A history of Asiatic cholera / by C. MacNamara.

Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A history of Asiatic cholera / by C. MacNamara. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    »•] 03 of the country to come and pray at her shrine in Calcutta. As is usual in such cases, the idol became the property of a priestly family and a source of income. Originally the idol was kept merely under a bamboo shed; but early in the eighteenth century, probably about the year 1720, an English merchant to please his native friends, built a temple to the goddess which still exists in a ruinous state. Of the rites performed at the shrine we know that, besides presenting offerings, the votaries of the goddess fasted in the morning, and at two o’clock in the after- noon dined upon crushed rice and dhahee, a preparation of milk, taking nothing after that until next day. Every Tuesday and Saturday some three or four hundred females used to worship after this fashion, and return to their respective homes in the evening. The pilgrimage was especially common from April to June, or during the cholera season. In process of time the temple became inconvenient from its situation, and Mr. Duncan gave 6,000 rupees for the erection of the edifice which is now in use; it was built probably about the year 1750 : near it is the tomb of Mr. Duncan’s Mohamedan wife and child. The old rude stone was transferred to the new temple, and a somewhat elaborate idol constructed; it represents in the centre a carcass, with a vulture preying on it, and on the back of the latter the goddess is represented with four hands and in a sitting posture; on her right is