Captain Campbell, after describing the lascivious dancing of Hindoo girls, who get their living by it, says, “that such enticements to vice should make a part of the system of any society is to be lamented: yet in all ceremonies and great occasions, whether religious worship or domestic enjoyment, they make a part of the entertainment; and the altars of their gods, and the purity of the magic rites, are alike polluted by the introduction of the dancing girls. The impurity of this custom, however, vanishes, when compared with the hideous practice of introducing dancing boys.” With respect to the pagoda of Jaggernat, which he calls a curious and grotesque monument of superstitious folly, he says, “it is an immense barbarous structure of a kind of pyramidal form, embellished with devices cut in stone work, not more singular than disgusting.” Christian idolaters, in forming types and figures of divine things, always endeavour to represent them with personal beauty, as proportionate to their divine nature as human skill can make it. Those Pagans, on the contrary, in forming their idols, cast out every vestige of beauty—everything that, by the consent of mankind, is supposed to convey pleasing sensations; and, in their place, substitute the most extravagant, unnatural deformity, the most loathsome nastiness, the most disgusting obscenity. It is not in language to convey an adequate idea of their temples and idols; and if it was, no purpose could be answered by it, only the excitement of painful and abominable sensations. To keep pace with the figures of their idols, a chief Brahmin, by some accursed artificial means (by herbs, I believe), has brought to a most unnatural form, and enormous dimensions, that which decency forbids me to mention; and the pure and spotless women who from infancy have been shut up from the sight of men, even of their own brothers, are brought to kiss this disgusting and misshapen monster, under the preposterous belief that it promotes fecundity. Tavernier mentions the same abominable custom, as also does Alexander Hamilton, in his account of the East Indies. In this pagoda, Capt. Campbell says, stands the figure of Jaggernat, but it is nothing more than a black stone of an irregular pyramidal form, having two rich diamonds in the top by way of eyes, and a nose and mouth painted red. For this god, he says, five hundred priests are employed in spoiling food. Every pagoda, says La Crose, has a certain number of prostitutes annexed to it, dedicated to its use by pompous and solemn ceremonies. They choose the handsomest, and educate them in such a manner, that when they come to a proper age they may bring the greatest gain to the temple by the price of their prostitution. They can never marry, or leave the idol; and their children, if they have any, are also dedicated to it.