Life of William Carey by George Smith - The Jesus Army

weapons, in winning the first victories over the secular as well as spiritual lawlessness which fell before Paul
and his successors down to Augustine and his City of God. The gentle and reasonable but none the less divinely
indignant father of modern missions brings against Hindoo and Mohammedan society accusations no
more railing than those in the opening passage of the Epistle to the Romans, and he brings these only that,
following Paul, he may declare the more excellent way.
As Serampore, or its suburbs, is the most popular centre of Jaganath worship next to Pooree in Orissa, the
cruelty and oppression which marked the annual festival were ever before the missionaries’ eyes. In 1813 we
find Dr. Claudius Buchanan establishing his veracity as an eye-witness of the immolation of drugged or voluntary
victims under the idol car, by this quotation from Dr. Carey, whom he had to describe at that time to
his English readers, as a man of unquestionable integrity, long held in estimation by the most respectable
characters in Bengal, and possessing very superior opportunities of knowing what is passing in India generally:
“Idolatry destroys more than the sword, yet in a way which is scarcely perceived. The numbers who die
in their long pilgrimages, either through want or fatigue, or from dysenteries and fevers caught by lying out,
and want of accommodation, is incredible. I only mention one idol, the famous Juggernaut in Orissa, to
which twelve or thirteen pilgrimages are made every year. It is calculated that the number who go thither is,
on some occasions, 600,000 persons, and scarcely ever less than 100,000. I suppose, at the lowest calculation,
that in the year 1,200,000 persons attend. Now, if only one in ten died, the mortality caused by this one
idol would be 120,000 in a year; but some are of opinion that not many more than one in ten survive and return
home again. Besides these, I calculate that 10,000 women annually burn with the bodies of their deceased
husbands, and the multitudes destroyed in other methods would swell the catalogue to an extent almost
exceeding credibility.”
After we had taken Orissa from the Marathas the priests of Jaganath declared that the night before the conquest
the god had made known its desire to be under British protection. This was joyfully reported to Lord
Wellesley’s Government by the first British commissioner. At once a regulation was drafted vesting the shrine
and the increased pilgrim-tax in the Christian officials. This Lord Wellesley indignantly refused to sanction,
and it was passed by Sir George Barlow in spite of the protests of Carey’s friend, Udny. In Conjeeveram a
Brahmanised civilian named Place had so early as 1796 induced Government to undertake the payment of the
priests and prostitutes of the temples, under the phraseology of “churchwardens” and “the management of
the church funds.” Even before the Madras iniquity, the pilgrims to Gaya from 1790, if not before, paid for authority
to offer funeral cakes to the manes of their ancestors and to worship Vishnoo under the official seal
and signature of the English Collector. Although Charles Grant’s son, Lord Glenelg, when President of the
Board of Control in 1833, ordered, as Theodosius had done on the fall of pagan idolatry in A.D. 390, that “in
all matters relating to their temples, their worship, their festivals, their religious practices, their ceremonial
observances, our native subjects be left entirely to themselves,” the identification of Government with
Hindooism was not completely severed till a recent period.
The Charak, or swinging festival, has been frequently witnessed by the present writer in Calcutta itself. The
orgie has been suppressed by the police in great cities, although it has not ceased in the rural districts. In 1814
the brotherhood thus wrote home:
“This abominable festival was held, according to the annual custom, on the last day of the
Hindoo year. There were fewer gibbet posts erected at Serampore, but we hear that amongst the
swingers was one female. A man fell from a stage thirty cubits high and broke his back; and another
fell from a swinging post, but was not much hurt. Some days after the first swinging, certain
natives revived the ceremonies. As Mr. Ward was passing through Calcutta he saw several
Hindoos hanging by the heels over a slow fire, as an act of devotion. Several Hindoos employed
in the printing-office applied this year to Mr. Ward for protection, to escape being dragged into
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