False Gods in India
“What ugly looking pictures! What can they be?”
I do not wonder that you think the pictures ugly, but if you could see them, idols in the temple of Juggernaut, in India, you would think them still more ugly than their pictures. And yet you would see something that would seem worse to you than the idols themselves; you would see people bowing down before these hideous looking idols and calling them their gods, and praying to them!
“And are these the only gods that the people of India know anything about?”
Oh no, there are more gods in India than there are people! There are so many that a person could not worship them all if he should try. Each person therefore chooses the ones that he likes best and worships them.
“Well, are the gods all like them!” you say.
No not just like these, but very many are as bad as these, and some are still worse.
There are “idols of every form and shape, from the little painted clay image in a poor man’s house, up to the huge figure of gold in one of their temples, or to the image of a bull, twenty feet high, cut out of a rock.” Then besides these frightful idols of clay, and stone and brass, and gold, some of them worship demons, which they say are the blood-thirsty spirits of wicked men who have died. Others worship the sun and moon and stars, the fire which blazes on the hearth, the wind which sweeps across the plains, the stream which flows by their dwelling, the cow which browses in the pasture, the very tools with which they work, the snakes that crawl across their path, the trees that surround their villages, the mountains, hills, plants, and stones, and numberless other familiar objects.
The three greatest gods are Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Siva the destroyer.
Siva is worshipped more than the other because the people are afraid of him. He and his wife, Kali Devi, are said to be so bloodthirsty that the people are willing to give them almost anything, not because they love them, but to keep them from hurting them. Siva is represented by a small black bone carried in a silver box around the neck, or fastened to the arm.
Siva’s wife, Kali Devi, is an idol of very dark blue, almost black. “She has four arms, having in one hand a sword, and in another the head of a giant which she holds by the hair, another hand is open to bestow a blessing and with the fourth she is forbidding fear. She wears two dead bodies for earrings, and a necklace of skulls; her mouth is open, and her tongue hangs down to the chin. The heads of several giants are hung as a girdle around her waist, and her tresses fall down to her feet. As she is supposed to have been drinking the blood of the giants which she has slain, her eyebrows are bloody, and the blood is falling in a stream down her breast; her eyes are red like those of a drunkard. She stands with one foot on her husband, Siva, who had cast himself down before her among the bodies of the dead.”
Just think of worshipping a god like that! It is said that she can be kept from hurting them in no other way than by giving her plenty of blood. “The blood of a tiger is said to please her for a hundred years, and the blood of a lion, a deer, or a man, a thousand, while by the sacrifice of three men she is pleased a hundred thousand years.” No wonder that the poor people at one time offered human beings to her, and that they still spend so much of their money for animals to sacrifice to her at her yearly festivals. Every year the blood runs in streams before her shrines.
Ganess, the elephant-headed son of Siva and Kali Devi, is also much worshipped. His image is found everywhere, by the roadside, and under trees, and in small temples. “No one sets out on a journey without praying to him, ‘O! thou work-perfecting Ganess grant me success in my journey.’ At the head of every letter, his peculiar mark is made. When a person begins to read he salutes Ganess, and shopkeepers and others paint the image or name of this god over the doors of their shops or houses, expecting him to protect them and help them in their work. Many keep in their houses a small brass image of him and worship it daily. In him they think is found all wisdom. Often is the Hindu mother seen pointing her frightened infant to this hideous idol, and joining its tiny hands together towards the god.”
The people live in fear all the time. Those who worship demons dare not even show that they love their children, or take good care of them when they are ill, for fear the demons will see their love and kill their children or cause some other dreadful thing to happen to them.
And what has one of these idols ever done that they should be thus worshipped and feared? Not one thing.
They are but wood or stones or brass or clay made into these shapes. Can a piece of stone or clay hear you when you speak to it? Can it feel when you touch it? Does it know when you are in trouble? Has it power to come and help you? No; and neither can these false gods.
“They have mouths, but they speak not;
Eyes have they, but they see not;
They have ears, but they hear not;
Noses have they, but they smell not;
They have hands, but they handle not;
Feet have they, but they walk not;
Neither speak they through their mouths.” [Psalm 115:5-7]
“If they can do nothing to hurt anyone why do so many of the people of India fear them?” “If they can do nothing to help a person, why do they pray to them?”
It is because they are following false guide-books. They are told that these are their gods and that bad spirits come into their idols that will do dreadful things to them unless they worship them and give them many offerings. They believe this so strongly that sometimes they go for years without noticing that their prayers are never answered, and when they do notice, they often think it is because they must offer still greater sacrifices, or more sorely afflict their bodies.
Oh, that all might get hold of the true Guide-Book! Oh, that all might learn of the true God!