“Musicians.—Tingle, tangle; tingle, tangle; bray, bray, bray.
“Chuprassee, clearing the way with his sheathed sabre.—Silence! Room for the Lord Judge, the Lord Priest. Get out of the way! Quick! (Then gently patting and stroking the broad back of a Brahmin bull.) Oh, good man, move.
“Bull, scarcely moving.—Bu-u-uh.
“Second beggar, counting his beads, rolling his eyes, and moving his body backwards and forwards.—Ram, ram; ram, ram!”
Benares, said to be founded on the point of Siva’s trident, as the most sacred city of all Hindostan, swarmed with beggars, fakirs, sacred animals, and idols of every description; but close beside it was a church for consecration and thirty candidates for confirmation, of whom fourteen were natives. The next day the Bishop was taken to see a school founded by a rich Bengalee baboo, whom Mr. Corrie had almost persuaded to be
a Christian, but who had settled down into a sort of general admiration for the beauty of the Gospel, and a wish to improve his countrymen. He had made over the house where the school was kept to the Church Missionary Society, and the staff consisted of an English schoolmaster, a Persian moonshee, and two Hindostanee writing masters, the whole presided over by an English catechist, a candidate for Holy Orders. There were several class rooms, and a large, lofty hall, supported by pillars, where the Bishop examined the 140, who read Persian and English, answered questions in Hindostanee and English, and showed great proficiency in writing, arithmetic, and geography. No objection was made to their reading the New Testament.
Afterwards, when the Bishop looked into a little pagoda, richly carved, and containing an image of Siva, crowned with scarlet flowers, with lamps burning before him, and a painted bull in front, a little boy, one of the brightest scholars in the school, came forward, and showing his Brahminical string, told, in tolerable English, the histories of the deities with which the walls were painted. “This,” says the Bishop, “opened my eyes more fully to a danger which had before struck me as possible, that some of the boys brought up in our schools might grow up accomplished hypocrites, playing the part of Christian with us, and with their own people of zealous followers of Brahma, or else that they would settle down in a sort of compromise between the two creeds, allowing that Christianity was the best for us, but that idolatry was necessary and commendable in persons of their own nation.” This in fact seems to have been ever since the state of a large proportion of the educated Hindoos. May it be only a transition state!
The street preaching employed by the Serampore community had not been resorted to by the Church Missionary Society, and Bishop Heber decided that in the fanatic population, amid the crowds of bulls, beggars, and sacred apes, it was far wiser not to attempt it; but the missionaries were often sent for to private houses to converse with natives of rank, on their doctrine. One notable Hindoo, Amrut Row, who had at one time been Peishwa of the Mahrattas, who had retired to Benares, used on the feast of his patron god to give a portion of rice and a rupee to every Brahmin and blind or lame person who applied between sunrise and sunset. He had a large garden with four gates, three of which were set open for the three classes of
applicants; the fourth served himself and his servants. As each person received his dole, he was shown into the garden, and detained there to prevent his applying twice, but there he enjoyed plenty of shade, water, company, and idols! This day’s distribution often amounted to above 50,000 rupees, and his charities altogether were three times as great in the course of every year. He was a good kind man, religious to the best of his knowledge; and just before the Bishop’s visit, he had sent a message to Mr. Morris, the clergyman at Sealcote, to call on him in the middle of the next week as he wished to inquire further into Christianity. Alas! before the appointed day Amrut Row was dead, and his ashes were still smoking when the Bishop quitted Benares.
What had become of Henry Martyn’s church does not appear, for at Cawnpore he found none, but service was alternately performed in a bungalow and in the riding-school. He went as far north as Oude, and found at Chinear a much larger native congregation than he expected, though the women still retained so much of Eastern customs that they would not even raise their veils when receiving the Holy Communion. Almost all were the converts of the excellent Mr. Corrie, Henry Martyn’s friend.