It and plunged into it three times, dhuti,
head, and all, after which he came out looking exactly like a
well-favored dripping wet Triton. He twisted the only lock of
hair on the top of his shaved head and sprinkled it with water.
This operation concluded the first act.
The second act began with religious meditations and with mantrams,
which, by really pious people, must be repeated three times a day -
at sunrise, at noon and at sunset. Sham Rao loudly pronounced the
names of twenty-four gods, and each name was accompanied by a stroke
of the bell. Having finished he first shut his eyes and stuffed
his ears with cotton, then pressed his left nostril with two fingers
of his left hand, and having filled his lungs with air through the
right nostril, pressed the latter also. Then he tightly closed
his lips, so that breathing became impossible. In this position
every pious Hindu must mentally repeat a certain verse, which is
called the Gayatri. These are sacred words which no Hindu will
dare to pronounce aloud. Even in repeating them mentally he must
take every precaution not to inhale anything impure.
I am bound by my word of honor never to repeat the whole of this
prayer, but I may quote a few unconnected sentences:
"Om... Earth... Heaven.... Let the adored light of.... [here follows
a name which must not be pronounced] shelter me. Let thy Sun, O
thou only One, shelter me, the unworthy... I shut my eyes, I shut
my ears, I do not breathe ... in order to see, hear and breathe
thee alone. Throw light upon our thoughts [again the secret name]... "
It is curious to compare this Hindu prayer with the celebrated
prayer of Descartes' "Meditation III" in his L'Existence de Dieu.
It runs as follows, if I remember rightly:
"Now I shut my eyes, cover my ears, and dismiss all my five senses,
I will dwell on the thought of God alone, I will meditate on His
quality and look on the beauty of this wondrous radiancy."
After this prayer Sham Rao read many other prayers, holding with
two fingers his sacred Brahmanical thread. After a while began
the ceremony of "the washing of the gods." Taking them down from
the altar, one after the other, according to their rank, Sham Rao
first plunged them in the big font, in which he had just bathed
himself, and then bathed them in milk in a smaller bronze font
by the altar. The milk was mixed up with curds, butter, honey,
and sugar, and so it cannot be said that this cleansing served
its purpose. No wonder we were glad to see that the gods underwent
a second bathing in the first font and then were dried with a
clean towel.
