THE BRAHMO SOMAJ
We spent a few very pleasant days at Calcutta and met various interesting people. Amongst them was Protap Chunder Mozoondar, Head of the Brahmo Somaj (i.e. Society Seeking God). He paid me a special visit to expound the tenets of his Society, which, as is well known, was founded by Babu Chunder Sen, father of the (Dowager) Maharanee of Kuch Behar. Briefly, the ideas of the Society are based on natural theology, or the human instinct, which tells almost all men that there is a God. The Brahmo Somaj accepts a large portion of the Holy Books of all nations, especially the Vedas and the Bible. It acknowledges Christ as a Divine Incarnation and Teacher of Righteousness, but again it does not regard His atonement as necessary to salvation. My informant’s view was that Christian missionaries did not sufficiently take into account Hindu feelings, and enforced unnecessary uniformity in dress, food, and outward ceremonies. This is quite possible, but it would be difficult for a Christian missionary not to insist on the Sacraments, which form no essential part of the Brahmo Somaj ritual.
Babu Chunder Sen’s own sermons or discourses in England certainly go beyond a mere acknowledgment of Christ as a Teacher and express deep personal devotion to him and acceptance of His atonement in the sense of at-one-ment, or bringing together the whole human race, and he regards the Sacraments as a mystical sanctification of the ordinary acts of bathing—so congenial to the Indian—and eating. However, in some such way Protap Chunder Mozoondar seemed to think that a kind of Hinduised Christianity would ultimately prevail in India.
It is impossible for an ordinary traveller to form an opinion worth having on such a point, but the Brahmo Somaj, like most religious bodies, has been vexed by schism. Babu Chunder Sen among other reforms laid down that girls should not be given in marriage before the age of fourteen, but his own daughter was married to the wealthy young Maharajah Kuch Behar before that age. This created some prejudice, though the marriage was a successful one, and she was a highly educated and attractive woman. She had a great reverence for her father, and in after years gave me some of his works. Another pundit, later on, started another Brahmo Somaj community of his own. The explanation of this given to me by Kuch Behar himself was that he was a “Parti” and that this other teacher (whose name I have forgotten) wanted him to marry his daughter, but he chose Miss Sen instead! I fear that this is not a unique example of church history affected by social considerations.
While at Calcutta we received a telegram to say that Villiers had reached Bombay and we met him at Benares on New Year’s Day, 1889. He had come out escorted by a Mr. Ormond, who wanted to come to India with a view to work there and was glad to be engaged as Villiers’s travelling companion. Rather a curious incident was connected with their voyage. A young Mr. S. C. had come out on our ship the Arcadia—on Villiers’s ship a youth travelled who impersonated this same man. The amusing part was that a very excellent couple, Lord and Lady W. (both now dead), were on the same ship. Lady W. was an old friend of Mrs. S. C.—the real man’s mother—but, as it happened, had not seen the son since his boyhood. Naturally she accepted him under the name he had assumed, and effusively said that she had nursed him on her knee as a child. The other passengers readily accepted him as the boy who had been nursed on Lady W.’s knee, and it was not until he had landed in India that suspicion became excited by the fact that there were two S. C.’s in the field and that number Two wished to raise funds on his personality. This assumption of someone else’s name is common enough, and every traveller must have come across instances, but it was rather funny that our son and ourselves should have travelled with the respective claimants.
MAHARAJAH OF BENARES
At Benares we were taken in hand by a retired official—a Jain—rejoicing in the name of Rajah Shiva Prashad. We stayed at Clark’s Hotel, while Shiva Prashad showed us all the well-known sights of the Holy City, and also took us to pay a formal visit to the “Maharajah of the people of Benares.” It is curious that the Maharajah should have adopted that name, just as Louis Philippe called himself “King of the French” rather than “of France” to indicate less absolute power. The Maharajah’s modesty was due to the fact that Shiva is supposed to uphold Benares on his trident, and bears the name of “Mahadeva”—Great God, or Ruler of the City—so the earthly potentate can only look after the people—not claim the city itself.
The Maharajah’s Palace was on the river in a kind of suburb called Ramnagar, to which we were taken on a barge. We were received at the water-steps by a Babu seneschal, at the Castle steps by the Maharajah’s grandson, and at the door of a hall, or outer room, by the Maharajah himself—a fine old man with spectacles. It was all very feudal; we were seated in due state in the drawing-room, and after some polite conversation, translated by our friend the Rajah, who squatted on the floor at the Maharajah’s feet, we were entertained with native music and nautch-dancing. After we had taken leave of our host we inspected his tigers, kept, I suppose, as an emblem of his rank. Shiva Prashad told us a romantic tale of his own life, according to which he first entered the service of the Maharajah of Bhurtpore, but was disgusted by the cruelty which he saw exercised—prisoners thrown into miserable pits, and only given water mixed with salt to drink. He left the Maharajah, and thought of becoming an ascetic, but being taunted by his relatives for his failure in life, he (rather like St. Christopher) determined to enter the service of someone “greater than the Maharajah.” He discovered this superior power in the British Government, which gave him an appointment in the Persian Department.
While there he somehow found himself with Lord Hardinge and three thousand men arrayed against sixty thousand Sikhs. The Council of War recommended falling back and waiting for reinforcements, “but Lord Hardinge pronounced these memorable words—‘We must fight and conquer or fall here.’” They fought—and first one three thousand, then another three thousand friendly troops joined in, so the Homeric combat ended in their favour, and Prashad himself was employed as a spy. Afterwards he retired to the more peaceful occupation of School Inspector, and when we knew him enjoyed a pension and landed property.
MARRIAGES OF INFANTS AND WIDOWS