cover image: The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India

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The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India

1896

But the jungle man or the village menial of the plains can seldom except in an hour of grievous need afford an expensive animal victim and it is only when the village shrine has come under the patronage of the official priests of the orthodox faith that the altar of the goddess reeks with gore like those of the Devis of Bindhachal or Devi Patin. [...] D. moo) there were six listinct sects of Sun-worshippers—one worshipping the rising sun as identified with Brahma ; the second the meridian am as Siva ; the third the setting sun as Vishnu ; the fourth worshippers of the sun in all the above phases as identified with the Trimurti ; the fifth worshippers of the sun regarded is a material being in the form of a man with a golden beard and golden hai [...] Haradatta mentions as one of the customs not sanctioned in the Veda that when the sun is in Aries the young girls would paint the sun with his retinue on the soil in coloured dust and worship this in the morning and evening;` and in Central India the sun was in the Middle Ages worshipped under the local form of Bhailla or " Lord of Life " a term which appears to have been the origin of the name [...] In the same way in India the bride and bridegroom are made to revolve round the sacred fire or the central pole of the marriage-shed in the course of the sun ; the pilgrim makes his solemn perabulation (parikramea) round a temple or shrine in the same way; in this direction the cattle move as they tread out the grain. [...] The same belief in the power of the sun is shown in the principle so common in folk-lore that to show a certain thing to it (in a Kashmir tale it is a tuft of the hair of the kindly tigress) will be sufficient to summon an absent friend' The mystical emblem of the Swastika which appears to represent the sun in his journey through the heavens is of constant occurrence.
philosophy religion
Pages
314
Published in
United Kingdom
SARF Document ID
sarf.142766
Segment Pages Author Actions
Frontmatter
i-vii W. Crooke view
Chapter I. The Godlings of Nature
1-82 unknown view
Chapter II. The Heroic and Village Godlings
83-122 unknown view
Chapter III. The Godlings of Disease
123-174 unknown view
Chapter IV. The Worship of the Sainted Dead
175-229 unknown view
Chapter V. Worship of the Malevolent Dead
230-294 unknown view

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