A voyage round the world, and visits to various foreign countries, in the United States frigate Columbia .. . alled the monkey, with its three-formedshape, painted red, with glaring white and black this ill-formed block of wood numbers prostratedthemselves and worshipped—asking their god for what-ever might be the object of their particular desire, and ten-dering to him offerings of rice, or cocoa-nuts, or money—at times beseeching his assistance, or at others threateningthe painted deity, that if the request be not granted hisgodship would get no more cocoa-nuts. This seems a pe-c
A voyage round the world, and visits to various foreign countries, in the United States frigate Columbia .. . alled the monkey, with its three-formedshape, painted red, with glaring white and black this ill-formed block of wood numbers prostratedthemselves and worshipped—asking their god for what-ever might be the object of their particular desire, and ten-dering to him offerings of rice, or cocoa-nuts, or money—at times beseeching his assistance, or at others threateningthe painted deity, that if the request be not granted hisgodship would get no more cocoa-nuts. This seems a pe-culiar kind of worship, but the Hindoos both threaten andentreat, in their approaches to their gods. We wandered by some thirty or forty and more of theseidol-houses, to examine their many and various appear-ances. The houses differed not much from the indifferentresidences of the lower classes in the bazaar part of thetown. Others presented more respectable piles of build-ings ; and in a few instances the temples were embracedwithin a court of considerable spaciousness. 226 A VOYAGE AROUND THE HINDOO DEVOTEE. At length we came to the tent of a noted devotee, whohas made himself conspicuous as a sacred character forhis abstinence, mortification, and by the peculiarity of theform of his penance. He holds in his left hand a smallflower-pot, containing a rose-shrub, with its branches pro-tected by a light frame-work. The finger nails of thehand, which embraces the flower-pot, wind in their un-couth and spiral shape, six or eight inches in say he has held this flower-pot in the positionhe now carries it for thirty years. The fleshy part ofhis fingers, under his nail, has also oddly elongated he has thus preserved this flower-pot this lengthof time or not in this position, he evidently has well playedhis part, as the result of this action, deemed self-mortifica-tion and penance, has been to accumulate from the multi-tude who visit him, some 20,0
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade184, booksubjectvoyagesaroundtheworld
