The white priestess was indeed a puzzle; for, while the handful of
Mohammedans in the village were fanatical in their belief in the true
prophet and his Koran, and put little faith in miracles and still less
in holy men who performed them, the advent of the white priestess
deeply mystified them. There was no getting around this: she was
there; with their own eyes they saw her. There might be something in
Hinduism after all.
When the hunters arrived at the portico of the temple they found two
greatly terrified holy men, shrilling their "Ai! Ai!" in lamentation
and beating their foreheads against the earth.
"Holy men, what is wrong?" asked one of the hunters, respectfully.
"The lion has killed our priestess; the sacred fires must die again!
Ai! Ai!"
"Where is the lion?"
"They fled toward the river, and there he has doubtless destroyed her,
for in evil, Siva, represented by the lion, is more powerful than
Vishnu, reincarnated in our priestess. Ai! Ai! She is dead and we
are undone!"
"Come!" said the chief huntsman. "Let us run to the river and see what
these queer gods are doing. We'll present the skin of Siva to our
master!" He laughed.
The leopard carriers deposited their burden and all started off at a
dog-trot. They had always been eager regarding this lion. In the
temple he was inviolable; but at large, that was a different matter.
Arriving at the river brink, they saw the foot-prints of the lion on
the wet sand which ran down to the water. To leap from this spot to
the water was not possible for any beast of the jungle. Yet the lion
had vanished completely, as though he had been given wings. They stood
about in awe till one of the older hunters knelt, reached out, and dug
his hand into the innocent looking sand. Instantly he leaped to his
feet and jumped back.
"The sucking sand!" he cried. "To the raft!"
They skirted the dangerous quicksands and dashed along the banks to
discover that their raft was gone. Vishnu, then, as reincarnated,
required solid transportation, after the manner of human beings? They
became angry. A raft was a raft, substantial, necessary; and there was
no reason why a god who had ten thousand temples for his own should
stoop to rob a poor man of his wherewithal to travel in safety.
"The mugger!" exclaimed one, "let the high priestess beware of the
mugger, for he is strong enough to tip over the raft!"
Nearly every village which lies close to a stream has its family
crocodile. He is very sacred and thrives comfortably upon suicides and
the dead, which are often cast into the river to be purified. The
Hindus are a suicidal race; the reverse of the occidental conception,
suicide is a quick and glorious route to Heaven.