If you wish to know what things would out-caste, ask the women. They have learned from their grandmothers, and they from theirs.
In the long ago travelling Priests would wander from house to house, telling tales from the old Epics, or building up that great fabric of folk-lore which we find in all parts of India. Often they would act the tales they told or sing them, and this made great entertainment in the lives of the women—Mystery Play, Oratorio, brought to their doors. In these latter days your Priest will whisper in your ear the name of the God you must worship, and he will direct your worship, and chiefly your charity; but he gives you no bundle of ethical maxims, no credo: and in a woman’s private chapel her own temperament supplies the religion. As I have said, most usual is the worship of the Baby Krishna, though there is also the Shiva cult which I have described, both with the same idea running through them, the reverence for Creation. Then to the timid, religion is often but a faggot of superstitions—what to avoid, what brings luck ... every home provides some old dame learned in this lore.
In one thing, however, all are alike. They will keep faith with Gods, not always with men; that matters little, for no one has taught them that sense of honour, product of the self-corporate, got from living in masses in the world. But the Gods are another matter, the Gods can punish. And the courage with which the frailest will keep faith, at what cost, offering a child in performance of some vow to a Temple, measuring her length along the ground in pilgrimage ... this is one of our paradoxes in India.
In the lives of most there is room for little beside the worship of the husband, with its perfection of self-sacrifice, which seems to exhaust all of altruism that the religion holds. And that is perhaps the chief difference between the standpoint of the West and Hinduism. When you benefit your fellow-men, it is more to buy merit than out of compassion. I suppose compassion dries up at the fount, so to speak, in the consciousness or sub-consciousness that misery is only another illusion, that in a way you have elected the present suffering, that at any rate you might have the very best of times in your next genesis. But however it may be, philanthropy among the orthodox is an acknowledged soul-saving arrangement. Listen to the very beggar in the street. “Gift me and buy merit,” is his prayer. He is not ashamed to beg; you are climbing to heaven on his shoulders. In a way it is you who are in his debt.
This absence of altruism is a fact which experience is always emphasizing; and I deem it the more noteworthy, inasmuch as in the field of thought and meditation the heights climbed are very great indeed, it is quite common to come across a mysticism parallel to the mysticism of the West. But I would not be misunderstood; though the doctrine of works and merit is the most general kind of Hinduism, I have met a higher. “Good works are fetters of gold, but still fetters,” as said my orthodox interpreter of religion, and he went on to explain that even the desire for goodness could be an obstacle on the way to God. Whereafter he told me this beautiful story.
There was once a woman who had lived an evil life. She was a Mahommedan, and she said to herself, “I will go the Pilgrimage and wipe out my sins.” So she set forth, taking with her a dog she loved. And as she wandered, her face Mecca-wards, the other pilgrims shunned her, for they knew her ill-repute. But she heeded them not, her mind being full of the so-soon purchase of sanctity.... And it came to pass that a few miles from Mecca the dog fell ill, and she said within herself, “I cannot leave it behind. I must needs stay and tend it.” So, albeit with a sigh, for Mecca was almost in sight, and she had longed so great a while to be holy even as those other women by whom she was shunned, she turned away from the path in search of water. But it was a place of sand, and it was long before she found a well, and then she had perforce to make a rope of her hair and a bucket of her clothes to draw water for the poor beast ... and, in tending him, day changed into night, but she heeded not—her whole soul in the desire that he might live.
And when the pilgrims reached the Holy City, and were preparing for the evening prayer, a voice forbade the recital.... “This,” said the Voice, “is not the place where God is to be found; go back to where she whom you deem evil tends a fellow life, for there to-day dwells God Himself.”
Faith is naturally a large factor in the religion of the Hindu women. Belief is so easy to her. She is troubled with never an intellectual doubt. Indeed, intellect, in her opinion, is an interloper in the regions of Faith. Where is the scope for Faith if you use your intelligence? she will argue.
There is a story told, one of many such, of a South-Indian woman, who believed that upon a certain day of the new moon, the God at a certain shrine would work whatever miracle were claimed by the faithful as a proof of his power; so, being drunk with ecstasy after long years of meditation, she set forth to the Shrine, having first cut out her tongue.... “My tongue which has often,” said she, “spoken words of unwisdom, will be given me anew of the God. This is the miracle I claim.” Day after day of her pilgrimage she trudged cheerfully, joy in her God at her heart. Day after day she carried but her water gourd and a small quantity of grain tied in the end of her saree, and she walked with the help of a tall bamboo pole, for she was bent with age; but the wisdom light streamed from the gates of her body, so that all knew her for holy, and crowds gathered about her, curious as to the faith that was in her, but she heeded them not; day after day through tracks of burning sand, through jungle or by river bed ... and at last the temple was in sight.