it every time with fresh clothes; as soon as it is dressed fifty-six Brahmans attend them and pre-sent them with various kinds of food. The quantity of victuals offered to these idols is so very great as to feed twenty thousand persons.”*
In 1020 Mahmud Ghazni plundered the temple of Somnath in Gujrat. “The princes of Hindustan had endowed it with about ten thousand villages. A thousand Brahmans worshipped the idol continuously . . a chain of gold weighing two hundred maunds, with bells fastened to it, was hung in a corner of the temple. . . Five hundred singing and dancing girls and two hundred musicians were in the service of the temple, ‘and all their requisites were provided out of the endowments and offerings.
. Many Rajas of Hindustan had dedicated their daughters to Somnath and sent them there.
.. Not a hundredth part of the gold and precious stones he obtained from Somnath were to be found in the treasury of any king of Hindustan.”– When he invaded the temple of Nagarkot, the Brahmans paid him a fine of 700,000 gold dinars, 700 maunds of gold and silver vessels, 2000 maunds of unpurified silver and 20. maunds of various jewels. From the temple of Mathura he took away 98,300 misqals of gold out of the idols alone, .200 silver idols so heavy that they could not be weighed without breaking !`them up. “When Malik Kafur, in the year 1310 during the reign of 260a-ud-Din Kbilji of Delhi, carried out his. success¬ful raids into the Deccan and to the Malabar coast sacking all Hindu temples, ravaging the territory of Mysore, and despoiling the country, he is said to have returned to Delhi with an amount of treasure that seems almost fabulous. , . Colonel Dow, in his translation of the works of Firishta computes
* Page 308, vide Ayin Akbari.
Pages 49, 50 and 53. Marcia of GIs: al, by Mohammad Habib,
the value of gold carried off by Malik Kafur at a hundred million sterling in our’ money. . . The. country had always been subject to Hindu kings and treasures had year by year- accumulated. The-Brahmans exacted gifts and payments from the people on all occasions.”* The sinful methods employed to attract people to the temples and extort money from them were nowhere so revolting as m the institution of dancing girls. Writing in 1914. about South Indian temples an author says thus: ‘The Hindu honours the temple girl as a daughter. of the deity; so great an hdnour is it regarded that the goldsmiths and weavers of Trichinoploy devote- the eldest daughter of the family to the temple service of Srirangam. The girls are handed over , young and are taught in the temple to read and write; sing’ and dance and dress themselves daintily, to-adorn their hair with flowers and wear their jewels` with dignity. When they reach the age of thirteen they go through the ceremony of marriage with the god Subramania who is represented by stone or image or b a figure. After the ceremony they are ready to ply their trade (prostitution!) with the devout worshippers who attend the temple. Their earnings go to swell the temple revenue.”
Mr. J. C. Ghost’, the Tagore Law Lecturer, says: “With the establishment of images and temples, dedications of land for their maintenance became necessary. Not only were lands dedicated, but slave women were also attached to many ancient-temples showing the spirit which led to image worship in India . .
“We should know that dedication for the gods meant dedication for the maintenance of the worshipping .Bralimans who, because they so worshipped, were called “devalas” and were all but outcastes
* Pages 402-403, A Forgotten Empire, Sewell.
among Brahmans; a fact showing the not very reputable origin and character of such worship and_ worshippers, the maintenance of servants, female slaves, dancing girls and musicians and providing for the articles of worship.”
Another powerful weapon in the armoury of the priests was philosophy. Before temples came into vogue, Brahmanism was opposed to the liberal teachings of the philosophers represented by the Upanishads and the Sankhya system. With the rise of the new Hinduism philosophy became a very convenient and extremely useful) refuge of the priestly class. Philosophizing was developed as a fine art of dissimulation and the ancient sages were ‘quoted to justify practices and rituals which were ‘diametrically opposed to their doctrines. Idolatry was goof because God was everywhere and could be worshipped in a stone image as well as anywhere else. Caste distinctions were explained as a divine law which no human being could alter. Every unmeaning ceremony was supported by some metaphysical theory. Animal sacrifices, drunken hysterics, and obscene festivities all had their place in spiritual – culture because God could be approached in any way, according to the faith of the worshipper. There is no vile practice, no injustice, no superstition, no cruelty, no immorality which could not be and has not been justified and advocated on philosophical grounds.
“The priests of a religion who advise, en-courage and permit crimes to be committed which they could prevent, take upon themselves the whole responsibility for the evil, and in this the modern Brahmans are so much the more to blame because they have done their best to distort and render unrecognizable the primitive religion of which they constituted themselves, the guardians and which however imperfect it may have Teen, was far from possessing the monstrous character which it acquired later in the hands of its avaricious and hypocritical interpreters. The Hindu system of religion is nothing more than a lever of which the Brahmans. make use habitually for influencing the passions of a credulous people and turnips them to their own advantage.”*
The caste, the temple and philosophy are the pillars which support the huge system of Brahman imperialism called Hinduism, Caste is the common law which defines the status, rights and responsibilities of the rulers and the ruled, the masters and the slaves, corresponding to, but much more deadly than the enactments of European imperialists concerning their subject nations.
The temple stands for the system of exploitation, which they call capitalism, in modern language. Capitalism, however, is economic only, whereas temple-craft is an intellectual, moral and economic spoliation of the subject people.
Just as the ultimate sanction of European imperialism is scientific militarism, so was philosophic militarism the final authority of Brahman imperialism. Science is now being used for the destruction of man and civilization in the West; so is philosophy being used for the perpetuation of untruths, oppressions and vices among the Hindus.
We saw the dark cloud of priestly supremacy ominously shaping itself during the age of the Vedas and gradually rising into prominence, increasing in strength and volume, until the brilliant kingdoms of the Gangetic Valley were caught in a treacherous whirlwind and swept away to their mysterious doom. Arrested for a long time in its forward move
* Page 613, Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, by Abbe Dubois-
by the righteous might of Lord Buddha, it kept on threateningly behind the brightness of the national rejoicings of free India for over a thousand years. In those years, when the people had their great heroes and also the youthful enthusiasm for such things as exalteth a nation, they made many a successful attempt to save themselves from the storm. So long as there was one strong and self-respecting Indian monarch in the country, the people fought for their free-born rights and to resist the aggressions of the priesthood. The Kshatriya kings stood firm. The Indian emperors held up the flag- of Buddhism and kept Brahmanism at bay. When the light of Buddhism became extinct, when the energies of the nation were cramped, when its moral courage, intellectual freedom and physical stamina were subdued by superstitious beliefs, and
-feeling of unity and solidarity were crushed under the unbearable weight of foreign subjection intensified by caste degradation,—then it was that the lowering clouds spread over the whole firmament and enveloped the country in an impenetrable gloom.
An ancient and gifted people who resisted the march of Alexander, produced a Buddha and made India the greatest nation of the ancient world, yielded their necks to the yoke of Brahmanism.
At least two Brahmanical empires attempted to attain ascendancy over all India—those of Vijayanagar and of the Marathas. The empire of Vijayanagar flourished between 1336 and 1565 and represented the grandest achievement of Brahman-ism. The, great Madhavacharya was probably its founder, his uterine brother Sayancharya was its greatest minister. Vijayanagar had its days of bar-baric splendour, wealth and luxury reminding us of the declining glory of Rome, when Rajas and nobles kept many hundreds of women in their harems and many more to attend on them, when palaces were literally paved with gold and jewels, when temples and their priests revelled in the immensity of their ill-gotten wealth, in the dazzling magnificence of their festivals and the fleeting charms of dancing girls, and gorgeous monuments of architecture rose out of the sweat of slaves and prisoners of war. Otherwise, the history of the 250 years of the ascendancy of Vijayanagar is a history of bloody wars without a moment of peace and security, of plots and counter-plots, of indulgence in wine and women, of Sati, slavery and forced labour, of 400 and 500 women being burnt along with the dead king, of women being buried alive along with their husbands, of human sacrifices, such as that of sixty human victims offered to ensure the security of a dam near Hospet, of huge slaughter of animals for religious functions and other frightful excesses of priestcraft. During a nine-day religious celebration the king accompanied by his Brahmans went where the idols were and every day watched the slaughter of animals. “Then he witnesses the slaugther of twenty-four buffaloes and a hundred and fifty sheep with which a sacrifice is made to the idol.”* The frequent wars and the distribution of booty among the Brahmans and temples remind us of those days of Asvamedha (horse-sacrifice) when the duty of the Kshatriya was to fight and amass wealth and share it with sacrificial priests. In the revived Hinduism, we find all the unhealthy features of the. religion of horse-sacrifices, with many more barbarous and debasing institutions which deserved but one fate—merciless, extirpation. Such brutalities could be excused among the Muhammadan or the Portuguese bigots of those days. But in a land where the Buddha had preached and Asoka had ruled,- there was no excuse for the enlightened and
*Page 266, A Forgotten Empire, by Sewell.
sacerdotal priestly class when they reared so monstrous a system of sin and exploitation.
Punishment came in a terrible form and with lightning speed. Wherever Hinduism raised its head there the no less cruel hand of the Muharnrnadans inflicted condign punishment for its sins. First it occurred in the North, then in the middle and later on right down to the southernmost part of India, from one end of the country to the other, the avenging arm of Nemesis followed in the trial of Hindu revival, and except for short periods of interruption under the Mughals, India knew no security nor peace for many a long century. It was one protracted reign of terror and bloodshed. Idols
were smashed to pieces, magnificent temples were desecrated or destroyed, the finest monuments of art and architecture, palaces and towers, rich cities :and flourishing universities were obliterated from the face of the earth and their enormous wealth of _ gold and silver and jewels was dragged out from Their secret cells and carried to distant lands. Many thousands of men and women and children, Brahmans and Mlechchas were enslaved and sold in foreign markets like sardines. Thousands of women from palaces and peasant homes, from temples and Brahman families, were made to enjoy the common sisterhood of the harems of Sultans and emperors. Many millions of Hindus were slaughtered, and many more forced to embrace Islam. Scenes of savage massacres, wholesale destruction and blood-curdling cruelties beggaring all description took place from end to end of the country.
The unrelenting hand of Karma levied from the superstitious Hindus the toll of gold for gold, slave for slave, women for women,- persecution for persecution, blood for blood, slaughter for slaughter, until Britain forced the Hindu and the Muslim to surrender their blood-stained swords and live in peace. Seeing how even after nearly two centuries of British rule, the Hindu still takes pride in treating his brother Hindu as a despicable “untouchable,” in fighting to preserve the abominable distinctions of caste, in clinging passionately to dark idolatry, and other iniquities and superstitions, who can say that the punishment was unmerited or too severe?
