Legend
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Juggernaut Human Sacrifices Untrue
To the Editor of the Banner of Light:
In the Banner of Feb. 17th is an article beginning: “Moncure D. Conway sticks to it that the Juggernaut suicides are the fiction of missionary imagination.” Some twenty years ago I know Rev. William Adam, born in Scotland, a graduate of Edinburgh University, a Baptist missionary in Hindostan, then editor of the Calcutta Gazette, the able and influential organ of the English residents in India, and afterward Professor of Sanscrit and Oriental Literature in Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Не was an accomplished linguist, could speak the Cingalese or common language of the Hindoos with ease, and twenty years residence in India had made him familiar, of course, with the habits, customs and religion of the people.
He assisted Rahmohun Roy in translating the Moral Precepts of Jesus for the use of the natives, and the comments and arguments of that eminent Brahmin philosopher and reformer made him a liberal Unitarian, and closed his Baptist missionary work.
Mr. Adam told me he had attended the great festivals of Juggernaut, and that human sacrifices, or bloody rites of any kind, were unknown, for the good reason that the god was one whose attributes were love and the preservation of life, and the only offerings to him were fruits and flowers. If pilgrims were ever crushed and trampled to death in the vast crowd, it was by accident, and no part of the ceremonies or worship.
Thus Mr. Conway is confirmed by an eminent authority, and is as right and clear on this matter as he is wrong and muddy on Spiritualism.
Yours truly,Sturgis, Mich., Feb. 22d. 1877.
Editor's notes
- ↑ Juggernaut Human Sacrifices Untrue by Stebbins, G. B., Banner of Light, The, v. 40, No. 24, March 10, 1877, p. 3
Sources
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Banner of Light, v. 40, No. 24, March 10, 1877, p. 3