Soul-stains.
Worse [than] all the results yet mentioned are the deep soul-stains, the utter ruin of all moral and spiritual character, which fall to the lot of countless thousands of innocent children through the direct influence of their religion. One longs to turn away from scenes like these, but we mothers, sisters, and daughters of Christian homes cannot be honest with ourselves and with our God, unless we are willing to know things as they really are, in order to help to make them as they really ought to be. Such conditions exist to a larger or smaller degree in many lands, but to be really understood in their baldest, most revolting form, it is only necessary to visit India. Bishop Caldwell says that “the stories related of the life of the god Krishna do more than anything to destroy the morals and corrupt the imaginations of Hindu youth.” Temple girls. The temple girls, nautch girls, and muralis are living witnesses to India’s need of a pure and holy religion.
The nautch-girl often begins her career of training under teachers as early as five years of age. She is taught to read, dance, and sing, and instructed in every seductive art. Her songs are usually amorous; and while she is yet a mere girl, before she can realize fully the moral bearings of her choice of life, she makes her debut as a nautch-girl in the community.
Khandoba is the deity of the Marathi country and is popularly believed to be an avator, or incarnation of Shiva. Muralis are girls devoted to him by their parents in infancy or early childhood. Outside the main entrance of the temple court, a stone column stands on the wall on the left side. It is about three feet high, and on the head of it is cut a filthy design. The column is called by the name of Yeshwantrao.... He it is who gives children to barren women.... It is to this image the poor deluded women promise to sacrifice their first-born daughters if Khandoba will make them mothers of many children. Then after the vow, the first-born girl is offered to Khandoba and set apart for him by tying a necklace of seven cowries around the little girl’s neck. When she becomes of marriageable age she is formally married to the Khanda or daggar of Khandoba, and becomes his nominal wife. Henceforth she is forbidden to become the wedded wife of man, and the result is that she usually leads an infamous life, earning a livelihood by sin.[83]
The stories told by Amy Wilson Carmichael and many others corroborate and emphasize the facts stated by Mrs. Fuller, and tell of what the British Government and Christian missions are trying to do to counteract and stop the monstrous evil. From the Missionary Review of the World for February, 1913, we quote:—
Legislation to abolish young temple girls.
“A bill lately introduced into the viceroy’s legislative council by Mr. Dadabhai, the Parsee member of that body, touches upon some of oldest and darkest social evils of India. It proposes to make it criminal for a parent or other lawful guardian to dedicate a girl under sixteen years of age to ‘the service of a deity,’ which always means dedicating her to a life of infamy, and to make the crime punishable with ten years penal servitude. It prohibits under very severe penalties, the practice which obtains whereby priests enter into temporary alliance with young girls thus dedicated, in order to initiate them into the life of professional profligacy.” To this we may add from an authoritative source that in 1913 the native state of Mysore had already abolished dancing girls from all its temples.
While the British Government is trying to prevent any of India’s daughters from being hereafter ruined, body and soul, in the name of religion, what is being done for the thousands who through no fault of their own have already become “the servants of the gods”? Is it possible to do anything to redeem the lives of these children whose earliest memories cluster about the most hideous forms of evil?
Rescuing the servant of the gods.
Another picture. A group of women lounging within the temple enclosure in the cool shade of the fragrant cork trees. A beautiful little girl of five years is running up and down the great stone steps of the tank, laughing and playing. Now and then one of the women calls the child to her and tries the effect of some article of [jewelry] against the bright little face. Little Moothi, the Pearl of the Temple, as she is called, is full of life and happiness. Too young to understand the sin and wrong about her, she loves the bright jewels and silken garments, the excitement of the dancing and singing. The daily exercise on the whirling wheel is only fun for her. She never grows dizzy and falls off as do her stupid companions, to be beaten by cross old Ramana, their teacher. “She will bring plenty of money by and by,” said one of the women to Moothi’s mother. “You had better let her go to the Christian school in the village. She will be taught to read and sing without any expense to you, and there is no danger of her remembering what she hears of that foolish religion.” But the mother’s face did not light up in response. Sitting in her little hut she has listened to the Gospel as it was told to a group of outcast women who had gathered weekly in the village palim on the other side of the wall. The wonderful story had penetrated her dark heart. But it is too late for her. She is too old to change, but oh, that her little Moothi, her beautiful one, might be spared the life of sin and shame to which she is doomed as a dancing girl devoted to the service of the temple. What can she do? Through the long nights she thought and thought, until finally she came to the decision to part with the little one though her heart break. One night she took the child with a little bundle of clothing and stole away. After weary miles of travel she appeared at the home of a missionary and begged her to take the little girl. “I give her to you,” she said, “to be taught your religion, and to be your child, but she must never know who her mother was.” She laid down twenty rupees which she had saved toward her support, and disappeared, leaving no clue to her name and village.
There was consternation among the women of the temple when it was discovered that Moothi was gone, but the mother gave no sign, and it was finally concluded that some one had stolen her because of her beauty, and such things are too common in a heathen land to cause a disturbance. As Moothi grew and developed into a beautiful Christian woman and earnest worker, the missionary often wondered whence came the God-given trust so strangely sent. Now and then, but less frequently as the years pass on, a woman, growing increasingly old and bent, was seen near the school, whom they associated with Moothi, but no one knew until upon her deathbed she sent for the missionary and told her story. Only a heathen mother, degraded and heart-broken, parted from her only joy in life, watching hungrily in the distance for a sight of the loved face. Can we not believe that the Christ of love was revealed to her heart also?[84]
What Christian mother will make it possible that some other heart-broken heathen mother may hear the Gospel message, and may find a place of refuge for her sweet, innocent child?