Through India and Burmah with pen and brush

by A. Hugh Fisher

I left the carriage to walk round the old mosque and saw beyond a fence some potters at work. There was the clay being kneaded by women into lumps of suitable size, and the potter sitting on the ground and turning his simple horizontal wheel with one foot, while with skilful touches of both hands he shaped the vessel. Almost every village in India possesses a potter. He is as essential as the holy man who blesses the fields for harvest, and in country districts is generally paid in kind, getting a definite quantity of grain per plough each harvest for providing the necessary supply of earthen pots to the household, and the shapes of his wares, as well as the method he employs, are probably at least two thousand years old.

Opposite to the mosque across the road was a new Idgar with half the ground paved and at one side the steps of the Kasbah to the Mimbar, on which the Mohammedan preacher stands. Under a shelter or roofed shed near the Idgar a processional car of Juggernaut dozed through the idle months and declined to notice more hard-working bullock-carts which groaned past, laden with rough stone for road-making or long sarput grass for thatching houses.

Farther on was the Central Hindoo College, founded largely through the efforts of Mrs Besant, and now accommodating 500 students. The original building, to which much has been added, was presented by the Maharajah of Benares in 1899:—"For the education of Hindoo youth in their ancestral faith and true loyalty and patriotism." In the large playground of this college some Hindoo youths were playing football.

Beyond the white buildings of the Maharajah of Vizianagram's palace with their high-walled gardens and cool-looking pavilions, and the houses of native bankers, surrounded by orange trees laden with green fruit, and yet another temple called the Mahram Barhal, the Durga Temple appeared at last.

A young man had just brought a little black kid for sacrifice. He was dressed in tan leather shoes, a long fawn coat with a pattern on it and a small black cap on his head. He had an orange red caste mark freshly painted on his forehead, and round his shoulders hung a flower garland. He had just recovered from an illness, and for that reason was making sacrifice. Planted in the ground stood a square post, to the base of which a woman, who was sister to the executioner's wife, was helping to tie the unoffending kid. Black flies were swarming round as the woman pulled the hind legs of the goat, and the executioner, with an absurdly large sword, wide and curved, cut off the head at a blow. Monkeys leering and chattering played about all round, and several lean-looking dogs darted forward to lick up greedily the blood spurting from the little body, which was flung down a few yards away. The head was put on a small altar facing the entrance to the inner shrine that the god might see it, and then the executioner and the woman (who, by the way, was tattooed) cleaned and prepared the carcase for cooking, that the young man might take it away with him for home consumption.

The sun was setting behind the Durga Temple as I walked across a beautiful garden called the Anundabagh, between red blossoming Arhol bushes to see a man named Merthil Swami, who succeeded ten years ago one of the most famous "holy men" of modern India, the Swami Bhaskarananda Saraswati. The garden was presented to Bhaskarananda by the Rajah of Amethi, who continues to send money for its upkeep. Swami Bhaskarananda was born of good Brahman family, and after a youth spent in diligent study of Sanskrit and the Vedantic philosophy, renounced the world and became a wandering ascetic, roaming from one end of India to the other clad in a single garment; and at last believing that he had attained "knowledge," settled in Benares for his remaining years, "waiting his deliverance from mortality."

In a little house with brass doors I saw in the garden a life-size marble statue of this old man squatting naked, as he had done in life, with serene and peaceful countenance though with a slight raising of the eyebrows that creased his forehead, and curiously outstanding ears. The statue was made during his lifetime and is said to be very like him. On the bald head lay one red rose.

"Every Maharajah," said Mahmud, "came to pray to him," and he might have added every foreign visitor came to see him, for Bhaskarananda always welcomed English and other European visitors, and gained their appreciation and respect both by his learning and his courteous manners. Tam cari capitis.

A disciple named Gaya Purshad who lived in Cawnpore had given a lakh of rupees to build a tomb of white marble for Bhaskara, and it was nearing completion on the spot where he used to sit with his legs crossed and where, being holy beyond all purification of fire, he was buried in the same sitting posture. The tomb, against which leaned a wide bamboo ladder, is a small square building with three windows of pierced marble screen-work and one door opening, and the workmen were busy upon a lovely marble arcade surrounding the whole mausoleum. Inside, on the centre of the floor over the place of burial, there is a little plain slab of stone on which lay a wreath of pale and dark marigolds.