QUEEN VICTORIA AS GODDESS.

THE Athenceum mentions casually a striking incident which is stated to have recently occurred in °Hasa, and which would have broken Lord Beaconsfield's heart. Sergeant Atkinson, presumably an Inspector of Roads, or, it may be, police officer, reports to the Indian Spectator, a Native paper

published in English, that a tribe in Orissa has adopted Queen Victoria as its deity. We have no details either as to worship or creed, though they will, no doubt, be speedily obtained ; but

the story is prima facie probable. A Sergeant would never have invented such an incident, so entirely outside his experience,

and such an elevation for the Queen is in entire accordance with all that is known of the operation of religious feeling among the lower castes and wilder tribes of the Indian Provinces. It is impossible to read the wonderfully suggestive and instructive "Essays" recently published by Sir Alfred Lyall—essays which want nothing but length and dryness to place their author in the front rank of Asiatic authorities—without perceiving that Brahmanism, so far from having ossified itself, is still a living and changing creed, that it constantly creates for itself or assimilates new objects of worship, fresh • deities, and even in rare but most important cases, new philo- sophies. The regular process is for a philosopher, or chief of a tribe, or otherwise influential person, to recognise in some system of thought, or person, or rare object—which latter may vary from an epergne to an oddly-shaped rock or strangely placed clump of trees—either a fitting symbol of the universal and divine, or an embodiment of it, or an earthly manifestation of some subordinate but powerful deity, and gradually belief, or worship,

or reverence accretes to the idea, or person, or thing, till he or it becomes an object of worship, and a centre of faith, it may be to scores of thousands. Chaitanya, founder of the Vaishnavas, is reverenced by millions. If the idea spreads, or the person is , believed to work wonders, or miracles are reported of the thing, the circle of worshippers extends, the worship becomes a. cult, with separate ceremonial and ritual ; and behold a new caste, with a new faith, fully born. If the new force is locally con- siderable, Brahmanism, as represented by local priests, or occa- sionally by teachers of wider influence, steps in, and either

denounces the new teaching as utterly evil—in which case every charge the foul imagination of Asia can invent is hurled at its votaries—or, much more frequently, adopts the idea, person, or thing, declares them all sacred, gives them Brahmanical names, and, so to speak, consecrates the whole affair, which thenceforward is an integral part of Hindooism, and developes till the teacher is considered not only inspired, but a source of inspiration, or the person is worshipped as an avatar, or the thing becomes a sacred idol :—

"Of the numerous local gods known to lave been living men, by far the greater portion derive from the ordinary canonisation of holy personages. This system of canonising has grown out of the world- wide sentiment that rigid asceticism and piety combined with im- plicit faith gradually develop a miraculous faculty. The saint or hermit may have deeper motives—the triumph of the spirit over corrupt imatter, of virtue over vanity and lusts, or the self-purifica- tion required of media3val magicians and mystical alchemists before they could deal with the great secrets of Nature ; but the popular belief is that his relentless austerity extorts thaumaturgic power from reluctant gods. And of him who works miracles do they say in India, as in Samaria they said of Simon Magus,—' This man is the great power of God ;' wherefore after death (if not in life) he is honoured as divine indeed. Now the word miracle must not be under- stood in our sense of an interposition to alter unvarying natural laws, for in India no such laws have been definitely ascertained ; it means only something that passes an ordinary man's understanding, authen- ticated and enlarged by vague and vulgar report. And the exhibition of marvellous devotion or contempt for what is valaed by the world stimulates inventive credulity. He who does such things is sure to be credited with miracles, probably during his life, assuredly after his death. When such an one dies, his body is not burnt, but buried ; a disciple or relative of the saint establishes himself over the tomb as steward of the mysteries and receiver of the temporalities; vows are paid, sacrifice is made, a saint's day is added to the local calendar, and the future success of the shrine depends upon some lucky hit in the way of prophecy or fulfilment of prayers. The number of shrines thus raised in Berar alone to these anchorites and persons deceased in the odour of sanctity is large, and it is constantly increasing. Some of them have already attained the rank of temples, they are richly endowed, and collect great crowds at the yearly pilgrim gatherings, like the tombs of celebrated Christian martyrs in the Middle Ages. But although the shrines of a Hindu ascetic and of St. Thomas of Canterbury may have acquired fame among the vulgar and ignorant by precisely the same attribute—their repu- tation for miraculous efficacy—yet the only point of resemblance between the two cases is this common inference from eminent sanctity in the world to wonder-working power in the grave. For whereas the great Catholic Church never allowed the lowest English peasant to regard St. Thomas or St. Edmund as anything higher than glorified intercessors, with a sort of delegated miraculous power, the Indian prophet or devotee does by the patronage of the Brahmans rise gradually in the hierarchy of supernatural beings, until his human origin fades and disappears completely in the haze of tradi- tion, and he takes rank as a god."

Sir Alfred Lyall declares that he could, if required, give minute details of such elevations, and this not of persons only, but of things ; and he proceeds to defend a theory which we cannot

now examine,—that this may have been the origin of much of the Hindoo polytheism, which in its wildness and impos- sibility so puzzles those who know that behind Hindoo- ism lives a vast and subtle philosophy worthy the study of the keenest minds. What is certain is that the process goes on, that the Indian people, with their hunger for belief and reverence, are constantly begetting new gods, and that Brah- manism, with its rooted notion that bhakti (faith) is in itself a

holy condition of mind apart from the object of faith, and its theory that anything may be an embodiment of the Universal Spirit, lends its sanction to the process, and in lending it sends crowds, it may be millions, hunting for what of benefit or good of any kind may be derivable from the new worship.

It is a logical induction from the Brahman faith, strange as it may seem, that creed, colour, or history is no bar to the acceptance of the person or thing thus deified. If the Universal Spirit, or, far below him, Vishnu or Siva, chooses to take an ugly stone or a silver dish for symbol, or to embody himself in a negro or a white man, there is no law of limitation upon his actions. The white man, however un- accountable, or barbaric, or unclean, was still created. The French General Raymond was worshipped as a god, though he probably believed nothing; so was General Nicholson, though he was, we have heard, of the straitest sect of Irish Orangemen ; so was a military philanthropist, whose name we are ashamed to have forgotten, who devoted his life to a wild tribe in the Bengalee Himalayas ; and so also may be the Queen. As to things, the instances of their elevation are endless. Sir A. Lyall knew of scores of shrines reared over stones and among sacred copses, and himself "knew a Hindu officer, of great shrewdness and very fair education, who devoted several hours daily to the elaborate wor- ship of five round pebbles, which he had appointed to be his sym- bol of Omnipotence. Although his general belief was in one all- pervading Divinity, he must have something symbolic to handle and address." There is a silver dish, an epergne, which is going through the process at this moment. It was presented to a G-oorkha regiment by Queen Victoria, and is already such an object of reverence that it has a voluntary guard, that officers dismount as it passes, and that it is as certain as anything human can be that, while it is on the ground, its Groorkha devotees—all Hindoos to the bone—will die before they retreat without it. Grant it victory in a skirmish or two, and the epergne will be a true object of worship, more than a symbol, possibly with a temple raised above it, and an admission from regular priests that in it resides some portion of the power of the Supreme.

The adoption of Queen Victoria into a system like this is so natural, that we wonder it has never occurred before. She is just the material to make a goddess of; a living being, of far- reaching power, invisible, yet present throughout India ; a worker, in native eyes, of many wonders ; and on the whole beneficent, though that, indeed, to the devotees of Small- pox and Cholera, both of which have worshippers, and the first very many, would make but little difference. God creates, and God crushes also, in the Hindoo mind. There is no reason in the world, on the Brahmanical theory, why the Universal should not express himself in Queen Victoria, or why Vishnu or Siva, or better still, Saraswuti, the mighty god- dess of wisdom and knowledge, should not express himself or herself in her. Either deity is unlimited, if not unconditioned,

and granting the acceptance of the faith, which is a question mainly of the number of its votaries, temples may yet rise over Orissa, or farther, in which worship will be paid to Queen Victoria, and her figure will be hung with jewels and sacred flowers, and thousands will bow, and march, and dance in an ecstasy of adoration, and hundreds of thousands, as they pay or receive coin, will put it to their foreheads, because it bears the effigy of the new goddess. Little of all this will probably happen, because the tribe which has adopted this cult is small, because Orissa is traversed incessantly by men who have lived in Calcutta, where scepticism is in the air—there are, if we recollect rightly, 50,000 men from Orissa in Calcutta, who return home as faithfully as Scotchmen—and because the English officials, fearing ridicule, will stamp out the new faith, if they can. But there is abso- lutely no impossibility in its spread, and if it spread, the con- sequences would be incalculable. The adhesion of a single province of India to the Queen in any way which made disloyalty or disobedience impossible would change all the conditions of government there, and rest the Empire, now so insecure, on a basis of granite. It will not happen, though a thing much greater, the formal adoption of Christianity by the Khalsa, the Sikh "children of the sugar and the sword," was within an ace of happening, would, as we believe, have happened, but for Lord Canning's repugnance ; but that there should be even a dim possibility of it is an incident in Indian history worth more than the Atkenceurn's quiet reference, or our own poor effort to explain.

We suppose some official note of the occurrence will one day reach the Queen, and we wonder how she will feel. It must be a carious sensation to know that in one corner of the world you are actually worshipped by men and women you never saw, or possibly heard of,—held to be divine, to be some- thing which, whether through the presence of a deity incar- nate in you, or any other way, is unmistakably above humanity. There must be a strange humility generated by that, The Roman Emperors could have told us some- thing of it, for though the cultus of the Emperor was not precisely worship, it approached it very closely, was held by loyal Christians to be entirely forbidden, as the worship of a false Deity, and must in a mind like that of Marcus Aurelius have developed some strange thoughts. Visible in- cense can hardly go up in a thousand cities before one's own image without exciting thought, and Aurelius could have told us so clearly what his thoughts were. Nicholson's thoughts we know. He was profoundly irritated at being made a deity,

and, with his usual "unconstitutionality," he ordered his worshippers severe whippings, which were inflicted, and which

profoundly confirmed their faith. They would have made a faithful guard for him in that final charge into Delhi, and, perhaps, preserved his life; but the Orangeman could not away with the blasphemy, or the soldier bear the touch of ridi- cule involved. Perhaps Queen Victoria will be angry, too, though she will hardly order whippings for the poor Ooreyas ; but still, even in a reign like hers, it may hereafter be recorded,

as a most weird incident, that far down in a forgotten sea-coast province of India, where, also within her reign, millions of persons perished of hunger, a wild tribe, struck in some unknown way by the separateness of her personality, resolved that, of all they knew, she was the most probable depositary of the breath of the Universal Spirit, and the fittest object for their worship. Some day, perhaps, even English electors, hearing of such things, will wake to a dim apprehension that all mankind is not alike, that humanity is not enclosed in a corner of the smallest continent, and that between them and the Indian there is still some kind of gulf.