are inflamed to
madness by the recollection of the really affecting incidents of the
massacre of the grandchildren of their prophet, and by the images of
their tombs, and their sombre music,[8] crosses that of the Holi[9]
(in which the Hindoos are excited to tumultuous and licentious joy by
their bacchanalian songs and dances) every thirty-six years; and they
reign together for some four or five days, during which the scene in
every large town is really terrific. The processions are liable to
meet in the street, and the lees of the wine of the Hindoos, or the
red powder which is substituted for them, is liable to fall upon the
tombs of the others. Hindoos pass on, forgetting in their saturnalian
joy all distinctions of age, sex, or religion, their clothes and
persons besmeared with the red powder, which is moistened and thrown
from all kinds of machines over friend and foe; while meeting these
come the Muhammadans, clothed in their green mourning, with gloomy
downcast looks, beating their breasts, ready to kill themselves, and
too anxious for an excuse to kill anybody else. Let but one drop of
the lees of joy fall upon the image of the tomb as it passes, and a
hundred swords fly from their scabbards; many an innocent person
falls; and woe be to the town in which the magistrate is not at hand
with his police and military force. Proudly conscious of their power,
the magistrates refuse to prohibit one class from laughing because
the other happens to be weeping; and the Hindoos on such occasions
laugh the more heartily to let the world see that they are free to do
so.

A very learned Hindoo once told me in Central India that the oracle
of Mahadeo had been at the same time consulted at three of his
greatest temples--one in the Deccan, one in Rajputana, and one, I
think, in Bengal--as to the result of the government of India by
Europeans, who seemed determined to fill all the high offices of
administration with their own countrymen, to the exclusion of the
people of the country. A day was appointed for the answer; and when
the priest came to receive it they found Mahadeo (Siva) himself with
a European complexion, and dressed in European clothes. He told them
that their European Government was in reality nothing more than a
multiplied incarnation of himself; and that he had come among them in
this shape to prevent their cutting each other's throats as they had
been doing for some centuries past; that these, his incarnations,