As the Brahman priests accommodated their religious beliefs to suit the popular mind, so have the Roman Catholic missionaries and priests effected a compromise between Hindooism and Christianity in India, and Eastern Christianity has assumed features as foreign to the sublime teachings of Christ as demon- and serpent-worship are foreign to the pure and natural religion of the Vèdas. It is only by examining the existences of all the different races and layers of populations, and the mingling of so many and such conflicting religions, that we can rightly understand the India of to-day with her hydra-headed creeds, dogmas, and castes. FOOTNOTES: [27] A species of palm-leaf dried and stitched together, much used all over Hindostan in roofing houses and sheds. [28] Most of the high-caste Hindoo women cultivate this plant for the purpose of dyeing their nails and finger-tips. The dye is prepared by bruising the leaves and moistening them with a little lime-water. This mixture is then applied to the nails, tips of the fingers, palms of the hands, and sometimes even to the soles of the feet, which in a short time become dyed of a reddish-orange color. The stain remains on the skin until it wears off. [29] A "Guru" is a spiritual guide, a Brahman ecclesiastic, invested with the power of attending births, deathbeds, marriages, and settling all such questions as effect Hindoo caste and all its duties and obligations. A Guru is generally an ascetic of peculiar sanctity, and is often worshipped as an incarnate deity. This office descends from father to son. The Gurus comprise a very large and influential body of men, occupying the chief cities of India, wielding a despotic power over the people, as their curse is dreaded by all ranks and conditions of people. [30] The Bhats and Charans, the bards and genealogists of these tribes, are remarkable for their power of reciting from memory whole epics describing the birth, exploits, and death of the various Bhil chiefs. They will also devote themselves to death or to receive the most cruel mutilations in order to keep a promise, accomplish a vow, recover a debt, or to obtain any end which might be secured by inspiring others with superstitious reverence and dread. A Bhat of Viramghaw in 1806 put his little daughter, a beautiful girl of seven years old, to death by decapitation, and with her blood, which he carried in an earthen vessel, he sprinkled the gate of the Malliah Rajah's castle, and thus compelled him to pay a debt to the Gaikwar for which he had become security.