Swithun's "New Home in the Village."
CHAPTER III
THE INDIAN VIEW OF NATURE AND ARCHITECTURE
Indians oblivious to scenery. The beauties of Nature. Results of learning drawing. Hindus' offerings of flowers; their garlands. Pictures of flowers. The new village church attracts; impressed by its interior; schoolboys visit it. Visitors from the Hindu college. A party from the Widows' Home. Brahmin ladies admire the embroidery. The "religious bath."
Almost all Indians are apparently oblivious to beautiful scenery. You rarely see them looking at a gorgeous sunset, or hear them speak about it. You will seldom hear them make any reference to the beauty or otherwise of their surroundings. As they travel along the road you will not see them looking round about them. Some passengers gaze listlessly out of the windows of the train, but to all appearance without much interest, except at stations where there is a crowd on the platform. Even the buildings or shop windows of a city only attract a languid amount of attention; but a street quarrel, or a war of words between two excited females, will soon draw a large crowd.
The brightness of the moon and the glory of the stars, astonishingly brilliant as they are when seen through the clear Indian atmosphere, does not seem to excite admiration, in spite of the divine attributes which Hindus ascribe to such objects. Even ordinary secular education does not do much to stimulate appreciation of the beauties in Nature. Christianity does something in this direction by extending the range of mental vision to the possibilities of the heavenly country, and the knowledge of God as the Creator excites a measure of interest in the objects of His creation. But even amongst Indian Christians any keen perception of the beauty of scenery by land or on the sea-coast is defective.