From Adam's Peak to Elephanta

by Edward Carpenter

CHAPTER VII.
A NIGHT-FESTIVAL IN A HINDU TEMPLE.

The festival of Taypusam is one of the more important among the many religious festivals of the Hindus, and is celebrated with great rejoicings on the night of the first full moon in January each year. In the case of the great temples of Southern India, some of which are so vast that their enclosures are more than a mile in circumference, enormous crowds—sometimes 20,000 people or more—will congregate together to witness the ceremonials, which are elaborately gorgeous. There are a few Hindu temples of smaller size in Ceylon, and into one of these I had the good fortune to be admitted, on the occasion of this year’s festival (1891), and at the time when the proceedings were about to commence.

It was nine o’clock, the full moon was shining in the sky, and already the blaring of trumpets and horns could be heard from within as I stood at the gate seeking admittance. At first this was positively denied; but my companion, who was a person, of some authority in the temple, soon effected an entrance, and we presently stood within the precincts. It must be understood that these temples generally consist of a large oblong enclosure, more or less planted with palms and other trees, within which stands the sanctuary itself, with lesser shrines, priests’ dwellings and other buildings grouped round it. In the present case the enclosure was about one hundred yards long by sixty or seventy wide, with short grass under foot. In the centre stood the temple proper—a building without any pretensions to architectural form, a mere oblong, bounded by a wall ten or twelve feet high; unbroken by any windows, and rudely painted in vertical stripes, red and white. At the far end, under trees, were some low priests’ cottages; and farther on a tank or reservoir, not very large, with a stone balustrade around it. Coming round to the front of the temple, which was more ornamented, and where the main doorway or entrance was, we found there a considerable crowd assembled. We were in fact just in time to witness the beginning of the ceremony; for almost immediately a lot of folk came rushing out through the doorway of the temple in evident excitement; torches were lighted, consisting of long poles, some surmounted with a flaming ring of rags dipped in coco-nut oil, others with a small iron crate in which lumps of broken coco-nut burned merrily. In a few moments there was a brilliant light; the people arranged themselves in two lines from the temple door; sounds of music from within got louder; and a small procession appeared, musicians first, then four nautch girls, and lastly a small platform supported on the shoulders of men, on which was the great god Siva.

At first I could not make out what this last-named object was, but presently distinguished two rude representations of male and female figures, Siva and his consort Sakti, apparently cut out of one block, seated, and about three feet high, but so bedone with jewels and silks that it was difficult to be sure of their anatomy! Over them was held a big ornamental umbrella, and behind followed the priest. We joined the procession, and soon arrived at the edge of the reservoir which I have already mentioned, and on which was floating a strange kind of ship. It was a raft made of bamboos lashed to empty barrels, and on it a most florid and brilliant canopy, covered with cloths of different colors and surmounted by little scarlet pennants. A flight of steps down to the water occupied the whole of one side of the tank, the other three sides were surrounded by the stone balcony, and on these steps and round the balcony the crowd immediately disposed itself, while the procession went on board. When the god was properly arranged under his canopy, and the nautch girls round about him, and when room had been found for the crew, who with long poles were to propel the vessel, and for as many musicians as convenient—about a dozen souls in all—a bell rang, and the priest, a brown-bodied young Brahman with the sacred thread over his shoulders and a white cloth edged with red round his loins, made an offering of flame of camphor in a five-branched lamp. A hush fell upon the crowd, who all held their hands, palms together, as in the attitude of prayer (but also symbol of the desire to be joined together and to the god)—some with their arms high above their heads; a tray was placed on the raft, of coco-nuts and bananas which the priest opening deposited before the image; the band burst forth into renewed uproar, and the ship went gyrating over the water on her queer voyage.

TAMIL MAN.

What a scene! I had now time to look around a little. All round the little lake, thronging the steps and the sides in the great glare of the torches, were hundreds of men and boys, barebodied, barehead and barefoot, but with white loin-cloths—all in a state of great excitement—not religious so much as spectacular, as at the commencement of a theatrical performance, myself and companion about the only persons clothed,—except that in a corner and forming a pretty mass of color were a few women and girls, of the poorer class of Tamils, but brightly dressed, with nose-rings and ear-rings profusely ornamented. On the water, brilliant in scarlet and gold and blue, was floating the sacred canopy, surrounded by musicians yelling on their various horns, in the front of which—with the priest standing between them—sat two little naked boys holding small torches; while overhead through the leaves of plentiful coco-nut and banana palms overhanging the tank, in the dim blue sky among gorgeous cloud-outlines just discernible, shone the goddess of night, the cause of all this commotion.

Such a blowing up of trumpets in the full moon! For the first time I gathered some clear idea of what the ancient festivals were like. Here was a boy blowing two pipes at the same time, exactly as in the Greek bas-reliefs. There was a man droning a deep bourdon on a reed instrument, with cheeks puffed into pouches with long-sustained effort of blowing; to him was attached a shrill flageolet player—the two together giving much the effect of Highland bagpipes. Then there were the tomtoms, whose stretched skins produce quite musical and bell-like though monotonous sounds; and lastly two old men jingling cymbals and at the same time blowing their terrible chank-horns or conches. These chanks are much used in Buddhist and Hindu temples. They are large whorled sea-shells of the whelk shape, such as sometimes ornament our mantels. The apex of the spiral is cut away and a mouthpiece cemented in its place, through which the instrument can be blown like a horn. If then the fingers be used to partly cover and vary the mouth of the shell, and at the same time the shell be vibrated to and fro in the air—what with its natural convolutions and these added complications, the most ear-rending and diabolically wavy bewildering and hollow sounds can be produced, such as might surely infect the most callous worshiper with a proper faith in the supernatural.

The temper of the crowd too helped one to understand the old religious attitude. It was thoroughly whole-hearted—I cannot think of any other word. There was no piety—in our sense of the word—or very little, observable. They were just thoroughly enjoying themselves—a little excited no doubt by chanks and divine possibilities generally, but not subdued by awe; talking freely to each other in low tones, or even indulging occasionally—the younger ones—in a little bear-fighting; at the same time proud of the spectacle and the presence of the divinity, heart and soul in the ceremony, and anxious to lend hands as torch-bearers or image-bearers, or in any way, to its successful issue. It is this temper which the wise men say is encouraged and purposely cultivated by the ceremonial institutions of Hinduism. The temple services are made to cover, as far as may be, the whole ground of life, and to provide the pleasures of the theatre, the art-gallery, the music hall and the concert-room in one. People attracted by these spectacles—which are very numerous and very varied in character, according to the different feasts—presently remain to inquire into their meaning. Some like the music, others the bright colors. Many men come at first merely to witness the dancing of the nautch girls, but afterwards and insensibly are drawn into spheres of more spiritual influence. Even the children find plenty to attract them, and the temple becomes their familiar resort from early life.

The theory is that all the ceremonies have inner and mystic meanings—which meanings in due time are declared to those who are fit—and that thus the temple institutions and ceremonies constitute a great ladder by which men can rise at last to those inner truths which lie beyond all formulas and are contained in no creed. Such is the theory, but like all theories it requires large deductions before acceptance. That such theory was one of the formative influences of the Hindu ceremonial, and that the latter embodies here and there important esoteric truths descending from Vedic times, I hardly doubt; but on the other hand, time, custom and neglect, different streams of tradition blending and blurring each other, reforms and a thousand influences have—as in all such cases—produced a total concrete result which no one theory can account for or coordinate.