In the upper provinces she is called Šītalā Devī, or simply Devi. In the South her name is Mārī-amman, 'Mother of Death.' This goddess may either avert small-pox-of which there are three different kinds-cause small-pox, or be herself small-pox. In some parts of the country persons who die of small-pox are not burnt, lest the goddess herself should be burnt too. She also presides over cholera and other diseases causing death. Her shrines are generally found outside villages, under trees, or in groves, and are often associated with the shrines of Ganesa.

Some of the most important local Mothers in the South are deifications of celebrated women who were great benefactresses and came to be regarded after death as manifestations or forms of Siva's wife. Such are Mīnāći (for Minakshi, worshipped at Madura), Kāmāćī, Visālāćī, and others.

In the South of India the Mothers are called Ammans. Notably a Mother named Ella-amman presides over boundaries, and is supposed to have great power over serpents and to be particularly fond of fish.

Another, called Pīdārī, is said to be 'a queen among the devils,' because all who hang or poison themselves, or die any violent death, are turned into malignant demons who would destroy the whole human race if not kept in check by Pidāri.

Other Mothers dreaded for their fierce nature are them

selves simply demons; for example, Ćāmuṇḍā, Marudāyī, and Kateri. The last is an evil spirit inhabiting the air, and is thought to be too aerial in character to be represented by an image.

All these Mothers are believed to delight in blood and to drink it. Hence the blood of swine, goats, and cocks, besides all kinds of cooked grain, are offered to them. One Mother called Kulumāndī-amman is said to have a special fancy for black kids, and can only be appeased and prevented from causing sickness and death if the blood of at least three or four thousand such kids is presented to her every year.

Sometimes she is personated by a man who is carried on the shoulders of two other men and sucks up some of the blood of the slaughtered animals.

When a woman dies unpurified within fifteen days after childbirth she becomes a demon called Ćuḍel (Churel). She is then always on the watch to attack other young mothers.

On the other hand, the power of at least one well-disposed Mother in Gujarāt is exerted in a remarkable way for the benefit of women after childbirth. Among a very low-caste set of basket-makers (called Pomlā) it is the usual practice of a wife to go about her work immediately after delivery, as if nothing had happened. The presiding Mātā of the tribe is supposed to transfer her weakness to her husband, who takes to his bed and has to be supported with good nourishing food. The goddess Shashṭhi (Chathi) protects infants, and is therefore worshipped on the sixth day after delivery. She is represented by a simple stone set up under some tree.

The eight Mothers worshipped by the Tantrikas of Bengal are each represented with a child in her lap, and it is remarkable that Umā, wife of Śiva, when worshipped as a type of beauty and motherly excellence, is always regarded as a virgin1.

All the Mothers are believed to have control over magical powers, and especially over the secret operations of nature and all those mysterious occult agencies which are intensified by darkness and invisibility. These powers and preternatural faculties they can impart to their worshippers, if properly propitiated. This is a proof of the intimate connexion subsisting between Mother-worship and the doctrines of Šāktism as described in the preceding chapter.

1 So in particular churches at Munich and elsewhere the shrines of the black Virgin are frequented by vast numbers of pilgrims, who hang up votive offerings, often consisting of waxen arms and legs, around her altar, in the firm belief that they owe the restoration of broken limbs and the recovery from various diseases to her intervention.

CHAPTER IX.

Demon-worship and Spirit-worship.

THIS subject has already been to some extent anticipated in the previous chapter. There I have endeavoured to point out that the universal prevalence of the worship of tutelary deities among the great mass of the population in India is the result of a perpetual dread of evil demons-a dread which haunts Hindus of all ranks and stations, from the highest to the lowest, with the exception of those fortunate persons whom a European education has delivered from the dominion of superstitious ideas.

My object in the present chapter will be to show that the very demons and evil spirits are as much objects of worship as the gods who defend men from their malice; just as the tutelary deities may themselves under aggravating circumstances turn into angry demons who require to be propitiated (see p. 245).

In fact, a belief in every kind of demoniacal influence has always been from the earliest times an essential ingredient in Hindū religious thought. The idea probably had its origin in the supposed peopling of the air by spiritual beings—the personifications or companions of storm and tempest. Certainly no one who has ever been brought into close contact with the Hindūs in their own country can doubt the fact that the worship of at least ninety per cent. of the people of India in the present day is a worship of fear. Not that the existence of good deities presided over by one Supreme

Being is doubted; but that these deities are believed to be too absolutely good to need propitiation; just as in ancient histories of the Slāv races, we are told that they believed in a white and a black god, but paid adoration to the last alone, having, as they supposed, nothing to apprehend from the beneficence of the first or white divinity.

The simple truth is that evil of all kinds, difficulties, dangers, and disasters, famines, diseases, pestilences, and death, are thought by an ordinary Hindu to proceed from demons, or, more properly speaking, from devils, and from devils alone. These malignant beings are held, as we have seen, to possess varying degrees of rank, power, and malevolence. Some aim at destroying the entire world, and threaten the sovereignty of the gods themselves. Some delight in killing men, women, and children, out of a mere thirst for human blood. Some take a mere mischievous pleasure in tormenting, or revel in the infliction of sickness, injury, and misfortune. All make it their business to mar or impede the progress of good works and useful undertakings.

And the remarkable thing is, that the power wielded by certain arch-demons over men, and even gods, is supposed to have been acquired by the practice of religious austerities. It is said of the demon Ravaṇa, that after undergoing severe austerities in a forest for ten thousand years, standing in the midst of five fires with his feet in the air, he obtained from the god Brahma powers greater than those possessed by the gods themselves.

We must, however, at the outset guard against the idea. that in Hindu mythology the expressions devil and demonany more than the Greek diáßoλos and daíuwv-are convertible terms; or that these two words at all adequately express the immense variety of spiritual beings supposed to hold communication with man or liable to be brought into relationship with him.

It is well known that Indian literature makes constant

mention of numerous regions above and below the earth which serve as the abode of such beings. Thus we learn from the Epic poems and Purāņas that there are seven upper and seven lower worlds1 (see p. 102, note), and beneath the latter are twenty-one hells. They are enumerated in Manu IV. 88-90, and others are added in Vishņu-purāṇa II. 62.

The hells are for the infliction of various degrees of suffering on sinful men. Yet they are not places of eternal punishment. They are merely temporary purgatories intended for the purification of those who have led wicked lives. One is a place of terrific darkness; another consists of heated caldrons (tapta-kumbha); another of red-hot iron (tapta-loha); another contains pits of red-hot charcoal; another of blood; another is a dense forest whose leaves are sharp swords; another is a hell of pincers (Sandanša); another is a sea of fetid mud; another is a plain paved with iron spikes3.

1 All fourteen worlds are believed to rest on the thousand heads of the great serpent Sesha; or the earth which is the lowest of the seven upper worlds is supposed to be supported at the quarters and intermediate quarters of the sky by eight male and eight female mythical elephants. Then, again, the earth is thought to be composed of seven great circular islands (most of which are known by the name of some tree or plant, such as Jambu, Kuša, Plaksha, Šālmali), surrounded by seven circular seas, all of which are described in Mahā-bhārata VI. 236, etc., and in the Vishņu-purāņa II. 2, etc. See also my 'Indian Wisdom,' p. 419.

2 This Purāṇa and the Bhāgavata make twenty-eight hells.

3 In a recent number of a Chicago paper I find the following curiously parallel ideas quoted from a Roman Catholic book for children, by the Rev. J. Furniss: 'The fourth dungeon is the boiling kettle. Listen; there is a sound like that of a kettle boiling. The blood is boiling in the scalded brains of that boy; the brain is boiling and bubbling in his head; the marrow is boiling in his bones. The fifth dungeon is the redhot oven, in which is a little child. Hear how it screams to come out; see how it turns and twists itself about in the fire; it beats its head against the roof of the oven; it stamps its feet upon the floor of the oven.' The idea of terrific torture lasting to all eternity seems a wholly Western conception. The same Chicago paper goes on to quote from another author: 'The world will probably be converted into a great lake or liquid globe of fire, in which the wicked shall be overwhelmed, which