90 



RELICS OF POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS. 



Slimed to arrest or follow her steps, A kind of surprise, sucli as 

 results from some unexpected gleam of brilliant light, had been 

 excited even among the most vulgar, by the nobleness of this un- 

 happy mother. Ibrahim, though he felt that she had wilhngly 

 sacrificed splendour and honour to save her son, also felt that she 

 had sacrificed him ; and had proved her affection as a wife, infe- 

 rior to her fondness as a parent ; and his consternation was not 

 unmingled with resentment. But while he paused, the kindred 

 of his revengeful Bomanjee completed the measures they had pre- 

 pared for his misery. Instigated by their eloquence and their 

 bribes, the most zealous Brahmins had placed themselves in read- 

 iness to seize their victim. Abandoned to their ferocious power 

 by all the creeds and all the customs of the Hindoos, the misera- 

 ble outcast was brought back to suffer the ordeal by which their 

 superstition pretends to discover those who are really Pariahs or 

 outcasts from the gods. Conscious of his own indiscreet dupHcity, 

 fearful of the disgrace which vehement interference might draw 

 on his own head, and unnerved by the habitual indolence of a sel- 

 fish hfe, Ibrahim satisfied himself with silent regret, while the 

 Brahmins conveyed their victim to Carh, intending to exhibit her 

 fate as a terrible evidence of their power, and an atoning sacrifice 

 to their goddess Kali."^ Ibrahim heard Kali named with a fright- 

 ful and remorseful consciousness of the death designed for Chande- 

 la and her son. The languor of his temperament, which, like his 

 personal beauty, possessed more elasticity than strength, gave way 

 to human passions ; and he embarked secretly in his boat at mid- 

 night to overtake the Brahmins in their journey to their temple. 

 He reached it safely a few hours after their arrival, and pitched 

 his tent at the foot of its tremendous seat. With no attendants, 

 he ascended the piles of rocks sheltered by wild groves of mango 

 trees on the road to Carli. All was dark when he reached the 

 mouth of its giant cave, and hid himself among the arched niches 

 which form its portico. The spectacle would have awed a stronger 

 spirit. Hewn in the solid rock, three aisles formed by twenty-one 

 enormous pillars supported a coved roof resting on ribs of teak- 

 wood undecayed by six hundred years. A few torches gleaming 



^ This tremendous deity (the wife of Seeva) receives many victims still, 

 betv^een the shores of Calcutta and the isle of Sangor, where her ruined 

 temple stands. Her votaries are deemed happy if seized by the sharks 

 which wait around it. 



