FROM MADRAS TO CALCUTTA.—THE TEMPLE AND CAR OF JUGGERNAUT.
From Madras the steamer continued her course up the coast, and touched at two or three ports, where the boys went on shore and wandered for a few hours about the towns and villages; but they did not find much to interest them after what they had already seen. As they returned from one of these excursions the captain of the ship informed them that he had an interesting piece of intelligence to convey, as he was about to stop at a port which was not on the regular programme.
Frank asked what the place was, and on learning its name he immediately went to Doctor Bronson to tell the good news.
"The captain says we are to stop at Pooree," the youth exclaimed; "and Pooree is another name for Juggernaut."
"And we'll see the famous idol of Juggernaut," said Fred, "that crushes thousands of people under its wheels every year."
The Doctor smiled, and asked if they wanted to see the great procession and witness the crushing. Thereupon Frank and Fred turned pale, and began to wish that the steamer would not stop there, as they did not desire to see any suffering that it was in their power to prevent. The deaths of these hundreds of fanatics who throw themselves under the wheels of the car of Juggernaut would be a horrible spectacle, and they wanted to be as far from the scene as possible.
"I may as well tell you now as later," said Doctor Bronson, "that the story of the car of Juggernaut and its terrible slaughter is almost entirely a fiction. The car exists, and it makes its annual procession from the temple to the country-house of the god, where it is dragged by thousands of worshippers. Here are the facts of the case as given by Mr. W. W. Hunter, who lived a long time in the district of Orissa, and was director-general of the statistical survey of India. He published a book on Orissa a few years ago, and gave particular attention to the history of the car of Juggernaut. Here is what he says of the slaughter of the pilgrims:
INHABITANTS OF POOREE.
"'In a closely packed, eager throng of a hundred thousand men and women, many of them unaccustomed to exposure or hard labor, and all of them tugging and straining to the utmost under the blazing tropical sun, deaths must occasionally occur. There have, doubtless, been instances of pilgrims throwing themselves under the wheels in a frenzy of religious excitement; but such instances have always been rare, and are now unknown. At one time several unhappy people were killed or injured every year, but they were almost invariably cases of accidental trampling. The few suicides that did occur were, for the most part, cases of diseased and miserable persons, who took this means to put themselves out of pain. The official returns put this beyond doubt. Indeed, nothing could be more opposed to the spirit of Vishnu worship than self-immolation.'"
"In that case," said one of the boys, "we shall be very glad to visit Pooree, and see the car of Juggernaut. The romance is gone from it, but it will be an interesting sight on account of the story that has so long been connected with it."
"One of your countrymen," said the captain of the steamer, who had been listening to the conversation—"one of your countrymen was a passenger with me last year on the voyage we are now making. When I told him we were not to visit Pooree he was greatly disappointed, as he wanted to see the famous car, and also hoped that he might witness the traditional slaughter of the pilgrims. When I told him what you have just learned he was still more angry, and said that all the poetry of the East was gone. He had hoped to see a widow burnt by the side of her dead husband, and to witness the Juggernaut procession with its old-time attractions; the loss of these interesting spectacles was too much for him, and he heartily wished he had never left home."
"We won't be so cruel in our tastes as all that," one of the boys answered, and then the conversation on this topic came to an end.
In due time they reached the port in question, and anchored in front of the town. Doctor Bronson and the youths engaged a boat, and were taken ashore; and with the consent of the captain they were accompanied by one of the servants of the steamer, who spoke English and could serve them as guide. They found that the town was not a large one, its population being estimated at about 30,000; but its streets were crowded with people, and they were not surprised to learn that it was annually visited by more than a million pilgrims.
Their guide took them to the principal street, which is very wide, and bordered on each side by religious establishments called maths, where pilgrims are lodged, and where certain ceremonies of purification are performed by them before they enter the temple. These maths are low buildings of a single story, with wide verandas in front, and a plentiful supply of shade-trees; they are built of stone, and their occupants are not required to pay any kind of rent to the Government on account of their religious character. At the end of this street is the great temple, and the boys quickened their steps as they approached it, so anxious were they to look at its interior.
PLAN OF THE TEMPLE OF JUGGERNAUT.
They found the temple enclosed in an area of about ten acres in extent, and learned from their guide that each side of the enclosure measured 650 feet, and the lofty wall before them extended all the way around. On the eastern side, where they entered, there was a broad staircase of stone steps leading up to a platform twenty feet in height; this platform was about 450 feet square, and enclosed by a wall somewhat lower than the outer one, and it appeared to be pretty well filled with small temples, and pagodas that had been built with comparatively little regard to order or regularity.
The great pagoda rises from the centre of this platform or terrace; it has a base about thirty feet square, and its top is 200 feet above the foundation. It tapers gradually, and is rounded at the summit; the sides are cut full of niches for holding small statues, and at a distance the effect is quite pretty. Close by the entrance is a stone pillar nearly fifty feet high, hewn from a single block, and said to be a remarkable piece of work.
The enclosure and the temples were full of pilgrims who had come to make their offerings; some of them scowled at the strangers, but offered no violence, though a few crowded around and made remarks in a menacing tone till they were silenced by the guide. The interior of the temple is divided into four rooms or halls that open into each other: one is the hall of offerings, where gifts are made by the pilgrims, to be afterward appropriated by the priests; the second is the hall of the musicians and bayaderes; the third is the hall of audience, where the pilgrims gaze on the god, and the fourth and last is in the centre of the building, and occupied by the god Juggernaut, or Jaganath, with his brother on one side and his sister on the other.
JAGANATH AND HIS BROTHER AND SISTER.
Contrary to their expectation, our friends found that the statue of the god was only a log rudely fashioned into the shape of a human body without arms, while the figures on each side of him had rude representations of hands uplifted. The priests explain this deficiency by saying that Jaganath, or "the lord of the world," has no need of hands, as he can perform everything without their aid. Sometimes on festival occasions they fasten golden hands to his shoulders, and adorn him with jewels: his eyes are supposed to be of fine diamonds of enormous value; but according to tradition one of them was stolen by a sailor, who managed to conceal himself in the temple one night, and since then the diamonds have been removed and bits of glass put in their place.
The guide told them that the service of the temple consisted of a daily offering of fruit and flowers, together with articles of food, such as rice, butter, milk, salt, vegetables, cocoa-nuts, and the like. Four times a day the temple is closed for the god to take his meals, and it is hardly necessary to say that the food which has been collected is eaten by the priests and other attendants of the place. It has been estimated that the value of the offerings averages nearly twenty-five dollars daily, and all of it goes to the support of the priests. In addition to these offerings of food there are donations of money and jewels from wealthy pilgrims, which are estimated by Mr. Hunter to amount to more than $300,000 a year.
The pilgrims come from all parts of India to worship at this shrine: many of them are women, and they are collected by missionaries who are sent out from Pooree to the number of about six thousand every year. They go all over the country, and each has his field of labor assigned to him. He shows to the people the great advantages of a journey to the sacred shrine, and as soon as he has collected a band of pilgrims he starts with them for the holy spot. Most of the pilgrims are poor, and they go on foot and beg their subsistence as they proceed. Now and then a wealthy merchant concludes to make the pilgrimage, and he does it with carts and wagons and a whole train of servants, and it sometimes happens that a prince comes with dozens of elephants, and everything in grand style.
A HINDOO DEVOTEE.
It is estimated that ninety-five per cent. of the pilgrims are poor, and perform the journey on foot; and some of the pious devotees prostrate themselves at every third, fifth, or tenth step. Many of them die on the road, and after their arrival at Pooree the mortality is frightful. This is partly owing to the fact that a hundred thousand people are often crowded into a city that has a resident population of less than a third that number, and no effort is made to keep it clean. The great festival occurs in the rainy season, so that the attendance is largest at the very time when it should be least. The drainage is the worst that could be imagined, and the stench that arises is horrible in the extreme. Sometimes there are hundreds of deaths in a day, but the vacancies created by the losses are quickly made up by fresh arrivals.
Another cause of serious illness and frequent death is a religious observance connected with the worship of the idol. It is the custom to carry cooked rice into the presence of the god, and it immediately becomes so sanctified by his presence that it destroys all distinctions of caste. All classes can eat it together, and the richest may sit down by the side of the most humble in the presence of this holy food. Not a grain of it must be thrown away, and thus it happens that it is often kept for several days before it is eaten. When fresh it does no harm, but after a day or two it putrefies, and is a sure producer of disease.
There is hardly a year when cholera does not appear among the pilgrims to Juggernaut, in consequence of the bad food they eat. The true Asiatic cholera had its origin here, and it is noticeable that every recurrence of the epidemic has had its beginning in the festivals connected with some of the Hindoo forms of worship.
The great epidemic of cholera (in 1817) began at Juggernaut, and was carried across India and thence up the Persian Gulf to Bussorah, where 18,000 persons died in eighteen days; it then moved on through the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers to the shores of the Mediterranean, where it stopped. In 1826 there was another epidemic, arising in the same locality; it was the first to reach Europe and America, and arrived in the latter country in the spring of 1832, in a ship that brought some Irish emigrants to Quebec. It ascended the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes, and entered the United States at Detroit, whence it spread over the country and caused many thousands of deaths.
THE CAR OF JUGGERNAUT.
When our friends entered the temple the boys asked for the famous car on which the idol takes his annual ride. The guide led the way to a small shrine in the enclosure surrounding the temple where the wonderful carriage was standing. It was a great structure, about forty feet high and nearly as many square on each of its four sides; its wheels were eight or ten feet in diameter, and were hewn from single blocks of wood like the trucks on a country baby-cart. The shrine where the god is placed during his annual ride was decorated with some hideous carving, and just above the wheels there were representations of horses in the act of running.
A little distance away were two smaller cars, and the guide explained that each of the idols has a carriage of his own, that of Juggernaut being the largest and most important. A short time was devoted to the inspection of these vehicles, and then the party left the temple and returned to the shore, as it was near the hour for the steamer to leave; besides, it was considered judicious to get away from the pestilential atmosphere of the temple, as none of the strangers cared to invite the development of a case of cholera on his own account.
On the way back to the ship the guide told the boys about the great car festival that takes place in July of each year.
For weeks before the time fixed for the event the pilgrims arrive at the rate of thousands daily, and the city is crowded to its utmost capacity; there are rarely less than 100,000 people there on the occasion of the great festival, and sometimes they are ten or twelve thousand above that figure. When the day comes for the ceremony, all the space in and around the temple is densely crowded, and the priests find it difficult to move about in the performance of their duties. The idols are taken from their pedestals and placed in their cars, and as this is done a signal is made, and the whole multitude falls to the ground. In a few moments they rise and seize the great ropes to drag the cars forward, amid the beating of hundreds of drums and the clashing of many gongs and cymbals.
The huge car of Juggernaut moves onward amid the shouts of the vast assemblage, the sound of music in frightful discordance, and the songs of the priests who stand on the front of the car or clinging to its sides. The progress is slow, and sometimes the journey of little more than a mile requires two or three days for its accomplishment. The end of the journey is the summer-house of the god, and when the car has been brought there it is abandoned by the pilgrims, whose pious duty has been finished. It is taken back to the temple by the inhabitants of Pooree and the surrounding country, and the idols are restored to their pedestals.
A TROPICAL MORNING AT SEA.
By the time the story was ended the boat was at the side of the steamer, and our friends were speedily on board. In a little while the captain had completed his business at Pooree, and the vessel steamed away in the direction of Calcutta. Pooree was the last port visited on the voyage from Colombo to Calcutta.
When the boys went on deck in the morning the captain said they were in sight of land; Frank and Fred looked around, but could see nothing save the waters extending in every direction, with a few sails in sight here and there. The captain observed their perplexity, and smiled as he said,
"We are in sight of the Sand Heads; you have heard of the Sand Heads at the month of the Hoogly River, have you not?"
"Certainly," Frank answered; "but I cannot see them."
"Well," continued the captain, "they are under water where you see that brig anchored a couple of miles ahead of us. We consider that land is in sight when we see the pilot-brig, though we cannot see any land at all. The Sand Heads are banks of sand beneath the water, and the brig marks their locality. At the brig the steamer goes into the charge of the pilot, and my authority over her course ceases."
As they neared the brig a small boat came off; the ladder was lowered from the side of the steamer, and the pilot climbed to the deck, followed by his servant and baggage; then the small boat dropped astern, and the steamer continued on her way. Soon a buoy was in sight, and then another and another, in a winding line, and the boys learned that the channel through the treacherous sands was thus indicated long before land could be seen.
"You see what an excellent means of defence we have in case of war," said the captain of the steamer. "We have only to take up the buoys, and no hostile fleet could find its way inside, even if it had the aid of all the pilots in the service. No one can follow the channel without these buoys, no matter how often he may have been over the route. The maintenance of the harbor of Calcutta and its approaches is a matter of great expense, and has been a puzzle to the best engineers. Even after we enter the river we have many difficulties to encounter, and the pilot needs a pair of sharp eyes, and must keep them well open."
BAYOU IN SAUGUR ISLAND.
By-and-by a dark line appeared on the horizon, which the captain pronounced the island of Saugur; and then little tufts and patches of green were seen here and there close to the shore, or out on the sand-bars that just rose to the surface. The morning was bright, with the exception of a few light clouds that were tipped with crimson from the rays of the tropical sun, and the sea was undisturbed save by a light ripple which was not enough to give the least rocking to the steamer. The dark line developed into a low forest, and after a time another forest was revealed on the other side of the ship, but there were no high headlands, and nothing to indicate that there were any mountains within hundreds of miles.
Saugur is a densely-wooded island many miles in extent, rising only a few feet out of the water, and seamed and traversed by numerous bayous and creeks. Here come the wood-cutters who supply Calcutta with fuel, and occasionally—much against their will—furnish a good meal for the tigers for which Saugur is famous. The jungle is dense, and the tigers find in it a secure cover; they lurk in the vicinity of the paths, and spring on their victims without the least warning. Formerly they were numerous, but their ranks have been thinned by enterprising and intrepid hunters, and by the tidal wave that swept over Saugur a few years ago, and laid the whole island under water for several hours. All the low land at the mouth of the Hoogly was inundated, and the wave reached to Calcutta, where it caused enormous damage to the shipping. Thousands of lives were lost, and the terrible visitation fills a melancholy chapter in the history of the City of Palaces. On the island of Saugur nearly all the persons who were there at the time, engaged in wood-cutting or for other purposes, were drowned; only those escaped who were near their boats or were able to get into the tops of trees.
Two natives who were among the saved said that they climbed into a tree out of reach of the water, and were followed by a tiger. The animal did not molest them, and for several hours they were within a few feet of him, and were not even saluted with a growl. The beast was so terrified at the sight of the waters, and his own danger, that he forgot all his natural antipathy to man, but, on the contrary, seemed to court their presence. Since the inundation it is observed that there are but few tigers on Saugur Island, and the inference is that many of them were killed by drowning.
The steamer followed the tortuous channel among the sand-banks, and finally came to the entrance of the Hoogly, one of the mouths of the Ganges. The Ganges, like the other great rivers of the globe, has brought down vast quantities of earth and deposited it at its mouth, and the amount is so great as to divide the river into several channels. Doctor Bronson explained to the boys this peculiarity of great rivers, and told them that the earth which thus accumulates is called a delta.
"I understand," said Fred; "I read about that at school. Every great river has its delta, and some of them are very large. The delta of the Mississippi is more than 300 miles long, and is extending every year. In every ten gallons of water brought down by the river there is one gallon of solid matter, which is deposited in the Gulf of Mexico and must fill it up in time."
"Yes," echoed Frank; "and I've read about it, too. If you look on the map of any country where there is a large river, you will see that, it is pushed way out into the sea, and is generally divided into several mouths. This is the case with the Mississippi, the Nile, the Ganges, the Indus, the Mekong, and lots of others. The Amazon has a broad delta, as its mouth is 180 miles wide, and contains an immense island that was formed by the earth brought down from the interior ages and ages ago. What is that?"
He pointed directly ahead of the steamer to a spot on the bank where a flag appeared to be waving from a mast.
DIAMOND HARBOR.
"I presume it is Diamond Harbor," the Doctor responded, "as it is about time for us to reach it."
The speck grew larger and larger, and finally resolved itself into a building like a fortress on a diminutive scale. A few palm-trees waved around it, and, with their glasses, our friends could see that there was an earthwork surrounding the building to protect it from possible assault. From a mast that resembled the cross-trees of a ship two or three flags were waving, and it did not take the boys long to realize that they were nearing a telegraph-station.
"You are quite right," said the Doctor, "that is Diamond Harbor, the station whence ships are announced, and before we have passed it the name of our steamer will be flashed to Calcutta. See, they are sending up our flag now."
The boys turned and saw that the steamer's flag had been sent to the top of the mast, and was waving in the gentle breeze. They felt that they were once more at the end of a sea-voyage, and Fred remarked that the next thing to arriving at Calcutta was to know that the coming of the ship had been announced there.
SCENE ON THE HOOGLY.
They passed the station without stopping, and steamed onward up the Hoogly. Everywhere the banks were the same, and the scenery soon grew monotonous. Forests and groups of palm-trees, and wide spaces devoted to the cultivation of rice or other tropical product, succeeded one another as bend after bend of the river was followed; cattle grazing on the banks were seen at frequent intervals, and occasionally the low walls of a village presented themselves. At last a white object was seen in the distance, and the captain announced that they were practically in sight of Calcutta.