the right hand, and lets it run off his extended
fingers. To refresh the sages, the cord must hang about the neck,
and the water run over the side of the hand between the thumb and the
forefinger, which is bent back. For the ancestors, the cord passes
over the right shoulder, and the water falls from the hand in the
same way as for the sages. 'Let the fathers be refreshed,' says the
prayer, 'may this water serve all those who inhabit the seven worlds,
as far as to Brahma's dwelling, even though their number be greater
than thousands of millions of families. May this water, consecrated
by my cord, be accepted by the men of my race who have left no sons.'

"With this prayer the morning service ends. Now, remember that
this worship is daily, that these formulas must be pronounced,
these movements of the hands made with mechanical precision; that
if the worshipper forgets one of the incarnations of Vishnu which
he is to figure with his fingers, if he stop his left nostril when
it should be the right, the entire ceremony loses its efficacy;
that, not to go astray amid this multitude of words and gestures
required for each rite, he is obliged to use mnemotechnic methods;
that there are five of these for each series of formulas; that his
attention always strained and always directed toward the externals
of the cult, does not leave his mind a moment in which to reflect
upon the profound meaning of some of these prayers, and you will
comprehend the extraordinary scene that the banks of the Ganges at
Benares present every morning; this anxious and demented multitude,
these gestures, eager and yet methodical, this rapid movement of the
lips, the fixed gaze of these men and women who, standing in the water,
seem not even to see their neighbours, and count mentally like men in
the delirium of a fever. Remember that there are ceremonies like these
in the afternoon and also in the evening, and that in the intervals,
in the street, in the house at meals, when going to bed, similar rites
no less minute pursue the Brahman, all preceded by the exercises of
respiration, the enunciation of the syllable OM, and the invocation of
the principal gods. It is estimated that between daybreak and noon he
has scarcely an hour of rest from the performance of these rites. After
the great powers of nature, the Ganges, the Dawn, and the Sun, he
goes to worship in their temples the representations of divinity,
the sacred trees, finally the cows, to whom