The doctor, who was a tall, dark, and rather handsome high-caste Hindoo, placed himself near the bedside of Govind and proceeded to feel his skin, pulse, and chest and to examine the condition of his tongue, eyes, and nails.
Meanwhile, the Brahman priest requested a pitcher of water and an empty bowl. Furnished with these by Doorah, Bhawanee's sister, he sat himself down in the middle of the room and began to transfer the water from the jar into the empty bowl, drop by drop, repeating over each drop the "Gayatree," the holiest text of the Vèdas, the most sacred and effacious prayer of the Brahmans, and thought by them to be absolutely necessary to salvation, while the soothsayer sat apart waiting his turn to perform certain magical enchantments for the benefit of the poor sick man. The latter opened his eyes once more and looked at his Guru,[29] or priest, and said solemnly, "I am dying."
"Dying? you are not dying," said the doctor. "I will soon make you well," whereupon he opened a bag and drew out of it some pieces of iron, which he placed on a charcoal fire. While these were being heated he took out various roots and dried herbs and began to rub them on a small stone, occasionally moistening the stone with a little water. Having compounded several queer, dark-looking doses, he, to my utter astonishment, deliberately began pinching, thumping, and slapping poor Govind—now on his back, anon on the soles of his feet. His sides, palms, shoulders, elbows, knee-joints were all slapped and beaten. This done, he branded with the hot pieces of iron the poor patient on the pit of his stomach, the inside of his arms, and the calves of his legs; then administered his queer-looking doses, which the unhappy-looking Govind swallowed without a sign of remonstrance; and, finally covering him from head to foot with a thick quilt, the Hindoo physician beckoned to the soothsayer to complete the cure.
The soothsayer robed himself in a dress covered with strange designs of men exorcising fiends, put on a cap to which was attached two or three long cords, at the end of which hung little brooms made of kusah-grass (a grass sacred to the Hindoo gods). He then took up the pan of burning coals and scattered them over the quilt which covered the patient; these he brushed off as rapidly as possible with the sacred brooms hanging from his cap. This was to dispossess the sick man of some extraordinary but invisible devil, which he then drove out at the door, running after the spirit and howling terrific invectives on it for having dared to enter the "divine precincts occupied by the liver of a Brahman." All this while the Guru, or priest, prayed, chanting in a monotonous tone, over each drop of water that passed from the pitcher to the bowl, and each of which was supposed to carry off with it the cholera of the sick man.
Strange to say, violent and absurd as were the remedies administered to poor Govind, he not only bore them patiently, but seemed better; a profuse perspiration having broken out upon him, it was looked upon as a most hopeful sign and an especial interposition of Brahm.
In another hour the rain ceased; Govind had fallen into a peaceful sleep; Bhawanee's face was irradiated with smiles; the old woman was setting out their mid-day repast on a mat in the adjoining apartment. I returned home, promising to call and see Bhawanee on the following day. The next day, when I started off, I fully expected to hear that Govind had passed away; but when I reached the outer gate of the yard enclosing Govind's dwelling I found the pundit, although looking weak and feeble enough, seated on a small stone holding in his left hand three blades of kusah-grass. The old woman, who was in the act of tying up the lock of sacred hair on his head in some mystical form, shouted to me to keep off. I stood at a distance and looked on. He was evidently undergoing the purification ceremony. Bhawanee, who smiled sweetly at me, was holding before her husband a bowl of water, which he first sipped, then flung a little of it toward the horizon, and washed his hands, ears, breast, eyes, nose, shoulders, and feet, repeating over each member a prayer. His wife then brought him a stick of lighted wood from the household fire; he breathed over it, repeating the mystic word "Aum," "O divine Spirit, resplendent Fire, purify me from all uncleanliness." He then placed the sacred grass on his right ear (Gunga, the sacred river, is supposed to have its source in the right ear of Brahm, the sacrificial fire (or life) in Brahm's nostrils, so that when the pundit touched these members of his person with fire and water all the impurity entailed by my visit to his house on the previous day passed away). Finally he took some sacred mud out of a pot which was handed to him by his wife, and made the holy mark, the circle and the cross of his caste and race, on his brow.
Meanwhile, Doorah, the sister, had been purifying the hut. First it was sprinkled all over with holy water, smeared with cow-ordure, and lastly fumigated with certain gums—a very sensible proceeding in a hot, moist climate like that of Bombay.
And at length the poor pundit, restored to his normal condition of holiness, was once more assisted into his bed by his tender and loving wife. I smiled at them from a distance, and went my way regretting more keenly than ever we were so separated from one another that the simplest act of kind interest on my part should entail on the whole household a series of purificatory rites to last for seven days.
As long as there exist in social life certain laws, manners, and customs by which the civilized man is distinguished from the savage, the gentleman from the cowherd, the high-born dame from her lowly maid, so long will caste, which is nothing more or less than social grades, complicate the lives and destinies not only of the races of the East, but of the West. The three great problems which yet remain to be solved by the British in India are to do away with the degradation of man by caste, the bondage of woman by custom, and the deterioration of childhood through the influence of the one and the other.