with a peculiar vibratory noise, caused by the motion of the hand and tongue, or
the tongue alone. The devil-dancer is now worshipped as a present deity, and
every bystander consults him respecting his diseases, his wants, the welfare of
his absent relatives, the offerings to be made for the accomplishment of his
wishes, and, in short, everything for which superhuman knowledge is supposed
to be available.”
Before we quit this subject, it may be for the interest and convenience of the
reader, if we offer a brief account of the doctrines and rites of Brahmism. This
movement against the old Hindu faith, initiated by Rammohun Roy, and
developed by Babu Keshub Chunda Sen, owes its origin, however
unconsciously, to the influence of Christianity, which the Hindu mind, on
awaking from its long sleep of centuries, found, as it were, by its side, and the
pure and elevated character of which it could not but recognise.
Rammohun Roy was born in the district of Moorshadabad in 1772, and was
upwards of forty years of age when he undertook the part of a religious reformer.
A man of considerable natural powers, he had cultivated them carefully,
acquired a thorough knowledge of Sanskrit and Arabic, and accompanied his
meditations on the Sastras, or Hindu religious books, with a close study of the
English Scriptures. Removing to Calcutta in 1814, he endeavoured to engage his
friends in the same pursuits, and as this effort led him naturally to new inquiries,
he soon came to abandon his belief in traditional Hinduism. A cry of ‘infidel!’
was immediately raised against him; he became the subject of an incessant
hostility; was on one occasion mobbed in the streets of Calcutta; and owed his
life to the protection of the British Government. Persecution, however, could not
quench his thirst after knowledge. He applied himself to the study of Greek and
Hebrew, that by reading the Bible in its original languages, he might penetrate
more thoroughly into the spirit of Hebrew and Christian devotion.
Having dismissed the authority of the Puranas, he rested his faith on the Vedas,
the oldest of the Hindu sacred books, in the conviction (an erroneous one) that
the old creed of Hinduism was monotheistic, and the belief (a justifiable one)
that the Puranas represented the degeneracy of a later age. Strange to say, he did
not detect the Pantheism that overflows the Vedas: in the Upanishads or treatises
attached to them, he fancied that he saw a pure Deism, and to diffuse this among
his countrymen, he published numerous translations and organised a society of