CHAPTER XVI
HINDU PHILOSOPHY
The barrenness of Hinduism. The Golden Threshold; its authoress—her poetry; the four kinds of religion; her motherly instincts; her letters; her father; her search for beauty; her portrait. Rarity of happy Hindu faces. The picture of "Jerome."
People sometimes say, when asking about Hinduism, "Surely if the idolatry, and folly, and indecency, which we know exists in the religion as it now is could be cleared away, we should find remaining some deep philosophic thoughts and mystical poetical fancies which we might admire?"
The reply to this question is that, if Hinduism was subjected to this purging process, what would be left would be practically nothing at all. This can be strikingly illustrated in the following way.
An Indian lady, Mrs Sarojini Naidu, has published a little volume of poems called The Golden Threshold. There is an introduction to the book by Mr Arthur Symons, giving a few particulars of the life of the authoress. She is apparently a thoroughgoing Hindu, although one of sufficient independence of character to marry another Hindu who was not a Brahmin like herself, and on that account meeting with obloquy from her own people. She is evidently a highly cultivated lady, knowing English perfectly. But though she has lived in England, and travelled much, there is nothing to indicate that she has been touched in any way by Christianity. She has had, therefore, only Hinduism from which to get poetic thoughts connected with religion. She is evidently a true poet, and if there had been anything in the religion capable of suggesting poetic ideas she would have certainly found it. She has undoubtedly a mind of great refinement, so that all that is otherwise in connection with Hinduism has to be eliminated from the field in which she could gather poetic thought. What, then, is the result? While there is a distinct charm in the rhythm of her verses, their utter emptiness makes them of no real value. The only poem, curiously enough, in which a deeper note is struck is when she describes the four kinds of religion which flourish under the kindly rule of H.H. the Nizam of Hyderabad: the Mohammedan, the Hindu, the Parsee, and the Christian. The verse is as follows:—
"The votaries of the Prophet's faith,
Of whom you are the crown and chief;
And they who bear on Vedic brows
Their mystic symbols of belief;
And they who worshipping the sun,
Fled o'er the old Iranian sea;
And they who bow to Him who trod
The midnight waves of Galilee."
Each religion is happily touched with a delicate hand. To get a suitable idea concerning each into a couple of lines of real poetry shows a gifted mind, and the two last lines are specially happy. (The capital letter in the pronoun is so printed in the book.) Her mind coming thus into brief contact with higher and truer things, she rises in the concluding verse to a kind of benediction on this beneficent Mohammedan ruler, which almost approaches the nature of a prayer:—
"God give you joy, God give you grace,
To shield the truth and smite the wrong,
To honour Virtue, Valour, Worth,
To cherish faith and foster song.
Your name within a nation's prayer,
Your music on a nation's tongue."
The only other poem which rises above the mere commonplace is that in which Queen Gulnaar expresses the unsatisfied condition of her heart because she has no rival to her beauty, and with none to envy, life has no savour. Although seven beautiful brides are sent for and brought before her, she remains without a rival. Finally, with delight, she finds what she sought for in her own little two-year-old daughter. But it was not her religion which supplied the poetess with this pretty fancy. It arose out of her own motherly instincts, which amongst Easterns are charmingly dominant.