The Khonds of Orissa, in India, afford an instance of this close and pernicious association between religious and military ideas, which may be traced through the history of many far more advanced communities. For though they regard the joy of the peace dance as the very highest attainable upon earth, they attribute, not to their own will, but to that of their war god, Loha Pennu, the source of all their wars. The devastation of a fever or tiger is accepted as a hint from that divinity that his service has been too long neglected, and they acquit themselves of all blame for a war begun for no better reason, by the following philosophy of its origin: ‘Loha Pennu said to himself, Let there be war, and he forthwith entered into all weapons, so that from instruments of peace they became weapons of war; he gave edge to the axe and point to the arrow; he entered into all kinds of food and drink, so that men in eating and drinking were filled with rage, and women became instruments of discord instead of soothers of anger.’ And they address this prayer to Loha Pennu for aid against their enemies: ‘Let our axes crush cloth and bones as the jaws of the hyæna crush its prey. Make the wounds we give to gape.... When the wounds of our enemies heal, let lameness remain. Let their stones and arrows fall on us as the flowers of the mowa-tree fall in the wind.... Make their weapons brittle as the long pods of the karta-tree.’ In their belief that wars were of external causation to themselves, and in their endeavour to win by prayer a favourable issue to their appeal to arms, it could scarcely be maintained that the nations of Christendom have at all times shown any marked superiority over the modern Khonds. But in spite of this, and of the fierce military character that Christianity ultimately assumed, the Church always kept alive some of her earlier traditions about peace, and even in the darkest ages set some barriers to the common fury of the soldier. When the Roman Empire was overthrown, her influence in this direction was in marked contrast with what it has been ever since. Even Alaric when he sacked Rome (410) was so far affected by Christianity as to spare the churches and the Christians who fled to them. Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome, inspired even Attila with respect for his priestly authority, and averted his career of conquest from Rome; and the same bishop, three years later (455), pleaded with the victorious Genseric that his Vandals should spare the unresisting multitude and the buildings of Rome, nor allow torture to be inflicted on their prisoners. At the instance of Gregory II., Luitprand, the Lombard king, withdrew his troops from the same city, resigned his conquests, and offered his sword and dagger on the tomb of St. Peter (730).