Cardiff Blavatsky Archive

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H P Blavatsky

 

                              

 

From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan

by

H P Blavatsky

 

Translated From Russian

 

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Translator's Preface

 

 

"You must remember," said Mme. Blavatsky, "that I never

meant this for a scientific work.  My letters to the Russian

Messenger, under the general title:  'From the Caves and Jungles

of Hindostan,' were written in leisure moments, more for amusement

than with any serious design.

 

"Broadly speaking, the facts and incidents are true;  but

I have freely availed myself of an author's privilege to group,

colour, and dramatize them, whenever this seemed necessary to the

full artistic effect;  though, as I say, much of the book is exactly

true, l would rather claim kindly judgment for it, as a romance

of travel, than incur the critical risks that haunt an avowedly

serious work."

 

To this caution of the author's, the translator must add

another;  these letters, as Mme Blavatsky says, were written in

leisure moments, during 1879 and 1880, for the pages of the Russki

Vyestnik, then edited by M. Katkoff.  Mme. Blavatsky's manuscript

was often incorrect;  often obscure.  The Russian compositors,

though they did their best to render faithfully the Indian names

and places, often produced, through their ignorance of Oriental

tongues, forms which are strange, and sometimes unrecognizable.

The proof-sheets were never corrected by the author, who was then

in India;  and, in consequence, it has been impossible to restore

all the local and personal names to their proper form.

 

A similar difficulty has arisen with reference to quotations

and cited authorities, all of which have gone through a double

process of refraction:  first into Russian, then into English.

The translator, also a Russian, and far from perfectly acquainted

with English, cannot claim to possess the erudition necessary to

verify and restore the many quotations to verbal accuracy;  all

that is hoped is that, by a careful rendering, the correct sense

has been preserved.

 

The translator begs the indulgence of English readers for

all imperfections of style and language;  in the words of the

Sanskrit proverb:  "Who is to be blamed, if success be not reached

after due effort?"

 

The translator's best thanks are due to Mr. John C. Staples,

for valuable help in the early chapters.

 

--London, July,  1892

 

 

 

FROM THE CAVES AND JUNGLES OF HINDOSTAN

By H P Blavatsky

 

 

 

In Bombay

 

 

 

Late in the evening of the sixteenth of February, 1879,

after a rough voyage which lasted thirty-two days, joyful exclamations

were heard everywhere on deck.  "Have you seen the lighthouse?"

"There it is at last, the Bombay lighthouse."

 

Cards, books, music, everything was forgotten.  Everyone

rushed on deck.  The moon had not risen as yet, and, in spite of

the starry tropical sky, it was quite dark.  The stars were so

bright that, at first, it seemed hardly possible to distinguish,

far away amongst them, a small fiery point lit by earthly hands.

The stars winked at us like so many huge eyes in the black sky,

on one side of which shone the Southern Cross.  At last we

distinguished the lighthouse on the distant horizon.  It was

nothing but a tiny fiery point diving in the phosphorescent waves.

The tired travellers greeted it warmly.  The rejoicing was general.

 

What a glorious daybreak followed this dark night!  The sea no

longer tossed our ship.  Under the skilled guidance of the pilot,

who had just arrived, and whose bronze form was so sharply defined

against the pale sky, our steamer, breathing heavily with its

broken machinery, slipped over the quiet, transparent waters of

the Indian Ocean straight to the harbour.  We were only four miles

from Bombay, and, to us, who had trembled with cold only a few

weeks ago in the Bay of Biscay, which has been so glorified by

many poets and so heartily cursed by all sailors, our surroundings

simply seemed a magical dream.

 

After the tropical nights of the Red Sea and the scorching hot

days that had tortured us since Aden, we, people of the distant

North, now experienced something strange and unwonted, as if the

very fresh soft air had cast its spell over us.   There was not a

cloud in the sky, thickly strewn with dying stars.  Even the moonlight,

which till then had covered the sky with its silvery garb, was

gradually vanishing;  and the brighter grew the rosiness of dawn

over the small island that lay before us in the East, the paler

in the West grew the scattered rays of the moon that sprinkled with

bright flakes of light the dark wake our ship left behind her, as

if the glory of the West was bidding good-bye to us, while the

light of the East welcomed the newcomers from far-off lands.

Brighter and bluer grew the sky, swiftly absorbing the remaining

pale stars one after the other, and we felt something touching

in the sweet dignity with which the Queen of Night resigned her

rights to the powerful usurper.  At last, descending lower and

lower, she disappeared completely.

 

And suddenly, almost without interval between darkness and light,

the red-hot globe, emerging on the opposite side from under the

cape, leant his golden chin on the lower rocks of the island and

seemed to stop for a while, as if examining us.  Then, with one

powerful effort, the torch of day rose high over the sea and

gloriously proceeded on its path, including in one mighty fiery

embrace the blue waters of the bay, the shore and the islands with

their rocks and cocoanut forests.  His golden rays fell upon a

crowd of Parsees, his rightful worshippers, who stood on shore

raising their arms towards the mighty "Eye of Ormuzd."  The sight

was so impressive that everyone on deck became silent for a moment,

even a red-nosed old sailor, who was busy quite close to us over

the cable, stopped working, and, clearing his throat, nodded at the sun.

 

Moving slowly and cautiously along the charming but

treacherous bay, we had plenty of time to admire the picture

around us.  On the right was a group of islands with Gharipuri or

Elephanta, with its ancient temple, at their head.  Gharipuri

translated means "the town of caves" according to the Orientalists,

and "the town of purification" according to the native Sanskrit

scholars.  This temple, cut out by an unknown hand in the very

heart of a rock resembling porphyry, is a true apple of discord

amongst the archaeologists, of whom none can as yet fix, even

approximately, its antiquity.  Elephanta raises high its rocky brow,

all overgrown with secular cactus, and right under it, at the foot

of the rock, are hollowed out the chief temple and the two lateral

ones.  Like the serpent of our Russian fairy tales, it seems to be

opening its fierce black mouth to swallow the daring mortal who

comes to take possession of the secret mystery of Titan.  Its two

remaining teeth, dark with time, are formed by two huge pillars

t the entrance, sustaining the palate of the monster.

 

How many generations of Hindus, how many races, have knelt

in the dust before the Trimurti, your threefold deity, O Elephanta?

How many centuries were spent by weak man in digging out in your

stone bosom this town of temples and carving your gigantic idols?

Who can say?  Many years have elapsed since I saw you last, ancient,

mysterious temple, and still the same restless thoughts, the same

recurrent questions vex me snow as they did then, and still remain

unanswered.  In a few days we shall see each other again.  Once more

I shall gaze upon your stern image, upon your three huge granite faces,

and shall feel as hopeless as ever of piercing the mystery of your

being.  This secret fell into safe hands three centuries before ours.

It is not in vain that the old Portuguese historian Don Diego de Cuta

boasts that "the big square stone fastened over the arch of the

pagoda with a distinct inscription, having been torn out and sent

as a present to the King Dom Juan III, disappeared mysteriously

in the course of time....," and adds, further, "Close to this big

pagoda there stood another, and farther on even a third one, the

most wonderful of all in beauty, incredible size, and richness of

material.  All those pagodas and caves have been built by the Kings

of Kanada, (?) the most important of whom was Bonazur, and these

buildings of Satan our (Portuguese) soldiers attacked with such

vehemence that in a few years one stone was not left upon another...."

And, worst of all, they left no inscriptions that might have given

a clue to so much.  Thanks to the fanaticism of Portuguese soldiers,

the chronology of the Indian cave temples must remain for ever an

enigma to the archaeological world, beginning with the Brah-mans,

who say Elephanta is 374,000 years old, and ending with Fergusson,

who tries to prove that it was carved only in the twelfth century

of our era.  Whenever one turns one's eyes to history, there is

nothing to be found but hypotheses and darkness.  And yet Gharipuri

is mentioned in the epic Mahabharata, which was written, according

to Colebrooke and Wilson, a good while before the reign of Cyrus.

In another ancient legend it is said that the temple of Trimurti

was built on Elephanta by the sons of Pandu, who took part in the

war between the dynasties of the Sun and the Moon, and, belonging

to the latter, were expelled at the end of the war.  The Rajputs,

who are the descendants of the first, still sing of this victory;

but even in their popular songs there is nothing positive.  Centuries

have passed and will pass, and the ancient secret will die in the

rocky bosom of the cave still unrecorded.

 

On the left side of the bay, exactly opposite Elephanta,

and as if in contrast with all its antiquity and greatness, spreads

the Malabar Hill, the residence of the modern Europeans and rich

natives.  Their brightly painted bungalows are bathed in the greenery

of banyan, Indian fig, and various other trees, and the tall and

straight trunks of cocoanut palms cover with the fringe of their

leaves the whole ridge of the hilly headland.  There, on the south-

western end of the rock, you see the almost transparent, lace-like

Government House surrounded on three sides by the ocean. This is

the coolest and the most comfortable part of Bombay, fanned by

three different sea breezes.

 

The island of Bombay, designated by the natives "Mambai,"

received its name from the goddess Mamba, in Mahrati Mahima, or Amba,

Mama, and Amma, according to the dialect, a word meaning, literally,

the Great Mother.  Hardly one hundred years ago, on the site of

the modern esplanade, there stood a temple consecrated to Mamba-Devi.

With great difficulty and expense they carried it nearer to the shore,

close to the fort, and erected it in front of Baleshwara the "Lord

of the Innocent"--one of the names of the god Shiva.  Bombay is

part of a considerable group of islands, the most remarkable of

which are Salsetta, joined to Bombay by a mole, Elephanta, so named

by the Portuguese because of a huge rock cut in the shape of an

elephant thirty-five feet long, and Trombay, whose lovely rock rises

nine hundred feet above the surface of the sea.  Bombay looks, on

the maps, like an enormous crayfish, and is at the head of the

rest of the islands.  Spreading far out into the sea its two claws,

Bombay island stands like a sleepless guardian watching over his

younger brothers.  Between it and the Continent there is a narrow

arm of a river, which gets gradually broader and then again narrower,

deeply indenting the sides of both shores, and so forming a haven

that has no equal in the world.   It was not without reason that

the Portuguese, expelled in the course of time by the English, used

to call it "Buona Bahia."

 

In a fit of tourist exaltation some travellers have compared it

to the Bay of Naples;  but, as a matter of fact, the one is as

much like the other as a lazzaroni is like a Kuli.  The whole

resemblance between the former consists in the fact that there

is water in both.  In Bombay, as well as in its harbour, everything

is original and does not in the least remind one of Southern Europe.

Look at those coasting vessels and native boats;  both are built

in the likeness of the sea bird "sat," a kind of kingfisher.  When

in motion these boats are the personi-fication of grace, with their

long prows and rounded poops.  They look as if they were gliding

backwards, and one might mistake for wings the strangely shaped,

long lateen sails, their narrow angles fastened upwards to a yard.

Filling these two wings with the wind, and careening, so as almost

to touch the surface of the water, these boats will fly along with

astonishing swiftness.  Unlike our European boats, they do not

cut the waves, but glide over them like a sea-gull.

 

The surroundings of the bay transported us to some fairy land of

the Arabian Nights.  The ridge of the Western Ghats, cut through

here and there by some separate hills almost as high as themselves,

stretched all along the Eastern shore.  From the base to their

fantastic, rocky tops, they are all overgrown with impenetrable

forests and jungles inhabited by wild animals.  Every rock has been

enriched by the popular imagination with an independent legend.

All over the slope of the mountain are scattered the pagodas,

mosques, and temples of numberless sects.  Here and there the hot

rays of the sun strike upon an old fortress, once dreadful and

inaccessible, now half ruined and covered with prickly cactus.

At every step some memorial of sanctity.  Here a deep vihara, a

cave cell of a Buddhist bhikshu saint, there a rock protected by

the symbol of Shiva, further on a Jaina temple, or a holy tank,

all covered with sedge and filled with water, once blessed by a

Brahman and able to purify every sin, all indispensable attribute

of all pagodas.  All the surroundings are covered with symbols of

gods and goddesses.  Each of the three hundred and thirty millions

of deities of the Hindu Pantheon has its representative in something

consecrated to it, a stone, a flower, a tree, or a bird.  On the

West side of the Malabar Hill peeps through the trees Valakeshvara,

the temple of the "Lord of Sand."  A long stream of Hindus moves

towards this celebrated temple;  men and women, shining with rings

on their fingers and toes, with bracelets from their wrists up

to their elbows, clad in bright turbans and snow white muslins,

with foreheads freshly painted with red, yellow, and white, holy

sectarian signs.

 

The legend says that Rama spent here a night on his way from Ayodhya

(Oudh) to Lanka (Ceylon) to fetch his wife Sita who had been stolen

by the wicked King Ravana.  Rama's brother Lakshman, whose duty

it was to send him daily a new lingam from Benares, was late in

doing so one evening.  Losing patience, Rama erected for himself

a lingam of sand.  When, at last, the symbol arrived from Benares,

it was put in a temple, and the lingam erected by Rama was left

on the shore.  There it stayed during long centuries, but, at the

arrival of the Portuguese, the "Lord of Sand" felt so disgusted

with the feringhi (foreigners) that he jumped into the sea never

to return.  A little farther on there is a charming tank, called

Vanattirtha, or the "point of the arrow."  Here Rama, the much

worshipped hero of the Hindus, felt thirsty and, not finding any

water, shot an arrow and immediately there was created a pond.  Its

crystal waters were surrounded by a high wall, steps were built

leading down to it, and a circle of white marble dwellings was

filled with dwija (twice born) Brahmans.

 

India is the land of legends and of mysterious nooks and corners.

There is not a ruin, not a monument, not a thicket, that has no

story attached to it.  Yet, however they may be entangled in the

cobweb of popular imagination, which becomes thicker with every

generation, it is difficult to point out a single one that is not

founded on fact.  With patience and, still more, with the help

of the learned Brahmans you can always get at the truth, when once

you have secured their trust and friendship.

 

The same road leads to the temple of the Parsee fire-worshippers.

At its altar burns an unquenchable fire, which daily consumes

hundredweights of sandal wood and aromatic herbs.  Lit three

hundred years ago, the sacred fire has never been extinguished,

notwithstanding many disorders, sectarian discords, and even wars.

The Parsees are very proud of this temple of Zaratushta, as they

call Zoroaster.  Compared with it the Hindu pagodas look like

brightly painted Easter eggs.  Generally they are consecrated to

Hanuman, the monkey-god and the faithful ally of Rama, or to the

elephant headed Ganesha, the god of the occult wisdom, or to one

of the Devis.  You meet with these temples in every street.  Before

each there is a row of pipals (Ficus religiosa) centuries old,

which no temple can dispense with, because these trees are the

abode of the elementals and the sinful souls.

 

All this is entangled, mixed, and scattered, appearing to one's

eyes like a picture in a dream.  Thirty centuries have left their

traces here.  The innate laziness and the strong conservative

tendencies of the Hindus, even before the European invasion,

preserved all kinds of monuments from the ruinous vengeance of the

fanatics, whether those memorials were Buddhist, or belonged to

some other unpopular sect.  The Hindus are not naturally given

to senseless vandalism, and a phrenologist would vainly look for

a bump of destructiveness on their skulls.  If you meet with

antiquities that, having been spared by time, are, nowadays, either

destroyed or disfigured, it is not they who are to blame, but

either Mussulmans, or the Portuguese under the guidance of the Jesuits.

 

At last we were anchored and, in a moment, were besieged, ourselves

as well as our luggage, by numbers of naked skeleton-like Hindus,

Parsees, Moguls, and various other tribes.  All this crowd emerged,

as if from the bottom of the sea, and began to shout, to chatter,

and to yell, as only the tribes of Asia can.  To get rid of this

Babel confusion of tongues as soon as possible, we took refuge

in the first bunder boat and made for the shore.

 

Once settled in the bungalow awaiting us, the first thing we were

struck with in Bombay was the millions of crows and vultures.  The

first are, so to speak, the County Council of the town, whose duty

it is to clean the streets, and to kill one of them is not only

forbidden by the police, but would be very dangerous.  By killing

one you would rouse the vengeance of every Hindu, who is always

ready to offer his own life in exchange for a crow's.  The souls

of the sinful forefathers transmigrate into crows and to kill one

is to interfere with the law of Karma and to expose the poor

ancestor to something still worse.  Such is the firm belief, not

only of Hindus, but of Parsees, even the most enlightened amongst

them.  The strange behaviour of the Indian crows explains, to a

certain extent, this superstition.  The vultures are, in a way,

the grave-diggers of the Parsees and are under the personal protection

of the Farvardania, the angel of death, who soars over the Tower

of Silence, watching the occupations of the feathered workmen.

 

The deafening caw of the crows strikes every new comer as uncanny,

but, after a while, is explained very simply.  Every tree of the

numerous cocoa-nut forests round Bombay is provided with a hollow

pumpkin.  The sap of the tree drops into it and, after fermenting,

becomes a most intoxicating beverage, known in Bombay under the

name of toddy.  The naked toddy wallahs, generally half-caste

Portuguese, modestly adorned with a single coral necklace, fetch

this beverage twice a day, climbing the hundred and fifty feet

high trunks like squirrels.  The crows mostly build their nests

on the tops of the cocoa-nut palms and drink incessantly out of

the open pumpkins.  The result of this is the chronic intoxication

of the birds.  As soon as we went out in the garden of our new

habitation, flocks of crows came down heavily from every tree.

The noise they make whilst jumping about everywhere is indescribable.

There seemed to be something positively human in the positions

of the slyly bent heads of the drunken birds, and a fiendish light

shone in their eyes while they were examining us from foot to head.

----------

 

 

We occupied three small bungalows, lost, like nests, in the garden,

their roofs literally smothered in roses blossoming on bushes

twenty feet high, and their windows covered only with muslin,

instead of the usual panes of glass.  The bungalows were situated

in the native part of the town, so that we were transported, all

at once, into the real India.  We were living in India, unlike

English people, who are only surrounded by India at a certain distance.

We were enabled to study her character and customs, her religion,

superstitions and rites, to learn her legends, in fact, to live

among Hindus.

 

Everything in India, this land of the elephant and the poisonous

cobra, of the tiger and the unsuccessful English missionary, is

original and strange.  Everything seems unusual, unexpected, and

striking, even to one who has travelled in Turkey, Egypt, Damascus,

and Palestine.  In these tropical regions the conditions of nature

are so various that all the forms of the animal and vegetable

kingdoms must radically differ from what we are used to in Europe.

Look, for instance, at those women on their way to a well through

a garden, which is private and at the same time open to anyone,

because somebody's cows are grazing in it.  To whom does it not

happen to meet with women, to see cows, and admire a garden?

Doubtless these are among the commonest of all things.  But a

single attentive glance will suffice to show you the difference

that exists between the same objects in Europe and in India.  Nowhere

more than in India does a human being feel his weakness and

insignificance.  The majesty of the tropical growth is such that

our highest trees would look dwarfed compared with banyans and

especially with palms.  A European cow, mistaking, at first sight,

her Indian sister for a calf, would deny the existence of any

kinship between them, as neither the mouse-coloured wool, nor the

straight goat-like horns, nor the humped back of the latter would

permit her to make such an error.  As to the women, each of them

would make any artist feel enthusiastic about the gracefulness

of her movements and drapery, but still, no pink and white, stout

Anna Ivanovna would condescend to greet her.  "Such a shame, God

forgive me, the woman is entirely naked!"

 

This opinion of the modern Russian woman is nothing but the echo

of what was said in 1470 by a distinguished Russian traveler, "the

sinful slave of God, Athanasius son of Nikita from Tver," as he

styles himself.  He describes India as follows:  "This is the land

of India.  Its people are naked, never cover their heads, and wear

their hair braided.  Women have babies every year.  Men and women

are black.  Their prince wears a veil round his head and wraps

another veil round his legs.  The noblemen wear a veil on one

shoulder, and the noblewomen on the shoulders and round the loins,

but everyone is barefooted.  The women walk about with their hair

spread and their breasts naked.  The children, boys and girls,

never cover their shame until they are seven years old. . . ."

This description is quite correct, but Athanasius Nikita's son is

right only concerning the lowest and poorest classes.  These really

do "walk about" covered only with a veil, which often is so poor

that, in fact, it is nothing but a rag.  But still, even the poorest

woman is clad in a piece of muslin at least ten yards long.  One

end serves as a sort of short petticoat, and the other covers

the head and shoulders when out in the street, though the faces

are always uncovered.  The hair is erected into a kind of Greek

chignon.  The legs up to the knees, the arms, and the waist are

never covered.  There is not a single respectable woman who would

consent to put on a pair of shoes.  Shoes are the attribute and

the prerogative of disreputable women.  When, some time ago, the

wife of the Madras governor thought of passing a law that should

induce native women to cover their breasts, the place was actually

threatened with a revolution.  A kind of jacket is worn only by

dancing girls.  The Government recognized that it would be

unreasonable to irritate women, who, very often, are more dangerous

than their husbands and brothers, and the custom, based on the

law of Manu, and sanctified by three thousand years' observance,

remained unchanged.

----------

 

For more than two years before we left America we were in constant

correspondence with a certain learned Brahman, whose glory is great

at present (1879) all over India.  We came to India to study, under

his guidance, the ancient country of Aryas, the Vedas, and their

difficult language.  His name is Dayanand Saraswati Swami.  Swami

is the name of the learned anchorites who are initiated into many

mysteries unattainable by common mortals.  They are monks who never

marry, but are quite different from other mendicant brotherhoods,

the so-called Sannyasi and Hossein.  This Pandit is considered

the greatest Sanskritist of modern India and is an absolute enigma

to everyone.  It is only five years since he appeared on the arena

of great reforms, but till then, he lived, entirely secluded, in

a jungle, like the ancient gymnosophists mentioned by the Greek

and Latin authors.  At this time he was studying the chief

philosophical systems of the "Aryavartta" and the occult meaning

of the Vedas with the help of mystics and anchorites.  All Hindus

believe that on the Bhadrinath Mountains (22,000 feet above the

level of the sea) there exist spacious caves, inhabited, now for

many thousand years, by these anchorites.  Bhadrinath is situated

in the north of Hindustan on the river Bishegunj, and is celebrated

for its temple of Vishnu right in the heart of the town.  Inside

the temple there are hot mineral springs, visited yearly by about

fifty thousand pilgrims, who come to be purified by them.

 

From the first day of his appearance Dayanand Saraswati produced

an immense impression and got the surname of the "Luther of India."

Wandering from one town to another, today in the South, tomorrow

in the North, and transporting himself from one end of the country

to another with incredible quickness, he has visited every part

of India, from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas, and from Calcutta

to Bombay.  He preaches the One Deity and, "Vedas in hand," proves

that in the ancient writings there was not a word that could justify

polytheism.  Thundering against idol worship, the great orator

fights with all his might against caste, infant marriages, and

superstitions.  Chastising all the evils grafted on India by

centuries of casuistry and false interpretation of the Vedas,

he blames for them the Brahmans, who, as he openly says before

masses of people, are alone guilty of the humiliation of their

country, once great and independent, now fallen and enslaved.

And yet Great Britain has in him not an enemy, but rather an ally.

He says openly--"If you expel the English, then, no later than

tomorrow, you and I and everyone who rises against idol worship

will have our throats cut like mere sheep.  The Mussulmans are

stronger than the idol worshippers;  but these last are stronger

than we."  The Pandit held many a warm dispute with the Brah-mans,

those treacherous enemies of the people, and has almost always

been victorious.  In Benares secret assassins were hired to slay

him, but the attempt did not succeed.  In a small town of Bengal,

where he treated fetishism with more than his usual severity,

some fanatic threw on his naked feet a huge cobra.  There are two

snakes deified by the Brahman mythology:  the one which surrounds

the neck of Shiva on his idols is called Vasuki;  the other, Ananta,

forms the couch of Vishnu.  So the worshipper of Shiva, feeling

sure that his cobra, trained purposely for the mysteries of a

Shivaite pagoda, would at once make an end of the offender's life,

triumphantly exclaimed, "Let the god Vasuki himself show which of

us is right!"

 

Dayanand jerked off the cobra twirling round his leg, and with a

single vigorous movement, crushed the reptile's head.  "Let him

do so," he quietly assented.  "Your god has been too slow.  It

is I who have decided the dispute, Now go," added he, addressing

the crowd, "and tell everyone how easily perish the false gods."

 

Thanks to his excellent knowledge of Sanskrit the Pandit does a

great service, not only to the masses, clearing their ignorance

about the monotheism of the Vedas, but to science too, showing who,

exactly, are the Brahmans, the only caste in India which, during

centuries, had the right to study Sanskrit literature and comment

on the Vedas, and which used this right solely for its own advantage.

 

Long before the time of such Orientalists as Burnouf, Colebrooke

and Max Muller, there have been in India many reformers who tried

to prove the pure monotheism of the Vedic doctrines.  There have

even been founders of new religions who denied the revelations

of these scriptures;  for instance, the Raja Ram Mohun Roy, and,

after him, Babu Keshub Chunder Sen, both Calcutta Bengalees.  But

neither of them had much success.  They did nothing but add new

denominations to the numberless sects existing in India.  Ram Mohun

Roy died in England, having done next to nothing, and Keshub Chunder

Sen, having founded the community of "Brahmo-Samaj," which professes

a religion extracted from the depths of the Babu's own imagination,

became a mystic of the most pronounced type, and now is only "a

berry from the same field," as we say in Russia, as the Spiritualists,

by whom he is considered to be a medium and a Calcutta Swedenborg.

He spends his time in a dirty tank, singing praises to Chaitanya,

Koran, Buddha, and his own person, proclaiming himself their prophet,

and performs a mystical dance, dressed in woman's attire, which,

on his part, is an attention to a "woman goddess" whom the Babu

calls his "mother, father and eldest brother."

 

In short, all the attempts to re-establish the pure primitive

monotheism of Aryan India have been a failure.  They always got

wrecked upon the double rock of Brahmanism and of prejudices

centuries old.  But lo! here appears unexpectedly the pandit

Dayanand.  None, even of the most beloved of his disciples, knows

who he is and whence he comes.  He openly confesses before the

crowds that the name under which he is known is not his, but was

given to him at the Yogi initiation.

 

The mystical school of Yogis was established by Patanjali, the

founder of one of the six philosophical systems of ancient India.

It is supposed that the Neo-platonists of the second and third

Alexandrian Schools were the followers of Indian Yogis, more

especially was their theurgy brought from India by Pythagoras,

according to the tradition.  There still exist in India hundreds

of Yogis who follow the system of Patanjali, and assert that they

are in communion with Brahma.  Nevertheless, most of them are

do-nothings, mendicants by profession, and great frauds, thanks

to the insatiable longing of the natives for miracles.  The real

Yogis avoid appearing in public, and spend their lives in secluded

retirement and studies, except when, as in Dayanand's case, they

come forth in time of need to aid their country.  However, it is

perfectly certain that India never saw a more learned Sanskrit

scholar, a deeper metaphysician, a more wonderful orator, and a

more fearless denunciator of every evil, than Dayanand, since the

time of Sankharacharya, the celebrated founder of the Vedanta

philosophy, the most metaphysical of Indian systems, in fact,

the crown of pantheistic teaching.  Then, Dayanand's personal

appearance is striking.  He is immensely tall, his complexion is

pale, rather European than Indian, his eyes are large and bright,

and his greyish hair is long.  The Yogis and Dikshatas (initiated)

never cut either their hair or beard.  His voice is clear and loud,

well calculated to give expression to every shade of deep feeling,

ranging from a sweet childish caressing whisper to thundering

wrath against the evil doings and falsehoods of the priests.  All

this taken together produces an indescribable effect on the

impressionable Hindu.  Wherever Dayanand appears crowds prostrate

themselves in the dust over his footprints;  but, unlike Babu

Keshub Chunder Sen, he does not teach a new religion, does not

invent new dogmas.  He only asks them to renew their half-forgotten

Sanskrit studies, and, having compared the doctrines of their

forefathers with what they have become in the hands of Brahmans,

to return to the pure conceptions of Deity taught by the primitive

Rishis--Agni, Vayu, Aditya, and Anghira--the patriarchs who first

gave the Vedas to humanity.  He does not even claim that the Vedas

are a heavenly revelation, but simply teaches that "every word in

these scriptures belongs to the highest inspiration possible to

the earthly man, an inspiration that is repeated in the history

of humanity, and, when necessary, may happen to any nation....."

 

During his five years of work Swami Dayanand made about two million

proselytes, chiefly amongst the higher castes.  Judging by appearances,

they are all ready to sacrifice to him their lives and souls and

even their earthly possessions, which are often more precious to

them than their lives.  But Dayanand is a real Yogi, he never touches

money, and despises pecuniary affairs.  He contents himself with a

few handfuls of rice per day.  One is inclined to think that this

wonderful Hindu bears a charmed life, so careless is he of rousing

the worst human passions, which are so dangerous in India.  A

marble statue could not be less moved by the raging wrath of the

crowd.  We saw him once at work.  He sent away all his faithful

followers and forbade them either to watch over him or to defend

him, and stood alone before the infuriated crowd, facing calmly

the monster ready to spring upon him and tear him to pieces.

----------

 

 

Here a short explanation is necessary.  A few years ago a society

of well-informed, energetic people was formed in New York.  A

certain sharp-witted savant surnamed them "La Societe des Malcontents

du Spiritisme."  The founders of this club were people who, believing

in the phenomena of spiritualism as much as in the possibility of

every other phenomenon in Nature, still denied the theory of the

"spirits."  They considered that the modern psychology was a

science still in the first stages of its development, in total

ignorance of the nature of the psychic man, and denying, as do

many other sciences, all that cannot be explained according to

its own particular theories.

 

From the first days of its existence some of the most learned

Americans joined the Society, which became known as the Theosophical

Society.  Its members differed on many points, much as do the

members of any other Society, Geographical or Archeological, which

fights for years over the sources of the Nile, or the Hieroglyphs

of Egypt.  But everyone is unanimously agreed that, as long as

there is water in the Nile, its sources must exist somewhere.  So

much about the phenomena of spiritualism and mesmerism.  These

phenomena were still waiting their Champollion--but the Rosetta

stone was to be searched for neither in Europe nor in America,

but in the far-away countries where they still believe in magic,

where wonders are performed daily by the native priesthood, and

where the cold materialism of science has never yet reached--in

one word, in the East.

 

The Council of the Society knew that the Lama-Buddhists, for instance,

though not believing in God, and denying the personal immortality

of the soul, are yet celebrated for their "phenomena," and that

mesmerism was known and daily practised in China from time immemorial

under the name of "gina."  In India they fear and hate the very

name of the spirits whom the Spiritualists venerate so deeply, yet

many an ignorant fakir can perform "miracles" calculated to turn

upside-down all the notions of a scientist and to be the despair

of the most celebrated of European prestidigitateurs.  Many members

of the Society have visited India--many were born there and have

themselves witnessed the "sorceries" of the Brahmans.  The founders

of the Club, well aware of the depth of modern ignorance in regard

to the spiritual man, were most anxious that Cuvier's method of

comparative anatomy should acquire rights of citizenship among

metaphysicians, and, so, progress from regions physical to regions

psychological on its own inductive and deductive foundation.

"Otherwise," they thought, "psychology will be unable to move

forward a single step, and may even obstruct every other branch

of Natural History."  Instances have not been wanting of physiology

poaching on the preserves of purely metaphysical and abstract knowledge,

all the time feigning to ignore the latter absolutely, and seeking

to class psychology with the positive sciences, having first bound

it to a Bed of Procrustes, where it refuses to yield its secret

to its clumsy tormentors.

 

In a short time the Theosophical Society counted its members, not

by hundreds, but by thousands.  All the "malcontents" of American

Spiritualism--and there were at that time twelve million Spiritualists

in America--joined the Society.  Collateral branches were formed

in London, Corfu, Australia, Spain, Cuba, California, etc.

Everywhere experiments were being performed, and the conviction

that it is not spirits alone who are the causes of the phenomena

was becoming general.

 

In course of time branches of the Society were in India and in

Ceylon.  The Buddhist and Brahmanical members became more numerous

than the Europeans.  A league was formed, and to the name of the

Society was added the subtitle, "The Brotherhood of Humanity."

After an active correspondence between the Arya-Samaj, founded by

Swami Dayanand, and the Theosophical Society, an amalgamation was

arranged between the two bodies.  Then the Chief Council of the

New York branch decided upon sending a special delegation to India,

for the purpose of studying, on the spot, the ancient language of

the Vedas and the manuscripts and the wonders of Yogism.  On the

17th of December, 1878, the delegation, composed of two secretaries

and two members of the council of the Theosophical Society, started

from New York, to pause for a while in London, and then to proceed

to Bombay, where it landed in February, 1879.

 

It may easily be conceived that, under these circumstances, the

members of the delegation were better able to study the country

and to make fruitful researches than might, otherwise, have been

the case.  Today they are looked upon as brothers and aided by

the most influential natives of India.  They count among the

members of their society pandits of Benares and Calcutta, and

Buddhist priests of the Ceylon Viharas--amongst others the learned

Sumangala, mentioned by Minayeff in the description of his visit

to Adam's Peak--and Lamas of Thibet, Burmah, Travancore and elsewhere.

The members of the delegation are admitted to sanctuaries where,

as yet, no European has set his foot.  Consequently they may hope

to render many services to Humanity and Science, in spite of the

illwill which the representatives of positive science bear to them.

 

As soon as the delegation landed, a telegram was despatched to

Dayanand, as everyone was anxious to make his personal acquaintance.

In reply, he said that he was obliged to go immediately to Hardwar,

where hundreds of thousands of pilgrims were expected to assemble,

but he insisted on our remaining behind, since cholera was certain

to break out among the devotees.  He appointed a certain spot,

at the foot of the Himalayas, in the jab, where we were to meet

in a month's time.

 

Alas! all this was written some time ago.  Since then Swami

Dayanand's countenance has changed completely toward us.  He is,

now, an enemy of the Theosophical Society and its two founders--

Colonel Olcott and the author of these letters.  It appeared that,

on entering into an offensive and defensive alliance with the

Society, Dayanand nourished the hope that all its members, Christians,

Brahmans and Buddhists, would acknowledge His supremacy, and become

members of the Arya Samaj.

 

Needless to say, this was impossible.  The Theosophical Society

rests on the principle of complete non-interference with the

religious beliefs of its members.  Toleration is its basis and

its aims are purely philosophical.  This did not suit Dayanand.

He wanted all the members, either to become his disciples, or to

be expelled from the Society.  It was quite clear that neither

the President, nor the Council could assent to such a claim.

Englishmen and Americans, whether they were Christians or Freethinkers,

Buddhists, and especially Brahmans, revolted against Dayanand, and

unanimously demanded that the league should be broken.

 

However, all this happened later.  At the time of which I speak

we were friends and allies of the Swami, and we learned with deep

interest that the Hardwar "mela," which he was to visit, takes

place every twelve years, and is a kind of religious fair, which

attracts representatives from all the numerous sects of India.

 

Learned dissertations are read by the disputants in defence of

their peculiar doctrines, and the debates are held in public.

This year the Hardwar gathering was exceptionally numerous.  The

Sannyasis--the mendicant monks of India--alone numbered 35,000 and

the cholera, foreseen by the Swami, actually broke out.

----------

 

 

As we were not yet to start for the appointed meeting, we had

plenty of spare time before us;  so we proceeded to examine Bombay.

 

The Tower of Silence, on the heights of the Malabar Hill, is the

last abode of all the sons of Zoroaster.  It is, in fact, a Parsee

cemetery.  Here their dead, rich and poor, men, women and children,

are all laid in a row, and in a few minutes nothing remains of

them but bare skeletons.  A dismal impression is made upon a

foreigner by these towers, where absolute silence has reigned for

centuries.  This kind of building is very common in every place

were Parsees live and die.  In Bombay, of six towers, the largest

was built 250 years ago, and the least but a short time since.

With few exceptions, they are round or square in shape, from twenty

to forty feet high, without roof, window, or door, but with a

single iron gate opening towards the East, and so small that it

is quite covered by a few bushes.  The first corpse brought to a

new tower--"dakhma"--must be the body of the innocent child of a

mobed or priest.  No one, not even the chief watcher, is allowed

to approach within a distance of thirty paces of these towers.

Of all living human beings "nassesalars"--corpse-carriers--

alone enter and leave the "Tower of Silence."  The life these

men lead is simply wretched.  No European executioner's position

is worse.  They live quite apart from the rest of the world, in

whose eyes they are the most abject of beings.  Being forbidden

to enter the markets, they must get their food as they can.  They

are born, marry, and die, perfect strangers to all except their

own class, passing through the streets only to fetch the dead and

carry them to the tower.  Even to be near one of them is a degradation.

Entering the tower with a corpse, covered, whatever may have been

its rank or position, with old white rags, they undress it and place

it, in silence, on one of the three rows presently to be described.

Then, still preserving the same silence, they come out, shut the

gate, and burn the rags.

 

Amongst the fire-worshippers, Death is divested of all his majesty

and is a mere object of disgust.  As soon as the last hour of a

sick person seems to approach, everyone leaves the chamber of death,

as much to avoid impeding the departure of the soul from the body,

as to shun the risk of polluting the living by contact with the dead.

The mobed alone stays with the dying man for a while, and having

whispered into his ear the Zend-Avesta precepts, "ashem-vohu"

and "Yato-Ahuvarie," leaves the room while the patient is still

alive.  Then a dog is brought and made to look straight into his

face.  This ceremony is called "sas-did," the "dog's-stare."  A

dog is the only living creature that the "Drux-nassu"--the evil

one--fears, and that is able to prevent him from taking possession

of the body.  It must be strictly observed that no one's shadow

lies between the dying man and the dog, otherwise the whole strength

of the dog's gaze will be lost, and the demon will profit by the

occasion.  The body remains on the spot where life left it, until

the nassesalars appear, their arms hidden to the shoulders under

old bags, to take it away.  Having deposited it in an iron coffin--

the same for everyone--they carry it to the dakhma.  If any one,

who has once been carried thither, should happen to regain

consciousness, the nassesalars are bound to kill him;  for such

a person, who has been polluted by one touch of the dead bodies

in the dakhma, has thereby lost all right to return to the living,

by doing so he would contaminate the whole community.  As some

such cases have occurred, the Parsees are trying to get a new law

passed, that would allow the miserable ex-corpses to live again

amongst their friends, and that would compel the nassesalars to

leave the only gate of the dakhma unlocked, so that they might

find a way of retreat open to them.  It is very curious, but it

is said that the vultures, which devour without hesitation the

corpses, will never touch those who are only apparently dead, but

fly away uttering loud shrieks.  After a last prayer at the gate

of the dakhma, pronounced from afar by the mobed, and re-peated

in chorus by the nassesalars, the dog ceremony is repeated.  In

Bombay there is a dog, trained for this purpose, at the entrance

to the tower.  Finally, the body is taken inside and placed on one

or other of the rows, according to its sex and age.

 

We have twice been present at the ceremonies of dying, and once

of burial, if I may be permitted to use such an incongruous term.

In this respect the Parsees are much more tolerant than the Hindus,

who are offended by the mere presence at their religious rites of

an European.  N. Bayranji, a chief official of the tower, invited

us to his house to be present at the burial of some rich woman.

So we witnessed all that was going on at a distance of about forty

paces, sitting quietly on our obliging host's verandah.  While

the dog was staring into the dead woman's face, we were gazing,

as intently, but with much more disgust, at the huge flock of

vultures above the dakhma, that kept entering the tower, and flying

out again with pieces of human flesh in their beaks.  These birds,

that build their nests in thousands round the Tower of Silence,

have been purposely imported from Persia.  Indian vultures proved

to be too weak, and not sufficiently bloodthirsty, to perform the

process of stripping the bones with the despatch prescribed by

Zoroaster.  We were told that the entire operation of denuding the

bones occupies no more than a few minutes.  As soon as the ceremony

was over, we were led into another building, where a model of the

dakhma was to be seen.  We could now very easily imagine what was

to take place presently inside the tower.  In the centre there

is a deep waterless well, covered with a grating like the opening

into a drain.  Around it are three broad circles, gradually sloping

downwards.  In each of them are coffin-like receptacles for the

bodies.  There are three hundred and sixty-five such places.  The

first and smallest row is destined for children, the second for

women, and the third for men.  This threefold circle is symbolical

of three cardinal Zoroastrian virtues--pure thoughts, kind words,

and good actions.  Thanks to the vultures, the bones are laid bare

in less than an hour, and, in two or three weeks, the tropical sun

scorches them into such a state of fragility, that the slightest

breath of wind is enough to reduce them to powder and to carry

them down into the pit.  No smell is left behind, no source of

plagues and epidemics.  I do not know that this way may not be

preferable to cremation, which leaves in the air about the Ghat

a faint but disagreeable odour.  The Ghat is a place by the sea,

or river shore, where Hindus burn their dead.  Instead of feeding

the old Slavonic deity "Mother Wet Earth" with carrion, Parsees

give to Armasti pure dust.  Armasti means, literally, "fostering

cow," and Zoroaster teaches that the cultivation of land is the

noblest of all occupations in the eyes of God.  Accordingly, the

worship of Earth is so sacred among the Parsees, that they take

all possible precautions against polluting the "fostering cow"

that gives them "a hundred golden grains for every single grain."

In the season of the Monsoon, when, during four months, the rain

pours incessantly down and washes into the well everything that

is left by the vultures, the water absorbed by the earth is filtered,

for the bottom of the well, the walls of which are built of granite,

is, to this end, covered with sand and charcoal.

 

The sight of the Pinjarapala is less lugubrious and much more amusing.

The Pinjarapala is the Bombay Hospital for decrepit animals, but a

similar institution exists in every town where Jainas dwell.  Being

one of the most ancient, this is also one of the most interesting,

of the sects of India.  It is much older than Buddhism, which took

its rise about 543 to 477 B.C.  Jainas boast that Buddhism is

nothing more than a mere heresy of Jainism, Gautama, the founder

of Buddhism, having been a disciple and follower of one of the

Jaina Gurus.  The customs, rites, and philosophical conceptions

of Jainas place them midway between the Brahmanists and the Buddhists.

In view of their social arrangements, they more closely resemble

the former, but in their religion they incline towards the latter.

Their caste divisions, their total abstinence from flesh, and their

non-worship of the relics of the saints, are as strictly observed

as the similar tenets of the Brahmans, but, like Buddhists, they

deny the Hindu gods and the authority of the Vedas, and adore their

own twenty-four Tirthankaras, or Jinas, who belong to the Host of

the Blissful.  Their priests, like the Buddhists', never marry,

they live in isolated viharas and choose their successors from

amongst the members of any social class.  According to them, Prakrit

is the only sacred language, and is used in their sacred literature,

as well as in Ceylon.  Jainas and Buddhists have the same traditional

chronology.  They do not eat after sunset, and carefully dust any

place before sitting down upon it, that they may not crush even

the tiniest of insects.  Both systems, or rather both schools of

philosophy, teach the theory of eternal indestructible atoms,

following the ancient atomistic school of Kanada.  They assert

that the universe never had a beginning and never will have an end.

"The world and everything in it is but an illusion, a Maya," say

the Vedantists, the Buddhists, and the Jainas;  but, whereas the

followers of Sankaracharya preach Parabrahm (a deity devoid of will,

understanding, and action, because "It is absolute understanding,

mind and will"), and Ishwara emanating from It, the Jainas and

the Buddhists believe in no Creator of the Universe, but teach

only the existence of Swabhawati, a plastic, infinite, self-created

principle in Nature.  Still they firmly believe, as do all

Indian sects, in the transmigration of souls.  Their fear, lest,

by killing an animal or an insect, they may, perchance, destroy

the life of an ancestor, develops their love and care for every

living creature to an almost incredible extent.  Not only is there

a hospital for invalid animals in every town and village, but their

priests always wear a muslin muzzle, (I trust they will pardon the

disrespectful expression!) in order to avoid destroying even the

smallest animalcule, by inadvertence in the act of breathing.  The

same fear impels them to drink only filtered water.  There are a

few millions of Jainas in Gujerat, Bombay, Konkan, and some other places.

 

The Bombay Pinjarapala occupies a whole quarter of the town, and

is separated into yards, meadows and gardens, with ponds, cages

for beasts of prey, and enclosures for tame animals.  This institution

would have served very well for a model of Noah's Ark.  In the first

yard, however, we saw no animals, but, instead, a few hundred human

skeletons--old men, women and children.  They were the remaining

natives of the, so-called, famine districts, who had crowded into

Bombay to beg their bread.  Thus, while, a few yards off, the official

"Vets." were busily bandaging the broken legs of jackals, pouring

ointments on the backs of mangy dogs, and fitting crutches to lame

storks, human beings were dying, at their very elbows, of starvation.

Happily for the famine-stricken, there were at that time fewer

hungry animals than usual, and so they were fed on what remained

from the meals of the brute pensioners.  No doubt many of these

wretched sufferers would have consented to transmigrate instantly

into the bodies of any of the animals who were ending so snugly

their earthly careers.

 

But even the Pinjarajala roses are not without thorns.  The

graminivorous "subjects," of course, could mot wish for anything

better;  but I doubt very much whether the beasts of prey, such

as tigers, hyenas, and wolves, are content with the rules and the

forcibly prescribed diet.  Jainas themselves turn with disgust

even from eggs and fish, and, in consequence, all the animals of

which they have the care must turn vegetarians.  We were present

when an old tiger, wounded by an English bullet, was fed.  Having

sniffed at a kind of rice soup which was offered to him, he lashed

his tail, snarled, showing his yellow teeth, and with a weak roar

turned away from the food.  What a look he cast askance upon his

keeper, who was meekly trying to persuade him to taste his nice

dinner!  Only the strong bars of the cage saved the Jaina from a

vigorous protest on the part of this veteran of the forest.  A

hyena, with a bleeding head and an ear half torn off, began by

sitting in the trough filled with this Spartan sauce, and then,

without any further ceremony, upset it, as if to show its utter

contempt for the mess.  The wolves and the dogs raised such

disconsolate howls that they attracted the attention of two

inseparable friends, an old elephant with a wooden leg and a sore-

eyed ox, the veritable Castor and Pollux of this institu-tion.

In accordance with his noble nature, the first thought of the

elephant concerned his friend.  He wound his trunk round the neck

of the ox, in token of protection, and both moaned dismally.

Parrots, storks, pigeons, flamingoes--the whole feathered tribe--

revelled in their breakfast.  Monkeys were the first to answer

the keeper's invitation and greatly enjoyed themselves.  Further

on we were shown a holy man, who was feeding insects with his own

blood.  He lay with his eyes shut, and the scorching rays of the

sun striking full upon his naked body.  He was literally covered

with flies, mosquitoes, ants and bugs.

 

"All these are our brothers," mildly observed the keeper, pointing

to the hundreds of animals and insects.  "How can you Europeans

kill and even devour them?"

 

"What would you do," I asked, "if this snake were about to bite you?

Is it possible you would not kill it, if you had time?"

 

"Not for all the world.  I should cautiously catch it, and then

I should carry it to some deserted place outside the town, and

there set it free."

 

"Nevertheless;  suppose it bit you?"

 

"Then I should recite a mantram, and, if that produced no good

result, I should be fair to consider it as the finger of Fate, and

quietly leave this body for another."

 

These were the words of a man who was educated to a certain extent,

and very well read.  When we pointed out that no gift of Nature

is aimless, and that the human teeth are all devouring, he answered

by quoting whole chapters of Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection

and Origin of Species.  "It is not true," argued he, "that the

first men were born with canine teeth.  It was only in course of

time, with the degradation of humanity,--only when the appetite

for flesh food began to develop--that the jaws changed their first

shape under the influence of new necessities."

 

I could not help asking myself, "Ou la science va-t'elle se fourrer?"

-------------

 

 

The same evening, in Elphinstone's Theatre, there was given a

special performance in honour of "the American Mission," as we

are styled here.  Native actors represented in Gujerati the ancient

fairy drama Sita-Rama, that has been adapted from the Ramayana,

the celebrated epic by Vilmiki.  This drama is composed of

fourteen acts and no end of tableaux, in addition to transformation

scenes.  All the female parts, as usual, were acted by young boys,

and the actors, accord-ing to the historical and national customs,

were bare-footed and half-naked.  Still, the richness of the costumes,

the stage adornments and transformations, were truly wonderful.

For instance, even on the stages of large metropolitan theatres,

it would have been difficult to give a better representation of

the army of Rama's allies, who are nothing more than troops of

monkeys under the leadership of Hanuman--the soldier, statesman,

dramatist, poet, god, who is so celebrated in history (that of

India s.v.p.).  The oldest and best of all Sanskrit dramas, Hanuman-

Natak, is ascribed to this talented forefather of ours.

 

Alas! gone is the glorious time when, proud of our white skin

(which after all may be nothing more than the result of a fading,

under the influences of our northern sky), we looked down upon

Hindus and other "niggers" with a feeling of contempt well suited

to our own magnificence.  No doubt Sir William Jones's soft heart

ached, when translating from the Sanskrit such humiliating sentences

as the following:  "Hanuman is said to be the forefather of the

Europeans."  Rama, being a hero and a demi-god, was well entitled

to unite all the bachelors of his useful monkey army to the

daughters of the Lanka (Ceylon) giants, the Rakshasas, and to

present these Dravidian beauties with the dowry of all Western

lands.  After the most pompous marriage ceremonies, the monkey

soldiers made a bridge, with the help of their own tails, and

safely landed with their spouses in Europe, where they lived very

happily and had a numerous progeny.  This progeny are we, Europeans.

Dravidian words found in some European languages, in Basque for

instance, greatly rejoice the hearts of the Brahmans, who would

gladly promote the philologists to the rank of demi-gods for this

important discovery, which confirms so gloriously their ancient

legend.  But it was Darwin who crowned the edifice of proof with

the authority of Western education and Western scientific literature.

The Indians became still more convinced that we are the veritable

descendants of Hanuman, and that, if one only took the trouble

to examine carefully, our tails might easily be discovered.  Our

narrow breeches and long skirts only add to the evidence, however

uncomplimentary the idea may be to us.

 

Still, if you consider seriously, what are we to say when Science,

in the person of Darwin, concedes this hypothesis to the wisdom

of ancient Aryas.  We must perforce submit.  And, really, it is

better to have for a forefather Hanu-man, the poet, the hero, the

god, than any other monkey, even though it be a tailless one.

Sita-Rama belongs to the category of mythological dramas, something

like the tragedies of Aeschylus.  Listening to this production

of the remotest antiquity, the spectators are carried back to the

times when the gods, descending upon earth, took an active part

in the everyday life of mortals.  Nothing reminds one of a modern

drama, though the exterior arrangement is the same.  "From the

sublime to the ridiculous there is but a step," and vice versa.

The goat, chosen for a sacrifice to Bacchus, presented the world

tragedy (greek script here).  The death bleatings and buttings of

the quadrupedal offering of antiquity have been polished by the

hands of time and of civilization, and, as a result of this process,

we get the dying whisper of Rachel in the part of Adrienne Lecouvreur,

and the fearfully realistic "kicking" of the modern Croisette in

the poisoning scene of The Sphinx.  But, whereas the descendants

of Themistocles gladly receive, whether captive or free, all the

changes and improvements considered as such by modern taste,

thinking them to be a corrected and enlarged edition of the genius

of Aeschylus;  Hindus, happily for archaeologists and lovers of

antiquity, have never moved a step since the times of our much

honoured forefather Hanuman.

 

We awaited the performance of Sita-Rama with the liveliest curiosity.

Except ourselves and the building of the theatre, everything was

strictly indigenous and nothing reminded us of the West.  There

was not the trace of an orchestra.  Music was only to be heard

from the stage, or from behind it.  At last the curtain rose.  The

silence, which had been very remarkable before the performance,

considering the huge crowd of spectators of both sexes, now became

absolute.  Rama is one of the incarnations of Vishnu and, as most

of the audience were worshippers of Vishnu, for them the spectacle

was not a mere theatrical performance, but a religious mystery,

representing the life and achievements of their favourite and most

venerated gods.

 

The prologue was laid in the epoch before creation began (it may

safely be said that no dramatist would dare to choose an earlier one)

--or, rather, before the last manifestation of the universe.  All

the philosophical sects of India, except Mussulmans, agree that

the universe has always existed.  But the Hindus divide the

periodical appearances and vanishings into days and nights of Brahma.

The nights, or withdrawals of the objective universe, are called

Pralayas, and the days, or epochs of new awakening into life and

light, are called Manvantaras, Yugas, or "centuries of the gods."

These periods are also called, respectively, the inbreathings and

outbreathings of Brahma.  When Pralaya comes to an end Brahma

awakens, and, with this awakening, the universe that rested in

deity, in other words, that was reabsorbed in its subjective essence,

emanates from the divine principle and becomes visible.  The gods,

who died at the same time as the universe, begin slowly to return

to life.  The "Invisible" alone, the "Infinite," the "Lifeless,"

the One who is the unconditioned original "Life" itself, soars,

surrounded by shoreless chaos.  Its holy presence is not visible.

It shows itself only in the periodical pulsation of chaos,

represented by a dark mass of waters filling the stage.  These

waters are not, as yet, separated from the dry land, because Brahma,

the creative spirit of Narayana, has not yet separated from the

"Ever Unchanging."  Then comes a heavy shock of the whole mass and

the waters begin to acquire transparency.  Rays, proceeding from

a golden egg at the bottom, spread through the chaotic waters.

Receiving life from the spirit of Narayana, the egg bursts and the

awakened Brahma rises to the surface of the water in the shape of

a huge lotus.  Light clouds appear, at first transparent and web-like.

They gradually become condensed, and transform themselves into

Prajapatis, the ten personified creative powers of Brahma, the god

of everything living, and sing a hymn of praise to the creator.

Something naively poetical, to our unaccustomed ears, breathed

in this uniform melody unaccompanied by any orchestra.

 

The hour of general revival has struck.  Pralaya comes to an end.

Everything rejoices, returning to life.  The sky is separated from

the waters and on it appear the Asuras and Gandharvas, the heavenly

singers and musicians.  Then Indra, Yama, Varuna, and Kuvera, the

spirits presiding over the four cardinal points, or the four elements,

water, fire, earth, and air, pour forth atoms, whence springs the

serpent "Ananta."  The  monster swims to the surface of the waves

and, bending its swanlike neck, forms a couch on which Vishnu reclines

with the Goddess of Beauty, his wife Lakshmi, at his feet.  "Swatha!

Swatha!  Swatha!" cries the choir of heavenly musicians, hailing

the deity.  In the Russian church service this is pronounced  Swiat!

Swiat!  Swiat! and means holy! holy! holy!

 

In one of his future avatars Vishnu will incarnate in Rama,  the

son of a great king, and Lakshmi will become Sita.  The motive of

the whole poem of Ramayana is sung in a few words by the celestial

musicians.  Kama, the God of Love, shelters the divine couple and,

that very moment, a flame is lit in their hearts and the whole world

is created.

 

Later there are performed the fourteen acts of the drama, which

is well known to everybody, and in which several hundred personages

take part.  At the end of the prologue the whole assembly of gods

come forward, one after another, and acquaint the audience with

the contents and the epilogue of their performance, asking the

public not to be too exacting.  It is as though all these familiar

deities, made of painted granite and marble, left the temples and

came down to remind mortals of events long past and forgotten.

 

The hall was full of natives.  We four alone were representatives

of Europe.  Like a huge flower bed, the women displayed the bright

colors of their garments.  Here and there, among handsome, bronze-

like heads, were the pretty, dull white faces of Parsee women,

whose beauty reminded me of the Georgians.  The front rows were

occupied by women only.  In India it is quite easy to learn a person's

religion, sect, and caste, and even whether a woman is married or

single, from the marks painted in bright colors on everyone's forehead.

 

Since the time when Alexander the Great destroyed the sacred books

of the Gebars, they have constantly been oppressed by the idol

worshippers.  King Ardeshir-Babechan restored fire worship in the

years 229-243 A.C.  Since then they have again been persecuted

during the reign of one of the Shakpurs, either II., IX., or XI.,

of the Sassanids, but which of them is not known.  It is, however,

reported that one of them was a great protector of the Zartushta

doctrines.  After the fall of Yesdejird, the fire-worshippers

emigrated to the island of Ormasd, and, some time later, having

found a book of Zoroastrian prophecies, in obedience to one of

them they set out for Hindustan.  After many wanderings,

they appeared, about 1,000 or 1,200 years ago, in the territory

of Maharana-Jayadeva, a vassal of the Rajput King Champanir, who

allowed them to colonize his land, but only on condition that

they laid down their weapons, that they abandoned the Persian

language for Hindi, and that their women put off their national

dress and clothed themselves after the manner of Hindu women.  He,

however, allowed them to wear shoes, since this is strictly prescribed

by Zoroaster.  Since then very few changes have been made.  It

follows that the Parsee women could only be distinguished from

their Hindu sisters by very slight differences.  The almost white

faces of the former were separated by a strip of smooth black hair

from a sort of white cap, and the whole was covered with a bright

veil.  The latter wore no covering on their rich, shining hair,

twisted into a kind of Greek chignon.  Their foreheads were brightly

painted, and their nostrils adorned with golden rings.  Both are

fond of bright, but uniform, colors, both cover their arms up to

the elbow with bangles, and both wear saris.

 

Behind the women a whole sea of most wonderful turbans was waving

in the pit.  There were long-haired Rajputs with regular Grecian

features and long beards parted in the middle, their heads covered

with "pagris" consisting of, at least, twenty yards of finest white

muslin, and their persons adorned with earrings and necklaces;

there were Mahrata Brahmans, who shave their heads, leaving only

one long central lock, and wear turbans of blinding red, decorated

in front with a sort of golden horn of plenty;  Bangas, wearing

three-cornered helmets with a kind of cockscomb on the top;  Kachhis,

with Roman helmets;  Bhillis, from the borders of Rajastan, whose

chins are wrapped three times in the ends of their pyramidal turbans,

so that the innocent tourist never fails to think that they constantly

suffer from toothache;  Bengalis and Calcutta Babus, bare-headed

all the year round, their hair cut after an Athenian fashion, and

their bodies clothed in the proud folds of a white toga-virilis,

in no way different from those once worn by Roman senators;  Parsees,

in their black, oilcloth mitres;  Sikhs, the followers of Nanaka,

strictly monotheist and mystic, whose turbans are very like the

Bhillis', but who wear long hair down to their waists;  and hundreds

of other tribes.

 

Proposing to count how many different headgears are to be seen in

Bombay alone, we had to abandon the task as impracticable after a

fortnight.  Every caste, every trade, guild, and sect, every one

of the thousand sub-divisions of the social hierarchy, has its own

bright turban, often sparkling with gold lace and precious stones,

which is laid aside only in case of mourning.  But, as if to

compensate for this luxury, even the mem-bers of the municipality,

rich merchants, and Rai-Bahadurs, who have been created baronets

by the Government, never wear any stockings, and leave their legs

bare up to the knees.  As for their dress, it chiefly consists of

a kind of shapeless white shirt.

 

In Baroda some Gaikwars (a title of all the Baroda princes) still

keep in their stables elephants and the less common giraffes,

though the former are strictly forbidden in the streets of Bombay.

We had an opportunity of seeing ministers, and even Rajas, mounted

on these noble animals, their mouths full of pansupari (betel leaves),

their heads drooping under the weight of the precious stones on

their turbans, and each of their fingers and toes adorned with rich

golden rings.  While the evening I am describing lasted, however,

we saw no elephants, no giraffes, though we enjoyed the company of

Rajas and ministers.  We had in our box the hand-some ambassador

and late tutor of the Mahararana of Oodeypore.  Our companion was

a Raja and a pandit.  His name was a Mohunlal-Vishnulal-Pandia.

He wore a small pink turban sparkling with diamonds, a pair of

pink barege trousers, and a white gauze coat.  His raven black

hair half covered his amber-colored neck, which was surrounded by

a necklace that might have driven any Parisian belle frantic with

envy.  The poor Raiput was awfully sleepy, but he stuck heroically

to his duties, and, thoughtfully pulling his beard, led us all

through the endless labyrinth of metaphysical entanglements of

the Ramayana.  During the entr'actes we were offered coffee,

sherbets, and cigarettes, which we smoked even during the performance,

sitting in front of the stage in the first row.  We were covered,

like idols, with garlands of flowers, and the manager, a stout

Hindu clad in transparent muslins, sprinkled us several times

with rose-water.

 

The performance began at eight p.m. and, at half-past two, had only

reached the ninth act.  In spite of each of us having a punkah-wallah

at our backs, the heat was unbearable.  We had reached the limits

of our endurance, and tried to excuse ourselves.  This led to general

disturbance, on the stage as well as in the auditorium.  The airy

chariot, on which the wicked king Ravana was carrying Sita away,

paused in the air.  The king of the Nagas (serpents) ceased breathing

flames, the monkey soldiers hung motionless on the trees, and Rama

himself, clad in light blue and crowned with a diminutive pagoda,

came to the front of the stage and pronounced in pure English speech,

in which he thanked us for the honour of our presence.  Then new

bouquets, pansu-paris, and rose-water, and, finally, we reached home

about four a.m.  Next morning we learned that the performance had

ended at half-past six.

 

 

 

 

On The Way To Karli

 

 

 

It is an early morning near the end of March.  A light breeze

caresses with its velvety hand the sleepy faces of the pilgrims;

and the intoxicating perfume of tuberoses mingles with the pungent

odors of the bazaar.  Crowds of barefooted Brahman women, stately

and well-formed, direct their steps, like the biblical Rachel, to

the well, with brass water pots bright as gold upon their heads.

On our way lie numerous sacred tanks, filled with stagnant water,

in which Hindus of both sexes perform their prescribed morning

ablutions.  Under the hedge of a garden somebody's tame mongoose

is devouring the head of a cobra.  The headless body of the

snake convulsively, but harmlessly, beats against the thin flanks

of the little animal, which regards these vain efforts with an

evident delight.  Side by side with this group of animals

is a human figure;  a naked mali (gardener), offering betel and

salt to a monstrous stone idol of Shiva, with the view of pacifying

the wrath of the "Destroyer," excited by the death of the cobra,

which is one of his favourite servants.  A few steps before reaching

the railway station, we meet a modest Catholic procession, consisting

of a few newly converted pariahs and some of the native Portuguese.

Under a baldachin is a litter, on which swings to and fro a dusky

Madonna dressed after the fashion of the native goddesses, with

a ring in her nose.  In her arms she carries the holy Babe,

clad in yellow pyjamas and a red Brah-manical turban.  "Hari, hari,

devaki!" ("Glory to the holy Virgin!") exclaim the converts,

unconscious of any difference between the Devaki, mother of Krishna,

and the Catholic Madonna.  All they know is that, excluded from

the temples by the Brahmans on account of their not belonging to

any of the Hindu castes, they are admitted sometimes into the

Christian pagodas, thanks to the "padris," a name adopted from

the Portuguese padre, and applied indiscriminately to the missionaries

of every European sect.

 

At last, our gharis--native two-wheeled vehicles drawn by a pair

of strong bullocks--arrived at the station.  English employes open

wide their eyes at the sight of white-faced people travelling about

the town in gilded Hindu chariots.  But we are true Americans, and

we have come hither to study, not Europe, but India and her products

on the spot.

 

If the tourist casts a glance on the shore opposite to the port

of Bombay, he will see a dark blue mass rising like a wall between

himself and the horizon.  This is Parbul, a flat-topped mountain

2,250 feet high.  Its right slope leans on two sharp rocks covered

with woods.  The highest of them, Mataran, is the object of our trip.

From Bombay to Narel, a station situated at the foot of this mountain,

we are to travel four hours by railway, though, as the crow flies,

the distance is not more than twelve miles.  The railroad wanders

round the foot of the most charming little hills, skirts hundreds

of pretty lakes, and pierces with more than twenty tunnels the

very heart of the rocky ghats.

 

We were accompanied by three Hindu friends.  Two of them once

belonged to a high caste, but were excommunicated from their

pagoda for association and friendship with us, unworthy foreigners.

At the station our party was joined by two more natives, with whom

we had been in correspondence for many a year.  All were members

of our Society, reformers of the Young India school, enemies of

Brahmans, castes, aid prejudices, and were to be our fellow-travelers

and visit with us the annual fair at the temple festivities of Karli,

stopping on the way at Mataran and Khanduli.  One was a Brahman

from Poona, the second a moodeliar (landowner) from Madras, the

third a Singalese from Kegalla, the fourth a Bengali Zemindar, and

the fifth a gigantic Rajput, whom we had known for a long time by

the name of Gulab-Lal-Sing, and had called simply Gulab-Sing.  I

shall dwell upon his personality more than on any of the others,

because the most wonderful and diverse stories were in circulation

about this strange man.  It was asserted that he belonged to the

sect of Raj-Yogis, and was an initiate of the mysteries of magic,

alchemy, and various other occult sciences of India.  He was rich

and independent, and rumour did not dare to suspect him of deception,

the more so because, though quite full of these sciences, he never

uttered a word about them in public, and carefully concealed his

knowledge from all except a few friends.

 

He was an independent Takur from Rajistan, a province the name

of which means the land of kings.  Takurs are, almost without

exception, descended from the Surya (sun), and are accordingly

called Suryavansa.  They are prouder than any other nation in the

world.  They have a proverb, "The dirt of the earth cannot stick

to the rays of the sun."  They do not despise any sect, except

the Brahmans, and honor only the bards who sing their military

achievements.  Of the latter Colonel Tod writes somewhat as follows,*

"The magnificence and luxury of the Rajput courts in the early periods

of history were truly wonderful, even when due allowance is made for

the poetical license of the bards.  From the earliest times Northern

India was a wealthy country, and it was precisely here that was

situated the richest satrapy of Darius.  At all events, this country

abounded in those most striking events which furnish history with

her richest materials.  In Rajistan every small kingdom had its

Thermopylae, and every little town has produced its Leonidas.

But the veil of the centuries hides from posterity events that

the pen of the historian might have bequeathed to the everlasting

admiration of the nations.  Somnath might have appeared as a

rival of Delphi, the treasures of Hind might outweigh the riches

of the King of Lydia, while compared with the army of the brothers

Pandu, that of Xerxes would seem an inconsiderable handful of men,

worthy only to rank in the second place."

 

-----------

* In nearly every instance the passages quoted from various

authorities have been retranslated from the Russian.  As the

time and labor needful for verification would he too great, the

sense only of these passages is given here.  They do not pretend

to be textual.--Translator

----------

 

England did not disarm the Rajputs, as she did the rest of the

Indian nations, so Gulab-Sing came accompanied by vassals and

shield-bearers.

 

Possessing an inexhaustible knowledge of legends, and being

evidently well acquainted with the antiquities of his country,

Gulab-Sing proved to be the most interesting of our companions.

 

"There, against the blue sky," said Gulab-Lal-Sing, "you behold

the majestic Bhao Mallin.  That deserted spot was once the abode

of a holy hermit;  now it is visited yearly by crowds of pilgrims.

According to popular belief the most wonderful things happen there--

miracles.  At the top of the mountain, two thousand feet above

the level of the sea, is the platform of a fortress.  Behind it

rises another rock two hundred and seventy feet in height, and

at the very summit of this peak are to be found the ruins of a

still more ancient fortress, which for seventy-five years served

as a shelter for this hermit.  Whence he obtained his food will

for ever remain a mystery.  Some think he ate the roots of

wild plants, but upon this barren rock there is no vegetation.

The only mode of ascent of this perpendicular mountain consists

of a rope, and holes, just big enough to receive the toes of a man,

cut out of the living rock.  One would think such a pathway

accessible only to acrobats and monkeys.  Surely fanaticism must

provide wings for the Hindus, for no accident has ever happened

to any of them.  Unfortunately, about forty years ago, a party of

Englishmen conceived the unhappy thought of exploring the ruins,

but a strong gust of wind arose and carried them over the precipice.

After this, General Dickinson gave orders for the destruction of

all means of communication with the upper fortress, and the lower

one, once the cause of so many losses and so much bloodshed, is

now entirely deserted, and serves only as a shelter for eagles

and tigers."

 

Listening to these tales of olden times, I could not help comparing

the past with the present.  What a difference!

 

"Kali-Yug!" cry old Hindus with grim despair.  "Who can strive

against the Age of Darkness?"

 

This fatalism, the certainty that nothing good can be expected now,

the conviction that even the powerful god Shiva himself can neither

appear nor help them are all deeply rooted in the minds of the old

generation.  As for the younger men, they receive their education

in high schools and universities, learn by heart Herbert Spencer,

John Stuart Mill, Darwin and the German philosophers, and entirely

lose all respect, not only for their own religion, but for every

other in the world.

 

The young "educated" Hindus are materialists almost without exception,

and often achieve the last limits of Atheism.  They seldom hope to

attain to anything better than a situation as "chief mate of the

junior clerk," as we say in Russia, and either become sycophants,

disgusting flatterers of their present lords, or, which is still

worse, or at any rate sillier, begin to edit a newspaper full of

cheap liberalism, which gradually develops into a revolutionary organ.

 

But all this is only en passant.  Compared with the mysterious

and grandiose past of India, the ancient Aryavarta, her present

is a natural Indian ink background, the black shadow of a bright

picture, the inevitable evil in the cycle of every nation.  India

has become decrepit and has fallen down, like a huge memorial of

antiquity, prostrate and broken to pieces.  But the most

insignificant of these fragments will for ever remain a treasure

for the archeologist and the artist, and, in the course of time,

may even afford a clue to the philosopher and the psychologist.

"Ancient Hindus built like giants and finished their work like

goldsmiths," says Archbishop Heber, describing his travel in India.

In his description of the Taj-Mahal of Agra, that veritable eighth

wonder of the world, he calls it "a poem in marble."  He might

have added that it is difficult to find in India a ruin, in the

least state of preservation, that cannot speak, more eloquently

than whole volumes, of the past of India, her religious aspirations,

her beliefs and hopes.

 

There is not a country of antiquity, not even excluding the Egypt

of the Pharaohs, where the development of the subjective ideal

into its demonstration by an objective symbol has been expressed

more graphically, more skillfully, and artistically, than in India.

The whole pantheism of the Vedanta is contained in the symbol of

the bisexual deity Ardhanari.  It is surrounded by the double

triangle, known in India under the name of the sign of Vishnu.

By his side lie a lion, a bull, and an eagle.  In his hands there

rests a full moon, which is reflected in the waters at his feet.

The Vedanta has taught for thousands of years what some of the

German philosophers began to preach at the end of last century and

the beginning of this one, namely, that everything objective in

the world, as well as the world itself, is no more than an illusion,

a Maya, a phantom created by our imagination, and as unreal

as the reflection of the moon upon the surface of the waters.  The

phenomenal world, as well as the subjectivity of our conception

concerning our Egos, are nothing but, as it were, a mirage.  The

true sage will never submit to the temptations of illusion.  He

is well aware that man will attain to self-knowledge, and become

a real Ego, only after the entire union of the personal fragment

with the All, thus becoming an immutable, infinite, universal Brahma.

Accordingly, he considers the whole cycle of birth, life, old age,

and death as the sole product of imagination.

 

Generally speaking, Indian philosophy, split up as it is into

numerous metaphysical teachings, possesses, when united to Indian

ontological doctrines, such a well developed logic, such a

wonderfully refined psychology, that it might well take the

first rank when contrasted with the schools, ancient and modern,

idealist or positivist, and eclipse them all in turn.  That

positivism expounded by Lewis, that makes each particular hair

on the heads of Oxford theologians stand on end, is ridiculous

child's play compared with the atomistic school of Vaisheshika,

with its world divided, like a chessboard, into six categories

of everlasting atoms, nine substances, twenty-four qualities, and

five motions.  And, however difficult, and even impossible may

seem the exact representation of all these abstract ideas, idealistic,

pantheistic, and, sometimes, purely material, in the condensed shape

of allegorical symbols, India, nevertheless, has known how to express

all these teachings more or less successfully.  She has immortalized

them in her ugly, four-headed idols, in the geometrical, complicated

forms of her temples, and even in the entangled lines and spots

on the foreheads of her sectaries.

 

We were discussing this and other topics with our Hindu fellow-

travellers when a Catholic padre, a teacher in the Jesuit College

of St. Xavier in Bombay, entered our carriage at one of the stations.

Soon he could contain himself no longer, and joined in our

conversation.  Smiling and rubbing his hands, he said that he

was curious to know on the strength of what sophistry our companions

could find anything resembling a philosophical explanation "in

the fundamental idea of the four faces of this ugly Shiva, crowned

with snakes," pointing with his finger to the idol at the entrance

to a pagoda.

 

"It is very simple," answered the Bengali Babu.  You see that its

four faces are turned towards the four cardinal points, South,

North, West, and East--but all these faces are on one body and

belong to one god."

 

"Would you mind explaining first the philosophical idea of the

four faces and eight hands of your Shiva," interrupted the padre.

 

"With great pleasure.  Thinking that our great Rudra (the Vedic

name for this god) is omnipresent, we repre-sent him with his face

turned simultaneously in all directions.  Eight hands indicate his

omnipotence, and his single body serves to remind us that he is One,

though he is everywhere, and nobody can avoid his all-seeing eye,

or his chastising hand."

 

The padre was going to say something when the train stopped;  we

had arrived at Narel.

 

It is hardly twenty-five years since, for the first time, a white

man ascended Mataran, a huge mass of various kinds of trap rock,

for the most part crystalline in form.  Though quite near to Bombay,

and only a few miles from Khandala, the summer residence of the

Europeans, the threatening heights of this giant were long considered

inaccessible.  On the north, its smooth, almost vertical face rises

2,450 feet over the valley of the river Pen, and, further on,

numberless separate rocks and hillocks, covered with thick vegetation,

and divided by valleys and precipices, rise up to the clouds.  In

1854, the railway pierced one of the sides of Mataran, and now has

reached the foot of the last mountain, stopping at Narel, where,

not long ago, there was nothing but a precipice.  From Narel to

the upper plateau is but eight miles, which you may travel on a

pony, or in an open or closed palanquin, as you choose.

 

Considering that we arrived at Narel about six in the evening,

this course was not very tempting.  Civilization has done much

with inanimate nature, but, in spite of all its despotism, it has

not yet been able to conquer tigers and snakes.  Tigers, no doubt,

are banished to the more remote jungles, but all hinds of snakes,

especially cobras and coralillos, which last by preference inhabit

trees, still abound in the forests of Mataran as in days of old,

and wage a regular guerilla warfare against the invaders.  Woe

betide the belated pedestrian, or even horseman, if he happens to

pass under a tree which forms the ambuscade of a coralillo snake!

Cobras and other reptiles seldom attack men, and will generally try

to avoid them, unless accidentally trodden upon, but these guerilleros

of the forest, the tree serpents, lie in wait for their victims.  As

soon as the head of a man comes under the branch which shelters the

coralillo, this enemy of man, coiling its tail round the branch,

dives down into space with all the length of is body, and strikes

with its fangs at the man's forehead.  This curious fact was long

considered to be a mere fable, but it has now been verified, and

belongs to the natural history of India.  In these cases the natives

see in the snake the envoy of Death, the fulfiller of the will of

the bloodthirsty Kali, the spouse of Shiva.

 

But evening, after the scorchingly hot day, was so tempting, and

held out to us from the distance such promise of delicious coolness,

that we decided upon risking our fate.  In the heart of this

wondrous nature one longs to shake off earthly chains, and unite

oneself with the boundless life, so that death itself has its

attractions in India.

 

Besides, the full moon was about to rise at eight p.m.  Three hours'

ascent of the mountain, on such a moonlit, tropical night as would

tax the descriptive powers of the greatest artists, was worth any

sacrifice.  Apropos, among the few artists who can fix upon canvas

the subtle charm of a moonlit night in India public opinion begins

to name our own V.V. Vereshtchagin.

 

Having dined hurriedly in the dak bungalow we asked for our sedan

chairs, and, drawing our roof-like topees over our eyes, we started.

Eight coolies, clad, as usual, in vine-leaves, took possession of

each chair and hurried up the mountain, uttering the shrieks and

yells no true Hindu can dispense with.  Each chair was accompanied

besides by a relay of eight more porters.  So we were sixty-four,

without counting the Hindus and their servants--an army sufficient

to frighten any stray leopard or jungle tiger, in fact any animal,

except our fearless cousins on the side of our great-grandfather

Hanuman.  As soon as we turned into a thicket at the foot of the

Mountain, several dozens of these kinsmen joined our procession.

Thanks to the achievements of Rama's ally, monkeys are sacred in

India.  The Government, emulating the earlier wisdom of the East

India Company, forbids everyone to molest them, not only when met

with in the forests, which in all justice belong to them, but even

when they invade the city gardens.  Leaping from one branch to

another, chattering like magpies, and making the most formidable

grimaces, they followed us all the way, like so many midnight spooks.

Sometimes they hung on the trees in full moonlight, like forest

nymphs of Russian mythology;  sometimes they preceded us, awaiting

our arrival at the turns of the road as if showing us the way.

They never left us.  One monkey babe alighted on my knees.  In a

moment the authoress of his being, jumping without any ceremony

over the coolies' shoulders, came to his rescue, picked him up,

and, after making the most ungodly grimace at me, ran away with him.

 

"Bandras (monkeys) bring luck with their presence," remarked one

of the Hindus, as if to console me for the loss of my crumpled topee.

"Besides," he added, "seeing them here we may be sure that there

is not a single tiger for ten miles round."

 

Higher and higher we ascended by the steep winding path, and the

forest grew perceptibly thicker, darker, and more impenetrable.

Some of the thickets were as dark as graves.  Passing under hundred-

year-old banyans it was impossible to distinguish one's own finger

at the distance of two inches.        It seemed to me that in certain

places it would not be possible to advance without feeling our way,

but our coolies never made a false step, but hastened onwards.

Not one of us uttered a word.  It was as if we had agreed to be

silent at these moments.  We felt as though wrapped in the heavy

veil of dark-ness, and no sound was heard but the short, irregular

breathing of the porters, and the cadence of their quick, nervous

footsteps upon the stony soil of the path.  One felt sick at heart

and ashamed of belonging to that human race, one part of which

makes of the other mere beasts of burden.  These poor wretches

are paid for their work four annas a day all the year round.  Four

annas for going eight miles upwards and eight miles downwards not

less than twice a day;  altogether thirty-two miles up and down a

mountain 1,500 feet high, carrying a burden of two hundredweight!

However, India is a country where everything is adjusted to never

changing customs, and four annas a day is the pay for unskilled

labor of any kind.

 

Gradually open spaces and glades became more frequent and the light

grew as intense as by day.  Millions of grasshoppers were shrilling

in the forest, filling the air with a metallic throbbing, and flocks

of frightened parrots rushed from tree to tree.  Sometimes the

thundering, prolonged roars of tigers rose from the bottom of the

precipices thickly covered with all kinds of vegetation.  Shikaris

assure us that, on a quiet night, the roaring of these beasts can

be heard for many miles around.  The panorama, lit up, as if by

Bengal fires, changed at every turn.  Rivers, fields, forests,

and rocks, spread out at our feet over an enormous distance, moved

and trembled, iridescent, in the silvery moonlight, like the tides

of a mirage.  The fantastic character of the pictures made us hold

our breath.  Our heads grew giddy if, by chance, we glanced down

into the depths by the flickering moonlight.  We felt that the

precipice, 2,000 feet deep, was fascinating us.  One of our American

fellow travelers, who had begun the voyage on horseback, had to

dismount, afraid of being unable to resist the temptation to dive

head foremost into the abyss.

 

Several times we met with lonely pedestrians, men and young women,

coming down Mataran on their way home after a day's work.  It often

happens that some of them never reach home.  The police unconcernedly

report that the missing man has been carried off by a tiger, or

killed by a snake.  All is said, and he is soon entirely forgotten.

One person, more or less, out of the two hundred and forty millions

who inhabit India does not matter much!  But there exists a very

strange superstition in the Deccan about this mysterious, and only

partially explored, mountain.  The natives assert that, in spite

of the considerable number of  victims, there has never been found

a single skeleton.  The corpse, whether intact or mangled by tigers,

is immediately carried away by the monkeys, who, in the latter case,

gather the scattered bones, and bury them skillfully in deep holes,

that no traces ever remain.  Englishmen laugh at this superstition,

but the police do not deny the fact of the entire disappearance

of the bodies.  When the sides of the mountain were excavated,

in the course of the construction of the railway, separate bones,

with the marks of tigers' teeth upon them, broken bracelets, and

other adornments, were found at an incredible depth from the surface.

The fact of these things being broken showed clearly that they

were not buried by men, because, neither the religion of the Hindus,

nor their greed, would allow them to break and bury silver and gold.

Is it possible, then, that, as amongst men one hand washes the other,

so in the animal kingdom one species conceals the crimes of another?

 

Having spent the night in a Portuguese inn, woven like an eagle's

nest out of bamboos, and clinging to the almost vertical side of

a rock, we rose at daybreak, and, having visited all the points

de vue famed for their beauty, made our preparations to return to

Narel.  By daylight the panorama was still more splendid than by

night;  volumes would not suffice to describe it.  Had it not been

that on three sides the horizon was shut out by rugged ridges of

mountain, the whole of the Deccan plateau would have appeared before

our eyes.  Bombay was so distinct that it seemed quite near to us,

and the channel that separates the town from Salsetta shone like

a tiny silvery streak.  It winds like a snake on its way to the

port, surrounding Kanari and other islets, which look the very

image of green peas scattered on the white cloth of its bright

waters, and, finally, joins the blinding line of the Indian Ocean

in the extreme distance.  On the outer side is the northern Konkan,

terminated by the Tal-Ghats, the needle-like summits of the Jano-Maoli

rocks, and, lastly, the battlemented ridge of Funell, whose bold

silhouette stands out in strong relief against the distant blue

of the dim sky, like a giant's castle in some fairy tale.  Further

on looms Parbul, whose flat summit, in the days of old, was the

seat of the gods, whence, according to the legends, Vishnu spoke

to mortals.  And there below, where the defile widens into a valley,

all covered with huge separate rocks, each of which is crowded

with historical and mythological legends, you may perceive the

dim blue ridge of mountains, still loftier and still more strangely

shaped.  That is Khandala, which is overhung by a huge stone block,

known by the name of the Duke's Nose.  On the opposite side, under

the very summit of the mountain, is situated Karli, which, according

to the unanimous opinion or archeologists, is the most ancient

and best preserved of Indian cave temples.

 

One who has traversed the passes of the Caucasus again and again;

one who, from the top of the Cross Mountain, has beheld beneath

her feet thunderstorms and lightnings;  who has visited the Alps

and the Rigi;  who is well acquainted with the Andes and Cordilleras,

and knows every corner of the Catskills in America, may be allowed,

I hope, the expression of a humble opinion.  The Caucasian Mountains,

I do not deny, are more majestic than Ghats of India, and their

splendour cannot be dimmed by comparison with these;  but their

beauty is of a type, if I may use this expression.  At their sight

one experiences true delight, but at the same time a sensation of awe.

One feels like a pigmy before these Titans  of nature.  But in India,

the Himalayas excepted, mountains produce quite a different impression.

The highest summits of the Deccan, as well as of the triangular

ridge that fringes Northern Hindostan, and of the Eastern Ghats,

do not exceed 3,000 feet.  Only in the Ghats of the Malabar coast,

from Cape Comorin to the river Surat, are there heights of 7,000

feet above the surface of the sea.  So that no comparison can be

dawn between these and the hoary headed patriarch  Elbruz, or Kasbek,

which exceeds 18,000 feet.  The chief and original charm of

Indian mountains wonderfully consists in their capricious shapes.

Sometimes these mountains, or, rather, separate volcanic peaks

standing in a row, form chains;  but it is more common to find

them scattered, to the great perplexity of geologists, without

visible cause, in places where the formation seems quite unsuitable.

Spacious valleys, surrounded by high walls of rock, over the very

ridge of which passes the railway, are common.  Look below, and

it will seem to you that you are gazing upon the studio of some

whimsical Titanic sculptor, filled with half finished groups,

statues, and monuments.  Here is a dream-land bird, seated upon

the head of a monster six hundred feet high, spreading its wings

and widely gaping its dragon's mouth;  by its side the bust of a

man, surmounted by a helmet, battlemented like the walls of a

feudal castle;  there, again, new monsters devouring each other,

statues with broken limbs, disorderly heaps of huge balls, lonely

fortresses with loopholes, ruined towers and bridges.  All this

scattered and intermixed with shapes changing incessantly like the

dreams of delirium.  And the chief attraction is that nothing here

is the result of art, everything is the pure sport of Nature, which,

however, has occasionally been turned to account by ancient builders.

The art of man in India is to be sought in the interior of the earth,

not on its surface.  Ancient Hindus seldom built their temples

otherwise than in the bosom of the earth, as though they were

ashamed of their efforts, or did not dare to rival the sculpture

of nature.  Having chosen, for instance, a pyramidal rock, or a

cupola shaped hillock like Elephanta, Or Karli, they scraped away

inside, according to the Puranas, for centuries, planning on so

grand a style that no modern architecture has been able to conceive

anything to equal it.  Fables (?) about the Cyclops seem truer in

India than in Egypt.

 

The marvellous railroad from Narel to Khandala reminds one of a

similar line from Genoa up the Apenines.  One may be said to travel

in the air, not on land.  The railway traverses a region 1,400

feet above Konkan, and, in some places, while one rail is laid on

the sharp edge of the rock, the other is supported on vaults and

arches.  The Mali Khindi viaduct is 163 feet high.  For two hours

we hastened on between sky and earth, with abysses on both sides

thickly covered with mango trees and bananas.  Truly English

engineers are wonderful builders.

 

The pass of Bhor-Ghat is safely accomplished and we are in Khandala.

Our bungalow here is built on the very edge of a ravine, which

nature herself has carefully concealed under a cover of the most

luxuriant vegetation.  Everything is in blossom, and, in this

unfathomed recess, a botanist might find sufficient material to

occupy him for a lifetime.  Palms have disappeared;  for the

most part they grow only near the sea.  Here they are replaced by

bananas, mango trees, pipals (ficus religiosa), fig trees, and

thousands of other trees and shrubs, unknown to such outsiders as

ourselves.  The Indian flora is too often slandered and misrepresented

as being full of beautiful, but scentless, flowers.  At some seasons

this may be true enough, but, as long as jasmines, the various

balsams, white tuberoses, and golden champa (champaka or frangipani)

are in blossom, this statement is far from being true.  The aroma

of champa alone is so powerful as to make one almost giddy.  For

size, it is the king of flowering trees, and hundreds of them were

in full bloom, just at this time of year, on Mataran and Khandala.

 

We sat on the verandah, talking and enjoying the surrounding views,

until well-nigh midnight.  Everything slept around us.

 

Khandala is nothing but a big village, situated on the flat top

of one of the mountains of the Sahiadra range, about 2,200 feet

above the sea level.  It is surrounded by isolated peaks, as

strange in shape as any we have seen.

 

One of them, straight before us, on the opposite side of the abyss,

looked exactly like a long, one-storied building, with a flat

roof and a battlemented parapet.  The Hindus assert that, somewhere

about this hillock, there exists a secret entrance, leading into

vast interior halls, in fact to a whole subterranean palace, and

that there still exist people who possess the secret of this abode.

A holy hermit, Yogi, and Magus, who had inhabited these caves for

"many centuries," imparted this secret to Sivaji, the celebrated

leader of the Mahratta armies.  Like Tanhauser, in Wagner's opera,

the unconquerable Sivaji spent seven years of his youth in this

mysterious abode, and therein acquired his extraordinary strength

and valour.

 

Sivaji is a kind of Indian Ilia Moorometz, though his epoch is

much nearer to our times.  He was the hero and the king of the

Mahrattas in the seventeenth century, and the founder of their

short-lived empire.  It is to him that India owes the weakening,

if not the entire destruction, of the Mussulman yoke.  No taller

than an ordinary woman, and with the hand of a child, he was,

nevertheless, possessed of wonderful strength, which, of course,

his compatriots ascribed to sorcery.  His sword is still preserved

in a museum, and one cannot help wondering at its size and weight,

and at the hilt, through which only a ten-year-old child could put

his hand.  The basis of this hero's fame is the fact that he, the

son of a poor officer in the service of a Mogul emperor, like

another David, slew the Mussulman Goliath, the formidable Afzul Khan.

It was not, however, with a sling that he killed him, he used in

this combat the formidable Mahratti weapon, vaghnakh, consisting

of five long steel nails, as sharp as needles, and very strong.

This weapon is worn on the fingers, and wrestlers use it to tear

each other's flesh like wild animals.  The Deccan is full of legends

about Sivaji, and even the  English historians mention him with

respect.  Just as in the fable respecting Charles V, one of tile

local Indian traditions asserts that Sivaji is not dead, but lives

secreted in one of the Sahiadra caves.  When the fateful hour

strikes (and according to the calculations of the astrologers the

time is not far off) he will reappear, and will bring freedom to

his beloved country.

 

The learned and artful Brahmans, those Jesuits of India, profit

by the profound superstition of the masses to extort wealth from

them, sometimes to the last cow, the only food giver of a large family.

 

In the following passage I give a curious example of this.  At

the end of July, 1879, this mysterious document appeared in Bombay.

I translate literally, from the Mahratti, the original having been

translated into all the dialects of India, of which there are 273.

 

"Shri!" (an untranslatable greeting).  "Let it be known unto every

one that this epistle, traced in the original in golden letters,

came down from Indra-loka (the heaven of Indra), in the presence

of holy Brahmans, on the altar of the Vishveshvara temple, which

is in the sacred town of Benares.

 

"Listen and remember, O tribes of Hindustan, Rajis-tan, Punjab, etc.,

etc.  On Saturday, the second day of the first half of the month

Magha, 1809, of Shalivahan's era" (1887 A.D.), "the eleventh month

of the Hindus, during the Ashwini Nakshatra" (the first of the

twenty-seven constellations on the moon's path), "when the sun

enters the sign Capricorn, and the time of the day will be near

the constellation Pisces, that is to say, exactly one hour and

thirty-six minutes after sunrise, the hour of the end of the Kali-Yug

will strike, and the much desired Satya-Yug will commence" (that is

to say, the end of the Maha-Yug, the great cycle that embraces the

four minor Yugas).  "This time Satya-Yug will last 1,100 years.

During all this time a man's lifetime will be 128 years.  The days

will become longer and will consist of twenty hours and forty-eight

minutes, and the nights of thirteen hours and twelve minutes, that

is to say, instead of twenty-four hours we shall have exactly

thirty-four hours and one minute.  The first day of Satya-Yug will

be very important for us, because it is then that will appear to

us our new King with white face and golden hair, who will come from

the far North.  He will become the autonomous Lord of India.  The

Maya of human unbelief, with all the heresies over which it presides,

will be thrown down to Patala" (sig-nifying at once hell and the

antipodes), "and the Maya of the righteous and pious will abide

with them, and will help them to enjoy life in Mretinloka" (our earth).

 

"Let it also be known to everyone that, for the dissemination of

this divine document, every separate copy of it will be rewarded

by the forgiveness of as many sins as are generally forgiven when

a pious man sacrifices to a Brahman one hundred cows.  As for the

disbelievers and the indifferent, they will be sent to Naraka" (hell).

"Copied out and given, by the slave of Vishnu, Malau Shriram, on

Saturday, the 7th day of the first half of Shravan" (the fifth month

of the Hindu year), "1801, of Shalivalian's era" (that is, 26th

July, 1879).

 

The further career of this ignorant and cunning epistle is not

known to me.  Probably the police put a stop to its distribution;

this only concerns the wise administrators.  But it splendidly

illustrates, from one side, the credulity of the populace, drowned

in superstition, and from the other the unscrupulousness of the Brahmans.

 

Concerning the word Patala, which literally means the opposite side,

a recent discovery of Swami Dayanand Saraswati, whom I have already

mentioned in the preceding letters, is interesting, especially if

this discovery can be accepted by philologists, as the facts seem

to promise.  Dayanand tries to show that the ancient Aryans knew,

and even visited, America, which in ancient MSS. is called Patala,

and out of which popular fancy constructed, in the course of time,

something like the Greek Hades.  He supports his theory by many

quotations from the oldest MSS., especially from the legends about

Krishna and his favourite disciple Arjuna.  In the history of the

latter it is mentioned that Arjuna, one of the five Pandavas,

descendants of the moon dynasty, visited Patala on his travels,

and there married the widowed daughter of King Nagual, called Illupl.

Comparing the names of father and daughter we reach the following

considerations, which speak strongly in favour of Dayanand's supposition.

 

(1)  Nagual is the name by which the sorcerers of Mexico,  Indians

and aborigines of America, are still designated.  Like the Assyrian

and Chaldean Nargals, chiefs of the Magi, the Mexican Nagual unites

in his person the functions of priest and of sorcerer, being served

in the latter capacity by a demon in the shape of some animal,

generally a snake or a crocodile.  These Naguals are thought to

be the descendants of Nagua, the king of the snakes.  Abbe Brasseur

de Bourbourg devotes a considerable amount of space to them in his

book about Mexico, and says that the Naguals are servants of the

evil one, who, in his turn, renders them but a temporary service.

In Sanskrit, likewise, snake is Naga, and the "King of the Nagas"

plays an important part in the history of Buddha;  and in the Puranas

there exists a tradition that it was Arjuna who introduced snake

worship into Patala.  The coincidence, and the identity of the

names are so striking that our scientists really ought to pay some

attention to them.

 

(2)  The Name of Arjuna's wife Illupl is purely old Mexican, and

if we reject the hypothesis of Swami Daya-nand it will be perfectly

impossible to explain the actual existence of this name in Sanskrit

manuscripts long before the Christian era.  Of all ancient dialects

and languages it is only in those of the American aborigines that

you constantly meet with such combinations of consonants as pl, tl,

etc.  They are abundant especially in the language of the Toltecs,

or Nahuatl, whereas, neither in Sanskrit nor in ancient Greek are

they ever found at the end of a word.  Even the words Atlas and

Atlantis seem to be foreign to the etymology of the European languages.

Wherever Plato may have found them, it was not he who invented them.

In the Toltec language we find the root atl, which means water and

war, and directly after America was discovered Columbus found a

town called Atlan, at the entrance of the Bay of Uraga.  It is now

a poor fishing village called Aclo.  Only in America does one find

such names as Itzcoatl, Zempoaltecatl, and Popocatepetl.  To attempt

to explain such coincidences by the theory of blind chance would

be too much, consequently, as long as science does not seek to

deny Dayanand's hypothesis, which, as yet, it is unable to do,

we think it reasonable to adopt it, be it only in order to follow

out the axiom "one hypothesis is equal to another."  Amongst other

things Dayanand points out that the route that led Arjuna to America

five thousand years ago was by Siberia and Behring's Straits.

 

It was long past midnight, but we still sat listening to this

legend and others of a similar kind.  At length the innkeeper sent

a servant to warn us of the dangers that threatened us if we

lingered too long on the verandah on a moonlit night.  The programme

of these dangers was divided into three sections--snakes, beasts

of prey, and dacoits.  Besides the cobra and the "rock-snake," the

surrounding mountains are full of a kind of very small mountain

snake, called furzen, the most dangerous of all.  Their poison

kills with the swiftness of lightning.  The moonlight attracts them,

and whole parties of these uninvited guests crawl up to the verandahs

of houses, in order to warm themselves.  Here they are more snug

than on the wet ground.  The verdant and perfumed abyss below our

verandah happened, too, to be the favorite resort of tigers and

leopards, who come thither to quench their thirst at the broad

brook which runs along the bottom, and then wander until daybreak

under the windows of the bungalow.  Lastly, there were the mad

dacoits, whose dens are scattered in mountains inaccessible to

the police, who often shoot Europeans simply to afford themselves

the pleasure of sending ad patres one of the hateful bellatis

(foreigners).  Three days before our arrival the wife of a Brahman

disappeared, carried off by a tiger, and two favorite dogs of the

commandant were killed by snakes.  We declined to wait for further

explanations, but hurried to our rooms.  At daybreak we were to

start for Karli, six miles from this place.

 

 

 

 

In The Karli Caves

 

 

 

At five o'clock in the morning we had already arrived at the limit,

not only of driveable, but, even, of rideable roads.  Our bullock-cart

could go no further.  The last half mile was nothing but a rough sea

of stones.  We had either to give up our enterprise, or to climb on

all-fours up an almost perpendicular slope two hundred feet high.

We were utterly at our wits' end, and meekly gazed at the historical

mass before us, not knowing what to do next.  Almost at the summit

of the mountain, under the overhanging rocks, were a dozen black

openings.  Hundreds of pilgrims were crawling upwards, looking,

in their holiday dresses, like so many green, pink, and blue ants.

Here, however, our faithful Hindu friends came to our rescue.  One

of them, putting the palm of his hand to his mouth, produced a

strident sound something between a shriek and a whistle.  This

signal was answered from above by an echo, and the next moment

several half naked Brahmans, hereditary watchmen of the temple,

began to descend the rocks as swiftly and skillfully as wild cats.

Five minutes later they were with us, fastening round our bodies

strong leathern straps, and rather dragging than leading us upwards.

Half an hour later, exhausted but perfectly safe, we stood before

the porch of the chief temple, which until then had been hidden

from us by giant trees and cactuses.

 

This majestic entrance, resting on four massive pillars which form

a quadrangle, is fifty-two feet wide and is covered with ancient

moss and carvings.  Before it stands the "lion column," so-called

from the four lions carved as large as nature, and seated back to

back, at its base.  Over the principal entrance, its sides covered

with colossal male and female figures, is a huge arch, in front of

which three gigantic elephants are sculptured in relief, with heads

and trunks that project from the wall.  The shape of the temple is

oval. It is 128 feet long and forty-six feet wide.  The central

space is separated on each side from the aisles by forty-two pillars,

which sustain the cupola-shaped ceiling.  Further on is an altar,

which divides the first dome from a second one which rises over a

small chamber, formerly used by the ancient Aryan priests for an

inner, secret altar.  Two side passages leading towards it come

to a sudden end, which suggests that, once upon a time, either

doors or wall were there which exist no longer.  Each of the forty-two

pillars has a pedestal, an octagonal shaft, and a capital, described

by Fergusson as "of the most exquisite workmanship, representing two

kneeling elephants surmounted by a god and a goddess."  Fergusson

further says that this temple, or chaitya, is older and better

preserved than any other in India, and may be assigned to a period

about 200 years B.C., because Prinsep, who has read the inscription

on the Silastamba pillar, asserts that the lion pillar was the gift

of Ajmitra Ukasa, son of Saha Ravisobhoti, and another inscription

shows that the temple was visited by Dathama Hara, otherwise

Dathahamini, King of Ceylon, in the twentieth year of his reign,

that is to say, 163 years before our era.  For some reason or other,

Dr. Stevenson points to seventy years B.C. as the date, asserting

that Karlen, or Karli, was built by the Emperor Devobhuti, under

the supervision of Dhanu-Kakata.  But how can this be maintained

in view of the above-mentioned perfectly authentic inscriptions?

Even Fergusson, the celebrated defender of the Egyptian antiquities

and hostile critic of those of India, insists that Karli belongs

to the erections of the third century B.C., adding that "the

disposition of the various parts of its architecture is identical

with the architecture of the choirs of the Gothic period, and the

polygonal apsides of cathedrals."

 

Above the chief entrance is found a gallery, which reminds one of

the choirs, where, in Catholic churches, the organ is placed.

Besides the chief entrance there are two lateral entrances, leading

to the aisles of the temple, and over the gallery there is a single

spacious window in the shape of a horseshoe, so that the light

falls on the daghopa (altar) entirely from above, leaving the aisles,

sheltered by the pillars, in obscurity, which increases as you

approach the further end of the building.  To the eyes of a

spectator standing at the entrance, the whole daghopa shines with

light, and behind it is nothing but impenetrable darkness, where

no profane footsteps were permitted to tread.  A figure on the

dag-hopa, from the summit of which "Raja priests" used to pronounce

verdicts to the people, is called Dharma-Raja, from Dharma, the

Hindu Minos.  Above the temple are two stories of caves, in each

of which are wide open galleries formed by huge carved pillars,

and from these galleries an opening leads to roomy cells and corridors,

sometimes very long, but quite useless, as they invariably come to

an abrupt termination at solid walls, without the trace of an issue

of any kind.  The guardians of the temple have either lost the

secret of further caves, or conceal them jealously from Europeans.

 

Besides the Viharas already described, there are many others,

scattered over the slope of the mountain.  These temple-monasteries

are all smaller than the first, but, according to the opinion of

some archeologists, they are much older.  To what century or epoch

they belong is not known except to a few Brahmans, who keep silence.

Generally speaking, the position of a European archaeologist in

India is very sad.  The masses, drowned in superstition, are utterly

unable to be of any use to him, and the learned Brahmans, initiated

into the mysteries of secret libraries in pagodas, do all they can

to prevent archeological research.  However, after all that has

happened, it would be unjust to blame the conduct of the Brahmans

in these matters.  The bitter experience of many centuries has

taught them that their only weapons are distrust and circumspection,

without these their national history and the most sacred of their

treasures would be irrevocably lost.  Political coups d'etat which

have shaken their country to its foundation, Mussulman invasions

that proved so fatal to its welfare, the all-destructive fanaticism

of Mussulman vandals and of Catholic padres, who are ready for

anything in order to secure manuscripts and destroy them--all these

form a good excuse for the action of the Brahmans.  However in

spite of these manifold destructive tendencies, there exist in

many places in India vast libraries capable of pouring a bright

and new light, not only on the history of India itself, but also

on the darkest problems of universal history.  Some of these

libraries, filled with the most precious manuscripts, are in the

possession of native princes and of pagodas attached to their

territories, but the greater part is in the hands of the Jainas

(the oldest of Hindu sects) and of the Rajputana Takurs, whose

ancient hereditary castles are scattered all over Rajistan, like

so many eagles' nests on high rocks.  The existence of the

celebrated collections in Jassulmer and Patana is not unknown to

the Government, but they remain wholly beyond its reach.  The

manuscripts are written in an ancient and now completely forgotten

language, intelligible only to the high priests and their initiated

librarians.  One thick folio is so sacred and inviolable that it

rests on a heavy golden chain in the centre of the temple of

Chintamani in Jassulmer, and taken down only to be dusted and

rebound at the advent of each new pontiff.  This is the work of

Somaditya Suru Acharya, a great priest of the pre-Mussulman time,

well-known in history.  His mantle is still preserved in the temple,

and forms the robe of initiation of every new high priest.  Colonel

James Tod, who spent so many years in India and gained the love

of the people as well as of the Brahmans--a most uncommon trait

in the biography of any Anglo-Indian--has written the only true

history of India, but even he was never allowed to touch this folio.

Natives commonly believe that he was offered initiation into the

mysteries at the price of the adoption of their religion.  Being

a devoted archaeologist he almost resolved to do so, but, having

to return to England on account of his health, he left this world

before he could return to his adopted country, and thus the enigma

of this new book of the sibyl remains unsolved.

 

The Takurs of Rajputana, who are said to possess some of the

underground libraries, occupy in India position similar to the

position of European feudal barons of the Middle Ages.  Nominally

they are dependent on some of the native princes or on the British

Government;  but de facto they are perfectly independent.  Their

castles are built on high rocks, and besides the natural difficulty

of entering them, their possessors are made doubly unreachable by

the fact that long secret passages exist in every such castle,

known only to the present owner and confided to his heir only at

his death.  We have visited two such underground halls, one of

them big enough to contain a whole village.  No torture would ever

induce the owners to disclose the secret of their entrances, but

the Yogis and the initiated Adepts come and go freely, entirely

trusted by the Takurs.

 

A similar story is told concerning the libraries and subterranean

passages of Karli.  As for the archaeologists, they are unable

even to determine whether this temple was built by Buddhists or

Brahmans.  The huge daghopa that hides the holy of holies from

the eyes of the worshippers is sheltered by a mushroom-shaped roof,

and resembles a low minaret with a cupola.  Roofs of this description

are called "umbrellas," and usually shelter the statues of Buddha

and of the Chinese sages.  But, on the other hand, the worshippers

of Shiva, who possess the temple nowadays, assert that this low

building is nothing but a lingam of Shiva.  Besides, the carvings

of gods and goddesses cut out of the rock forbid one to think

that the temple is the production of the Buddhists.  Fergusson

writes, "What is this monument of antiquity?  Does it belong to

the Hindus, or to the Buddhists?  Has it been built upon plans

drawn since the death of Sakya Sing, or does it belong to a more

ancient religion?"

 

That is the question.  If Fergusson, being bound by facts existing

in inscriptions to acknowledge the anti-quity of Karli, will still

persist in asserting that Elephanta is of much later date, he

will scarcely be able to solve this dilemma, because the two styles

are exactly the same, and the carvings of the latter are still

more magnificent.  To ascribe the temples of Elephanta and Kanari

to the Buddhists, and to say that their respective periods

correspond to the fourth and fifth centuries in the first case,

and the tenth in the second, is to introduce into history a very

strange and unfounded anachronism.  After the first century A.D.

there was not left a single influential Buddhist in India.  Conquered

and persecuted by the Brahmans, they emigrated by thousands to

Ceylon and the trans-Himalayan districts.  After the death of King

Asoka, Buddhism speedily broke down, and in a short time was entirely

displaced by the theocratic Brahmanism.

 

Fergusson's hypothesis that the followers of Sakya Sing, driven

out by intolerance from the continent, probably sought shelter on

the islands that surround Bombay, would hardly sustain critical

analysis.  Elephanta and Salsetta are quite near to Bombay, two

and five miles distant respectively, and they are full of ancient

Hindu temples.  Is it credible, then, that the Brahmans, at the

culminating point of their power, just before the Mussulman invasions,

fanatical as they were, and mortal enemies of the Buddhists, would

allow these hated heretics to build temples within their possessions

in general and on Gharipuri in particular, this latter being an

island consecrated to their Hindu pagodas?  It is not necessary

to be either a specialist, an architect, or an eminent archeologist,

in order to be convinced at the first glance that such temples as

Elephanta are the work of Cyclopses, requiring centuries and not

years for their construction.  Whereas in Karli everything is

built and carved after a perfect plan, in Elephanta it seems as

if thousands of different hands had wrought at different times,

each following its own ideas and fashioning after its own device.

All three caves are dug out of a hard porphyry rock.  The first

temple is practically a square, 130 feet 6 inches long and 130

feet wide.  It contains twenty-six thick pillars and sixteen pilasters.

 

Between some of them there is a distance of 12 or 16 feet, between

others 15 feet 5 inches, 13 feet 3 1/2 inches, and so on.  The

same lack of uniformity is found in the pedestals of the columns,

the finish and style of which is constantly varying.

 

Why, then, should we not pay some attention to the explanations

of the Brahmans?  They say that this temple was begun by the sons

of Pandu, after "the great war," Mahabharata, and that after their

death every true believer was bidden to continue the work according

to his own notions.  Thus the temple was gradually built during

three centuries.  Every one who wished to redeem his sins would

bring his chisel and set to work.  Many were the members of royal

families, and even kings, who personally took part in these labors.

 

On the right hand side of the temple there is a corner stone, a

lingam of Shiva in his character of Fructifying Force, which is

sheltered by a small square chapel with four doors.  Round this

chapel are many colossal human figures.  According to the Brahmans,

these are statues representing the royal sculptors themselves,

they being doorkeepers of the holy of holies, Hindus of the highest

caste.  Each of the larger figures leans upon a dwarf representative

of the lower castes, which have been promoted by the popular fancy

to the rank of demons (Pisachas).  Moreover, the temple is full

of unskillful work.  The Brahmans hold that such a holy place

could not be deserted if men of the preceding and present generations

had not become unworthy of visiting it.         As to Kanari or Kanhari,

and some other cave temples, there is not the slightest doubt that

they were all erected by Buddhists.  In some of them were found

inscriptions in a perfect state of preservation, and their style

does not remind one in the least of the symbolical buildings of

the Brahmans.  Archbishop Heber thinks the Kanari caves were built

in the first or second centuries B.C.  But Elephanta is much older

and must be classed among prehistoric monuments, that is to say,

its date must be assigned to the epoch that immediately followed

the "great war," Mahabharata.  Unfortunately the date of this

war is a point of disagreement between European scientists;  the

celebrated and learned Dr. Martin Haug thinks it is almost antediluvian,

while the no less celebrated and learned Professor Max Muller places

it as near the first century of our era as possible.

----------

 

 

The fair was at its culmination when, having finished visiting the

cells, climbing over all the stories, and examining the celebrated

"hall of wrestlers," we descended, not by way of the stairs, of

which there is no trace to be found, but after the fashion of pails

bringing water out of a deep well, that is to say, by the aid of ropes.

A crowd of about three thousand persons had assembled from the

surrounding villages and towns.  Women were there adorned from the

waist down in brilliant-hued saris, with rings in their noses, their

ears, their lips, and on all parts of their limbs that could hold

a ring.  Their raven-black hair which was smoothly combed back,

shone with cocoanut oil, and was adorned with crimson flowers,

which are sacred to Shiva and to Bhavani, the feminine aspect of

this god.

 

Before the temple there were rows of small shops and of tents,

where could be bought all the requisites for the usual sacrifices--

aromatic herbs, incense, sandal wood, rice, gulab, and the red

powder with which the pilgrim sprinkles first the idol and then

his own face.  Fakirs, bairagis, hosseins, the whole body of the

mendicant brotherhood, was present among the crowd.  Wreathed in

chaplets, with long uncombed hair twisted at the top of the head

into a regular chignon, and with bearded faces, they presented a

very funny likeness to naked apes.  Some of them were covered with

wounds and bruises due to mortification of the flesh.  We also saw

some bunis, snake-charmers, with dozens of various snakes round

their waists, necks, arms, and legs--models well worthy of the

brush of a painter who intended to depict the image of a male Fury.

One jadugar was especially remarkable.  His head was crowned with

a turban of cobras.  Expanding their hoods and raising their

leaf-like dark green heads, these cobras hissed furiously and so

loudly that the sound was audible a hundred paces off.  Their

"stings" quivered like light-ning, and their small eyes glittered

with anger at the approach of every passer-by.  The expression,

"the sting of a snake," is universal, but it does not describe

accurately the process of inflicting a wound.  The "sting" of a

snake is perfectly harmless.  To introduce the poison into the

blood of a man, or of an animal, the snake must pierce the flesh

with its fangs, not prick with its sting.  The needle-like eye

teeth of a cobra communicate with the poison gland, and if this

gland is cut out the cobra will not live more than two days.

Accordingly, the supposition of some sceptics, that the bunis cut

out this gland, is quite unfounded.  The term "hissing" is also

inaccurate when applied to cobras.  They do not hiss.  The noise

they make is exactly like the death-rattle of a dying man.  The

whole body of a cobra is shaken by this loud and heavy growl.

 

Here we happened to be the witnesses of a fact which I relate

exactly as it occurred, without indulging in explanations or

hypotheses of any kind.  I leave to naturalists the solution of

the enigma.

 

Expecting to be well paid, the cobra-turbaned buni sent us word

by a messenger boy that he would like very much to exhibit his

powers of snake-charming.  Of course we were perfectly willing,

but on condition that between us and his pupils there should be

what Mr. Disraeli would call a "scientific frontier."*  We selected

a spot about fifteen paces from the magic circle.  I will not

describe minutely the tricks and wonders that we saw, but will

proceed at once to the main fact.  With the aid of a vaguda, a

kind of musical pipe of bamboo, the buni caused all the snakes to

fall into a sort of cataleptic sleep.  The melody that he played,

monotonous, low, and original to the last degree, nearly sent us

to sleep ourselves.  At all events we all grew extremely sleepy

without any apparent cause.  We were aroused from this half lethargy

by our friend Gulab-Sing, who gathered a handful of a grass,

perfectly unknown to us, and advised us to rub our temples and

eyelids with it.  Then the buni produced from a dirty bag a kind

of round stone, something like a fish's eye, or an onyx with a

white spot in the centre, not bigger than a ten-kopek bit.  He

declared that anyone who bought that stone would be able to charm

any cobra (it would produce no effect on snakes of other kinds)

paralyzing the creature and then causing it to fall asleep.  Moreover,

by his account, this stone is the only remedy for the bite of a cobra.

You have only to place this talisman on the wound, where it will

stick so firmly that it cannot be torn off until all the poison is

absorbed into it, when it will fall off of itself, and all danger

will be past.

 

----------

* Written in 1879.

----------

 

Being aware that the Government gladly offers any premium for the

invention of a remedy for the bite of the cobra, we did not show

any unreasonable interest on the appearance of this stone.  In the

meanwhile, the buni began to irritate his cobras.  Choosing a cobra

eight feet long, he literally enraged it.  Twisting its tail round

a tree, the cobra arose and hissed.  The buni quietly let it bite

his finger, on which we all saw drops of blood.  A unanimous cry

of horror arose in the crowd.  But master buni stuck the stone on

his finger and proceeded with his performance.

 

"The poison gland of the snake has been cut out," remarked our

New York colonel.  "This is a mere farce."

 

As if in answer to this remark, the buni seized the neck of the

cobra, and, after a short struggle, fixed a match into its mouth,

so that it remained open.  Then he brought the snake over and

showed it to each of us separately, so that we all saw the death-

giving gland in its mouth.  But our colonel would not give up his

first impression so easily.  "The gland is in its place right

enough," said he, "but how are we to know that it really does

contain poison?"

 

Then a live hen was brought forward and, tying its legs together,

the buni placed it beside the snake.  But the latter would pay

no attention at first to this new victim, but went on hissing at

the buni, who teased and irritated it until at last it actually

struck at the wretched bird.  The hen made a weak attempt to

cackle, then shuddered once or twice and became still.  The death

was instantaneous.  Facts will remain facts, the most exacting

critic and disbeliever notwithstanding.  This thought gives me

courage to write what happened further.  Little by little the

cobra grew so infuriated that it became evident the jadugar himself

did not dare to approach it.  As if glued to the trunk of the tree

by its tail, the snake never ceased diving into space with its

upper part and trying to bite everything.  A few steps from us was

somebody's dog.  It seemed to attract the whole of the buni's

attention for some time.  Sitting on his haunches, as far as

possible from his raging pupil, he stared at the dog with motionless

glassy eyes, and then began a scarcely audible song.  The dog grew

restless.  Putting his tail between his legs, he tried to escape,

but remained, as if fastened to the ground.  After a few seconds

he crawled nearer and nearer to the buni, whining, but unable to

tear his gaze from the charmer.  I understood his object, and felt

awfully sorry for the dog.  But, to my horror, I suddenly felt that

my tongue would not move, I was perfectly unable either to get up

or even to raise my finger.  Happily this fiendish scene was not

prolonged.  As soon as the dog was near enough, the cobra bit him.

The poor animal fell on his back, made a few convulsive movements

with his legs, and shortly died.  We could no longer doubt that

there was poison in the gland.  In the meanwhile the stone had

dropped from the buni's finger and he approached to show us the

healed member.  We all saw the trace of the prick, a red spot not

bigger than the head of an ordinary pin.

 

Next he made his snakes rise on their tails, and, holding the

stone between his first finger and thumb, he proceeded to demonstrate

its influence on the cobras.  The nearer his hand approached to the

head of the snake, the more the reptile's body recoiled.  Looking

steadfastly at the stone they shivered, and, one by one, dropped

as if paralyzed.  The buni then made straight for our sceptical

colonel, and made him an offer to try the experiment himself.  We

all protested vigorously, but he would not listen to us, and chose

a cobra of a very considerable size.  Armed with the stone, the

colonel bravely approached the snake.  For a moment I positively

felt petrified with fright.  Inflating its hood, the cobra made

an attempt to fly at him, then suddenly stopped short, and, after

a pause, began following with all its body the circular movements

of the colonel's hand.  When he put the stone quite close to the

reptile's head, the snake staggered as if intoxicated, its hissing

grew weak, its hood dropped helplessly on both sides of its neck,

and its eyes closed.  Drooping lower and lower, the snake fell at

last on the ground like a stick, and slept.

 

Only then did we breathe freely.  Taking the sorcerer aside we

expressed our desire to buy the stone, to which he easily assented,

and, to our great astonishment, asked for it only two rupees.  This

talisman became my own property and I still keep it.  The buni

asserts, and our Hindu friends confirm the story, that it is not

a stone but an excrescence.  It is found in the mouth of one cobra

in a hundred, between the bone of the upper jaw and the skin of

the palate.  This "stone" is not fastened to the skull, but hangs,

wrapped in skin, from the palate, and so is very easily cut off;

but after this operation the cobra is said to die.  If we are to

believe Bishu Nath, for that was our sorcerer's name, this excrescence

confers upon the cobra who possesses it the rank of king over the

rest of his kind.

 

"Such a cobra," said the buni, "is like a Brahman, a Dwija Brahman

amongst Shudras, they all obey him.  There exists, moreover, a

poisonous toad that also, sometimes, possesses this stone, but its

effect is much weaker.  To destroy the effect of a cobra's poison

you must apply the toad's stone not later than two minutes after

the infliction of the wound;  but the stone of a cobra is effectual

to the last.  Its healing power is certain as long as the heart of

the wounded man has not ceased to beat."

 

Bidding us good-bye, the buni advised us to keep the stone in a

dry place and never to leave it near a dead body, also, to hide

it during the sun and moon eclipses, "otherwise," said he, "it

will lose all its power."  In case we were bitten by a mad dog,

he said, we were to put the stone into a glass of water and leave

it there during the night, next morning the sufferer was to drink

the water and then forget all danger.

 

"He is a regular devil and not a man!" exclaimed our colonel, as

soon as the buni had disappeared on his way to a Shiva temple,

where, by the way, we were not admitted.

 

"As simple a mortal as you or I," remarked the Rajput with a smile,

"and, what is more, he is very ignorant.  The truth is, he has

been brought up in a Shivaite pagoda, like all the real snake-charmers.

Shiva is the patron god of snakes, and the Brahmans teach the bunis

to produce all kinds of mesmeric tricks by empiri-cal methods, never

explaining to them the theoretical principles, but assuring them

that Shiva is behind every phenomenon.  So that the bunis sincerely

ascribe to their god the honor of their `miracles."'

 

"The Government of India offers a reward for an antidote to the

poison of the cobra.  Why then do the bunis not claim it, rather

than let thousands of people die helpless?"

 

"The Brahmans would never suffer that.  If the Government took

the trouble to examine carefully the statistics of deaths caused

by snakes, it would be found that no Hindu of the Shivaite sect

has ever died from the bite of a cobra.  They let people of other

sects die, but save the members of their own flock."

 

"But did we not see how easily he parted with his secret,

notwithstanding we were foreigners.  Why should not the English

buy it as readily?"

 

"Because this secret is quite useless in the hands of Europeans.

The Hindus do not try to conceal it, because they are perfectly

certain that without their aid nobody can make any use of it.

The stone will retain its wonderful power only when it is taken

from a live cobra.  In order to catch the snake without killing it,

it must be cast into a lethargy, or, if you prefer the term, charmed.

Who is there among the foreigners who is able to do this?  Even

amongst the Hindus, you will not find a single individual in all

India who possesses this ancient secret, unless he be a disciple

of the Shivaite Brahmans.  Only Brahmans of this sect possess a

monopoly of the secret, and not all even of them, only those, in

short, who belong to the pseudo-Patanjali school, who are usually

called Bhuta ascetics.  Now there exist, scattered over the whole

of India, only about half-a-dozen of their pagoda schools, and

the inmates would rather part with their very lives than with

their secret."

 

"We have paid only two rupees for a secret which proved as strong

in the colonel's hands as in the hands of the buni.  Is it then

so difficult to procure a store of these stones?"  Our friend laughed.

 

"In a few days," said he, "the talisman will lose all its healing

powers in your inexperienced hands.  This is the reason why he let

it go at such a low price, which he is, probably, at this moment

sacrificing before the altar of his deity.  I guarantee you a week's

activity for your purchase, but after that time it will only be fit

to be thrown out of the window."

 

We soon learned how true were these words.  On the following day

we came across a little girl, bitten by a green scorpion.  She

seemed to be in the last convulsions.  No sooner had we applied

the stone than the child seemed relieved, and, in an hour, she

was gaily playing about, whereas, even in the case of the sting

of a common black scorpion, the patient suffers for two weeks.

But when, about ten days later, we tried the experiment of the

stone upon a poor coolie, just bitten by a cobra, it would not

even stick to the wound, and the poor wretch shortly expired.  I

do not take upon myself to offer, either a defence, or an explanation

of the virtues of the "stone."  I simply state the facts and leave

the future career of the story to its own fate.  The sceptics may

deal with it as they will.  Yet I can easily find people in India

who will bear witness to my accuracy.

 

In this connection I was told a funny story.  When Dr. (now Sir J.)

Fayrer, who lately published his Thanatophidia, a book on the

venomous snakes of India, a work well known throughout Europe,

he categorically stated in it his disbelief in the wondrous snake-

charmers of India.  However, about a fortnight or so after the book

appeared amongst the Anglo-Indians, a cobra bit his own cook.  A

buni, who happened to pass by, readily offered to save the man's

life.  It stands to reason that the celebrated naturalist could

not accept such an offer.  Nevertheless, Major Kelly and other

officers urged him to permit the experiment.  Declaring that in

spite of all, in less than an hour his cook would be no more, he

gave his consent.  But it happened that in less than an hour the

cook was quietly preparing dinner in the kitchen, and, it is added,

Dr. Fayrer seriously thought of throwing his book into the fire.

 

The day grew dreadfully hot.  We felt the heat of the rocks in

spite of our thick-soled shoes.  Besides, the general curiosity

aroused by our presence, and the unceremonious persecutions of

the crowd, were becoming tiring.  We resolved to "go home," that

is to say, to return to the cool cave, six hundred paces from the

temple, where we were to spend the evening and to sleep.  We would

wait no longer for our Hindu companions, who had gone to see the

fair, and so we started by ourselves.

-------------

 

 

On approaching the entrance of the temple we were struck by the

appearance of a young man, who stood apart from the crowd and was

of an ideal beauty.  He was a member of the Sadhu sect, a "candidate

for Saintship," to use the expression of one of our party.

 

The Sadhus differ greatly from every other sect.  They never appear

unclothed, do not cover themselves with damp ashes, wear no painted

signs on their faces, or foreheads, and do not worship idols.

Belonging to the Adwaiti section of the Vedantic school, they

believe only in Parabrahm (the great spirit).  The young man looked

quite decent in his light yellow costume, a kind of nightgown without

sleeves.  He had long hair, and his head was uncovered.         His elbow

rested on the back of a cow, which was itself well calculated to

attract attention, for, in addition to her four perfectly shaped

legs, she had a fifth growing out of her hump.  This wonderful

freak of nature used its fifth leg as if it were a hand and arm,

hunting and killing tiresome flies, and scratching its head with

the hoof.  At first we thought it was a trick to attract attention,

and even felt offended with the animal, as well as with its handsome

owner, but, coming nearer, we saw that it was no trick, but an

actual sport of mischievous Nature.  From the young man we learned

that the cow had been presented to him by the Maharaja Holkar, and

that her milk had been his only food during the last two years.

 

Sadhus are aspirants to the Raj Yoga, and, as I have said above,

usually belong to the school of the Vedanta.  That is to say, they

are disciples of initiates who have entirely resigned the life of

the world, and lead a life of monastic chastity.  Between the

Sadhus and the Shivaite bunis there exists a mortal enmity, which

manifests itself by a silent contempt on the side of the Sadhus,

and on that of the bunis by constant attempts to sweep their rivals

off the face of the earth.  This antipathy is as marked as that

between light and darkness, and reminds one of the dualism of the

Ahura-Mazda and Ahriman of the Zoroastrians.  Masses of people

look up to the first as to Magi, sons of the sun and of the Divine

Principle, while the latter are dreaded as dangerous sorcerers.

Having heard most wonderful accounts of the former, we were burning

with anxiety to see some of the "miracles" ascribed to them by some

even among the Englishmen.  We eagerly invited the Sadhu to visit

our vihara during the evening.  But the handsome ascetic sternly

refused, for the reason that we were staying within the temple of

the idol-worshippers, the very air of which would prove antagonistic

to him.  We offered him money, but he would not touch it, and so

we parted.

 

A path, or rather a ledge cut along the perpendicular face of a

rocky mass 200 feet high, led from the chief temple to our vihara.

A man needs good eyes, sure feet, and a very strong head to avoid

sliding down the precipice at the first false step.  Any help

would be quite out of the question, for, the ledge being only two

feet wide, no one could walk side by side with another.  We had to

walk one by one, appealing for aid only to the whole of our personal

courage.  But the courage of many of us was gone on an unlimited

furlough.  The position of our American colonel was the worst,

for he was very stout and short-sighted, which defects, taken

together, caused him frequent vertigos.  To keep up our spirits

we indulged in a choral performance of the duet from Norma, "Moriam'

insieme," holding each other's hands the while, to ensure our being

spared by death or dying all four in company.  But the colonel did

not fail to frighten us nearly out of our lives.  We were already

half way up to the cave when he made a false step, staggered, lost

hold of my hand, and rolled over the edge.  We three, having to

clutch the bushes and stones, were quite unable to help him.  A

unanimous cry of horror escaped us, but died away as we perceived

that he had succeeded in clinging to the trunk of a small tree,

which grew on the slope a few steps below us.  Fortunately, we

knew that the colonel was good at athletics, and remarkably cool

in danger.  Still the moment was a critical one.  The slender stem

of the tree might give way at any moment.  Our cries of distress

were answered by the sudden appearance of the mysterious Sadhu

with his cow.

 

They were quietly walking along about twenty feet below us, on

such invisible projections of the rock that a child's foot could

barely have found room to rest there, and they both traveled as

calmly, and even carelessly, as if a comfortable causeway were

beneath their feet, instead of a vertical rock.  The Sadhu called

out to the colonel to hold on, and to us to keep quiet.  He patted

the neck of his monstrous cow, and untied the rope by which he

was leading her.  Then, with both hands he turned her head in our

direction, and clucking with his tongue, he cried "Chal!" (go).

With a few wild goat-like bounds the animal reached our path, and

stood before us motion-less.  A for the Sadhu himself, his movements

were as swift and as goat-like.  In a moment he had reached the tree,

tied the rope round the colonel's body, and put him on his legs again;

then, rising higher, with one effort of his strong hand he hoisted

him up to the path.  Our colonel was with us once more, rather

pale, and with the loss of his pince-nez, but not of his presence

of mind.

 

An adventure that had threatened to become a tragedy ended in a farce.

 

"What is to be done now?" was our unanimous in-quiry.  "We cannot

let you go alone any further."

 

"In a few moments it will be dark and we shall be lost," said Mr.

Y---, the colonel's secretary.

 

And, indeed, the sun was dipping below the horizon, and every

moment was precious.  In the meanwhile, the Sadhu had fastened

the rope round the cow's neck again and stood before us on the

pathway, evidently not understanding a word of our conversation.

His tall, slim figure seemed as if suspended in the air above the

precipice.  His long, black hair, floating in the breeze, alone

showed that in him we beheld a living being and not a magnificent

statue of bronze.  Forgetting our recent danger and our present

awkward situation, Miss X---, who was a born artist, exclaimed:

"Look at the majesty of that pure profile;  observe the pose of

that man.  How beautiful are his outlines seen against the golden

and blue sky.  One would say, a Greek Adonis, not a Hindu!"  But

the "Adonis" in question put a sudden stop to her ecstasy.  He

glanced at Miss X--- with half-pitying, half-kindly, laughing eyes,

and said with his ringing voice in Hindi--

 

"Bara-Sahib cannot go any further without the help of someone else's

eyes.  Sahib's eyes are his enemies.  Let the Sahib ride on my cow.

She cannot stumble."

 

"I!  Ride on a cow, and a five-legged one at that?  Never!" exclaimed

the poor colonel, with such a helpless air, nevertheless, that we

burst out laughing.

 

"It will be better for Sahib to sit on a cow than to lie on a chitta"

(the pyre on which dead bodies are burned), remarked the Sadhu with

modest seriousness.  "Why call forth the hour which has not yet struck?"

 

The colonel saw that argument was perfectly useless, and we succeeded

in persuading him to follow the Sadhu's advice, who carefully hoisted

him on the cow's back, then, recommending him to hold on by the fifth

leg, he led the way.  We all followed to the best of our ability.

 

In a few minutes more we were on the verandah of our vihara, where

we found our Hindu friends, who had arrived by another path.  We

eagerly related all our adventures, and then looked for the Sadhu,

but, in the meanwhile, he had disappeared together with his cow.

 

"Do not look for him, he is gone by a road known only to himself,"

remarked Gulab-Sing carelessly.  "He knows you are sincere in your

gratitude, but he would not take your money.  He is a Sadhu, not

a buni," added he proudly.

 

We remembered that it was reported this proud friend of ours also

belonged to the Sadhu sect.  "Who can tell," whispered the colonel

in my ear, "whether these reports are mere gossip, or the truth?"

 

Sadhu-Nanaka must not be confounded with Guru-Nanaka, a leader of

the Sikhs.  The former are Adwaitas, the latter monotheists.  The

Adwaitas believe only in an impersonal deity named Parabrahm.

 

In the chief hall of the vihara was a life-sized statue of Bhavani,

the feminine aspect of Shiva.  From the bosom of this devaki streams

forth the pure cold water of a mountain spring, which falls into a

reservoir at her feet.  Around it lay heaps of sacrificial flowers,

rice, betel leaves and incense.  This hall was, in consequence, so

damp that we preferred to spend the night on the verandah in the

open air, hanging, as it were, between sky and earth, and lit from

below by numerous fires kept burning all the night by Gulab-Sing's

servants, to scare away wild beasts, and, from above, by the light

of the full moon.  A supper was arranged after the Eastern fashion,

on carpets spread upon the floor, and with thick banana leaves for

plates and dishes.  The noiselessly gliding steps of the servants,

more silent than ghosts, their white muslins and red turbans, the

limitless depths of space, lost in waves of moonlight, before us,

and behind, the dark vaults of ancient caves, dug out by unknown

races, in unknown times, in honor of an unknown, prehistoric religion--

all these, our surroundings, transported us into a strange world,

and into distant epochs far different from our own.

 

We had before us representatives of five different peoples, five

different types of costume, each quite unlike the others.  All

five are known to us in ethnography under the generic name of Hindus.

Similarly eagles, condors, hawks, vultures, and owls are known to

ornithology as "birds of prey," but the analogous differences are

as great.  Each of these five companions, a Rajput, a Bengali, a

Madrasi, a Sinhalese and a Mahratti, is a descendant of a race,

the origin of which European scientists have discussed for over

half a century without coming to any agreement.

-----------

 

 

Rajputs are called Hindus and are said to belong to the Aryan race;

but they call themselves Suryavansa, that is to say, descendants

of Surya or the sun.

 

The Brahmans derive their origin from Indu, the moon, and are called

Induvansa;  Indu, Soma, or Chandra, meaning moon in Sanskrit.  If

the first Aryans, appearing in the prologue of universal history,

are Brahmans, that is to say, the people who, according to Max Muller,

having crossed the Himalayas conquered the country of the five rivers,

then the Rajputs are no Aryans;  and if they are Aryans they are not

Brahmans, as all their genealogies and sacred books (Puranas) show

that they are much older than the Brahmans;  and, in this case,

moreover, the Aryan tribes had an actual existence in other countries

of our globe than the much renowned district of the Oxus, the cradle

of the Germanic race, the ancestors of Aryans and Hindus, in the

fancy of the scientist we have named and his German school.

 

The "moon" line begins with Pururavas (see the genealogical tree

prepared by Colonel Tod from the MS. Puranas in the Oodeypore

archives), that is to say, two thousand two hundred years before

Christ, and much later than Ikshvaku, the patriarch of the Suryavansa.

The fourth son of Pururavas, Rech, stands at the head of the line

of the moon-race, and only in the fifteenth generation after him

appears Harita, who founded the Kanshikagotra, the Brahman tribe.

 

The Rajputs hate the latter.  They say the children of the sun

and Rama have nothing in common with the children of the moon and

Krishna.  As for the Bengalis, according to their traditions and

history, they are aborigines.  The Madrasis and the Sinhalese are

Dravidians.  They have, in turn, been said to belong to the Semites,

the Hamites, the Aryans, and, lastly, they have been given up to

the will of God, with the conclusion drawn that the Sinhalese, at

all events, must be Mongolians of Turanian origin.  The Mahrattis

are aborigines of the West of India, as the Bengalis are of, the East;

but to what group of tribes belong these two nationalities no

ethnographer can define, save perhaps a German.  The traditions of

the people themselves are generally denied, because they are not in

harmony with foregone conclusions.  The meaning of ancient manuscripts

is disfigured, and, in fact, sacrificed to fiction, if only the

latter proceeds from the mouth of some favorite oracle.

 

The ignorant masses are often blamed and found to be guilty of

superstition for creating idols in the spiritual world.  Is not,

then, the educated man, the man who craves after knowledge, who is

enlightened, still more inconsistent than these masses, when he

deals with his favorite authorities?  Are not half a dozen laurel-

crowned heads allowed by him to do whatever they like with facts,

to draw their own conclusions, according to their own liking, and

does he not stone every one who would dare to rise against the

decisions of these quasi-infallible specialists, and brand him

as an ignorant fool?

 

Let us remember the case in point of Louis Jacolliot, who spent

twenty years in India, who actually knew the language and the country

to perfection, and who, nevertheless, was rolled in the mud by Max

Muller, whose foot never touched Indian soil.

 

The oldest peoples of Europe are mere babes com-pared with the

tribes of Asia, and especially of India.  And oh! how poor and

insignificant are the genealogies of the oldest European families

compared with those of some Rajputs.  In the opinion of Colonel Tod,

who for over twenty years studied these genealogies on the spot,

they are the completest and most trustworthy of the records of

the peoples of antiquity.  They date from 1,000 to 2,200 years B.C.,

and their authenticity may often be proved by reference to Greek

authors.  After long and careful research and comparison with the

text of the Puranas, and various monumental inscriptions, Colonel

Tod came to the conclusion that in the Oodeypore archives (now

hidden from public inspection), not to mention other sources, may

be found a clue to the history of India in particular, and to

universal ancient history in general.  Colonel Tod advises the

earnest seeker after this clue not to think, with some flippant

archaeologists who are insufficiently acquainted with India, that

the stories of Rama, the Mahabharata, Krishna, and the five brothers

Pandu, are mere allegories.  He affirms that he who seriously

considers these legends will very soon become thoroughly convinced

that all these so-called "fables" are founded on historical facts,

by the actual existence of the descendants of the heroes, by tribes,

ancient towns, and coins still extant;  that to acquire the right

to pronounce a final opinion one must read first the inscriptions

on the Inda-Prestha pillars of Purag and Mevar, on the rocks of

Junagur, in Bijoli, on Aravuli and on all the ancient Jaina temples

scattered throughout India, where are to be found numerous

inscriptions in a language utterly unknown, in comparison with

which the hieroglyphs will seem a mere toy.

 

Yet, nevertheless, Professor Max Muller, who, as already mentioned,

was never in India, sits as a judge and corrects chronological

tables as is his wont, and Europe, taking his words for those of an

oracle, endorses his decisions. Et c'est ainsi que s'ecrit l'histoire.

 

Talking of the venerable German Sanskritist's chronology, I cannot

resist the desire to show, be it only to Russia, on what a fragile

basis are founded his scientific discussions, and how little he

is to be trusted when he pronounces upon the antiquity of this

or that manuscript.  These pages are of a superficial and descriptive

nature, and, as such, make no pretense to profound learning, so that

what follows may seem incongruous.  But it must be remembered that

in Russia, as elsewhere in Europe, people estimate the value of

this philological light by the points of exclamation lavished upon

him by his admiring followers, and that no one reads the Veda

Bhashaya of Swami Dayanand.  It may even be that I shall not be

far from the truth in saying that the very existence of this work

is ignored, which may perhaps be a fortunate fact for the reputation

of Professor Max Muller.  I shall be as brief as possible.  When

Professor Max Muller states, in his Sahitya-Grantha, that the Aryan

tribe in India acquired the notion of God step by step and very

slowly, he evidently wishes to prove that the Vedas are far from

being as old as is supposed by some of his colleagues.  Having

presented, in due course, some more or less valuable evidence to

prove the truth of this new theory, he ends with a fact which, in

his opinion, is indisputable.  He points to the word hiranya-garbha

in the mantrams, which he translates by the word "gold," and adds

that, as the part of the Vedas called chanda appeared 3,100 years ago,

the part called mantrams could not have been written earlier than

2,900 years ago.  Let me remind the reader that the Vedas are divided

into two parts:  chandas--slokas, verses, etc.;  and mantrams--

prayers and rhythmical hymns, which are, at the same time, incantations

used in white magic.  Professor Max Muller divides the mantram ("Agnihi

Poorwebhihi," etc.) philologically and chronologically, and, finding

in it the word hiranya-garbha, he denounces it as an anachronism.