Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 328

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RELIGIOUS ORGIES AMONGST THE ANCIENTS
regarded as acts of virtue by the fanatics. As usual, the
meeting winds up with the most revolting orgy.
Without the salutary restraint of a healthy tone of
morality, how can these people be expected to fight success-
fully against the vehemence of their passions %
And then,
when they give way to unbridled licence, they think to
stifle remorse by investing these horrible practices with a
religious element, as if sacrilege could disguise their moral
turpitude.
Strange to say, it is the Brahmins, and very
often the women of this caste, who are frequently the most
ardent promoters of these Bacchanalian orgies. However,
debauches of this kind entail such heavy expenses as
fortunately to prevent their frequent recurrence.
Of course it is well known that most ancient nations
had their own peculiar mysterious rites, and that very few
among them failed to worship profligacy in some shape or
other.
Greece might well feel ashamed of the depravity
which pervaded the cultus of a large number of her deities.
Many remains still exist, proving irrefutably that the grossest
excesses defiled the temples of Venus, Ceres, Bacchus, &c,
while the Persian Mitra and the Egyptian Osiris were the
objects of equally impure worship.
Holy Scripture tells us something of the abominations
practised by the Canaanites in honour of Baal, Baal-peor,
and Moloch, which brought down upon them such terrible
punishments. Thus we see that, all the world over, idolatry
assumed much the same forms, for ignorance and fanaticism
can have but one termination.
At the same time, the Hindus, accustomed as they are
to carry everything to extremes, appear to have surpassed
all the other nations of the world, both ancient and modern,
in the unconscionable depravity with which so many of
their religious rites are impregnated.
CHAPTER X
The Various Occupations
of
Brahmins.
If Brahmins kept strictly to the letter of the rules of
their caste, they would live in isolated places, far from the
haunts of men, where their whole lives would be spent in