History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v5.c74.23.4

v5.c74.23.4

The grandeur and sublimity of snow-capped mountains, of large life-sustaining rivers and of great forests easily impress the minds of almost all people and induce them to think that there is something divine about them, that the Supreme Being is partially revealed in such surroundings. In Protestant Europe and the U. S. A. hardly anyone performs a pilgrimage to a holy place in these days. Instead, they tour different countries for rest, health and in search of natural beauty and a respite from humdrum existence But pilgrimage to a place supposed to be holy for the curing of disease is not rare even now. When one reads a work like that of Louis Carell, a great surgeon and a winner of the Nobel prize, on the miracles worked at Lourdes in France (in 'a Journey to Lourdes') one sees that pilgrimage has taken on a new motive in the West. Similarly, pilgrimage to the tombs of unknown warriors has become common owing to the two world wars.