Feeding The Jackals

A strange ceremony is carried on at a certain temple lying in a belt of swamp and jungle at the foot of the Himalayas. The author of "Indian Memories," who visited the place at sundown, says that she found the priests in perfect silence, engaged in cooking large cakes before the temple. Then they sat down, still silent and stolid, as if ignorant of any unaccustomed presence. As the last rays of sunlight died off the temple, a man of extreme age, ciad in white robes and closely shaven, issued from the shrine. It was the chief priest. Moving slowly forward, he took up a bronze hammer, and began to strike the bell. Very sweet and deep was the note; the whole, glade rang and vibrated with it. At the sound, all the priests rose and moved solemnly and in dead silence round the quadrangle, bearing with them their huge cakes, which they broke np as they walked, and deposited them on the stones and treetrunks, and the steps of the temple. A rustling sound made me turn. A jackal, big and plump, brushed past me, with an upward curl of his lips, and a look of surprise and resentment in his red-bronze, gleaming eyes. Simultaneously, from every lane and passage in the darkening thicket, came other jaokals, singly and in pairs, and filled the space before the temple. Soon the feast was spread. The high priest ceased to toll the bell, and at a shout and wave of the hand, every jackal trotted, without rivalry and without snarling or confusión, to what was evidently his accustomed place in the feast, seized the cake in his jaws, turned and disappeared through the thicket. In vain did I fee the priests to learn the meaning of this strange bounty. "It had always been so," was their answer.