PART I. LECT. II. here, on all who will now share my flesh, let all curse the Janni to the gods. "The Janni. Dying creature, do you contend with me? I shall not allow you a place among the gods. "The victim. In dying I shall become a god, and then will you know whom you serve. Now do your will on me." The form of the sacrifice is no less awful than the ritual. Fixed against a short post, in the midst of four larger ones, the victim's chest or his throat is fitted into the rift of a branch, cut green and cleft several feet down. Cords are twisted round the open extremity, which the priest and one or two elders then strive with all their might to close: the priest then wounds the victim slightly with his axe, and the whole crowd throws itself upon the sacrifice, and strips the flesh from the bones; the possession of a strip of such flesh ensuring a participation in the merits of the sacrifice. Tari Pennu is then invoked us. "You have afflicted us greatly; have brought death to our children and our bullocks, and failure to our corn-but we do not complain of this. It is your desire only to compel us to perform your due rites, and then to raise up and enrich Do you now enrich us! Let our herds be so numerous that they cannot be housed; let children so abound that the care of them shall overcome their parents, as shall be seen by their burned hands; let our heads ever strike against brass pots innumerable hanging from our roofs; let the rats form their nests of shreds of scarlet cloth and silk; let all the kites in the country be seen in the trees of our village, from beasts being killed there every day. We are ignorant of what it is good to ask for. You know what is good for us. Give it to us.' I dare hardly trust myself to say all I think of this ritual. Nothing can show more strikingly the "feeling after God" of the heathen, while yet He is "not far" from them. It is full, if I may so speak, of instinctive Christianity. We have the sense, not only of the need of sacrifice, but of A GOSPEL FOR THE KHONDS. 31 a sacrifice which shall be "for the whole world." PART 1. Out of this sacrifice arises human society itself; Races. it is its corner-stone. This sacrifice must be the LECT. II. sacrifice of a man,—the victim must be pure, he must be freely given, yet bought with a price. By sacrifice the victim becomes a god; the merits of his sacrifice are imparted by communion in his flesh and blood. All these mighty truths lie embedded in the bloody, dreadful worship of Tari Pennu. But how dreadful it is! how revolting! How true and fine the struggle of nature against it, as exhibited in the same ritual, the instinctive rebellion of the human heart against its atrocity! The very priest is cursed for performing the rite. The last act of the victim is to crush him, as it were, with the might of his all-but-realized godhead. How noble the proclamation of the Boora Pennu worshippers, that the God of light abhors the shedding of His creatures' blood, that He is ever victorious over evil, and only uses it as His minister ! Surely there is good news to be told to these poor Khonds, good news which is capable of reconciling all their sectarian feuds, of harmonizing all their spiritual struggles, of cementing into one the precious half-truths which each division of the tribe possesses, and rightly clings to, the good news of Christ's one oblation of Himself once offered;" of the "full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world;" of the "tender mercy"-not the quenchless wrath—of the Heavenly Father that gave Him to suffer death; of that communion in His most blessed body and PART I. blood which is "to continue a perpetual memory of His precious death until His coming again." Races. LECT. II. 1 It is remarkable that the Dabistan, a curious Mahommedan work of the seventeenth century on the religions of the world, does not even distinguish the native forms of worship from Hindooism. It treats two of the aboriginal tribes of Middle India, the Soorahs, whom it calls Surwar, and the Gonds, whom it calls Gondwar, as mere Hindoo sects. See Vol. II., pp. 241-2, of the English translation. LECTURE III. THE HINDOOS. The Hindoos confessedly not Aboriginal-Caucasians from the North-west-Originally Fair-complexioned-Their Characteristics: Organised Polytheism; Caste; Municipal System - Polytheism of the Hindoos: the sole Representative of that of Antiquity; a Book-Religion - The Vedas and their Commentators - The Code of Menu - Present Hindoo Theology; its good Tendencies; Faith in Saviour Gods who become Incarnate; Yearning for Union with God -The Sanskrit Language, Literature, and Civilisation Lies of Hindooism - The Pooranas Caste: The four Primitive Castes - Brahmin Preeminence; its Moral and Intellectual Elements -The Caste System the Hindoo Pattern of a Divine Order-Its Appeals to Human Selfishness -Fetters of the High Caste Man The Low Caste not precluded from Social Advancement Results of shaking off Caste- The Municipal System; the Village Communities - Panchayets - Hindoo Heresies: Buddhism; Jainism; The Sikh Faith. THE next layer from the bottom of Indian PART I. The Hindoos do not pretend to be aboriginal in India. Their legends and traditions point to holy mountains in the north-west,—the direction of the Hindoo Koosh mountains, the true Caucasus,—as their primitive home. At the dawn D Races. LECT. III. PART I. of their literature,—fourteen or fifteen centuries, it is reckoned, before our era, or some 3,300 years ago, we find the Rig Veda evincing by internal evidence that they had not spread beyond the north-west of India; the most acceptable offering to their gods being the fermented juice of the Toma or Moon-plant-a round, smooth, twining plant, peculiar, we are told, "to the mountains in the west of India, the desert to the north of Delhi, and the mountains of the Bolan pass," not to be found in rich soils, and which, therefore, does not extend into the interior of India. They were not, however, then fresh come from the Hindoo Koosh, but were evidently well acquainted with the sea. It is said, in the Rig Veda, that the adorers of Indra throng round him " as the covetous of gain crowd the ocean on a voyage; that Varuna, abiding in the ocean, knows the course of ships; and vessels "floating over the ocean," and "a hundred-oared ship," &c., are elsewhere spoken of (vol. i. pp. 152, 307). The constant mention of horses and chariots, moreover, indicates evidently a descent into the plains; whilst the description of the horse itself proves, as Mrs. Speir remarks, that the animal spoken of must be the high-bred one of Beloochistan, rather than the far inferior one of India. Nor their progress rapid after this period. General Briggs observes, that "from the time of the Vedas, they had not crossed the Vindhya range in six centuries and a half. Ten centuries more occurred ere they turned that barrier on the east and west, leaving the savage belt unsubdued, and Gondwana intact; and five cen |