Religious Reform Author:John Murdoch Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Devil-dancing is declining in South India. Numbers who once stood in constant dread of imaginary evil spirits are now freed from their superstitious fears, and w... more »orship the one true God alone. It should be universally abandoned. Tutelary And Village Deities. A tutelary god among the Hindus is one that delivers from the calamities believed to be due to demons. The village deities (grama-devata) probably represent the local fetiches once held in veneration by uncivilized aboriginal tribes, and afterwards grafted into, the Hindu system of the Brahmans, whose policy has ever been to appropriate all existing cults, customsi and superstitions. Scarcely a village and indeed scarcely a household in India is without its tutelary divinity, usually represented by some rudely carved image or symbol, located in homely shrines, or over doorways, or, it may be, denoted by simple patches of red paint on rocks or under sacred trees or in crossways, and always taking the place of the superior gods in the religion of the lower orders- The village deity is often represented simply by a stone. The worship of stones is very ancient and was widely prevalent. The prophet Isaiah, 2600 years ago, refers to the offerings to stones among the Jews. The Arabs worshipped rocks and stones before the time of Muhammad, and the black stone of the Kaaba is still venerated by them. An American Indian will pick up a round stone of any kind, paint it, clear away the grass at some distance from his hut, and there place his stone or god. He makes an offering to it of some tobacco, and prays to it to deliver him from danger. In some parts of America three kinds of stones are specially worshipped—one profitable for crops, another for women to be delivered without pain, and a third for rain. All over India ...« less