144 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTKAL INDIA. 



it was a very ancient form of worship among the peoples of 

 Western Asia, and was even prevalent in heathen Eome more 

 than 1600 years ago. It was, as in India, so in the countries 

 of Western Asia, connected with human sacrifices. It is true 

 that this form of the Hindu religion is chiefly prevalent in 

 the wilder parts of the country, where the aboriginal element 

 prevails, many of its chief est shrines being in fact situated in 

 secluded wildernesses, and guarded by aboriginal, or semi- 

 aboriginal, custodians. It may be, then, that the personified 

 forms of this deity were adaptations from the cultus of some 

 of the aboriginal races that have been absorbed in Hinduism ; 

 but I think we must go much further back in the history of 

 this movement to find the originals of Kali and Bhairava 

 than to anything we know of the indigenes as they now 

 exist. May it not have been in the earliest days of Brahmin- 

 ical revival, when competitors for the adherence of the people 

 in the great struggle with Buddhism had to be sought for 

 among the popular deities when Vishnu was transformed 

 into the popular demigods Kama and Krishna, into the Tor- 

 toise, and the Fish, and the Man-Tiger, to suit the tastes of a 

 variety of half-Hinduized races that then Siva was also im- 

 ported from the West, and allied with the sterner objects of 

 worship of the wilder races, to draw them into the great net 

 of the priests, as the incarnations of Vishnu in their popular 

 heroes and totems were employed to draw the more civilized 

 classes of the people % Were these deities really indigenous 

 amongst the Gonds we should certainly see their worship a 

 matter of more widespread and heartfelt devotion than it is. 

 It is in truth still almost confined to the Chiefs and their half- 

 Hindu dependants, and to a few of the most advanced, and 

 probably half-blooded, sections of the tribes. In the great 

 periodical acts of public propitiation of the gods they are 



