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They are the Holy Panditas. The palace itself is encircled by the palaces of the Goro, who possess all the visible and invisible forces of the earth, of inferno and of the sky and who can do everything for the life and death of man. If our mad humankind should begin a war against them, they would be able to explode the whole surface of our planet and transform it into deserts.

Meanwhile the panditas, or priests, subject him to a system of enthusiastic excitement that will turn him into a wild beast of the most formidable kind. They madden his already disordered brain, they make still more supple his oily limbs, until they have the strength of steel and the nervous force of the tiger or panther.

The highest Panditas place their hands on their eyes and at the base of the brain of younger ones and force them into a deep sleep, wash their bodies with an infusion of grass and make them immune to pain and harder than stones, wrap them in magic cloths, bind them and then pray to the Great God.

There in palaces of wonderful crystal live the invisible rulers of all pious people, the King of the World or Brahytma, who can speak with God as I speak with you, and his two assistants, Mahytma, knowing the purposes of future events, and Mahynga, ruling the causes of these events." "The Holy Panditas study the world and all its forces.

The future is differently conceived by different sects and families, some panditas teaching that the soul, having come from God, will return to him at death; others that it will sleep in the earth or the air until the world has ended, when all will be swept on a wind to a mount of judgment, where saints and angels will weigh them, and souls heavy with sin will fall into hell; others that there is no hell of fire, because there is not coal enough to keep it going, but that every man is punished until his soul is purified, when it rises to heaven, glowing with light and color; others that men are punished according to their sins; liars and gossips with sore mouths and tired jaws; gluttons with lame stomachs; jealous, cruel, tricky people with aching hearts; abusive and thievish ones with pains in their hands; others that one finds hell enough on earth in fear, illness, disappointment, misunderstanding and Spaniards, to atone for all the mischief he is liable to make.

The acknowledgment of the existence of the most holy and most powerful man, of the blissful kingdom, of the great temple of sacred science is such a consolation to our sinful hearts and our corrupt lives that to conceal it from humankind is a sin. . . . Well, listen," he continued, "throughout the whole year the King of the World guides the work of the Panditas and Goros of Agharti.

"In Agharti the learned Panditas write on tablets of stone all the science of our planet and of the other worlds. The Chinese learned Buddhists know this. Their science is the highest and purest. Every century one hundred sages of China collect in a secret place on the shores of the sea, where from its depths come out one hundred eternally-living tortoises.

I conclude the episode by a quotation from the prose rendering given by Raffles, which keeps more exactly to the original, and gives a characteristically Eastern picture of heaven. "The astonished spirit of Prince Salya quickly said "'Uneasy and impatient have I waited for thee among the clouds, with many widadaris, panditas, and diwas.

"On the night of your birth, the panditas announced that the charm boy, who was to lead the tribe to victory, would be born before the stars dimmed. Your cry came first, but there was another, also, fated to come to us that night. Anxiously the Moro men and women gazed at their idol, Piang. His manly little head was held high, and the powerful shoulders squared as he listened.