Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Página 588

548
MOTIVES FOR DEIFYING OBJECTS
It was not to the forests, to the rivers, or to the
fountains that prayers were offered, but to the Fauns and
to the Naiads who presided over them.
The idolatry of India, which is of a much grosser kind,
has for the object of its worship the material substance
itself.
It is to water, to fire, to the most common house-
hold implements in a word, to everything which they
understand to be useful or hurtful, that the Hindus pay
direct worship.
It is true that they admit another kind of idolatry which
There are images of deities of the
is a little more refined.
first rank which are exposed to public veneration only
after a Brahmin has invoked and incorporated in them
In these cases, it is really the
these actual divinities.
divinity that resides in the idol, and not the idol itself,
that is worshipped.
But the one kind of worship does not exclude the other
and that which has for its object the actual substance
itself is the most common.
The Hindus hold, as an invariable principle, that every
object, animate or inanimate, which has the power of doing
good or evil, should be worshipped.
My god,' a respectable Hindu said to me one day, is
for as they work
the headman amongst my field labourers
under his orders, he can, by using his influence, do me
to him.
;
;
'
'
;
much good
or
much
evil.'
have somewhere read a conversation between the wives
of the seven famous Bishis, in which they agreed in the
principle that the chief god of a woman is her husband,
by reason of the good or evil he can do her and we have
already seen that the rules of conduct drawn up for Hindu
It is this same
ladies continually remind us of this idea.
notion which makes the Hindus attach so much importance
I
;
to the blessing or the curse of persons reputed to be saints
is on the same principle also that they are so easily
persuaded to give the name of god to princes and great
personages, and, in short, to every one from whom they
have something to hope or to fear.
;
it
There is one phrase which among the civilized nations
Europe has at all times been a metaphorical exaggera-
To make a god
tion, but which is taken literally in India.
of