144 Wilber Theodore Elmore 



women who have died in childbirth, and any persons who have 

 received marked injustice while on earth. It is thought that these 

 people will have a grudge against the world which used them so 

 badly, and so will return to get satisfaction.^^ 



The ghosts of the Perantalus^^ apparently are not feared at 

 first, but are worshiped because they did good while on earth. 

 They become the milder and more beneficent of the goddesses, 

 yet because of the general tendencies of Dravidian worship, the 

 more bloody ceremonies are often present, and in time many of 

 them come to be feared but little less than are the other demons.^^ 



Morality of the Dravidian Religion. To one who for the 

 first time comes into contact with the Dravidian religious cere- 

 monies, they seem shocking and terrible. Comparing them with 

 the ceremonies of Hinduism he is inclined to feel that the Dra- 

 vidian rites represent the very acme of immoral "heathenism," 



57 I place here the deification of women dying in childbirth, for it seems 

 the best explanation. What is more unjust than that a woman should 

 lose her life in giving life to another? From the human point of 

 view there is no explanation, and such a woman, it is thought by the Dra- 

 vidians, will not be in a good mood toward the living. 



58 In the Vizagapatam District Perantalu worship is very common. They 

 are usually worshiped as gramma devatalu, or village goddesses, but have 

 no influence over epidemics. In this district little is known of the local 

 histories of the goddesses, which appears to indicate that they have come 

 from further south. See Gazetteer of Vizagapatam District, I, p. 315. 



59 The Manual of Administration of the Madras Presidency, p. 71, says 

 that ancestor worship among the Dravidians began with fear of the shades 

 of the ancestors. This is no doubt true wherever ancestor worship is 

 found. As has been seen in the preceding pages, the deity is very seldom 

 an ancestor. Ancestor worship is more Brahmanic than Dravidian. Sir 

 Alfred Lyall {Asiatic Studies, First Series, p. 49) argues that the gods of 

 the aboriginal tribes originate in the worship of living people. He says that 

 the human personality impresses them so powerfully that they worship 

 people while living, and the spirits of the same people after they have died. 

 The foregoing investigations cast considerable doubt on this explanation. 

 No instances have been found of a person being worshiped while living 

 and also after death. It is the Brahmanic religion which teaches the 

 worship of living people, that is, the worship of Brahmans. Among the 

 Dravidians the absence of the worship of people and of human personality 

 appears to be a marked feature. 



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