SKETCH OF MY LIFE.
CHAPTER I.
My Childhood and Education.—My Mother.
I was born of a Brahmun family, in a place called Balie. It is nearly seven miles from Calcutta, the metropolis of British India, and is beautifully situated on the river Ganges, the sacred river of the Hindoos. Balie, for its numerous population, especially the Brahmun, and its learning, is universally regarded as one of the large and renowned places of Bengal. It has several districts, in which the people are settled according to their castes; thus, in our part—the Southern District—the Brahmuns live in one district. The physicians, the astrologers, the barbers, the farmers, the goldsmiths, the blacksmiths, the washermen, the dairymen, the fish-men, the shoemakers, the hog-keepers, etc. have distinct quarters of their own. When you come to a Brahmun, he can introduce you to twenty, more or less, of his fellow Brahmun neighbors; and such is the case with almost all other castes. The Brahmun population of my birthplace numbers more than two thousand. There are several temples in this place; the chief of which is one belonging to the god Shibā. There is a large market, perhaps the largest, where people from the neighboring towns and villages daily buy and sell their merchandise. There are two rum distilleries, owned by two French gentlemen, a large sugar factory, established by an Englishman, I presume; besides several castor-oil, gunny-bag, brick, and rope manufactories. A canal, passing through it, has made its north district a separate town, called Ootterparah, or north village; the other, however, is connected with the main village by two iron suspension bridges, one built by the East India Railway Company, and the other by the Government. The Government bridge is long, and handsomely constructed. As you sail up the Ganges from Calcutta, you see it distinctly on your left, hanging in the air.
There are three or four English schools, and one of them, standing on the Ootterparah side of the canal, belongs to the Government, to which the high castes send their sons for an English education. To come to Balie from Calcutta, the shortest way would be by railroad, which makes its first station here. There are also hundreds of small sailing Dingees, which carry passengers to and from Calcutta several times a day.
My father was a new settler in Balie; his native place is Vimpoor, of which I have no knowledge. While a young boy he was left an orphan, and with the care of a brother younger than himself. The only near relation he had was his aunt, the wife of a celebrated priest in Balie, who kindly invited the two orphan brothers to live with her. I cannot help speaking, if but a word, in this connection, of his uncle, as he seems to have been a very good and righteous man. The simplicity of his character, his devotion to good causes, his love for his fellow-creatures, were purely Christian. Among all his noble acts of charity, the most prominent was his taking care of the orphans, houseless, friendless, and helpless ones. He himself did not, as we hear, have a large family of his own,—not numbering more than eight members; still every day the floor of his dining-room had been overspread with twenty plates or more. His guests were not from his own caste exclusively; any child of God coming to his door for food or drink, would meet a loving welcome. Indeed, to love God through love toward man, was his darling motto. He manifested his love towards the low castes as much as his office and his religion allowed him. His door was open to all,—his house was the home for those who had “no place where to lay their heads.” Like other priests, he used to bathe in the Ganges early in the morning throughout the year, but excelled them in his prayer and worship to the idols, which occupied daily nearly four hours on the stretch. By two in the afternoon he would come into the inner department of the house, and speak words of love to all around, inquiring of one after his health, congratulating another on his success, lamenting with a third his sorrows, etc. Entering into the kitchen, the first question to his wife would be, “Has every one got something to eat?” And receiving a satisfactory answer, he would put his hand on her head, with the benediction, “Yes! God has answered my prayer then!”
As this good old man had no time to inspect, nor inclination to interfere with, the private proceedings of his guests, there arose a universal outbreak of looseness and corruption of manners to which my uncle fell a victim. But fortunately, my father, conscious of his own responsibility as a moral agent, and desirous of becoming independent, escaped the general contagion which was then making dreadful havoc among his friends. But he could not save his younger brother, who chose his own course, and ran headlong to destruction. Applying himself diligently to the pursuit of theology, my father soon was able to take care of the temple services, and to help his uncle in the discharge of his priestly functions. By and by, serving as an assistant to a Brahmun,—the priest over a wealthy family in Calcutta,—he stood on a firm footing, married a wife, and determined to build a house and remove his family into it. There was a piece of land close by his aunt’s, which he bought with a small sum for the following reason. There were some cocoa-nut, mango, and other wild trees on that lot which were, as they believed, the homes of demons, so hardly anybody dared to go to gather fruits thereon. It happened that my father, being a young man of courage and good common sense, fearlessly used to go there after the fruits which otherwise would have been left on the ground untouched by human hands. The owner of the lot, finding that my father enjoyed all the fruits of his trees which he had given up for fear of demons, thought it prudent to sell it to him for a reasonable sum. My father availed himself of the opportunity, and secured the lot with all its trees, and speedily built a house on it. He often used to say, he had driven all the demons from his place with “prayer and fasting” unto the god Rama. It would have been difficult for him to have moved to his new house, had it not been that my mother’s courage was strong as his. For this new place had so bad a reputation that her female neighbors did not dare to call on her in the evening, for fear of the demons. She believed in their existence, but feared them not, saying, that if we behave well and do not offend them, no demon would trouble us in the least. I used to hear from her the stories of the demons coming invisibly near the house in the shades of midnight, and filling the place with the fragrance of some exquisite flowers. Such fragrant flowers she knew did not grow in the neighborhood. Four or five years after my father had removed to his new house a misfortune happened to the family. He was on a visit to a friend in a neighboring town, and my mother was left in care of a female servant. It was dark midnight when “the object on the lap could not be recognized;” she was sleeping in a room with her infant Joguth,—myself,—and the favorite domestic was in her own bed close by. Some burglars, taking advantage of my father’s absence, broke through the house, and robbed it almost of its last penny. With a view of taking off the ornaments from the ankles of the sleeping women, one of the burglars touched the feet of my mother and thereby awoke her. She thought perhaps the servant had in her sleep touched her feet with hers, and spoke to her to the following effect: “Your limbs are pretty long, I see, On-nō!” “What made you think so, madam?” “Why, from there you could reach my ankle.” “Your ankles? did I touch them with my feet? I am sure I shall die pretty soon. That’s the reason why I do not wish to lie down close to the Brahmuns, lest I should kick them while sleeping. Sleeping and dining are just the same, you know,” etc. She rises from her bed, puts her hand reverently to my mother’s feet, salutes her, and stretches herself on the bed again. It can only be imagined with what death-like silence the sons of sin heard the conversation, and, waiting a little while, took off the ornaments from my mother’s body by force, and in a few minutes went on their way with a rich spoil. The cries of the women and the child gathered a crowd from the neighborhood. Some Brahmuns examined the house and found it rifled; boxes and chests were empty of their contents, as if they were just brought from the carpenter’s. In fact, such was the entire loss of property, that my mother did not have a second suit of clothing left, and the family had to eat their dinner the next day on banana-leaves, on account of the plates, cups, etc., being all taken away. With a manly resignation my father bore his misfortune; and to add more to his discouragement, the next year his house was broken into and robbed by the same burglars a second time. The chief of these was a man belonging to a respectable family, now living, I presume, who with his son has thrown several families into poverty by robbing them in the midnight gloom! My uncle, being invited to his house, a few years afterwards, recognized the very tumbler he used to drink from at his own house. As the Brahmuns deem it a great sin to swear by the Ganges, no matter under what circumstances, my father did not raise any complaint against the man. He would rather go poor and suffer loss than regain his property, if possible, by swearing before a magistrate. His family grew larger, and what he subsequently earned was consumed for their support; so he never could gain a comfortable position again, in regard to pecuniary prospects.
Nine children were born unto him, of whom five are living. Of the living, the first is my brother, the second and the third are sisters, the fourth is the writer, and the fifth is my youngest sister. Our names, although not in essence, are, in significance, pretty. My oldest brother is named after the god “Krishto and the moon;” the oldest sister is “Drop of Honey;” the second is “Young Beauty;” the meaning of my name is “The Moon of the World;” and our youngest brother, who died at seven, was “The Summer Moon.”
There being no system of female education in Bengal, my father applied all his energies for my training, and being a religious man himself, cared more for the right development of my heart than for my head. I remember distinctly sitting in his lap every evening and committing the prayers, proverbs, etc., to memory.
He had a remarkable faculty of cultivating, improving, and enriching another’s memory. Every evening I had to learn either a part or the whole of a prayer or moral precept, in the Sanscrith poetry, and to recite to him all the old ones beside. Thus, while other Brahmun boys of my own age or older knew nothing about proverbs and parables, my memory was amply supplied with the same. With such care he had taught me these things, that what I learned while a boy, perhaps nine or ten years old, I can repeat to-day, word by word, most of it being prayers to nearly twelve deities, such as the Sun, the River Ganges, Doorga, Shibă, Rama, Krishto, etc., and “an hundred and eight proverbs,” besides select pieces from old Sanscrith poems, etc.
He did not aim at crowding my youthful mind with dry, unintelligible precepts, but bathed it with their sweet juice. Indeed, ere I was made Thejo, or Second Born, I could almost draw pleasure from those Sanscrith proverbs, and recognize their applicability to the internal phenomena of the world. My fondness for poetry—which afterwards grew so strong that, though a renouncer of the Hindoo gods, I took much pains to compose several pieces of drama from the legends—was implanted in these younger days. And, as the result of learning the stories and legends of the gods, a deep reverence for them filled my heart. My childhood’s devotion to the idols was exemplary. My dear mother told me several anecdotes of my early days, about my offering or rather reciting prayers to the deities. During the great worship of a goddess in our neighborhood, my father was going to see the theatrical shows late in the evening. He awoke me from my sleep, and gladly I started with him. It was my habit to thank the gods, each by its respective name, before going out of doors. There was an idol of Shawlgram in our house, and as I passed through a narrow entry, I bent my head against the wall of the room in which the image was, and offered prayers. One by one my favorite gods all came into my mind; of course it took a longer time than usual to ask blessings from them all. My father walked almost to the place of worship and turned back to speak to me, but I was not there. Fearing some accident might have happened, or that I was taken aloft by Neeshie, he hastened toward home,[29] and found his little boy slowly striking his head against the wall. He felt doubly happy in learning that nothing unpleasant had happened, and that his boy was growing religious. How little did he know then that a Spirit more hurtful than Neeshie had already taken possession of the tender heart of his son. It was superstition that caused him to “bow down to wood and stone.”