A Tour of the Missions: Observations and Conclusions

by Augustus Hopkins Strong

Bombay is a great city, the second, in population, of the British Empire in India. While Calcutta has over a million people, Bombay comes only a few short of that number. Its commerce is immense; its public buildings are fashioned after European models; its streets are broad and finely paved; there is every evidence of wealth and cultivation. But Hindus greatly outnumber Mohammedans; Parsees are strong; Christians are active, but still comparatively few. In thought and customs, Bombay is still essentially Oriental, while yet profoundly influenced by modern newspapers and modern inventions. It was a memorable change for us travelers to emerge from its Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, and then to find ourselves, first in its Caves of Elephanta, and secondly, in its Towers of Silence.

A word of explanation is necessary for each of these notable objects of interest. Elephanta is a little island eight miles from Bombay, and so named because of its general resemblance in shape to an elephant. Elephanta Island forms a beautiful object as seen from the deck of the little steamer that serves for a ferry, and the views from the summit of Elephanta Hill, over the Bombay Bay, with the gleaming towers of the green city in the distance, are very charming. The island is a great resort, however, not so much for the views therefrom, as because it is the seat of a rock-hewn temple excavated centuries ago in honor of Siva, the Hindu god, whose province it is to destroy. Brahma is the Creator; Vishnu, the Preserver; and Siva, the Destroyer. Siva was the god of reproduction, however, as well as the god who destroys, and his worship has been often connected with obscene and lascivious rites.

The approach to Siva's temple is through a lovely garden, in which are many splendid specimens of tropical vegetation. At last there appears to the visitor, in the side of the precipitous hill, a massive portico, with four immense pillars, all hewn out of the solid rock. Then come long rows of similar columns leading darkly like a cathedral nave into the stony hill, and terminating at the altar, above which towers the statue of Siva, colossal in size, with Parvati, his goddess wife, by his side, and all the emblems of his authority, as scepter and sword, around him. The statue seems to express the joy of sovereignty, and, though somewhat mutilated, it is noticeably free from the immoral suggestions which have been intimated in many descriptions of it. Entrance to the statue is flanked by great guardian statues, and the whole chancel, so to speak, is enclosed by a broad and lofty corridor, in the manner of cathedral architecture. From this corridor on either side, many nooks in the rock have been excavated, like chantry chapels, each with its separate statue at least twenty feet in height. The whole Hindu pantheon, seems to be represented by carved figures, but all cluster about the god Siva. The really characteristic and indispensable feature of these caves is, however, still to be mentioned. It is the image of the lingam, or phallus, gigantic in size, and carven out of solid stone, in the innermost shrine, where it is the object of hysterical or lustful worship. Every year, on an appointed feast-day, three or four thousand people throng to this shrine, some to pray for offspring, others to seek license for illicit pleasure. Elephanta has become in this way the symbol and propagator of a debasing superstition. Such worship is only a deification of the lower instincts of human nature.

Returning to Bombay, it was natural to think of the Towers of Silence, for these too are located on a lovely eminence, called the Malabar Hill, and overlooking the city and the bay. These towers are enclosures in which the Parsees, a most intelligent, wealthy, and influential sect, dispose of the bodies of their dead, by laying the forms in the open air where they can be devoured by vultures. The towers themselves are at least half a dozen in number, and they vary in size. But the style of their construction is uniform. Inside of a lofty circular wall are concentric beds of stone, each with its groove in which a corpse can be laid. There are three concentric circles, the outermost for men, the next inner for women, the innermost for children. The structure has no roof, but is open to the air. Great flocks of vultures perch upon the top of the outermost enclosing wall, waiting in silence and expectation for the time when they can descend upon their prey. Only a half-hour elapses after a body is laid on its stony bed, before these ravenous birds have torn every morsel of flesh from its bones. The skeleton is then left to disintegrate by the action of the elements, until the rains wash the remaining dust into a great pit at the center of the circles, from which receptacle the refuse is conducted away by drains during the rainy season, to mingle with the surrounding earth.

This is the Parsees' "ashes to ashes, dust to dust." They glory in this method of disposing of their dead, and they think it far more natural and impressive than the common Hindu method of cremation. We must grant that all methods of disposing of the dead are painful. But faith in a resurrection of the body is surely most in consonance with our time-honored custom of laying our dead away in their kindred earth, "until the day dawns, and the shadows flee away."

From Bombay to the town of Kedgaon may seem to some a descent from great to small. Not so; it is rather an ascent from the false to the true, from the impure to the pure, from the illusory to the real. For Kedgaon is the home, and center of the work, of Pundita Ramabai, perhaps the most learned, and certainly the most influential Christian woman in India. The very name pundita is given only to those of high intellectual attainments. A Hindu of the highest, that is the Brahman, caste, she was many years ago converted to Christianity, and she has devoted all her powers to the education and uplifting of her countrywomen. Her father was a great Sanskrit scholar. He was one of the first in India to determine that his daughter should be a learned woman. Accordingly she was thoroughly instructed. She knew by heart the sacred scriptures of her people long before she became a Christian. She could repeat from memory an amount of them equal to that of our whole English Bible. It is especially the improvement of the condition of women, and particularly of child-widows, to which she has devoted her attention. The condition of the child-widow in India is most pitiable. She is held responsible for the death of her husband, no matter how young she may be. She is subjected to indignities. Her hair is entirely shaven from her head. Her jewels are taken from her. Her bright clothing is taken away, and she is clad in the coarsest garments. She becomes the slave of the family; virtually an outcast; frequently a prostitute. She can never remarry, no matter how young she may be at the beginning of her widowhood.

It was to ameliorate this condition of affairs that Pundita Ramabai set herself many years ago. She gathered child-widows under her protection, surrounded them with Christian influences, and gave them a Christian education. A time of famine threw upon her care in one year twenty-four hundred girls, who depended upon her alone for food to keep them from starving. That time of great distress is now past, but when we remember that in India there are estimated to be as many as two millions of child-widows, it will be clear that the need of a refuge for such is still immensely great. Girls of the highest caste are in the greatest need, for among the lower classes the reproach of child-widowhood is not so strongly felt. It was the sorrows of girls belonging to her own Brahman caste, married perhaps at the age of eight or ten to husbands five times their own age, and then made practically outcasts by those husbands' death, that most touched the heart of Ramabai. It is wonderful what she has already accomplished. We found on her extensive premises a great assembly-room which has sheltered at one time twenty-six hundred auditors; schools of every grade for Hindu girls, including a school for the blind; a large and commodious hospital; a printing office with presses capable of turning out a high order of typography; an asylum for lepers; a rescue-home for unfortunate girls; normal classes for teachers and for nurses; training in sewing, embroidery, and weaving; and many another sort of Christian service, including the work of the factory and the farm. Every species of cooking on the premises, and all the care of the rooms and houses, is done by the girls themselves, so that all of them are taught how to support themselves when they leave the institution. Three hours a day for industrial work, and three hours a day for schooling, is the uniform rule. One can imagine the far-reaching influence of this institution, if he remembers that out of the twenty-four hundred scholars who were received and taught in that dreadful time of famine, more than fifteen hundred were child-widows and many of them of the highest caste.

Ramabai is a great scholar. She has translated and printed the whole New Testament, in the colloquial Mahrati dialect, for the benefit of the poor women in her district. She is now engaged upon the Psalms and the book of Genesis, with the hope of finishing the whole Old Testament. Numberless tracts of her composition have gone out into all parts of India. Her graduates become not only teachers, but also evangelists. No one can measure the extent of her present influence, as showing what a native woman in India can do, in the way of breaking down caste, overthrowing pernicious customs, and demonstrating to a benighted heathen world the superior claims of Christian truth. We left Ramabai, invoking a blessing upon her head and upon Manorama, her daughter, who bids fair to prove her worthy successor. Ramabai, by her intellectual gifts, her executive ability, and above all by her Christian devotion, deserves honor from all lovers of Christ and his gospel.

As we neared Madras, the third largest city of India, the heat began to oppress us. Up to this time India had been unexpectedly and refreshingly cool, at night even cold. But now it was unpleasantly warm. The heat reminded us of the conundrum: "Why is India, although so hot, the coldest country on the globe?" Answer: "Because the hottest thing in it is chilly" ("chili" is the peppery sauce which the natives mix with other spices to form "curry"). We have learned to like curry. I cannot understand it; but if seems as if the hottest countries needed the hottest kinds of food. At any rate we had a warm welcome in Madras, thirteen degrees in latitude above the equator. We were fortunate in reaching this fine city during the session of all our Baptist missionaries in the South India, or Telugu, field—that field which a few years ago witnessed the baptism of 2,222 converts in one day. It was a remarkable illustration of the family and tribal spirit in India. We Baptists believe in individual conversions, and we seek evidence, in every case, of regeneration by the Holy Spirit. But the coherence of the family and the village is so strong in a heathen community, that the lot of the individual Christian is often exceedingly hard. Occasionally there is apostasy. The resistance of an important man to the gospel makes the persistence of his dependents in the gospel-way almost impossible.

In some quarters, however, whole families and whole clans have been blessedly converted, and idolatry has been completely eradicated. In other cases where mass movements have taken place, certain missionaries have found it physically impossible to sift out each doubtful individual, and for safety have demanded that the whole family or clan or village shall give up idolatry before any single individual convert has been received for church-membership. To combine strict faith and practice, according to the New Testament standard, with a proper respect for local customs and traditions, demands great wisdom in our missionaries, and makes their conferences very practical and very necessary. Certain it is that in our Baptist missions abroad greater care is exercised in receiving members than that to which we are accustomed in the homeland. The missionary cannot afford to have false disciples in the flock, if he knows it, for "one sinner destroyeth much good."