CONCERNING the many difficulties to be encountered in the Madura District, Rev. H. C. Hazen, missionary of the American Board, says:
"It is thought by some that car-drawings, such as used to be witnessed at Juggernaut, have been abolished by government. This is a mistake. I know from personal observation that idol-cars are annually drawn at five different places in the Madura Districts. In fact, the car-drawing is the principal business at the festival; that is the climax to which all look forward. Government has prohibited the voluntary immolation of victims before the car, but men and women roll behind the car, and occasionally, without any warning, or before any one has a suspicion of what is going to take place, a woman will throw herself in front of the moving car, and be crushed before it can be stopped. This is, of course, suicide, with religious fanaticism as the supposed cause, helped along, no doubt, by misery in the home life.
"Incredible tho it may seem, 'hook-swinging' is still practised in the Madura District. A hook is passed through two strong muscles in the back, and then the man is swung high into the air, and the car is slowly moved along. A vast throng is eager to catch the flowers which he scatters, which are supposed to contain great merit, as if they had fallen from heaven. The man who endures all that is looked upon as a god, and makes enough money by it to live in idleness during the remainder of his life.
"Many of the lower castes in Southern India are devil worshipers. They worship the devil because they are afraid of him. The wily priests prophesy to the people, when they try to become Christians, that many calamities will overtake them, if they forsake their father's god; houses will take fire, crops will be destroyed, cows and sheep will die, children will sicken and die, etc. These unscrupulous priests have ways of fulfilling their own prophecies, and all the heathen are with them in the plot. We have many sad illustrations of this statement. One entire family was wiped out one after another by poison, the priest warning the wife and mother at each step; but she held out, true to Christ, till all were gone, and she was carried to a distant place, and never heard of afterward."