Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/421

---

disconnected from vice and virtue. All notions of right and wrong, good and evil, sin and holiness, are confounded and destroyed. Thus, according to Manu, the great Hindu lawgiver, the killing of all the inhabitants of three worlds, and the eating food from the hands of a low-caste man, are sins of equal magnitude. The same authority asserts that the Brahmin, learned in the Vedas, who takes charity from a Sudra, shall, for twelve births, be born an ass; for sixty births, a hog; and for seventy births, a dog! On the other hand, by the repetition of a particular prayer, without any repentance or reformation, the vilest sins are atoned for, and the greatest merit is obtained. To repeat the name of his guardian-god is a work of great value. Even if it is done unintentionally, it still gives the repeater great merit. Thus, a certain Ajamil, we learn from the Bagavat, committed the most enormous sins, and lived in crime all his days. In the hour of death, feeling extreme thirst, he cried, “Narayana! Narayana! Narayana! give me some water!" When the ministers of Yama, the king of hell, were about to drag him away to punishment, he was rescued by the messengers of Vishnu. Upon this, the officers of retribution, greatly enraged, appealed