ja or mystical spell of
wind or air, the body and its indwelling sinful self are dessicated, the
breath being expelled by the right nostril."[122] And so on _ad
infinitum_. Superstition, Western or Eastern, has no end of panaceas. We
recall the advertisements of "Plenaria indulgenzia" on the doors of
churches in South Italy. Visiting Benares, the metropolis of popular
Hinduism, the conception of salvation everywhere obtruded upon one is
that it is a question of sacred spots, and of due offerings and
performances thereat.

[Sidenote: The signification of sacrifices to the Indian masses.]

[Sidenote: Description of animal sacrifice.]

What to the masses is _sacrifice_ even, the word which to western ears,
familiar with the term in our Scriptures, suggests acknowledgment of sin
and atonement therefor? It is a mistake to regard sacrifices in India as
expiatory; they are gifts to the Deities as superior powers for boons
desired or received, or they are the customary homage to the powers that
be, at festivals and special occasions. Animal sacrifices are
distinguished from the offerings of fruits and flowers only in being
limited to particular Deities and pertaining to more special occasions.
An actual instance will show the place that sacrifices hold. In a letter
from a village youth to his father, informing him how he had proceeded
upon his arrival at Calcutta, whither he had gone for the University
Matriculation Examination, he reports that he has offered a goat in
sacrifice in order to ensure his success. What he probably does is this.
In a bazaar near the great temple of Kalighat, near Calcutta, the
greatest centre of animal sacrifices in the world, he buys a goat or
kid, fetches it into the temple court and hands it over to one of the
priests whom he has fee'd. The priest puts a consecrating daub of red
lead upon the animal's head, utters over it some mantra or sacred
Sanscrit text, sprinkles water and a few flowers upon it at the actual
place of slaughter, and then delivers it over again to the offerer. Then
when the turn of the offerer, whom we are watching, has come, he hands
over the animal to the executioner, who fixes its neck within a forked
or Y-shaped stick fixed fast in the ground. With one blow the animal's
head is severed from its body. The bleeding head is carried off into the
shrine to be laid before the image of the goddess, and become the temple
perquisite. The decapitated body is carried off by the off