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Aghori

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Agiasma

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is the name of a HindA sect professing complete worldly indifference. The original Aghori worship seems. to have been that of Devi, in some of her terrific forms, and to have required even human victims for its performance. Dr. Horace' Wilson thus describes their practices: "The regular worship of this sect has long been suppressed, and the early traces of it now left are presented by a few disgusting wretches who, while they profess to have adopted its tenets, make them a mere plea for extorting alms. In proof of their indifference to worldly objects, they eat and drink whatever is given to them, even ordure and carrion. They smear the body with excrement. and carry it about with them in a wooden cup or skull, either to swallow it for the purpose of obtaining alms, or to throw it upon the .persons or into the houses of those who refuse' to comply with their demands. They also for the same purpose inflict gashes on their limbs, that the crime of blood may rest upon the head of the recusant, and' they have a variety of similar disgusting devices to extort money from the timid and credulous Hindu. They are, fortunately, not numerous, and are universally detested and feared."