Life and religion of the Hindoos.

by Joguth Chunder Gangooly

PREFACE.

To speak of one’s self is not an easy matter. There are two things to be avoided,—vanity, which would cause one to put on what he never possessed, to say what he never was, and thereby to exaggerate the whole matter; second, cowardly humiliation, which would lead him to hide what he really has, and not to say what he has a right to say, lest the world should call him an egotist. It is better to take the middle ground, and proceed with prayer and watchfulness, keeping in mind “Thou God seest me.”

Since my arrival in this country, my friends have expressed a great desire to know my personal history,—how I was educated, what led me to change my former religious views, etc. This brief sketch, which I leave to my friends as a “parting gift,” will answer all these inquiries in a measure. This has been written in great haste. I have not had time to revise this sketch. Whenever the reader finds a point not clearly explained, he will please remember the circumstances under which this has been written. Only a few weeks before my departure for home I commenced writing it; and at the same time I had to attend to all other duties, and to make preparation for the voyage.

J. C. G.

SKETCH OF MY LIFE.

CHAPTER I.
My Childhood and Education.—My Mother.

I was born of a Brahmun family, in a place called Balie. It is nearly seven miles from Calcutta, the metropolis of British India, and is beautifully situated on the river Ganges, the sacred river of the Hindoos. Balie, for its numerous population, especially the Brahmun, and its learning, is universally regarded as one of the large and renowned places of Bengal. It has several districts, in which the people are settled according to their castes; thus, in our part—the Southern District—the Brahmuns live in one district. The physicians, the astrologers, the barbers, the farmers, the goldsmiths, the blacksmiths, the washermen, the dairymen, the fish-men, the shoemakers, the hog-keepers, etc. have distinct quarters of their own. When you come to a Brahmun, he can introduce you to twenty, more or less, of his fellow Brahmun neighbors; and such is the case with almost all other castes. The Brahmun population of my birthplace numbers more than two thousand. There are several temples in this place; the chief of which is one belonging to the god Shibā. There is a large market, perhaps the largest, where people from the neighboring towns and villages daily buy and sell their merchandise. There are two rum distilleries, owned by two French gentlemen, a large sugar factory, established by an Englishman, I presume; besides several castor-oil, gunny-bag, brick, and rope manufactories. A canal, passing through it, has made its north district a separate town, called Ootterparah, or north village; the other, however, is connected with the main village by two iron suspension bridges, one built by the East India Railway Company, and the other by the Government. The Government bridge is long, and handsomely constructed. As you sail up the Ganges from Calcutta, you see it distinctly on your left, hanging in the air.

There are three or four English schools, and one of them, standing on the Ootterparah side of the canal, belongs to the Government, to which the high castes send their sons for an English education. To come to Balie from Calcutta, the shortest way would be by railroad, which makes its first station here. There are also hundreds of small sailing Dingees, which carry passengers to and from Calcutta several times a day.

My father was a new settler in Balie; his native place is Vimpoor, of which I have no knowledge. While a young boy he was left an orphan, and with the care of a brother younger than himself. The only near relation he had was his aunt, the wife of a celebrated priest in Balie, who kindly invited the two orphan brothers to live with her. I cannot help speaking, if but a word, in this connection, of his uncle, as he seems to have been a very good and righteous man. The simplicity of his character, his devotion to good causes, his love for his fellow-creatures, were purely Christian. Among all his noble acts of charity, the most prominent was his taking care of the orphans, houseless, friendless, and helpless ones. He himself did not, as we hear, have a large family of his own,—not numbering more than eight members; still every day the floor of his dining-room had been overspread with twenty plates or more. His guests were not from his own caste exclusively; any child of God coming to his door for food or drink, would meet a loving welcome. Indeed, to love God through love toward man, was his darling motto. He manifested his love towards the low castes as much as his office and his religion allowed him. His door was open to all,—his house was the home for those who had “no place where to lay their heads.” Like other priests, he used to bathe in the Ganges early in the morning throughout the year, but excelled them in his prayer and worship to the idols, which occupied daily nearly four hours on the stretch. By two in the afternoon he would come into the inner department of the house, and speak words of love to all around, inquiring of one after his health, congratulating another on his success, lamenting with a third his sorrows, etc. Entering into the kitchen, the first question to his wife would be, “Has every one got something to eat?” And receiving a satisfactory answer, he would put his hand on her head, with the benediction, “Yes! God has answered my prayer then!”

As this good old man had no time to inspect, nor inclination to interfere with, the private proceedings of his guests, there arose a universal outbreak of looseness and corruption of manners to which my uncle fell a victim. But fortunately, my father, conscious of his own responsibility as a moral agent, and desirous of becoming independent, escaped the general contagion which was then making dreadful havoc among his friends. But he could not save his younger brother, who chose his own course, and ran headlong to destruction. Applying himself diligently to the pursuit of theology, my father soon was able to take care of the temple services, and to help his uncle in the discharge of his priestly functions. By and by, serving as an assistant to a Brahmun,—the priest over a wealthy family in Calcutta,—he stood on a firm footing, married a wife, and determined to build a house and remove his family into it. There was a piece of land close by his aunt’s, which he bought with a small sum for the following reason. There were some cocoa-nut, mango, and other wild trees on that lot which were, as they believed, the homes of demons, so hardly anybody dared to go to gather fruits thereon. It happened that my father, being a young man of courage and good common sense, fearlessly used to go there after the fruits which otherwise would have been left on the ground untouched by human hands. The owner of the lot, finding that my father enjoyed all the fruits of his trees which he had given up for fear of demons, thought it prudent to sell it to him for a reasonable sum. My father availed himself of the opportunity, and secured the lot with all its trees, and speedily built a house on it. He often used to say, he had driven all the demons from his place with “prayer and fasting” unto the god Rama. It would have been difficult for him to have moved to his new house, had it not been that my mother’s courage was strong as his. For this new place had so bad a reputation that her female neighbors did not dare to call on her in the evening, for fear of the demons. She believed in their existence, but feared them not, saying, that if we behave well and do not offend them, no demon would trouble us in the least. I used to hear from her the stories of the demons coming invisibly near the house in the shades of midnight, and filling the place with the fragrance of some exquisite flowers. Such fragrant flowers she knew did not grow in the neighborhood. Four or five years after my father had removed to his new house a misfortune happened to the family. He was on a visit to a friend in a neighboring town, and my mother was left in care of a female servant. It was dark midnight when “the object on the lap could not be recognized;” she was sleeping in a room with her infant Joguth,—myself,—and the favorite domestic was in her own bed close by. Some burglars, taking advantage of my father’s absence, broke through the house, and robbed it almost of its last penny. With a view of taking off the ornaments from the ankles of the sleeping women, one of the burglars touched the feet of my mother and thereby awoke her. She thought perhaps the servant had in her sleep touched her feet with hers, and spoke to her to the following effect: “Your limbs are pretty long, I see, On-nō!” “What made you think so, madam?” “Why, from there you could reach my ankle.” “Your ankles? did I touch them with my feet? I am sure I shall die pretty soon. That’s the reason why I do not wish to lie down close to the Brahmuns, lest I should kick them while sleeping. Sleeping and dining are just the same, you know,” etc. She rises from her bed, puts her hand reverently to my mother’s feet, salutes her, and stretches herself on the bed again. It can only be imagined with what death-like silence the sons of sin heard the conversation, and, waiting a little while, took off the ornaments from my mother’s body by force, and in a few minutes went on their way with a rich spoil. The cries of the women and the child gathered a crowd from the neighborhood. Some Brahmuns examined the house and found it rifled; boxes and chests were empty of their contents, as if they were just brought from the carpenter’s. In fact, such was the entire loss of property, that my mother did not have a second suit of clothing left, and the family had to eat their dinner the next day on banana-leaves, on account of the plates, cups, etc., being all taken away. With a manly resignation my father bore his misfortune; and to add more to his discouragement, the next year his house was broken into and robbed by the same burglars a second time. The chief of these was a man belonging to a respectable family, now living, I presume, who with his son has thrown several families into poverty by robbing them in the midnight gloom! My uncle, being invited to his house, a few years afterwards, recognized the very tumbler he used to drink from at his own house. As the Brahmuns deem it a great sin to swear by the Ganges, no matter under what circumstances, my father did not raise any complaint against the man. He would rather go poor and suffer loss than regain his property, if possible, by swearing before a magistrate. His family grew larger, and what he subsequently earned was consumed for their support; so he never could gain a comfortable position again, in regard to pecuniary prospects.

Nine children were born unto him, of whom five are living. Of the living, the first is my brother, the second and the third are sisters, the fourth is the writer, and the fifth is my youngest sister. Our names, although not in essence, are, in significance, pretty. My oldest brother is named after the god “Krishto and the moon;” the oldest sister is “Drop of Honey;” the second is “Young Beauty;” the meaning of my name is “The Moon of the World;” and our youngest brother, who died at seven, was “The Summer Moon.”

There being no system of female education in Bengal, my father applied all his energies for my training, and being a religious man himself, cared more for the right development of my heart than for my head. I remember distinctly sitting in his lap every evening and committing the prayers, proverbs, etc., to memory.

He had a remarkable faculty of cultivating, improving, and enriching another’s memory. Every evening I had to learn either a part or the whole of a prayer or moral precept, in the Sanscrith poetry, and to recite to him all the old ones beside. Thus, while other Brahmun boys of my own age or older knew nothing about proverbs and parables, my memory was amply supplied with the same. With such care he had taught me these things, that what I learned while a boy, perhaps nine or ten years old, I can repeat to-day, word by word, most of it being prayers to nearly twelve deities, such as the Sun, the River Ganges, Doorga, Shibă, Rama, Krishto, etc., and “an hundred and eight proverbs,” besides select pieces from old Sanscrith poems, etc.

He did not aim at crowding my youthful mind with dry, unintelligible precepts, but bathed it with their sweet juice. Indeed, ere I was made Thejo, or Second Born, I could almost draw pleasure from those Sanscrith proverbs, and recognize their applicability to the internal phenomena of the world. My fondness for poetry—which afterwards grew so strong that, though a renouncer of the Hindoo gods, I took much pains to compose several pieces of drama from the legends—was implanted in these younger days. And, as the result of learning the stories and legends of the gods, a deep reverence for them filled my heart. My childhood’s devotion to the idols was exemplary. My dear mother told me several anecdotes of my early days, about my offering or rather reciting prayers to the deities. During the great worship of a goddess in our neighborhood, my father was going to see the theatrical shows late in the evening. He awoke me from my sleep, and gladly I started with him. It was my habit to thank the gods, each by its respective name, before going out of doors. There was an idol of Shawlgram in our house, and as I passed through a narrow entry, I bent my head against the wall of the room in which the image was, and offered prayers. One by one my favorite gods all came into my mind; of course it took a longer time than usual to ask blessings from them all. My father walked almost to the place of worship and turned back to speak to me, but I was not there. Fearing some accident might have happened, or that I was taken aloft by Neeshie, he hastened toward home,[29] and found his little boy slowly striking his head against the wall. He felt doubly happy in learning that nothing unpleasant had happened, and that his boy was growing religious. How little did he know then that a Spirit more hurtful than Neeshie had already taken possession of the tender heart of his son. It was superstition that caused him to “bow down to wood and stone.”

Through his precious help and guidance I early learned to read distinctly and understandingly almost all the Bengalee books containing the lives of the gods. The legends of Ramà, Krishto, the Ganges, etc., were my favorite studies. To do justice to his noble discretion, I should say that he never put any reading of a light character within my reach. I read over and over those religious books, which after a while grew so familiar that I could read the most of them merely by glancing at the page. The fact, that nearly half of my time was occupied in reading became known to the people, who would come to my house or invite me to theirs for the purpose. On holidays, I had to edify them by reading or reciting the sacred things.

Some elderly woman would conduct me to the inner department of a Hindoo house to read to the young women who are inaccessible to young men, and not being themselves taught to read or write are strangers to intellectual pleasures. My age and ability were remarkably adapted to the case, because though a little boy I could accomplish a great deal. I distinctly remember the congregation of women; one fanning me, a second holding a plate full of confectioneries, a third, an old woman, congratulating my mother for her having had such a child, etc. My father would occasionally let me accompany him in his official visits, that the religious zeal of his people might be quickened in hearing the voice of truth “revealed unto the babe.”

I was sent to a Patshala, or house of instruction, at the age of five; but I acquired more at home than anywhere else. Mental arithmetic, letter-writing, composition, etc. I learned from my father. Such was his untiring zeal to load my mind with all possible useful information, that my first acquaintance with a few English words was made through him. His priestly mouth, after imparting instruction in the Sanscrith, would teach me a few words in English, such as the pronouns of different persons and numbers; the word for God, man, hand, dog, etc., which he had picked up in some way, from those who studied English. But I am sorry to see now that the good man taught me two or three phrases in English with which the vulgar people swear. He of course did not know the evil; he thought what the Englishmen use must be delicate, proper, and useful.

Although not educated herself, my mother could teach me a great many things in the absence of my father. She knew the multiplication table up to how much eighteen times nineteen would be; also parables and proverbs, all by heart. She would comment upon and furnish hints on reading, explain difficult passages, and use the best materials in her conversation. She too, like my father, valued more our spiritual than intellectual accomplishments. Respect to age, love and devotion to the idols, honor to parents, faithfulness to conviction, strict observance of the customs of the country, were the themes she dwelt upon. These she would require obstinately, not willing to take off the veil and examine the substance within. How much I had to struggle against from her displeasure when the free tone of my thought and desires after reformation came into collision with her conservatism and adherence to superstitious institutions, I cannot tell. My position, in after years, proved diametrically opposite to her wishes in a great many respects, and she persistently labors, even up to to-day, to reconcile them, not making in the least any surrender on her part though. She exhorted me all the time to observe “every jot and tittle” pertaining to Hindooism, and would apply reason, persuasion, entreaty, and finally threats for the purpose. My oldest brother had not the chance of being under her care, nor of hearing her advice,—being absent from her most of the time,—and he has grown a self-willed, immoral young man. She laments very much over him, and says, “she would take twofold care over Joguth,” lest he too should slip away from the path of right, and disappoint her accordingly. Always she used to say, “He who comes last runs towards the direction in which the first has gone.” That she might not have occasion to suffer again on my account she built some walls around me.

I know no mother in our neighborhood who watched the steps of her sons so vigilantly as mine did. In fact the women of the adjacent houses often said that “they never dreamed of or prescribed such regulations for their children, and that they did not watch their babies so closely as my mother did her adults.” When anything unpleasant, wicked, or vicious happened in the place, she would take the opportunity to warn me, saying, “I hope, Joguth, you would die before you would become guilty of such things. I should feel anxious to leave you alone in this world, in case I should die first, much as it will be a happiness to me. Remember the saying, ‘Let go your life, but retain your honor.’” Her favorite mottoes were the following, which she would always hold before me. When we complained of any one, she would say, “If I am good, the world is good unto me.” In time of temptation, “Conquer within first, and you will conquer without.” When any one is discontented, and cannot live in peace with his brethren, her motto is, “Peace accommodates nine persons in one room, but discord puts them in nine separate ones.” Speaking of quarrelsome persons, her saying was, “She who is naturally quarrelsome would quarrel with her work-basket.” Of those who bring discord, “Wicked man and mouse break; good man and needle connect.” Beside these she had other sayings: “Where there is right, there is victory.” “Walk in the way of righteousness, and you will receive your meal even in the midnight.” “If you want to be the greatest, be the lowest.”

I have observed before that she would watch me on every side. She did not feel satisfied with merely prescribing regulations for me, but with strictness would see them carried out. Sometimes she would put some false charge upon me, in order to teach me a lesson. “Joguth, were you quarreling with the boy?” so saying, she would paint the evil of fighting in dark colors. I was not allowed to dress gay like other young men of my age, nor even to part my hair: “Comb your hair simply; look clean but not foppish.” She would comment upon my mode of walking, smiling, and talking, and give some sharp rebukes if there was any fault in them.

One evening I came very near the kitchen where the women were, walking so slow that none could hear sounds of my steps. To my utter confusion she said, “I am afraid of you, Joguth; what kind of walking was that? You came in, giving no warning with your steps, so slow they were! O Joguth, gentlemen do not do so; thieves do. Were you practising how the thieves walk?” When at home I was not allowed to talk to my aunt, or brother’s wife even. My mother had great fear of young women, saying that man could not corrupt them unless they yield; so more than a dozen times she begged them not to speak to her Joguth.

She does not find any pleasure in gossip and slander, and avoids the place where such are indulged. Her counsel is, “Speak good of others, and bring their evil before you simply for the purpose of deriving admonition from them. We are all liable to make blunders. ‘The saints may err,’ is the Sanscrith saying. Our talking of the imperfections and immoralities of others is just as ridiculous as the censure of the sieve, which cried out, ‘Brother needle, why, there is a hole in your body.’”

In her daily occupation and habits she is worthy of our imitation. She is the last to go to bed and the first to leave it. You awake in the midnight and you will find her at work or whispering hymns; rise early, and you will see she has gone to the Ganges to bathe. Inaction is an abomination to her: she would urge all to do something innocently profitable. She hates debt, and fears it as death itself. At the first call she would pay her debts, even if her children should suffer for it. She believes that he who dies a debtor will have to settle his dues after death; and to confirm this doctrine she points out the trees that grow one upon the other, such as a banian tree upon the trunk of a palm; explaining, thus, that the latter did not pay his debts, so after death he has become a tree, and his creditor grows on his head in the form of a banian. Such is an imperfect sketch of my dear mother, under whose care and supervision my early days were directed. Any good thing I have in me was the gift of this noble woman; she laid it in my heart in its rude state, and a Teacher wiser and more unerring than she has polished it afterwards. May God judge and reward her according to the light she has. To whom much is given of them much shall be required. God grant that before she breathes her last breath, she may know that in deserting the idol gods her son has not committed an unpardonable sin!