Feeding-places for birds—boxes on posts—ornamented with carving and sometimes brightly painted, naturally arouse the curiosity of visitors to Ahmedabad. A sect of the Hindu faith in this city is known as the Jains; they erected the feeding-places and supply food for the birds. This Buddhist sect believes all inorganic matter has a soul, and that a man's soul may pass into stone; but it is their concern for animal life, more than their other beliefs, that interests. They will not kill an animal, bird or insect. To maintain life in flies, bedbugs, mosquitoes, fowl, dogs, and monkeys is a strict tenet of their religion; they also believe bodily penance is necessary to salvation. This sect numbers a million and a half.
The Jain temple—Hathi Singh Temple—is one of the prettiest church buildings we have seen. Though it has not the imposing appearance of the Cathedral of Milan, Italy, a view of the Jain temple of Ahmedabad will long remain in one's mind. The church, built of white marble, surmounted by 53 domes, will bring to mind, as a poor illustration, the handsomely ornamented Christmas or wedding cakes seen in bakers' windows. Woolen slippers must be worn on entering. The interior is in keeping with the richness of the exterior. The gods in the temple where the Jains worship seem to be made of gold, although they may be of brass; they are two feet high, and some are ornamented with what looks like precious stones.
In a mosque of that city there is a marble window, with delicate tracery on stone of stems and branches. This beautiful craftsmanship is in every detail equal to what one would expect if the same design was worked by a deft hand lace-worker. The window is six or seven feet across, and of the same height. The tracery was executed nearly 300 hundred years ago. Formerly there were two, but one was removed from the mosque and taken to London, and is now in the British Museum.
In all the larger centers of India a garrison, or cantonment, is located just outside the city, some of them composed largely of native soldiers, with European officers in charge. Europeans living in these centers occupy homes near the cantonments.
Ahmedabad streets are well shaded, and some of the houses, though none too tidy in appearance, are beautifully ornamented on the outside with wood carving. Beggars are numerous. A wall, in some sections 40 feet high, with 12 entrances, surrounds the old city. A good park is another feature, and the old wells are an example of art in a high degree in the past. The necessity for these wells will be understood when it is stated that rain does not fall from the termination of the monsoons until rain is again due, a period of eight months; but the sacred tamarind trees do not die. All the cities of India put one in mind of a rosy apple rotten in the center: the outskirts are beautified with nice parks, good roads, and shady trees, but the inside is always spoiled by a dirty, bad-smelling bazaar.
Packs of big monkeys and homeless dogs—pariah dogs, they are called—stand on the roads in the suburbs until a horse almost steps on them. They are waiting for the Jains to come with food. The pariah dog is generally mangy, scaly, starved, and half mad when he is not actually snapping. Though a menace to human life, if a European were to kill one it might lead to an uprising in India. The mortality from rabies is appalling.
Lizards were seen sliding about the walls, crickets were piping from the corners, and frogs were hopping about the floor of the room I occupied in Ahmedabad. No one of this sect will kill a lizard, as he is a house scavenger—puts in all his time catching flies and mosquitoes. The lizard is evidently not a Jain.
A 24-hour ride was ahead of us before Agra could be reached. The country passed through was as level as a table, with patches of rice growing on each side of the railway track. Now and again an irrigation trench is seen, and trees in cultivated fields, while often separated by considerable space, give the landscape a timbered appearance. Four poles, from eight to ten feet above the ground, may be seen standing in fields where grain is growing, on top of which a shaky platform has been built. An Indian is assigned to this "look-out," to protect the growing and ripening crops from invasions of destructive fowl and animals. Rice will grow only in from three to twelve inches of water. If the monsoons be limited, there will not be enough water to grow the rice, and the dreaded famine results. Though the monsoons had been good, the people looked half starved; so we have no desire to travel through India in a famine year. The Indian plough is perhaps an improvement on what was in use 5,000 years ago, as it has a pointed iron bolt in a stick of wood, but in the murky past the point of the plough might have been wood. Oxen, with big humps on their shoulders, draw the stick and bolt, and two Indians—generally a woman and a man—seem to be required to work the device. A long pole sticking in the air, with half a dozen to a dozen Indians around—each woman with a baby astraddle her hip—is scaled by two or three men, a cloth no larger than a pocket handkerchief about their loins, the top of the pole bending to the ground as the men approach the end of it. A sort of bucket—generally of earthenware, but sometimes an American five-gallon tin oil can—is seen appearing on the surface with water dripping from it. This is the windmill of India. When the monsoons fail them, this is their only hope of getting water from the wells to nourish the rice "paddies," and it is borne on the head for long distances for the purpose of maintaining life.
Very few people drink water in India, as in most rivers it is polluted by dead bodies, is used by "dobeys" (washermen), and in other ways made unfit to drink, all of which causes typhoid fever. For this reason much whisky, also soda water, is drunk. Soda water on trains sells at four cents a bottle to a second-class passenger and eight cents to a first-class passenger. In this country one pays according to his position for any and everything he buys.
Stations are not announced in India, and noticing "Agra" on a board, in large letters, that place being a Mecca for travelers, we fell in line with custom and left the train.