The Bacchic orgy begins with hard drinking.  Civa as Bh[=a]irava, ‘the dreadful,’ has his human counterpart also, who must then and there pair with the impersonated Durg[=a].  The worship proper consists in the repetition of meaningless mantra syllables and yells; the worship improper, in indulgence in ’wine and women’ (particularly enjoined in the rite-books called Tantras).  Human sacrifice at these rites is said to be extinct at the present day.[49]

But blood-lust is appeased by the hacking of their own bodies.  Garments are cast in a heap.  Lots are drawn for the women’s garments[50] by the men.  With her whose clothes he gets each man continues the debauch, inviting incest in addition to all other excess.[51]

The older Vishnuite sects (P[=a][=n]car[=a]tras, etc.) may have had some of this filth in their make-up; but mass for mass the practices are characteristic of Civaism and not of Vishnuism.[52] Especially Civaite, however, is the ‘mother worship,’ to which reference was made in the chapter on epic Hinduism.  These ‘mothers’ are guardian goddesses, or fiends of disease, etc.  One may not claim that all C[=a]ktas are Civaites, but how small a part of Vishnuism is occupied with Cakti-worship can be estimated only by surveying the whole body of worshippers of that name.

We cannot leave the lust and murder of modern Civaism without speaking of still another sect which hangs upon the heels of K[=a]l[=i], that of the Thugs.  It may, indeed, be questioned whether Civa should be responsible for the doings of his spouse, K[=a]l[=i].  But like seeks like, and there is every historical justification in making out Civa to be as bad as the company he keeps.  Durg[=a] and K[=a]l[=i] are not vainly looked upon as Civa’s female side.  So that a sect like the Thugs,[53] which worshipped K[=a]li, may, it is true, be taken out of the Civaite sects, but only if one will split Civaism in two and reproduce the original condition, wherein Civa was one monster and K[=a]li was another; which is scarcely possible after the two have for centuries been looked upon as identical.  With this in mind it may be granted that the Thugs payed reverence to K[=a]li, rather than to her lord.  Moreover, many of them were Mohammedans; but, for our purpose, the significant fact is that when the Thugs were Hindus they were K[=a]li-Civaites.  And we believe that these secret murderers, strange as it seems, originated in a reformatory movement.  As is well known, it was a religious principle with them not to spill blood.[54] They always throttled.  They were, of course, when they first became known m 1799 (Sherwood’s account), nothing but robbers and murderers.  But, like the other Civaite monstrosities, they regarded their work as a religious act, and always invoked K[=a]li if they were Hindus.  We think it probable, therefore, that the sect originated among the K[=a]li-worshippers as a protest against blood-letting.  Admitting