1866.] Notes on a Tour in Maunbhoom. 193 



formation abortt the antiquities of the place. The people, though to 

 this day worshipping Kalee and offering sacrifices to a clay image of 

 her in a shed, utterly disregard the ancient shrines, and care not for 

 the desecration or deportation of the idol. It is the same with similar 

 remains of Brahminical worship all over the country. We see that it 

 was established in places that are now the haunts of wild beasts or the 

 abode of a race that know nothing of such worship, and we see by the 

 destruction of the temples and mutilation of the images that equal zeal 

 was displayed in uprooting, as in establishing, it. The destructive 

 agency is generally supposed to have been put in action by the Maho- 

 medan power, but I do not understand, if this were so, how it is that 

 some tradition regarding the destruction is not retained. We may 

 associate some of these temples with the hermits, rishis or sages of the 

 ancient days of Aryan progress ; — attempts made to establish religious 

 colonies amongst the yet unsubdued aborigines. It would appear that 

 even in the days of the Ramayun the aborigines of this part of the 

 country were called Kols. In the Ramayun they are alluded to as 

 fierce savages in a conversation between Seeta and her mother-in-law, 

 wherein the latter enumerates the various difficulties Seeta would have 

 to encounter if she accompanied Ram in his progress south.* ' The 

 Ramayun,' says Lassen, ' contains the narrative of the first attempts of 

 1 the Aryans to extend themselves to the south by conquest, but it 

 'presupposes the peaceable extension of the Brahminical missions in the 

 ' same direction as having taken place still earlier. Ram, when he 

 ' arrives at the south of the Vindya range, finds there the sage Agastya 

 ' by whom the southern regions had been rendered safe and accessible. 

 ' The Rakshasas, who are represented as disturbing the sacrifices and 

 t devouring the priests, signify here, as often elsewhere, merely the 

 ' savage tribes which placed themselves in hostile opposition to the 

 ' Brahminical institutions. "f The Ramayun depicts the Dasyas as 

 infesting the hermitages or settlements of the Aryans, as obstructing 

 their sacred rites, as enemies of the Brahmins, &c. It is true we do not 

 hear that in these early days the worship of Siva had been established,, 

 but the Hindoos of the Pooranic times were not less zealous in prosely- 

 tizing, and may have followed the same system of pushing forward 



* Prom Muir's Sanskrit Texts, Part II. page 425. 

 f From the same, page 435. 



