As we lie in our bunks that night, while the ship ploughs the water in the dark, let us realize to what point on the vast surface of the globe we have travelled. A hundred miles away to east of us are the mountains of Ceylon, rising some eight thousand feet above the level of the ocean. A hundred miles to west is Cape Comorin, the southernmost point of India, lying eight degrees north of the Equator. Let us not be deceived by the apparent smallness of space on the maps which we use—those eight degrees are nearly equivalent to the length of Great Britain.
From Cape Comorin two coasts diverge, the one known as the Malabar Coast northwestward for a thousand miles, the other known as the Coromandel Coast northward and then northeastward for a like distance. The surf of the Arabian Sea beats on the Malabar Coast, that of the Bay of Bengal on the Coromandel Coast. Both the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal open broadly southward to the Indian Ocean, for the great Indian Peninsula narrows between them to a sharp point at Cape Comorin.
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Map of Southern India.| The interior of the Indian Peninsula is for the most part a low plateau, known as the Deccan, whose western margin forms a steep brink overlooking the Malabar Coast. From the top of this brink, called the Western Ghats, the surface of the plateau falls gently eastward to a second lower brink, which bears the name of Eastern Ghats. Between the Eastern Ghats, however, and the Coromandel Coast there is a broad belt of low-lying plain, the Carnatic. Thus India presents a lofty front to the ship approaching from the west, but a featureless plain along the Bay of Bengal, where the trees of the coastline appear to rise out of a water-horizon when seen from a short distance seaward.
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Approaching Tuticorin.| We wake at the dawn of the equatorial day which comes almost suddenly at six in the morning. There is bustle on board, for the launch is alongside which is to carry us ashore. The ship is riding in a yellow, turbid sea, and the land is distant some miles to the west, a low dark line along the horizon. At one point are white buildings, which gleam in the increasing light. We cross the broad shoal, and gradually the detail of the coast separates into a rich vegetation of trees, and a city whose most prominent object is a cotton factory with tall chimneys—strange reminder at the very threshold of our journey that we are entering a land which is in process of economic change. The United Kingdom underwent such a change a century ago, when spinning and weaving were removed from the cottage to the steam-driven factory.
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Nearer approach to Tuticorin.| India is a land of cotton. The very name calico is derived from Calicut, a town on the Malabar Coast, which was a centre of trade when Europeans first came over the ocean. Lancashire now sends cotton fabrics to India, and the Lancashire power-looms compete seriously with the finer work of the hand looms of India. But India manufactures great quantities of her own coarser cottons, and such a mill as this at Tuticorin is doing more than Lancashire to change the occupations of the Indian people. The beautiful silks, however, worn by the better-to-do women of India are still manufactured by hand loom.
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Landing at Tuticorin.| |7.
The Bazaar, Tuticorin.| |8.
Spinning Mill at Tuticorin.| |9.
Ducks at Tuticorin.| We land. Dark gesticulating figures surround us, scantily clad in white cotton. The morning sun casts long shadows, but there is a throng of people, for the work of India is done in the cool of the morning. The express train to Madras is waiting, but we have a short time for that first stroll, which leaves so deep an impression on the traveller setting foot in a new land. Tuticorin is a remote provincial city, a Dover or a Calais, on the passage from Ceylon. Here is a picture of its little bazaar with dark people in flowing white robes; there is a country cart in the street—ox-drawn. Next we have a nearer view of the spinning mill with a half-naked workman in the foreground. Under the shade of these leafy trees is a flock of ducks for sale. At every turn we see something characteristic, and must ask questions.
|Repeat Map No. 3.| We leave Tuticorin and travel for a hundred miles across the plain. It is a barren-looking country and dry, though at certain seasons there is plentiful rain, and crops enough are produced to maintain a fairly dense population. Far down on the western horizon, as we journey northward, are the mountains of the Malabar Coast, for in this extremity of India the Western and Eastern Ghats have come together and there is no plateau between them. The mountains rise from the western sea and from the eastern plain into a ridge along the west coast whose summits are about as high as the summits of Ceylon, that is to say some 8,000 feet. A group of small hills, isolated on the plain, marks the position of Madura, a hundred miles from Tuticorin. Madura is the seat of one of the finest temples in the land.
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Plan of a South Indian Temple.| A Hindu temple in Southern India usually consists of a square building rising through several stories which grow gradually smaller. It is thus pyramidal in form, and is adorned with tiers of thronged sculpture. Within is a cell containing the image. The temple itself is surrounded by square and walled enclosures, one without the other; the great gateways through the successive walls are the chief glories of southern architecture. Though often larger than the central shrine, they are not unlike it in general appearance, but rectangular in plan, not square. They rise story above story to a summit ridge and are rich with thousands of sculptured figures. These great gateways are known as gopuras. In the courtyards enclosed between the successive walls are the homes of the priests, and usually a large water tank and a hall of a thousand columns. Some of these temples are very wealthy foundations.
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The Tank of the Golden Lilies, The Temple, Madura.| |12.
The Temple, Madura.| |13.
A Gopura at Madura.| Here we have the tank of the Golden Lilies in the Temple of Madura, surrounded by a colonnade, with gopuras rising from beyond; and here another view in the same temple, and here a gopura photographed from near.
Hinduism is in its essence a spiritual religion. Western thought instinctively takes for granted the reality of outward things. Eastern thought instinctively takes for granted the reality of the “soul” or inward life. In the cosmology of the West there are two worlds, the natural and the supernatural; in the East the soul is the only real existence. The world-soul, or soul of Universal Nature, is God, and this Divine Soul is the supreme and fundamental reality; by comparison with it all outward things are shadows. Eternity is a vital aspect of reality. The present existence of the soul is not more certain than its pre-existence and its future existence. The present life is always brief and fleeting, but the past began and the future will end in eternity. Issuing from the Universal Soul and passing through æons of what may be called prenatal existence, the soul at last becomes individualised and enters on a career of conscious activity. Far from being dependent on the body, the soul takes to itself the outward form which it needs and deserves, and the body dies when it is deprived of the vitalising presence that animated it. The destiny of the soul is determined by its origin. It issued from the Universal Soul, and into the Universal Soul, its source, it must eventually be re-absorbed, though it may pass through innumerable lives on its way to the goal of spiritual maturity. “As it nears the goal the chains of individuality relax their hold upon it; and at last, with the final extinction of egoism, with the final triumph of selflessness, with the expansion of consciousness till it has become all-embracing—the sense of separateness entirely ceases, and the soul finds its true self, or, in other words, becomes fully and clearly conscious of its oneness with the living whole.” Such, in a few words, is the inner faith of the East.