INTERIOR SHRINE, ELEPHANTA.
I should not forget to mention that in a square chamber also hewn out of the rock, but accessible by a door in each of the four sides, is a huge lingam—which was probably also kept concealed except on great occasions; and round the exterior walls of the chamber, looking down the various aisles of the temple, are eight enormous guardian figures, of fine and composed workmanship. (See illustration—in which a man is standing beneath the torso of the nearest figure.) Altogether the spirit of the whole thing is to my mind infinitely finer than that of the South Indian temples, which with their courts and catacomb-like interiors suggest no great ideas, but only a general sense of mystery and of Brahmanical ascendancy.
March 6th.—A little after sunset yesterday “Sikandra” took me to see an opium den in the native quarter. It was rather early, as the customers were only just settling in, but the police close these places at nine. Much what I expected. A dark dirty room with raised wide bench round the sides, on which folk could lie, with little smoky lamps for them to burn their opium. For three pice you get a little thimbleful of laudanum, and by continually taking a drop on the end of a steel prong and frizzling it in the flame you at last raise a viscid lump hardly as big as a pea, which you put in a pipe, and then holding the mouth of the pipe in the flame, draw breath. Two or three whiffs of thick smoke are thus obtained—and then more stuff has to be prepared; but the poison soon begins to work, and before long the smoker lies motionless, with his eyes open and his pipe dropping out of his hand. I spoke to a man who was just preparing his dose, and who looked very thin and miserable, asking him if he did not find it damage his health; but he said that he could not get along without it—if he gave it up for a day or two he could not do his work, and felt nervous and ill.
The effect of these drugs, opium, haschisch (hemp or ganja),[6] as well as of laughing gas, sulphuric ether, etc., is no doubt to produce a suspension of the specially bodily and local faculties for the time, and with it an inner illumination and consciousness, very beatific and simulating the real “ecstasy.” Laughing gas (nitrous oxide) produces a species of illumination and intuition into the secrets of the universe at times—as in the case of Sir Humphry Davy, who first used it on himself and who woke up exclaiming, “Nothing exists but thoughts! the universe is composed of impressions, ideas, pleasures and pains.” The feelings induced by opium and haschisch have often been described in somewhat similar terms; and it has to be remembered that many much-abused practices—indulgence in various drugs and strong drinks, mesmeric trance-states, frantic dancing and singing, as well as violent asceticisms, self-tortures, etc.—owe their hold upon humanity to the same fact, namely that they induce in however remote and imperfect a degree or by however unhealthy a method some momentary realisation of that state of cosmic consciousness of which we have spoken, and of the happiness attending it—the intensity of which happiness may perhaps be measured by the strength of these very abuses occurring in the search for it, and may perhaps be compared, for its actual force as a motive of human conduct, with the intensity of the sexual orgasm.
[6] As a curiosity of derivation it appears that these two words hemp and ganja are from the same root: Sanskrit goni, ganjika; Persian, Greek and Latin, cannabis; French chanvre; German Hanf; Dutch hennep. Canvas also is the same word.
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One evening two or three friends that I had made among the native “proletariat”—post-office and railway clerks—insisted on giving me a little entertainment. I was driven down to the native city, and landed in a garden-like court with little cottages all round. To one of these we were invited. Found quite a collection of people; numbers increasing on my arrival till there must have been about fifty. Just a little front room nine feet square, with no furniture except one folding chair which had been brought from heaven knows where in my honor. A nice rug had been placed on the ground, and pillows round the walls; and the company soon settled down, either inside the room (having left their shoes at the door), or in the verandah. A musician had been provided, in the shape of an old man who had a variety of instruments and handled them skilfully as far as I could judge. But the performance was rather wearisome and lasted an unconscionably long time.
It was very curious to me, as a contrast to English ways, to see all these youngish fellows sitting round listening to this rather stupid old man playing by the hour—so quiescent and resigned if one might use the word. They are so fond of simply doing nothing; their legs crossed and heads meditatively bent forward; clerks, small foremen and bookkeepers, and some probably manual workers—looking very nice and clean withal in their red turbans and white or black shawls or coats.
There is a certain tastefulness and grace always observable in India. Here I could not but notice, not only the Mahratta dress, but all the interior scene; plain color-washed walls edged with a running pattern, the forms of the various instruments, a few common bowls brought in to serve as musical glasses, the brass pot from which water was poured into them—all artistic in design and color, though the house was of tiniest proportions—only apparently two or three rooms, of the same size as that one.
After the music a little general conversation ensued, with coffee and cigarettes, talk of course turning on the inevitable Congress question and the relations of England and India—a subject evidently exciting the deepest interest in those present; but not much I think was added to former conversations. One of the company (a post-office clerk) says that all the educated and thoughtful people in India are with the Congress, to which I reply that it is much the same with the socialist movement in the West. He thinks—and they all seem to agree with him—that the condition of the agricultural people is decidedly worse than it used to be; but when I ask for evidence there is not much forthcoming, except references to Digby. I guess the statement is on the whole true, but the obvious difficulty of corroborating these things is very great; the absence of records of the past, the vastness of India, the various conditions in different parts, etc., etc., make it very difficult to come to any general and sweeping conclusion. The same friend pointed out (from Digby) that mere statistics of the increasing wealth of India were quite illusive “as they only indicated the increase of profits to merchants and foreigners, and had nothing to do with the general prosperity”; and to this I quite agreed, telling him that we had had plenty of statistics of the same kind in England; but that this was only what might be expected, as the ruling classes in both countries being infected with commercialism would naturally measure political success by trade-profits, and frame their laws too chiefly in view of a success of that kind.