After the fiery consummation had taken place, on the ground where the sadhwee, or "pure one," had expired three chatties, or earthen vessels, full of consecrated balls of rice, were placed as offerings to the gods.
The Bombay government notified the rao at once that the repetition of such inhuman atrocities would not again be overlooked.[52] This had no doubt some effect on His Highness, but nevertheless some time after this sacrifice the beautiful mother of the rao suddenly fell ill and died, and one of her female attendants voluntarily buried herself alive near her mistress, in order that she should be in readiness to attend her in a future state.
It is very difficult for the Western mind to comprehend this utter self-abnegation on the part of Hindoos, and it can only be accounted for by their deep faith in the universal metamorphosis of life and the unreality of form. Maya[53] is illusion, the evanescent dream of life, which is only a "sleep between a sleep," the constant flow of form into form, of thought into thought, of life into other life. Even Brahm does not recognize himself in the second person: "I know when I am I, but who am I when I am thou?" It renders individuality illusive, intangible, and uncertain, so that to the Hindoos life and possession assume a meaning entirely different from that with which we are disposed to regard them. It is true that life loses half its charms, but death is robbed of its terrors. Life is valued only in so far as they are prepared to lay it aside, or rather to change it for some other form; for life and death are but the perpetual ebb and flow, the advance or retrograde, of soul toward "the Soul." Under this ardent faith, that everything above, below, beyond, God himself, is illusion, change, metamorphosis, is hidden the secret that helps them to endure suffering not only without a murmur, but with joy, and to count death itself a positive gain in the presence of the eternal, immutable, and solid fact of life to be found at last in the final reunion of the human with the divine life. This faith so potent, so absorbing, so far reaching, has stamped a character hereditary and almost ineffaceable on the Hindoo mind.
To-day Brahmanism is so expansive in character that it takes in every form and peculiarity of religious sentiment. The more earnest and spiritual have grand and magnificent theories of God that supply ample food for the imagination; the tender have laws that reach down almost to vegetable life; the ignorant and vulgar have attractive festivals and endless ceremonials suited to engage their attention; the vicious and degraded have the loves and frivolities of the gods and heroes, whose lives encourage pursuit of sensual gratifications; the devotee who abandons all that is sensual for spiritual insight has text upon text and example upon example, taken from the Puranas[54] and from the actual lives of saints, to support him in the effort of finding God at last. The self-sacrificing only quits an illusion for a reality, and the idolater who bows down before wood and stone believes that he sees before him only the form of a divine life hidden everywhere in matter. Thus highest religious thought and life and lowest sensual indulgence meet together in the theology of the Brahmans.
FOOTNOTES:
[45] A new school of the Brahmanic order—"Brahmo-Somaj," meaning an assembly in the name of God. This Church has connected itself with every progressive movement in India. The originator of this social and religious movement was Rajah Rammahun Roy, a very learned man. In 1818 he published, for the benefit of his own countrymen, selections from the teachings of Jesus, taken from the Gospels, in Sanskrit and Bengali, calling the book "The Precepts of Jesus, the Guide to Peace and Happiness." He died and was buried in England in 1833. Rammahun Roy built a church in Calcutta, where the Brahmo-Somaj still hold their worship. The members belonging to this new school of religious thought are estimated at ten thousand. The women have a separate prayer-meeting from the men. Their form of worship is very simple—singing of hymns adapted from the Vèdas or from the Brahmanasu, or Brahman Aspirations, the Christian Bible, and extempore prayer, followed by an exhortation on morality and purity of thought and character. The late Mr. Keshub Chunder Sen was everywhere recognized as their chief leader.
[46] "Rama, Rama, the god Rama, bless you!"
[47] The value of a rupee is about forty-five American cents.
[48] Their names vary with the language. I have heard them called "Khoo mattees" in parts of Guzerat; also "Dhayahtees" in the Deccan, and Bhaladhya in parts of Western India, from Sanskrit "bala," youth, and "dhya," tenderness.
[49] Ocymum or sweet basil. This plant has a very dark-blue flower, and hence, like the large bluish-black bees of India, is held sacred to Krishna and his amours. A fable, however, is told in the Purânas concerning the metamorphosis of the nymph Toolasi (by Krishna) into the shrub which has since borne her name, because he could not return her love.