From Adam's Peak to Elephanta

by Edward Carpenter

INDIA

GREAT PAGODA IN TEMPLE AT TANJORE.

(192 feet high.)

CHAPTER XII.
THE SOUTH INDIAN TEMPLES.

Leaving Colombo by steamer one evening in the later part of January, I landed on the sandy flat shores of Tuticorin the next day about noon. The deck was crowded with 250 of the poorest class of Tamils, coolies mostly, with women and children, lying in decent confusion heaped upon one another, passively but sadly enduring the evil motion of the ship and the cold night air. One man, nameless, unknown, and abjectly thin, died in the night and was cast overboard. I was the only Englishman on board beside the captain and officers. Said the second officer, “Well, I would rather have these fellows than a lot of English emigrants. The lowest class of English are the damnedest, dirtiest, etceteraest etceteras in the world.”

Tuticorin is a small place with a large cotton mill, several Roman Catholic churches and chapels, relics of Portuguese times, and a semi-christianised semi-wage-slaving native population. From there to Madras is about two days by rail through the great plains of the Carnatic, which stretch between the sea-shore and the Ghauts—long stretches of sand and scrub, scattered bushes and small trees, and the kittool palm; paddy at intervals where the land is moister, and considerable quantities of cotton on the darker soil near Tuticorin; mud and thatch villages under clumps of coco-palm (not such fine trees as in Ceylon); and places of village worship—a portico or shrine with a great clay elephant or half-circle of rude images of horses facing it; the women working in the fields or stacking the rice-straw in stacks similar to our corn-stacks; the men drawing water from their wells to run along the irrigation channels, or in some cases actually carrying the water in pots to pour over their crops!

These plains, like the plains of the Ganges, have been the scene of an advanced civilization from early times, and have now for two thousand years at any rate been occupied by the Tamil populations. Fergusson in his History of Architecture speaks of thirty great Dravidian temples to be found in this region, “any one of which must have cost as much to build as an English cathedral.” I visited three, those of Mádura, Tanjore, and Chidámbaram; which I will describe, taking that at Tanjore first, as having the most definite form and plan.

I have already (chap. VII.) given some account of a smaller Hindu temple. The temples in this region are on the same general plan. There is no vast interior as in a Western cathedral, but they depend for their effect rather upon the darkness and inaccessibility of the inner shrines and passages, and upon the gorgeous external assemblage of towers and porticos and tanks and arcades brought together within the same enclosure. At Mádura the whole circumference of the temple is over 1,000 yards, and at Sri Rungam each side of the enclosure is as much as half a mile long. In every case there has no doubt been an original shrine of the god, round which buildings have accumulated, the external enclosure being thrown out into a larger and larger circumference as time went on; and in many cases the later buildings, the handsome outlying gateways or gópuras and towers, have by their size completely dwarfed the shrine to which they are supposed to be subsidiary, thus producing a poor artistic effect.

TEMPLE AT TANJORE, GENERAL VIEW.

(Portico with colossal bull on the right, priests’ quarters among trees on the left.)

In the temple at Tanjore the great court is 170 yards long by 85 wide. You enter through a gateway forming a pyramidal structure 40 or 50 feet high, ornamented with the usual carved figures of Siva and his demon doorkeepers, and find yourself in a beautiful courtyard, flagged, with an arcade running round three sides, the fourth side being occupied by priests’ quarters; clumps of coco-palms and other trees throw a grateful shade here and there; in front of you rises the great pyramidal tower, or pagoda, 190 feet high, which surmounts the main shrine, and between the shrine and yourself is an open portico on stone pillars, beneath which reposes a huge couchant bull, about six yards long and four yards high, said to be cut from a solid block of syenite brought 400 miles from the quarries. This bull is certainly very primitive work, and is quite brown and saturated with constant libations of oil; but whether it is 2,700 years old, as the people here say, is another question. The difficulty of determining dates in these matters is very great; historical accuracy is unknown in this land; and architectural style gives but an uncertain clue, since it has probably changed but little. Thus we have the absurdity that while natives of education and intelligence are asserting on the one hand that some of these temples are five or even ten thousand years old, the Western architects assert equally strongly that they can find no work in them of earlier date than 1000 A.D., while much of it belongs to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Probably the architects are in the main right. It is quite probable however that the inner shrines in most of these cases are extremely old, much older than 1000 A.D.; but they are so buried beneath later work, and access to them is so difficult, and if access were obtained their more primitive style would so baffle chronology, that the question must yet remain undetermined.

Close to the bull is the kampam or flagstaff, and then, beyond, a flight of steps leading up to the main sanctuary and the tower or pagoda. The sanctuary is all fine and simple work of red sandstone in which horizontal lines predominate. At its far end and under the pagoda would be no doubt the inner shrine or holy of holies—the vimana or womb of the temple, a cubical chamber, in which the lingam would be placed. Into these mysteries we did not penetrate, but contented ourselves with looking at the pagoda from the outside. It is a very dignified and reposeful piece of work, supposed by Fergusson to belong to the early part of the fourteenth century; ninety-six feet square at the base, with vertical sides for about fifty feet, and then gradually drawing in narrower through thirteen stories to the summit (see plate at head of this chapter). The red sandstone walls at the base are finely and quietly paneled, with statues of Siva—not grotesque, but dignified and even graceful—in the niches. Higher up in the pyramidal part the statues are fewer, and are mingled with couchant bulls and flame-like designs composed of multitudinous cobras and conches and discs (symbols of the god—who is lord of Time, the revolving disc, and of Space, represented by the sounding conch) in tiers of continually diminishing size to the summit, where a small dome—said to be also a single massive block of stone—is surmounted by a golden pinnacle. The natural red of the stone which forms the lower walls is artificially deepened in the panels, and the traces of blue and green tints remaining, together with silvery and brown incrustations of lichen in the upper parts, give a wonderful richness to the whole. I am afraid however that the pyramidal structure is not stone, but brick covered with plaster. The frequency of the bull everywhere throughout this and other Saivite temples reminds one of the part played by the same animal in Persian and Egyptian worship, and of the import of the Zodiacal sign Taurus as a root-element of the solar religions. The general structure and disposition of these buildings might I should think also recall the Jewish and Egyptian temples.

All round the base of the great sanctuary and in other parts of the temple at Tanjore are immense inscriptions—in Telugu, says one of the Brahmans, but I cannot tell—some very fresh and apparently modern, others nearly quite obliterated.

The absolute incapacity shown by the Hindus for reasoned observation in religious matters was illustrated by my guide—who did not in other respects appear to be at all a stickler for his religion. When he first called my attention to the pagoda he said, adding to his praise of its beauty, “Yes, and it never casts a shadow, never any shadow.” Of course I did not trouble to argue such a point, and as we were standing at the time on the sunlit side of the building there certainly was no shadow visible there. Presently however—after say half an hour—we got round to the other side, and were actually standing in the shadow, which was then quite extensive, it being only about 9 a.m., and the sun completely hidden from us by the pagoda; I had forgotten all about the matter; when the guide said again and with enthusiasm, “And it has no shadow.” Then seeing my face (!) he added, “No, this is not the shadow.” “But,” said I, “it is.” “No,” he repeated, “this is not the shadow of the pagoda, for that never casts any shadow”—and then he turned for corroboration to an old half-naked Brahman standing by, who of course repeated the formula—and with an air of mechanical conviction which made me at once feel that further parley was useless.

It might seem strange to any one not acquainted with the peculiarities of human nature that people should go on perhaps for centuries calmly stating an obvious contradiction in terms like that, without ever so to speak turning a hair! But so it is, and I am afraid even we Westerners can by no means claim to be innocent of the practice. Among the Hindus, however, in connection with religion this feature is really an awkward one. Acute and subtle as they are, yet when religion comes on the field their presence of mind forsakes them, and they make the most wild and unjustifiable statements. I am sorry to say I have never witnessed a real good thungeing miracle myself. We have all heard plenty of stories of such things in India, and I have met various Hindus of ability and culture who evidently quite believed them, but (although quite willing and ready-equipped to believe them myself) I have always felt, since that experience of the shadow, that one “couldn’t be too careful.”

On either side of the great pagoda, and standing separate in the courtyard, are two quite small temples dedicated, one to Ganésa and the other to Soubramániya, very elegant, both of them; and one or two stone pandals or porticos for resting places of the gods in processions. One can imagine what splendid arenas for processions and festivals these courts must afford, in which enormous crowds sometimes assemble to take part in ceremonials similar to that which I have described in chapter VII. Owing however to former desecrations by the French (who in 1777 fortified the temple itself), and present treatment by the British Government, this Tanjore temple is not so much frequented as it used to be. The late Rajah of Tanjore, prior to 1857, supported the place of course with handsome funds; but the British Government only undertakes necessary repairs and allows a pension of four rupees a month to the existing temple servants. They are therefore in a poor way.

The arcade at the far end and down one side of the court is frescoed with the usual grotesque subjects—flying elephants trampling on unbelievers, rajahs worshiping the god, women bathing, etc., and is furnished the whole way with erect stone lingams—there must be at least a hundred of them. These lingams are cylindrical stones a foot and a half high or so, and eight or nine inches thick, some bigger, some smaller, standing in sort of oval troughs, which catch the oil which is constantly poured over the lingams. Women desiring children pay their offerings here, of flowers and oil, and at certain festivals these shrines are, notwithstanding their number, greatly in request.

* * * * *

The palace at Tanjore is a very commonplace round-arched whitewashed building with several courts—in part of which the women-folk of the late rajah are still living behind their bars and shutters; the whole place a funny medley of Oriental and Western influences; a court of justice opening right on to one of the quadrangles, with great oil paintings of former rajahs; a library; a harness and dress room, with elephants’ saddles, horses’ head-gear, rajah’s headgear, etc.; a reception room also quite open to a court, with sofas, armchairs, absurd prints, a bust of Nelson, and a clockwork ship on a troubled sea; elephants wandering about in the big court; painted figures of English officers on the sideposts of one of the gates, and so forth.

Round the palace, and at some little distance from the temple, clusters the town itself with its narrow alleys and mostly one-storied cottages and cabins, in which the goldsmiths and workers in copper and silver repoussé ware carry on their elegant trades.

* * * * *

The ancient city of Mádura, though with a population of 60,000, is even more humble in appearance than Tanjore. At first sight it looks like a mere collection of mud cabins—though of course there are English bungalows on the outskirts, and a court-house and a church and an American mission-room and school, and the rest. The weavers are a strong caste here; they weave silk (and cotton) saris, though with failing trade as against the incoming machine-products of capitalism—and you see their crimson-dyed pieces stretched on frames in the streets.

The choultrie leading up to one of the temple gates is a colonnade 110 yards long, a central walk and two aisles, with carven monolithic columns—a warrior sitting on a rearing horse trampling shields of soldiers and slaying men or tigers, or a huge seated king or god, in daring crudeness—and great capitals supporting a stone roof. Choultries were used as public feeding-halls and resting-places for Brahmans, as well as for various ceremonies, and in old days when the Brahmans were all-powerful such places were everywhere at their service, and they had a high old time. This choultrie has however been turned into a silk and cotton market, and was gay, when I saw it, with crowds of people, and goods pinned up to the columns. Emerging from it, the eastern gate of the temple stands on the opposite side of the road—a huge gópura, pagoda form, fifteen stories or so high, each tier crowded with figures—Siva hideous with six arms and protruding eyes and teeth, Siva dancing, Siva contemplative, Siva and Sakti on the bull, demon doorkeepers, etc.—the whole picked out in the usual crude reds, yellows, greens, blues, and branching out at top into grotesque dragon-forms—a strange piece of work, yet having an impressive total effect, as it rises 200 feet into the resplendent sky over the little mud and thatch cottages—its crude details harmonised in the intense blaze, and its myriad nooks of shadow haunted by swallows, doves and other birds.

There are nine such gópuras or gate-towers in all in this temple, all on much the same plan, ranging from 40 to 200 feet in height, and apparently used to some extent as dwelling-places by priests, yogis, and others. These, together with the various halls, shrines, tanks, arcades, etc., form a huge enclosure 280 yards long by nearly 250 wide.

On entering the huge doorway of the eastern gópura one finds oneself immediately in a wilderness of columns—the hall of a thousand columns—besides arcades, courts, and open and covered spaces,—a labyrinth full of people (for this temple is much frequented)—many of whom are selling wares, but here more for temple use, flowers for offerings, cakes of cowdung ashes for rubbing on the forehead, embroidered bags to put these in, money-changers, elephants here and there, with bundles of green stuff among the columns, elephant-keepers, the populace arriving with offerings, and plentiful Brahmans going to and fro. The effect of the numerous columns—and there are fully a thousand of them, fifteen feet high or so—is very fine—the light and shade, glimpses of sky or trees through avenues of carved monsters, or cavernous labyrinths of the same ending in entire darkness: grotesque work and in detail often repulsive, but lending itself in the mass to the general effect—Siva dancing again, or Ganésa with huge belly and elephant head, or Parvati with monstrous breasts—“all out of one stone, all out of one stone,” the guide keeps repeating: feats of marvelous patience (e.g. a chain of separate links all cut from the same block), though ugly enough very often in themselves.

And now skirting round the inner sanctuary to the left, we come into a sort of cloister opening on a tank some fifty yards square, from whence we get a more general view of the place, and realise its expanse. The five or six gópuras visible from our standpoint serve to indicate this—all painted in strong color but subdued by distance, roofs of various portions of the temple, clumps of palm and other trees, two gold-plated turrets shining brilliantly in the sun, the tank itself with handsome stone tiers and greenish waters where the worshipers wash their feet, the cloisters frescoed with elaborate legendary designs, and over all in the blue sky flocks of birds—swallows, doves, and bright green parrots chattering. Once more we plunge into dark galleries full of hungry-eyed Brahmans, and passing the shrine of Minakshi, into which we cannot gain admittance, come into the very sombre and striking corridor which runs round the entire inner shrine. The huge monoliths here are carven with more soberness and grace, and the great capitals bear cross-beams which in their turn support projecting architraves. Hardly a soul do we meet as we make the circuit of the three sides. The last turn brings us to the entrance of the inner sanctuary itself; and here is the gold-plated kambam which I have already described (chap. VII.), and close behind it the bull Nandi and the gloom of the interior lit only by a distant lamp or two. To these inner parts come only those who wish to meditate in quiet; and in some secluded corner may one occasionally be seen, seated on the floor with closed eyes and crossed legs, losing or endeavoring to lose himself in samádhi.

Outside the temple in the streets of Mádura we saw three separate Juggernath cars, used on occasions in processions. These cars are common enough even in small Hindu towns. They are unwieldy massive things, often built in several tiers, and with solid wooden wheels on lumbering wooden axles, which look as if they were put on (and probably are) in such a way as to cause the maximum of resistance to motion. At Streevelliputhur there is a car thirty feet high, with wheels eight feet in diameter. The people harness themselves to these things literally in thousands; the harder the car is to move, the greater naturally is the dignity of the god who rides upon it, and the excitement becomes intense when he is at last fairly got under weigh. But I have not witnessed one of these processions.

* * * * *

The temple of Chidámbaram is in some respects more interesting than those of Tanjore and Mádura. It is in fact more highly thought of as a goal of pilgrimage and a place of festival than any other South Indian temple, and may be said to be the Benares of South India. The word Chidámbaram means region of pure consciousness, and Siva is worshiped here under his most excellent name of Nátarája, lord of the dance. “O thou who dancest thy illimitable dance in the heaven of pure consciousness.”

There is a little railway station of Chidámbaram, but it is two or three miles from the temple and the town; and though the town itself numbers some 20,000 to 30,000 inhabitants, there is not a single Englishman resident in the place or within some miles of it, the only white-faced inhabitant being a Eurasian druggist who keeps a shop there. When I was there the whole temple was in course of repair, and the Brahmans were such a nuisance that I really did not get so good an idea of the place as I could have wished. These gentry swarm here, and descend upon one like birds of prey, in quest of tips; indeed the physiognomy of a great many of them suggests the kite family—sharp eyes, rather close together, and a thin aquiline nose; this with their large foreheads looking all the larger on account of the shaven head does not give a very favorable impression.

The ascendancy of the Brahman caste is certainly a very remarkable historical fact. It is possible that at one time they really resembled the guardians of Plato’s ideal republic—teachers and rulers who themselves possessed nothing and were supported by the contributions of the people; but before so many centuries had gone by they must have made the first part of their functions subsidiary to the second, and now—though a good many of them ply trades and avocations of one kind or another—the majority are mere onhangers of the temples, where they become sharers of the funds devoted to the temple services, and bleed the pockets of pious devotees. When a Hindu of any worldly substance approaches one of these places, he is immediately set upon by five or six loafers of this kind—each of whom claims that his is the Brahman family which has always done the priestly services for the visitor’s family (and indeed they do keep careful note of these matters), and that he therefore should conduct the visitor to the proper quarter of the temple, take his offerings to the god, and receive his reward accordingly.

This temple is I should think about the same size as that at Mádura, but more open like the Tanjore temple. There are four gópuras of about equal size—120 feet high or so—at the four points of the compass. On entering by the eastern one the hall of a thousand columns stands away in the court to the right, and gives the idea of a complete temple in itself. The sides and back end are closed in, but the front forms a sort of portico, and columns similar to those of the portico—every one a monolith—extend through the entire interior. There is a lane or aisle down the middle, and then on each side they stand thick, in rows perhaps ten feet apart. As you go in the gloom gets deeper and deeper. Only here and there a gap in the external wall throws a weird light. The whole suggests a rock cave cut in multitudinous pillars to support the overlying weight, or a gloomy forest of tree-trunks. But the columns are commonplace in themselves, and their number and closeness together under a flat roof of no great weight is not architecturally admirable. When you reach the interior sanctum, where you might expect to find the god at home, you discover a mere bare cavity, so dark that you cannot see the roof, and occupied by innumerable bats who resent your intrusion with squeaks and shrieks. But my guide explained to me that twice a year the god does come to dwell there, and then they clean the place up and decorate it with lamps for a season.

A large tank stands just west of this hall—a tank 200 feet long I should think—in which men (and women) were washing their feet and clothes. These tanks are attached to every temple. At Mádura there is a very beautiful one, “the golden lotus tank,” two miles away from the temple, with a pagoda on an island in the midst of it—to which they resort at the Taypúsam festival. Also at Mylapore, Madras, there is a handsome tank with pagoda just outside the temple; but mostly they are within the precincts.

TEMPLE AND TANK AT MYLAPORE, MADRAS.

Entering the inner inclosure at Chidámbaram you come to various arcades and shrines, where Brahmans and chetties raged. The chetties have great influence at Chidámbaram; their caste supplies I believe the main funds of the temple—which is practically therefore in their hands. I was presented with flower garlands and a lime, and expected to make my money-offering in front of a little temple, of Vishnu I think, which they seasonably explained to me was to be roofed with gold! On the other hand—to the left—was a temple to Siva—both these forms being worshiped here. Into the shrine of Parvati I did not penetrate, but it looked ancient and curious. Fergusson says that this shrine belongs to the 14th or 15th centuries, and the inner sanctuaries to somewhere about 1000 A.D., while the hall of the thousand columns—which shows Mahomedan influence—is as late as the 17th century.

An elderly stoutish man, half naked, but with some authority evidently—who proved afterwards to be the head of the chetties—announced in a loud voice that I was to be treated with respect and shown as much as possible—which only meant that I was to give as large an offering as possible. Then an excited-looking fellow came up, a medium-sized man of about forty, and began talking cockney English as fluently and idiomatically as if he had been born by the Thames, rattling off verses and nursery rhymes with absurd familiarity. The rest said he was a cranky Brahman with an insane gift for language—knew Sanskrit and ever so many tongues.

Escaping from these I left the temple and went into the village to see the goldsmiths who are employed (by the chetties) on work connected with its restoration. Found a large workshop where they were making brass roof-pinnacles, salvers, pedestals for images, etc., and plating the same with gold leaf or plates—also store of solid gold things—armlets and breastplates for the gods, etc.—another touch remindful of Greek life. The gold leaf was being beaten out between thin membranes—many leaves at once—with a hammer. All handwork, of course.

My guide—who is the station clerk and a Brahman, while his station-master is a Sudra (O this steam-engine!)—told me on the way back that the others at the station often advised him to give up his caste practices; but he had plenty of time in the middle of the day, between the trains, to go through his ablutions and other ceremonies, and he did not see why he should not do so.

As we walked along the road we met two pilgrims—with orange-colored cloths—coming along. One of them, a hairy, wild, and obstinate-looking old man, evidently spotted the hated Englishman from afar, and as he passed put his tongue gently but firmly out at me!

CHAPTER XIII.
MADRAS AND CALCUTTA.

India beggars description—the interminable races, languages, creeds, colors, manners, costumes.

The streets of Madras (Blacktown) are a blaze of color—predominant white, but red, orange, brilliant green and even blue cloths and turbans meet the eye in every direction. Blacktown reminds one of Pompeii—as it may have been in its time—mostly one-storied buildings, stuccoed brick with little colonnades or lean-to thatches in front, cool dark stone interiors with little or no furniture—a bit of a court somewhere inside, with a gleam of the relentless sun—a few mango leaves over the door in honor of the Pongal festival (now going on), and saffron smeared on doorposts; a woman standing half lost in shadow, men squatting idling in a verandah, a brahman cow with a bright brass necklace lying down just in the street—(sometimes in the verandah itself); a Hindu temple with its queer creepy images fronting on the street, and a Juggernath car under a tall thatch, waiting for its festival; or a white arabesqued and gimp-arched mosque with tall minarets pinnacled with gold spiring up into the blue; absurd little stalls with men squatted among their baskets and piled grains and fruits; and always this wonderful crowd going up and down between.

I should think half the people have religious marks on their foreheads—black, white, or red spots on the frontal sinus—horizontal lines (Saivite), vertical lines (Vaishnavite)—sometimes two vertical white marks joined at the base with a red mark between, sometimes a streak of color all down the ridge of the nose—and so forth. It is as if every little sect or schism of the Christian Church declared itself by a symbol on the brow.

How different from Ceylon! There is a certain severity about India, both climate and people. The dry soil, the burning sun (for though so much farther north the sun has a more wicked quality about it here), are matched by a certain aridity and tension in the people. Ceylon is idyllic, romantic—the plentiful foliage and shade everywhere, the easy-going nature of the Cinghalese themselves, the absence of caste—even the English are softened towards such willing subjects. But here, such barriers, such a noli-me-tangere atmosphere!—the latent feud between Hindu and Mussulman everywhere, their combined detestation of the English springing out upon you from faces passing; rigid orthodoxies and superiorities; the Mahomedans (often big and moderately well-conditioned men) looking down with some contempt upon the lean Hindu; the Hindus equally satisfied in their own superiority, comforting themselves with quotations from Shastras and Puranas.

As to the boatmen and drivers and guides and servants generally, they torment one like gadflies; not swindling one in a nice open riant way like the Italians of the same ilk, but with smothered dodges and obsequious craft. The last hotel I was at here was odious—a lying Indian manager, lying and cringing servants, and an idiotic old man who acted as my “boy” and tormented my life out of me, fiddling around with my slippers on pretence of doing something, or holding the towel in readiness for me while I was washing my face. On my leaving, the manager—as he presented his bill with utmost dignity and grace—asked for a tip; so did the head-waiter, and all the servants down to the bath-man; then there were coolies to carry my luggage from the hotel steps (where the servants of course left it) to the cab, and then when I had started, the proprietor of the cab ran after it, stopped it, and demanded a larger fare than I had agreed to! On one occasion (in taking a boat) I counted eleven people who put in a claim for bakshish. Small change cannot last for ever, and even one’s vocabulary of oaths is liable to be exhausted in time!

It requires a little tact to glide through all this without exposing oneself to the enemy. Good old John Bull pays through the nose for being ruler of this country. He overwhelms the people by force, but they turn upon him—as the weaker is prone to do—through craft; and truly they have their revenge. Half believing in the idea that as sahib and ruler of the country he must live in such and such style, have so many servants, etc., or he would lose his prestige, he acquiesces in a system of impositions; he is pestered to death, and hates it all, but he must submit. And the worst is one is conscious all the time of being laughed at for one’s pains. But British visitors must not commit the mistake—so commonly made by people in a foreign country—of supposing that the classes created in India by our presence, and who in some sense are the reflection of our own sins, are or represent the normal population—even though we naturally see more of them than we do of the latter.

There are however in the great cities of India little hotels kept and frequented by English folk where one is comparatively safe from importunities; and if you are willing to be altogether a second-rate person, and go to these places, travel second class by train, ride in bullock-hackeries, and “undermine the empire” generally by doing other such undignified things, you may travel with both peace of mind and security of pocket.

* * * * *

Madras generally is a most straggling, dull, and (at night) ill-lighted place. Blacktown, already described, and which lies near the harbor, is the chief centre of native life; but the city generally, including other native centres, plexuses of commercial life, knots of European hotels and shops, barracks, hospitals, suburban villas and bungalows, stretches away with great intervals of dreary roads between for miles and miles, over a dead flat on whose shore the surf beats monotonously. Adyar, where the Theosophists have their headquarters—and which is still only a suburb of Madras—is seven miles distant from the harbor. The city however, though shorn of its former importance as far as the British are concerned, and slumbering on its memories of a hundred years ago, is a great centre of native activity, literary and political; the National Indian Congress receives some of its strongest support from it; many influential oysters reside here; papers like the Hindu, both in English and vernacular, are published here, and a great number of books printed, in Tamil and other South Indian languages.

At Adyar I saw Bertram Keightley and one or two others, and had some pleasant chats with them. Col. Olcott was absent just at the time. The Theosophist villa, with roomy lecture-hall and library, stands pleasantly among woods on the bank of a river and within half a mile of the sea. Passing from the library through sandalwood doors into an inner sanctum I was shown a variety of curios connected with Madame Blavatsky, among which were a portrait, apparently done in a somewhat dashing style—just the head of a man, surrounded with clouds and filaments—in blue pigment on a piece of white silk, which was “precipitated” by Madame Blavatsky in Col. Olcott’s presence—she simply placing her two hands on the white silk for a moment. Keightley told me that Col. Olcott tested a small portion of the silk so colored, but found the pigment so fast in the fibre that it could not by any means be washed out. There were also two oil portraits—heads, well framed and reverently guarded behind a curtain—of the now celebrated Kout Houmi, Madame Blavatsky’s Guru, and of another, Col. Olcott’s Guru—both fine-looking men, apparently between forty and fifty years of age, with shortish beards and (as far as I could see, for the daylight was beginning to fail) dark brown hair; and both with large eyes and what might be called a spiritual glow in their faces. Madame Blavatsky knew Col. Olcott’s Guru as well as her own, and the history of these two portraits (as told me by Keightley) is that they were done by a German artist whom she met in the course of her travels. Considering him competent for the work—and he being willing to undertake it—she projected the images of the two Gurus into his mind, and he painted from the mental pictures—she placing her hand on his head during the operation. The German artist medium accounted for the decidedly mawkish expression of both faces, as well as for the considerable likeness to each other—which considering that Kout Houmi dates from Cashmere, and the other (I think) from Thibet, might not have been expected. All the same they are fine faces, and it is not impossible that they may be, as I believe Madame Blavatsky and Col. Olcott considered them, good likenesses. Keightley was evidently much impressed by the “old lady’s” clairvoyant power, saying that sometimes in her letters from England she displayed a knowledge of what was going on at Adyar, which he could not account for. Altogether I had an interesting conversation with him.

Among other places in Madras I visited one of the little Pompeiian houses in Blacktown, which I have already described—where a Hindu acquaintance, a small contractor, is living: a little office, then a big room divided in two by a curtain—parlor in front and domestic room behind—all cool and dark and devoid of furniture, and little back premises into which I did not come. He is an active-minded man, and very keen about the Indian Congress to which he was delegate last year, sends hundreds of copies of the Hindu and other “incendiary” publications about the country each week, and like thousands and hundreds of thousands of his fellow-countrymen to-day, has learnt the lessons taught him by the British Government so well that the one thing he lives for is to see electoral and representative institutions embedded into the life of the Indian peoples, and the images of Vishnu and Siva supplanted in the temples by those of John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer.

While I was there two elderly gentlemen of quite the old school called—innocent enough of Herbert Spencer and of cloth coats and trousers—with their white muslins round their bodies, and red shawls over their shoulders, and grey-haired keen narrow faces and bare shins and horny feet, which they tucked up onto their chairs as they sat; but with good composed unhurried manners, as all Easterns of the old school seem to have. This habit of the mild Hindu, of tucking his feet under him, is his ever-present refuge in time of trouble or weariness; at the railway station or in any public place you may see him sitting on a seat, and beneath him, in the place where his feet ought to be, are his red slippers; but of visible connection between them and his body there is none—as if he had already severed connection with the earth and was on the way toward heaven.

Calcutta.—Arrived 6th Feb., about 4 p.m.—steaming all day since dawn up the Hooghly, 130 miles from the light-boat at its mouth to Calcutta—a dismal river, with dismal flat shores, sandy and dry in places and only grown with scrub, in others apparently damp, to judge by the clumps of bamboo; landscape often like Lincolnshire, trees of similar shape, stacks of rice-straw looking just like our stacks, mud and thatch villages; in other places the palmyra and coco-nut palm; and doubtless in parts wild tangles and jungles haunted by tigers; aboriginal boats going up and down; and the Hooghly narrowing at last from four or five miles near its mouth to half a mile at the Howrah bridge of boats.

Nearing Calcutta brick-kilns and the smoky tall chimneys of civilisation appear along the banks, and soon we find ourselves among docks and wharfs, and a forest of shipping alongside of a modern-looking city (that part of it).

Calcutta is built on a dead flat. There is a considerable European quarter of five-storied buildings, offices, warehouses, law-courts, hotels, shops, residences, wide streets and open spaces, gardens, etc.; after which the city breaks away into long straggling lines of native dwellings—small flat-roofed tenements and shops, crowded bazaars and tram-lines—embedding almost aboriginal quarters, narrow lanes with mere mud and tile cabins—labyrinths where a European is stared at.

The white dome of the Post Office, like a small St. Paul’s, dominates the whole riverside city with its crowded shipping and animated quays—fit symbol of modern influences. Round no temple or mosque or minster does the civilising Englishman group his city, but round the G.P.O. It would almost seem, here in Calcutta, as if the mere rush of commercial interests had smashed up the native sanctions of race and religion. The orderly rigor of caste, which is evident in Madras, is not seen; dress is untidy and unclean, the religious marks if put on at all are put on carelessly; faces are low in type, lazy, cunning, bent on mere lucre. The Bengali is however by nature a versatile flexile creature, sadly wanting in backbone, and probably has succumbed easily to the new disorganising forces. Then the mere mixture of populations here may have a good deal to do with it. A huge turmoil throngs the bazaars, not only Bengalis, but Hindustanis, Mahomedans, Chinese, and seedy-looking Eurasians—in whom one can discern no organising element or seed-form of patriotism, religion, or culture (with the exception perhaps of the Chinese). It seems to be a case of a dirty Western commercialism in the place of the old pharisaism of caste and religion, and it is hard to say which may be the worst.

Sunday (the 8th) was a great day for bathing in the river. I did not know that the Hooghly was for such purposes considered to be a part of the Ganges, but it appears that it is; and owing to an important and rare astronomical conjunction, announced in the almanacs, bathing on that day was specially purificatory. In the morning the waterside was thronged with people, and groups of pilgrims from a distance could be seen coming in along the roads. Wherever the banks shelved down to the water, or the quays and river-walls allowed, huge crowds (here mostly dressed in unbleached cotton, with little color) could be seen preparing to bathe, or renewing themselves afterwards—beggars at all the approaches spreading their cloths on the ground to catch the scanty handfuls of rice thrown to them; everywhere squatted, small vendors of flowers for offerings, or of oil, or sandalwood paste for smearing the body with after the bath, or of colored pigments for painting sect-marks on the forehead; strings of peasants followed by their wives and children; old infirm people piloted by sons and daughters; here a little old woman, small like a child, drawn in a clumsy wooden barrow to the waterside; there a horrible blind man with matted hair, squatted, yelling texts from the holy books; here family groups and relatives chatting together, or cliques and clubs of young men coming up out of the water—brass pots glancing, and long hair uncurled in the wind. If you imagine all this taking place on a fine summer’s day somewhere a little below London Bridge, the scene would hardly be more incongruous than it is here by the handsome wharfs of Calcutta Strand, under the very noses of the great black-hulled steamships which to-day perhaps or to-morrow are sailing for the West.

The evening before the festival I went with Panna Lall B. to a European circus which happened to be in the place—same absurd incongruity—dense masses of “oysters” perched or sitting cross-legged on their benches—their wraps drawn round them, for the night was really cold—watching under the electric light the lovely and decidedly well-developed Miss Alexandra in tights performing on the trapeze, or little “Minnie” jumping through rings of flame. Considering that, except among the poorest classes (peasants, etc.), the Bengalis keep their women closely shut up, and that it is a rare thing to see a female (unless it be a child or old woman) in the streets of Calcutta—a scene of this kind at the circus must cause a sufficient sensation; and indeed the smile which curled the lips of some of these rather Mephistophelean spectators was something which I shall not easily forget.

But the mass of the people of India must be wretchedly poor. These half-starved peasants from the surrounding country wandering about—their thin thin wives and daughters trailing after them, holding on to the man’s unbleached and scanty cotton cloth—over the maidan, through the Asiatic Museum, through the streets, by the riverside—with gaping yet listless faces—are a sad and touching sight; yet it only corroborates what I have seen in other parts. “Wide and deepening poverty all over the land, such as the world has never before seen on so vast a scale,” says Digby; and with some testimony to show that the people in the native states are in a better condition than those under our organisation. Even if the poverty is not increasing (and this is a matter on which it is most difficult to form a definite opinion), there seems to be no evidence to show that it is decreasing. The famines go on with at least undiminished severity, and the widespread agricultural paralysis is by no means really compensated by a fallacious commercial prosperity, which in the larger centres is enriching the few at the expense of the many.

After watching these pathetic crowds on Sunday, I went the next day to a meeting of the Countess of Dufferin’s Fund for the Medical Education of Indian Women—a well-meant movement, which after being launched with all advantages and éclat has only met with moderate success. A very varied spectacle of dress and nationality. Rajahs and native chiefs of all sorts of hues and costumes; yellow silk tunics figured with flowers, flowing purple robes, dainty little turbans over dark mustachioed faces, sprays and feathers of diamonds; English ladies in the pink of fashion, military uniforms, and the Viceroy and Lady Lansdowne in the centre in quiet morning costume. The English speakers belauded the native chiefs present, and the native chiefs complimented the English ladies; but after the spectacle of the day before the general congratulations fell rather flat upon me, nor did they appear to be justified by the rather melancholy and inefficient appearance of the bevy of native women students and nurses present. Sir Chas. Elliott, the Lieut.-Governor, made a kindly speech, which left on one the unpleasant impression that one sometimes gets from those big-brained doctrinaire persons whose amiability is all the more hard and narrow-minded because it is so well-intentioned. Lord Lansdowne underneath an exterior (physical and mental) of decadent aristocracy seems to have just a spark of the old English high-caste ruling quality about him—which was certainly good in its time, but will be of little use I fear to the half-starved peasants of to-day.

I fancy, with all respect to the genuine good intention shown in these zenana missions, medical education funds, etc., there must be something rather comical to the natives themselves in philanthropic efforts of this kind, made by a people who understand the country so little as the English do; just as there is something rather comical to the masses at home in the toy “charities” and missions of the lady and gentleman here, and suggestive of an old parable about a mote and a beam. In a lecture given by the Maharajah of Benares, in July, 1888, he chaffed these philanthropists somewhat—recounting how one such lady “actually regretted that the peasant cultivators could not provide themselves with boots! while another had a long conversation with a Rani on the ill effects of infant marriage, and was surprised to hear that the Rani had been married at the age of seven, and had sons and grandsons, all of whom were happy and contented. The Rani then turned to the lady, and observing that her hair was turning grey, inquired whether no one had ever offered her proposals of marriage, and suggested that the English laws required some modification to insure ladies against remaining so long in a state of single blessedness.”

But the most interesting people, to me, whom I have met here, are a little côterie of Bengalis who live quite away in the native part of the city. Chundi Churn B. is a schoolmaster, and keeps a small school of thirty or forty boys, which lies back in a tangle of narrow lanes and alleys, but is quite a civilised little place with benches and desks just like an English school—except that like all the schools in this part of the world it is quite open to the street (with trellised sides in this case), so that passers-by can quite easily see and be seen. Chundi Churn told me that he started the school on purely native lines, but had poor success until he introduced the English curriculum—English history, science, Euclid, Algebra, etc.—when he soon got as many boys as he wanted. As in all the Indian schools they work what appear to us frightfully long hours, 7–9 a.m.; then an hour for breakfast; 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and then an hour for dinner; and again from 3 till 6. I fancy they must take it fairly easy; and then it is certain that the native boys—though they have active little brains—are much more quiescent than the English, are content to sit still, and the master has little trouble in keeping order.

CHUNDI CHURN B.

I have been round several evenings after school hours and chatted with Chundi Churn and his brother and various friends that dropped in—an intelligent little community. Two of them are Brahman fellows of about thirty, with the eager tense look that the Brahmans mostly have, but good imaginative faces. We discuss the Indian Congress, English and Indian customs, the child-marriage question (which is raging just now), and the great question of Caste. They insist on my eating various sweet cakes of native preparation, but will not eat with me; and they smoke hubble-bubble pipes, which they pass round—but the Brahmans must have a hubble-bubble to themselves! At the same time they are careful to explain that “no one believes in all this now”; but as they are at home, and only trellis-work between us and the lane, it would not do to violate the rules. And this, I believe, is largely the state of affairs. The anglicising population, for the sake of parents’ feelings (and they are tender on this point), or respectability, or commercial connection, keep up a show of caste rules which they have ceased or are ceasing to believe in; and it is an open secret that Brahman gentlemen of high standing in their caste, not unfrequently when traveling, or in places where they are not known, resort to British hotels and have a high feed of beefsteaks and champagne!

One of the Brahmans is clerk in a mercantile establishment in the English part of Calcutta, and some of the others are students at the Metropolitan College. Western education is going on at a tremendous rate—so much so that there will soon be an educated proletariat (what Grant Duff calls “the worst of evils”) in the great cities of India. Two or three of the party are very quick at mathematics—which seems to be a subject in which the Bengalis excel—and readily picked up the key to one or two little problems which I presented to them. They all seem to be much impressed with the greatness of Western civilisation—for the present at any rate, but will react probably before so very long. Finding I knew something of astronomy they pelted me with questions about the stars, and insisted on going out at night and trying to hunt up the ecliptic among the constellations! Then after a time they would relapse into tale-telling and music. The fellows still show a truly Oriental love of long stories, and would listen with rapt attention to one of their party relating some ancient yarn about the child of a king who was exposed in the woods and ultimately came back after many convolutions of adventure and claimed his kingdom—just as if they had not heard it before; or about the chaste Draupatha (in the Mahabhárata) who—when Duriyodhana, desiring to insult her before a large assembly, gave orders that she should be stripped of her cloth—thought of Vishnu, and her cloth went on lengthening and unwinding indefinitely—their stories lengthening and unwinding like Draupatha’s cloth, in a way that would have delighted the heart of William Morris.

PANNA LALL B.

Panna Lall, Chundi Churn’s brother, is a bright-mannered youth of about twenty, of a modest affectionate disposition, and with a certain grace and dignity of bearing. He doesn’t care about books, but has a good ear and plays one or two musical instruments in an easy unstudied way; lives in quite primitive style with his father down in one of these back lanes—but has a tiny little room of his own where he takes me to sit and chat with friends. There is no furniture, but you squat cross-legged on the floor—so there is plenty of room for quite a party. There may be a box or two in a corner, and on the walls some shelves and a few prints. Indeed it gives one a curious sensation to see crude colored woodcuts, framed under glass and exactly resembling the pictures of the Virgin or of Christ common in Catholic countries, and then on nearer approach to find that they represent Siva or Parvati, or among the Bengalis Chaitanya, or some other incarnation of the divinity, standing or seated on a lotus flower and with benign head encircled by an aureole. These pictures are printed in Calcutta.

Panna Lall is quite an athlete, and interested in anything in that line. He took me one day to a little bit of ground where he and some friends have their horizontal bars, etc.; they did some good tumbling and tight-rope walking, and with their golden-brown skins and muscular bodies looked well when stripped. The Bengali Babu is often of a lightish-brown colour. The people generally wear more clothing than in South India, and at this time of year throw a brown woollen shawl over their shoulders, toga fashion; their heads are almost always bare, but they have taken a great fancy lately in Calcutta to wearing narrow-toed patent-leather shoes, which look sufficiently absurd and must be fearfully uncomfortable on their well-developed broad feet. Only it is a mark of distinction and civilisation! Panna Lall every now and then, when walking, entreats me to stop and rest under a tree, and then takes off his shoes and waggles his toes about to soothe and refresh them! I am never tired of admiring the foot in its native state. It is so broad and free and full and muscular, with a good concave curve on the inner line, and the toes standing well apart from each other—so different from the ill-nourished unsightly thing we are accustomed to. I sometimes think we can never attain to a broad free and full life on our present understandings in the West.

Another absurd custom of the young Babus here (I am speaking of the mass of the people) is that of putting on a Manchester cotton shirt, pure and simple, when they wish to appear in full dress! As they do not wear trousers, the effect (combined with the patent-leather shoes) is very naïve and touching.

On the whole Calcutta does not impress me very favorably. There is the official society, and the trading and commercial ditto, and the educational and legal sections, and a considerable racing population, including a great number of jockeys and horse-trainers who come over with their girls from Australia for the season; there-is a fine zoological garden and a botanic garden, and the Asiatic Museum, and various public buildings, and two or three colleges, including a college for native women; but all these interests seem to serve chiefly in the direction of disorganizing the mass of the people and the primitive sanctions of their life. Taking it at its worst the general population is dirty, lazy and rapacious. As in our slums, a kind of listlessness and despair marks the people in the poorest quarters—who, instead of congregating as with us round a beershop, may be seen perching about on doorsteps and even on the tops of walls, sitting on their heels with knees drawn up to the chin, and a draggled garment about them—looking painfully like vultures, and generally chewing betel, that common resource against hunger. One notes however, even here, a few fine faces, and a good many very pathetic ones, of old people.

Chundi Churn plays a little on the sítar—the original of our guitar I suppose—an instrument with a long neck and small belly made of a pumpkin shell, and four or five wires (originally three wires, from si, three, and tar, string). The frets are movable, so that keeping the same key-note you can play in major, minor, or other modes. I am beginning to understand the Indian music better now, after having heard a little in different places; but have not very much systematic knowledge about it. It appears that they divide the octave into twenty-two exactly equal parts, called sruti—each part having its own special name. An interval of four srutis may then be said to constitute a major tone, three srutis a minor tone, and two a semitone—though this is not quite exact; and out of these three intervals, major tone, minor tone, and semitone, a seven-step scale is constituted very nearly similar to ours, and having the semitones in the same places. The key-note of this scale is called Sa or Ansa, and corresponds to our Do, and though not exactly a key-note in the modern sense of the word, it is the most accentuated note and “rules the others.” By adopting any of the other six notes as key-note scales are got very nearly corresponding to the seven Gregorian scales of the old church music; and one very commonly in use, if I am not mistaken, corresponds to the Phrygian mode—i.e. that which we produce on the piano by using E as tonic and playing all the white keys.

These seven scales constituted the first system of Hindu music; but they had a second system in which the notes, though preserving their names, could be, any of them, raised or dropped by a sruti; and a third system in which one or two notes being omitted, five or six-step scales were produced.

Out of the hundreds (or thousands) of possible scales thus producible, the Oriental mind, unable to find the scientific root of the whole business, made a fantastic selection. There were six sons of Brahma and Saráswati called Rágas—the genii of the passions. Six principal scales were named after these genii and called Rags, and then each of these had five feminine sub-scales or Raginas attached to it; and so forth. Then the numbers five, six and seven became typical of divisions of the year, days of the week, the number of planets, etc., and very soon a most fanciful system was elaborated—the remains only of which have lingered to the present day. The old notation appears to have died out; but a vast number of time-honored melodies, or rather phrases, in the different modes and scales, have been preserved by tradition—and are now called rags and raginas, though these names were formerly applicable to the scales only. These rags and raginas are not what we should call tunes, but are brief or extended phrases, which have been classified as suitable for various occasions, emotions, festivals, times of day, seasons of the year, and the like; and these the musician uses and combines, within limits, to his taste; and in the hands of a skilful person they are very effective, but become abominably insipid and conventional if treated in a mechanical way.

Besides the regular notes belonging to any given scale, the Hindus use the quarter tones, or srutis, a good deal in the little turns and twanks of which they are so fond; and sometimes by slurring they pass through every intermediate gradation of tone. The slur, which is congenial to the mystic vague melody of the East, and so foreign to the distinct articulation of Western music, is often used in singing; and on the sítar a slight slurring rise of tone is produced by drawing the string sideways along the fret—a device which recalls the clavichord of which Sebastian Bach was so fond, in which instrument the hammer which struck the string was also the bridge which defined its length, so that an increased pressure by the finger on the key after the first striking of the note raised the bridge a little, tightened the string, and so produced a plaintive rise of tone.

WOMAN PLAYING SÍTAR.

All this gives the idea of a complicated system of music; and it will be seen that in the range of mere melody the Hindu music has really a greater capacity of subtle expression than ours. But in harmony it is deficient—the ground idea of their harmony being the use of a drone bass—which bass, though it may change not unfrequently, always seems to preserve the drone character. And of course the deficiency in harmony reacts on and limits the play of melody.

The general character of the music, like that of much of the Indian life, reminds one of our own mediæval times. The monkish plain-song and the early minstrel music of Europe were probably very similar to this. There was the same tendency to work from a droning bass rather than from a key-note in our sense of the word, the same tendency to subordinate the music to the words, causing vague and not always balanced flights of intricate melody, the same love of ornamental kinks, and the same want of absolute definition in the matter of time.

The instruments most commonly used, besides the Sítar and its relative the Vina, are the Manda, a horizontal harp somewhat resembling the Tyrolese zither; the Sigara, a small clarinet; a bamboo flageolet, which has a very sweet and mellow tone; the Tabala, a small kettledrum; and the Taus, a four-stringed fiddle played with a bow. This last is a very curious instrument. Beneath the four main strings are stretched a number of other fine wires, which by their vibration lightly reinforce and sustain the notes played. The effect when not played too fast is very graceful and clinging, with subtle harmonics; and I have heard some most bewitching phrasing on this instrument—a dialogue one might say between it and the voice—with accompaniment of the little Tabala. The Tabala itself is very charming, with its gurgling and bell-like sounds and sudden explosions and chattering accompaniments, executed by the fingers and the butt end of the hand on two drums simultaneously. The great effect of the sítar, whose tone on the whole is thin, is undoubtedly the side tension of the strings, which gives much expression to it.

At its best the Indian music seems to me to produce a powerful impression—though generally either plaintive or frenzied. On the deep background of the drone are wrought these (Wagnerian) phrases, which are perfectly fluent and variable according to the subject conveyed, which are extraordinarily subtle in expression, and which generally rise in intensity and complexity as the piece progresses, till the hearers are worked into a state of cumulated excitement. When there are several instruments and voices thus figuring together over the same bass, the effect is fine. The little tambours with their gurgling notes record the time in a kind of unconscious way and keep the musicians together. The big drums and the lower strings of the vina give the required basses, the taus and sítars and voices fly up and down in delightful intricacy, quarter notes touched here and there create a plaintive discord, and even the slur judiciously used adds a weird effect as of the wind in the forest.

When not at its very best however it is certainly (to me) damnably rambling, monotonous and wearisome—notwithstanding chromatic effects of admitted elegance and occasional passages of great tenderness. What the music most seems to want is distinct form and contrast, and the ruder rockier elements—nor is their time-system sufficiently developed to allow change of accent in successive bars, etc. They all say however that the art is not cultivated to-day, and indeed is greatly decadent and to some extent actually lost. Like all branches of learning in India, and the caste-system itself, it has been subject to intense pedantry and formalism, and has become nearly stifled amid the otiose rules which cumber it. On the other hand it is interesting to find that the Hindus call our music not only monotonous (as we call theirs, and which may be accounted for by mere unfamiliarity—as a town-bred man thinks all sheep alike), but also coarse and rude—by which I fancy they mean that our intervals are all very obvious and commonplace, and the time-system rigid—while probably our sequences of harmony are lost upon them. Panna Lall, I find, picks up our tunes quite easily; and seems to like them fairly, but always adds a lot of little kinks and twanks of his own.

After all, though the vaguely-floating subtle recitative style of the Indian music has its drawbacks and makes one crave for a little more definition and articulateness, it presses upon one as possible that our music might gain something by the adoption and incorporation of some of these more subtle Eastern elements—if only at times, and as an enhancement of our range of expression by contrast with our own generic style.

CHAPTER XIV.
BENARES.

The great plains of the Ganges are very impressive; so vast—with a stretch, roughly speaking, of a thousand miles, and breadth from 200 to 300 miles—so populous,[5] yet with such an ancient world-old village life; and dominated always by these tremendous powers of sun and sky. All the way from Calcutta to Delhi (and beyond) this immense plain, absolutely flat, spreads in every direction, as far as eye can see the same, dotted park-like with trees (mangos many of them), which thickening here and there into a clump of palmyra palms indicate the presence of a village. The long stretches of bare land with hardly a blade of grass, shimmering in the noonday heat; oases of barley and dhol (a shrub-like lentil) looking green at this time of year, but soon to be reaped and stowed away; patches of potatos, castor-oil plant, poppy in white flower, small guava trees, indigo, etc.; here and there a muddy pool or irrigation channel; a herd of slow ungainly buffalos or the more elegant humped cow’s, browsing miraculously on invisible herbage; a woman following them, barefoot and barehead, singing a sad-toned refrain, picking up the precious dung (for fuel) and storing it in a basket; long expanses of mere sand with a few scrubby trees, brown crop-lands without a crop, straggling natural roads or tracks going to the horizon—not a hedge for hundreds of miles—strings of peasants passing from distant village to village, donkeys laden with produce, and now and then a great solid-wheeled cart labouring and creaking by over the unbroken land. The villages themselves are mostly mere collections of mud huts, looking when partially broken down very like anthills; and some villages are surrounded by rude mud walls dating from older and less settled times, and having a very primitive appearance. The people on the whole (after Southern India) look rather dirty in their unbleached cotton, but here and there one meets with bright colors and animated scenes.

[5] With an average density of population of 500 per square mile, or nearly double that of the United Kingdom!

Here are two peasants drawing water all day from the well to irrigate their rice-field; one guides the bucket down to the water, the other runs out on the long lever arm of a horizontal pole—holding on to the branches of a neighboring tree as he does so—and so brings the bucket up again. And thus they continue from earliest dawn to latest dusk, with a few hours’ rest at midday.

Here is one watering his fields by hand, carrying pots and emptying them over the thirsty plants—a fearful toil!

Here again is the classical picture—the two mild-eyed cows harnessed at the well mouth. The rope passes over a pulley and draws up a huge skin full of water as the cows recede from the well; then, as they remount the slight slope, the skin again falls to the water. To and fro go the cows; one man guides them, another empties the skins into the water channel; and so day-long the work continues.

But out on the great plain you may go for hundreds of miles, and mark but little change or variation. Flocks of green parrots, or of pigeons, fly by, or lesser birds; kites perpetually wheel and float overhead; occasionally you may see an antelope or two among the wilder scrub, or a peahen and her little family; the great cloudless blue (though not by any means always cloudless) arches over to the complete circle of the horizon, the whole land trembles in the heat, a light breeze shivers and whispers in the foliage, the sun burns down, and silence (except for the occasional chatter of the parrots or the plaintive song of the peasant) reigns over the vast demesne.

In many of these villages the face of a white man is seldom or never seen. Even such centres as Allahabad are mere specks in an ocean; the railway is a slender line of civilisation whose influence hardly extends beyond the sound of the locomotive whistle; over the northern borders of the plain the great snows of the Himalayas dawn into sight and fade away again mornings and evenings, and through its midst wind the slow broad-bosomed waters of the sacred Ganges.

Over all this region, when night comes, floats a sense of unspeakable relief. The spirit—compressed during the day in painful self-defence against the burning sun above and the blinding glare below—expands in grateful joy. A faint odor is wafted from the reviving herbage. The flat earth—which was a mere horizon line in the midday light—now fades into nothingness; the immense and mystic sky, hanging over on every side like a veil, opens back into myriads and myriads of stars—and it requires but little imagination to think that this planet is only an atom in the vast dome of heaven. To the Hindu, Life is that blinding sun, that fever of desire and discomfort, and night is the blessed escape, the liberation of the spirit—its grateful passage into Nirwana and the universal.

One understands (or thinks one does) how these immense plains have contributed to the speculative character of the Hindu mind. Mountains and broken ground call out energy and invention, but here there is no call upon one to leave the place where one is, or to change one’s habits of life, for the adjoining hundreds of miles present nothing new. Custom undisturbed consolidates itself; society crystallises into caste. The problem of external life once solved presents no more interest, and mechanical invention slumbers; the mind retires inward to meditate and to conquer. Hence two developments—in the best types that of the transcendental faculties, but in the worst mere outer sluggishness and lethargy. The great idea of Indifference belongs to these flat lands—in its highest form one of the most precious possessions of the human soul, in its lowest nothing better than apathy. The peasant too in these plains has for several months nothing to do. He sows his crop, waters it, and reaps it; works hard, and in a few months the rich land rewards him with a year’s subsistence; but he can do no more; the hot weather comes, and the green things are burnt up; agriculture ceases, and there remains nothing but to worship the gods. Hence from February to the end of May is the great time for religious festivals, marriages, and ceremonies and frolics of all kinds.

That the Ganges should be sacred, and even an object of worship, is easily intelligible—not only on account of its fertilising beneficence to the land, but there is something impressive in its very appearance: its absolute tranquillity and oceanic character as it flows, from half a mile to a mile wide, slowly, almost imperceptibly, onward through the vast hot plain. The water is greenish, not too clear, charged even in the lower portions of its course with the fine mud brought from the mountains; the banks are formed by sandy flats or low cliffs cut in the alluvial soil. As you stand by the water’s edge you sometimes in the straighter reaches catch that effect—which belongs to such rivers in flat countries—of flowing broad and tranquil up to and over the very horizon—an effect which is much increased by the shimmer of heat over the surface.

In the Mahabhárata Siva is god of the Himalaya range—or rather he is the Himalayas—its icy crags his brow, its forests his hair. Ganga, the beautiful Ganga, could not descend to earth till Siva consented to receive her upon his head. So impetuously then did she rush down (in rain) that the god grew angry and locked up her floods amid his labyrinthine hair—till at last he let them escape and find their way to the plains. The worship of Siva is very old—was there perhaps when the ancestors of the Brahmans first found their way into these plains—though we do not hear of it till about 300 B.C.—one of those far-back Nature worships in which the phenomena of earth and sky are so strangely and poetically interwoven with the deepest intimations of the human soul.

On the banks of the Ganges, in the midst of the great plain, stands Benares, one of the most ancient cities of India, and the most sacred resort of Northern Hinduism. Hither come pilgrims by the hundred and the thousand all the year round, to bathe in the Ganges, to burn the bodies of their friends or cast their ashes in the stream, and to make their offerings at the 5,000 shrines which are said to exist in the city. Outside the town along the river-side and in open spots may be seen the tents of pilgrims, and camels tethered. The city itself stands on the slightest rising ground—hardly to be called a hill—and the river banks, here higher than usual, are broken and built into innumerable terraces, stairs, temples, and shrines. The scene is exceedingly picturesque, especially as seen from the river; and though taken in detail the city contains little that is effective in the way of architecture—the shrines and temples being mostly quite small, the streets narrow, and the area of the place circumscribed considering its large population—yet it is the most characteristic and interesting town of India that I have hitherto seen.

The English make no show here—there are no residents, no hotels—the English quarter is four miles off, the names of the streets are not written in English characters, and you hardly see a shop sign in the same. And I must say the result of all this is very favorable. The sense of organic life that you immediately experience is very marked in contrast to a mongrel city like Calcutta. As you thread the narrow alleys, along which no vehicle can pass, with houses three or four storeys high forming a close lane above you, balconies and upper floors projecting in picturesque confusion not unlike the old Italian towns, you feel that the vari-colored crowd through which you elbow your way is animated by its own distinct standards and ideals. A manifold ancient industry little disturbed by modern invention is going on in the tiny shops on either hand—workshops and saleshops in one. Here is a street full of brass-workers. The elegant brass pots which the whole population uses—for holding or carrying water or oil, for pouring water over the head in bathing, for offering libations in the temples, and so forth—and which form such a feature of Indian folk-life—are here being made, from miniature sizes up to huge vessels holding several gallons. Then there are little brass images, saucers to carry flowers in, and other fancy ware of the same kind.

Another street is full of sandal and leather workers; another of sweetmeat or sweet-cake confectioners; another is given to the sale of woollen and cotton wraps—which are mostly commercial products of the West; stone and marble effigies, and gems, form another branch of industry; and cookshops—innocent fortunately of the smell of meat—of course abound. There are many fine faces, both old and young, but especially old—grave peaceful penetrative faces—and among the better types of young men some composed, affectionate, and even spiritual faces—withal plenty of mere greed and greasy worldliness.

Niched among these alleys are the numerous shrines and temples already mentioned—some a mere image of Vishnu or Siva, with a lingam in front of it, some little enclosures with several shrines—the so-called Golden Temple itself only a small affair, with one or two roofs plated with gold. In many of the temples brahman cows wander loose, quite tame, nosing against the worshipers, who often feed them; and the smell of litter and cowdung mingles with that of frankincense and camphor. Vulture-eyed Brahmans are on the alert round the more frequented sanctuaries, and streams of pilgrims and devotees go to and fro.

The river-side is certainly a wonderful scene. A mere wilderness of steps, stairs, terraces and jutting platforms, more or less in disorder and decay, stretching for a mile or more by the water. Flights of a hundred steps going up to small temples or to handsome-fronted but decayed palaces, or to the Mosque of Aurungzebe, whose two tall red-sandstone minarets (notwithstanding the incongruity) are the most conspicuous objects in this sacred metropolis of Hinduism; the steps covered with motley groups going down to or coming up from the water—here an old man, a wanderer perhaps from some distant region, sitting perched by himself, his knees drawn up to his chin, meditating; there another singing hymns; groups under awnings or great fixed straw umbrellas, chatting, or listening to stories and recitations; here a string of pilgrims with baskets containing their scanty bedding, etc., on their heads, just emerging from one of the narrow alleys; there on a balcony attached to a big building appear half a dozen young men, stripped, and with Indian clubs in their hands—their yellow and brown bodies shining in the early sun; they are students at some kind of native seminary and are going through their morning exercises; here are men selling flowers (marigolds) for the bathers to cast into the water; here is a yogi squatted, surrounded by a little circle of admirers; there are boats and a quay and stacks of wood landed, for burning bodies; and there beyond, a burning ghaut.

THE GHAUTS AT BENARES.

One morning Panna Lall—who had come on with me from Calcutta—wanted to bathe at a particular ghaut (as each family or caste has its special sanctuaries), so we went off early to the river-side. He looked quite jaunty in his yellow silk coat with white nether garment and an embroidered cap on his head. As it happened, a spring festival was being celebrated, and everybody was in clean raiment and bright colors, yellow being preferred. As we approached the river the alleys began to get full of people coming up after their baths to the various temples—pretty to see the women in all shades of tawny gold, primrose, saffron, or salmon-pink, bearing their brass bowls and saucers full of flowers, and a supply of Ganges water.

The ghauts were thronged. Wandering along them we presently came upon a yogi sitting under the shade of a wall—a rather fine-looking man of thirty-five, or nearing forty, with a kindly unselfconscious face—not at all thin or emaciated or ascetic looking, but a wild man decidedly, with his hair long and matted into a few close ringlets, black but turning brown towards his waist, a short unkempt beard, and nothing whatever on but some beads round his neck and the merest apology for a loin-cloth. He sat cross-legged before a log or two forming a small fire, which seemed grateful as the morning was quite cold, and every now and then smeared his body with the wood-ashes, giving it a white and floury appearance. For the rest his furniture was even less than Thoreau’s, and consisted apparently of only one or two logs of firewood kept in reserve, a pair of tongs, and a dry palm-leaf overhead to ward off the sun by day and the dews by night. I looked at him for some time, and he looked at me quietly in return—so I went and sat down near him, joining the circle of his admirers of whom there were four or five. He seemed pleased at this little attention and told me in reply to my questions that he had lived like this since he was a boy, and that he was very happy—which indeed he appeared to be. As to eating he said he ate plenty “when it came to him” (i.e. when given to him), and when it didn’t he could go without. I should imagine however from his appearance that he did pretty well in that matter—though I don’t think the end of his remark was mere brag; for there was that look of insouciance in his face which one detects in the faces of the animals, His friends sat round, but without much communication—at any rate while I was there—except to offer him a whiff out of their pipes every now and then, or drop a casual remark, to which he would respond with a quite natural and pleasant laugh. Of any conscious religion or philosophy I don’t think there was a spark in him—simply wildness, and reversion to a life without one vestige of care; but I felt in looking at him that rare pleasure which one experiences in looking at a face without anxiety and without cunning.

A little farther on we came to one of the burning ghauts—a sufficiently dismal sight—a blackened hollow running down to the water’s edge, with room for three funereal pyres in it. The evening before we had seen two of these burning—though nearly burnt out—and this morning the ashes only remained, and a third fresh stack was already prepared. As we stood there a corpse was brought down—wrapped in an unbleached cloth (probably the same it wore in life) and slung beneath a pole which was carried on the shoulders of two men. Round about on the jutting verges of the hollow the male relatives (as we had seen them also the day before) sat perched upon their heels, with their cloths drawn over their heads—spectators of the whole operations. I could not help wondering what sort of thoughts were theirs. Here there is no disguise of death and dissolution. The body is placed upon the pyre, which generally in the case of the poor people who come here is insufficiently large, a scanty supply of gums and fragrant oils is provided, the nearest male relative applies the torch himself—and then there remains nothing but to sit for hours and watch the dread process, and at the conclusion if the burning is complete to collect the ashes and scatter them on the water, and if not to throw the charred remains themselves into the sacred river. The endurance of the Hindu is proverbial—but to endure such a sight in the case of a dear and near relative seems ultra-human. Every sense is violated and sickened; the burning-ground men themselves are the most abhorred of outcasts—and as they pass to and fro on their avocations the crowd shrinks back from the defilement of their touch.

We did not stay more than a few minutes here, but passed on and immediately found ourselves again amongst an animated and gay crowd of worshipers. This was the ghaut where Panna wished to bathe—a fine pyramidal flight of stairs jutting into the water and leading up to the Durga Temple some way above us. While he was making preparations—purchasing flowers, oil, etc.—I sat down in the most retired spot I could find, under an awning, where my presence was not likely to attract attention, and became a quiet spectator of the scene.

After all, there is nothing like custom. One might think that in order to induce people to bathe by thousands in muddy half-stagnant water, thick with funeral ashes and drowned flowers, and here and there defiled by a corpse or a portion of one, there must be present an immense amount of religious or other fervor. But nothing of the kind. Except in a few, very few, cases there was no more of this than there is in the crowd going to or from a popular London church on Sunday evening. Mere blind habit was written on most faces. There were the country bumpkins, who gazed about them a bit, and the habitués of the place; there were plenty with an eye to business, and plenty as innocent as children; but that it was necessary for some reason or other to bathe in this water was a thing that it clearly did not enter into any one’s head to doubt. It simply had to be done.

The coldness of the morning air was forced on my attention by a group of women coming up, dripping and shivering, out of the river and taking their stand close to me. Their long cotton cloths clung to their limbs, and I wondered how they would dress themselves under these conditions. The steps even were reeking with wet and mud, and could not be used for sitting on. They managed however to unwind their wet things and at the same time to put on the dry ones so deftly that in a short time and without any exposure of their bodies they were habited in clean and bright attire. Children in their best clothes, stepping down one foot always first, with silver toe-rings and bangles, were a pretty sight; and aged people of both sexes, bent and tottering, came past pretty frequently; around on the various levels were groups of gossipers, and parties squatting opposite each other, shaving and being shaved. Nearly opposite to me was one of the frequent stone lingams which abound here at corners of streets and in all sorts of nooks, and I was amused by the antics of a goat and a crow, which between them nibbled and nicked off the flowers, ears of barley, and other offerings, as fast as the pious deposited them thereon.

While I was taking note of these and other features of the scene, my attention was suddenly arrested by a figure standing just in front of me, and I found that I was looking at one of those self-mutilating fakirs of whom every one has heard. He was a man of a little over thirty perhaps, clothed in a yellow garment—not very tall though of good figure; but his left arm was uplifted in life-long penance. There was no doubt about it; the bare limb, to some extent dwindled, went straight up from the shoulder and ended in a little hand, which looked like the hand of a child—with fingers inbent and ending in long claw-like nails, while the thumb, which was comparatively large in proportion to the fingers, went straight up between the second and third. The mans face was smeared all over with a yellow pigment (saffron), and this together with his matted hair gave him a wild and demonish appearance.

One often reads of such things, yet somehow without quite realising them; certainly the sight of this deliberate and lifelong mutilation of the human body gave me a painful feeling—which was by no means removed by the expression of the face, with its stultified sadness, and brutishness not without deceit. His extended right hand demanded a coin, which I gladly gave him, and after invoking some kind of blessing he turned away through the crowd—his poor dwindled hand and half-closed fingers visible for some time over the heads of the people. Poor fellow! how little spiritual good his sufferings had done him. His heavy-browed face haunted me for some time. For the rest he was well-liking enough, and it must be said that these fellows for the most part make a fair living out of the pious charity of the people, though I would not be understood to say that all of them adopt this mode of life with that object.

When Panna came up out of the water and had dressed himself, and I had satisfied the curiosity of one or two bystanders who wanted to know whether I had come with him all the way on this pilgrimage out of friendship, we went up to the temple above—where a little band was playing strange and grisly music, and a few devotees were chanting before an image of Siva—and having made an offering returned to our hotel.

CHAPTER XV.
THE ANGLO-INDIAN AND THE OYSTER.

Allahabad.—It certainly is a very difficult thing to see the real India, the real life of the people. You arrive at a railway station, give the name of a hotel, and are driven there. When you wake up in the morning you find yourself in a region of straight shady avenues, villa residences, hotels and churches, lawn-tennis and whisky pegs. Except that the residences are houses of one storey instead of three, and that the sun is rather glaring for February, you might just as well be at Wandsworth or Kew. In some alarm you ask for the native city and find that it is four miles off! You cannot possibly walk there along the dusty roads, and there is nothing for it but to drive. If there is anything of the nature of a “sight” in the city you are of course beset by drivers; in any case you ultimately have to undergo the ignominy of being jogged through the town in a two-horse conveyance, stared at by the people, followed by guides, pestered for bakshish, and are glad to get back to the shelter of your hotel.

If you go and stay with your Anglo-Indian friend in his villa-bungalow, you are only a shade worse off instead of better. He is hospitality itself and will introduce you cordially to all the other good folk, whom (and their ways) you have seen more than once before at Wandsworth and at Kew; but as to the people of the country, why, you are no nearer them physically, and morally you are farther off because you are in the midst of a society where it is the correct thing to damn the oyster, and all that is connected with him.

The more one sees of the world the more one is impressed, I think, by the profundity and the impassibility of the gulf of race-difference. Two races may touch, may mingle, may occupy for a time the same land; they may recognise each other’s excellencies, may admire and imitate each other; individuals may even cross the dividing line and be absorbed on either side; but ultimately the gulf reasserts itself, the deepset difference makes itself felt, and for reasons which neither party very clearly understands they cease to tolerate each other. They separate, like oil and water; or break into flame and fierce conflict; or the one perishes withering from the touch of the other. There are a few souls, born travelers and such like, for whom race-barriers do not exist, and who are everywhere at home, but they are rare. For the world at large the great race-divisions are very deep, very insuperable. Here is a vast problem. The social problem which to-day hangs over the Western lands is a great one; but this looms behind it, even vaster. Anyhow in India the barrier is plain enough to be seen—more than physical, more than intellectual, more than moral—a deepset ineradicable incompatibility.

Take that difference in the conception of Duty, to which I have already alluded. The central core of the orthodox Englishman, or at any rate of the public-school boy who ultimately becomes our most accepted type, is perhaps to be found in that word. It is that which makes him the dull, narrow-minded, noble, fearless, reliable man that he is. The moving forces of the Hindu are quite different; they are, first, Religion; and second, Affection; and it is these which make him so hopelessly unpractical, so abominably resigned, yet withal so tender and imaginative of heart. Abstract duty to the Hindu has but little meaning. He may perform his religious exercises and his caste injunctions carefully enough, but it is because he realises clearly the expediency of so doing. And what can the Englishman understand of this man who sits on his haunches at a railway station for a whole day meditating on the desirability of not being born again! They do not and they cannot understand each other.

Many of the I.C.S. are very able, disinterested, hardworking men, but one feels that they work from basic assumptions which are quite alien to the Hindu mind, and they can only see with sorrow that their work takes no hold upon the people and its affections. The materialistic and commercial spirit of Western rule can never blend with the profoundly religious character of the social organisation normal to India. We undertake the most obviously useful works, the administration of justice, the construction of tanks and railways, in a genuine spirit of material expediency and with a genuine anxiety to secure a 5 per cent. return; to the Hindu all this is as nothing—it does not touch him in the least. Unfortunately, since the substitution of mere open competition for the remains of noblesse oblige, which survived in the former patronage appointments to the I.C.S., and with the general growth of commercialism in England, the commercial character of our rule has only increased during the last thirty years. There is less belief in justice and honor, more in 5 per cent. and expediency—less anxiety to understand the people and to govern them well, more to make a good income and to retire to England with an affluence at an early date.

Curious that we have the same problem of race-difference still utterly unsolved in the United States. After all the ardor of the Abolitionists, the fury of civil war, the emancipation of the slaves, the granting of the ballot and political equality, and the prophecies of the enthusiasts of humanity—still remains the fact that in the parts where negroes exist in any numbers the white man will not even ride in the same car with his brother, or drink at the bar where he drinks. So long does it take to surpass and overcome these dividing lines. We all know that they have to be surpassed—we all know that the ultimate and common humanity must disentangle itself and rise superior to them in the end. The Gñáni knows it—it is almost the central fact of his religious philosophy and practice; the Western democrat knows it—it is also the central fact of his creed. But the way to its realisation is long and intricate and bewildering.

We must not therefore be too ready to find fault with the Anglo-Indian if he only (so to speak) touches the native with the tongs. He may think, doubtless, that he acts so because the oyster is a poor despicable creature, quite untrustworthy, incapable, etc.—all of which may be true enough, only we must not forget that the oyster has a corresponding list of charges against the Anglo—but the real truth on both sides is something deeper, something deeper perhaps than can easily be expressed—a rooted dislike and difference between the two peoples. Providence, for its own good reasons, seems to have put them together for a season in order that they may torment each other, and there is nothing more to be said.

And, putting race-difference aside, it is obvious that the circumstances of our presence in India make any fusion of the two parties very difficult. Certainly the spectacle of our domination of this vast region is a very remarkable one—something romantic, and almost incredible—the conquest and subjection of so many tribes and of such diverse elements under one political rule and standard, the mere handful of foreigners holding the country at such a vast distance from home and from their base of operations, the patience and pluck with which the problem has been worked out, the broad and liberal spirit of administration with less of rapine than perhaps ever known in such a case before, and even an allowance and tenderness for native customs and institutions which are especially remarkable considering the insular habits of the conquerors—all this makes one feel how wonderful an achievement the thing has been. But as far as intercourse between the two peoples goes, the result has been inevitable. We came to India as conquerors, we remain there as a ruling caste. There is a gulf to begin with; how can it be bridged over?

A young man at the age of twenty-two or twenty-three comes out to join the official ranks. He finds two societies existing, quite sundered from each other. He cannot belong to both. He may have the most cosmopolitan ideas; he might even prefer to associate with the subject race, but that would be obviously impossible; he must join his own people—which means the use of the tongs when a native gentleman calls. As a mere lad, even though of strong character, it is impossible for him to withstand the tremendous pressure which the Anglos will bring to bear on him. When he is forty, he will have accommodated his views to his position. Thus the gulf remains as wide as ever.

Then the people themselves are the conquered, and they have learned their lesson only too well. Walking through an Indian city is as bad as walking through a Devonshire parish, where the parson and the squire have done their deadly work, and the school-children curtsey to you and the farm-laborer pulls his forelock and calls you “Sir,” if you only ask the way. I have walked alone through a crowded city in this part of India for two or three hours without seeing a single white face—one among scores of thousands—and the people officiously pushing each other out of the way to make room for me, the native police and soldiers saluting and shouldering arms as one went by, and if one chanced to look too straight at a man he covered his face with his hands and bowed low to the ground! This does not happen fortunately in the great centres like Bombay and Calcutta, but it does in some of the up-country cities; and it is a strange experience, impressing one no doubt with a sense of the power of the little mother-country ten thousand miles away, which throws its prestige around one—but impressing one also with a sinister sense of the gulf between man and man which that prestige has created. It may be imagined that a long course of this kind of thing soon convinces the average Anglo-Indian that he really does belong to a superior order of being—reacting on him just as the curtseys and forelock-pulling react on the class-infatuation of squire and parson—and so the gulf gets wider instead of lessening.

At dinner last night I met a dozen or so of the chief officials here, and thought them a capable, intelligent and good-hearted lot—steeped of course in their particular English class-tradition, but of their class as good a sample as one could expect to meet. Talking with a Bengali gentleman who was present—one of the numerous Bannerji clan—he reiterated the usual complaint. “The official people,” he said, “are very good as long as the governed submit and say nothing; but they will neither discuss matters with individual natives nor recognise the great social movement (National Congress, etc.) that is going on. Their methods in fact are those of a hundred years ago.” “It is a great pity,” he continued, “because in a few years the growing movement will insist on recognition, and then if that leads to altercation and division the future will be lost, both for the English and the native. The people of India are most friendly to the Government, and if the official classes would stretch out a hand, and give and take so to speak, they would be loyal to death.”

With these last expressions I am much inclined to agree, for having talked with oysters of all classes on this subject—from the lowest to the highest—I have always found but one sentiment, that of satisfaction with the stability and security which our rule has brought to the country at large—not of course without serious criticisms of our policy, but with the general conviction, quite spontaneously expressed, that a change of government—as to that of Russia—or even a return to the divided rule of native princes, would be a decided change for the worse. While however thus gladly and unasked expressing their loyalty, my interlocutors have (I think in every case) qualified their remarks by expressing their dissatisfaction at the personal treatment they receive from the English. As one friend mildly expressed it, “The English official calls upon you, and you of course take care to return his call; but he takes care to confine the conversation to the weather and similar topics, and makes you feel that it is a relief when the visit is over, and so there is not much cordiality.”

No doubt as rulers of the country and inheriting, as I have said, a tradition of aloofness and superiority over the ruled, it is difficult for our Anglo-Indian folk to act otherwise than they do. Some of them I think feel really grieved at the estrangement. One of the officials here said to me in quite a pathetic tone, “There is a gulf between us and the people which it is very difficult to bridge.” The native gentleman on the other hand is, very naturally, extremely sensitive about his dignity, and not inclined—under such conditions—to make advances; or, if not sensitive, tends in some cases to be a toady for his own ends; in either case further estrangement results. If the English are to keep India together (supposing that really is a useful object) they must rule no doubt, and with a firm hand. At the same time the rapidly growing public opinion beneath the surface has to be recognised, and will have to be recognised even more in the future. I myself am inclined to think that timidity has a good deal to do with the policy of the English to-day. Conscious that they are not touching the people’s hearts, and cut off from them so as to be unable to fathom rightly what is going on in their minds, they magnify the perils of their own position, and entrenching themselves in further isolation and exclusiveness, by so doing create the very danger that they would avoid.

Aligurh.—This place affords a striking example of a rapprochement taking place between the rulers and the ruled. It is the only place in India which I have visited where I have noticed anything like a cordial feeling existing between the two sections; and this is due to the presence here of the Mahomedan Anglo-Oriental College, run by Englishmen whose instincts and convictions lie a little outside the Anglo-Indian groove. And the fact shows how much might be done by even a few such men scattered over India. Our friends Theodore Beck and Harold Cox, both Cambridge men, and the latter a decided Socialist in opinion, being connected with the college at its first start a few years ago, naturally made a point of cultivating friendly relations not only with the boys but with their parents—especially those who might happen to be residing in the place. Being also, naturally, on friendly terms with the Anglo-Indians and officials of Aligurh, they (and the college) became a point of contact between the two sections of the community. At cricket matches, prize-givings, supper-parties, etc., the good people of both sides met and established comparatively cordial relations with each other, which have given, as I say, a quite distinctive flavor to the social atmosphere here.

Last night (Feb. 17th) I came in for a dinner-party, given in the college reception-room by one of the Mahomedan taluqdars, or landlords, of the neighborhood—a little grey timid man with gold-braided cap and black coat—somewhat resembling the conductor of a German band. Very amusing. Gold caps on beaked and bearded faces, and gorgeous robes; speeches in Hindustani by Englishmen, and in English by Mahomedans; a few Hindus present, sitting apart so as not to eat at the table with us; healths enthusiastically drunk in tea, etc.! and to crown it all, when the health of the Mahomedans and Hindus present was proposed, and the English—including officials, collector, and all—stood up and sang, “For they are jolly good fellows”—the astonishment of the natives, hardly knowing what it all meant and unaccustomed to these forms of jollification, was quite touching.

But the influence of Sir Syed Ahmed here must of course not be overlooked. He is the originator and founder of the M.A.O. College, and one of the leading Mahomedans of India, as well as a confidant of the British and of the Government—a man of considerable weight, courage, and knowledge of the world, if a little ultra-Mahomedan in some of his views and in his contempt of the mild Hindu. He was a member of Lord Ripon’s Council and opposed Lord Ripon with all his might in the matter of the proposed system of popular election to Local Boards and Municipal Councils. The Mahomedan is poles asunder from the modern Radical, and Carlylean in his contempt of voting machinery. His fingers still itch, even in these degenerate days, to cut the Gordian knot of politics with the sword. He hates the acute and tricky Bengali, whom he cannot follow in his acuteness, and whom he disdains to follow in his tricks, and cannot away with his National Congress and representative reforms. But all this perhaps recommends him the more to Anglo-Indian sympathies. There is something in the Mahomedan, with his love of action and dogmatic sense of duty, which makes him more akin to the Englishman than is the philosophical and supple-minded Hindu. And one can easily understand how this race ruled India for centuries, and rejoiced in its rule.

Yet to-day it seems to be the fact that the Mahomedan population is falling into considerable poverty, which—according to some opinions—must end either in the extinction of their influence or their adoption of Western ideas and habits. With the advent of commercialism the stiff-necked son of Islam finds himself ousted in trade by the supple chetty or Brahman. Hence the feud between the two races, which to a certain extent in the country parts was scarring over with mere lapse of time, seems likely now in the more advancing districts and commercial centres to break out afresh. “In Bundelkhand,” says Beck in his Essays on Indian Topics, “where society is very old-fashioned, the Rajas are quite Islamized in their customs and thoughts; while in Calcutta, where English influence has been longest, the anti-Mahomedan feeling reaches its greatest height.” That is to say, that in Calcutta and such places the English have brought with them commercialism and a desire among the Hindus for political representation, both of which things have only served to enrage the two parties against each other—Hindu against Mahomedan, and Mahomedan against Hindu.

When a man of authority and weight could make such a jingo speech as that of Sir Syed Ahmed at Lucknow in 1887—who in the extremity of his contempt for the Hindu said, “We do not live on fish; nor are we afraid of using a knife and fork lest we should cut our fingers (cheers). Our nation is of the blood of those who made not only Arabia but Asia and Europe to tremble. It is our nation which conquered with its sword the whole of India, although its peoples were all of one religion”—one realises how deep-set is the antagonism still existing. Though forming a minority, fifty or sixty million descendants of a powerful race sharing such sentiments cannot be ignored; and it is obvious that the feud between the two races must for a long period yet form one of the great difficulties and problems of Indian politics.

A few years ago the Hindus tied a pig at night-time in the midst of the Jumma Mosque at Delhi, where it was found in the morning by the infuriated Mahomedans. They in retaliation cut up a brahman cow and threw it into a well used by Hindus. Street fights and assassinations followed and many people were killed—and the affair might have grown to a large scale but for the interference of British troops. Such little amenities are not infrequent, at any rate in certain districts.

* * * * *

There is a big horse-fair going on here just now. A hundred booths or more arranged in four little streets in form of a cross, with decorations. All round, bare sandy land with horses tied up for sale. The Cabulees—great tall men with long hair and skin coats, fur inside, and ramshackle leggings and shoes—ride in with their strings of horses, 300 or 400 miles from the frontier—where they are obliged to pile their arms until they return, as they would play the deuce in the country if they were to bring their guns with them. They look tidy ruffians, and no doubt would overrun the country if not held back by the English or some military power.

Outside the fair is a wrestling arena, with earth-banks thrown up round it, on which a motley crowd of spectators was seated to-day. Saw several bouts of wrestling. The Aligarh champion’s challenge was accepted by a big Punjaubee, a fellow from Meerut, over sixty years of age, but remarkably powerful—burly, with small nose, battered ears, and huge frontal prominences like some African chieftain or Western prize-fighter—good-humored too and even jolly till accused of unfair play, when he raged among the mob, and the meeting broke up in insane noise and blows of sticks—a small whirlwind of combatants eddying away for some distance over the plain. It was characteristic though, that when they had had enough of fighting, the two parties came back and appealed for fair play to Beck and me—the only two Englishmen present—though there did not seem the least reason why they should, and we were quite unable to afford them any proper satisfaction.

CHAPTER XVI.
DELHI AND AGRA.

The train rushes over an iron girder bridge, crossing the Jumna, into Delhi. There are sandy flats and bits of garden by the river-side, and then the great red-sandstone walls of the fort, 30 or 40 feet high, surmounted by remnants of the old white marble palace of Shah Jehan, looking out eastward over the great plain. Here are the Pearl Mosque—a little pure white shrine—the Shah’s private audience hall, the zenana apartments, and the royal baths, still standing. The women’s apartments are certainly lovely. White and polished marble floor and marble walls inlaid with most elegant floral and arabesque designs in mosaics of colored stones, and in gold; with marble screens of rich lace-like open work between the apartments and the outer world; and a similarly screened balcony jutting over the fort wall—through which the river and the great plains beyond are seen shimmering in the heat. The private audience hall is of like work—a sort of open portico supported on some twenty marble columns, with marble floor and rich mosaic everywhere (see [illustration]), and the baths the same. Indeed the old Shah with his fifty queens must have had some high old times in these baths—one for himself, one for the queens, and one for his children, all opening conveniently into each other.

Behind the fort used to be the densest part of the city; but after the Mutiny this was cleared away, and now an open space extends from the fort walls up to the Jumma Mosque and the present Delhi.

DEWAN KHAS, OR AUDIENCE HALL, IN PALACE AT DELHI.

A large city of narrow alleys and courtyards—here and there a broad tree-planted avenue with disheveled little two-storey houses on each hand, and occasional banks, hotels, and offices. Crowds of people. A finer-looking race than southwards—more of the Mahomedan element—and about the Hindus themselves more fling and romance and concreteness; some handsome faces, verging a little towards the Greek or Italian types—but looking fine with their dark skins. I suppose that in the Punjaub the men are finer and taller still, and look down a little on the folk at Delhi. Cows and brahman bulls throng the streets, and come out of courtyards in the mid-city. Some of these bulls are public property, belong to no individual and live on the highways and mingle with the herds of cows. When they want food they go into the market, and the Hindus feed them with their hands.

The Jumma Mosque is the first large mosque I have seen in India, but I am a little disappointed with it. These Indian mosques differ a little from the Turkish—being quite open to sun and sky. The idea seems to be, first a large open square, 100 feet across, or 100 yards, or more, paved with marble if possible, with a tank in the middle for worshipers to wash their feet in, and an arcade round three sides, very likely open-work of stone, with fine gateways in each side—and on the fourth side a sort of very handsome portico, with its floor raised above the general court, and surmounted by three domes. Right and left of the portico stand the two tall minarets. To be perfect the whole should be of white polished marble inlaid with arabesques and scriptures from the Koran. One of the main points is the absolute purity of the place. There is nothing whatever under the portico—no likeness of beast or bird—only three recesses in which one might fairly expect to see an altar or an image, a flight of three steps on which the reader stands to read the Koran, and that is all. Attendants continually dust the whole courtyard with cloths to keep it clean.

From a distance the effect of the domes, the minarets, the open-work of the arcade, the handsome gateways, and the little kiosks is very attractive; but within one misses something. It seems as if the portico ought to open back on a vast interior; but it doesn’t. There is no mysterious gloom anywhere—not a cranny for a hobgoblin even. There is no nice Virgin Mary in the niches, or nasty gurgoyle on the angles, no meditative Buddha or terrifying Kali with necklace of skulls, no suggestion of companionship human or divine, no appeal to sense. It doesn’t give one a chance of even having a make-believe god. How different from Hinduism with its lingams and sexual symbols deified in the profound gloom of the temple’s innermost recess!

THE JUMMA MOSQUE, DELHI.

What an extraordinary region is this to the south and west of Delhi—a huge waste sprinkled with the ruins of six or seven previous Delhis! Emperors in those days had a cheerful way—when they thought they had found a securer or more convenient site—of calmly removing a whole city from its old location. Now you pass through an arid land, here and there green with crops, but running up into stony ridges and mounds, and dotted with ruins as far as the eye can see. Stumpy domes of decayed mosques in every direction looming against the sky, mere lumps of brickwork, now turned into barns and farmyards, or with herds of goats sheltering from the sun beneath their arches—the land in some parts fairly covered with loose stones, remnants of countless buildings. Here and there, among some foliage, you see a great mosque tomb in better preservation—kept up by the Government—that of Safdar Jung, for instance, who died 1753, Akbar’s Vizier, or of the Emperor Humayoun, or the marble shrine of the poet Khusro. Along the roads go bullock-carts of all kinds, some with curtains to them, concealing women folk; and camels with loads of grass, and donkeys with huge panniers of cowdung; and by the wayside are ash trees and peepul trees, and wells worked by brahman cows drawing up water in huge skins.

Eleven miles south of Delhi stands the great Kutab Minar, a huge tower 240 feet high and 50 feet diameter at its base—tapering through five storeys to its summit, which unfortunately has lost its four-columned watch-turret and has only now a wretched iron rail—a kind of multiple column breaking out into a sort of scroll-work capital at each landing—not very beautiful, but impressive in its lonely vastness. The twin column or minar—hardly to be called a minaret—was never finished; its base alone stands to a height of 40 or 50 feet. Between them lie the remains of a handsome mosque, and within the courtyard of the mosque the columned arcades of an ancient Hindu temple; while the whole group stands within the lines of the old Hindu fortress of Lalkab built about A.D. 1060. The mosque and minar were built by Kutab-ud-din about 1200 A.D.; but the Hindu temple is no doubt considerably older. Within the latter stands the celebrated iron pillar (22 feet high above ground—and said to be an equal depth below the surface—by 16 inches diameter at base)—whose construction at that early date is somewhat of a puzzle. It evidently is not a casting, but hammered. It is of pure iron, and was probably, I should say, welded to these huge dimensions piece by piece. A Sanskrit inscription on it, recording a victory over the Bahilkas near the seven mouths of the Indus, fixes its date at A.D. 360–400.

This huge Kutab Minar is supposed to have been built as a kind of glorification of the triumph of Mahomedanism over Hinduism; but now from its top one looks out over a strange record of arid lands and deserted cities—both Mahomedan and Hindu—fortified places built one after another in succession and razed to the ground or deserted. The circles of their old walls are still however mostly traceable. One of these, which was called Toglakabad, and was destroyed by Tamerlane in 1398, lies to the south-east. Another, which the English call the old Fort, and which lies nearer Delhi, I visited on my way back to the city. Like most of the villages it stands on an eminence composed of the débris of former habitations. The walls, 40 feet high, of this little fortress, whose irregular sides are none of them probably much more than a quarter of a mile in length, are very rude but bold stonework, and command a dry ditch. Within there are now only a hundred or so mud huts, and a red-sandstone mosque of rather good appearance—from the terrace of which you look out over the Jumna and see the minarets of the present city only three or four miles off. Owing however to the dust flying in the air the views were by no means very clear.

Agra.—The fort here is quite on the same lines as that at Delhi, but of earlier date—built by Akbar in 1566 or so—and even finer in conception. There is indeed something very grand about this bold stern and practical Mahomedan structure with its lofty seventy-foot walls and solid gateway of red sandstone, surmounted by the glitter of the marble and gilt-roofed domes and arcades and terraces which formed the royal palace within. All these buildings of the royal palace, like the Taj and other monuments, are now kept and repaired by the British Government, and with tender care, and are open for visitors to walk through at their own sweet will—subject to the trivial importunities of a few guides. One may wander for a whole day through the many courts of the palace at Agra and keep finding fresh beauties and interest. After one guide has been exhausted and paid off the others leave one respectfully alone, and one may sit down in the lovely arcade of the Dewan Khas, or in the canopied balcony called the Jessamine Tower, and enjoy the shade and coolness of the marble, or the sight of the brilliant landscape between the arches—the river banks and the busy folk washing themselves and their linen—or study the beautiful floral mosaics upon walls and columns, at one’s leisure.

PERFORATED MARBLE SCREEN IN PALACE AT DELHI.

In marble and mosaic it is impossible to imagine anything more elegant than the Mahomedan work of this period—as illustrated by numbers of buildings—the brilliant coloring and richness of inlaid stone in coral, agate, jade, bloodstone, turquoise, lapis-lazuli, or what not; the grace of running leaf and flower; the marble reliefs—whole plants—in panels, the lily or the tulip or the oleander conventionalised—one of the most beautiful in the Dewan Khas being a design of the tomato plant; and then the inimitable open-work screens (often out of one great slab of stone)—of intricately balanced yet transparently simple designs—some in the zenana apartments here almost as elaborate as lacework; and the care and finish with which they have all been wrought and fitted. It was from this fort and among these arcades and balconies that 500 English during the early days of the Mutiny watched the clouds of flame and smoke going up from their burning homes.

* * * * *

Here at Agra I find myself as usual at least an hour’s walk from the native city, measuring by milestones—but how far I am from any possibility of converse with the people there, considering that I cannot speak their language, that they bow to the ground if I only look at them, and that my view of noblesse oblige as a Britisher should forbid my associating freely with them, is more than I can calculate. To go and see the Taj Mehul is easy: enough; but to explore what lies behind some of these faces that I see on the road—beautiful as they are, something more wonderful than even the Taj itself—is indeed difficult. All this is very trying to people of democratic tendencies; but perhaps it will be said that such people ought not to visit India, at any rate under its present conditions.

One must I suppose console oneself with the Taj. I saw it for a few brief minutes this evening under the magic conditions of deep twilight. I was standing in the middle of the garden which opens like a lovely park in front of the tomb. Cypresses and other trees hid its base; the moonlight was shining very tenderly and faintly on the right of the great white building; and on its left a touch of the blush of sunset still lingered on the high dome. The shadows and recesses and alcoves were folded as it were in the most delicate blue mist; the four minarets were (in the doubtful light) hardly visible; and in the heart of the shrine, through the marble lacework of doors and screens, was seen the yellow glow of the lights which burn perpetually there.

THE TAJ, AT AGRA.

I think this is the best point of view. The garden foliage hides the square platform on which the Taj stands—which platform with its four commonplace minarets is an ugly feature, and looks too obtrusively like a table turned upside down. Indeed the near view of the building is not altogether pleasing to me. The absolute symmetry of the four sides, which are identical even down to the mosaic designs, and the abrupt right angles of the base give the thing a very artificial look. But the inlaid work of colored and precious stones—only to be seen on a near view—is of course perfect.

The Taj stands on a terrace which falls perpendicular into the Jumna river (behind the building in [the above illustration]). A mile and a half away to the west lies the sombre line of the fort walls crowned with the marble kiosks and minarets of the royal palace. A mile or two beyond that again lies the city of Agra, with one or two spires of English churches or colleges; while to the east the lovely tomb looks out over a wild ravine land, bare and scarred, which suggests a landscape in the moon as much as anything.

In the daytime the ornamental garden of which I have spoken, with its gay flowers, and water-tanks, and children at play, sets off the chaste beauty of the building; while the reflected lights from the marble platform, with their creamy tints, and blue in the shadows, give an added aerial charm. The thing certainly stands solid as though it would last for centuries—and might have been built yesterday for any sign of decay about it. Indeed I was startled—as if my own thoughts had been echoed—when I heard a voice behind me say in good English, “This is rather a different style from your English jerry-building is it not?”—and looking round saw a somewhat jerry-built native youth, whose style showed that he came from one of the great commercial centres, saluting me in these mocking tones.

The small green parrots (the same that one commonly sees in cages in England) which are common all over India, and which haunt the Taj here and its garden, billing and chattering close by one, are quite a feature of the place; their flight, with the long tail straight behind, is something like a cuckoo’s or a hawk’s. Occasionally one may see a vulture perched upon some point of vantage looking down upon them with an envious eye. In Delhi, walking through a crowded street, I saw a kite swoop down and actually snatch something—some eatable I think—out of a child’s hand a little in front of me. It then soared up into the air, leaving the little one terrified and sobbing on a doorstep.

This great river (the Jumna, and the Ganges the same) and the plain through which it slowly winds have a great fascination for me—the long reaches and sandy spurs, the arid steep banks and low cliffs catching just now the last red light of sunset—here and there a little domed building standing out on a promontory, with steps down to the water—or a brown grass-woven tent on the sands below; the great vultures slowly flapping hitherward through the fading light; a turtle splashing into the water; the full moon mounting into the sky, though yet with subdued glory, and already the twinkle of a light in a house here and there; and on my right this great mountain of marble catching the play of all the heavenly radiances.

She must have been very beautiful, that queen-wife “the crown of the palace,” to have inspired and become the soul of a scene like this; or very lovely in some sense or other—for I believe she was already the mother of eight children when she died. But indeed it does not matter much about external or conventional beauty; wherever there is true love there is felt to be something so lovely that all symbols, all earth’s shows, are vain to give utterance to it. Certainly if anything could stand for the living beauty of a loved creature, it might be this dome pulsating with all the blushes and radiances of the sky, which makes a greater dome above it.

Across the river, just opposite, you dimly distinguish the outline of a vast platform—now mainly ploughed up and converted into fields—on which the good Shah intended to have built a similar or twin tomb for his own body; fortunately however he died long before this idea could be carried out, and now he lies more appropriately by the side of his loved one in the vocal gloom of that lofty interior.

“You say we Mahomedans do not respect our women, yet where in all Europe can you point out a monument to a woman, equal to this?” said Syed Mahmoud triumphantly to me one day. And then one remembers that this precious monument (like so many others that the world is proud of) was made by the forced and famine labor of 20,000 workmen working for seventeen years—and one thinks, “What about them and their wives?”

* * * * *

Called on a coterie of professors connected with the university college at Agra—A. C. Bose, who is professor of mathematics; Gargaris, professor of physics; Nilmani Dhar, law lecturer; and A. C. Bannerji, judge of small cause court—an intelligent and interesting lot of fellows. I found Bose reading a book on Quaternions; when he learnt that I had known W. K. Clifford at Cambridge he was much interested, and wanted to hear all about him—has read his book on “The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences,” and was interested in the theory of “crumpled space” and the fourth dimension. They told me a good deal about family communism as it exists among the Bengalis, and spoke rather feelingly of its drawbacks—in respect of the incubus of poor relations, etc. They also asked some questions—rather touching—about sending their sons to study in England, and what treatment they might expect at the hands of the English at home—“if it were the same as we receive here, we would never consent to send our sons.” Of course I assured them that their reception in England would be perfectly cordial and friendly. At the same time I said that they must not think ill of the English people generally because of the unfortunate gulf existing between the two races in India; because after all the officials and Anglo-Indians generally—though an honorable body—could not be taken to represent the whole people of England, but only a small section; and that as a matter of fact the masses of the people in England made much the same complaint against the moneyed and ruling sections there, namely, that they were wanting in good manners. Bannerji asked me if I saw the Lieut.-Governor (Sir A. Colvin) at Allahabad, and I said that I had had some conversation with him, and that I thought him a man of marked ability and culture, and probably having more liberality in his real opinions than his natural reserve and caution would allow him to give rein to.

Gargaris is a big-headed logical-minded slowish man who inquired much after the Positivists, and apparently thinks much of them—being indeed of that type himself. Nilmani Dhar seemed very enthusiastic about the Brahmo Somaj, which I cannot say I feel any interest in. He is of course a Theist, but most of the folk now-a-days who go in for Western learning and ideas are Agnostics, and adopt the scientific materialism of Huxley and Tyndall.

* * * * *

The men in the streets here—and I noticed the same at Nagpore—are very handsome, many of them, with their large eyes and well-formed noses, neither snub nor hooked, and short upper lips. With great turbans (sometimes a foot high) on their heads, and fine moustaches, they look quite martial; but like mermaids they end badly, for when you look below you see two thinnest shins with little tight cotton leggings round them, and bare feet. How they get these leggings on and off is a question which I have not yet been able to solve. Anyhow I have come to the conclusion about the Hindus generally that their legs are too thin for them ever to do much in the world.

The people sitting by the hundred at all the railway stations in this part of India, waiting for their trains, are quite a sight. They congregate in large sheds or areas—hardly to be called waiting rooms—reserved for this purpose; and whether it be that their notion of time is so defective, or whether it be for the sake of society or of rest or shelter that they come there, certain it is that at any hour of day or night you may see these compacted crowds of thin-shanked undemonstrative men, with wives and children, seated squatting on their hams, talking or meditating or resigning themselves to sleep, as if the arrival of their train was an event far remote, and of the very least importance. They must however really enjoy this method of traveling, for the third-class carriages are generally crowded with the poorer natives. They squat on the seats in all attitudes, and berth-like seats being let down overhead, they sometimes occupy these too—forming two storeys of cross-legged mortals. The women and children have a carriage to themselves—a fine exhibition generally of nose-rings and ear-rings. It is the third class that pays; first and second are only scantily used; the first by English alone, the second by mixed English and higher class natives. Though the distances to be covered by the traveling Englishman are generally large the conditions are not uncomfortable. Journeys are made largely by night, for coolness; first and second class are generally small saloons with couch-like seats; and these couches with the berths available above generally allow of one’s having a good stretch and a sound sleep.

Traveling second class one meets (though not always) with some pleasant bivalves. As a specimen (and a favorable one) of the Young India that is growing up under modern influences I may mention a railway goods clerk who was my companion in the train between Nagpore and Bombay; a very bright face with clear well-balanced expression, and good general ability,—said he worked ten hours a day on the average, Rs. fifteen a month, but would be raised next year; was leaving Nagpore district because it was so out of the way—no papers, etc. “In Bombay you knew what was going on all over the world. Why he had only heard of Mr. Bradlaugh’s death yesterday—two months after date.” The English rule was very good. “Under the Mahrattas you were liable any day to have your goods stolen, but now there was general security, and peace between the different peoples instead of dissension as there would be if the English were to go”—a real nice fellow, and I felt quite sorry when he left the train.

Later on the same evening, in the same train, a little incident occurred which may be worth recording. I and another Englishman were the sole occupants of the compartment; it was in fact near midnight, and we were stretched on our respective couches, when our slumbers were disturbed by the entrance of a family of four or five Parsees, among whom were a lady and a child and an old gentleman of somewhat feeble but refined appearance. Of course, though we were not disturbed, there was a little conversation and discussion while couches were being arranged and berths let down, etc.—till at last my fellow-countryman, losing his little store of patience, rolled over among his rugs with a growl: “I wish you would stop that chattering, you Parsees.” To which, when they had settled themselves a bit, one of them replied, “Please to sleep now, Mr. Gentleman.”

CHAPTER XVII.
BOMBAY.

The native city of Bombay is really an incredible sight. I walked through some part of it I suppose every day for a week or more, trying to photograph its shows upon my brain, yet every day it seemed more brilliant and original than before—and I felt that description or even remembrance were nothing to compare with the actual thing. The intense light, the vivid colors, the extraordinarily picturesque life, the bustle and movement; the narrow high tumbled houses with projecting storeys, painted shutters, etc., and alleys simply thronged with people; the usual little shops with four or five men and boys squatted in each, and multifarious products and traffic—gold and silver work of excellent quality, elegant boxes and cabinets, all being produced in full view of the public—embroidery and cap shops, fruit shops, sweetmeat shops, cloth merchants, money-changers; such a chattering, chaffering and disputing, jokes shouted across the street from shop to shop; Hindu temples, mosques, opium dens, theatres, clubs; and at night, lights and open casements and balconies above with similar groups; handsome private houses too scattered about, but some of them now converted into warehouses or lodging-houses, and looking dirty enough.

STREET IN BOMBAY, NATIVE QUARTER.

(Little shops on each side, a mosque on the left.)

Imagine a great house towering above the rest, with projecting storeys and balconies and casements—the top tiers nothing but painted wood and glass, like the stern of a huge three-decker. The basement storey is open and fronted with great carved wooden columns. Here are a few plants standing, and among them—his gold-brown body thrown up against the gloom behind—stands a young boy of eight or nine, nearly naked, with silver wristlets and string of blue beads round his neck. The next houses are low, only two or three storeys, and their basements are let out in tiny shops only a few feet square each. Here squatted among cushions, smoking his long pipe, sits an old money-lender with white cap and frock and gold-rimmed spectacles. Near him are boys and assistants, totting up accounts or writing letters on their knees. The man is worth thousands of pounds, but his place of business is not bigger than a dining-room table—and there are scores like him. The next few shops are all silversmiths—four or five in each shop, couches and cushions as before, and cabinets full of trinkets. Further on they are hammering brass and copper—a score of shops at least consecutive. Now we come to an archway, through which behold a large reservoir, with people bathing. There is a Hindu temple here, and they do not like us to enter; but under the arch sits an old ascetic. He has sat cross-legged for so many years that he can take no other position; sometimes for extra penance he gets them to lift him up and seat him on a spiked board; but I fancy he is such a hardened old sinner that he does not feel even that much! He is a well-known character in the city.

PARSEE WOMAN.

A little farther on, in a balcony, is a group of girls, with henna-black eyes, somewhat daintily got up, and on the look-out for visitors. Now a covey of Parsee women and children comes by, brilliant in their large silk wraps (for even the poorer Parsee females make a point of wearing these)—pale-green, or salmon color, or blue—drawn over their heads and depending even to their feet—their large dark eyes shining with fire and intelligence, not the timid glance of the general run of Indian women. Many of the Parsee fair ones, indeed—especially of the well-to-do classes—are exceedingly handsome. But the women generally in Bombay form quite a feature; for the Mahrattas, who constitute the bulk of the population, do not shut up their women, anymore than the Parsees do, and numbers of these—mostly of course, though not exclusively, of the poorer classes—may be seen moving quite freely about the streets: the Mahratta fisher-women for instance, dressed not in the long depending cloak of the Parsees, but in the ordinary Indian sari, which they wind gracefully about the body, leaving their legs bare from the knees down. Of the Parsees I understand that they are very helpful to each other as a community, and while leaving their women considerable freedom are at pains to prevent any of them falling through poverty into a life of prostitution.

If you take this general description of the native Bombay, and add to it a handsome modern city, with fine Banks, Post and Government offices, esplanades, parks, docks, markets, railway stations, etc.; and then again add to that a manufacturing quarter with scores of chimneys belching out smoke, ugly stretches of waste land, and all the dirt of a Sheffield or Birmingham (only with coco-palms instead of oak-trees shriveling in the blight); then distribute through it all a population, mainly colored, but of every nation in the world, from sheerly naked water-carriers and coolies to discreet long-raimented Parsees and English “gentlemen and ladies”—you will have an idea of Bombay—the most remarkable city certainly that I have visited in this part of the world.

The Parsee nose is much in evidence here. You meet it coming round the corner of the street long before its owner appears. It is not quite the same as the Jewish, but I find it difficult to define the difference; perhaps though larger it is a little suaver in outline—more suaviter in modo, though not less fortiter in re. It is followed by a pair of eyes well on the alert, which don’t miss anything that the nose points out. At every turn you meet that same shrewd old gentleman with the beautifully white under-raiment falling to his feet, and a long China silk coat on, and black brimless hat—so collected and “all there”; age dims not the lustre of his eye to biz. Somehow he strangely reminds one of the neighborhood of the London Stock Exchange, only it is a face of more general ability than you often see in the City.

PARSEE MERCHANTS.

And (what also is more than can be said for his city confrère) he is up early in the morning for his religious exercises. At sunrise you may see him on the esplanades, maidans, and other open places, saying his prayers with his face turned towards the east. He repeats or reads in an undertone long passages, and then bows three times towards the light; then sometimes turning round will seem to go through a similar ceremony with his back to it. The peculiarity of the physiognomy (not forgetting the nose of course) seems to lie in the depth of the eye. This together with the long backward line of the eyelid gives a remarkable look of intelligence and earnestness to the finer faces.

The younger Parsee is also very much to the fore—a smartish fellow not without some Brummagem self-confidence—pushing in business and in his efforts to join in the social life of the English; who in revenge are liable to revile him as the ‘Arry of the East. Anyhow they are a go-ahead people, these Cursetjees, Cowasjees, Pestonjees, and Jejeebhoys, and run most of the cotton mills here (though one would think that they might manage to get on without quite so many “jees”). Justice Telang spoke to me highly one day of them as a body—their helpful brotherly spirit and good capacity and versatility. He said however that they were not taking the lead in business quite so much as formerly, but turning rather more to political life.

Telang himself is a Mahratta—a sturdy well-fleshed man, of energy and gentleness combined—able, sound, and sensible, I should say, with good judgment and no humbug. He of course thinks the creation of a united India a long and difficult affair: but does not seem to despair of its possibility; acknowledges that the Mahomedan element is mostly indifferent or unfriendly to the idea, but the Parsees are favorable.

I was in Telang’s court one day, and admired much the way he conducted the business. On the whole I thought the English barristers present showed up only feebly against the native judge and pleaders. I certainly am inclined to think the educated oysters quite equal or if anything superior to the Englishman in matters of pure intellect (law, mathematics, etc.); where they are wanting—taking the matter quite in bulk, and with many individual exceptions—is in that quality which is expressed by the word morale; and it is that defect which prevents them being able to make the best use of their brain power, or to hold their own against us in the long run. So important is that quality. The Anglo-Saxons, with deficient brains, have it in a high degree, and are masters of the world.

I called another day on Tribhovan Das, who is head of the Bunyas here—a large and influential merchant caste. He occupies the house which belonged to his father, Sir Mungal Das, who was member of the Bombay Legislative Council and a great man in his time both in wealth and influence. The house is a large one standing in the native city. We went and sat in state in a big drawing-room, and then made a tour of the other reception rooms and the library, and solemnly inspected and admired the works of art—oscillating models of ships in a storm, pictures with musical boxes concealed behind them, a huge automatic musical organ, wax-flowers and fruits in the library, fountains in the garden, etc.—all quite in the style of the reception rooms of wealthy natives twenty years or so ago. Tribhovan showed me over it all with that mingled air of childlike pride and intense boredom which I have noticed before in Orientals under the same circumstances; then took me out for a drive in his swagger barouche, with white horses and men in sky-blue livery—along the Malabar drive and up to the reservoir on the hill-top, a very charming seaside road, and thronged at that hour on Sunday evening with carriages and the motley aristocracy of the city. The view from the reservoir is famous. The Malabar hill is a promontory jutting southward into the sea, and occupied largely with villa residences. Westward from its summit you look over the open ocean, dotted with white sails; eastward, or south-eastward, across a narrow bay, is seen the long spit of flat land on which modern mercantile Bombay stands, with its handsome public buildings and long line of esplanade already at that hour beginning to twinkle with lamps. Beyond that spit again, and farther eastward, lies another much deeper and larger bay, the harbor proper, with masts of ships just discernible; and beyond that again are the hills of the mainland. At the base of the spit and a little inland lies the native portion of Bombay—largely hidden, from this point of view, by the masses of coco-nut trees which grow along its outskirts and amongst its gardens.

Tribhovan said he would much like to come to England, but that as head of the caste it was quite impossible. He told me that many people think the Bunyas took their dress (the cylindrical stiff hat like an English chimney-pot hat without a brim, and the long coat buttoned close round the neck) from the Parsees; but it was just the opposite—the Parsees when they came to India having adopted the dress of those Hindus amongst whom they first found themselves, namely the Bunyas.

Whilst driving back through the city we came upon a marriage ceremony going on—a garden full of lights, and crowds of people conversing and taking refreshments. Two houses opened on the same garden, and one of these was occupied for the occasion by the bridegroom and his friends, and the other by the bride. This is the orthodox arrangement, enabling the bridegroom to descend into the garden and go through the ceremony of taking his bride; and my host explained that houses thus arranged are often kept and let solely for this purpose—as few people have houses and gardens of their own large enough for the array of guests asked, or suitably built for the ceremony. In the thick of the city the bridegroom will sometimes manage to hire or get the loan of a house in the same street and opposite to that in which his bride dwells, and then the street is turned into a temporary garden with ornamental shrubs and branches, and lanterns are hung (for the ceremony is always in the evening) and chairs placed in rows, and a large part of the processions and festivities are as public as the gossips can desire. All this adds much to the charm of life in this most picturesque city.

The native theatres here are a great institution—crowded mostly by men and boys of the poorer sort—the performance a curious rambling business, beginning about 9 p.m. and lasting say till 2 or 3 in the morning! Murderous and sensational scenes carried out by faded girls and weak ambrosial youths, and protracted in long-drawn agonies of operatic caterwauling, with accompaniment of wondrous chromatic runs on the taus and a bourdon bass on some wind-instrument. Occasionally a few sentences spoken form a great relief. What makes the performance so long is the slowness of the action—worse even than our old-fashioned opera; if the youth is madly in love with the girl he goes on telling her so in the same “rag” for a quarter of an hour. Then she pretends to be indifferent, and spurns him in another “rag” for fifteen minutes more!

Another feature of Bombay now-a-days, and indeed of most of the towns of India, including even quite small villages, is the presence and work of the Salvation Army. I must say I am Philistine enough to admire these people greatly. Here in this city I find “Captain” Smith and young Jackson (who were on board ship with me coming out), working away night and day in the “cause,” and always cheerfully and with a smile on their faces—leading a life of extreme simplicity, penury almost, having no wages, but only bare board and lodging—with no chance even to return home if they get sick of the work, unless it were by the General’s order. “I should have to work my way back on board ship if I wanted to go, but I shall not want to go, I shall be happy here,” said Jackson to me. These two at any rate I feel are animated by a genuine spirit. Whatever one may think of their judgment or their philosophy, I feel that they really care for the lowest and most despised people and are glad to be friends and brothers with them—and after all that is better philosophy than is written in the books. They adopt the dress of the people and wear turbans and no shoes; and most of them merge their home identity and adopt a native name. Of course it is easy to say this is done out of mere religious conceit and bravado; but I am certain that in many cases it springs from something much deeper than that.

One day I joined a party of five of them on their way to the Caves of Elephanta—“Captain” and Mrs. Smith, “Sikandra” (Alexander), and two others. Mrs. Smith is a nice-looking and real good woman of about thirty years of age, and Sikandra is a boy of ability and feeling who has been out here about three years. They were all as nice and natural as could be (weren’t pious at all), and we enjoyed our day no end—a three hours’ sail across the bay in a lateen-sailed boat with two natives—the harbor a splendid sight, with its innumerable shipping, native fish-boats, P. and O. and other liners, two or three ironclads, forts, lighthouses, etc.—and then on beyond all that to the retired side of the bay and the islands; picnic on Elephanta Island under the shade of a great tamarind tree—visit to the caves, etc.; and return across the water at sundown.

Very Indian these islands—the hot smell of the ground covered with dead grass and leaves, the faint aromatic odor of sparse shrubs, with now and then a waft of delicious fragrance from the little white jessamine, the thorns and cactus, palms, and mighty tamarinds dropping their sweet-acid fruit. Then the sultry heat at midday, the sea lying calm and blue below in haze, through which the ridged and rocky mountains of the mainland indistinctly loom, and the far white sails of boats; nearer, a few humped cows and a collection of primitive huts, looking, from above, more like heaps of dead palm-leaves than human habitations.

THE GREAT CAVE AT ELEPHANTA.

(Some of the rock-pillars being restored, sculptured figures visible in background.)

The great cave impressed me very much. I have not seen any other of these Indian rock-sanctuaries, but this one gave me a greater sense of artistic power and splendid purpose than anything in the way of religious architecture—be it mosque or Hindu temple—that I have seen in India. It is about half-way up the hillside from the water, and consists of a huge oblong hall, 50 yards square, cut sheerly into the face of the rock, with lesser halls opening into it on each side. Huge pillars of rock, boldly but symmetrically carved, are left in order to support the enormous weight above; and the inner roof is flat—except for imitations of architraves running from pillar to pillar. The daylight, entering in mass from the front, and partly also by ingenious arrangement from the sides, is broken by the many great pillars, and subdues itself at last into a luminous gloom in the interior—where huge figures of the gods, 18 feet high, in strong relief or nearly detached, stand out from the walls all round. These figures are nobly conceived and executed, and even now in their mutilated condition produce an extraordinarily majestic effect, making the spectator fancy that he has come into the presence of beings vastly superior to himself.

On the back wall immediately opposite the entrance are three huge panels of sculpture—the most important objects in the temple. The midmost of these consists of three colossal heads—Brahma, Vishnu and Siva—united in one; Brahma of course full faced, the others in profile. Each head with its surmounting tiara is some twelve feet high, and the portions of the busts represented add another six feet. The whole is cut deep into the rock so as to be almost detached; and the expression of the heads—which are slightly inclined forwards—is full of reserved power and dignity. It is Brahm, the unrealisable and infinite god, the substratum of all, just dawning into multiple existence—allowing himself to be seen in his first conceivable form.

In this trinity Vishnu of course represents the idea of Evolution—the process by which the inner spirit unfolds and generates the universe of sensible forms—as when a man wakes from sleep and lets his thoughts go out into light and definition; Siva represents the idea of Involution, by which thought and the sensible universe are indrawn again into quiescence; and Brahma represents the state which is neither Evolution nor Involution—and yet is both—existence itself, now first brought into the region of thought through relation to Vishnu and Siva.

Each figure with a hand upturned and resting on the base of its neck holds an emblem: Vishnu the lotus-flower of generation, Brahma the gourd of fruition, and Siva a cobra, the “good snake” whose bite is certain dissolution. Siva also has the third eye—the eye of the interior vision of the universe, which comes to the man who adopts the method of Involution. There is good reason to suppose, from marks on the rock, that the recess in which this manifestation of deity is carved was closed by a veil or screen, only to be drawn aside at times of great solemnity. A hollow behind the triple head is pointed out, in which it is supposed that a concealed priest could simulate the awful tones of the god.

PANEL OF SIVA AND HIS CONSORT PARVATI, ELEPHANTA.

Of the three forms of the trinity Siva is the most popular in Hindu devotion, and he forms the centre figure of all the other panels here. The panel on the right of the principal one just described portrays the next devolution of godhead—namely into the form of humanity—and represents Siva as a complete full length human being conjoining the two sexes in one person. This idea, of the original junction of the sexes, though it may be philosophically tenable, and though it is no doubt supported by a variety of traditions—see the Bible, Plato, etc.—and by certain interior experiences which have been noticed (and which are probably the sources of tradition) is inartistic enough when graphically portrayed; and the main figure of this panel, with its left side projecting into a huge breast and hip, is only a monstrosity. As to the sexual parts themselves they are unfortunately quite defaced. The cloud of moving figures however around and above, who seem to be witnessing this transformation, are very spirited.

The third panel—on the left of the principal one—in which the differentiation is complete, and Siva and his consort Sakti or Parvati are represented side by side as complete male and female figures, in serene and graceful pose—he colossal and occupying nearly the centre of the panel, she smaller and a little to one side—is a great success. Round them in the space above their heads a multitude of striding clean-legged figures bear witness to the energy of creation now fully manifested in this glorious pair.

The rest of the panels though still colossal are on a slightly smaller scale, and seem to represent the human-divine life of Siva: his actual marriage, his abandonment of home, his contest with Rávana, his terrible triumph over and slaughter of his enemies, his retirement into solitude and meditation, and his ultimate reabsorption into Brahm, figured by his frenzied dance in the “hall of illimitable happiness”—that most favorite subject of the Hindu sculptors. This last panel—though the legs and arms are all broken—has extraordinary vigor and animation, and is one of the very best. The whole series in fact, to those who can understand, is a marvelous panorama of the human soul. The work is full of allegorical touches and hints, yet hardly ever becomes grotesque or inartistic. It provides suggestions of the profoundest philosophy, yet the rudest peasant walking through these dim arcades could not but be affected by what he sees. In every direction there are signs of “go” and primitive power which point to its production as belonging to a time (probably about the 10th cent. A.D.) of early vigor and mastery and of grand conception.

INTERIOR SHRINE, ELEPHANTA.

I should not forget to mention that in a square chamber also hewn out of the rock, but accessible by a door in each of the four sides, is a huge lingam—which was probably also kept concealed except on great occasions; and round the exterior walls of the chamber, looking down the various aisles of the temple, are eight enormous guardian figures, of fine and composed workmanship. (See illustration—in which a man is standing beneath the torso of the nearest figure.) Altogether the spirit of the whole thing is to my mind infinitely finer than that of the South Indian temples, which with their courts and catacomb-like interiors suggest no great ideas, but only a general sense of mystery and of Brahmanical ascendancy.

March 6th.—A little after sunset yesterday “Sikandra” took me to see an opium den in the native quarter. It was rather early, as the customers were only just settling in, but the police close these places at nine. Much what I expected. A dark dirty room with raised wide bench round the sides, on which folk could lie, with little smoky lamps for them to burn their opium. For three pice you get a little thimbleful of laudanum, and by continually taking a drop on the end of a steel prong and frizzling it in the flame you at last raise a viscid lump hardly as big as a pea, which you put in a pipe, and then holding the mouth of the pipe in the flame, draw breath. Two or three whiffs of thick smoke are thus obtained—and then more stuff has to be prepared; but the poison soon begins to work, and before long the smoker lies motionless, with his eyes open and his pipe dropping out of his hand. I spoke to a man who was just preparing his dose, and who looked very thin and miserable, asking him if he did not find it damage his health; but he said that he could not get along without it—if he gave it up for a day or two he could not do his work, and felt nervous and ill.

The effect of these drugs, opium, haschisch (hemp or ganja),[6] as well as of laughing gas, sulphuric ether, etc., is no doubt to produce a suspension of the specially bodily and local faculties for the time, and with it an inner illumination and consciousness, very beatific and simulating the real “ecstasy.” Laughing gas (nitrous oxide) produces a species of illumination and intuition into the secrets of the universe at times—as in the case of Sir Humphry Davy, who first used it on himself and who woke up exclaiming, “Nothing exists but thoughts! the universe is composed of impressions, ideas, pleasures and pains.” The feelings induced by opium and haschisch have often been described in somewhat similar terms; and it has to be remembered that many much-abused practices—indulgence in various drugs and strong drinks, mesmeric trance-states, frantic dancing and singing, as well as violent asceticisms, self-tortures, etc.—owe their hold upon humanity to the same fact, namely that they induce in however remote and imperfect a degree or by however unhealthy a method some momentary realisation of that state of cosmic consciousness of which we have spoken, and of the happiness attending it—the intensity of which happiness may perhaps be measured by the strength of these very abuses occurring in the search for it, and may perhaps be compared, for its actual force as a motive of human conduct, with the intensity of the sexual orgasm.

[6] As a curiosity of derivation it appears that these two words hemp and ganja are from the same root: Sanskrit goni, ganjika; Persian, Greek and Latin, cannabis; French chanvre; German Hanf; Dutch hennep. Canvas also is the same word.

* * * * *

One evening two or three friends that I had made among the native “proletariat”—post-office and railway clerks—insisted on giving me a little entertainment. I was driven down to the native city, and landed in a garden-like court with little cottages all round. To one of these we were invited. Found quite a collection of people; numbers increasing on my arrival till there must have been about fifty. Just a little front room nine feet square, with no furniture except one folding chair which had been brought from heaven knows where in my honor. A nice rug had been placed on the ground, and pillows round the walls; and the company soon settled down, either inside the room (having left their shoes at the door), or in the verandah. A musician had been provided, in the shape of an old man who had a variety of instruments and handled them skilfully as far as I could judge. But the performance was rather wearisome and lasted an unconscionably long time.

It was very curious to me, as a contrast to English ways, to see all these youngish fellows sitting round listening to this rather stupid old man playing by the hour—so quiescent and resigned if one might use the word. They are so fond of simply doing nothing; their legs crossed and heads meditatively bent forward; clerks, small foremen and bookkeepers, and some probably manual workers—looking very nice and clean withal in their red turbans and white or black shawls or coats.

There is a certain tastefulness and grace always observable in India. Here I could not but notice, not only the Mahratta dress, but all the interior scene; plain color-washed walls edged with a running pattern, the forms of the various instruments, a few common bowls brought in to serve as musical glasses, the brass pot from which water was poured into them—all artistic in design and color, though the house was of tiniest proportions—only apparently two or three rooms, of the same size as that one.

After the music a little general conversation ensued, with coffee and cigarettes, talk of course turning on the inevitable Congress question and the relations of England and India—a subject evidently exciting the deepest interest in those present; but not much I think was added to former conversations. One of the company (a post-office clerk) says that all the educated and thoughtful people in India are with the Congress, to which I reply that it is much the same with the socialist movement in the West. He thinks—and they all seem to agree with him—that the condition of the agricultural people is decidedly worse than it used to be; but when I ask for evidence there is not much forthcoming, except references to Digby. I guess the statement is on the whole true, but the obvious difficulty of corroborating these things is very great; the absence of records of the past, the vastness of India, the various conditions in different parts, etc., etc., make it very difficult to come to any general and sweeping conclusion. The same friend pointed out (from Digby) that mere statistics of the increasing wealth of India were quite illusive “as they only indicated the increase of profits to merchants and foreigners, and had nothing to do with the general prosperity”; and to this I quite agreed, telling him that we had had plenty of statistics of the same kind in England; but that this was only what might be expected, as the ruling classes in both countries being infected with commercialism would naturally measure political success by trade-profits, and frame their laws too chiefly in view of a success of that kind.

Several of those present maintained that it was quite a mistake to say the Mahomedans are against the Congress; a certain section of them is, but only a section, and education is every day tending to destroy these differences and race-jealousies. I put the question seriously to them whether they really thought that within 50 or 100 years all these old race-differences, between Mahomedan and Hindu, Hindu and Eurasian, or between all the sections of Hindus, would be lost in a sense of national unity. Their reply was, “Yes, undoubtedly.” Education, they thought, would abolish the ill-feeling that existed, and indeed was doing so rapidly; there would soon be one common language, the English; and one common object, namely the realisation of Western institutions. Whether right or not in their speculations, it is interesting to find that such is the ideal of hundreds of thousands of the bulk-people of India now-a-days. Everywhere indeed one meets with these views. The Britisher in India may and does scoff at these ideals, and probably in a sense he is right. It may be (indeed it seems to me quite likely to be) impossible for a very long time yet to realise anything of the kind. At the same time who would not be touched by the uprising of a whole people towards such a dream of new and united life? And indeed the dream itself—like all other dreams—is a long step, perhaps the most important step, towards its own realisation.

Thus we chatted away till about midnight, when with mutual compliments, and the usual presents of flowers to the parting guest, we separated. These fellows evidently prize a little English society very much; for though they learn our language in the schools and use it in the business of every-day life, it rarely, very rarely, happens that they actually get into any friendly conversation with an Englishman; and I found that I was able to give them useful information—as for instance about methods of getting books out from England—and to answer a variety of other questions, which were really touching in the latent suggestion they contained of the utter absence of any such help under ordinary circumstances. It struck me indeed how much a few unpretending and friendly Englishmen might do to endear our country to this people.

SIDE CAVE, ELEPHANTA.

It is quite a sight at night walking home—however late one may be—to see on the maidans and open spaces bright lamps placed on the dusty turf, and groups of Parsees and others sitting round them on mats—playing cards, and enjoying themselves very composedly. Round the neighborhood of the Bunder quay and the club-houses and hotels the scene is rather more gay and frivolous. How pleasant and cool the night air, and yet not too cool! The darkies sleep out night-long by hundreds in these places and on the pavements under the trees. They take their cloths, wrap them under their feet, bring them over their heads, and tuck them in at the sides; and lie stretched straight out, with or without a mat under them, looking for all the world like laid-out corpses.

* * * * *

Indian Ocean.—On the way to Aden. The harbor of Bombay looked very beautiful as we glided out in the SS. Siam—with its variegated shore and islands and shipping. I went down into my berth to have a sleep, and when I awoke we were out of sight of India or any land. Most lovely weather; impossible to believe that England is shivering under a March sky, with north-east winds and gloom. The sea oily-calm; by day suffused with sunlight up to the farthest horizon—only broken, and that but seldom, by the back-fin of a porpoise, or the glance of flying-fish; by night gleaming faintly with the reflection of the stars and its own phosphorescence. Last night the sea was like a vast mirror, so smooth—every brighter star actually given again in wavering beauty in the world below—the horizon softly veiled so that it was impossible to tell where the two heavens (between which one seemed suspended) might meet. All so tender and calm and magnificent. Canopus and the Southern Cross and the Milky Way forming a great radiance in the south; far ahead to the west Orion lying on his side, and Sirius, and the ruddy Aldebaran setting. Standing in the bows there was nothing between one and this immense world—nothing even to show that the ship was moving, except the rush of water from the bows—which indeed seemed an uncaused and unaccountable phenomenon. The whole thing was like a magic and beautiful poem. The phosphorescent stars (tiny jelly creatures) floating on the surface kept gliding swiftly over those other stars that lay so deep below; sometimes the black ocean-meadows seemed to be sown thick with them like daisies. The foam round the bows lay like a luminous necklace to the ship, and fell continually over in a cascade of brilliant points, while now and then some bigger jelly tossed in the surge threw a glare up even in our faces.

One might stand for hours thus catching the wind of one’s own speed—so soft, so mild, so warm—the delicate aroma of the sea, the faint far suggestion of the transparent air and water, wafting, encircling one round. And indeed all my journey has been like this—so smooth, so unruffled, as if one had not really been moving. I have several times thought, and am inclined to think even now, that perhaps one has not left home at all, but that it has been a fair panorama that has been gliding past one all these months.

THE OLD ORDER
AND
THE NEW INFLUENCES

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE OLD ORDER: CASTE AND COMMUNISM.

There is certainly a most remarkable movement taking place in India to-day, towards modern commercialism and Western education and ideas, and away from the old caste and communal system of the past—a movement which while it is in some ways the reverse of our Western socialist movement answers curiously to it in the rapidity and intensity of its development and in the enthusiasm which it inspires. The movement is of course at present confined to the towns, and even in these to sections and coteries—the 90 per cent. agricultural population being as yet practically unaffected by it—but here again it is the old story of the bulk of the population being stirred and set in motion by the energetic few, or at any rate following at some distance on their lead; and we may yet expect to see this take place in the present case.

Knowing as we do at home the evils which attend our commercial and competitive order of society it is difficult to understand the interest which it arouses in India, until we realise the decay and degradation into which caste and the ancient communism have fallen. On these latter institutions commercialism is destined to act as a solvent, and though it is not likely that it will obliterate them—considering how deeply they are rooted in the genius of the Indian people, and considering how utterly dissimilar that genius is to the genius of the West—still it may fairly be hoped that it will clean away a great deal of rubbish that has accumulated round them, and free them to be of some use again in the future, when the present movement will probably have had its fling and passed away. On all sides in India one meets with little points and details which remind one of the Feudal system in our own lands; and as this passed in its due time into the commercial system so will it be in India—only there is a good deal to indicate that the disease, or whatever it is, will not be taken so severely in India as in the West, and will run its course and pass over in a shorter time.

The complexity into which the caste system has grown since the days when society was divided into four castes only—Brahmans, Kshattriyas, Vaisyas, and Sudras—is something most extraordinary. Race, occupation and geographical position have all had their influence in the growth of this phenomenon. When one hears that the Brahmans alone are divided into 1,886 separate classes or tribes, one begins to realise what a complicated affair it is. “The Brahmans,” says Hunter in his Indian Empire, “so far from being a compact unit are made up of several hundred castes who cannot intermarry nor eat food cooked by each other.” Of course locality has a good deal to do with this sub-division; and it is said that a Brahman of the North-West is the most select, and can prepare food for all classes of Brahmans (it being a rule of all high caste that one must not touch food cooked by an inferior caste); but family and genealogical descent also no doubt have a good deal to do with it; and as to employment, even among the Brahmans, though manual labor is a degradation in their eyes, plentiful individuals may be found who follow such trades as shepherds, fishermen, porters, potters, etc. Dr. Wilson of Bombay wrote two large volumes of his projected great work on Caste, and then died; but had not finished his first subject, the Brahmans!

In the present day the Brahmans are I believe pretty equally distributed all over India, forming their own castes among the other races and castes, but of course not intermarrying with them, doing as a rule little or no manual work, but clustering in thousands round temples and holy places, full of greed and ever on the look-out for money. Though ignorant mostly, still they have good opportunities in their colleges for learning, and some are very learned. They alone can perform the temple services and priestly acts generally; and oftentimes they do not disguise their contempt for the inferior castes, withdrawing their skirts pharisaically as they pass, or compelling an old and infirm person to descend into the muddy road while they occupy the narrow vantage of the footway.

This pharisaism of caste marks not only the Brahmans, but other sections; a thousand vexatious rules and regulations hedge in the life of every “twice-born” man; and the first glance at the streets of an Indian town makes one conscious of something antagonistic to humanity, in the broad sense by which it affords a common ground to the meeting of any two individuals. There are difficulties in the way of mere human converse. Not only do people not eat together (except they belong to the same section); but they don’t touch each other very freely; don’t shake hands, obviously; even the terms of greeting are scanty. A sort of chill strikes one: a noli-me-tangere sentiment, which drives one (as usual) to find some of the most grateful company among the outcast. Yet the people are disposed to be friendly, and in fact are sensitive and clinging by nature; but this is the form of society into which they have grown.

The defence of the system from the native religious point of view is that Caste defines a man’s position and duties at once, limits him to a certain area of life, with its temptations and possibilities and responsibilities—(caste for instance puts a check on traveling; to go to sea is to break all bounds)—and saves him therefore from unbridled license and the insane scramble of the West; restricts his outward world and so develops the inward; narrows his life and so causes it to reach higher—as trees thickly planted spire upward to the sky. Caste, it is said, holds society in a definite form, without which vague turmoil would for ever ensue, distracting men to worldly cares and projects and rendering them incapable of the higher life. When however this last is developed within an individual, then—for him—the sanction of caste ceases, and he acknowledges it no more. As to the criticism—so obvious from the Western point of view—of the unfairness that a man should be confined all his life to that class or stratum in which he is born, to the Indian religioner this is nothing; since he believes that each man is born in those surroundings of life which belong to his stage of progress, and must get the experience which belongs to that stage before moving farther.

However this may be, the rigidity of caste as it yet exists gives a strange shock to one’s democratic notions. “Once a dhobi always a dhobi,” says the proverb. The washerman (dhobi) is one of the poorest and most despised of men; the word is in fact a common term of reproach; but once a washerman, a washerman (save in the rarest cases) you will remain. And once a pariah always a pariah—a thing that no caste man will touch. Yet—and here comes in the extraordinary transcendental democracy (if one may call it so) of the Hindu religion—Brahm himself, the unnameable God, is sometimes called the dhobi, and some of the greatest religious teachers, including Tiruvalluvar, the author of the Kurral, have been drawn from the ranks of the Pariahs.

The English themselves in India hardly realise how strong are the caste feelings and habits among all but the few natives who have fairly broken with the system. At a levee some few years back a Lieut.-Governor, to show his cordial feeling towards a native Rajah, put his hand on the prince’s shoulder, while speaking to him; but the latter, as soon as he could decently disengage himself, hurried home and took a bath, to purify himself from the touch! Nor to this day can the mass of the people of India get over the disgust and disapprobation they felt towards the English when they found that they insisted on eating beef—a thing that only the very lowest classes will touch; indeed this habit has not only done a good deal to alienate the sympathies of the people, but it is one of the chief reasons why the English find it so hard or next to impossible to get servants of good caste.

An acquaintance of mine in Ceylon who belongs to the Vellála caste told me that on one occasion he paid a visit to a friend of his in India who belonged to the same caste but a different section of it. They had a Brahman cook, who prepared the food for both of them, but who being of a higher caste could not eat after them; while they could not eat together because they did not belong to the same section. The Brahman cook therefore ate his dinner first, and then served up the remainder separately to the two friends, who sat at different tables with a curtain hanging between them!

I myself knew of a case in which an elderly native gentleman was quite put to it, and had to engage an extra servant, because, though he had a man already who could cook and draw water for him to drink, this man was not of the right caste to fill his bath! Can one wonder, when caste regulations have fallen into such pettiness, that the more advanced spirits hail with acclaim any new movement which promises deliverance from the bondage?

Another curious element in the corruption of caste is the growth of the tyranny of respectability. Among certain sections—mainly I imagine the merchant and trading castes—some of the members becoming rich form themselves into little coteries which take to themselves the government of the caste, and while not altogether denying their communal fellowship with, do not also altogether conceal their contempt for, the poorer members, and the divergence of their own interests and standards from those of the masses. Of course with this high-flying respectability goes very often (as with us) a pharisaical observance of religious ordinances, and a good deal of so-called philanthropy.

I have before me a little book called “The Story of a Widow Re-marriage,” written by a member of the Bunya caste, and printed (for private circulation) at Bombay in 1890. The author of this book some years ago married—in defiance of all the proprieties of high-caste Hinduism—a lady who was already a widow; and he tells the story of this simple act and the consequent caste-persecution which he had to endure in a style so genuine and at once naïve and shrewd that the book is really most interesting. The poor girl whom he married had lost her husband some years before: he in fact was a mere boy and she a child at the time of his death. Now she was an “unlucky woman,” a widow—one of those destined to spend all her life under a ban, to wear black, to keep away from any festivity lest she should mar it by her presence. “What happiness in the world have I,” said she, when the author at their first meeting condoled with her on her fate; “nothing but death can relieve me of all my woes. I have abjured food for the last twelve months; I live only on a pice-worth of curd from day to day. I starve myself, in order that any how my end may come as soon as possible. I have often thought,” she continued, “of committing suicide by drowning myself in the sea or in the neighboring tank of Walkeshwar, or by taking opium. But there are many considerations which hold me back. According to our Brahmans the Shastras say that those who commit suicide are doomed to die a similar death seven times over in their future existence. Moreover I myself believe that taking one’s own life is as sinful as taking the life of any other person. This gives me pause, and I do not do what I would do. I have however forsaken all food, in order that the happy deliverance may come to me in a short time. I have nothing in this life to live for. If I had a child of my own, I would have had some cause for hope.”

Moved by the sufferings of the unhappy Dhunkore, as well as by her youth and beauty, Madhowdas fell genuinely in love with her; and she, in return, with him; and ere long they determined—notwithstanding the relentless persecution of the more influential members of the caste, which they knew would follow—to get married. Madhowdas was in business, and there was the utmost danger that he would be boycotted and ruined. To Dhunkore her chief trouble was the thought of the grief this step would occasion to her mother (with whom she lived). She might be intimate with Madhowdas “under the rose”—that would be venial; she might if there were any serious consequences go a “pilgrimage,” as so many widows do, to some quiet place where a delivery would not attract attention; but to be publicly married—that could never be forgiven. Not only her wealthy relations, but even her mother, would never see her again. So inexcusable would be the act, so dire its consequences.

Nevertheless the pair decided to go through with it. With the utmost secrecy they made their preparations, knowing well that if any rumors got abroad the arrangements would likely be interfered with by mercenary violence; the young woman might even be kidnapped—as had happened in a similar case before. Only sympathisers and a few witnesses were invited to the actual ceremony, which however was safely performed—partly owing to the presence of a European officer and a body of police! The next morning the Times of India, the Gazette, and other Bombay papers were out with an account of the widow re-marriage, and the native city was convulsed with excitement—the community being immediately divided (though very unequally) into two hostile camps over their views of it.

The mother’s alarm at the mysterious disappearance of Dhunkore was only partly allayed when she found among her daughter’s trinkets a little note: “Be it known to my dear mother that not being able to bear the cruel pangs of widowhood, I forsook all kinds of food, and ate only a piece of curd every day. The consequence was that I became very weak, but did not die, as I hoped.... My dear mother, it is not at all likely that we shall meet again hereafter. You may therefore take me for dead. But I shall be very happy if I ever hear from the lips of any one that you are all doing well. I have not done this thing at the instigation of any one, but have resolved upon it of my own free will; so you will not blame anybody for it. I have taken away nothing from your house, and you will kindly see for yourself that your property is quite safe....” And the alarm was changed into dismay when the news came of what had really happened. A meeting of wealthy relations and influential members of the caste was called; everything was done to damage the credit and ruin the business of Madhowdas; and finally he and his wife were solemnly excommunicated!

The pair however struggled on, contending against many difficulties and trials, and supported by a few friends, both among their own caste and the resident English, for some years. Though crippled, their worldly prospects were not ruined. Gradually Madhowdas established himself and his business, drew round him a small circle of the more advanced spirits, settled in a roomy house at Girgaon, and snapped his fingers at his enemies. Indeed his house became a centre of propaganda on the subject of widows’ wrongs, and an asylum for other couples situated as he and his wife had been; meetings, of both English and native speakers, were held there; quite a number of marriages were celebrated there; and it appears that the house, to confirm its mission, now goes by the name of “Widow Re-marriage Hall!”

But what I set out to note in telling this story was the curious way in which wealth asserts itself even in the caste system of India to form a tyranny of so-called respectability and of orthodoxy—dividing the caste, in some cases at any rate, into distinct parties not unlike those which exist in our society at home. “The real opponents of widow re-marriage,” says Madhowdas in his book, “are not generally the simple and poor members of a caste, but its Shetthias. They pose before the public as the most enlightened members of their caste. In their conversation with European or Parsi acquaintances they declare themselves to be ardent advocates of social reform, and they pretend to deplore the folly, the stupidity, and the ignorance of their caste-fellows. But as a matter of fact it is these same Shetthias, these leading citizens, these enlightened members of society, who are really the bitterest and most uncompromising enemies of social progress.... Can the reformer turn to the educated classes for help? I am grieved to say, yet the truth must be told, that their moral fibre is capable of a great deal of strengthening; and as to their active faculties, they still lie perfectly dormant. They have indeed the intelligence to perceive social evils. But their moral indignation on the tyranny and barbarism of custom evaporates in words.... A race of idle babblers these. They will speak brave words from the political platform about their country’s wrongs and their countrymen’s rights. But talk to them of something to be done, some little sacrifice to be made, they will shrink away, each one making his own excuse for his backsliding.... The world generally believes them; and if they occasionally give a few thousand rupees towards some charity, their reputation for liberality and large-mindedness is confirmed still more, and their fame is trumpeted forth by newspapers as men of munificence and enlightenment.”

* * * * *

It must not be thought however, because the caste-system is in many ways corrupt and effete, that it is without its better and more enduring features—even in the present day. Within the caste there is a certain communal feeling, which draws or tends to draw all the members together, as forming a corporate body for common ends and fellowship, and giving every member a claim on the rest in cases of distress or disability. Moreover a great many of the castes, being founded on hereditary occupation, form trade societies, having their own committees of management, and rules and regulations, fines, feasts and mutual benefit arrangements, almost quite similar to our old trade-guilds and modern unions. Thus there are the goldsmiths (a powerful caste which in South India, says Hunter, for centuries resisted the rule of the Brahmans, and claimed to be the religious teachers, and wore the sacred thread), the brass-workers, the weavers, the fishers, and scores of others—each divided into numerous sub-sections. The caste-guild in these cases regulates wages, checks competition, and punishes delinquents; the decisions of the guild being enforced by fines, by causing the offender to entertain all his fellows at a feast, and by other sanctions. The guild itself derives its funds not only from fines, but also from entrance fees paid by those beginning to practise the craft, and from other sources. In any case whether trade-guild or not, the caste—while it assures its members against starvation—exercises a continual surveillance over them, as we have seen in the case of Madhowdas—extending to excommunication and even expulsion. Excommunication being of three kinds: (1) from eating with other members of the caste, (2) from marriage with them, and (3) from use of the local barber, washerman, and priest. Expulsion is rare; and it is said that it seldom takes place unless the offender is a real bad lot.

As an instance of trade-unionism in caste, Hunter mentions the case of the bricklayers at Ahmedabad in 1873. Some of the bricklayers were working overtime, and thus were getting a few pence a day extra, while at the same time others of them were unemployed. The guild therefore held a meeting, and decided to forbid the overtime—the result of which was that employment was found for all.

When I was at Kurunégala in Ceylon, an amusing dispute took place between the barber caste and the Brahmans of the locality. The barbers—though a very necessary element of Hindu society, as shaving is looked upon as a very important, almost religious, function, and is practised in a vast variety of forms by the different sections—are still somewhat despised as a low caste; and it appeared that the Brahmans of the place had given offence to them by refusing to enter the barbers’ houses in order to perform certain religious ceremonies and purifications—the Brahmans no doubt being afraid of contaminating themselves thereby. Thereupon the barbers held a caste meeting, and decided to boycott the Brahmans by refusing to shave them. This was a blow to the latter, as without being properly scraped they could not perform their ceremonies, and to have to shave themselves would be an unheard-of indignity. They therefore held a meeting, the result of which was that they managed to get a barber from a distant place—a kind of blackleg—who probably belonged to some other section of the barber community—to come over and do their scraping for them. Things went on merrily thus for a while, and the blackleg no doubt had good times, when—in consequence of another barbers’ meeting—he was one day spirited away, and disappeared for good, being seen no more. The barbers also, in defiance of the Brahmans, appointed a priest from among their own body to do their own religious choring for them—and the Brahmans were routed all along the line. What steps were taken after this I do not know, as about that time I left the place.

When at Bombay I had another instance of how the caste-guild acts as a trade-union, and to check competition among its members. I was wanting to buy some specimens of brass-work, and walking down a street where I knew there were a number of brass-workers’ shops, was surprised to find them all closed. I then proposed to my companion, who was a Hindu, that we should go to another street where there were also brass-workers’ shops; but he said it would be no good, as he believed this was a half-holiday of the brass-workers’ caste. “But,” I said, “if it is a half-holiday, there may yet be some who will keep their shops open in order to get the custom.” “Oh, no,” he replied with a smile at my ignorance, “they would not do that; it would be against all caste rules.”

Thus we see that the caste-system contains valuable social elements, and ancient as it is may even teach us a lesson or two in regard to the organization of trades.

When we come to the other great feature of Indian social life, Communism, we find it existing under three great forms—agricultural, caste, and family communism. Of the first of these—agricultural communism—I know personally but little, having had no opportunity of really studying the agricultural life. The conditions of village tenure vary largely all over India, but apparently in every part there may be traced more or less distinctly the custom of holding lands in common, as in the primitive village life of Germany and England. In most Indian villages there are still extensive outlying lands which are looked upon as the property of the community; and of the inlying and more settled lands, their cultivation, inheritance, etc., are largely ruled by common custom and authority. Maine, however, points out in his Village Communities that the sense of individual property, derived from contact with the West, is even now rapidly obliterating these ancient customs of joint tenure.

Of the second, the caste communism, I have already spoken. It no doubt is less strongly marked than it was; but still exists, not certainly as an absolute community of goods, but as a community of feeling and interest, and some degree of mutual assistance among the members of the caste. The third is the family communism; and this is still pretty strongly marked, though the first beginnings of its disintegration are now appearing.

In speaking of the Family it must be understood that a much larger unit is meant than we should denote by the term—comparatively distant relations being included; and there seems to be a tacit understanding that the members of this larger Family or Clan have a claim on each other, so that any one in need can fairly expect support and assistance from the others, and without feeling humiliated by receiving it. This has its good side—in the extended family life and large-heartedness that it produces, as well as in its tendency to keep wealth distributed and to prevent people playing too much for their own hands; but it has its drawbacks, chiefly in the opportunity it affords to idle “ne’er-do-weels” to sponge upon their friends.

I have mentioned the case (p. 90) of a young man who came to read English with me in Ceylon, and who, though married and having children, turned out to be living with and dependent on his parents. I must not speak of this as a case of a ne’er-do-weel, as the fellow was genuinely interested in literature, and was in the habit of giving lectures on philosophy in his native place—and if one began calling such people names, one might not know where to stop; but to our Western notions it was a curious arrangement. Certainly a Bengali gentleman whom I met one day complained to me very bitterly of the system. He said that he was in an official position and receiving a moderate salary, and the consequence was that his relatives all considered him a fair prey. He not only had his own wife and children, and his father and mother, to support—of which he would not make a grievance; but he had two or three younger brothers, who though of age had not yet found anything to do, and were calmly living on at his cost; and besides these there were two aunts of his, who had both married one man. The husband of the aunts had died leaving one of them with children, and now he, the complainant, was expected to provide for both aunts and children, besides the rest of his family already mentioned! To a man once bitten with the idea of “getting on” in the Western sense of the word, one can imagine how galling it must be to have indefinite strings of relations clinging around one’s neck; and one can guess how forcibly the competitive idea is already beginning to act towards the disruption of family communism.

In Calcutta and other places I noticed considerable numbers of grown youths loafing about with nothing to do, and apparently with no particular intention of doing anything as long as their friends would support them. And this no doubt is a great evil, but I think it would be hardly fair to lay it all at the door of the family communal habits. It is rather to the contact of the old communal life with the new order of things, and to the dislocation of the former which ensues, that we must attribute the evil. For under the old order a youth growing up would no doubt, by the obligations of his caste, religion, etc., have his duties and calling so distinctly set out for him, that the danger of his giving himself up to idleness and infringing on the hospitality of his family would seldom arise; but now the commercial and competitive régime, while loosening his old caste and religious sanctions, often leaves him quite unprovided with any opening in life—indeed forbids him an opening except at the cost of a struggle with his fellows—and so tempts him to relapse into a state of dependence.

The closeness of the family tie still subsisting is, when all is said, a beautiful thing. The utmost respect is accorded to parents; and to strike a father or mother is (as I think I have already remarked) an almost unheard-of crime. I was much impressed in talking to Justice Telang at Bombay by the way in which he spoke of his parents. I had asked him whether he intended coming over to England for the National Congress—to be held in London in 1893—and reply was that he should like to, but his parents “would not let him” (no doubt on account of the loss of caste in crossing the sea). This from a man of forty, and one of the leading Mahrattas, indeed one of the most influential politicians in Bombay, was sufficiently striking; but it was said with a tenderness that made one feel that he would forego almost anything rather than wound those of whom he spoke.

Thus as in the social progress of the West the sword descending divides, with often painful estrangement, brother from sister, and child from parent; so is it also in the East. Only that in the East the closeness of the parental tie makes the estrangement more odious and more painful, and adds proportionately to the obstacles which lie in the path of progress.

CHAPTER XIX.
THE NEW INFLUENCES: WESTERN SCIENCE AND COMMERCIALISM.

The first objects that I saw in India—indeed I saw them while still well out at sea—were a lighthouse and a factory chimney! This was at Tuticorin, a little place in the extreme south; but afterwards I found that these objects represented remarkably well the vast spread of Western influences all over the country, in their two great main forms, science and commercialism.

I had no idea, until I landed, how Western ideas and education have of late years overrun the cities and towns, even down to the small towns, of India; but I was destined to be speedily enlightened on this subject. Having a few hours to spare at Tuticorin, I was walking up and down by the sad sea-waves when I noticed a youth of about seventeen reading a book. Glancing over his shoulder, to my surprise I saw it was our old friend “Todhunter’s Euclid.” The youth looked like any other son of the people, undistinguished for wealth or rank—for in this country there is no great distinction in dress between rich and poor—simply clad in his cotton or muslin wrap, with bare head and bare feet; and naturally I remonstrated with him on his conduct. “O yes,” he said in English, “I am reading Euclid—I belong to Bishop Caldwell’s College.”—“Bishop Caldwell’s College?”—“Yes,” he said, “it is a large college here, with 200 boys, from ages of 13 or 14 up to 23 or 24.”—“Indeed, and what do you read?”—“Oh, we read Algebra and Euclid,” he replied enthusiastically, “and English History and Natural Science and Mill’s Political Economy, and” (but here his voice fell a semitone) “we learn two chapters of the Bible by heart every day.” By this time other boys had come up, and I soon found myself the centre of a small crowd, and conversing to them about England, and its well-known scholars and politicians, and a variety of things about which they asked eager questions. “Come and see the college,” at last they said, seeing I was interested; and so we adjourned—a troop of about fifty—into a courtyard containing various school-buildings. There did not seem to be any masters about, and after showing me some of the class-rooms, which were fitted up much like English class-rooms, they took me to the dormitory. The dormitory was a spacious room or hall, large enough I daresay to accommodate most of the scholars, but to my surprise it contained not a single bit of furniture—not a bed or a chair or a table, far less a washstand; only round the wall on the floor were the boys’ boxes—mostly small enough—and grass mats which, unrolled at night, they used for sleeping on. This (combined with J. S. Mill) was plain living and high thinking indeed. Seeing my look of mingled amusement and surprise, they said with a chuckle, “Come and see the dining-hall”—lo! another room of about the same size—this time with nothing in it, except plates distributed at equal distances about the floor! The meal hour was just approaching, and the boys squatting down with crossed feet took each a plate upon his lap, while serving-men going round with huge bowls of curry and rice supplied them with food, which they ate with their fingers.

It certainly impressed me a good deal to find a high level of Western education going on, and among boys, many of them evidently from their conversation intelligent enough, under such extremely simple conditions, and in so unimportant a place as Tuticorin might appear. But I soon found that similar institutions—not all fortunately involving two chapters of the Bible every day, and not all quite so simple in their interior instalments—existed all over the land. Not only are there universities at Madras, Calcutta and Bombay, granting degrees on a broad foundation of Western learning, and affiliated to Oxford and Cambridge in such a way that the student, having taken his B.A. at either of the Indian universities, can now take a further degree at either of the English ones after two years’ residence only; but there are important colleges and high schools in all the principal towns; and a graduated network of instruction down to the native village schools all over the land. Besides these there are medical colleges, such as the Grant Medical College at Bombay; women’s colleges, like the Bethune College at Calcutta, which has fifty or sixty women students, and which passed six women graduates in the Calcutta university examinations in 1890; and other institutions. In most cases the principals of these higher institutions are English, but the staff is largely native.

And as a part of Western education I suppose one may include our games and sports, which are rapidly coming into use and supplanting, in populous centres, the native exercises. It is a curious and unexpected sight to see troops of dark-skinned and barefooted lads and men playing cricket—but it is a sight one may meet with in any of the towns now-a-days in the cooler weather. At Bombay the maidans are simply crowded at times with cricketers—Parsee clubs, Hindu clubs, Eurasians, English—I reckoned I could count a score of pitches one day from the place where I was sitting. The same at Calcutta. The same at Nagpore, with golf going on as well. Yet one cannot help noticing the separation of the different sections of the population, even in their games—the English cricket-ground, the “second-class” English ground, the Eurasian ground, the Hindu and Mahomedan—all distinct!

The effect of this rush of Western ideas and education is of course what one might expect—and what I have already alluded to once or twice—namely, to discredit the old religion and the old caste-practices. As my friend the schoolmaster said at Calcutta, “No one believes in all this now”; by no one meaning no one who belongs to the new movement and has gone through the Western curriculum—the “young India.”

The question may be asked then, What does the young India believe in? It has practically abandoned the religion of its fathers, largely scoffs at it, does it accept Christianity in any form in its place? I believe we may reply No. Christianity in its missions and its Salvation armies, though it may move a little among the masses, does not to any extent touch the advanced and educated sections. No, the latter read Mill, Spencer and Huxley, and they have quite naturally and in good faith adopted the philosophy of their teachers—the scientific materialism which had its full vogue in England some twenty years ago, but which is now perhaps somewhat on the wane. As one of these enthusiasts said to me one day, “We are all Agnostics now.” With that extraordinary quickness and receptivity which is one of the great features of the Hindu mind, though beginning the study so much later in the day, they have absorbed the teachings of modern science and leapt to its conclusions almost as soon as we have in the West. That the movement will remain at this point seems to me in the highest degree unlikely. There may be a reaction back to the old standpoint, or, what is more hopeful, a forward effort to rehabilitate the profound teachings of their forefathers into forms more suited to the times in which we live, and freed from the many absurdities which have gathered round the old tradition.

* * * * *

The second great factor in modern India is the growth of Commercialism. This is very remarkable, and is likely to be more so. Not only at Tuticorin, but at a multitude of places are factory chimneys growing up. At Nagpore I saw a cotton-mill employing hundreds of hands. At Bombay there are between thirty and forty large cotton-mills, there is a manufacturing quarter, and a small forest of chimneys belching forth their filth into the otherwise cloudless blue.

I visited one of the largest of these mills (that of the United Spinning and Weaving Co.) with a friend who at one time had worked there. It was the counterpart of at Lancashire cotton-mill. There was the same great oblong building in three or four storeys, the same spinning jenny and other machinery (all of course brought out from England, and including a splendid high-pressure condensing engine of 2,000 H.P.), the same wicked roar and scream of wheels, and the same sickening hurry and scramble. But how strange to see the poor thin oysters working under the old familiar conditions of dirt and unhealth—their dark skins looking darker with grease and dust, their passive faces more passive than ever—to see scores of Hindu girls with huge ear-rings and nose-rings threading their way among the machinery, looking so small, compared with our women, and so abstracted and dreamy that it hardly seemed safe. And here a little naked boy about 10 years of age, minding a spinning jenny and taking up the broken threads, as clever and as deft as can be. Fortunately the Hindu mind takes things easier than the English, and refuses to be pressed; for the hours are shamefully long and there is but little respite from toil.

There is no doubt that great fortunes have been and are being made in this cotton business. It can hardly be otherwise, for as long as Manchester is in the market the goods of Bombay are in a line as to price with the products of English manufacture; but they are produced at very much less cost. I suppose the average wage for adults in one of these mills is not more than 8d. a day (if so much), and the difference between this and 2s. 8d. a day say as in England, gives 2s. per diem saved on each employee. In the mill that I visited there are 1,100 hands—say 1,000 adults; that gives a saving of 1,000 × 2 shillings, or £100, a day; or £30,000 a year. Against this must be set the increased price of coal, which they get all the way from England (the coal of the country being inferior) at Rs. 15 to 17 per ton—say 25 tons a day at 20s. added cost to what it would be in England—i.e., £25 a day, or £7,500 a year. Then it is clear that despite this and some other drawbacks, the balance in favor of production in India is very great; and the dividends of the cotton-mills at Bombay certainly show it, for they run at 20, 25, 50 and even 80 per cent., with very few below 20.

It is clear that such profits as these are likely to draw capital out to India in rapidly increasing degree, and we may expect a vast development of manufacturing industry there during the next decade or two. The country—or at any rate the town-centres—will be largely commercialised. And as far as the people themselves are concerned, though the life in mills is wretched enough, still it offers a specious change from the dull round of peasant labor, and something like a secure wage (if only a pittance) to a man who in his native village would hardly see the glint of coin from one year’s end to another; the bustle and stir of the town too is an attraction; and so some of the same causes which have already in England brought about the depletion of the land in favor of the congestion of the cities, are beginning to work in India.

Then beside the manual employment which our commercial institutions provide there are innumerable trading posts and clerkships, connected with merchants’ houses, banks, railways, post-offices, and all manner of public works, all of which practically are filled by natives; and some of which, with the moderate salaries attached, are eagerly sought after. One hardly realises till one sees it, how completely these great organizations are carried on—except for perhaps one or two Englishmen at the head—by native labor; but when one does see this one realises also how important a part of the whole population this section—which is thus ministering to and extending the bounds of modern life—is becoming. And this section again is supplemented by at least an equally numerous section which, if not already employed in the same way, is desirous of becoming so. And of course among both these sections Western ideals and standards flourish; competition is gradually coming to be looked on as a natural law of society; and Caste and the old Family system are more or less rapidly disintegrating.

* * * * *

Such changes as these are naturally important, and indeed in an old and conservative country like India strike one as very remarkable—but they are made even more important by the political complexion they have of late years assumed. In the National Indian Congress we see that not only the outer forms of life and thought, but the political and social ideas which belong to the same stage of historical development, have migrated from West to East. The people—or at least those sections of it of which we are speaking—are infected not only with Darwin and Huxley, but with a belief in the ballot, in parliaments and town-councils, and in constitutionalism and representative government generally. The N. I. C. brings together from 1,000 to 1,500 delegates annually from all parts of India, representing a variety of different races and sections, and elected in many of the larger towns with the utmost enthusiasm; and this by itself is a striking fact—a fact quite comparable in its way with the meetings of the Labor Congresses in late years in the capitals of Europe. Its conferences have been mostly devoted to such political questions as the application of the elective principle to municipal and imperial councils, and to such social questions as that of child-marriage; and these subjects and the speeches concerning them are again reviewed and reported by a great number of newspapers printed both in English and the vernacular tongues, and having a large circulation. Certainly it is probable that the Congresses will not immediately lead to any very striking results—indeed it is hard to see how they could do so; but the fact of the existence of the N. I. C. movement alone is a pregnant one, and backed as it is by economical changes, it is not likely—though it may change its form—to evaporate into mere nothingness.

In fact—despite the efforts of certain parties to minimise it—it seems to me evident that we are face to face with an important social movement in India. What the upshot of it may be no one probably can tell—it may subside again in time, or it may gather volume and force towards some definite issue; but it certainly cannot be ignored. The Pagetts, M.P., may be ponderously superficial about it, but the Kiplings merry are at least equally far from the truth. Of course in actual numerical strength as compared with the whole population the party may be small; but then, as in other such movements, since it is just the most active and energetic folk who join them, their import cannot be measured by mere numbers. It is useless again to say that because the movement is not acknowledged by the peasants, or by the religious folk, or because it is regarded with a jealous eye by certain sections, that therefore it is of no account; because similar things are always said and always have been said of every new social effort—in its inception—however popular or influential it may afterwards become.

The question which is most interesting at this juncture to any one who recognises that there really is something like a change of attitude taking place in the Indian peoples, is: How do the Anglo-Indians regard this change? and my answer to this—though given with diffidence—since it is a large generalisation and there may be, certainly are, many exceptions to it—is: I believe that taken as a whole the Anglos look upon it with a mingled sentiment of Fear and Dislike. I think they look upon the movement with a certain amount of Fear—perhaps not unnaturally. The remembrance of the Mutiny of ’57 is before them; they feel themselves to be a mere handful among millions. And I am sure they look upon it with Dislike, for as said above there is no real touch, no real sympathy, between them and the native races. However it may be for the liberalising Englishman at home to indulge in a sentimental sympathy with the aspiring oyster, the Britisher in India feels that the relation is only tolerable as long as there is a fixed and impassable distinction between the ruler and the ruled. Take that away, let the two races come into actual contact on an equality, and ... but the thought is not to be endured.

And this feeling of race-dislike is I think—as I have hinted in an earlier chapter—enhanced by the fact that the Britisher in India is a “class” man in his social feeling. I have several times had occasion to think that the bulk-people of the two countries—though by no means agreeing with each other—would, if intercourse were at all possible, get on better together than the actual parties do at present. The evils of a commercial class-government which we are beginning to realise so acutely at home—the want of touch between the rulers and the ruled, the testing of all politics by the touchstone of commercial profits and dividends, the consequent enrichment of the few at the expense of the many, the growth of slum and factory life, and the impoverishment of the peasant and the farmer, are curiously paralleled by what is taking place in India; and in many respects it is becoming necessary to realise that some of our difficulties in India are not merely such as belong to the country itself, but are part and parcel of the same problem which is beginning to vex us at home—the social problem, namely. The same narrowness of social creed, the entire decadence of the old standards of gentle birth without their replacement by any new ideal, worthy to be so called, the same trumpery earmarks of society-connection, etc., distinguish the ruling classes in one country as in the other; and in both are the signals of coming change.

At the same time it would be absurd to assume that the native of India is free from serious defects which make the problem, to the Anglo-Indian, ever so much more difficult of solution. And of these probably the tendency to evasion, deceit, and underhand dealing is the most serious. The Hindu especially with his subtle mind and passive character is thus unreliable; it is difficult to find a man who will stick with absolute fidelity to his word, or of whom you can be certain that his ostensible object is his real one; and naturally this sort of thing creates estrangement.

To my mind this social gulf existing between the rulers and the ruled is the most pregnant fact of our presence in India—the one that calls most for attention, and that looms biggest with consequences for the future. Misunderstandings of all kinds flow from it. “When this want of intercourse,” says Beck in his Essays on Indian Topics, “between the communities or a reasonable number of people of each, is fixed on my attention, I often feel with a sinking of the heart that the end of the British Indian Empire is not far distant.”

I have already pointed out (p. 276) how clear it is by the example of Aligarh that friendly intercourse is possible between the two sections—though we have allowed that it is difficult to bring about. Mr. Beck corroborates this in his Essays by strong expressions. He says (p. 89), “An Englishman would probably be dubbed a lunatic if he confessed that the only thing which made life tolerable in his Indian exile was the culture, the interest, and the affection he found in native society. Such an Englishman will therefore at most hint at his condition”; and again—“As one whose circumstances have compelled him to see more of the people of India than the average Englishman, I can only say that the effort repays itself, and that, incredible though it may appear, all degrees of friendship are possible between the Anglo-Indian and his Eastern fellow-subject.” And further on, after urging the importance, the vast importance, of cultivating this intercourse, and so attempting to bridge the fatal gulf, he says:—“To know the people, and to be so trusted by them that they will open out to us the inmost recesses of their hearts; to see them daily; to come to love them as those who have in their nature but an average share of affection cannot help loving them when they know them well—this is our ideal for the Indian civilian. Some Englishmen act up to this ideal: in the early days of our rule several did. If it become the normal thing the Indian Empire will be built upon a rock so that nothing can shake it. Agitation and sedition will vanish as ugly shadows. Had it existed in 1857 the crash would not have come.”

The writer of the above paragraphs thinks nothing of the N. I. C. movement, or rather I should say thinks unfavorably of it; but of the importance of bridging the social gulf he cannot say enough—and in this latter point, as far as I feel competent to form an opinion at all, I entirely agree with him. But will it ever be bridged? Unfortunately the few who share such sentiments as those I have quoted are very few and far between—and of those the greater number must as I have already explained be tied and bound in the chains of officialdom. “The Anglo-Indian world up to the hour when the great tragedy of ’57 burst upon them was busily amusing itself as best it can in this country with social nothings”—and how is it amusing itself now? The most damning fact that I know against the average English attitude towards the natives, is the fact that one of the very few places besides Aligarh, where there is any cordial feeling between the two parties, is Hyderabad—a place in which, on account of its being under the Nizam, the officials are natives, and their position therefore prevents their being trampled on!

* * * * *

If the Congress movement is destined to become a great political movement, it must it seems to me eventuate in one of two ways—either in violence and civil war, owing to determined hostility on the part of our Government and the continual widening of the breach between the two peoples; or,—which is more likely—if our Government grants more and more representative power to the people—in the immense growth of political and constitutional life among them, and the gradual drowning out of British rule thereby. There is a third possibility—namely the withdrawal of our government, owing to troubles and changes at home. Either of these alternatives would only be the beginning of long other vistas of change, which we need not attempt to discuss. They all involve the decadence of our political power in India, and certainly, situated as we are—unable to really inhabit the country and adapt ourselves to the climate, and with growing social forces around us—I can neither see nor imagine any other conclusion.

The Congress movement being founded on the economical causes—the growth of commercialism, etc.—it is hard to believe that it will not go on and spread. Certainly it may alter its name and programme; but granted that commercialism is going to establish itself, it is surely impossible to imagine it will do so, among so acute and subtle a people as the Hindus, without bringing with it the particular forms of political life which go with it, and really belong to it.

One of the most far-reaching and penetrating ways in which this Western movement is influencing India is in its action on the sense of property. The conception of property, as I have already pointed out once or twice, is gradually veering from the communistic to the highly individualistic. In all departments, whether in the family or the township or the caste, the idea of joint possession or joint regulation of goods or land for common purposes is dying out in favor of separate and distinct holding for purely individual ends. It is well known what an immense revolution in the structure of society has taken place, in the history of various races and peoples, when this change of conception has set in. Nor is it likely that India will prove altogether an exception to the rule. For the change is going on not only—as might fairly be expected—in the great cities, where Western influence is directly felt, but even in the agricultural regions, where ever since the British occupation it has been slowly spreading, partly through the indirect action of British laws and land settlements, and partly through the gradual infiltration, in a variety of ways, of commercial and competitive modes of thought.

Now no estimate of Indian affairs and movements can be said to be of value, which does not take account of the weight—one might say the dead weight—of its agricultural life: the 80 or 90 per cent. of the population who live secluded in small villages, in the most primitive fashion, with their village goddess and their Hindu temple—hardly knowing what government they live under, and apparently untouched from age to age by invention and what we call progress. Nor can the conservative force so represented be well exaggerated. But if even this agricultural mass is beginning to slide, we have indeed evidence that great forces are at work. If the village communities are going to break up, and the old bonds of rural society to dissolve, we may be destined to witness, as Henry Maine suggests, the recurrence of “that terrible problem of pauperism which began to press on English statesmen as soon as the old English cultivating groups began distinctly to fall to pieces.” “In India however,” he says, “the solution will be far more difficult than it has proved here.”

All this assumes the continued spread and growth of the commercial ideal in India—which is a large question, and wide in its bearings. Considering all the forces which tend now-a-days in that direction, and the apparent inevitableness of the thing as a phase of modern life at home, its growth in India for some years to come seems hardly doubtful. But it is a curious phenomenon. Anything more antagonistic to the genius of ancient India—the Wisdom-land—than this cheap-and-nasty, puffing profit-mongering, enterprising, energetic, individualistic, “business,” can hardly be imagined; and the queer broil witnessed to-day in cities like Bombay and Calcutta only illustrates the incongruity. To Hindus of the old school, with their far-back spiritual ideal, a civilisation like ours, whose highest conception of life and religion is the General Post Office, is simply Anathema. I will quote a portion of a letter received from an Indian friend on the subject, which gives an idea of this point of view. Referring to the poverty of the people—

“All this terrible destitution and suffering throughout one-seventh of the world’s population has been brought about without any benefit to the English people themselves. It has only benefited the English capitalists and professional classes. The vaunted administrative capacity of the English is a fiction. They make good policemen and keep order, when the people acquiesce—that is all. If this acquiescence ceases, as it must, when the people rightly or wrongly believe their religion and family life in danger from the government, the English must pack up and go, and woe to the English capitalist and professional man! I feel more and more strongly every day that the English with their commercial ideals and standards and institutions have done far more to ruin the country than if it had been overrun periodically by hordes of savage Tatars.”

That Commercialism is bringing and will bring great evils in its train, in India as elsewhere—the sapping of the more manly and martial virtues, the accentuation of greed and sophistry, the dominance of the money-lender—I do not doubt; though I do not quite agree with the above denunciation. I think if the English have infested and plagued poor India, it is greatly the fault of the Indians themselves who in their passiveness and lethargy have allowed it to be so. And I think—taking perhaps on my side a too optimistic view—that this growing industrialism and mechanical civilisation may (for a time) do much good, in the way of rousing up the people, giving definition, so much needed, to their minds and work, and instilling among them the Western idea of progress, which in some ways fallacious has still its value and use.

Only for a time however. We in England, now already witnessing the beginning of the end of the commercial régime, are becoming accustomed to the idea that it is only a temporary phase; and in India where, as I have said, the whole genius of the land and its traditions is so adverse to such a system, and the weight of ancient custom so enormous, we can hardly expect that it will take such hold as here, or run through quite so protracted a course of years. Commercialism will no doubt greatly modify and simplify the caste system—but to the caste system in some purified form I am inclined to think the people will return; it will do something also to free the women—give them back at least as much freedom as they had in early times and before the Mahomedan conquests, if not more; and finally Western science will strongly and usefully criticise the prevalent religious systems and practices, and give that definition and materialism to the popular thought which is so sadly wanting in the India of to-day; but the old underlying truths of Indian philosophy and tradition it will not touch. This extraordinary possession—containing the very germ of modern democracy—which has come all down the ages as the special heritage and mission of the Indian peoples, will remain as heretofore indestructible and unchanged, and will still form, we must think, the rallying point of Indian life; but it is probable and indeed to be hoped that the criticism of Western thought, by clearing away a lot of rubbish, will help to make its outline and true nature clearer to the world. However there we must leave the matter.

THE END.

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Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.