"Ha!" said Bhima Gandharva, as if he were clearing his throat. He grasped my arm: "Come, I thought I saw the young man's father standing near the door as we passed out. I wonder if he will irresistibly attract you?" He made me retrace my steps to the banker's office: "There he is."
He was the image of the son in feature, yet his face was as repulsive as his son's was beautiful: the Devil after the fall, compared with the angel he was before it, would have presented just such a contrast.
"They are two Vallàbhácháryas," said my companion as we walked away. "You know that the trading community of India, comprehended under the general term of Baniahs, is divided into numerous castes, which transmit their avocations from father to son and preserve themselves free from intermixture with others. The two men you saw are probably on some important business negotiation connected with Bombay or the west of India; for they are Bhattias, who are also followers of the most singular religion the world has ever known—that of the Vallàbháchárya or Maharaja sect. These are Epicureans who have quite exceeded, as well in their formal creeds as in their actual practices, the wildest dreams of any of those mortals who have endeavored to make a religion of luxury. They are called Vallàbhácháryas, from Vallabha, the name of their founder, who dates from 1479, and áchárya, a "leader." Their Pushti Marga, or eat-and-drink doctrine, is briefly this: In the centre of heaven (Gouloka) sits Krishna, of the complexion of a dark cloud, clad in yellow, covered with unspeakable jewels, holding a flute. He is accompanied by Roaha, his wife, and also by three hundred millions of Gopis, or female attendants, each of whom has her own palace and three millions of private maids and waiting-women. It appears that once upon a time two over-loving Gopis quarreled about the god, and, as might be expected in a place so given over to love, they fell from heaven as a consequence. Animated by love for them, Krishna descended from heaven, incarnated himself in the form of Vallabha (founder of the sect), and finally redeemed them. Vallabha's descendants are therefore all gods, and reverence is paid them as such, the number of them being now sixty or seventy. To God belong all things—Tan (the body), Man (the mind) and Dhan (earthly possessions). The Vallàbhácháryas therefore give up all first to be enjoyed by their god, together with his descendants (the Maharajas, as they royally term themselves) and his representatives, the gosains or priestly teachers. Apply these doctrines logically, and what a carnival of the senses results! A few years ago one Karsandas Mulji, a man of talent and education, was sued for libel in the court at Bombay by this sect, whose practices he had been exposing. On the trial the evidence revealed such a mass of iniquity, such a complete subversion of the natural proprietary feelings of manhood in the objects of its love, such systematic worship of beastly sin, as must for ever give the Vallàbhácháryas pre-eminence among those who have manufactured authority for crime out of the laws of virtue. For the Vallàbhácháryas derive their scriptural sanction from the eighth book of the Bhagavata Purana, which they have completely falsified from its true meaning in their translation called the Prem Sagar, or "Ocean of Love." You saw the son? In twenty years—for these people cannot last long—trade and cunning and the riot of all the senses will have made him what you saw the father."
On the next day we visited the Jammah Masjid, the "Great Mosque" of Shah Jehan the renowned, and the glory of Delhi. Ascending the flight of steps leading to the principal entrance, we passed under the lofty arch of the gateway and found ourselves in a great court four hundred and fifty feet square, paved with red stone, in the centre of which a large basin supplied by several fountains contained the water for ceremonial ablutions. On three sides ran light and graceful arcades, while the fourth was quite enclosed by the mass of the mosque proper. Crossing the court and ascending another magnificent flight of stone steps, our eyes were soon commanding the façade of the great structure, and reveling in those prodigious contrasts of forms and colors which it presents. No building could, for this very reason, suffer more from that lack of simultaneity which is involved in any description by words; for it is the vivid shock of seeing, in one stroke of the eye, these three ripe and luxuriant domes (each of which at the same time offers its own subsidiary opposition of white and black stripes), relieved by the keen heights of the two flanking minarets,—it is this, together with the noble admixtures of reds, whites and blacks in the stones, crowned by the shining of the gilded minaret-shafts, which fills the eye of the beholder with a large content of beautiful form and color.
As one's eye becomes cooler one begins to distinguish in the front, which is faced with slabs of pure white marble, the divisions adorned by inscriptions from the Koran inlaid in letters of black marble, and the singularly airy little pavilions which crown the minarets. We ascended one of the minarets by a winding staircase of one hundred and thirty steps, and here, while our gaze took flight over Delhi and beyond, traversing in a second the achievements of many centuries and races, Bhima Gandharva told me of the glories of old Delhi. Indranechta—as Delhi appears in the fabulous legends of old India, and as it is still called by the Hindus—dates its own birth as far back as three thousand years before our era. It was fifty-seven years before the time of Christ that the name of Delhi began to appear in history. Its successive destructions (which a sketch like this cannot even name) left enormous quantities of ruins, and as its successive rebuildings were accomplished by the side of (not upon) these remains, the result has been that from the garden of Shahlimar, the site of which is on the north-west of the town, to beyond the Kantab Minar, whose tall column I could plainly distinguish rising up nine miles off to the south-west, the plain of Delhi presents an accumulation and variety of ruins not to be surpassed in the whole world.
LIFE-SAVING STATIONS.
With their enthusiasm fairly kindled for the work which the government carries on in the signal-service department of the little house on the beach,[1] our exploring party descended the narrow ladder and found themselves in a ten-by-twelve room, warmed by a stove and surrounded by benches. It is used, the old captain who has volunteered as guide tells us, by the men on the life-saving service during the nine months in which they are on duty. A cheerful fire was burning in the stove, and we gathered about it: the wind blew a stronger gale each moment outside, barring out the far sea-horizon with a wall of gray mist. The tide rolled up on the shelving beach beneath the square window with a sullen, treacherous roar.
"It's the bar that gives the sea that sound," said the captain. "This is the ugliest bit of coast for vessels from Nova Scotia to Florida. It's like this," drawing his finger across the table in the vain effort to map out the matter intelligibly to a landsman's comprehension. "Here's the Jersey coast. You've got to hug it close with your vessel to make New York harbor—there; and all along it, from Sandy Hook to Cape May, runs the bar—so. Broken, but so much the worse. A nor'-easter drives you on it, sure. I've known from sixteen to twenty wracks in a winter on this coast before the companies or government took up the matter."
"That only argued bad seamanship," said one of his listeners. "When every ship's captain knew the bar—"