this stirring scene you have only a few steps to go to find
yourself in the large mosque built by the Emperor Aurungzeb on the site
of the old temple of Bisheshwar, which was thrown down to give place to
it. The contrast is very striking. You have left the bustling, noisy
crowd, and see only a few individuals in the attitude of devotion--now
standing with folded hands, then on their knees, then with forehead
touching the floor, engaged in supplicating the Invisible One. Instead
of grotesque and repulsive images meeting your view, you see very little
ornament of any kind, and are impressed with the severe simplicity of
the lofty building. The more one knows of Muhammadanism, the more
grievous are its defects and errors seen to be; but in the simplicity of
its mosques, which has nothing in common with the sordid barn-like
bareness too characteristic at one time of many places of worship in our
own land, there is much from which Christians might learn a useful
lesson.

Within a stone's throw of Bisheshwar's temple there is a host of
temples, none of them very large, some of them small, but most covered
with carving, to some extent for mere ornamentation, but chiefly for the
purpose of illustrating the objects of Hindu worship. If you visit them
you will see everything is accordant with the great shrine you have
left. You will see Shiva, sometimes seated on a bull, sometimes on a
dog; his hideous partner Durga, with her eight arms and her ferocious
look, indicating her delight in blood; Hanuman, the monkey-god, with his
huge tail; Krishna engaged in his gambols; Ganesh, the god of wisdom,
with his elephant head and protuberant belly; and many others beside.
Everything you see is wild, grotesque, unnatural, forbidding, utterly
wanting in verisimilitude and refinement, with nothing to purify and
raise the people, with everything fitted to pervert their taste and
lower their character; and yet, I must add, with everything to give a
faithful representation of the mythology prepared by their religious
leaders. The pundits who wrote the sacred books of the Hindus were men
of great talent, of abundant leisure; and it is a marvel to me, of which
I can give no explanation, how they spent their days in spinning the
wildest legends, and in setting forth their gods as performing the most
fantastic, capricious, foolish, and wicked deeds, when they had a clear
canvas before them, and might have filled it with something worthy of
our natu