Volume 1

Rambles and recollections of an Indian official / [Sir William Henry Sleeman].

  • William Henry Sleeman
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Rambles and recollections of an Indian official / [Sir William Henry Sleeman]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    59/492 page 19
    LEGEND OF THE NERBUDDA RIVER lo IS worshipped, or a single priest to profit by the delusion. As in the case of the Ganges, it is the river itself to whom they address themselves, and not to any deity residing in it, or presiding over it; the stream itself is the deity which fills their imaginations, and receives their homage. Among the Romans and ancient Persians rivers were propitiated by sacrifices. When Vitellius crossed the Euphrates with the Roman legions to put Tiridates on the throne of Armenia, they propitiated the river according to the rites of their country by the suovetaurilia, the sacrifice of the hog, the ram, and the bull. Tiridates did the same^ by the sacrifice of a horse. Tacitus does not mention the river god^ but the river itself^ as propitiated (See [Annals], book vi, chap. 37).^ Plato makes Socrates condemn Homer for making Achilles behave disrespect- fully to^\ards the river Xanthus, though acknowledged to be a divinity, in offering to fight him,~ and towards the river Sperchius, another acknowledged god, in presenting to the dead body of Patroclus the locks of his hair which he had promised to that river. The Son river, which rises near the source of the Nerbudda on the table-land of Amarkantak, takes a westerly course for some miles, and then turns off suddenly to the east, and is joined by the little stream of the Johila before it descends the great cascade ; and hence the poets have created this fiction, which the mass of the population receive as divine revelation. The statue of little Johila, the barber’s daughter, in stone, stands in the temple of the goddess Nerbudda at Amarkantak, bound in chains. It may here be remarked that the first over- tmes in India must always be made through the medium of the barber, whether they be from the prince or the Sacrificantibus, cum hie more Romano suovetaui ilia daret, ille equum placando amni adornasset.” 2 , , *• /xeyas- Trorafxoi ^advdivrjs, “ Ou SdvSov KaXiovo-i Oeoi, audpes be ^Kaaavbpovd—llhd, xx, 72. ^ Iliad, xxiii, 140-153.
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