58 
E. T. Atkinson— Notes on the history 
[No. 1 , 
here as amongst the extreme of either class. The more respectable and 
intelligent, whatever their practice in secret may be, never profess in 
public any attachment to the grosser ceremonial of the left-hand S'aktas, 
and it is only fair to say that they generally reprobate it as opposed to 
the spirit of the more orthodox writings. As a rule, the worshipper 
simply offers up a prayer and on great occasions presents one, two, five 
or eight kids, which are slaughtered and afterwards form the consecrated 
food of which all may partake. The left-hand ritual is more common in 
Garhwal, where there are some sixty-five temples dedicated to Nagaraja 
and Bhairava and some sixty dedicated to Bhairava alone, whilst there 
are not twenty temples to these forms in Kumaon. filagaraja is supposed 
to represent Vishnu, and Bhairava is held to be a form of S'iva, and these 
with their personified energies are considered present in each of these 
temples, though in the actual ceremony the worship is chiefly directed to 
the female form of S'iva’s S'akti. In all the rites, the use of some or all 
the elements of the five-fold makdra, viz., matsya (fish), mdinsa (flesh), 
madya (wine), maithund (women) and mudrd (certain mystical gesti¬ 
culations), are prescribed. Each step in the service is accompanied by 
its appropriate mantra in imitation of those used with the five-fold offer¬ 
ings of the regular services. In the great service of the Sri Ghahra or 
FurndhhisheJca,^ the ritual, as laid down in the DasaJcarma, places the 
worshippers, male and female, in a circle around the officiating priest as 
representatives of the Bhairavas and Bhairavis. The priest then brings 
in a naked woman, to whom offerings are made as the living representa¬ 
tive of S'akti, and the ceremony ends in orgies which may be better 
imagined than described. It is not therefore astonishing that temple 
priests are, as a rule, regarded as a degraded, impure class, cloaking 
debauchery and the indulgence in wine, women and flesh under the name 
of religion. Garhwal is more frequented by pilgrims and wandering reli¬ 
gious mendicants, and this is given as a reason for the more frequent 
public exhibition of their ceremonies there. In Kumaon the custom 
exists, but it is generally observed in secret, and none but the initiated 
are admitted even to the public ceremonies. The Tantras prescribe for 
the private ceremony that a worshipper may take :—“ a dancing-girl, a 
prostitute, a female devotee, a washerwoman or a barber’s wife,” and 
seating her before him naked, go through the various rites and partake 
with her of the five-fold mahdra. 
Sacrifices. The hali-dana or oblation when offered by Vaishnavas 
consists of curds, grain, fruits and flowers, but when offered by the S^aiva 
S aktas here usually assumes the form of living victims, the young of 
* See for further details Wilson, I., 258, and Ward, III, 194, ed. 1822 : the de- 
scriptions there given fairly represent the practice in the hills. 
