the Hindu gods.  It has suppressed the thugs, who, as you have read, formerly went about the country killing people in order to acquire holiness; it has prohibited the awful processions of the car of Juggernaut, before which hysterical fanatics used to throw their own bodies, and the bodies of their children, to be crushed under the iron wheels, in the hope of pleasing some monster among their deities.  The suppression of infanticide, which is still encouraged by the Brahmins, is now receiving the vigilant attention of the authorities.

Every effort has been made during the last fifty years to prevent the awful cruelties to human beings that formerly were common in Hindu worship, but no police intervention has ever been necessary to protect dumb animals; nobody was ever punished for cruelty to them; on the contrary, animal worship is one of the most general of practices among the Hindus, and many beasts and reptiles are sacred.  But the Jains go still further and establish hospitals for aged and infirm animals.  You can see them in Bombay, in Delhi, Lucknow, Calcutta and other places where the Jains are strong.  Behind their walls may be found hundreds of decrepit horses, diseased cows and bullocks, many dogs and cats and every kind of sick, lame and infirm beast.  Absurd stories are told strangers concerning the extremes to which this benevolence is carried, and some of them have actually appeared in published narratives of travel in India.  One popular story is that when a flea lights upon the body of a Jain he captures it carefully, puts it in a receptacle and sends it to an asylum where fat coolies are hired to sit around all day and night and allow fleas, mosquitoes and other insects to feed upon them.  But although untrue, these ridiculous stories are valuable as illustrating the principles in which the Jains believe.  They are strict vegetarians.  The true believers will not kill an animal or a fish or a bird, or anything that breathes, for any purpose, and everybody can see that they strictly practice what they preach.

His most gracious majesty, King of Great Britain and Ireland and Emperor of India, has more Mohammedan subjects than the Great Turk or any other ruler.  They numbered 62,458,061 at the last census.  They are a clean, manly, honorable and industrious portion of the population.  Commercially they do not rank as high as the Parsees, who number only 94,190, or the Jains, who number 1,334,148, but are vastly superior to the Hindus from any point of view.  They are not so ignorant nor so filthy nor so superstitious nor so submissive to their priests.  They are self-respecting and independent, and while the believers in no other creed are more scrupulous in the performance of their religious duties, they are not in any measure under the control or the dictation of their mullahs.  They have their own schools, called kuttebs, they take care of their own poor very largely; drunkenness and gambling are very rare among them.  They are