in Bengal.

In October, November, and December there are fewer ceremonies. January is
a month devoted to religious bathing. Also, in January, the religious
Hindoos invite Brahmans to read and expound the sacred books in their
houses, which are open to all hearers. In February there are festivals to
Krishna.

The month of March is devoted to ascetic exercises, especially to the
famous one of swinging suspended by hooks. It is a festival in honor of
Siva. A procession goes through the streets and enlists followers by
putting a thread round their necks. Every man thus enlisted must join the
party and go about with it till the end of the ceremony under pain of
losing caste. On the day before the swinging, men thrust iron or bamboo
sticks through their arms or tongues. On the next day they march in
procession to the swinging tree, where the men are suspended by hooks and
whirled round the tree four or five times.

It is considered a pious act in India to build temples, dig tanks, or
plant trees by the roadside. Rich people have idols in their houses for
daily worship, and pay a priest who comes every morning to wake up the
idols, wash and dress them, and offer them their food. In the evening he
comes again, gives them their supper and puts them to bed.

Mr. Gangooly, in his book, from which most of the above facts are drawn,
denies emphatically the statement so commonly made that Hindoo mothers
throw their infants into the Ganges. He justly says that the maternal
instinct is as strong with them as with others; and in addition to that,
their religion teaches them to offer sacrifices for the life and health of
their children.

Sec. 9. Relation of Brahmanism to Christianity.

Having thus attempted, in the space we can here use, to give an account of
Brahmanism, we close by showing its special relation as a system of
thought to Christianity.

Brahmanism teaches the truth of the reality of spirit, and that spirit is
infinite, absolute, perfect, one; that it is the substance underlying all
existence. Brahmanism glows through and through with this spirituality.
Its literature, no less than its theology, teaches it. It is in the dramas
of Calidasa, as well as in the sublime strains of the Bhagavat-gita.
Something divine is present in all nature and all life,--

"Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air."

Now, with this Christianity is in fullest agreement. We have