Modern India

by William Eleroy Curtis

The census of 1901 returned 2,728,812 priests, which is an average of one for every seventy-two members of the Hindu faith, and it is believed that, altogether, there are more than 9,000,000 persons including monks, nuns, ascetics, fakirs, sorcerers, chelas, and mendicants or various kinds and attendants employed about the temples who are dependent upon the public for support. A large part of the income of the pious Hindu is devoted to the support of priests and the feeding of pilgrims. Wherever you see it, wherever you meet it, and especially when you come in contact with it as a sightseer, Brahminism excites nothing but pity, indignation and abhorrence.

Buddhism is very different, although Buddha lived and died a Hindu, and the members of that sect still claim that he was the greatest, the wisest and the best of all Brahmins. No two religions are so contradictory and incompatible as that taught by Buddha and the modern teachings of the Brahmins. The underlying principles of Buddha's faith are love, charity, self-sacrifice, unselfishness, universal brotherhood and spiritual and physical purity. He believed in none of the present practices of the Hindu priests. There is a striking resemblance between the teachings of Buddha and the teachings of Christ. Passages in the New Testament, reporting the words of the Savior, seem like plagiarisms from the maxims of Buddha, and, indeed, Buddhist scholars tell of a myth concerning a young Jew who about five centuries after Buddha, and twenty centuries ago, came from Syria with a caravan and spent several years under instruction in a Buddhist monastery in Thibet. Thus they account for the silence of the scriptures concerning the doings of Christ between the ages of 12 and 20, and for the similarity between his sermons and those preached by the founder of their religion. Buddha taught that good actions bring happiness and bad actions misery; that selfishness is the cause of sin, sorrow and suffering, and that the abolition of self, sacrifices for others and the suppression of passions and desires is the only true plan of salvation. He died 543 years before Jesus was born, and within the next two centuries his teachings were accepted by two-thirds of the people of India, but by the tenth century of our era they had been forgotten, and a great transformation had taken place among the Indo-Ayran races, who began to worship demons instead of angels and teach fear instead of hope, until now there are practically no Buddhists in India with the exception of the Burmese, who are almost unanimous in the confession of that faith. It is a singular phenomenon that Buddhism should so disappear from the land of its birth, although 450,000,000 of the human race still turn to its founder with pure affection as the wisest of teachers and the noblest of ideals.

The teachings of Buddha survive in a sect known as the Jains, founded by Jina, or Mahavira, a Buddhist priest, about a thousand years ago, as a protest against the cruel encroachments of the Hindus. Jina was a Perfect One, who subdued all worldly desires; who lived an unselfish life, practiced the golden rule, harmed no living thing, and attained the highest aim of the soul, right knowledge, right conduct, temperance, sobriety, chastity and a Holy Calm.

There are now 1,334,148 Jains in India, and among them are the wealthiest, most highly cultured and most charitable of all people. They carry their love of life to extremes. A true believer will not harm an insect, not even a mosquito or a flea. All Hindus are kind to animals, except when they ill treat them through ignorance, as is often the case. The Brahmins represent that murder, robbery, deception and every other form of crime and vice may be committed in the worship of their gods. They teach that the gods themselves are guilty of the most hideous depravity, and that the sacrifice of wives, children, brothers, sisters and friends to convenience or expediency for selfish ends is justifiable. Indeed, the British government has been compelled to interfere and prohibit the sacrifice of human life to propitiate the Hindu gods. It has suppressed the thugs, who, as you have read, formerly went about the country killing people in order to acquire holiness; it has prohibited the awful processions of the car of Juggernaut, before which hysterical fanatics used to throw their own bodies, and the bodies of their children, to be crushed under the iron wheels, in the hope of pleasing some monster among their deities. The suppression of infanticide, which is still encouraged by the Brahmins, is now receiving the vigilant attention of the authorities.

Every effort has been made during the last fifty years to prevent the awful cruelties to human beings that formerly were common in Hindu worship, but no police intervention has ever been necessary to protect dumb animals; nobody was ever punished for cruelty to them; on the contrary, animal worship is one of the most general of practices among the Hindus, and many beasts and reptiles are sacred. But the Jains go still further and establish hospitals for aged and infirm animals. You can see them in Bombay, in Delhi, Lucknow, Calcutta and other places where the Jains are strong. Behind their walls may be found hundreds of decrepit horses, diseased cows and bullocks, many dogs and cats and every kind of sick, lame and infirm beast. Absurd stories are told strangers concerning the extremes to which this benevolence is carried, and some of them have actually appeared in published narratives of travel in India. One popular story is that when a flea lights upon the body of a Jain he captures it carefully, puts it in a receptacle and sends it to an asylum where fat coolies are hired to sit around all day and night and allow fleas, mosquitoes and other insects to feed upon them. But although untrue, these ridiculous stories are valuable as illustrating the principles in which the Jains believe. They are strict vegetarians. The true believers will not kill an animal or a fish or a bird, or anything that breathes, for any purpose, and everybody can see that they strictly practice what they preach.

His most gracious majesty, King of Great Britain and Ireland and Emperor of India, has more Mohammedan subjects than the Great Turk or any other ruler. They numbered 62,458,061 at the last census. They are a clean, manly, honorable and industrious portion of the population. Commercially they do not rank as high as the Parsees, who number only 94,190, or the Jains, who number 1,334,148, but are vastly superior to the Hindus from any point of view. They are not so ignorant nor so filthy nor so superstitious nor so submissive to their priests. They are self-respecting and independent, and while the believers in no other creed are more scrupulous in the performance of their religious duties, they are not in any measure under the control or the dictation of their mullahs. They have their own schools, called kuttebs, they take care of their own poor very largely; drunkenness and gambling are very rare among them. They are hospitable, kind to animals and generous. The difference between the Mohammedans and the Hindus may be seen in the most forcible manner in their temples. It is an old saying that while one god created all men, each man creates his own god, and that is strikingly true among the ignorant, superstitious people of the East. The Hindu crouches in a shadow to escape the attention of his god, while the Mohammedan publicly prays to his five times a day in the nearest mosque, and if no mosque is near he kneels where he stands, and takes full satisfaction in a religion of hope instead of fear.

From the political standpoint the Mohammedans are a very important factor in the situation in India. They are more independent than the Hindus; they occupy a more influential position than their numbers entitle them to; they have most profound pride in their religion and race, and in their social and intellectual superiority, and the more highly they are educated the more manly, self-reliant and independent they become, and the feeling between the Mohammedans and the Hindus is bitterly hostile. So much so as to make them a bulwark of the government. Several authorities told me that Mohammedans make the best officials in the service and can be trusted farther than any other class, but, speaking generally, Islam has been corrupted and debased in India just as it has been everywhere else.

One of the results of this corruption is the sect known as Sikhs, which numbers about 2,195,268. It thrives best in the northern part of India, and furnishes the most reliable policemen and the best soldiers for the native army. The Sikhs retain much that is good among the teachings of Mohammed, but have a bible of their own, called the Abi-granth, made up of the sermons of Nanak, the founder of the sect, who died in the year 1530. It is full of excellent moral precepts; it teaches the brotherhood of man, the equality of the sexes; it rejects caste, and embraces all of the good points in Buddhism, with a pantheism that is very confusing. It would seem that the Sikhs worship all gods who are good to men, and reject the demonology of the Hindus. They believe in one Supreme Being, with attributes similar to the Allah of the Mohammedans, and recognize Mohammed as his prophet and exponent of his will. They have also adopted several Hindu deities in a sort of indirect way, although the Sikhs strictly prohibit idolatry. Their worship is pure and simple. Their temples are houses of prayer, where they, meet, sing hymns, repeat a ritual and receive pieces of "karah prasad," a consecrated pastry, which means "the effectual offering." They are tolerant, and not only admit strangers to their worship, but invite them to participate in their communion.

The morning we arrived in Agra we swallowed a hasty breakfast and hurried off to the great mosque to witness the ceremonies of what might be termed the Mohammedan Easter, although the anniversary has an entirely different significance. The month of Ramadan is spent by the faithful followers of the Prophet in a long fast, and the night before it is broken, called Lailatul-Kadr, or "night of power," is celebrated in rejoicing, because it is the night on which the Koran is supposed to have come down from heaven. In the morning following, which is as much a day of rejoicing as our Christmas, the men of Islam gather at the mosques and engage in a service of thanksgiving to Allah for the blessings they and their families have enjoyed during the year past, and pray for a repetition of the same mercies for the year to come. This festival is called the "Idu I-Fitr," and we were fortunate enough to witness one of the most impressive spectacles I have ever seen. Women never appear, but the entire male population, with their children assembled at the great park which surrounds the mosque, clad in festival attire, each bringing a prayer rug to spread upon the ground. About ten thousand persons of all ages and all classes came on foot and in all sorts of vehicles, with joyous voices and congratulations to each other that seemed hearty enough to include the whole world. Taking advantage of their good humor and the thankful spirits hundreds of beggars were squatting along the roadside and appealing to every passerby in pitiful tones. And nearly everyone responded. Some people brought bags of rice, beans and wheat; others brought cakes and bread, but the greater number invested in little sea shells which are used in the interior of India as currency, and one hundred of them are worth a penny.

Rich people filled their pockets with these shells and scattered them by handsful among the crowd, and the shrieking beggars scrambled for them on the ground. There were long lines of food peddlers, with portable stoves, and tables upon which were spread morsels which the natives of India considered delicacies, but they were not very tempting to us. The food peddlers drove a profitable trade because almost every person present had been fasting for a lunar month and had a sharp appetite to satisfy. After the services the rich and the poor ate together, masters and servants, because Mohammed knew no caste, and it was an interesting sight to see the democratic spirit of the worshipers, for the rich and the poor, the master and the servant, knelt down side by side upon the same rug or strip of matting and bowed their heads to the ground in homage of the God that made them all. Families came together in carriages, bullock carts, on the backs of camels, horses, mules, donkeys, all the male members of the household from the baby to the grandfather, and were attended by all men servants of the family or the farm. They washed together at the basins where the fountains were spouting more joyously than usual, and then moved forward, laughing and chattering, toward the great mosque, selected places which seemed most convenient, spread their rugs, matting, blankets and sheets upon the ground, sat in long rows facing Mecca, and gossiped cheerfully together until the great high priest, surrounded by mullahs or lower priests, appeared in front of the Midrab, the place in every mosque from which the Koran is read, and shouted for attention.