"The origin of this race dates from the most remote antiquity. Amongst the countless Hindoo divinities to be found in our curiosity shops, you may have remarked a four-armed figure perched on an elephant. He is one of the eight gods of Brahminism; he is called Indra and, according to the legend, the bayaderes, or celestial dancing girls, inhabited his kingdom. One of these was enamoured of a mortal, and gave birth to a daughter, who, on account of her semi-terrestrial origin, could not be brought up in heaven, and was in consequence confided to the care of the priests called Brahmins. They placed her in a pagoda, where, by way of proving the truth of the saying that every well-bred dog has a good nose, she displayed from her earliest years the greatest aptitude and liking for dancing. She, in her turn, had seven daughters who, gifted in like manner as their mother and their grandmother, became dancers of renown. "In the present day they are connected with the worship of the gods, and might be called the vestals of their religion, if its rules, whilst forbidding them to marry, did not place them entirely at the mercy and in the hands of the Brahmins. In a word, they are a species of religious harem of which the priests of Brahma are the Sultans. The bayadere, therefore, still lives, but exclusively in the temple or pagoda where, on the days of religious ceremonial, she executes the prescribed dances before the idols. Occasionally, too, she is to be found in the palace of some Rajah who has purchased her on her attaining maturity for a fabulous price from the Brahmins, for she is their property, and a very handsome revenue they manage to secure out of her and her fellows. "This race of women would have long ago become extinct, if several castes in India, the weavers amongst others, did not look upon it as a pious duty to devote their daughters to the service of the temples. To be accepted they must not be more than five years old, must be possessed of sufficiently good looks to give promise of future beauty, and their family must renounce all idea of ever seeing them again. If they fulfil the required conditions they are handed over to the care of some aged matron, herself a graduated priestess, to whom is entrusted the task of instructing them in their new duties, and of initiating them into all the mysteries of a dance, which, whilst it partakes of the nature of all Oriental dances, yet actually resembles no one of them, and is, moreover, invested with decidedly mystic characteristics. "Such is the information, a little hazy, perhaps, but quite correct as far as it goes, which I am enabled to give you on the subject of the genuine bayadere. If you want a more detailed account, refer to that very instructive work, Jacolliot's "Voyage au pays des Bayadères."