290 An Accotnit of Gnr]iival, [Sess. 



India. Each of them has always with him a deputy, who 

 succeeds him when he dies. When this occurs, a new deputy 

 is at once sent up from the convents in Southern India, 

 which have held from time immemorial the patronage of the 

 appointments. Once sent up, the priest never returns to the 

 sunny south, but lives and dies in the mountains. He has, 

 however, a brilliant position, especially the high priest of 

 Budrienath. The greatest native princes of India kneel before 

 him, and almost worship him as a divinity. 



In the plains of India, among the adherents of the Vaish- 

 nav sect, a fanatic devotee often takes a vow to visit four 

 great temples at the four corners of India — 1st, the temple 

 of Juggernath in the east ; 2d, the temple of Dwarka in the 

 west ; 3d, the temple of Cape Comorin in the south ; and 4th, 

 the temple of Budrienath in the Himalayas. Owing to this, 

 the Vaishnav pilgrims in Gurhwal are more numerous than the 

 Sivite ones. It is easy to know them, as the two sects mark 

 their foreheads with chalk of different colours, and in a differ- 

 ent way. The followers of Vishnu mark their foreheads with 

 three perpendicular lines, the centre one being red and the 

 lateral ones white. The followers of Mahadao use white chalk 

 only, and mark their foreheads with horizontal lines, not per- 

 pendicular. Imagine this being introduced into Scotland — 

 Episcopalians putting horizontal lines in white chalk on their 

 foreheads, and Presbyterians perpendicular lines. English 

 travellers sometimes absurdly call these marks caste-marks. 

 They have nothing whatever to do with caste, since a Brahmin 

 and a low-caste man who belong to the same religious sect, 

 wear exactly the same mark on their forehead. I repeatedly 

 called on the high priests, and found them very pleasant and 

 intelligent men ; but I used to wonder whether they would 

 not have been happier if they had remained poor monks in 

 their convent in the warm south, instead of becoming high 

 priests in the cold bleak mountains, living practically their 

 whole life in the region of perpetual snow. 



Close to the temple of Kidarnath is a famous precipice, 

 from which, in former times, pilgrims used to throw themselves 

 down, believing that by so doing they would go straight to 

 heaven. This has been forbidden by the British Govern- 

 ment, and one of the duties of the high priest of Kidarnath, 



