[89] The young members of a family have no hesitation in partaking of food cooked by Mussulmans and forbidden in the Hindoo Shasters. On holidays or on special occasions, they send orders to the "Great Eastern Hotel," and get supplies of English delicacies such as they have a liking for. It is a well-known fact that almost every rich family in Calcutta and its suburbs (the orthodox members excepted) recognised as the head of the Hindoo community, patronise the English Hotel-keepers. Mr. D. Wilson, the famous purveyor in Government Place, seeing the great rush of native gentlemen into his shop on a Christmas eve, was said to have remarked that the Baboos were amongst his best customers. The great purveyor was right, because the Baboos give large orders and pay regularly for fear of exposure. Such of them as are placed in mediocre circumstances arrange with their Mussulman syces and get fowl curry or roast as often as they choose. There are indeed a few honorable exceptions, who on principle do not encourage the English style of eating and drinking. A very little reflection will convince any one that the English mode of living is ill suited to the Natives. It not only leads a man into extravagance, but what is more reprehensible, begets a habit of drinking, which, I need hardly say, has been the ruin of many a promising young Baboo.
[90] This gentleman was a Banian to several American and English firms, which used to deal largely in cow and other hides. From religious scruples he refused to accept the usual commission on such articles by which he might have obtained at least forty thousand Rupees per annum. In these days no Baboo declines to take the usual commission, but on the contrary, many are engaged in the trade, which is a sacrilegious act in the eye of the Hindoo Shaster.
[91] As the natural consequence of this declension of supremacy, Brahminical learning, from this and other analogous circumstances, slept a winter sleep, occasionally disturbed and broken by brilliant coruscations of light thrown upon it by Western researches, contemporaneously sustained by the faint efforts of learned Pundits.
[92] To so miserable a strait are some of them reduced that they actually strive to get a living by making these sacred thread poitas and strings for loins, indicating the pinching poverty and repulsive squalor in which they pine away their wretched existence. Indeed not a few of these widows are left "to the cold pity and grudging charity of a frosty world." They might almost sing and sigh with the poet as he sat in deep dejection on the shore.
"Alas! I have nor hope, nor health,
Nor peace within, nor calm around;
Nor that content, surpassing wealth,
The sage in contemplation found;
Others I see whom these surround,
Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;
To me that cup hath been dealt in another measure."
[93] However learned a Pundit might be in philology, philosophy, logic and theology, he is lamentably deficient in scientific knowledge, notably in geography and ethnology. With a view to test the knowledge of his Pundit on those two subjects, Bishop Middleton was said to have once asked him two very simple questions, (1) whence are the English come? (2) what is their origin? The reply of the Pundit was somewhat to the following effect: The English are come somewhere from Lunka or Ceylon (the imaginary land of cannibals), and they are of mixed origin, sprung from monkey and cannibal, because they jabber like monkeys, and sit like them on chairs with their legs hanging down,—an attitude peculiar to the monkey species,—and they eat like cannibals half-boiled beef, pork, mutton, &c. Childish as the reply was, the pious Bishop, however, with his wonted benignity, smiled and corrected his error.
[94] It is a disreputable fact, but it most assuredly is a fact, that when some years ago a teacher of the Government School of Art published a book in Bengallee on the ancient arts and manufactures of Hindoosthan, and sent a copy of it to one of these English-made Rajahs, he politely refused to take it—the price being one Rupee only—saying it was of no use to him though it was an instructive and suggestive manual. This refusal offers a sad comment on the liberality of my fellow countrymen towards the encouragement of learning. But turning from the dark to the bright side of the picture, I may perhaps be permitted to point with pardonable pride to the almost unparalleled munificence of the late Baboo Kally Prosono Singh of this City, in this respect. That distinguished patron of vernacular literature had, it is said, spent upwards of £50,000 on the compilation of Mohabharat, that grand Epic poem of the Hindoos, which says Talboys Wheeler, still continues to exercise an influence on the masses of the people "infinitely greater and more universal than the influence of the Bible upon modern Europe."
[95] Of all the English-made Rajahs of the present day, it is pleasing to recognise, in Moharajah Rajender Mullick of this City, some of the noble attributes of a Rajah. Modest and unassuming, he manifests to a great degree a generous disposition to relieve suffering humanity and to do good by stealth. Never did he struggle to thrust himself, by the nature of his work, upon public notice. Gifted with an intelligent mind, a refined taste, and considerable artistic ability, his moral greatness throws all other forms of greatness into the shade. He is not ambitious to make his name the theme, the gaze, the wonder of a dazzled community.
[96] Of all the Hindoo millionaires whose life afforded the most ennobling example of a pious and disinterested man that of Lalla Baboo—the ancestor of the present Paikpárrá Rajah family, in the suburbs of Calcutta—was certainly one of the most remarkable. He possessed a princely fortune, a considerable portion of which he wisely set apart for the support of the poor and destitute. Unlike most of his wealthy countrymen, he renounced all the pleasures of the world, and in the evening of his life retired with only a shred of cloth into the holy city of Brindabun. As a practical illustration of self-denial he actually led the life of a religious mendicant, daily begging from door to door for a mouthful of bread. His religious endowments still continue to offer shelter and food to hundreds of poor people in and around Brindabun, which has been so graphically described by Colonel Tod. "Though the groves of Brinda" says he, "in which Kanaya (Krishna) disported with the Gopis, no longer resound to the echoes of his flute; though the waters of the Jumna are daily polluted with the blood of the sacred kine, still it is the holy land of the pilgrim, the sacred Jordan of his fancy, on whose banks he may sit and weep, as did the banished Israelite of old, the glories of Mathoora, his Jerusalem."