s are brought by their
parents and given to Temple women for the sake of merit. It is very
meritorious to give a child to the gods. Often the parents are poor but
of good Caste. Always suitable compensation and a 'joy gift' is given by
the Temple women to the parents. It is an understood custom, and ensures
that the child is a gift, not a loan. The amount depends upon the age
and beauty of the child. If the child is old enough to miss her mother,
she is very carefully watched until she has forgotten her. Sometimes she
is shut up in the back part of the house, and punished if she runs out
into the street. The punishment is severe enough to frighten the child.
Sometimes it is branding with a hot iron upon a place which does not
show, as under the arm; sometimes nipping with the nail till the skin
breaks; sometimes a whipping. After the child is reconciled to her new
life, occasionally her people are allowed to come if they wish; and in
special circumstances she pays a visit to her old home. But this is
rare. If she has been adopted as an infant, she knows nothing of her
own relations, but thinks of her adopted mother as her own mother. As
soon as she can understand she is taught all evil and trained to think
it is good."

As to her education, the movements of the dance are taught very early,
and the flexible little limbs are rendered more flexible by a system of
massage. In all ways the natural grace of the child is cultivated and
developed, but always along lines which lead far away from the freedom
and innocence of childhood. As it is important she should learn a great
deal of poetry, she is taught to read (and with this object in view she
is sometimes sent to the mission school, if there is one near her home).
The poetry is almost entirely of a debased character; and so most
insidiously, by story and allusion, the child's mind is familiarised
with sin; and before she knows how to refuse the evil and choose the
good, the instinct which would have been her guide is tampered with and
perverted, till the poor little mind, thus bewildered and deceived, is
incapable of choice.

CHAPTER XXIX

"Very Common in those Parts"

"The dark enigma of permitted wrong."--F. R. H.

THE mixture of secrecy and openness described by the Temple woman is
confirmed by Hindus well acquainted with Temple affairs. "All the Temple
women are married to the gods. In former times the marriages were
conducted upon a grand scale