Khandoba is the deity of the Marathi country and is popularly believed to be an avator, or incarnation of Shiva. Muralis are girls devoted to him by their parents in infancy or early childhood. Outside the main entrance of the temple court, a stone column stands on the wall on the left side. It is about three feet high, and on the head of it is cut a filthy design. The column is called by the name of Yeshwantrao.... He it is who gives children to barren women.... It is to this image the poor deluded women promise to sacrifice their first-born daughters if Khandoba will make them mothers of many children. Then after the vow, the first-born girl is offered to Khandoba and set apart for him by tying a necklace of seven cowries around the little girl’s neck. When she becomes of marriageable age she is formally married to the Khanda or daggar of Khandoba, and becomes his nominal wife. Henceforth she is forbidden to become the wedded wife of man, and the result is that she usually leads an infamous life, earning a livelihood by sin.[83] The stories told by Amy Wilson Carmichael and many others corroborate and emphasize the facts stated by Mrs. Fuller, and tell of what the British Government and Christian missions are trying to do to counteract and stop the monstrous evil. From the _Missionary Review of the World_ for February, 1913, we quote:-- [Sidenote: Legislation to abolish young temple girls.] “A bill lately introduced into the viceroy’s legislative council by Mr. Dadabhai, the Parsee member of that body, touches upon some of oldest and darkest social evils of India. It proposes to make it criminal for a parent or other lawful guardian to dedicate a girl under sixteen years of age to ‘the service of a deity,’ which always means dedicating her to a life of infamy, and to make the crime punishable with ten years penal servitude. It prohibits under very severe penalties, the practice which obtains whereby priests enter into temporary alliance with young girls thus dedicated, in order to initiate them into the life of professional profligacy.” To this we may add from an authoritative source that in 1913 the native state of Mysore had already abolished dancing girls from all its temples. While the British Government is trying to prevent any of India’s daughters from being hereafter ruined, body and soul, in the name of religion, what is being done for the thousands who through no fault of their own have already become “the servants of the gods”? Is it possible to do anything to redeem the lives of these children whose earliest memories cluster about the most hideous forms of evil? [Sidenote: Rescuing the servant of the gods.]