The holy cows walked slowly with the people, hung with garlands and painted on the face and sides; holding up the traffic as, unafraid, they snuffled their velvety muzzles in the unguarded baskets of grain, and pushed their way unconcernedly and by holy right across the human stream into the Cow Temple as they passed the ever-open door.

There was certainly no pushing nor striving to get one before the other, but underneath the calm pulsated a certain restrained excitement, to be read in the light of the thousands of eyes, and the extraordinary spasmodic, almost uncontrolled, movements of the delicate dusky hands.

Mothers would suddenly jerk their children up into their arms and press their little faces against one of the thousands of tiny shrines, where the gods sit all day and all night behind the bars through which are thrust offerings of flowers, of food, of jewels.

Men would suddenly strip themselves of all except the loin-cloth and, casting their clothing at the feet of some holy man, proceed calmly upon their way.  One out of a number of beautiful, fragile girls, with cast-down painted eyes and half-veiled face, for no apparent reason would sidle up against some man; rest for one moment against him, and continue with him upon the road, his arm about her, crushing her body to his; and the drums throbbed, and the horns screamed in and around the temple of their goddess.

Yet one did strive, and, heedless of rebuke, did push her way ruthlessly through the throngs, slipping on the greasy pavement covered with refuse and cow-dung; sliding, ducking, squirming her way in and out, breathless and dishevelled, with a simple brown sari slipping from about her sleek head and pock-marked face.

Her monkey eyes flashed this way and that in search of something or someone she could not find; her withered hands beat her withered breast; the sweat streamed down her face until at last the crowd gave way, and looking upon her as one mentally afflicted, helped her stumbling passage up to and through the temple gateway.

Priests stood at the entrance to the outer court of the temple.  They did not stand there, as do the ushers in the West, in order to keep the riff-raff, those humble, poverty-stricken children of God, from occupying the plush-covered seats in His House; but knowing the intimate connection between religion and the senses, and the limited space of the court of sacrifice and the temple itself, they stood there in order to keep a finger upon the pulse of that mass of humanity’s passions.

The full moon flung her silver on to the stained worn flags of the roofless court; hundreds, thousands even of tiny wicks in tiny earthenware saucers flickered in the niches and on the outer edge of the walls; hundreds of torches flung a smoky veil around the restless figures passing in and out of the narrow entrance, and over dark heaps which lay at the foot of the walls and in the corners.