Great Indian Religion

Author(s): G T Bettany
Publisher: Ward Lock Bowden and Co

Page 93

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LOCAL DEITIES AND DEMONS.
women; some are in effect devils, delighting in blood. All are believed to control secret operations of nature, and to have magic powers which may be imparted to worshippers.
Some even go so far as to say that the predominant belief of the Hindus, especially in the villages, is a dread of evil spirits, who are believed to bring about all evils and diseases, and often have peculiar and special areas of destructiveness. They may have material bodies of a more ethereal structure than those of men, have differences of sex, and possess the power of assuming any shape and moving through the air in any direction. Some of these are the Asuras, or demons created at the foundation of the world or by the gods (though originally the word meant simply beings of a godlike nature). We cannot go into their classes; but it is to be noted that the majority of demons are believed to have been originally human beings, whose evil nature lives after them as demons. All crimes, diseases, and calamities are due to special devils. They mostly require food, and especially the blood of living animals. Sometimes mounds of earth, piles of bricks, etc., do duty as shrines for their "worship," the offering of food and recital of incantations being the chief rites. Every village has its own demon. A volume might be occupied in describing the devil-cults of India. In the south, where they are believed to delight in dancing, music, etc., "when pestilence is rife in any district, professional exorcisers, or certain persons selected for the purpose, paint their faces, put on hideous masks, dress up in fantastic garments, arm themselves with strange weapons, and commence dancing. Their object is to personate particular devils, or rather perhaps to induce such devils to leave the persons of their victims and to occupy the persons of the dancers, who shriek, fling themselves about, and work themselves up into a frenzy of excitement, amid beating of tom-toms, blowing of horns, and ringing of bells. When the dancers are thoroughly exhausted, they sink down in a kind of trance, and are then believed to be gifted with clairvoyance and a power of delivering prophetic utterances. The
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