644 BHOOTAMS, OR EVIL SPIRITS
these precepts are practised with a praiseworthy object, all the merit is spoilt by the evidently self-interested motives which influence them. To perform a virtuous action simply
for the sake of enjoying the feeling of having done right, is a sentiment entirely beyond their comprehension. If you were to ask a rich Hindu why he spent part of his fortune in erecting buildings consecrated to religious worship, in establishing rest-houses for the accommodation of travellers, or in planting trees along the high-road to shelter wayfarers
from the burning sun, he would frankly tell you that such munificence was calculated to raise him in public esteem
during his lifetime, and to transmit his name to posterity after his death.
Bhootams, or Evil Spirits.
Almost all ancient philosophers, among them Pythagoras and the followers of Plato, have agreed in saying that each human being is under the influence of a good spirit or an
evil spirit; some even go so far as to allow him both a good and a bad spirit. Our own revealed religion can suggest
more reasonable ideas on this subject; but superstition, the creature of ignorance and fear, was obliged to fall back on the imagination to find plausible reasons for the alternations of good and evil to which mankind is subject. Incapable of a just appreciation of the workings of Providence, and unable to fathom that which is inscrutable, these
heathen people imagine that the sorrows and troubles which befall them are all the work of invisible and malicious spirits, to whom they must offer prayers and sacrifices by way of
propitiation. Hindus carry their credulity on this point to a ridiculous excess. The worship of evil spirits is in fact firmly established and very generally practised among them l. These spirits are called by the generic name of bhootams, which also means elements, as if the elements were nothing else but evil spirits materialized and were the
1
The system of demon-worship seems to have been that of the tribes whom the Hindus supplanted and drove into the mountains or into the extreme south. The Brahmins have given a place to those demons in their system, and represent them as attendants of Siva( Bhutesa = lord of demons). The method of worship, the ceremonies and observances of this ancient system, are foreign to the genius of Hinduism. Pope.