DEMON WORSHIP. 



9 



former is only to injure the body. A Singhalese demon is himself 

 a being subject to death, like all other beings recognised by Budd- 

 hism, although that event may in some instances take place only 

 at the end of some tens of thousands of years. This difference arises 

 from the Buddhist doctrine, that there is no state of perpetual ex- 

 istence for any being; that happiness or misery can never be per- 

 petual; that the rewards or punishments for the actions of one life 

 will be reaped in one or more states of existence afterwards, and 

 then come to an end; and that mere obedience to a demon does not 

 necessitate any disobedience to one's religion. 



In every other form of worship, which exists among men, whether 

 it be Buddhism, Capuism, Mohammedanism, Brahminism, or any 

 other, the objects of worship are always regarded with feelings of 

 veneration by their votaries; but in Demonism alone, no such 

 feelings exist in the heart of the worshipper, whose worship consists 

 only in trying to induce them by flattery, and offerings, or to coerce 

 them by threats, to cure, or to inflict some disease, or to secure a 

 man from becoming liable to it at all. And yet neither the rites of 

 Buddhism, nor of Capuism, nor even of Grahaism, are more fre- 

 quently and eagerly resorted to, than those belonging to the worship 

 of demons, who, instead of being objects of religious veneration, 

 are only objects of indescribable dread. 



One of the main differences between an educated and an unedu- 

 cated intellect seems to be this — that, while the former always aims 

 at analysis, at generalization, at resolving the mysterious and the 

 marvellous into natural causes, at laying open the hidden and in- 

 scrutable things of nature, the latter takes the directly opposite 

 course of indulging in the unreasonable and unaccountable pleasure 

 of throwing a veil of mystery and darkness even over those things, 

 which, if it were to view them rationally, it might understand, and 

 of endeavouring, as often as possible, to give "a local habitation 

 and a name " to what has neither. Nowhere is this strange pecu- 

 liarity of the uncultivated intellect perceived in a more tangible 

 form than in the demonology of the Singhalese. 



As may naturally be expected in such a system, created and 



c 



