Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 688

648
INANIMATE OBJECTS WORSHIPPED
animals that are offered as sacrifices must be at least three
years old, and must be healthy and free from all defects.
Under no circumstances can Brahmins preside or assist in
any way
at a sacrifice of blood.
CHAPTER
Inanimate Objects
Darbha Grass.
—
VII
—
Worship. The Salagrama Stone.
The Sacred Fig-Tree.
of
— The
Tvlasi.
—
Voltaire thought it incredible that the Egyptians could
ever have worshipped onions and other products of their
He always jeered at this tradition, and looked
gardens.
upon it as a mere fable. But the fact is, in matters of
superstition truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. What
I have already said and what I am now about to say re-
specting the Hindus will show incontestable that there are
absolutely no limits to the follies of idolatry. The Brah-
mins, indeed, must needs borrow objects from all three
kingdoms of nature in order to arrive at the magnificent total
of three hundred and thirty millions of deities which they
Amongst the inanimate substances which
recognize \
they worship, there are four which they consider especially
sacred. namely, the salagrama stone, darbha grass, the plant
tulasi, and the aswatta or sacred fig-tree.
The Salagrama
'-'.
held in great honour throughout India.
to be a metamorphosis of Vishnu, and
It is a sort
for this reason they offer daily sacrifices to it.
This
little
stone
is
Brahmins consider
it
of fossilized shell ammonite or nautilus, oval, striated, um-
bilicated, and ornamented with ' arborizations or tree-like
markings on the outside. The more there are of these tree-
'
more highly they are revered.
every Brahmin to have one of these
They are handed down from father
stones in his possession.
like markings, the
It is obligatory for
1
These are properly speaking devas or divine beings, not deities in the
Ed.
The snlagmiH or ammonite found in the Gundiek and other rivers
The account of
flowing through Nepal is said to be a form of Vishnu.
its origin given in the Skanda-purana is most monstrously and incredibly
strict sense of the term.
2
abominable.
Pope