Theosophical Society,
H P Blavatsky
From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan
by
H P Blavatsky
Translated
From Russian
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
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
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.