But when the beloved Brother died, and the Uncle sought to recover the child, she refused to come, nor could she now as initiated Priestess be bride to the cousin. So a bribe to the opium eater procured silence, and the disciple her freedom.
It was a wandering life—now grove, now cave, now hill camping-ground—the little Priestess sitting over the opium fire, her head on a prayer-stick, meditating—her instructress raking in the offerings. A prayer-stick is shaped so—T: and the head lies on the arm stretched across the bar, while the fumes of the opium fire produce drowsiness. But the life of prayer and meditation, in the name of her Brother, became very real to the Baby Priestess: and as she grew, and her Old-Woman-Guru used her to attract devotees to the Shrine, there was many a tussle between righteousness and unrighteousness, till policy suggested the Child’s sanctity as the more lasting bait.
She must have been about twenty when they made the pilgrimage to Nasik; and here the old woman met her own one-time Guru, and he claimed the prayer-stick of the beautiful grand-disciple as a talisman. Perhaps he claimed more, we were not told; but the rupture on refusal brought her to that wayside throwing of herself on the mercy of a stranger.... She was wonderfully adaptive to the demands of civilization, cast away her opium pipe, and even struggled bravely with forgotten memories of reading and writing; but she loved best to sit huddled up in the dusk and tell stories of her wanderings. What stories they were!
“In every house a Father, in every house a Mother”—a great phrase with her; and soon, the wander spirit proved too much for her. The road called her, and she went—comet-like. This was many years ago; but I still hope to come upon the copper-headed owner of the prayer-stick.
Once I thought I had found her at a place of pilgrimage in company with a holy woman who had gained her reputation for sanctity in a way unusual. She was an untaught Mathematician, sat at the mouth of a cave drawing geometrical figures in the sand, and spelling out for herself the problems which the world of books has dedicated to other names than hers. The pilgrims thought the triangles and parabolas magic, and would wag wise heads over the Mathematician at work; quite content if after the cabalistic musings which had nothing to do with their goods and ills she announced to the inquirer that there would be a good harvest, or that his son would die and his enemy be degraded in rebirth.
But if it were indeed my Comet whose copper head hung over a prayer-stick behind the Mathematician, I got not opportunity for speech or sight. Yet, I am thinking that some day, when the sun is low, that column of burnished light will wait for me once more beside the Pilgrim’s way.
VIII
THE NASAL TEST
A STUDY OF CASTE
Caste in its origin was merely a guide to marriage, i.e., a man was distinguished from his fellow-men simply in order to determine into what families a woman might or might not marry.
Moreover, a “County” family was known by the width of its nose, caste varying inversely as the width. For the only question with which caste dealt in the long ago, was: Are you an Aryan or are you a Dravidian?
There were later stages, influenced, who can say, by what motives? providing, how know we now, for what momentary need? serving, who shall tell us, what personal spites or conveniences? and caste came finally to denote not only a man’s place on the social ladder, but his privileges in a spiritual kingdom and his value in a professional market.