Three Bizarre Hindu Beliefs

Each day, about 1,000 worshipers and about 70 tourists visit the temple of Karni Mata, Deshnoke, India. Why? Because in this temple, about 300 rats wander freely while the believers bring their offerings to these idols. The rats are adored and any necessity that they might have is satisfied by the ecstatic prayers.

The priests of the temple and the rats eat from the same dishes and drink the same water. The priests say these rats are god's messengers. The belief is that when the temple's priests die, they reincarnate as rats.

In India, monkeys are considered sacred animals for over 2,000 years. In Ramayana, Hanuman, the monkey king aided Lord Rama (an avatar of Vishnu) in rescuing his wife, Sita from the Rakshasa king Ravana. In many cultures, monkeys are considered sacred, but only in the city of Vrindavan (India) they walk freely through the streets, without the fear of being captured. In fact, the Rhesus macaque population is so large in that city because the high number of pilgrims feed the monkeys, believing that this brings prosperity. Sacred rhesus macaques are also found in Nepalese temples. The monkeys indulge with the offers left by worshipers to the gods, like rice, nuts and sweets. Only that the Nepalese temples are Buddhist. The monkey populations grow by 5-15 % annually, when the resources allow it.

In time, the monkeys became completely dependent from the humans' handout, as the city has a scarce vegetation. The macaques started stealing shopping bags and entering people’s houses looking for food. The locals agreed to move 60 % of the monkeys to rural areas.

For centuries, Hindu people sank their dead into the waters of Ganges River, believing that this practice will ensure moksha, the release of the soul from the cycles of the body existence. Along its 2,500 km (1,500 mi), the Ganges River was deep, and its swift currents carried hundreds of decomposing bodies. But in time, the river lost depth and slowed down its flowing speed because of the industrial and municipal wastes released in its waters. Because of this, the corpses remained caught in the vegetation and wastes for weeks.

Towards the end of the '80s, the solution they thought of was to bring in the Ganges thousands of carnivorous turtles. In 1994, this project was stopped because there were still too many bodies and the turtles proved rather ineffective; moreover, the turtles were poached. A new campaign tried to make people burn the dead or bury them in the sand on the river's banks.

MORE RELATED ARTICLES: How Is the Sugar Extracted from Sugar Cane? A Gene for Oral Sex! What's the Sleeping Disease? The Eight-Limbed Girl Has Been Operated Nature's Largest Fruits and Seeds Top 10 Infectious Diseases That Have Killed Millions of People 8 Amazing Facts about Taste Fish Swallows Four Times Bigger Prey Fish! The Black Sea, a Dead Sea? How Can Snakes Eat Poisonous Frogs?