The main entrance to Juggernaut’s temple in Puri. I was mobbed for stepping on the flagging around the column
Setting a course for the nearest shop, he advanced with dignified tread, shouldering his way through the multitude, pushing aside all who stood in his path, not rudely, but firmly, something almost human in his manner, of waywardness, self-complacency, and arrogance. The impoverished descendants of an ancient house would have marched with that stately air of superiority, the son of a nouveau riche with that attitude of primary proprietorship in the world and its goods. Native reverence for the animal was little short of disgusting. Pilgrims prostrated themselves before him; hawkers stepped aside with muttered prayers; scores of women fell on their knees and elbows in the teeming streets, bowed their heads low in the dust, and ran to kiss his flanks.
Marching boldly up to the first booth, the bull chose a morsel of green stuff from the inclined platform, and, chewing it leisurely after the manner of an epicure, strolled on to the next stall. In the days of his novitiate, ’tis said, the sacred calf eats his fill of the first food he comes upon. A few weeks of experience, however, make him discriminating in his tastes. Through the long rows of shops the beast levied on all, stopping longest where the supplies were freshest, and awaking a mild protest from the keeper. It was only a protest, however; taking the form of a chanted prayer. For how may the Hindu know that the soul of his grandfather does not look out through those bovine eyes! At any rate, he acquires merit for every leaf and stock that he loses. Now and again, Marten interpreted a rogation.
“Hast thou not always had thy fill, oh, holy one!” prayed the native, rocking his body back and forth in time to his chant, “I would willingly feed thee. Hast thou not always found welcome at my shop? But I am a poor man, O king of sacred beasts. I pray thee, therefore, take of the goods of my neighbor, who is the possessor of great wealth. For my poverty is extreme, and if thou dost not desist, to-morrow may I not be here to feed thee.”
As if in answer to the prayer, the animal moved on to the booth of the neighbor, who bore no outward sign, at least, of the great wealth that had been charged against him. His stock was fresh, however, and the bull ate generously in spite of the keeper’s incantation. A second and a third time the prayer was repeated, but to no effect. Then the Hindu, picking up the joint of a bamboo, murmured the prayer into it.
“Thou canst not hear the prayer of a poor man, O sacred one, through thy ears,” wailed the merchant. “Listen then to this petition,” and, rising in his place, he struck the animal sharply over the nose with the bamboo. The bull turned a reproachful gaze on the violator of his sanctity, looked sorrowfully at him for a moment through half-closed eyelids, and strolled slowly away.
Conspicuous among the swarming thousands of Puri are the widows. With the death of her husband the Hindu woman must shave her head and dress in a snow-white sheet that clings closely about her as she walks. Under no circumstances may she marry again nor lay aside the garb that announces her bereavement. More often than not her departed spouse has left her unprovided with this world’s goods, and in India the woman’s means of earning a livelihood are—well, painfully limited. Under a humane British rule the widow’s fate is less cruel than in the days when she mounted the funeral pyre with her dead, perhaps; but it is certainly no less humiliating. The uninformed sahib would seem justified in supposing that the chief interest of the Indian wife is the preservation of her husband’s health.
The Hindu woman of the masses enjoys an almost Occidental freedom from seclusion. Compared with the coarse females of Mohammedan lands, she is modest, almost dainty—pretty, too, in her younger days, for all her color. But age comes early, and with the increase of wrinkles and barbaric jewelry her charms fade. Her costume is more ample than that of the Singhalese,—a single strip of cloth of ten or twelve yards wound round her body from neck to ankles, leaving only arms and left shoulder bare. Lithe and supple by nature, her every movement might be graceful were it not the custom of her husband, dreading the tax collector, to load her down with his surplus wealth. As a girl she is bedecked with gaudy trinkets before her costume has advanced beyond the fig-leaf stage; as a matron, her passing sounds like a junk-shop in the grasp of a cyclone. It is no unusual experience to meet a female wearing rings on every finger and toe; bracelets on both arms from wrists to elbows; rings in the top, side, and lobe of each ear; and three nose-rings, one of which, some two inches in diameter, pierces the left nostril and swings back and forth against the cheek of the wearer. What a throb of joy must come to the husband who presses so precious a wife to his bosom! But on the other hand, as once I caught Marten musing to himself, “Suppose she flew de coop?”
