“The small-pox goddess stands with two uplifted crooked daggers, threatening to strike on the right and left. Before her are a band of executors of her vengeance. Two of them wear red grinning masks, carry black shields, and brandish naked scimitars. White lines, like rays, issue from the bodies of the others, to indicate infection. On the right there is a group of men with spotted bodies, afflicted with the malady; bells are hung at their cinctures, and a few of them wave in their hands black feathers. They are preceded by musicians with drums, who are supplicating the pity of the furious deity. Behind the goddess, on the right, there advances a bevy of smiling young women, who are carrying gracefully on their heads baskets with thanksgiving-offerings, in gratitude for their lives and their beauty having been spared. There is, besides, a little boy with a bell at his girdle, who seems to be conveying something from the right arm of the goddess. This action may possibly be emblematic of inoculation.”[282]
Another small-pox deity of India described by Mr. Dubois, a missionary,[283] is Mah-ry-Umma, who is supposed to incarnate herself in the disease. The natives, when vaccination was first introduced, objected to the practice for fear lest the goddess should be offended, as to prevent the small-pox would imply an objection to her becoming incarnate amongst them. The difficulty was overcome by the suggestion that the vaccination was a mild form of disease by which the goddess had chosen to visit her votaries, so that she might be worshipped with equal respect.
“Even Siva is worshipped as a stone, especially that Siva who will afflict a child with epileptic fits, and then, speaking by its voice, will announce that he is Parchânana, the Five-faced, and is punishing the child for insulting his image.”[284]
Surgeon-General Sir W. J. Moore, in an article on “The Origin and Progress of Hospitals in India,”[285] says that we may form a very good opinion of the condition of the whole of India in ancient times by recalling what was the state of medical relief in most of the native States previous to the institution of medical relief and sanitation in British districts.
“Recently, in the Native States, there might be witnessed disease proceeding unchecked and uninterfered with, to a degree which certainly would not be allowed at present in civilized Europe. And especially was this evident in surgical disease, as illustrated by the following extract from an official document:[286]—