Even Our Invulnerable Babu Always Wore A Kind Of White
Cap During The Night.
As soon as the reeds concert reaches its height and the inhabitants
of the neighborhood hear the distant "voices of the gods," whole
villages flock together to the bank of the lake, light bonfires,
and perform their pujas.
The fires lit up one after the other,
and the black silhouettes of the worshippers moved about on the
opposite shore. Their sacred songs and loud exclamations, "Hari,
Hari, Maha-deva!" resounded with a strange loudness and a wild
emphasis in the pure air of the night. And the reeds, shaken in
the wind, answered them with tender musical phrases. The whole
stirred a vague feeling of uneasiness in my soul, a strange
intoxication crept gradually over me, and in this enchanting place
the idol-worship of these passionate, poetical souls, sunk in dark
ignorance, seemed more intelligible and less repulsive. A Hindu
is a born mystic, and the luxuriant nature of his country has made
of him a zealous pantheist.
Sounds of alguja, a kind of Pandean pipe with seven openings, struck
our attention; their music was wafted by the wind quite distinctly
from somewhere in the wood. They also startled a whole family of
monkeys in the branches of a tree over our heads. Two or three
monkeys carefully slipped down, and looked round as if waiting
for something.
"What is this new Orpheus, to whose voice these monkeys answer?"
asked I laughingly.
"Some fakir probably.
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