Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 584

PUNISHING INCONTINENT DEITIES
544
which she poured upon them, had the effect of converting
them into a calf. After they had been thus transformed,
Anusooya took upon herself to bring up this calf by feeding
The Trimurti remained in this
it with her own milk.
humiliating position till all the female deities combined
together and, fearing lest some great misfortune might
befall them in the absence of their three principal gods,
after consulting one another, went in a body to Anusooya
and begged her most humbly to give up the Trimurti and
It was with great
to restore them to their former state.
Anusooya was persuaded to yield to their
and even then she imposed a condition that they
difficulty that
prayers,
be ravished (by whom the fable does not
deities, convinced that they could not
otherwise rescue the Trimurti, consented to undergo the
penalty required of them, choosing rather to lose their
honour than their gods. The conditions being fulfilled,
Anusooya restored the Trimurti to their former state, and
they returned to the place whence they came l
This scandalous adventure of the mighty divinities of
the Trimurti is one of the least indecent of the kind related
should first of all
say). The female
.
Hindu books.
But whatever may be the confusion pervading the con-
in the
tradictory accounts of the different Puranas, I am inclined
to believe that all that is said about the three divinities
of the Trimurti, and of the follies which are ascribed to
them, is a mere mass of disgusting allegory.
At the commencement of their idolatry the Hindus
confined their worship to visible objects, such as the sun,
the moon, the stars, and the elements. In those early
times they felt no need of making idols of stone, wood, or
But as paganism extended its dominion, and when,
metal.
in imitation of other idolatrous nations, the Hindus went
so far as to deify simple mortals, they had recourse to statues
and images in order to perpetuate the memory of their
celebrated men and to transmit their virtues to posterity.
By degrees, with the same object in view, they gave a
bodily form to all the objects of their worship. The origin
Hindus would say that these stories were not intended to illustrate
the immorality of their gods, but to affirm that a chaste woman is proof
even against divine temptation. Ed
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