AN INDIAN BAPTISM

Southland Times, Issue 20794, 7 June 1929, Page 11

AN INDIAN BAPTISM

CELEBRATED IN FRANCE. A baptismal ceremony which is probably the first of its kind ever to have taken place in France has just been celebrated in the Chateau of Saint German, occupied by Sir Tukoji Holkar, ex-Maharaja of Indore, and his American wife, formerly Miss Nancy Miller. There, in a room specially decorated in the manner of a Hindu temple, the ex-Maharaja’s infant daughter Sharada was baptised according to Hindu rites. The ceremony was strictly private, the only people present besides the parents and the child being two Brahmin priests and the grandparents of the child. The ceremony began with a sacrifice to fire, sandalwood and flowers being burned in a brazier. W’hen the flames reached their maximum height butter was flung upon them as a token of expiation, and the priests then called for the blessing of the gods upon the child and its parents. The name of the infant Sharada was then written in rice upon a silver tray, after which the blessing of her ancestors was invoked.

The crowning moment of the ceremony then arrived as the ex-Maharaja whispered the infant’s name first into his wife’s ear and then into that of the child before announcing it to the assembly. The service concluded with the distribution of pieces of sugar among those who had witnessed it, for among Hindus the eating of sugar is taken as a sign of joy.