Lives of Alcyone

Life XXXV
The car of Juggarnant (properly Jagannath, the Lord of
World), in the town of Puri on the Bay of Bengal, is famous in every
civilised country, and we were regaled in our nurseries upon
gruesome stories of the iniquities connected with it. Why so much
excitement was aroused by the garbled accounts of it given by early
missionaries, it is somewhat difficult to say, for not even the most
bigoted sectarian could pretend that all the slaughter which the
temple of Jagannath has seen since its foundation equals in horror
and cruelty one day of the ghastly tortures of the Christian
Inquisition. But nevertheless Jagannath has a world-wide reputation,
and there seems reason to suppose that, though it by no means
deserves it now, it may have done so some thousands of years ago.
The glimpse which we had of its methods at the close of the twenty-
eighth life of this series prepares us to find that unpleasant practices
were still going on there in 10,429 B.C., when Alcyone was born at a
coast-town called Kanura, only a few miles from Puri.
His father Brihat had been a great Aryan leader, but now that
the invading bands had reached the Sea, he had a great reputation
as a wise and holy man, full of devotion. Alcyone’ s mother in this
life was Uranus, an earnest and devoted woman. The eldest
children of this couple were two sisters, twins, Neptune and Siwa,
and these two had a great influence over Alcyone. Mizar also
appears as a sister, four years younger that Alcyone, whom he
loved and protected, and Mizar was devoted to him in return.
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