s. At festivals of Vishnu priests tried to enlist girls in the
attendant multitude. The line between the sacral usage and
licentiousness was broken down at some remote resorts, but in the great
temples the conduct of the women was not at all shameless, although they
were trained to please. They observed perfect decorum. No one could
venture on any impropriety with them. The bystanders would not allow it,
and the proceedings were all controlled by strict rules. The Brahmins
propounded a doctrine that intercourse with the consecrated women would
free from sin.[1930] The vows show us the motive which maintained this
usage, and these statements clearly show the conventionalization which
enveloped the whole. Although the practices in the temples have
undergone some modification, they still exist. There are secret
mysteries, and dramatic representations of mythological incidents, which
seem like survivals of the ancient usages above mentioned.[1931] There
are courtesans at the temples near which pilgrims congregate, and they
pay part of their earnings to the temple.[1932] The holy festival of
Jugganatha, at Puri, which is a spring festival of Vedic origin, is a
kind of Saturnalia, in which the bonds of social order are loosened and
the standards of decency are laid aside. There are rites in which "words
are uttered by persons who, on other occasions, would think themselves
disgraced by the use of them."[1933] The Phalgun festival in northern
India commemorates Krishna's voluptuous amusements. The rites are
indecent.[1934] The mythological stories about the gods have to be
converted by interpretation or special pleas into something which modern
mores can tolerate.[1935] Songs, dances, pantomimes, and mythological
dramas are represented in front of the image of a deity by men, but in
the presence of a general company of men and women.[1936] The Sakta
worshipers are a sect who worship Sakta, the mighty, mysterious,
feminine force recognized in nature, and which they personify as the
Mother of the Universe, like the ancient Mother-goddess. This goddess is
manifested, for Hindoos, in natural appetites, in highly developed
faculties by which one exalts one's self and defeats one's enemies. The
rites of the sect are horrible and obscene, and have for their purpose
to violate and outrage the restrictions in the mores. By those rites men
and women obtain union with the Supreme Being. The members of the sect
call themselves "perfect ones