CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE Cornell University Library DS 413.M54 India / 3 1924 022 898 161 INDIA Volumes in this Series by Mortimer Menpes EACH 20s. NET WITH ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR THE DURBAR JAPAN ■ WORLD'S CHILDREN WORLD PICTURES ■ VENICE WAR IMPRESSIONS BRITTANY V WHISTLER AS I KNEW HIM SQUARE IMPERIAL 8vO (i I X Sj INCHES) PRICE 40s. NET Published by A. & C. Black ■ Soho Square ■ London - W, AGENTS IN AMERICA THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 64 ^ 66 Fifth Avenue, New York iNi^irA INDIA BY MORTIMER MENPES TEXT BY FLORA ANNIE STEEL • PUBLISHED BY ADAM ^CHARLES BLACK SOHO SQUARE • LONDON 3> ■ £7^5* ,7 A ' -i f-ff h r\ . ^- o o "J a o Published Nm'tmhtT 1905 <=n '"'V PAGE CONTENTS CHAPTER I The Gates of Pearl ....... 1 CHATTER H Our Aryan Brother ....... 7 CHAPTER HI Its Buried Histor-s . . . . . . 19 CHAPTER IV The Rajputs ......... 30 CHAPTER V The Great Moghuls ....... 43 CHAPTER VI The Western Rulers ....... 56 vi INDIA CHAPTER VII Hinduism .......•• 62 PAGE CHAPTER VIII Mahommedanism ........ 73 CHAPTER IX Buddhism, Jainism, Parseeism, Animism .... 81 CHAPTER X The Bazaars of India . . . . . . 88 CHAPTER XI The Arts and Crafts of India . . . . .106 CHAPTER XII The Buildings of India . . . . . .127 CHAPTER XIII The Temples of India . . . . . .145 CHAPTER XIV The Women of India . . . . . .156 CHAPTER XV The Ascetics ok India . . . . . . . l67 CONTENTS vii CHAPTER XVI PAGE The Morals of India .175 CHAPTER XVn "1857" 184 CHAPTER XVIII The Anglo-Indian. ....... 196 CHAPTER XIX The Problem of India ....... 205 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1. "India" Frontispiece 2. A Bazaar, Delhi 2 S. At the Steps of a Palace . 4 4. By the Fountain, Jeypore . 6 5. The Red Shutter . 8 6. Agra ..... 10 7. Leisure Hours .... 12 8. A Side Street in Agra 14 9. A Potter 16 10. Jeypore at Noon 18 11. Nauteh Girls at Delhi 20 12. The Porcelain Dome 22 1 3. In the Streets of Delhi 24 14. A Native Bullock-cart, Jeypore 28 15, A Minstrels' Balcony 32 l6. A Water-carrier 36 17. Muttra 38 18. A Ruined Palace 42 IX INDIA 19. Humayun's Tomb 20. Fruit Stalls at Delhi . 21. King Babar'.s Tomb . 22. Mid-day, Delhi 23. In the City of Jeypore 24. A River Festival at Benares 25. On the Banks of the Holy River, Benares 26. Through the Streets of Delhi 27. A Wandering Grain-merchant 28. The Bookworm 29. Benares .... 30. In the Market-place, Jeypore 31. Grain-sellers 32. A Meat Shop in Peshawur 33. A Fruit Stall . 34. A Bazaar at Peshawur 35. A Quiet Street . 36. A Bazaar in Amritsar 37. Vegetable Market, Delhi . 38. An Unclassified Shop 39. A Rag Shop 40. Wood-cutters, Jeypore 41. Watching a Native Workman 42. A Street Corner, Peshawur 43 A Busy Bazaar in Delhi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 44. A Learned Man of Peshawur 4.5. Workers in Silver and Gold 46. A Popular Stall 47. At a Street Corner, Amritsar 48. At Lahore 49. A Narrow Thoroughfare . 50. Jeypore .... 51. The Jumna Masjid . 52. A Bara Durri at Delhi 53. Naul Masa Mosque . 54. The Taj Mahal, Agra 55. A Famous Well, Delhi 56. In the Temple of Amritsar 57. The Golden Temple, Amritsar 58. At the Door of the Temple 59. The River Front, Benares 60. A Woman at the Well, Jeypore 61. Water-carriers at Nutha . 62. A Native Woman of Jeypore 63. Market Women of Ajmere 64. A Native Bride . 65. Mid-day, Jeypore 66. A Street in Peshawur 67. A Narrow Street 6s. A Street in Jeypore . XI PAGE 114 116 118 122 128 130 132 136 138 140 142 144 148 150 152 154 156 158 160 162 166 168 172 178 182 xu INDIA 6,9. Peshawur ...... 70. Native Chiefs in Delhi 71. A Corner of the Fruit Market, Delhi 72. A Vegetable Market, Peshawur 73. On the River Steps at Agra 74. A Bullock-cart, Ajmere . 7.'). Market Day in Peshawur . PAGE 18G 192 196 200 204 206 208 INDIA CHAPTER I THE GATES OF PEARL The Gate of Tears lies behind us. Our faces are set eastward to the Land of the Rising Sun — to the land where sunshine is the heritage of the poorest beggar. But we Westerns do not appreciate this heritage at its full value. We wear pith hats to keep it out of our brains, and pad the small of our back with cotton to keep it out of our inarrow, and not one of us in a thousand knows the luxury of light on the bare body, unless, indeed, we have paid a guinea for a radiant heat bath, which in India: one can have all day and every day free of expense. So, as we sit, this last evening on board ship, on the forward anchor, catching the breeze of our own making, the question rises, " How far out in the Indian Ocean may we count India ? " 1 1 a INDIA 1 knew a man once, returning reluctantly to a jungle station after a really fancy furlough, who said that he could smell the Bombay bazaar in longitude 68° ; which is absurd, since, pungent as a bazaar is, even assafoetida cannot travel three hundred miles. And yet the real edge of India does lie some- where about there ; if not in the charts, still in the map of the mind. For, look down into the water through which the black keel is slipping so oilily that the little nautilus boats take no harm, but ride away on the long smooth ripple which parts the sea, leaving place for our huge vessel. Look down, I say, and through the milky, almost opalescent depths, what are those snake-like restless brown forms seen, half seen, twining, intertwining ? To the practical scientific botanical eye, it is the zone of sea-weed which, so I am told, drifts within certain limits all round India. But to the old navigators — and to the eye of faith nowadays — it is the zone of sea-serpents, the zone of sea-guardians between the outside world and enchanted India. This is the true line dividing those who can see behind the veil, from those to whom a spade must ever be a spade, and not the unit of man's civihsa- tion, the means by which he first forced Mother Earth to yield him — not what was to be found A BAZAAR, DELHI J ,;^c<*ftH-^nHiji:w>ui*N THE GATES OF PEARL 3 ready to his sight and hand — but those things that his heart desired. For the first quest for art was the quest for bread, and through that came the knowledge that man does not hve by bread alone. So, let me lay a wager, that those who looking down can see in the ever -restless inotion of those brown filaments nothing but a curious natural phenomenon due possibly to the exceeding activity of infusoria, which have attached themselves to floating portions of the Ectocarpu:< coufcrvoldes, or the Asperococcus canallc/ilcita, or any other of the pheeosporeasan alg£e, may as well turn back on the spot ; for they will never see India. For them it will always remain what the botanical, scieutifical, geographical, political, zoological, and, above all, sociological eye perceives it to be ; that is to say, a vast country wherein almost everything exists — wherein you can at your ease study the saxifrages of the snow line and the palms of the tropics, and where you can run every idea the world has ever possessed to its bitter end, and point out with one and the same breath the advantages of patriarchal monarchy and the blessings of a National Congress. They will see the railways, and the ascetics who ride in those railways holding their third-class tickets in hands shrivelled to a claw by years of immobile penance. 4 INDIA They will ride in Commissioners' carriages, or mount in the saddle — I say it advisedly — of a stirrupless country gig. They will inspect the tombs of dead kings, the temples of dead gods, and let us say, the Dufferin hospitals, and the Victoria Memorial at Calcutta — but They will never find India ! On the other hand, those who can see in that clear-obscure something which appeals to the imagination, which tells them of hidden treasure, of half- forgotten secrets guarded jealously from alien eyes, may go on. For them the gates are open. They will find and love India — as I do. The evening closes in. The opalescent sea mingles with the opalescent sky. There is no horizon. Above, below, the unseen sun sends prismatic hues through the misty heat-sodden air like the pearly tints on a nautilus' shell, over sea and sky. The world for us is blent into one perfect Whole, All-sufficing, Indivisible. Only that one black line, the keel of our consciousness, disturbs it for a time with smooth ripples which will close in behind us again to perfect peace. And India, guarded by its seaweed snakes, lies ahead of us, hidden by these Gates of Pearl. In AT THE STEPS OF A PALACE 5*! • "™««»1MS THE GATES OF PEARL 5 tnith, however, even to the most imaginative AVestern eye much of the ultimate charm of India is always hidden by the outside garb of it. just as the real honesty of welcome or God-speed on the part of one's native friends is always obscured, somehow, by tlie highly scented c/ia//ipak garlands wliich they will insist on hanging round ones neck. It is part of the ceremony — a ceremony in which, to judge by my experience, a large proportion of Ixniibay must be permanently employed. It is to be seen hi progress on board every arriving or departing vessel. — the eager Eastern faces, each one lavish of a longer and yet a longer garland : the self-conscious Western one. feeling itself like Bottom translated, touched by the underlyhig atfection of the outward act. yet longing for the time when m house or cabin it can get rid of the absurd rubbish. So the East comes always to the AVest laden with garlands and perfumes, quaint jewellery and tinsel, lavish of smile, full to the brim of hoary old wickednesses, ancient courtesies, and old customs. To her they are all illusion, shadows on the surface of the Great Unthinkable, and as she salaams to the new master with both hands, her heart is elsewhere, dreaming of unitv. 6 INDIA But we take her as we would take a London suburb, and provide her with electric trams and pure water. And she has drunken of tanks for ages ere we were born, and has, from a sense of duty, suffo- cated her female children with cotton wool dipped in oil, and to this day does a thousand things at which civilisation must hold up holy hands of horror. Yet, for all her unmentionable crimes, her in- numerable deceits, she holds a secret which we of the West have forgotten, if we ever knew it. She knows that "Time is not money. Time is naught." There is, then, no occasion for hurry ; we can take our time in India. BY THE FOUNTAIN, JEYPORE m^ . «*" It s- if /v.. 4 I /'' CHAPTER II OUIi ARYAN EKOTHEK Does- any one really believe in our brotherhood with the Aryan -. I doubt it. He — taking the phrase as synonymous Avith the unit of what are called the teeming millions of India — is so extraordinarily dissimilar to all we know of ourseh"es. from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head, from the first thought of his mind till the last, that it is dilflcult indeed to pre-suppose a common origin. Taking him as he appears tirst to our sight — a coolie against that chaotic background of Bombay, composeel in equal parts of London and the Arabian \/o//ts — the tirst thing we notice is that the absence of clothes makes no diiference to his decency. He is as much dressed in a bit of string and a rag as an Englishman is in the Park. In fact an Englishman looks far more indecent 8 INDIA without a collar or even without a tie than our Aryan brother does in a state of absolute nudity. Now this is undoubtedly partly due to colour. That fine brown skin of his, so supple, so clear and uniform in tint, on which the high lights show so hard and sharp and the shadows are all velvety, is, as it were, a dress in itself; but the greater part is due to the unconsciousness which he shares with the animals, and his sense of unity with all nature. Why should he not be seen as all things are seen ? And this unconsciousness goes very deep. He has not grasped half the things to which you cling as impregnable axioms ; but, on the other hand, he accepts much that you leave out of life. Indeed the uncertainty as to what you may find in digging down into the mind of the Aryan brother is one of the chief charms of India. You never know what prize you may not compass therein. It is a paradise of inconsistencies wherein the lion lies down with the lamb, and the man who has with the vitmost acuteness been criticising Mr. Chamberlain's fiscal policy will allow his firm belief in the transmutation of the baser metals into gold to leak out as a basis for the lightening of taxation. Therefore one must always have a laugh ready THE RED SHUTTER ; **4^»'^J!^ '^''#t'*.^ '-^--^ L- *. * l:^. '/%Vs\ !*,«»..» Jhi, ** «iSk •: •■'^ •'■r • J -A JBi» ■\- ■'-0^^i- ^TT?^'^ OUR ARYAN HROTHER 9 for the extravagances one may hear. Therefore, also, the wild inventions of native newspapers are not without their danger of being believed. India, practically, will believe anything. It has gone through so much since tirst those gentle ^iryan shepherds came from — well ! let us say the last new place whence philologists and anthropologists will allow them to have come — so many new races have arrived, so many new religions have appealed to its people, so many dynasties have arisen, reigned, and died, that in truth there is no limit to the possibility of more, no limit to the possi- bility of anything. Xo gobc-moiic/ie is like the Indian llv-catcher ! I remember years ago, when a certain star was seen through a certain comet's tail, a deputation of veiled women coming one clear night to ask me which particular day of the portent's stay was the one appointed for the burving alive of our late lady, Queen Mctoria. who. being so good and gracious, was unable to die. and thus had to ordain her own passing into Paradise. It was a quauit, withal a beautiful idea, which in truth I was somewhat loth to uproot from their kindly disturbed minds. Yet without adding fancy to fact, there is enough 10 INDIA to gossip over and to spare in the annals of India. The Ufe-history of our Aryan brother is an eventful history from the very beginning, when with his flocks and herds, his wives and children, he drifted down on India from the high uplands of Asia — the roof of the world. There is in India now a tract of sandy desert — watered into fruitfulness by deep wells which dip down, so the natives say, into the waters of the lost Sarsuti Kiver — where some of these hordes of shepherds settled, and rooting into the sand, have practically withstood the ages. There to this day they sing some of the Vedic hymns, and in half a hundred ways show themselves a remnant of the true Aryan race. These Sarsuti, or Saraswati Brahmins, are a fine, upstanding, fair race, of high features, tall and strong, but not martial, who live by agriculture, and spend the long Indian day in watering their crops — mustard and wheat and gram in the cold weather, millet and maize in the hot — watering them from the sacred hidden river of the Goddess of Speech. For Saraswati is the Indian Pallas Athene, the wise, chaste goddess in whose honour, however, the nuptial hynm is sung : — Charming Sar'suti, as svni't as a mare, Guard thou the duty which world-wide 1 swear. AGRA OUR ARYAN BROTHER 11 Thv womb. Sar'suti. the univcrt-e framed. NVisdom and beauty from thv name are named. So to thv o-lorv the bride ^in;;^ her hvmn. Hiii'hest ill storv whieh age cannot dim. Marriage is dutv — tis womanhoods vow ; Charming Sav'suti, be tliou witii us nov.-. So with cymbals and horns they bring the red- garmented, tearful yet wilhng bride home through the green wheat -helds on some auspicious day. and the bridegroom hfts her over the milk-besprinkled, sugar-cake-decked threshold, and one more family, moulded on the old Aryan type, starts on its way rejoicing, to keep up the numbers of the old village community. For that is one of the most ancient things hi India. Learned books have been ■\\Titten on it. people have travelled out to India to study it. and still the secret of its cohesion, despite the disintegrating influences amidst which it stands, remains as much a mystery as ever — as much a mvsterv as the self- forgetting, self-sacriflciiig cosmogony of a hi\ e of bees. I am told it is beginning to yield to our "Western gospel of personal comfort, but even now it remains as the thing best worth seeing in India. The indi-sidual taste of the globe-trotter may take him to Imperial durbars, to the palaces and tombs of 12 INDIA dead kings, to the rock-cut temple-shells of dead religions ; but unless he has seen a village com- munity at work, and grasped its absolute isolation from the rest of God's world, he has not seen India. Only one thing it cannot provide for itself: it cannot provide the mothers for its sons. For those it must go elsewhere, sending its daughters in exchange ; since marriage is no question of personal liking or disliking, no question even of spiritual affinities, mutual companionship, monetary con- venience, jolly chumship, or any of the thousand and one reasons for our modern matrimony, to the Aryan brother. It is simply a question of race — its purity, its preservation. The whole system of caste is in truth nothing but a complicated " table of affinities," which with us forbids a man to marry his deceased wife's sister, but with the Indian limits him to forbearance with many men's sisters. It is an interesting subject, this one of caste ; the most interesting thing about it being that caste is not an Indian but a Portuguese word. Its Indian equivalent is va7iia or colour. This word is used throughout all the ancient literature in discrimination of the Aryas, the white people, the people of God, from the Dasyias, the black people, the aborigines or children of the Devil. LEISURE HOURS OUR ARYAN BROTHER 13 Caste, tlicii, seems due to that hatred of misceo-ena- tion Avliieli is so marked a feature in all white races. It is a curious fact that anthropometry. which follows the track of race like a sleuth-hound, supports this view. Those castes which show clearly the characteristics of the aboriginal type are still the lowest in the social scale. Broadly speaking', a mans social status varies in inycrsc ratio to the width of his nose. " Follow vour nose" therefore has its justifieation indeed. JNIissionaries, of course, hold as a rule that caste — which they designate as "the curse of India" — lias a purely religious origin. To them Brahnnnism is the owl. caste the egg : that is to say. a natural product of a false religion. But. curiously enough, the whole weight of real religious feelinir in India is against caste. Every reformer has denounced it. many have openly rebelled against it. and pointed to that Sanskrit version of "What God has created call thou not common or unclean "" which is to be found in their oldest sacred book: " There is no distinction of caste w\t\\ Brahm. The whole world is Brahminical." "What is more, even in these days the true ascetic outgrows caste, as he is supposed to out- grow the sins which necessitate it. 14 INDIA I remember in the hill state of Chumba a very high-caste Brahmin bearer bringing me an egg in his hand ; a thing which I should have deemed fatal to his pretensions to purity. He laughed. The Rajah himself was not in a position to ques- tion his position : that lay between him and his God. So, underlying all the trivial distinctions of petty castes which in India seem so foolish, so degrading, stands this magnificent idea of a man standing alo)ie before his Creator, accountable only to Him for any contamination. There is, of course, another factor in caste besides the pride of race. It is an industrial precaution, and in the past has in India played the part of our trades guilds of the Middle Ages. And it has such a quaint influence on the whole land from the Himalaya to Cape Cormorin that surely none can carry away with him the least grip on India without understanding something of its hereditary trades. So let us revert to the village community where these hereditary trades linger, not altogether, yet still partially undisturbed by Manchester and Birmingham. The potter, the carpenter, the cobbler, the A SIDE STREET IN AGRA OUR ARYAN BROTHER 15 weaver, the smith — these are all the trades, if we except the undertaker, who is also the scavenger. "With artisans ready to give pots, to make shoes, to weave cloth, to forge metals, to hew wood, the village commmiity exists independent of all save itself. It was the one political and social organisation of buried India, and it remams so to an extent which makes much of the domestic life of the village a sealed book to outsiders. Its aftairs are conducted by a council of five elders. The head man. Avho succeeds to the office bv hereditary right, is responsible to the State for the land tax. It has its own officials, accountant, watchman, priest, musician, doctor •. its own hereditary trades- men. In the old days from one end of the village street to the other, in house and Avorkshop. nothing was to be found save village manufactures. Xow it is otherwise, and. even in the most remote, Birmingham and Berlin is writ clear on many things exposed for sale, paraffin is burnt every- where, and the peasant going to his fields lights his hulcka with matches. Still the old hereditary trades survive. Perhaps the most interesting, certainly the most typical one, is that of the potter. 16 INDIA There he sits, on the outskirts of the village among the sherds, as his fathers, unto Heaven knows how many generations, have sate. Ask him his origin, he will reply suavely, " My father's fathers made pots for the Court of Indra {i.e. in Paradise), since when we have always made pots. " And the droning hum of his wheel will go on evenly, the dome of clay upon it rise into a curving swan-like neck, then settle down dizzily into a globe, and so by myriads of faint, imper- ceptible flexions of the potter's thumb take some form consecrated by immemorial custom for the use of man ; since in the village you dare not even ask for a new shape. As pots were in the beginning, so they are now. As we made them in Paradise, so we make them now. Pots in Paradise ! The very words bring a sense of rest, and there are no butchers or bakers or candlestick-makers in the family to mar the even tenor of that refrain. " We made pots in Paradise." Above the potter the sky darkens and lightens with day or night ; below him the plastic clay awaits its strange immutability of form; the pitcher breaks^ but another and yet another goes to the well. A POTTER r^'* OUR ARYAN BROTHER 17 Though the clav be base and the potter mean. The pot brings water to make souls clean. savs the old rhyme. So. even a high-caste Hindu may drink from a vessel that comes straight from the potter's kiln, alight though that be with the refuse of the ^-illage ; but he must break it after the drink — that is the ritual of the pot. Agahi. when either birth or death touches a Hindu house- hold, every pot in it must be broken and a new one put in its place. Possiblv a bald fear of defile- ment may partially dictate this custom : but in addition there is undoubtedly the esoteric teachmg that all life, both that which comes and that which goes, needs to begin anew. Xou- it is this suggestiveness in his daily life, this unceasing iteration that about him there lies, as it were, a fourth dimension before which our three-dimensioned space becomes illusive, which differentiates our Aryan brother from his fellow- worker in the AVe>t. whose view of life is. alas I so often bounded on all sides by the ultimate sixpence. And it is this suo-crestiveness which is the true Indian local colour Im-king alike in shadow and shine. The picture may be '\"ivid enough : we may see the varied life of the bazaars, the quiet of 18 INDIA the fields, the vice of jthe towns, the unalterable obstmacy and patience of the people, even the spurious civilisation of such centres as Calcutta and Bombay ; but without this atmosphere we do not see the true India. It is like that dusty background of the Northern Provinces — that wonderful biscuit-coloured back- ground which softens yet strengthens every tint which touches it. So the Bombay coolie almost naked, certainly extortionate, has yet to be reckoned with as the most noticeable factor in picturesque India. JEYPORE AT NOON .i - .*^ ''"'"tH^ , J: "^ '*^.- " % -♦^ .?«-^*» "*^ * ^.«««i.3,^^ j# -r!»^- >^1^*"-" '5^ CHAPTER III ITS BURIED HISTORY IxDiANfliistory, treated as liistory, is a Dead Sea fruit. One is left Avith the ashes of dead dynasties in the mouth. Yet viewed as n romance it is full to the brim of almost magical cliarm ; not least that portion of it which may be termed its buried history — the history which lies buried among the ruins around Delhi or Indrapasthra, at Ayodhya, at Hastinipur, and deeper still in some of those as vet unexplored mounds in the wdde plains of the north-west which local tradition points out as tlie site of an ancient city. Some of these are so little raised above the surrounding levels that one needs to see them against a sunset sky before the faint cm-ve asserts itself. But when once seen the memorv of it never fades. The glow of a dvinoj day behind a slight mound of shadow^ — that is all which renrains of the palaces and fortresses of the 19 20 INDIA old Serpent race which, ages before the Aryans set foot in India, had wrested a part of the land, at any rate, from the original owners, the Kols, and the Bhils, and other aboriginal tribes. Who these Nagas were, it is impossible to say. Our only record of them beyond acres of huge bricks, which in the Punjab are to be found in many places under the sand-hills, are the allusions to them in the two great Hindu epics, the Mahabarata and the Ramayana. But they still rule India, for deep do^vn in the hearts of the people lies the worship of the snake. That has never been forgotten, and still throughout the length and breadth of India, the childless wife creeps out to some snake's hole with her offering of milk and sugar, and the cobra lives secure in its sanctity ; for a native rarely kills one except under dire distress. He would rather salaam to it, and let it slip unharmed on its way. On a certain day in August nearly all India worships the snake with laughter and jollity, the women amusing them- selves by making counterfeit presentments of the coiled creatures and frightening their men folk with them, while in the evening those people who still claim to be of the Snake tribe have the privilege of carrying the images round on NAUTCH GIRLS AT DELHI ITS BURIED HISTORY 21 Avimiowing baskets and collecting gifts for the snake. That, in the beoinninff, these Nao'abansis or Takkas were a kingless republican race we know ; also that they were very rich and verv luxurious, famous for their beautiful women and exhaustless treasures. Such fragments of history or legend regarding them as linger to these days are all extra- ordinarily stimulating to the imagination : and even the records of then- later days, when the republicanism had been forgotten, and Xaga king fought with Xao-a king, and ^vhen the o-reat Chandragupta ruled at Paliputra. the present Patna. and also at Takkashila in the Western Punjab, are full of lire and romance. The history of Asoka alone would make the Xaga race remarkable. Grandson of Chandragupta, he began his reign with the nickname of " The Furious," and ended it after three and thirty years as Piyadarsi. ''The Losing -minded." — a great change for an Eastern monarch who commenced by killing all liis brothers after the fashion of those days. Xor was the change to be attributed to his conversion to Buddhism, for the four years of his greatest furv followed on his adhesion to that religion. as ' INDIA Whether it is true that in after years he came under the influence of Jainism, that most tender- hearted of faiths, I know not, but certainly the edicts which remain to this day scattered over India, on rock and pillar, point to some teaching higher even than that of Sakymuni. They are well worth reading, these pronouncements of the old Naga-Maurya king who lived in the third century before Christ, — not the least remarkable one of them being that which ordains medical aid to all his people, even the "birds of the air and the beasts of the field." None of our Governments, neither Conservative nor Liberal, have found time even to suggest such a measure. Neither have we as a nation learnt to inckide in the catalogue of things for the welfare of which each one of us, as citizen, is responsible, the lives and rights of our fellow -mortals, the beasts that perish. So let every one who visits India take note with tears of at least one of the Griefless (a literal translation of Asoka) King's edicts. There are two at Delhi; But before Asoka's day a very momentous event had occurred. Alexander of Macedon had led a Greek phalanx into the land of tlie Five Rivers, and though his army refused to cross the THE PORCELAIN DOME ITS BURIED HISTORY 23 Sutlej and lie had eventually to return whence he came, he had left an indelible mark on India, 'i'o this day the Yunani or Greek system of medicine is practised by the Indian hakims, and just as, along the line of march of Alexander's army, coins, statues, bas-reliefs turn up in the sandy soil which are absoluteh" Grecian in feelino-, so even now there are traces of the dead conqueror in the lives of the people. Chandragupta, it is true, drove the Greeks out of India — after ha^•ing■ married a Greek princess, — but even he could not end their influence ; for long centuries after his death a monarch reigned in his stead, whose name was Sotor JNIeaas — the Nameless Kiny — and whose coins bear the legend — BAi:iAEOi: BAi:iAEfiX A mysterious, dream- compelling personality is this of the unknown Bactrian " King of Kings," whom some claim to have been King Azes, others \^ikramaditya. The latter, whose date is about that of the Christian era, is the hero demi-god of Indian legend. His exploits and those of SaliA'a- hana, who reigned about a century later, are on the lips of half India. The very children babble of him in their fairv stories. 24 INDIA Praise be to Vikra majit, He gave us pearls to eat, say the captured wild swans in the Aryan version of the world-wide tale. And then the rival monarch gives them seed pearls. But one day a pierced pearl is found in their food, and after many adventures they make their way back to the great Mansarobar Lake in Central Asia, where all wild swans dwell. Taken as the centre round which folk -tales gather, nevertheless, Raja Rasalu, the son of Salivahana, stands pre-eminent. How he killed the giants, how he became a Yogi, how he swung the seventy maidens, how he played chess — are not all these told again and again between darkness and dawn, when the drone of the story-teller serves at once as rousing stimulant and drowsy narcotic ? There is one other personality belonging to this period of almost buried history which has always had and always will have overwhelming influence in India, whether it be the India of yesterday, to-day, or to-morrow ; for Sakyamuni or Gautema Buddha was born at Kapila-vastu, in the sixth century before Christ. So much has been written of him that the bare fact of his birth and death is sufficient here. Born of that Shesh-nag or Serpent race of !N THE STREETS OF DELHI ITS BURIED HISTORY 25 kings wlioin Chandragupta afterwards overthrew, he forsook his croA^^l to sit under the Eo-tree and become a teacher, his last words, as he once aerain called his disciples round him. being : " Beloved ! That which causes life causes also decay and death ! '" Thev are words which have not been forirotten in India, and never will be forgotten. For the rest, one curious httle fact, not so well known as it might be. may be mentioned. Sakva has been canonised a Saint in the Roman Catholic Church under the name of St. Josaphet. So this buried history of the centuries before our era sur^^ves in a thousand ways amongst even the ignorant peasants : and the old bardic songs, mere strings of names as many appear to us. never fail to rouse nods of interest and approval. The doings of Sikundar (Alexander! are still in the mouths of all. and until our Western education of the last thirtv-tive vears left no time for such simple arts, everv child took a pride in having at least a few stories to tell, learnt accurately from some teacher. And tliey are tine, blood-curdling stories those gleaned from the Ramayana and the Alahabarata. Even the marriage of the delicious Draupadi to the whole live brothers at once, over 4 26 INDIA which some liistorians find it "necessary to draw a veil " (the veil it is to be presumed of modern decency over ancient depravity — or the converse !), is forgotten in the picture of her Swayamvara or Maiden's-choice, when with the nuptial garland in her hand she stood watching her suitors draw their bows. One, successful in hitting the mark, she dismisses as of too mean a birth ; but when Arjuna, disguised as a simple Brahman disciple, comes for her choice, lo ! the garland is round his young neck in a moment. What, too, can be finer than the gambling scene in the tent, when with loaded dice Sakuni and the Kaurava conspirators play with Draupadi's husband, whom they have inflamed with wine until he wagers and loses all — crown, kingdom, riches, liberty ; then sets his wife on the die and loses yet once again ! So to them in the tent comes Draupadi, sent for by her despairing husband . . . and swiftly routs them all ! She is a free woman ; no slave dare barter her, and was not he a slave deprived of crown, kingdom, riches, liberty, ere he had staked her on the throw '{ So the five brothers, rich only in Draupadi, wander forth to the jungle and the great war of the Fandava's for the recovery of kingship begins. ITS BURIED HISTORY 27 One hears the tale at night round many a viUage fire — ay ! and many a stalwart henpecked man, so- called head of a household of women, takes com- fort in the thought that even in the old o-olden days the grey mare was the better horse — as she is now ! And tliere are thousands of such stories which have been preserved wholesale by the bards, who nowadays live as they best can. Avandering about within a smaller or larger area, and takhio- o-ifts for their songs. But in ancient days they had a more assured existence, and were attached to the court of every petty feudal chief Among the Kajputs, indeed, the Charan or court herald was considered more sacred than the Brahman, and this being so, he was often used as a giuu^dian botli of honour and wealth. If, for instance, a caravan laden with bullion was waylaid by robbers, the Charan in charge would step forward waAing his long white robes and calling down vengeance on all Avho should molest him or his. And if this were not sufJicient he would stab himself, so bringing the most damnable bloodguiltiness on his enemies. Thus, in honour also, a kings Charan staked his life on his master's word, and if insult were oftered to the crown, avenged it instantlv bv 28 INDIA killing — not the offenders ! — but himself, in full belief that his death would cause the ruin of his master's detractors. To this day a similar form of intimidation exists in a much modified form in out-of-the-way villages. There one of two disputants will hire a Brahman to sit on the other's doorstep without food or drink until justice be done. As the Brahman's death from starvation would entail horrible conse- quences in the future world, this course generally brings about a compromise, especially if a retaliatory Brahman be sent to the other disputant's door. This system of " dharna " has, however, been made illegal by us, and in old days it certainly must have been a powerful thumbscrew, since the procedure then was slightly different. Then the Brahman appeared with poison or dagger, prepared to die if any one crossed the doorstep. Thus both within and without lay starvation, unless a settle- ment was brought about. Still it saved court fees, lawyers, and a A^ariety of equally useless expense ; besides, do we not still put our juries into " dharna " ? and does not our House of Commons use hunger as a weapon ? But these survivals of the old buried history of India are bound to sink deeper and deeper out of A NATIVE BULLOCK-CART, JEYPORE Ir* * ^-^ii^ , * J. Mmft^l^ i> ITS BURIED HISTORY ■■29 sight. They will crop up here and there, like the old bricks beneath the sand-hills, to amuse anti- quarians and folk-lorists. Then they will tinally disappear before a bailift's summons to attend the County Court. Already the authority of the old village Panchi- yat, "the Council of Five Elders," has almost gone. It still looks after the mhior morals of the com- munity; but even here the younger men and maidens — or perhaps one should say widows, since they practically are the only offenders — begin to question its right to parental despotism ; for India seems inclined to swallow the West c/i bloc — foundling hospitals, workhouses, pauperisation, and trades unions. In a dozen more years the buried history of Hindostan will hold many things worthv a longer life. CHAPTER IV THE RAJPUTS From time immemorial the level plains of the Punjab have been the battlefield of India. Here, from some remote Central Asian cradle, the Naga- bansis settled first, gradually extending their empire to Central India, where the town of Nagpore still remains witness to their presence. Here the Aryans came, and here still the most typical colony of their race remains. Here also Alexander marshalled his hosts, and the Scyths, Bactrians, the White Huns, the Getee (who still survive as the Jats) marched and countermarched. Out of this welter of races the Rajputs arose, bringing with them a romance, a chivalry almost unequalled in the world. During the early centuries of our era they were in the zenith of their power ; their rule extended far down the Ganges, and it was not till the twelfth century that the 30 THE RAJPUTS 31 Mahommed;ins succeeded in driving them back westward to what still remains Rajputana, During these long centuries the whole of India seems to have been one vast battlefield, petty chief warring with petty chief : and yet all the while the war was really between the claims of these born soldiers, the Rajputs, and the claims of those born priests, the IJrahnians. The old Aryan household, in which the house- holder was spiritual as well as temporal head, had passed away, an earlier Brahmanism based on purelv philosophical and esoteric principles contined to the intellectual few had given place to Buddhism, and now on the ashes of that faith a new Brahmanism had arisen, claiming not onlv spiritual but temporal power through hard and fast ritual and ceremonial binding on all ; the right performance of which, hoA\'ever. lay entirely in the hands of the hereditary priesthood. Hence the dispute for actual supremacy. The history of the Rajputs is a magnificent history. It links the buried India with the India of to-dav. for just as they faced and fought the old kings of 3Iagadha. half- Aryan. half-Xagabansi. so they fought the 3Iahouunedans. so they fought us. These sons of princes or rajahs claim to have sprung from the sun or fi'om the moon. The 32 INDIA former claims three races, the latter but one. There is, however, a third race, the " fire-born." This, which contains many of the most noted tribes, asserts that it was created by the gods from a fire sacrifice on Mount Abu, in order to aid the Brahmans. In the present day Udaipore holds the headship of all Rajputs. Its ruler is descended from the sun-born kings of Ayodhya or Oude, and the golden sun, rayed on a huge disc of black ostrich feathers, is his royal insignia, to which every Hindu does homage. Rama (the great god Ram) is his ancestor ; he is lineal descendant of the old Ranas of Chittore, that stronghold of Rajput chivalry — Chittore whose every stone has a remembrance. It is to the Mahabarata and the Ramayana that we must look for the earliest history — if history it may be called — of the Rajputs ; and yet to this day the race is so curiously similar to the heroes of those ancient epics that legend grows to reality as we read. There is no better description of the modern Rajput than that given by Talboys Wheeler: " They form a military aristocracy of the feudal type. They are brave and chivalrous, keenly sensitive of an affront, and especially jealous of the honovir of their women. MINSTRELS BALCONY f"*^' I- THE RAJPUTS 33 " Their chiefs, if occasion serve, are still prepared to lead the life of outlaws, like the five brothers, or to go into exile with tlie silent haughtiness of Kama. Indeed, but for the paramount power of the l?ritish Government, they would still carry on bloodv feuds for srenerations. or eno-ao-e in deadlv wars Avhich could only end in mutual extermination." Colonel Tod also tells us that the •■ poorest Rajpoot retains all his pride of ancestry, often his sole inheritance ; he scorns to hold the plough, or use his lance but on horseback. The history of such a people must needs be a long tissue of tales, each one of which would form the plot of a modern novel of adventure. There is the story of Bappa Kawul. herd-boy. knight- errant, king, who brought his island princess to Udaipur, and built for her that island on the lake where she might worship— as she had worshipped in her father's house — the Great ^Mother who became the tutelary goddess of 3Iewar. The story, too. of Kao Tunno"s great charge from his besieged fortress ; of Deo l\aj the boy bridegroom, refugee from liis own fatal wedding-feast, who found the Yogi's phial containing the precious golden elixir and used it to regain his lost kingdom on condition that he wore the Yogi's dress — which the suzerain 34 INDIA princes of Jassulmer do to this hour on the day of their enthronement. But the greatest stories of all are those connected with the three sacks of Chitore, those terrible days which make the oath " by the sin of the sack of Chitore " unalterable to a Rajput. The first of these was brought about by the fame of Princess Padmani, whose name still survives in common parlance as the synonym for fair and virtuous womanhood. Her renown as the greatest beauty of her day had attracted the Mahommedan conqueror Allah -u -din, and he forced his way to the bare rock of Chitore demanding to see her face, if it were only her face reflected in a mirror. He saw it, honourably entertained by Prince Bliimsi. But the sight inflamed his desire still more, and escorted as honourably back to his camp, he seized the Prince as a ransom for the Princess. The Chiefs of Chitore, aghast at the loss of their King, decided that Padmani must do her duty. So seven hundred litters containing the Princess and her attendants set out mournfully to the JMahom- medan's camp. The husband saw his wife for one brief farewell, and then — then by Padmani's wit, from out those seven hundred litters leapt seven THE RAJPUTS 35 hundred armed men. Avhile each of the bearers, tin-owing off his shght disguise, showed armed to the teeth. AMth such a bodyguard Ehimsi and Padmani had time to mount fleet horses and escape. But at a bitter cost. Surrounded by the JMaliom- medan army, the flower of Chitore died hard — but died. There is scarcely anything finer in the annals of India than the story of the Rajput wife and widow who, standing beside the flaming pyre, cried to the boy Avho had borne himself in battle beside her dead lord : '•Tell me eve I go hence, how mj- lord bore himself?" •• Reaper of the harvest of battle ! On the bed of honour he has spread a carpet of the slam ; a barbarian prince his pillow, he sleeps ringed about bv his enemies! " •■ Tell me vet once again, O bov ! how mv love bore himself.' " •• O mother! how can the world tell of his deeds! There were none left to fear or to praise him. " Years passed, and Allah-u-din. who had ne^■er forgotten the trick, returned. The maiden citv was held to be impregnable, but tiie gold which he paid for every basketful of earth soon raised a commanding point whence he could pour his missiles into the city. So the weary, hot days sped on slowly, until one night King Bhimsi woke in fear. In a lurid light the tutelary goddess of Chitore stood before him, saying : 36 INDIA " If my altar and your throne is to be kept, let twelve who wear the diadem die for Chitore." Now Bhimsi and Padmani had twelve sons. So one by one, in obedience to the goddess's orders, the young Princes were set on the throne. For three days they were King, and then they went forth to meet the foe and to meet fate. Only Ajeysi remained, the darling of his father's heart. Then Bhimsi called the chiefs together. " This shall not be," he said. " The child shall go free to recover what is lost ; I will die for Chitore." " Yea ! we will die for Chitore," echoed the chieftains solemnly. " In saffron robes and bridal coronets we will die for Chitore." Then throughout the whole city stern resolve took shape in bridal garments and a funeral pyre, vast, mysterious, set in the vaults and caverns which stretch far away into the earth. Thither in solemn procession came the Rajput women singing, in their holiday garments, covered with their jewels. Then, when the gate had closed upon the last woman — on Padmani — the men's turn had come ! Surrounding I'rince Ajeysi with a picked band of desperate warriors sworn to see the lad safe, they A WATER-CARRIER ■•siisi-'-'' ■Jll ^■Tfr ^V.-v^,-; ^ -—S^^N, ■'?'~-^' THE RAJPUTS 37 flung open the gates, and bridal-coroneted, safFron- robed, sought the embrace of death. When tlie conqueror led his victorious troops into Chitore all was still. Only a wisp or tAvo of thin smoke escaping from the vaults below hung earthwards or drifted skywards. None have entered the vaults since, save one, led thither by God ; and to-day the very entrance to them is forgotten, though the " sin of the sack of Chitore "" still echoes from Rajput mouth to Rajput mouth. The second sack of Chitore was in the time of Humayun, second of the three Great JMoghuls ; and once again a woman tried to save the city. There is an ancient custom in India, not, as some have asserted, by any means confined to the Rajputs, by which a woman may choose what is called a bracelet-brother for her defence by sending to any man — emperor or slave — a silken bracelet called a ram-nikki. It is made in remembrance of the bracelet which Ram's mother, Kansalya, fastened on her son's wrist ere he started on his exile, and is a mere cord of silk bounden with tinsel, fastened ■\ntli a loop and button, and hung with seven tiny little floss silk tassels, red. orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet — the colours of the spectrum. 38 INDIA It is optional to receive it, but once bound about the wrist, and the small breast bodice which custom has chosen as the fitting return sent to the giver, the twain are brother and sister indissolubly, and from that moment he is bound to her service. He is her "dear and reverend brother," she his "dear and virtuous sister." Now Kurnavati, mother to the baby King, saving herself from her husband's funeral fire for the child's sake, sent such a bracelet to the Emperor Humayun. " Tell him," she said to her messengers, " he is bracelet-bound brother to the Rani Kurnavati of Chitore, and that she is hard pressed by Bahadur Shah." Humayvm's every instinct was charmed with the chivalrous incident. Veritable knight-errant, full of enthusiasm, he left the conquest of Bengal on which he was engaged and hurried north. He came too late, however, and the doomed garrison prepared to die as they had died once before. Thirteen thousand women were led to a funeral pyre by the Rani herself, after she had succeeded in smuggling the infant King beyond the walls. Then what had happened before happened again. The gates were flung wide, and the remaining handful of the garrison, clad in bridal robes and MUTTRA THE RAJPUTS 39 coroneted with the bridal crown, ruslied. deahng- death, upon death. Tl\irty-two thousand men perished during this second sieg'e. Before passing to the third siege, the fate of Httle I'dai Singh, the baby King, deserves some few words. Given an asvhmi by his hah'-brother Eikramajit. he lived in the palace with his foster-mother Punnia. One night, when he had fallen asleep, screanis rose from the women's apartments, and then the death wail. Accustomed to the life of palaces. Puimia's quick brain leapt to the truth. Conspirators had slain Bikramajit. and the next \ ictim would surelv be Udai Singh. To catch the child up. thrust some sugared opium into his mouth, hide him still sleeping in a fruit-basket, and give that into the hands of a faithful servant, saving. " Go I — to the river-bed without the city — wait for me," was but an instant's quick work. The next was not so easy. - to throw a rich robe o^■er her own sleeping child and wait, wait breathlessly. It came all too soon that question. " The Prince '' ^^'here is the Prince .' " 40 INDIA With a supreme effort she pointed to the sleeping child. When all was over, when she had wept her full, poor soul, and the funeral rites of the supposed young King had been duly performed, she hid her face in her veil, and stern, dry-eyed, resolved, made for the river-bed. There she found her nursling, and rested not at all till, through wild hill and dale, by precipices and peaks, she reached the fortress of Komulmer. " Guard the life of the King," she cried to Aeysha Shah, the governor, and set the child upon his knee. It is a fine story whether it be true or untrue, and it is one that the women of India often tell. To return to the third sack of Chitore. This happened in the days of Akbar, son of Humayun, and greatest of the Great Moghuls. It was the third and last, for the conqueror was of right royal stuff, and knew how to treat brave men. So when the final consummation was once more reached, and thousands of brave ixien had gone to death by the sword, and thousands of braver women met death by fire, he left the city, levying no ransom, and on the place where his camp had stood raised a white mai-ble tower, from whose top a light might shine to cheer the darkness of Chitore. THE RAJFLTS -il Evit a few years afterwards, when ii; dire distress aiul riding for his life through an ambush, the man on Akbar's right hand and tlie man on his left, shielduig him from blows, making their swords his shelter, were two of the defeated IJajput generals. So much for the instinct of one born to lead uren. There is one more Kajpnt story, a simple little story, which yet lingers in the mind as one looks out on the lake at Udaipore — the stoi} of the Princess Kishua Ivoniari. the tlo^\"er of Rajasthan. Fifteen vears of age. lovely, lovable, she became the apple of discord between Sindhia. Juggut Singh of Anibar. and Kajah Maun of ]Marwar. Distracted bv fear lest one or all of these im- portunate suitors should sack town and palace, her father condenmed her to die. She took the poison ottered her. smiling, saying to her weeping mother. " Whv grieve .' A Rajput maiden often enters the world but to be sent from it. Rather thank mv father for giving you me till to-day." This happened late in the eighteenth century, but a few vears before India practically passed into the hands of the English. So the tire and the romance, the cliivaky and couraoe of the Rajputs have yet to be reckoned 42 INDIA with in our treatment of India. Not so lony asjo — riding over one of the level sand-stretches set here and there with cane brakes and great tiger grass and patches of green crops, which in Rajputana lie between those rocky hills that grow so blue, so ethereal, seen even at a short distance — I was talking to some Thakoors of the trend of politics in India, averring that the time would soon come when the whole land would be left to the babu. One of them turned his keen high face, with its eagle eyes, from the distracting trail of pig in the jungle, and answered with an indifferent laugh : " Give me a following of twelve, and the babu's tenor of office would be short in Rajasthan." And so it would be. A RUINED PALACE .^1 CHAPTER V THE GIJEAT MOGHUI.S The Enjput period overlaps the IMoghul just as the buried Hfe of India showed for a time on tliat welter of creed and race which followed the beginning of oiu- era. INIahnuul of Ghuzni, Allah-u-din. and nianv another jNIahomniedan invader came into conflict with the Rajput ca^•alry. but it was not till Babar (^flrst of the greatest trio of kings, following father to son. who ever existed) invaded India that the 3Iahonmiedan empire came to stay. Now these three — Babar. his son Humayun. his grandson Akbar — arc such overwhelming person- alities that one is tempted to leave out of the list of the Great ^loghuls those nnnor ones of Babar's I'-reat-iTrandson Jehangir and his son Shah Jehan. liis grandson Anrungzebe. Vet these in ordniary companv would stand out renowned. In fact, this 4;- 44 INDIA double trio forms one of the greatest dynasties of the world. Of Babar himself it is difficult to say enough with- out rousing incredulity. Poet, painter, musician, astronomer, soldier, lover, knight-errant, king, bon- vivant, he was all of these to perfection, and his kindly, valorous, intensely imaginative, and yet human atmosphere shows out, even after all these years, to an absolutely marvellous degree, as one reads the history of his time ; still more when we take up that incomparable book, his Memoirs. He was, in fact, all things, except what he is called, a Moghul. Of them he writes : If the Moghul race had an angel's birth, 'Twould still be made of the basest earth. Write the Moghul's name on thrice-fired gold, 'Twill ring as false as it did of old. From a Moghul's harvest sow never a seed, For the seed of a Moghul is false indeed ! A Moghul or Mongul in the East in those days being what a Tartar was in the West ; that is to say, a wild wanderer, unpleasant at close quarters, and therefore best not caught ! The first entry in Babar's Memoirs runs thus : " In the year 1494, and the twelfth of my age, I became King of Ferghana." HLTMAYUN S TOMB '— «** THE GREAT IMOGHULS 45 rractically he was but eleven, as lie was born on St. ^'alentines Day 1483. A great many kings have perchance begun king- ship earlier, but there has been some one behind the boyish hand gripping the reins of govern- ment. Babar — his real name was Zahir-ud-din, but he was nicknamed "the Tiger" as a child — held them himself from the beginnhig. His description of the kingdom he came to rule gives at once his literary skill: — "Ferghana is situate on the extreme boundary of the habitable world. It is a valley clipped by snowy mountains save on the west, whither the river tlows. Of small extent, it abounds in grahi and fruits. Its melons are excellent and plentiful. There are no better pears in the world. Its pheasants are so fat that four persons may dine on one and not tinish it. Its Aiolets are particularly elegant, and it abounds in streams of running water. In the spring its tulips and roses blow in rich profusion, and there are mines of turquoises in its mountahis. while in the vallev the people weave velvet of a crimson colom-."" This is the work of a heaven-born artist. As he writes, the hidden turquoise in the hills, the webs of crimson velvet, the roses, the tulips, leap to his mind's eye. The memory of many a ripe melon, 46 INDIA luscious pear, fat pheasant, returns to him, and the sweet scent of the violets, the sound of the running water, the sight of the distant snows in sunset all combine to fill his soul with content at the beauty he has seen. He has this unerring touch in everything, and his description of his father can, indeed, hardly be matched as portraiture : " He was of low stature, wore a short bushy beard, and was fat ; he used to wear his tunic very tight, and as he drew himself in when he put it on, when he let himself out the strings often burst ; he also wore his turban without folds, and let the ends hang down. His generosity was large, and so was his whole nature ; and though he was but a middling shot with a bow, he had such uncommon force with his fists that he never hit a man but he knocked him down. He was humane — and played a great deal at backgammon." There is the very man before us ! And so it is in all Babar's word-pictures. Of his knight-errantry there is enough and to spare in his Memoirs. As conqueror of Samarkand, as refugee in the moun- tains, as invader of India, as lover, husband, father, he stands out above the ruck absolutely informed with chivalry and fire. When he was three and twenty THE GREAT MOGHULS 47 he attempted to cross the Koh-i-baba hills in winter. " I have scarcely," he writes, " undergone more hardship." It was no time to employ authority ; at such times every one who has spirit does his best, and those who have none are not worth speaking about. So I and my nobles ourselves worked to trample down a path in the snow, till we could drag our horses forward a pace or two. So for a week we worked till we reached the pass. Here the storm of wind was dreadful, the snow fell continu- ously ; we all expected to meet death together. While yet light we came on a sort of small cave. Some were for my going into it, but I felt that for me to be in comparative comfort while my good soldiers were in snow and drift would be in- consistent with that fellowship in suffering which was their due. So I dug a hole in the drift at its mouth and found a shelter from the wind in it ; by bedtime prayers four inches of snow had settled on me. That night I caught a cold in my ear ! " A day or two afterwai'ds he records the fact of having seen " thirty-two different kinds of tulips, one yellow, and scented like a rose." Again, wlien eating: burnt cakes iji a headsman's house during: one of his reverses, he thinks regretfully "of a certain way they had in Ferghana of stuffing 48 INDIA apricots with almonds." For months on months his mother had the only tent in his flying camp ; as King he helped to carry her shoulder-high to her grave, and after long years of separation from his wife, he simply writes, " It was Smiday at mid- night when I met Maham again " : Maham — mother of Humayun and his sisters Rose-face, Rose-form, Rose-blush — being practically his only wife. This then was the paladin who appeared victorious on the arid plains of India, and found its luxury Dead Sea fruit before the sight of "an apple tree in full blossom," or the autumn leaves in his far-away hills,"which no painter however skilful could depict." " Hindustan," he writes, " is a country that has few pleasures to recommend it." Still he conquered it, pitting himself and his northern hordes against the Rajputs finally at Kanwaha near Agra. It was on this occasion that Babar issued his total abstinence manifesto which begins thus : — "Gentlemen and Soldiers — whoso sits down to the feast of life must end by drinking the cup of death." On this occasion he broke his golden drinking-cups before the army, and poured out his stores of wine. Nor did he afterwards break his vow, though but FRUIT STALLS AT DELHI OUR GRKAT .MOGHULS 49 a tew years before lie had Avritteii eahnly. with the absohite frankness as to liis fanlts wliich is so lenuirkable and so charming, " As I intended to abstain from wine at the age of forty, and as I noAV wanted somewhat less than a year of that aa:e. I therefore drank wine most copionslv. " Vet he conld resist temjitation, ap]iarently, for we never hear of his being off dntv. and avc may be sure he would have mentioned the fact with jKM'fect candour had he been so. Once when he was ill his diary is full of wisdom. It was easy to see, he writes, whence came his chastisement ; he would abstain from idle thoughts and unseemly pleasures. He would even break his pen in pcmtence for the frivolous verse he had scribbled ; yet but a few Aveeks later we find this entry : "The lights and watchtires in the valley seen from my tent \vere niost extraordinarily beautiful ; that is the reason, doubtless, why I drank too much wine at dinner." \\'hen lie died. Kmperor of India at the age of iortv-eight. thev carried him back to his beloved hills, to the Garden of the New Year, where his mother lay, and wrote this on his tomb : •• Heaven is the eternal abode of the Emperor r>abar." 7 50 INDIA It appears likely, for a more lovable, gifted, loyal, forgiving soul never visited this earth. His son Humayun inherited most of his charm, but little of his capability. Chivalrous to a degree, brave as a lion, he lacked tenacity, and nearly let the empire slip through his fingers. The story of his eager return to help the Rani of Chitore when she made him her bracelet-brother and his dilatori- ness in striking the needful blow for her safety is typical of him. So is that strange flight, almost alone, through the deserts of Sind, leading his young wife's palfrey and cheering her as best he could, till she could no more, and he had to leave her in a hill fortress, where, but a day or two afterwards, India's greatest king, in some ways her greatest man, the Emperor Akbar, was born. For eight years Humayun ruled with difficulty what his father had left him, for fourteen he waited an opportunity of regaining it, and within a year of once more getting the grip of conquest on the Panjab, he died, also at the fatal age of forty-eight. Highly educated, genial, extraordinarily witty, generous to a fault, Humayun nevertheless takes his place in history as the hander on of Babar's undoubted genius to Akbar. Of the latter it is agahi difficult to speak too KING BABAR S TOMB r- - - A,. . - - *. S I ,,_;s... CH'R GREAT .MOGHULS 51 liighly. It is impossible to tlisniiss hiiu as the Great Mogluil, a tli;ure-heail iiulissolublv mixed up in most English minds witli the C-ireat Pan]andrinii and a pack of playing cards ; tor from whatever side -we approach liim, whether as man. soldier, philosopher, adnninistrator. the conviction is forced home on ns that we stand before one of those fe-\v really great men Avho have, as it were, revealed the fnture to their present age. In liahar there is genius ; but it is genius tranmielled. as it so often is, by instability. To use words which will be connnonplaces in a few vears, though somewhat theoretical to-day. his sub- liminal and his conscious selves were not c>n equal terms. \\'ith ^Vkbar they \\ere. and he seems to liave li\'eil ab\a\ s master of himself He Avas fourteen vears old -when he began to reign, and from that moment his grip was o\\ all India. His countenance, we are told by his son. " was full of godlv dignity. ' and in person he must have resenibled his grandfather Babar. as he was tall, handsome, strong, with exceedingly captivating manners. l>ut in reading of his conquests, above all of his administrative reforms, one is struck most bv the calm, cool courage with which he faced all 52 INDIA difficulties, and the mastery not only of men, but of himself, Avhich he displayed. It is simply astounding to think how this boy of fourteen gras})ed at once the ephemeral nature of conquest without the cementing powers of mutual interests to bind conquerors and conquered together. For five years he seems to have dreamt this great dream, hitherto unknown to the Avorld, of building- up an empire, not on a foundation of swords, but on the goodwill of the people. To do this in a seeth- inu;, swirlino' welter of races such as Hindostan — to make Mahommedan, Hindu, Buddhist, Jain equally content, to give all classes equal justice, to make them equally loyal to the State — this was no boy's work. But he set himself to it, and he succeeded. It is to be doubted indeed if Akbar's form of government is not to this day the one best fitted to the needs of India. There is small doubt, anyhow, that in the northern parts of India the great mass of the people refer to his age as a golden one ; for the memory of it is more consonant with their still primitive ideas than even our own more advanced, more civilised rule. And yet Akbar was advanced, was civilised to an absolutel}' incredible extent. He is centuries before his time, and the number of laws passed by OUR GREAT MOGIIUI.S 5!5 liim within :i very few years of his accession at fourteen years of age sho^\' a marvellous grasp on wl'.at was needed to consolidate his vast empire. Perfect religious freedom, the removal of obnoxious taxation, a whole elaborate svstem of revenue collection, the prohibition of suttee and female infanticide, the legalisation of remarriage, and tlie discountenancing of nitant betrothal — all this, and many another wise law. form a continuous pro- cession of beneficial leoislation wliich. emanating; not from a parliament of men, but from the brain of one man only, and that a man whose surround- ings were those of Eastern despotism and whose era was that of Queen Elizabeth, is fairly astounding. '■ The wliole lejigth and breadth of the land," writes Maliamed Aniin of his reign, "was firmly and righteously governed. ^VU people of every description and station came to his court, and universal peace being established, men of every sect dwelt secure under his protection. He had. brietly, the power of independent thought and the vitalitv which makes it possible to turii thought to action. In other words, he had genius. The whole chronicle of his reign teems with incidents of overwhelming interest as showing the 54 INDIA personality of this born ruler of men. Tall and strong, he was counted the best polo -player in India, while his abstemious life fitted him for the extraordinary staying power which gave him an almost uncanny reputation. On one occasion he is known to have ridden eight hundred miles on camel -back vithout rest, and to have been fit thereafter to engage his enemy in battle. But it is in the imagination of the man that his greatest charm lies. He saw things, not as they were, but as they should be. He lived in the face of the Ideal, seeking above all things for the Truth. The record of his spiritual life culminates in his creed : O God ! in every temple they seek Thee, in every language they praise Thee ; each religion says Thou art One. Yet it is Thou whom I seek from Temple to Temple, since heresy and orthodoxy stand not behind the Screen of the Truth. Heresy to the Heretic, Orthodoxy to the Orthodox ; but only the Dust of the Rosc-pctal remains for those who sell Perfume. This creed, the marvellous town of Fattehpore Sikri, in which every building is a palace, every palace a dream carved in red sandstone, and the plain marble tomb with the single word 'Akbar' , /i^xk ^^v OUR GREAT MOGHULS .55 upon it under which tlie dead king Ues in the Horid mausoleum which IJisliop Heber describes as "designed by Titans, finished by jewellers," will, as lono- as the world lasts, remain evidences of the most striking figure in Indian history. We have none to cttmpare with it in England. His son .Tahangir lives only through the memory of' his wife Ninjehan, the woman with whom he fell in love as a bov, and for whom he waited twenty years. His son. again, Shahjehan, lives through the presence of the Taj ]Mahal, which he built in memory of his wife, who died when her thirteenth child was born ; a quahit histance, surelv. of marital constancy in a Great IMoghul which runs counter to many of the erroneous ideas which the West preconceives of the East. Aurungzebe, the third of the second trio, re- verted absolutely to orthodox Mahommedanism, and so broke up the empire which Babar won and Akbar consolidated. CHAPTER VI THE WESTEllX KULEKS How many kings ruled after Aurungzebe signed the first treaty of peace with England, and JMr. Job Charnock, the doijcn of Nabobs, landing on the left bank of the river Hooghly, laid the foundation of Calcutta ? Who knows, and who cares. The first to begin the long line was one Bahadur Shah, the last to end it was also Baliadur Shah ; and between the two how many a vicissitude of power marked by tlie steadily increasing hifiuence of the British merchants who came avowedly to exploit India ! For there can be no question that our empire in the East began with the " ultimate sixpence," That, and nothing else, was the ruison cCetre of our rule. It is not exactly edifying to read the history of those early years of steady encroachment for the sake of monetary gain ; indeed, out of the welter THE WESTERN RULERS 57 of intrigue, bribery, extortion, and overreaching, it is ditiioult to form any clear notion of what really did happen, and one is driven to judge of the action by its result. And that was undoubtedly English aggression. From tiie year l(iOO. when a list was made of '"the names of such persons as have written with their owne handes to venter in the splendid voiage to the Easte Indies ^tl1ewllich it niaie please the Lorde to prosper^" until 1838. when Queen N'ictoria formally took over tlie Government, scarcely a year passed without some record of annexation, liit by bit the land fell either to our pens or our swords, for we wielded both well and fearlessly. Our rirst real essav with the latter was atfer the accession of .Tames the Second, who. being a large shareholder of East India Company stock, was prepared to push the speculation by force of arms. Accorduiglv a thousand regulars and no less than two hundred guns were despatched with an ehiborate plan of unprovoked attack on the coast about Chittagong. The attempt failed egregiously. and drew down on us the Avrath of the Great Moo-hul. Auruno'zebe, with whom eventually we made a nefarious and humiliating peace by ottermg up Sir John Child as an innocent scapegoat 1 After 58 INDIA this come fifty years during wiiich the import of British goods doubled and trebled itself, so that the East India Company was in a position to lend a million to the English Government at 3 per cent in order to have their charter renewed. But by this time one Robert Clive had been born, and also one Warren Hastings, both men who were to make their mark in India. The former, by the overthrow of Suraj-ud-dowla at Plassey in 1757, sealed the fate of India. The less said of the diplomacy which led to the overthrow the better ; at the least, it ^vas disingenuous to a degree, though for that Clive himself was not wholly responsible. Whether he was responsible for other and still more shady transactions it is hard to say ; if he were, he was at least no worse than his accusers. He was at any rate bold in his defence of him- self; held to unwisdom, since by throwing out a challenge to his enemies he forced them to fight. But the whole story ending with Clive's death by his own hand hi the depression of disease and disgrace — merited or unmerited, who can say — is a blot — a very dark blot — on the history of Britisli India. It sickens one to read about it. And it was followed by another and almost similar stain due to the impeachment of Warren Hastings a IN THE CITY OF JEYPORE THE WESTERN RULERS 59 few years later. Were these two men. undoubtedly tlie greatest Eiigli>hnien of their time in India, both double-dyed scoundrels, or were they, as they elaiined to be. only sutterinii from the resentment of seoundrels whose dishonesty thev strove to cheek .' Looking to the general state of attairs when the pagoda tree was still in full bearing and all that it required was a good shaking, it is to be feared that the theorv which starts with but two just men is the mojt likelv. Tliese two. anyway, did something for what they gained. justly or uniustly. But whether exploited largely by tu'o. or in lejser degree by two hundred. India wa> the sufferer, and as one reads the story of Jolm Conipanys dealings with the native^, a feeling of shame creeps over one for niany an unprovoked attack, nianv an absolutely dislionest piece of diplomacy. At the same ti:r,e the record is one oi steadv. iust administration, and. once a district or pro\"ince was dul\ annexed, the extension to it of the laws and pri\ileges which Englishmen had won for the'.nselves by centuries of struggle. Still, the fact remains that we met duplicity by i^reater duplicitv. The earlv years of the nine- teenth century witnessed the same system of absorntion.. and even so late as the fifties our 60 INDIA absolutely unjust treatment of the Navvabs of Oude was largely responsible for the great Mutiny, — that, and the wave of Evangelical revival which swept across the continent of Europe in the late forties, and reaching India a few years later led to a sudden alteration in our attitude towards the people of India. The establishment of female schools, the sudden increase of missionary efforts, family prayers in which native servants had to join, the legislation of widow remarriage — a law which Akbar had enforced without any demur, — and many another similar evidence of a desire to save souls, roused a real terror lest Christianity should be forced upon India. Of that great Mutiny, antedated by one month from the centenary of Plassey, a day which the whole of India had for years been secretly taught would see the end of British rule, pages might be written. It was at once a death throe and a birth throe, a record of the heroism of both races, an expiation on both sides for many evils in the past. It had to come. For once the white face and the dark had to meet in conflict over some- thing better than the ultimate sixpence before they could find common ground of mutual respect. They were each fighting in 1857 for something THE WESTERN RULERS 61 that at bottom was dearer to tliem tlian gold or even land, and they emerged from the Valley of the Shadow with the clear eyes of those wlio have looked on death together. Since those days India has travelled fast. Out- wardly it is assimilating to itself our Western civilisation wholesale. Within ? Who can say ? W\[\ the Eastern theory of life which asserts that Time, so far from being money, is naught, liold its own against our strenuous and deadly doing by which not one moment is left to a man wherein to Again, wlio can say ? This much is certain — tlie uTost advanced thinkers of the AVest are day by day coming back to the philosophies of the East ; so, perhaps the two great streams of thouglit, one sm-charged with activities, the other with passivities, may meet, not in collision or absorption, but in an absolute weld- ing together of all that is good and true in either. CHAPTER VII HINDUISM Benares still holds Hinduism past and present. In one of its wide old gardens, set thick, not so much with flowers as with flowering trees, there lived till lately a survival of the most ancient days of Hinduism ; for Swami Baskeranund claimed to be a Vedic man — that is, a man whose spiritual life, based on the teaching of the Vedas, knew nothing of priests, or castes, or ceremonials. Certainly, he was a striking figure, and the very human vanity which led to his childish delight in his own marble statue, the very human perspicacity which made him invariably pick out those of the highest rank amongst his visitors for special favour, only emphasised the extraordinary expression of clear calm content upon his face. Almost naked, thin as an anatomy, hairless, toothless, there was such a dignity about him as doth hedge a king, 62 A RIVER FESTIVAL AT BENARES hinduis:m 64 and the look in liii. eye? was exactly that of the Child in the 3Iadonna di San Sisto. a look of wearied yet unwearied -wisdom, ^^'hat then was the creed of thi^ man .' Taking him as an example of what Hinduism teaches in the highest to its most apt pupils, it was the creed of Aristotle, of I'lato. Socrates, Euddha. the Christ — the creed, that is. which comes agahi and agahi to the -world robed in a neiv white robe of salvation for the sinner. He had already gone beyond the veil of the tlesh : he had found unity behind it in the Holy -of- Holies. This sense of unity lies at the bottom of all philosophies, all religions ; they do but voice man's eternal conviction of some higher life hi which his punv. futile one can be merged. It is not a conception which appeals much to the multitude, and so in India this funda- mental belief is to be found overlaid with such a supercargo of superstition and crazy creeds that it is sometimes dhticult to see that it exists. But it does. The veriest coolie, if hard pressed, will tell you that even your Honour's anger is all •• Jiiiihi " or illusion, and that the reality lies else- where : where, being a matter which scarcely con- cerns him. poor creature of a day. For all that, his mortal life is a perfect prey to such iUusions, and 64 INDIA the number of sanctions and limitations which he has to consider before he can get through a single day of it decently is perfectly appalling. These took possession of him long ere he was born, when his father and mother, in honour of his expected arrival, performed various ceremonies, the Un- cooked-Food ceremony, the Cooked- Food cere- mony, and finally the Feast-of-the-Five-Gifts, when milk, clarified butter, curds, honey, and cow dung are worshipped as the food of the gods. There is a belief prevalent amongst Europeans that every Hindu has to be born in a cow-house. If this were so, it would still be no more hardship than the birth of the Christ in a stable ; but it is not the case. The mother, being ceremonially un- clean, cannot remain in the house, and therefore finds refuge in some building or lumber room, where she stays until the days of her purification are over. The seventh night after birth, Brahma, in his Wisdom -form, is supposed to come and write its fate upon the child's forehead. The following ceremonials vary with every caste, every race ; but the name -giving, in which the father writes the name with a golden ring in unhusked rice, is curiously persistent ; its persistency pointing to some now-forgotten symbolism. The ceremony HINDUISM 65 of giving the child its first grain of rice when it is six montlis old is also a great festival ; and so is the shaving of its head into the orthodox scalp lock, and the beginning of its education. For the latter, on some auspicious day agreed upon by the family priest, friends and relatives are called together, and with varying customs and rites the child, if it be a boy, is handed over to a teacher, who, invoking the aid of the gods, teaches his pupil the form of the first vowel by drawing it once more in un- husked rice. Amongst Brahmans, however, the great festival of a boys life is the dav on which he is invested ^\dth the zonar, or sacred thread of second birth. Worn over the left shoulder, it is twisted of cotton wool and silk, and is the dearest possession of the priestlv race. With it goes the right of repeating the sacred text, which is always whispered so that no other can hear it : "Oih! O! Earth. O! Air. O! Heaven Orii ! Let us meditate on the supreme splendour of the Divine Sun, and may His Light lighten us." This ceremony over, the child starts fair on its life as an orthodox Hindu, and for the most part leads the life of an apprentice to learning until the age of sixteen is reached. For Hinduism divides 9 66 INDIA the life of man into four divisions or ages — Disciple- ship, Husbandhood, Parenthood, Saintship. In the first age you learn, in the second love and the world claim you, in the third your children, in the fourth the world beyond. So you pass out of one life into the next. To a Hindu man or woman marriage is a solemn religious duty. It is an absolutely in- violable sacrament, and divorce is unknown ; the underlying theory being that before God the male and the female form together the perfect human being. Therefore neither can really worship apart from the other. Before such a belief as this, it is idle to talk of the woman's position being degraded. It is not so in theory, whatever it may be in practice. Indeed, to any one who really thinks upon the vexed question of the relationship between the sexes, the Hindu standpoint is the only one that affords a stable foothold. For, once we allow personal passion its right on marriage, the difficulty of finding any point on which to cry " Halt " becomes apparent. Once married, a Hindu almost invariably be- comes a perfect prey to his women folk, at any rate for some years. So many things are lucky, so many unlucky, that life tends to be one long ON THE RANKS OF THE HOLY -=*^ " ^ ft J ■8^' >-1 . «--. .^ r •i ^ ^.Ejp c » , V"^ 'J ^' i HINDUISM 67 propitiation or praise, festival or fast. It is astonishing to what lengths the woman's in- fluence may go, and many an accurately dressed Europeanised native may carry about Avith him, carefully concealed, some ludicrous or even horrible talisman against evil spirits in which, were you to ask him, he would deny belief He might also deny the eflicacy of pilgrimages, but he goes on them, and the thirtv and odd big festivals which raise his whole household to a pitch of pleasurable excitement during the year, find him quite ready to take his part in them. It is a quaint back- ground to his self-contained semi-European life as clerk or merchant, lawyer or doctor. Yet it exists, and the man who has pled his case in court with a legal etiquette acquired in England, or spent his day over the commerce of many continents, may end it by wreathing the Goddess of Smallpox mth strung flowers, or even by bathing in some dreadful admixture of the Five Gifts. And yet under all the turmoil of almost senseless worship, behind all the thirty thousand and odd deities which are so worshipped in India, there is not one Hindu from Cape Cormorin to the Himalayas who would not scout the idea of there being more Gods than One, and that One Unknow- 68 INDIA able, Mysterious, Absolute Holiness. The rest are but Ideas, founded by man in the vain effort to bring the Incomprehensible into compre- hension. Beyond this unalterable belief, and the belief in Maya or Illusion, there is no dogma in Hinduism, And Maya is the illusion of personality, of in- dividualism. The whole universe is God, all things are forms of Him, yet men claim individual life, think of themselves as apart from Him. This is Maya. To escape from it is to realise Unity, to find oneself in all things, and all things in God. This is Nirvana. So we come back to the philosophers of all ages, to the secret of all religions, to the merging of a puny individual life in the Greater one of Greater Dimensions. That this view of ourselves, our hfe, should necessarily lead to quietism, is the belief of the Western nations, to whom deadly doing and the gospel of personal comfort are a religion in themselves ; but it is an erroneous belief, for once beyond the galling limitations of merely individual life the whole activities of the world are yours, and the blossoming of a flower, the glad song of the bird, the hammering on an ironclad's side, and the great cry for freedom which goes up from man- HINDUISM 69 kind are all equal harmonies in the s^Tnphony of existence. It is a boundless horizon, but it is one wliich the Hindu has ever before his eyes, despite the multiplicity of his gods, and the endless tale of ceremony which compass him about on every side. A Brahman, if he desires to perform his religious rites properly, should spend at least five hours a day over them, so complex have become the rules for ablution, expiation, and purification ; and yet his aim is, as a great missionary writes almost con- temptuously, "to obtain knowledge which will ensure his reunion ■s\'ith God." The belief in life after death is a;eneral amoncrst Hindus. Heaven for a longer or shorter period awaits the soul which has striven towards the light, hell the soul which has chosen darkness. Then once more comes another chance, another re- incarnation. So the wheel with its two pivots of bu'th and death turns, until the soul, escaping from the illusion, the limitations of personality, finds rest in the perfection of the Supreme. The process may last for millions of years, but, in the end, as all things have emanated from God. to Him they yvHl return. 70 INDIA There is a legend that the gods having by pious acts obtained immortahty, Yama, the Ender, the God of Death, came to them and said : " As ye have made yourselves Imperishable, so will men endeavour To free themselves from me ; what portion then Shall I possess in man ?" The gods replied, " Henceforth no being shall become immortal In his own body ; this his mortal frame Shalt thou still seize ; this shall remain thine own. He who through knowledge or religious works Henceforth attains to immortality. Shall first present his body. Death, to thee." ^ It is this absolute certainty of a future life which generates the disregard of death that is so marked a feature in Indian life. It is no stranger whom the Hindu awaits as he lies on the bare earth from which he came, while those who have been his companions in this particular incarnation wait also, commending his soul to the care of Ram. Death is a familiar friend in whose embrace he has already lain many, many times. This disregard of death is never more strikingly shown than during a cholera epidemic. Then, when a whole cantonment will be in a state of panic, the hospitals full of spurious cases due largely '^ Wilkins, Indian Wisdom. HINDUISM 71 to pure frigiit. when the authorities are doing all they can by various amusements to keep up the spirits of the Europeans, the native city hard by, where the disease rages unchecked by cantonment regulations, aWU go on its way calmly, burying and burning its dead by the hundred without one sign of fear. 1 remember in one A-illage of three hundred souls all told, wliere a passing pilgrim from Hardwar sickened with cholera, and as a result there were eighty-five deaths within thirty-six hours, the onlv complaint made was that the pilgrim liimself recovered ! That was considered rather unfair. This stoicism in regard to suffering and death is apt to engender a certain hardness in those who are witness to it. Durhig tlie retreat from Afghanistan, for instance, when cholera broke out amongst our troops, it was not till a British regiment was attacked that prayers were oftered up for the staviuiT of the platrue in our churches. thouQ-h for six weeks previously the native regiments had been suitering terribly. And yet. if the ordhiary missionary view be accepted, they were in more parlous straits than their Christian brethren. But, in truth, the Hindu standpoint is a very hard one to attack. Practically all proselytising 72 INDIA must be directed against the intolerable mass of superstition and ceremonial which has grown up round its central idea ; for the only appeal against that must be an appeal to selfishness, to the desire to carry ourselves and all our petty narrow interests into a future world. CHAPTER VIII MAHOMMF.DANIS:\I JNIahommedaxs ill India number about one-tifth of the total population. Rouglily speaking, therefore, the count is one to every three Hindus. They are, however, bv no means e\ enly distributed, nearly one-half of them behig found in Bengal and con- siderably more than one-half of the remainder in the Punjab : that is. at either end, as it were, of the great waves of Central Asian conquests which swept do^Mi the Gangetic plain again and again. With the exception of enforced converts from the Jat and Rajput races, aU the Indian 3Iahom- medans are, like ourselves, alien to the soil. They are also of extremely varied extraction. Sc}i;hians. Tartars. 3Iogliuls. Belooch, Persians, Afghans, and half a score of other races still remain curiously intact, stranded by the receding tide, and still preservmg their original type. 73 10 74 INDIA For as the Hindus were quick to adopt the Moslem custom of secluding women, so by that swift interchange of bad habits which it is to be feared is generally the result of man's close com- panionship, the Mahommedans immediately adopted caste restrictions ; with the result that intermarriage between different tribes became rare. So to this day, the hawk-nosed, eagle-eyed descendants of true Arab descent can almost be recognised at first sight ; and the broad-faced, massive-featured Belooch can scarcely be mistaken for his taller, slenderer neighbour the Jat. But amongst the whole of them, except perhaps the higher classes of Delhi Moghuls or Oude Syuds, it is impossible to find a social comity of purely Mahommedan type. Indeed, to such an extent are they riddled by and permeated with Hinduism that even virgin widowhood, than which nothing could be found more repugnant to the whole teaching of Islam, obtains amongst some tribes, and all, without exception, while refusing to eat food from the hands of the One-God-worship- ping Christian, take it freely from the idolatrous Hindu ; the teaching of Mahommed, of course, being the other way about ! They are undoubtedly the poorest people in THROUGH THE STREETS OF DELHI rr m ^lAHOMMEDANISM 75 India — poorest and most debased ; in the large towns a prey to well-worn evil and iiiuch-inlierited disease. In the country, on the other hand, there is often httle to choose between Hindu and 3Iahommedan neighbours, except that the latter are less enterprising, less educated, more proud. There is. in fact, amongst them a certain sadness of decay, a clinging to past traditions, a feeling that they have come down in the world. Xow and agahi you come upon a colony of them, lining* in some old many-storied town, surrounded by the mere mounds of ruined broken brick which tell of some larger city hi the olden time, and feel a pang of pity for the departed glory of both place and people. Everything, even the gold-tissue tunic in which the head of the clan turns out to receive you, is frayed and worn ; the very children, large-eyed, solemn, play the old games decorously in the gutter. Xowhere is this lack of any keen interest in life to be seen so clearly as in Delhi. There, in some quarters, the town is a town almost of the dead. The tall houses seek the sky. shutting out the sunlight : a shrouded woman creeps through the shadows ; a group of half-drowsy men sit. object- less, in the wide doorways, blocked, almost barri- caded, bv a transverse brick screen. There is a 76 INDIA stagnant pool of indescribable filth at your feet, fed by slim}^ trickles down the purple pock-marked walls, whence the smaller bricks have dropped, leaving hollows in the mortar. The droning sound of some one chanting the Koran filters out through narrow latticed windows. Here and there, farther down the narrow lane, a stain of vivid blue or red on the uneven brick pavement tells that some one upstairs has been saving twopence by dying cloth at home. But there are few pennies to spare among the inhabitants of these high tenement-houses. How some of them gain their living at all is a inystery. Sometimes you come upon an old man sitting in the dusty sun-ray which slants through the long slip of a room — a room empty, save at the corners, where lie huddled bundles and baskets containing Heaven knows what ! He is weaving tinsel threads at a diminutive loom — weaving it in some old, half- forgotten way ; and on the proceeds of this a whole family of children and grandchildren manage to live. Or, hard at work, some patriarchal house- hold may be seen busy stitching away at caps or embroidering shoes. Such work is the refuge of the decayed Mahommedan courtier. They are very pious, often very depraved, and their very festivals A WANDERING GRAIN-MERCHANT ^*JI '*"*T~ 'H^iS«' ';«aeBS«v^' MAHOMMEDANISM 77 are solemn. The fate of their women when they are left alone in the world is very terrible. No prisoner condemned to a life sentence leads a harder, more joyless existence than many a king's daughter has spent hi some back slum in Delhi, grinding away from morning till evening at the corn mill, that last exchange of stones for bread which there is in India. Some years ago there were over seven hundred pensioners of the Crown, most oi them women, in Delhi. Half of them never saAV a penny of the money monthly doled out to some distant relative, and the other half were contented with some poor percentage of what was granted to them for compensation, because — as one of them said cheerfully to me, "my husband was hanged by mistake hi the Evil Day." Poor souls, what redress had they against the responsible man ? And in truth the male pensioner is apt to be a terror, whether he takes the form of an old Turk with red dyed beard and an infinite distrust of women-kind, or a dicing, gambling, quail-tighting young one. who spends his nights in the bazaar and the davs in lolling capless. turbanless on a bedstead set in the doorway. It is in Lucknow. however, that you touch bottom, as it were, in the lees of a dead court. In 78 INDIA that town of stucco and sham, vice itself takes on a hideous unreality, there is a slackness in wicked- ness itself, but it is the slackness of a sleeping snake which has still poison in its fang, is still ready to strike if it finds opportunity. And, as one reads the history of Lucknow, wonder passes ; for surely never did degradation do its work more fully than in those last days of royalty. The very children bear the traces of it still, and yet in many a ruined old house in Lucknow lonely women are living still whose patient continuance in well-doing is a marvel indeed. For of that there is no doubt. The Mahom- medan woman of good family is often a com- pendium of all the most Christian virtues. Her patience is phenomenal. She is content to take the lowest place in this life and the next. In the country, however, matters are brighter, both for the man and the woman. Though a Mahoinmedan is seldom, if ever, so good a culti- vator of the soil as a Hindu, he can still hold his own with them, while as a breeder of horses or cattle he is their superior. But even at his best the Mahommedan never looks so happy and contented as the Hindu. His MAHOMMEDANISM 79 religion does not really offer him so much consola- tion. A heaven full of houris, aii eternal pro- cession of sensual pleasures (which experience in this world proves to be provocative of headache), is not a ver}' exhilarating outlook for any staid man of middle age. Then in JMahommedan houses, as elsewhere in India, the grey mare is so often the better horse, and there is such kindly affection between husband and wife, that the theory of a merely problematical Paradise by means of a luisbands coat-tail for the woman, is not satis- factory. But, thank Heaven ! it is for the most part but a theory. There are many fewer festivals for the ]Mahom- medan than for the Hindu, and they are mostly of ratlier a funereal character. JMohurrum, for instance, is instinct with weep- ing, wailing, and fiercest religious feeling. Shab-i- barat, with its touching feast for all those who have died in the past, is no time for jollity. Eed- id-Fitr, the day which breaks the fast of Ramzan, comes nearest to our idea of a festival, but on all the five great days of the year religious services and the preparation of food for the poor occupy a large portion of the time. 80 INDIA There is one great disadvantage attached to the Mahommedan religion in India: it does not enjoin daily ablution as a religious service. Con- sequently, especially amongst the poorer classes, dirt is a very common failing, whereas personal cleanhness is the rule amongst Hindus. Undoubtedly, taken en masse, the Mahommedan is not at his best in India. His star is not in the ascendant, and his position wars with his religion. That enjoins conversion by the sword if need be, and an almost fierce intolerance of the idolater. His whole entourage therefore is galling, and the friction shows itself in a lower moral standard in the many. The few, as always, rise above circum- stances, and there are no better men and women in India than some Mahommedans. THE BOOKWORM V jr — T>ss«**^^^ CHAPTER IX BUDDHISM, JAINISM, PARSEEISM, ANIMISM There are, roughly speaking, three million Bud- dhists in India, one and half million Jains, and over seven million non- Aryan aboriginal tribes of practically no religion at all. The Buddhists are to be found almost enthely fringing the hilly outskirts of the empire. Their hold has gone from the plains, where such magnifi- cent memorials as the tope at Sanchi remain to show that they had once a grip on the Avhole land. But Brahmanism -^vith its elaborate system of caste prevailed — as it was bound to prevail, owing to its appeal to the family, the racial feeling in humanity. StUl from one end to another of India the teaching of Sakyamuni are the foundations of all spiritual life. Between the conclusions of Hinduism and Buddhism at their highest there is little to choose : in both the claims of personality are the root of all 81 u 82 INDIA evil ; in both salvation lies in the realisiition of unity. The same thing may be said of the Jains — indeed, of all Eastern religions. All press the claims of collectivism over those of individualism. But the Jaina religion smacks of extreme antiquity. \Ve are told that it was founded by Rishaba Deva, and a date is added subsequent to the time of Buddha ; but hiternal evidence points to one of the oldest faiths in the world. The use of the Swastika or Fylfot alone would make one hesitate to place Jainism a century or so before C hrist ; for the Swastika is the oldest known symbol in the world and the most widespread. Its quaint cross, like an Isle of JNIan crest with four feet, is to be found from Scandinavia to Polynesia, from Africa to America. Mysterious utterly — for the ends at right angles to the uprights could have been derived from no mere savage crossing of sticks- — the unriddling of its tirst meaning will be the unriddling of many problems. Of course, the solar mythists have claimed it, as they claim all else ; but the fact that it is universally an emblem of good luck, that it is used as an equivalent for womanhood, and that it is inextricably mixed up with the serpent, points to another origin. BENARES in i." -C^J^ r '^' % :\ ts*'-^^, ,/.j --wr^^^SB* BUDDHISM, JAINISM, PARSEEISM, ANOIISM 83 But it is old, old as Time itself, and with the Jains it is still the sign par iwccUcnce. Another peculiarity of the Jains is their extreme 4'onsideration for life. Some of their ascetics go through life with their nostrils and mo\ith swathed in muslin, lest hy chance they should inhale and so destroy some frail inhahitant of the air. Luckily the microscope was unknown to them, else still stricter precautions, resulting in death to the breather, might have to be taken. The Jains divide themselves into two camps — the " Sky-clad ones' and the " White-robed ones." Of the two, those Avho, clad in the sky, go naked, or at least eat their food naked, are the stricter, possibly the most ancient. One curious tenet of theirs, that no woman by any means or at any time can ever attain to Nirvana, goes far to prove their antiquity, and, connected as this belief is with the use of the Swastika, raises many speculations. The .Jains are a very opulent people. Their horror of shedding the blood of even an insect has restricted them largely to sedentary occupations. It has, indeed, handicapped them in the activities of life, and legend says that the last Jaina king- lost his kino-dom through a refusal to march his armv one night in the rains, because of the enor- 84 INDIA mous sacrifice of insect life which must have ensued. Be that as it may, their energies diverted largely into commerce and banking, have placed them as the richest community in India, with the exception, perhaps, of the Parsees. There is a large colony of Jain bankers and merchants in Delhi, at Jeypore, Ahmedabad, and indeed in almost every town in Rajputana. In Delhi one may often in the Jain quarter, quiet, secluded, almost asleep in the sunlight, hear the quaint cry of the wicked, impish little Mahommedan boys and girls who, having caught a sparrow, go with it from house to house threatening to kill and enforcing ransom. Indeed, seeing the ease with which these little bird-slayers, as they are called, extort halfpence with their cry, " Ai ! followers of Rishaba ! give or I kill," the wonder rises why this system of toll is not practised in larger matters. For all we know it may be. The Jain architecture is some of the finest in India. Their cave temples are numerous, and in almost every large town some building, exquisite in the fineness of its carving, stands sponsor to the wealth and religion of the Jains. Their holy place, which at the same time shows the most perfect specimen of their art, is Mount Abu. Here is to IN THE MARKET-PLACIi, JiiYFORE I -4^: u- -J.*-- -^ ■'■'l •i ^ a\ HP'^ .*i*-v^ \ ir' ** -■' M 7 A^y^ ^,.v wjbi*' ^> flirA^. ■^ » ■ ■P*a| ^ ^B^^f^ 1 HNHfr^^ ^'^^ / BUDDHISM, JAINISM, PARSEEISIM, ANIMISM 85 be found a group of temples served by the strictest sect of sky-clad saif/iu.s', who never marry, who practise the utmost asceticism, and in their care for animal life sweep the ground before them with a broom ere they set foot on it. The Parsees are another rich race. In Bombay they are outwardly even more European than the Europeans ; but within, the old faith of the lire- worshippers remains, less touched by Western thouiiht than Hinduism is in Calcutta. The con- Crete belief in Hormuzd. the Central Creator typified in the sun, and in the sun's vicegerent, lire, is one that fits in better with ^^"^estern forms of thought than do the more mystical abstractions of Hindu philosophy. Beyond tliese religions — in which Sikhism might have found a place, but for its rapid reassimilation into the Bralmianical form of Hhiduism, even to the extent of a re-recoonition of the caste system — we have the seven and a half millions or so of non- Ar\ an tribes who are Animists, Shamanists— m other words, devil-worshippers. If we add to this those partially Hinduised or 3Iahommedauised races whom we used to call Pariahs — the leather-workers, sweepers, basket-makers, fowl-keepers of India — we get the large total of nearly eighteen millions 86 INDIA who are practically of no known religion at all. It is from amongst them — as might have been expected — that Christianity has gained most of its converts. Their belief, as a rule, goes no further than some dim idea of a distant god who has committed the charge of this world to demons and ghosts who have to be pacified, outwitted if possible. In the old days human sacrifices were a common form of propitiation. Once a year in almost every village or group of villages a young man was offered up for the good of the many. Nowadays the ceremony goes on as ever, and, according to what one is told, as effectively, but with great secrecy and many precautions against police interference. A bit of the chosen victim's hair has to be secured privately, a morsel of his clothing. These, with due ritual, are placed in the wide brazen platter surrounded by the sacrificial fire, while the shivery, teeth-chattering villagers circle in the shadow watching, waiting. And, sure enough, ere long the few hairs, the shreds of cloth, visualise themselves into the very semblance of the owner, and from out of the shadows pounces the demon, teeth wlietted for the dreadful feast. With more shivers, more chattering of teeth, the villagers watch it in silence, and then go home. H[TDDHISM, JAINISM. PARSEEISM, ANIMISM 87 Tlie devil's huuirer is assuao-ed — the victim will die within the year, and the white faces cannot object to the judgment of God. The existence of such simple souls — and in such large numbers — within the great continent of India makes the problem of its political future almost overwhelmingly ditticult. Young Bengal clamours for a vote ; perhaps justly. But are we to give it to the Santhal, the Bhil, the Kasva '. Or if we give it not, what is to be the test of fitness '. Literacy ? Then half the men whose vote is most worth having, the steady cultivators of the soil, the landed proprietors, the men of weight and intluence — would be excluded hi favour of a •• middell-fail " — the man who has gone up for the middle school examination and failed for it. Not yet ! we have not come to that yet — thank Heaven I — in India. CHAPTER X THE BAZAARS OF INDIA What is the scent of a bazaar ? Who can say ? It is quite indescribable, that fatty not unpleasant smell which is compounded, one knows, of so many unpleasant things ; for instance, drains, humanity, assafoetida. Taking it as a whole, however, I fancy the smell of turmeric brings back more than anything else the wonderful kaleidoscope of colours in an Indian bazaar. Take the Almond Bazaar, for instance, at Lahore. Look- ing down its long, narrow length, its infinite variety of tint and form is the first thing which strikes a stranger. And yet there is really very little variety in the wares for sale, or indeed in the shops where they are sold. There is, of course, always the shifting, changing crowd, giving the glare of an orange turban here, the gleam of a red petti- coat there ; but for the rest, a description of a GRAIN-SELLERS 41 fe-^^ THE BAZAARS OF INDIA 89 dozen or so of shops would exliaust the Avhole of them. First and foremost tlie grain-sellers. Under a tavernons toothed arch the pyramid-piled baskets of various peas, wheat, barley, grain, flour, sugar, chillies, curry stuff's, rise in a slanting heap backed by the dealer himself armed with a big pair of scales. That is a daily customer coming for his quantity of coarse flour. It is weighed out in a second, tilted into the corner of the customers shawl, a tiny piece of rock salt added free of charge, and a penny changes hands. Possibly, if the buyer be fairly well to do, a smear of clarified butter, or a spoonful of sour milk curd in a green-leaf cup, will be carried away also. So, one man's hunger will be satisfied for that day. The next customer may have larger wants, and ere he leaves even the tail-end of his turban may be occupied by little knotted bags of sugar, rice, split peas, and he may have in addition a paper corne or two, tied about with cotton thread, of spices and perhaps tea. For the buiniiah sells almost everything that can be cooked hito food — dried fruits, potatoes, and all kinds of quaint nuts and flour pastes, like our \\^estern vermiceUi ; soqjce, too, that is the inner- most germ of wheat, Avhich is made by moistening 12 90 INDIA the whole grain and grinding it in a stone picked out into minute holes, is another of his wares. He Avill lend money also to any one who asks him for it on no security, but a perfectly appalling rate of interest per day ; and in the long flat box, blackened with age, on which he sits, he has most likely got quite a pile of silver ornaments waiting to be taken out of pawn. The next shop may be a goldsmith's. It is only a tiny mud-plastered square with a little mud-brazier in the middle, at which the occupant blows with his blow-pipe, but he will tell you the percentage of alloy in your gold watch-chain in a moment with his touchstone, and guess the weight of the diamond in your ring to a ratti. He has a marvellously delicate set of scales in a little sandal-wood box, and the most confusing set of weights in the world — tiny scraps of glass, a bean perhaps, an irregular chunk of some metal, a bit of stick, a red and black seed, an odd morsel of turquoise, and a thin leaf of mother-o'-pearl. Anything and everything comes handy to the goldsmith's scales, and he remembers, or says he remembers, the weight of each, and totals them up in his head, saying as he weighs an earring or bracelet, "That will be one tola, two mashas, four ruttis, and a poppy A MEAT SHOP IN PESHAWUR THE BAZAARS OF INDIA 91 seed : with the making thereof, four rupees, eight annas, nine pie." No wonder the broad-laced country woman who has brought her store of silver to be fashioned wi-inkles her forehead in perplexity and acquiesces witli a sigh. A goldsmith, as the saying goes, would cheat his oa™ mother on the scales, and many are the stories of his overreaching himself in this way which are current amongst the people — ay ! and which are cast at him across the mud -plastered tloor of his shop should dispute run high. But in one way there is security from the wiles of the gold- smith : he cannot work in alloys, and even when using coined metal has to treat it again and again Avith quicksilver so as to make it soft and ductile. Next door is a pansari"s or druggist's shop. Here, surely, is the most curious oUa-podrida of wares the world ever saw under one archway ! And there are thousands more hiside the dark cavern beyond the arcli. stowed away in little screws of paper. Avhich in their turn are hidden out of sight and dust in earthen pots, or reed baskets, or pigeon-holes, or anv anei every kind of receptacle. He also has a substratum of shallow baskets heaped Avith turmeric, ochres of difterent sorts, red Holi 92 INDIA powder, black salt and peppers. He has opium too, and charras and bhang, selling these on a Govern- ment licence. Dried violets are also part of his stock-in-trade, and in the early morning customers will come to him for " Epsom Sar'l," " Sidlis," or even " Eno's Fruit Salt." I^ater on in the day some old Mahommedan will take the drug-seller into his confidence, and together they will work out some occult and partially nefarious prescription — rose leaves, the shining spicule from the inside of a bamboo stem, pigeon's dung, and Heaven knows what ! — all of which jyamari-ji will produce ; for it is almost as much a shibboleth with him to have everything in stock, as it is with William Whiteley's, Limited. I myself have asked one for cuttle-fish bone, and lo ! there it was, just two or three small broken pieces in a paper screw. If the ■pansari-ji be — which is but seldom — a Mahommedan, he may look on himself as a hakim or doctor also, in which case he will not only dispense medicines, including the celebrated Thirty-Six powder, which is supposed to cure thirty-six diseases, but will charge a few annas for mystic talismans written with many cantrips on betel leaves or scraps of paper, the same having to be rolled into pills or swallowed whole without water. A FRUrX STALL THE BAZAARS OF INDIA 93 On the wliole. lite would be ini])os.sible in India without the pansari. Has a horse a sore back, to him do you go for alum and indigo. Have you rheumatism, he will produce a tiny bottle of lemon grass oil. Do you feel the spring-time in your blood, he Avill mix you a kala-dana draught ^vliich will be a positive illness for days and reduce vou many pounds in ^xeight ! For the pansari does things thoroughly while he is about it. and it is always safer to halve his doses of native medicine. He will, or at any rate he used to, sell you a pound of crude arsenic without a wink, and the aconite root from his shop is of uncertain strength. For how many deaths he is responsible during the vear. wln> can say ; but he brings much comfort into life, for, when the early morning hours with tlieir bustle of •■yet another day" are over, there is tpiite a little crowd round his shop, and the purchasers go away cheerfully with their little screws of j^aper which contain the Dream Compeller. Next to him. perchance, stands the shop of a cKith merchant. This is palatial in comparison, monopolising two or even three arches, and tiie piles of ^Manchester goods rise in columns from the floor, receding backwards in aisles that end in darkness. The Hoor is spread with white calico 94 INDIA over a worn drugget, and two or three cane stools await the more distinguished customers ; but the country women in for a day's shopping squat on a string bed set over the gutter and haggle for hours over the price of a new pair of baggy trousers for the bride of the family. The cloth merchant himself has a variety of manners — one especially kept, with a schedule of prices, for the sahib logue, to whom he will talk learnedly of "matchin"' and "tintin"'; the "latest fashshun," alas! having already filtered down to the string bed over the gutter where Chand Kaur and Parbutti are arguing the relative styles of yellow and red, and yellow and green sussi. On the whole, Manchester goods are cheaper in the cloth merchant's shop than they are in Manchester itself, while the choice is far greater. It is, indeed, sad to see the piles on piles of absolute rubbish glazed with dressing into the semblance of solidity, skimped by a half-inch here, a half- yard -in -the -piece there, dyed with ephemeral aniline dyes, or printed in flaring flowers, which are replacing the more sober strength of Indian manufactures. It is only the old women now who finger the flimsy fabrics and murmur of English "starch." But even the young ones stiU favour the white piece goods of Germany, because A BAZAAR AT PESHAWUR THE BAZAARS OF INDIA 95 the mccisi/ri i\ alicai/\ ri^'//t. For our rivals in commerce are quicker-witted than we are. and recognise tlie vahie of considering the fancy of their urarket : one of these fancies being that the piece sl\all hoki its good forty yards. Then there are cohnnns of cheap woollen cloths, mostly shoddy and of the most brilliant hues : and in those thinner piles showing much paper there are even horrible pofijct silks scarcely to be ditter- entiated from the paper which holds them. Some, slightlv better, have a narrow striped border imitat- ing the native-made silks, which they are gradually oustiuii' : and amongst them are pieces of so-called gold tissues — l\orrible tinselly things, which will make a tine show in a wedding trousseau, and thereinafter turn black and go rotten. So a cloth merchant's shop is not altogether exhilarating, except to a budding politician, who might learn more from it than he might care to learn. Still, even here, if you hint a desire to '.see sometliing less civilised. Lalla-ii will say to an underling. •■ Fetch out the bundle we had from Samarkhand." or lieuares. or Ispahan, and there, carefidly done up in cotton casing agahist the moth, and tlie still greater pest, the woolly in>ect. -^nll be things ^North buying. — a piece of gauzy -gold- 96 INDIA embroidered silk muslin, an invertebrate shine of old gold satin facing both ways, a few yards of silver shimmer on a violet ground. " There is no one to buy," remarks Lalla-ji ; "even the noble people sing cheap nowadays." But the taste of India is not quite ruined yet ; for a hush falls on the string bed set in the gutter, while Chand Kaur and Parbutti let the Manchester fabrics fall from their listless fingers, as they eye the " bundle from Samarkhand " wistfully. Let us purchase, if it be but one sqviare inch of honest beauty, and go on our way amid the smiles of the onlookers. For never was such a sympathetic audience as the one in an Indian bazaar. It is ready always to chime in with the claims of the customer and to give remonstrant advice to the seller — to shake its head philosophically over a bad, and rejoice over a good bargain. I remember once having a dispute in what is called a " box wallah's " shop — that is, a shop which sells haberdashery, soap, brushes, combs, writing- paper, babies' bottles, and Cockle's pills — over a hank of native floss silk, the only one in the shop of a peculiar apricot tint. The price asked was eight annas, and despite the support of a slowly gatliering crowd I was unable to reduce it to the A QUIET STREET 'd .A w^^ ■s'f'^ - ■TN ^w^^ -'Tif 5f? ' ,^.p 4 " ■jy^j'-^-^*— y'i^-'*i''*ii"-'^i -'>-T;.--*itt.^^..jdML--f" I THE BAZAARS OF INDIA 97 normal six. I therefore asked the shopkeeper to give me six amias' worth, hoping he would do as he did — that is. divide the hank in two, and pro- ceed to roll my share up in paper. A blank dis- appohitment settled on the faces of mv audience. It was palpable injustice, but quo/ fairc ? AA'hat a change there was. however, when, as if I had altered my mind. I took up the remaining half, and saying. "After all. I think I only want two aimas' worth." transferred it to my bag. A roar oi unextinguishable laughter, in which the "bocus wallah" joined, rose up into the yellow sunlight. I think it is deaUng so much with civilised articles, such as trouser buttons, which debauches the "bocus wallah." but strangers and pilgrims had better beware of him unless they know the proper price of what he sells. StiU he has his good points. He is the onlv man on God's earth who never runs short of " Rowland's 3Iacassar Oil." although the putting of oil on the hair went out somewhere in the tifties. He always has a supply at " store prices. A few steps farther and we are back in ancient India. This is a hhuiija's shop, and tliere is nothing in it at aU — nothmg but a wide, shaUow, round, 13 98 INDIA cup-shaped iron pan set in the mud platform which forms, as it were, a counter. But beneath this counter is an oven-Uke fireplace, and the dark, wide -featured woman behind it is feeding the furnace with dry leaves and husks. What a delicious smell there is, and how the corn, which another woman stirs in the pan with a bundle of twigs, pops and fluflFs out to whiteness. As they pass, people throw a pice on the mud counter and hold out some portion of their raiment, and to it comes a handful of parched maize, or wheat, or gram, which they munch as they go along. Half India lives on parched grain. It is a vice, like snuff- taking or cigarette -smoking, and the very babies nibble away at it. With a drink of water, it satisfies the Aryan brother for many hours ; that is one reason why, as a soldier, he marches better in a hard country than Tommy Atkins, for a pound of parched grain can be tied up in the end of his turban, be tucked into its folds — giving him an inch or two of height — and there he is, without need of a baggage train for twenty-four hours. The next shop may be a greengrocer's, though, for the most part, they prefer a stall in some open market where the great piles of melons lie like pumpkins. There is no more uncertain fruit in A RAZAAR IN AMRITSAR THE BAZAARS OF INDIA 99 the world than an Indian melon. You may cut in to a hundred, and each one of them will taste faintly of rhubiu'b and magnesia. The hundred and tirst. outwardly the same, will be food for the gods. But the populace is not very particular. A melon is a melon, and it is good to be in the bazaar when they are in full season, when the laden donkeys unburden sacks of them on the brick pave- ment, and the very babies in arms are chewing away at a chunk. There are very few Indian fruits worth eating : even the mangosteen is over- rated, and one can quite understand the Emperor Babar"s regret for the peaches and grapes of his little tar-away kingdom of Ferghana. Of course, there are some people who can eat jack fruit ; but others will walk half a mile to keep to ^^'indwa^d of it. Guavas are also a trial to some folk ; and. personally. I can see no reason why there should be railwav carriages reserved " for Europeans only." except that native gentlemen and ladies like to eat guavas. jack fruits, and chew pan. in season and out of season. A great buzzing of flies proclaims the next shop to be a confectioner's. It is a pretty large shop, with a tiered mud-counter on one side and possibly a sugar -boiling furnace on the other, where the 100 INDIA metai-wallah is busy pulling out candy or making butte-sas on a hot plate. The latter when fresh are really quite nice, being, as it were, merely a bubble of milk and sugar. Jellabis are also ex- cellent, if you can persuade the maker to fry the batter in good instead of bad butter. Hurfam is nothing but cream toffee plastered with silver leaf; and rexverah, small candy or rock cakes thickly covered with husked linseed and slightly flavoured with spices, are well worth attention. Then there are endless varieties of luddu, made of sugar and curded milk. They, being the cheapest of sweets, are the standby of the poor. Give a street child a farthing, he will spend it, for sure, on two big round balls of sugar, ghi, and pounded pulse, or, if he is an epicure, on two smaller sweet fritters. If he is hungry, however, he will go in for a whole two ounces of kulwa, a dry combination of flour, sugar, and gJii, in which the flour predominates. The whole population has a sweet tooth of perfectly preposterous size, and a grown man going on a journey is sure as a pre- liminary to pay a visit to the confectioner's. Since trade is brisk, tiie latter nearly always looks con- tented as he sits perfunctorily whisking away the flies from his wares. It is a vain task. They fill VEGETABLE MARICET, DELHI THE BAZAARS OF INDIA 101 tlie air, and settle on your face with sticky, sugary feet as you pause to look. The next arch is probably a sherbet-seller's, since sweets are thirsty food. In the old days the whole in/sc en scene consisted of five or six bottles or jars, a drinking-vessel of copper, a pile of fragile pottery bowls, and a pitcher of clear water ; but nowadays, when folk are not so particular as to what they drink out of, four or five green -glass tumblers answer all purposes when wiped round the edge with a bit of paper, and there is a row of lemonade, ginger ale, and soda water behind them. It is to be doubted also if the bottles contain only, as they used to contain, lemon and tamarind syrup, violet essence, and such like. Doubtless these are asked for still on hot days, and some old customers still come for a glass of sugared water Avith just a smear of sandal-wood oil round the edge of the cup ; but in many cases the sherbet -sellers is frankly a drink -shop, and young India may be seen seated on cane stools outside, smoking cigarettes and drinkmg whisky and soda. An old IMahommedan, lean, wizened, coming for his daily draught of hanaJWia sherbet, will edge round their modern skirts gingerly, and mayhap say "Tobah!" under his breath. Yet no amount 102 INDIA of penitence, no abjuration of the few — and for the most part the old — will prevent the development of the public -house in India. Is it not on the highroad to civilisation ? Let us pass on to something older, more cheerful. Here is a shop which it is hard to classify. There is a basket platter of coarse flour, a lump of rock salt, an earthen chatti of clarified butter, a dish of curds, perhaps even another of hulwa, and a pile of hiddu. So much for comestibles. For the rest there are hanks of coir rope, pipe stems and bowls, bells for cattle, a coil that is not rope but tobacco, nails, winnowing baskets, flour sieves, a plate of fresh dates for wedding presents, and last, not least, great skeins of mangala, the turmeric and vermilion dyed cotton which is tied round the bride's neck on the occasion of her marriage. Behind the counter, too, hung up by their lacquered bars, are the wedding stools which the bride takes with her to her husband's house. And somewhere in the back premises lurk the lacquered wooden-bed legs, the decorated spinning wheels, even the round cowry-decked baskets that will also accompany her. This shop, in fact, hardly appeals to the general public. It has its own particular clientele whom AN UNCLASSIFIED SHOP THE BAZAARS OF INDIA 103 it supplies with everything from birth to death, — even with money ; for the grey-haired jovial-look- hig owner lias no objection to — as it were — keep the jewels of a family in safe custody in the iron box with a marvellous native lock, of which he is so inordinately proud, vowing it to be a hundred times safer than Chubb or Bramah. He is ready with everything which a Hindu home can possibly require, and at the last will supply wood. oil. and spices for tlie funeral pyre. A step farther brings us to the cook-shop, where you can see pulse puffs being fried in oil, and watch the spitted kahabs roasting over charcoal. Cold curried vegetables, dough cakes, pickled carrots, turnips and sugar, endless pilaus, and "double- onioned" stews cater for both Hindus and 3Iahom- medans. many of whom, being in various services, and therefore away from their women kind, live on such cook-shops, for the prices are marvellously reasonable. It is a restaurant mthout any upkeep save a fresh pile of dl/iik leaves every day. Fmally there is the kobarii/a's shop. The dictionarv gives the meaning of the word thus : — •' One who displavs old things hung up on wide- open doors." A"\"as there ever a better description ? Old 104 INDIA things, and still older things, upside down, higgledy- piggledy, hung on the top of each other : a patent rat-trap shouldering a broken lamp, an officer's tunic sheltering a pile of tent-pegs, a bazaar pipkin on top of some priceless old plate, a parrot's cage filled with French novels, a moth-eaten saddle keeping company with an old sword. And over all, sufficient scrap iron to furnish forth a foundry ; and in an old cauldron, incense spoons, little brass gods, prayer measures, sacred fire holders, all mixed up with battered electroplated forks, hot-water jug lids, and every conceivable kind of rubbish ! How two or three kobariyas shops would rejoice the heart of the ladies who spend their time in getting up rummage sales ! There are treasures to be found sometimes ; but, on the other hand, there are unpleasant things to be picked up, to say nothing of disease and death, in the piles of old clothing which fill up the corners from floor to ceiling. When will some sensible Government issue an edict by which all things that have been worn by the dead shall be burnt or buried with the corpse, as part of the outward husk which has to pass for purification into inorganic dust ere it is fit again to take its part in life ? A. RAG SHOP THE BAZAARS OF INDIA 105 So, throuohout tlie long- length of the Indian bazaar, these shops repeat themselves again and again. JNIetal-workers, tin-smiths, butchers, — these often have a quarter to themselves. And, adown the street, the multi-colour crowd jostles and parts to let the newly wed or the dead pass through ; while, in the balconies overhead, women, painted and> tired, members of the oldest profession in the world, sit hidifterent, drowsy, gazing ^vith lack- lustre eyes at the life beneath them as if it were nothing. A quail calls from its hooded cage. A municipal sweeper, coming along with his broom, propels an evil black tlooti along the gutter ; and that tall, spare bronze-taced man in a white uniform who rides along at a foot's pace, his keen blue eyes every- where, is the English police-ofHcer. He stops, says something to a yelloAv-legged orderly at his heels, then passes on. Thereinafter there are tears in some balcony or liquor shop, shice order must be preserved in the bazaar. 14 CHAPTER XI THE AllTS AND CRAFTS OF INDIA People speak of the art of India with bated breath, but the natives of that country have very little real artistic sense. On the slightest provoca- tion they fly to aniline dyes ; they prefer Manchester goods to their own beautiful hand-printed fabrics, and a Berlin-wool-work pattern will send them off at a tangent from the rhymed directions for making, let us say, an Irani carpet, which their fathers and grandfathers learnt and made, and which will remain for ever a thing of beauty. And yet India is full of indigenous arts and crafts, and when untempted by the West these remain in many ways beautiful exceedingly. In one way, however, all Indian art errs : it is too ornate. The tendency is to paint the lily, and gild refined gold. In nothing is this better seen than in the oldest known embroidery to be found 106 WOOD-CUTTERS, JKYPORE > ..^ THE ARTS AND CRAFTS OF INDIA 107 in India — that which is seen in what we call pliulkari work. The original was a somewhat sparse diapering in gold-colonred floss-silk on the madder-dyed native cloth, which by its coarse texture was peculiarly fitted for ^vhat is. really, a darning stitch. Its latest development — I mean, of course, before the European demand for cheap drapery ruined the work utterly — was practically the cover- ing of a far tiner tabric with silk of varying colours, leaving the substance of the stuff as a diaper ; the effect being not nearly so good, and the pro- duction twice or three times as laborious. It is so hi all thhigs. Leisure has led India astray, and the bold, free decorations of a past age have been elaborated into minute if still beautiful adornment. So much in regard to form. In regard to colour Nature was kind, indeed, in the past. IJefore coal- tar was. the flora of India furnished fortii infinite hues. soft, harmonious, each one of Avhich. like the flowers from which they sprang, could hold their own iu sunshine or in shade against a whole parterre of colour. These dye plants grow still, but they are ousted by Avhat the natives call "bottle dves." Bottle imps indeed — malevolent, destructive, which have but one good quality — 108 INDIA they are ephemeral. Even the grand old madder - red, that standby of every Indian scene, which, with the dull saffron yellow of the dhdk blossom dye, blends with the biscuit-coloured background of Upper India so marvellously, is fast disappear- ing, its place taken by some metallic mixture which does not need the labour of steeping the cloth in oil and all the thousand and one separate processes which made the dyeing of one woman's veil in the old fashion the work of weeks. But then I have such a veil which has been worn and washed for over two hundred years, and is still a glorious piece of colour, reminding one of the russet and gold millet stalks amongst which it was embroidered by some stalwart Jatni woman. Has this past gone for ever ? I fear so. We are not strong enough, we have not at heart a sufficient enthusiasm for the perfection of beauty — that is, not the beauty of form, of colour, of cheapness only, but of durability and skilful- ness, and usefulness also — to make it possible for us to do as the Japanese Government has done — that is, put the foot down- — squash ! — on the production of cheap art for the European market. So, ere long, the Arts and Crafts of India will WATCHING A NATIVE WOP-KMAN THE ARTS AND CRAFTS OF INDIA 109 be even as the arts and crafts of ^lanchester and Birmingham. To consider tliem, even now, it is necessarv to o'o back. To begin with, the sculpture of India is very tine, ^■ery laborious. One seldoms sees a ba.sso- ri'Iici-o : friezes and panels are very often in super- sensual relief. In many cases the figures are absolutely detached from their background, in many more they are outlined by hollows deep enough to hold the whole depth of the image. For imagination they must surely take the first place in the world. The so-called Hall-of-the- Four- Winds at Fattehpur Sikri. the marvellous arcade at Delhi, and the endless variety of column and capital, architrave and arch, in many a rock- cut temple, testify to the almost weird fancy of those who carved them. To our modern modestv some of these imaghiings must seem obscene, in- decent, but in the days when they were lovingly, reverentlv given shape from the rude stone, they were but common, everyday symbols of a great thought which the "West has not, and which the East has almost forgotten. Whether they shock our sensibilities or not. it is as well to remember that those who carved them carved 110 INDIA with the whole-hearted reverence for mysterious truth which also guided the hands and tools of those who built our catacombs, our basilicas, our churches. Taking architecture as the oldest Indian art of which there is any record, it is to be noted that stone is not supposed to have been used at all until after the invasion of India by Alexander the Great. It was the great King Asoka, however, who introduced it, as a means of preserving his rock and pillar cut edicts. For many centuries stone carving followed absolutely on the lines of wood building, the use of the arch being unknown until Mahommedan times. Immediately after this period, however, came the days of the Italian adventurer, who left his mark again on the archi- tecture of India ; so that altogether, sculpture in stone can scarcely be called indigenous. At the present day it is practically non-existent ; but the older art of wood-carving remains, and scarcely a mud hovel is built without some rude attempt at decoration on the lintel. The old Grajco-Buddhistic marbles which he scattered over the north-west frontier are often very fine, many of the Gautamas especially being quite beautiful ; but beyond a small colony of terra- A STREET CORNER, PESHAWUR -~ ^.''-WT.j^<-a^"/-i,-'a-.*. '^^^jit.v^-H.f,*^ -,'S-Y V THE ARTS AND CRAFTS OF INDIA 111 cotta workers in Lucknow there are practically now no modellers in India. The oldest paintings in India are the frescoes at Ajunta. Their age is donbtfnl, but it is quite possible that they date from a century or two before Christ. Judging by them, mural decoration did not advance at all during the years. Indeed, the fres- coes to be seen nowadays on newly-built temples, or the houses with which money-lenders love to overtop their mud-hovel clients, are not to be compared with the old ones. These modern productions are often extremely funny, especially when from excess of loyalty towards a legal system which enables hunhja-Ji to get his grip on the land he puts a sahib and a Dicm- sahib as supporters to his threshold. Temples nowadays run largely to extremely spidery pale- blue monkeys with excessively long tails. A picture of Kali De^-i in her Terrific Form, with her tono-ue out. drippincr blood, as she dances on her ao-o-rieved consort Shiv'. is also a favourite subject ; for as the world grows old it favours the horrors which stimulates its jaded appetite. So, year by year, our newspapers become more and more hysterical, more and more ravening-as-wolves after garbage 112 INDIA and carrion ; and in India the ritual of religion, which is to the people an amusement, as newspapers are to us, becomes more and more full of incanta- tions and charms, of small obscenities and puerile superstitions. The priests go one better all round in their effort to keep their hold on the people, and the women, more idle than they used to be before Manchester sent its cloths, and steam mills their flour, go still one more, vying with each other in the elaboration of ritual, till the Stri achchar or woman's law has become a terror to mankind. To revert to the art of painting. Some quite decent miniature work is done, and at Delhi the descendants of the old court painters still make a precarious living by portraits based on photography. Some few years ago a slight stir was made in Upper India by a purely native painter whose work was curiously like that of the early Italian school. One small picture, in particular, of a dead ascetic, might easily have been taken for a Pieta. Music is a difficult subject. It is almost im- possible for the Western ear even to imagine a musical scale in which each tone is but an eighth part of ours ; yet India claims to be able to dis- tinguish these infinitely trivial variations. Of rhythm there is plenty ; the insistent throb- A BUSY BAZAAR (N DELHI THE ARTS AND CRAFTS OF INDIA 113 bing of a tom-tom gets on the nerves with its absolutely changeless accent : and there is melody of a sort. Of harmony, to our ears, none ; and to harmonise a native tune is to treat it as FitzGerald treated the poor tentmaker, Omar Khayyam — that is, to translate it bodily into another world. There are a few tunes to which the West can nod its head, feeling that it can assimilate or par- tially assimilate them — the eternal ''Taza-ba-Taza" of the disreputable bazaar ; "• Zuc/ic/uii/,'" an Afghan song beloved of native bands ; last, but not least, " Oh / Minnca Punnya," the favourite of ayahs and nurseries. But if the West is cliary of accepting the music of the East, tlie East, as a rule, is charj' of the AVestern music. "• Home, sweet Home " (tiie first two bars of whicli is groaned out by almost every well-wheel in the land), "God save the King" (iu devious variations), " Twinkle, twinkle, little Star,"' and the " Bluebells of Scotland " are the only tunes I have ever heard outside the Presidency to"^^^ls. And for the most part, not the whole of them : three, or at most foiu- bars, iterated and re-iterated, is quite enough. Of musical instruments they have quite a number, the simplest, of course, behig the drum 15 114 INDIA kettle or otherwise. The little doroo or hour- glass-shaped drum, when twirled in the hand of an expert dancer, gives to her rhythmic movements just the verve and elan which the cachucha gains from the castanets. The simplest of stringed instruments again is the vina, the oldest of all the many forms of guitar or lyre known to India. It is held sacred to Krishna, who is the Eastern Apollo. It has a sweet tinkling note, and is struck by a steel plectron. Then there are endless fiddles and violas, of which the saringi is the best known. Wind instruments are few ; and yet if a native happen to have a cornet or a clarionet, he will, if he chance to be within a mile of you, make day and night hideous with, say, the first three bars of " God save the King " ; for he is like the bullfinch, — the most " damnable iteration " distresses him not at all — his sense of rhythm is such that one phrase suffices — to him music hath neither beginning nor end ! But for real music India has as yet no ear. Whether she will acquire one is doubtful. She has solved the riddle of life to her own satisfaction by saying, " All is illusion " ; and music lives by denying that illusion is possible. One wonders vaguely what the Emperor Akbar's A LEARNED MAN OF PESHAWUR THE AKTS AND CRAFTS OF INDIA 115 " Song of the Hours " was like, when at dawn and eventide the choristers appeared bearing the twelve golden candlesticks, which they lit or extinguished with censings and scattering of rose lea^ es. It might have been so beautiful, it may have been mere screechings of horns and batterings of drums ; but the ceremony at least Avakes the imagination. In the art of literature, India stands high. There is not nmcli of it. but what there is, is good — some of it superlatively so. To write Sanskrit well requires real culture, yet most of the old speculative and scientific ^vorks are written in unimpeachable style. The later ]Mahonunedan authors are over ornate, but a literatiu^e which can give us such incomparable books as the Ji/ni^civdd- a^ita. Sakiiufdht. the liulniiiKit. and Siibar s Jlct/ioirs mav well be content with itself So much for the arts of India. Kegarding the crafts, one stands arrested at once bv the Indian workman's hand, ^^'hat a marvel of subtle delicacv and supple strength it is I Simply to look at an Indian artisan's iingers is to see deft intertwining, swift knotting, a touch certain as the grave. Ev far the most wonderful sight I have seen in India was the sight of a lacquer-worker at Kasur engaged in engraving a little round lacquer 116 INDIA box which I have now. It is an ordinary round farash-wood box, turned on a country lathe — that most simple and effective of tools — and therein- after coated on the lathe with five successive layers of coloured lac — white, red, yellow, green, black. As a perfectly black box it lay in his hand. Then with one rapid turn of the lathe, the top, the side were grooved through to the green, the yellow, or the red, dividing the surfaces into circles or rings. With this faint guide only, he began work with one rough graver, apparently made out of an old nail, and in a flash a marvellous floreated scroll- work began to appear. Down to the yellow for the curving lines, down to the green for intricate curved foliage, and then, with a sideways flourish, to the red, edged and spotted with yellow, for the flat surfaces of fruit or flowers. So the pattern of pomegranates and draca;na lilies grew, free, yet conventionalised to an accuracy of recurring out- lines, true as a die ; an inner border of jasmine stars, cut clear to the white from the black, with fine yellow and red flourished scroll, an outer one of green zig-zagging on the black, and the box was handed to me by the maker, an absolutely illiterate man, with a deprecating smile. It w^as not worthy my honour's acceptance ; but I have it still, and as WORKERS IN SILVER AND GOLD *-%t\' ■"•■ .i^i,v ,,-f»;^". -J, THE ARTS AND CRAFTS OF INDIA 117 I look at its perfect accuracy of sweeping curve, the extraordinary balance of the whole scheme of decoration which grew from one tool, I feel that the Indian artisan's hand is an asset of which we have not yet recognised the full value. Xot that it will ever compete with machinery, if the machine- made perfection be our ideal. Perhaps it is. At any rate, manv of the old crafts of the Hindu are dying out. Some have alreadv gone. The one old man who could still inlav crystal with gold is dead, and so, unless some curio- collector falls in love with the delicate hunting- scenes and tiower-pieces on the little medallions that used to be set as waistbands, turban girdles, and such like, and bv collecting them stimulates imitation, the last will have been heard of one verv distinctive craft. l^ut. in truth, all the jewellery work of India is in danger of dissolution — if only because pure gold and silver is a necessity to it. Rough tools in a mere human hand cannot grapple with base alloy ; that tinds titting moulder in a Xasmyth steam- lianmier or a patent roller. And to-day. the rich- est of all Time's days, cannot aftord the price of gold : scarcelv the depreciated price of silver. So ornamentation conies from Eirmiiiii'liam or Berlin. 118 INDIA and the precious metals are simply welded into rough fetters for wrist or ankle, — fetters which cost but a rupee or two for the making, and which serve as a savings bank to the wearer. Another thing which militates against the native jeweller is the lack of expert lapidaries. They cannot facet, and the day of table-cut gems is over, — though, indeed, for pure decorative effect few things could beat, for instance, the necklace of table emeralds which used, at any rate, to be a State jewel of the Nawabs of Bhawulpore. To see it worn over a light-brown brocade coat veiled with white muslin was like seeing the young green wheat-fields set in the salt - effloresced soil of the State to which it belonged. And the pagoda-tree no longer thrives and bears fruit. So one sees no longer the great half-hoop rings of pearls, emeralds, sapphire diamonds, rubies, which on an Englishwoman's hand was as sure a guide to India — in the past or present — as an Englishman's yellow face was to an Indian liver. The Chandni-Chowk at Delhi may seem to confute the stagnation in the jeweller's craft ; but half the things one sees there are not really Indian- made. One thing is certain : it is becoming increasingly difficult to get an artificer in gold or A POPULAR STALL THE ARTS AND CRAFTS OF INDIA 119 silver to work for you, as they used to do, at your own house. Tlie makmg of gold thread is a craft in itself, and as it is one which cannot be effectually imitated by a machine it is well worth while to watch it for once, say in Delhi, where it is carried to perfection by the descendants of the tinsel-makers of the Great INIoghuls. The mere flattening of the parcel-gilt silver wire, line as a hair, on a highly polished steel an^'il, is an art in itself, but it is nothing to the manual dexterity required for the due casing of the silk thread with the tinv ribbon of aold. Yet all the tools required are a hook or ring a few feet above the floor, and a long-handled spindle. The silken thread, from a ball under the worker's feet as he squats on the ground, runs over the hook and is attached to the spindle. One rapid sweep of the latter along the worker's thigh sets it going, and both the slender supple hands are fi-ee, one for the thread, one for the reel of tinsel, which in a flash shoots upwards to arm's length, coiled like a snake about the spinning thread. A moment's arrest while the dexterous left hand twirls the made thread upon the spindle, and once more that rapid sweep along the thigh repeats a process of which it has been written " that it is doubtful whether any 120 INDIA mechanical means could ensm-e such perfection or whether it could ever be attained by artisans unused to it." Here then is evidence in favour of the hereditary craftsman, evidence which is not lacking where- €ver we turn in India, but which is never more clearly seen than in some miserably poor high tenement house in Delhi as the sunlight and the gold tinsel together flash up the yellow silken thread, seeming to set it on fire. The craft of weaving is another that is on the downward road in India, as elsewhere. It is inevit- able, of course, that this should be so. Spinning- jennies produce far more even thread than all but the most expert of human fingers ; and even then- production, though exquisite, can only be achieved by an expenditure of time and skill for which few -care to pay in this hurried world of ours. Even in India the housewife prefers to sell the raw cotton for export, and buy her yarn for all but the very coarsest cloths. In truth, she prefers to buy the cloth ready-made. Yet still outside the walls of the towns, in open spaces within them, and nearly always on the outskirts of the villages, you may find the weavers'-walk, where, steering their long-handled spindles deftly in and out of the set- THE ARTS AND CRAFTS OF INDIA 121 sticks, the weaver women twine the long warps, chattering shrilly as they go up and down, never pausing except under the greatest provocation, and then only with the spindles held taut on the thread. But the provocation comes fairly often, since the weavers'-walk is a great gossiping ground, and half the scandal of the village is hatched there. It is a monotonous task laying Avebs, and requires enlivenment ! The weaving of the finer qualities of Dacca muslin is an art in itself, as may be imagined from the fact that the yarn has to be spun during the short hour of light before the sun- rise when the dew still be-diamonds the world and the air is moist. There are tar fewer filaments of raw cotton in fine Dacca thread than in any machine-made yarn in the world, while its twist is about double ; l\ence its extraordinary strength — a strength which enables a piece of muslin, tine as a cobweb, to stand a heavy embroidery of gold, and thereafter to bear much washing. How some of the finer gold tissues with their raised flowers and intricate diaperings are made on the rude looms with bits of bamboo or grass for shuttles is a mystery. Once again, time and patience and long-inherited manual skill come to 16 122 INDIA take the place of brain. Such an expenditure of pure labour would, with the British workman, who requires four shillings a day at least for beef and bread, place the product beyond the pale of any one's purse, but with one who is content — ay ! better content than his European neighbour — to work on half that sum a week, the production is possible — nay, pleasurable ; since work that is not hurried work is great gain to humanity. There is another softener of hard labour in India which does not exist in England, and that is the dignity of being recognised as a "great artificer." To be pointed out as one possessed of unusual skill, as the holder of secret recipes, as the inheritor of acquired adaptations — or adaptability, it matters little which, — all this is also great gain. To see the smirk on the face of some old Mahommedan zumlogi as he, and his fathers, and his little loom are introduced to you by an admiring populace as the best gold -tissue producers of which the town boasts, is to learn that man does not live by bread alone — still less by beef ! And this praise is not the property of weavers or of any special trade. "So and so is a 'great artificer ' " stands to the credit of every one who puts himself into his work. I have seen a gold AT A STREET CORNER, AMRTTSAR -A-f; THE ARTS AND CRAFTS OF INDIA 123 iiilayer on steel, wlien shown a piece of work done by some mikno^vn artist in snch craft, salaam to it qnite simplv and say, " He was a workman indeed." jNIachinery and the division of labour render this attitude towards handicraft impossible in the West ; but that is no reason why we should not admire it. and count it in the day's wage of the Indian craftsman. Perhaps we might rationally go one step farther, and hesitate ere we attempt to sub- stitute for it one more ultimate sixpence. To return to the crafts of India : that of the carpenter is remarkable for having been stationary for thousands of years. Joinerv work is as rude to-day as it was. apparently, in Alexander's ; and now. as then, tlie most beautiful carving con- ceivable is put on a casket or door-frame so badly dovetailed that it needs putty to hide deticiencies. This is, no doubt, largely due to the poverty of tools. Tlie curiously set adze is. it is true, no mean substitute for a plane in the inlierited hand of the Indian carpenter, when used on a wide surface ; on a narrow one it is unreliable. The word inherited is used with intent : for, whether the adaptation or the adaptability of the muscles be handed on. certain it is that the ten-year-old son of an Indian carpenter will use his father's adze 124 INDIA with an accuracy, a certainty, which no grown man of another trade can compass without years of training. But it is hopeless to go down the list of Indian crafts ; there are so many, and they all depend so much on the personal equation, which is the out- come of countless generations of experience in that particular work and no other. The man who vaguely seeks "employment" in the West, who has been a butcher, been a candlestick-maker, and is quite ready to try his hand at plastering or hay- making, is an unknown quantity in India — at present. That this close guildship in trades does away with competition is true ; but then competi- tion brings with it so many evils, not the least of these being the craving for novelty. The wares of an Indian potter have served their purpose for centuries. The potter himself, with their every curve hidden in his pliant thumb, has no temptation to vary their shape into the hideous contortions to be seen in our china shops. In decoration also he is hedged about in every cell of body and mind, not by the experience of one life only, but of many lives. And so — and so the only monstrosities in Indian arts or crafts are those due directly to alien buyers or alien teachers. THE ARTS AND CRAFTS OF INDIA 125 It is almost incredible, the truly terrible teaching that is given at times with the very best intentions. For how much hideous broche-stitch worked into rainbow -hued comforters are not our mission ladies responsible ? and what tieud in human shape presented the beautiful Damascene workers in gold and steel of Sialkot with the pattern of an ink- stand — an apple on a vine leaf — round which one enterprising artist had inscribed in a scroll, " God bless INIaster-sahib Esquire Bahadur " ? Such things are not for laughter : they are for tears. Yet for some of the old handicrafts of India there seems to be no place left in the twentieth -centiu-y world. Take, for instance, the Kashmir shawl industry. So many shawls come from India to England every year as tribute ; and legend has it that one of these went to every bride about the court of that gracious lady. Queen Victoria. For the rest, who needs or buys them, except here and there a chance rajah or nawab ? So, nowadays, even in Kashmir, one seldom happens on a shawl-working family ; yet it is a picture whose loss is to be regretted. A deep thatch giving shade to the worker's eyes, light to his fingers : a warp of threads wide as the shawl itself; and huddled ao-ainst this — the children 126 INDIA perhaps given a bit of plain grounding — a whole family of sorts and sizes, all bending over their bundles of tiny bobbins, deftly weaving them in and out, as with unerring sequence Grandfather, his back against the brick pilaster, his pipe beside him, drones out the pattern, — so many black, one white, two yellow, a green, fourteen red, and so on all along the line. A bright little maid of ten, a greasy little red cap perched on her black pig-tails, watches eagerly for her turn, and is at work almost before the old man has sung out "twe-en-ty green." For it is a green shawl set thick with the pines whose shape is taken from the winding curves of the river which flows at the workers' feet. How does the old man remember each line of the pattern, not in one Kashmir shawl, but in many ? That is a secret — the secret of Weissman's kaim plaama ! CHAPTER XII THE BUILDINGS OF INDIA Pkacticalia' this is the India which tlie globe- trotter comes to see, and he goes away with a hod of bricks and mortar on his back, which he is destined to carry with him in all his recollections of that country. But the real beauty of India lies in the fact that, relatively to its population, there is hardly a building in it at all. You may travel through miles on miles of country without coming upon any more solid sign of human inhabitancy than a reed hovel or a mud hut. In Bombay, of course, there are buildings — beautiful buildings, reminiscent for the most part of kindergarten to) s and a cheap Glasgow emporium. Then there is Fattehpur Sikri. that dream in red sandstone. Thev are poles asunder, these two towns, vet thev pivot the whole round world 128 INDIA of India — its past of regrets, its present of progress. In most large Indian cities nowadays stand representatives of both factors. Tliere is a town hall, or an institute, or a museum of some sort, showing, for the most part, exactly the extent to which the genius of the East has permeated the mind of its Western designer. Sometimes there is a far-off echo of the tune of the tombs about it ; sometimes it is frankly Renaissance, with a minaret or two superadded as a sop to its surroundings. Then, somewhere, hidden away perhaps in a narrow dark lane, or forgotten among outside ruins amongst twisted Jhund or bahool trees, there will be a tomb or a temple telling us of the past. There are a few places in India still, however, in which one can forget the present, where — if one can only get rid of fellow-passengers, guides, and such like — one can realise what that past India must have been. Such are Amber, Oodeypore, Fattehpur Sikri, and, in a lesser degree, the ruins of old Delhi ; for in such places as the Caves of Elephants, the Tope at Sanchi, the rock -cut temples at Ajunta, and EUora, the mind is too full of the sight to be seen, of the marvellous ingenuity of the cutters and AT LAHORE * ' J ^ '*i^ {(■ v""- %^ ir ^:^ # --^ -^ .-^^ THE BUILDINGS OF INDIA 129 builders, for us to dream of the scenes which have been enacted with the building as a background. But these others are different. In Amber, perched high on the Rajputana hills, one can see the flower of chivalry riding up the stone-set slopes, and hear the clash of arms resounding through the Hall of Audience. It is a fine place, Amber. Compared with modern Jeypore, with its horrible Albert Hall and the still more appalling motto " Welcome " in gigantic white letters on its rocky hill, with its so-called "Palace of the Winds, " built of an intolerable pale pink stucco of which any honest, self-respectuig sou'wester would make mincemeat in a moment. Amber is rest and peace. The mere sight of it. a city of the dead, sleeping beside the little cool lake set in the glare of the red Rajputana rocks, makes one forget the soulless city of the living, one has left behind one. Up the steep stone stairs one climbs into the great Hall of Audience, with its quaint stuccoed pilasters hiding the finest carving in India beneath its smug mask of mediocritv. This was done hi the Emperor Jehangir's time, who. sending emissaries to command the instant destruction of a building said to eclipse all IMoghul eflorts after magnificence, IT 130 INDIA received them back again to learn that they had spared a hall of whose beauty the Emperor had heard a grossly exaggerated account, and which was not worthy of his anger. That was many hundred years ago, but the stucco remains. There is something very beautiful about the women's apartments at Amber — something which makes one see the proud innermost soul of the Rajputni who would die rather than surrender herself to the lightest touch of a conqueror ; or, prouder still, resent the least suspicion of familiarity on the part even of their own men. The story is still told of the Kohan princess who, amid the luxury and depravity of a later court, clung to the old flowing petticoat of the Rajput race, and who, when, half in desire to see her dressed in the scantier fashion of other court ladies, half in banter, her husband caught up a pair of scissors and vowed he would curtail her draperies, seized his sword and told him fiercely that such a jest was ill-timed, and that if he repeated it he would find that a sword in the hand of a Kohan woman was a better weapon than scissors in the hand of a Jeypore man. There is something very fine in the passion and poetry, the reserve and right-thinking, of these women, who must have swept over these marble A NARROW THOROUGHFARE THE BUILDINGS OF INDIA 131 floors so often, decked like a bride to meet their conquering lord, decked like a bride to meet his dead body and burn with it on the funeral pyre. Surely some of them, looking through the fretted marble lattices upon the wild hills, and seeing the freedom of the birds of the air, which even now wheel and swoop restlessly over the valley of ruins, as if they saw some quarry amongst the bare rocks, must have longed for the wino-s of a hawk, so that they might fly away and be at "war Avitli their husbands, their lovers, in some distant fleld of tight. One can imagine them, Avaiting, and watching, and wonderinsi" wliat fate held in store for them, as they sat looking out from the balcony over the still reflections in the still lake to the broken ridges of red hills far away beyond the yellow wastes of sand from which rise the rocks of Rajputana. Ay ! as one sits in the shadow feeling drowsy and dreamful by reason of the glare and blare of the yellow sunlight on hot stone, one can almost credit the old legend which tells how the Princess Beautiful, besieged to war's -point by chieftain lovers, seeing her unhappy country distraught by her all -innocent charms, sent a message bidding the many disputants cease quarrelling and come to 132 INDIA a wedding feast, at which she would choose her fate. And when they came, lo 1 the first gift un- covered, of all the honourable gifts that lay before the guests, was a Beautiful Head, holding between its closed, kissable lips the message that they had chosen Death for the bridegroom. " Si non e vero e' ben trovato " ; for it breathes the very spirit of the Rajputni. That breathes through Oodeypore also, where a woman now holds the headship of every Rajput in I' lia. It has a stirring history, this little principality of Mewar, of which Chitore was once the capital. The town stands now, half-rock, half- for ress, rising high above the broken ground where so x.iany besieging armies have camped, and where nistory tells us of at least three desperate sorties when the last hope of holding out was gone. One passes Chitore now in the train, a sullen purple shadow when seen against a primrose dawn. Who sees it thus — remembering those three awful days when the flaming banner of the sun (a golden disc on a round shield of black ostrich feathers) led the flood -tide of Rajput chivalry dressed in the yellow robes of sacrifices to certain death, while the flames of the women's funeral pyres rose up behind them — may well dream that JEYPORE THE BUILDINGS OF INDIA 133 on the battlements there stands the figure of the King's lierald, cUid in his Avhite robes, and Avith his silver sword proclaiming to all time that the Kajputs Avere indeed as their name implies, the Sons of Kings. Then there is old Delhi, or, rather to be accurate. Indrapastha, since the name Dilli was not known until a century or so before Christ. What strikes one there is the vast extent of what one may call formless, foundational ruin — mere heaps of broken brick, the angle corner of a wall, a mound that was perchance once a gateway. It is not much to look at, but seen under a lowering, rain-burdened December sky it is suggestive beyond words, — the wide rolling purpling plain broken by these waves of ruins into the semblance of a vast sea. sullen, mysterious, with the great shaft of the Kutb rising like the mast of some sunken galleon, and here and there — half submerged, like a wreck upon the rocks — the shadowy darkness of a ruined palace or a tomb of dead kings. From the iron pillar — the " arm or weapon of victory '" — \vhich is ascribed to Raja Dhava in the fourth century before Christ, and which is buried so deep in the earth that but one-half of its total length is visible, through the monolith of the great King Asoka, who 134 INDIA lived in the third century, onwards through many a forgotten tomb, to the marvellous spire of the Kutb built by the Slave King; past that to the mound-like pile of the Taghluk fort, and so to the almost perfect buildings of the Moghul times, — we have here a record of many centuries, of seven cities, spread before us for eleven long miles. There is nothing like it in the world. And submerged utterly by the ocean of earth, there must lie here the vestiges of still further generations, of the aboriginal chieftains, and the great Snake Kings, the richest in the world in jewels, gold, and women. There is something very dream -compelling about the thought of these passionate, luxurious, serpent -worshipping people, who flung gold away like water, and let a woman's kiss lure them from even kingship. Here but three miles from the gates of modern Delhi stands the tomb of Humayun, beautiful exceedingly in itself, with its marvellous arches which spring upwards with all the glad litheness of a rising skylark, but which has gained another significance from being the place where Hodson of Hodson's Horse laid peremptory hands on the foolish Bahadur Singh, last of all the Moghuls, and brought him and his scheming wife back by threats THE BUILDINGS OF INDIA 135 and promises to Delhi, tliere to be tried for his life, and convicted to something worse than death — unending exile. It is a fine, yet a pitiable story. — the lire and dash of the young cavalry officer whose grip had for weeks been tightening round the doomed King, his almost solitary venture into danger ; for the King in flight and hiding had yet witli him many hundreds of loyal followers. One can see the little procession, as Hodson describes it himself, making its way that 'Jlst of September, he himself riding beside the Queen's litter. So far good ; but what is to be said of that second procession on the following morning when he escorted the Princes, lured bv promises which lie knew he could not perform I So much controversy has raged round this point as to whether Hodson was or was not justifled in what he did, that it is useless further to discuss it. But one thing may be mentioned to prove indisput- ablv that it could not have been either surprise or attack which made Hodson give the order to shoot the Princes : Prince Aboolbakr was wearing a talisman round his wrist, and Hodsons orderly rnadc Ji'im take it (>//" before he shot him. That is 136 INDIA from the orderly's own lips, and it does not look like a sudden alarm. Close by Humayun's tomb is the mosque and observatory whence the Emperor fell, interrupted in his star-gazing by the call of the muazzim to prayer. They were all fond of the stars, those three great Moghuls, Babar, Humayun, Akbar, and Babar was, amongst many other things, no mean astronomer for the times. Of Delhi itself there is small need to speak, except in regard to the great Mutiny of 1857, of which later on. Even its palace, home once of the famous peacock throne, is dominated by the Ridge, red still as if with the blood that was spilt on it. The Jumna Masjid, itself dignified by a majesty of its own, as it stands supreme on its many-stepped plinth of red sandstone, yields to the simple tablet in the old arsenal, which tells the nine names of the nine heroes who fired the mine. And yet the Diwani-khas at Delhi comes next to the Taj Mahal in beauty of proportion. Shah Jehan — great -great -grandson of our jack- of- all- trades, who was yet master of many, Babar — must have inherited his ancestor's keen artistic sense, for whatever he built was beautiful. That he employed Italian architects does not affect the fact THJi JUMNA MASJib iS-W^ X THE BUILDINGS OF INDIA 137 that he employed good ones, and only approved suc^h plans as pleased his sense of form and colour. Tiiere are few things in the world more soul- satisfying than to stand, as you come from the Iving's bath, in one of the outer archways of the Private Hall of Audience, and look down through its pillared arcades to the great yellow tri])tych of blazing sunlight beyond, in whicii the white marble traceries of the King's pleasure-house show like a bridal veil, while through the aisles a chastened light niters from the gardens full of pomegranates and peaches. But in all these places the mind has freedom to wander and choose its subject through the centuries. In Fatteh])ur Sikri all thought is centred round one man — the man who built it, Avho lived in it. who in a way deserted it when years had brought him disillusionment. For Akbar was not one to be satisfied witli the outward show of kingship, and jiower, and influence. He was a man of A'ery strong affections ; his son was a disappointment to him, and the murder — the needless murder by that son — of ^Vbulfazl. the Emperor s dearest friend, his almost brt^ther, was an abidhig grief For all that, Fattehpur Sikri holds the best of Akbar ; and that, briefly, is the best of India, for IS 138 INDIA she has produced no man Hke unto him. He laid the foundation-stone of the city when he and his wife, a Hindu princess of the house of Jodhpore, in bitter grief over the loss of their twin boys, went to live for a time beside the hermitage of the saint Salim Chisti, in pursuance of a vow. Here he built a palace, and here nine months afterwards Prince Salim, so called after the saint, was born. Here also he was brought up. So every stone of Fattehpur Sikri represents Akbar's fatherhood, his hope that a son would come after him whose hands would be strong enough to hold the reins of govern- ment. He dreamt of the future, and his dream remains cut in red sandstone. Such a solid dream too ! Simple, and solid, and strong, with the excep- tion of Raja Birbal's house, which he, the Prime Minister, built for his daughter ; for Birbal had had enough of wives ! Cynical, worldly, Epicurean, the stories they tell of him to this day in India show him a man of culture, possessing the wisdom of the serpent, inchned at heart to jest bitterly over the riddle of life which he could not understand. And so, in the middle of all Akbar's wide court- yards and aspiring arches, Birbal's house stands, overlaid with ornament, capricious utterly, sur- A BARA DURRI AT DELHI THE BUILDINGS OF INDIA 139 charged with the spirit of "let us eat and driuk, for to-morrow we die." Such was not Akbar's thought. One can ahnost see the man, as he may have stood many a time, looking out througli his Gateway of Victory — the finest commemorative archway in the world, beside which the arches of Trajan or Constantine fade into insignificance — looking out over the wide expanse of India, stretching from his feet to the horizon of land and sky, and wondering what was to come after him. Perhaps his eyes may have often travelled to the sweeping, upspringing arch soaring away above his head, and linijered on the words chiselled round it in undying stone : Said Jesus, on whom be peace ! '■ This world is a bridge. ■• Pass over it, but build no house there. Who hopes for an hour hopes for eternity. The rest is unseen." There is scarcelv any one who has given a more outward and visible form to his inward and spiritual life than Akbar. The routine of his court was one long tale of spnbolism. Who but he would ever have thought of coining the immortal money — those marvellous gold pieces with a tulip or a rose stamped on one side, and on the other the simple legend •' God is greatest " '( Except, indeed, upon 140 INDIA the one called the Henseh, that almost fantastic square of gold worth nearly two hundred pounds, on which this warning showed : This coin is for the necessities of those who travel on the road to God. That was the keynote of the immortal money. No ultimate sixpence for pleasure, or luxury, or wealth ; only something to supply bread and the more than bread by which man lives as he passes over the Bridge of Life. The symbolisin of that nightmare of beauty the Panch - Mahal, quaint superstructure on super- structure of pink and yellow sandstone which stands not far from Birbal's house overlooking the women's apartments and gardens, has been for- gotten nowadays, and men puzzle over its purpose. What was it, with its tier on tier of open arcading, through which every wind of heaven may blow ? An old Mahommedan told me — and the idea grows upon one as the character of Akbar stands out more intensely romantic, imaginative, original, the more one reads of him — that the Emperor built it as a playground for that darling of his heart, that apple of his eye, the Prince Salim. On wet days the heir to India and the future was not to be " cribbed, NAUL MASA MOSQUE THE BUILDINGS OF INDIA 141 cabined, confined." He was to have shelter, but with the wide diversity of God's earth in it. No recurring line, no stereotyped curve, was to lead his young- mind into the groove which breeds intoler- ance, and so every tier of building is difterent, and no two colunnis are alike. To stand on the second story surrounded by thirty -and -five shafts and capitals, each one ditteringfrom the other, is almost like standii\g in the A-aulted aisles of a forest. Yes ! I think my old JMahommedan was right. The story tits square into the square blank. One cannot leave Fattehpur Sikri without paus- ing awhile in the Argument House, or, as some prefer to call it, the Hall of the Privy Council. It is bv far the most orighial thing in the whole of Akbar's citv. it springs direct from Akbar's most unfettered mind. It is fairly large, fairly lofty, vaulted into a central cusp, below which there rises from the floor to the height of ten or twelve feet an enormous colunm of red sandstone, the capital of which, highly decorated and set round with a carven balustrade, forms a sort of throne. From the four corners of the room, which are cut off into galleries, sweep out four low wide arches to meet this central throne. Balustraded in like manner, thev give means of access to it. Thus we have, as 142 INDIA it were, a two-storied building with no floor between the stories. Here in the centre, alone, unsupported by the echoing flattery which surrounds most Eastern kings, Akbar used to sit, watching, listen- ing, while from the four galleries the voices of the disputants rose, and below him — yawning, no doubt, over the, to them, tedious entertainment — sat his court. Sometimes, we are told, if the King wearied, he would slip away, leaving the learned men wrangling before emptiness ; but more often he would sit through to the bitter end, enjoying, so they say, the success of every skilled debater, no matter of what caste or creed. Here the Jesuit fathers Acquaviva and Anthony Monserrat held up the flag for Christianity against all the learned Ma- hommedan preachers and Hindu pundits of the day. Did Akbar favour any of the creeds, the dogmas, which he thus heard expounded ? It is hard to say. One thing is certain : in his own personal life he showed the asceticism of the Hindu sadhu, the grip and go of the Mahommedan zealot, the patience and loving-kindness of the Christian. For the rest let us leave him, as we have imagined him, standing under his Arch of Victory, looking out THE TAJ MAHAL, AGRA r f^ Ju -SUSP- THE BUILDINGS OF INDIA 143 over the world he had coiujiiered, with tliese words over liini : Tho rest is unsoon. To turn to tlie other buildings which are worth seeing in India. ^V great deal has been said in praise of the Pearl INIosque at ^Vgra. It is delicate and pure, super- latively. It is like some beautiful no\'ice dedicated in her innocence to be the Spouse of the Church ; but it is no more. It cannot appeal to the work- worn, world-worn souls of men as do the wide eclioing spaces of the Black INIosque at Delhi. Tlie tomb of .Tehangir at Lahore, Wazir Klian's IMosque, and in a lesser degree the Jumna jNIasjid at Dellii — which should be seen empty, by moon- liglit — have each and all a real soul of beauty. And what is to be said of tlie Taj INIahal I Only this — that it rejoices the heart to think that in his long, sad years of blindness its builder Shah Jehan nuist have had the memory of its unearthly beauty as a consolation. To know, that for once yon have nigh touched perfection, is great gain. For the rest. I saw the Taj for the tirst time when 1 was leaving India after tive-and-twenty years of residence therein. I was prepared to criticise. I had heard so much of its beautv that 144 INDIA I was inclined to doubt it. And my verdict — of value simply as a personal equation — is that it is a bit of the New Jerusalem. It neither requires moonlight nor sunset ; it brings its own atmo- sphere, its own light that "never yet was on sea or shore." And, surely, of all the quaintly upside down, blindingly contradictory things in the wide world is this, that in the land of Great Moghuls, Grand Turks, harems, zenanas, down-trodden womanhood, loveless marriages, polygamy, bestial couplings, and so forth — vide the reports of many excellent, well- intentioned men and women — this monument of exceeding, unparalleled beauty should stand, as one of the Seven Wonders of the World, a record of the love given to a wife who died when her thirteenth child was born ! A FAMOUS WELL, DELHI CHAPTER XIII THE TF,:\rPLES OF INDIA CoNSiDERiXG how temples abound in India, and considering tliat eacli sight-seer who looks at them has. as a rule, two eyes, it is surprising how few people realise either what a temple is, or what the worship is which the priests conduct hi them. Tliose who do grasp the foundational facts are cliietly missionaries, and they condemn root and branch a system and ritual Avhich at first sight — and, hideed, very often at last sight also — seems utterly uiispiritual. Indian temples, then, are not really temples in the sense hi which churches can be called God's temples. They are simply shrines ; shelter, that is, for the image of a god or godling. They are the receiving houses for the tithes set apart as a remembrance of thhigs spiritual. A good Hindu need never go near a temple 145 IS 146 INDIA He can pay his due through a servant's hand if he chooses. If he does go, he will simply present his offering, salaam to the symbol within, and go away. He has sought and he receives no spiritual refresh- ment. He has acknowledged something beyond and above his ordinary life with which it is ex- pedient to keep in touch. The very ignorant, no doubt, believe that they can get at the ear of this Something ; but the native of India is not the only person in the world who chei-ishes this belief They do not all offer sugar cups and curded milk ; but they offer what they presume pleases the great Power more than corporeal gifts. All the ritual of Christianity has for its aim the realisation by man of his unity with God. Our beautiful English Liturgy is instinct with this desire. To the Hindu this fact is undoubted. He knows himself only as something which after long ages will return whence it came ; to what — froni want of not words, but ideas — he is forced to call absolute nothingness, because in his present state of development it is unthinkable. It is not therefore necessary for the good Hindu to seek help in the realisation of his oneness with his Creator. He simply acknowledges the fact by treating that Creator as if He were very man. He THE TEMPLES OF INDIA 147 builds Him a liouse and gives tribute to the priests to keep Him comfortable, and duly supplied with all things which are desirable to mere man. Having done this, there is no doubt that many go no further : but the spiritually minded begin religion when they leave the temple, having given tithes of mint and cummin. And yet. even so. there can be no question that — almost ignored as it is by most writers, even so o;enerallv fair a one as W. J. Wilkins — the reverent drinking of the C/iaraii amr/t or "water of life. " that is. the water in which the gods feet have been bathed, is a sort of a sacrament. It is supposed to confer some spiritual good on the soul of the drinker : at least, this is my experience. '• If vou will come here, my daughter, to the temple to-morrow at dawn." an old Brahman has said to me. " I A\'ill give you C/nvan anuit, and then vou will become a real Hindu." This was at Benares ; and. had I gone. I have no doubt I should have been mulcted of five rupees ! But the idea was there ! Indeed, the mere derivation oi the word "amrit" or "a'mirt." which is the Sanskrit death with the negative affixed, by show- ing it to be the " Elixir of Life " shows its sacra- mental meaniuij, I have known Hindu widows 148 INDIA who found exactly the same comfort m a daily drinking of it as many a Christian woman does in daily communion. It is not always drunk at the temple ; it is often taken home and used as holy water. The ritual of the temple is, as a rule, confined to the Brahmans ; but in Benares about dawn the temple ways are literally thronged with women, each bearing a quaint little brass cruet-stand, holder of sandal-wood powder, rice, ghi, curds, and sugar, whilst hanging from the other hand will be a jasmine or marigold chaplet. They are going to attend " The Uprising," when the Brahmans, muttering texts the while — what texts it is impossible to say, — take the deity of the shrine from its bed, wash it, anoint it with oil, and return it to its proper seat for the day. The ritual of this is so complex, it involves so many changes of posture and genuflexions, the employment of so many acolytes and accessories, that seeing it only from a distance, performed in the always dark and generally overcrowded inner shrine, it is impossible to grasp what is going on ; but 1 remember that the first time I watched it I was irresistibly reminded, in the swift precision of the celebrants, their nasal twang, the celerity IN iHE TF.MPLE OF AMRITSAR THE TEMPLES OF INDIA 149 with which they changed the venue, and their absolnte lack of all reverence in look or manner, of a baptism I once saw in 3Iilan Cathedral, when a blue-chinned sensual-looking priest christened three babies, changing his stole and kissing it, juggling with oil and salt and bottles the Avhile, in an inci-edibly short space of time. Sacerdotalism is inevitably the same all over the world. The constant familiarity breeds, not contempt, but a curious indifference. The whole worsliip of the slu-ine consists in attending to the idol as if it were a man or woman and apportioning its days with propriety. There are, in all, seven ceremonies, the chief of these being "The Uprising," "'The King's Feast" or dhmer, '• The Joining " or the celebration of the meeting of Day and Night at sunset. For underneath all the thirty thousand little godlings lurks the one worship of the sun as the Light of Life. Tlie texts and the ritual vary somewhat day by day. but how or wherefore it is impossible to say ; "it has always been so" or "the priests know" being the ans\\'er to all inquiries. There is no reason to doubt the former state- ment, and therefore we are at liberty to suppose that the same anthropomorphic ritual that now 150 INDIA obtains was the worship in the old Brahmanical rock temples. In using the word anthropomorphic, however, it must be remembered that the native of India does not make his God in the likeness of man because he can conceive of nothing that is not man, but because he recognises that he him- self is part of that mysterious Something outside and beyond him which it is impossible for him to reduce to terms except as man. As in all other things, however, the actual and the theoretical differ widely in temple worship. The almost incredible rapacity of the priests, the gullibility of the women, are beyond words. The rapacity grows, too, with the growing years, as one by one the Brahman's richer, better educated clients break away from his authority. As the keeper of a shrine said to me mournfully, " Nowa- days the pilgrims deduct 'third-class tikkut' from their offerings and I starve." Naturally ; and this is a grievance that will increase. The pilgrimage to Benares, for instance, is a favourite one with widows, but they are literally not safe without some strong protector. With the Ganges at hand a stray widow or two can easily be dispensed with, after her money has been secured by intimidation. I heard terrible THE GOLDEN TEMPLE, AMRITSAR t'H, ' ■ Vll^ ' jf --'.%•'' 'f THE TEMPLES OF INDIA 151 tales of things that had really happened ivom four widows, who implored me to take a Cook's tourist party of them down with me ^vhen the great ecli])se fair was on. They had no men folk, they said, and they dared not go alone. In truth, one can well imagine the helplessness of that most helpless of God's creatines, an Indian woman who has been sheltered since she was born, in the little dark purlieus and tortuous lanes which fill up the space between the Temple of biscs/iiva?- and the river at Benares. And vet how perfect they are — as a picture — those high, windowless walls, pale ochre, flesh- colour, purple, a niche here, a niche there, dripping with the oil of many votive lamp-lets ; yet with nothing in them to be worshipped, maybe, except a worn stone, the print perhaps of a blood -red hand. A door in the Avall, just an ordinary square door, low, rudely carved, but Ye powers above ! wliat a glimpse through it ! A wide cloister, a spired shrine, a motley crowd, coloured, garlanded, tlie clang of a great brazen bell, and over all a chanting voice and a smell of incense, the wliole set round with three high, almost windowless walls ; above them more spires 152 INDIA rising into the sky, that seems pale with the very excess of light. Here, almost blocking the narrow lane, sits a seller of garlands. There is a platter of white purple reflexed datura blossoms among his wares — such deadly-looking flowers, holding such an un- kenned sweetness with a hint of poison in it. A veiled woman buys one, a pice clinks on the plate ; she hurries away towards the Great God's temple. What is she going to beg of Shiva -jee ? Who knows ? Something secret, for the datura is the flower of death. There, causelessly, a mere hole cut in the wall and arched over, is a relic-vendor's shop. He has the quaintest things on sale, and the bands of pilgrims as they pass, close-herded by priests and guides, have to stop, in obedience to covert nods and winks of the shopkeeper and his touts, to over- haul the stock-in-trade. See ! there is a priceless saligrama (it is only the glass ball from a soda- water bottle) — What ! not give eight annas for it ? Then take it, and good luck, for four, and bless the good priests who brought them to an honest man ! The tall country bumpkin, in charge of his long tail of womenkind, pulls out four annas sheepishly, and the glass soda-water ball goes off" AT THE DOOR OF THE TEMPLE THE TE:\IPLES of IXDIA 153 to be cosseted, and anointed with oil, and powdered with sandal-wood or red vermilion in some Hindu household. Women will tell their worries and troubles to it ; perhaps it may be held before some one's dying eyes ; it may even perform miracles. Who can tell ? Not all customers are so easy to please, however, and I once gauged the fierce, fanatical, blind rage of this temple-quarter of Benares by refusing to pay five rupees for a saligTcuna which had a violet tinge. I did not wish, I said, to buy a vindictive avatar. The seller flung the sacred thing back among its cheaper conn-ades with muttered curses, and as I moved on amid dark looks I heard the remark " The MFcchclta knows too much," in a tone which suggested a desire to teach me that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. About hiscslnvur itself, that small, absolutely- dark recessed square beneath the chased gold spire, there is a curious air of mystery that filters out mto the alley which encircles it. What hes inside the low door? One gains through a hole in the wall a glimpse of deep obscurity, of bending figures lit up by a flickering lamp, a floor covered A^dth garlands. There is a very ancient liugam, I am told — a pillared stone 20 154 INDIA of polished black marble. That is all. But it is jealously guarded. My Hindu widow promised to take me inside, and an old and very holy Brahman offered to do the same ; but it was not worth it. Besides, knowledge would have spoilt the mind- picture of the golden spires, the half-carven, half- crumbling temple, the intense shadow in the alley, the careless crowding in of flower-laden worshippers going where I may not, cannot go. Their faces are full of eager hope and reverence ; they believe in something of which I know naught, have a security that is far from me. I am outcast. Outcast in the streets of Benares ! What a fate for gods or men ! where every other shop sells a chaplet or Ram-dakkan, shaped like a carpenter's square, with " Ram-ram, ram-ram " running round endlessly appliqued in blue cloth on red, or red on blue, in which the faithful hand can rest and count its rosary unseen, without letting the right hand know what the left hand is doing ! No, Benares is no place for the MVeclicha. And yet he must remember it always with reverence. To see it once from the river-bank at the early dawn-tide of some great festival is to understand once and for all the power which, certainly for three thousand years, has kept India absolutely unprogressive. THE RIVER FRONT, BENARES THE TEMPLES OF INDIA 155 .\s slie was in the davs of iMegasthenes or Arrian, so she was when I first knew her. The secret of this stability hes open to the world, challeniihio; the litrht of a new day, on the ghants at Benares. This Avorld, even the city itself, is illusion ; true life lies behind it and all earthly things. Why struggle for personal comfort to the personal pass- ing body. Keep it pure, undeiiled. That is the whole duty of man. In this search for purity CAcry thought of the vast crowd of bathers is centred, and it lingers still in the half-charred bodies of the dead which sweep down the rushing yellow tide of the river towards the unseen sea. CHAPTER XIV THE WOMEN OF INDIA This is an extremely difficult subject of which to treat fairly, chiefly because it is impossible to swallow wholesale the two opposing estimates of Indian womanhood — the one favoured by most Anglo-Indians and fostered by missionary reports, which represents it as being thoroughly degraded, hopelessly, helplessly depraved, and utterly en- slaved ; the other — of late so enthusiastically preached by Miss Margaret Noble in her book The Web of Indian Life — which asserts that, on the contrary, the ideals of the Indian woman are the highest in the world, and that her conduct is an example, her life free and happy. Naturally, it is difficult to bring these two absolutely genuine beliefs into line, especially if we adopt the Western standpoint and begin by assert- ing that happiness must hold hands with freedom. 156 A WOMAN AT THE WELL, JEYTORE -♦•»K-'^ ^l^-T-*.-*™!™*-. ?»' , 1*« »1* \i. Jl I THE WO:\rEN OF INDIA 157 The only thing to be done is to take the asser- tions bit by bit. and see if they are borne out bv facts. I.el us therefore begin with the ideal. In the \Vest we formulate as our ideal woman a human being of equal rights with man ; mistress of her own sex. as he is master of his ; therefore free to use that sex as she chooses. ]M other in j)os-<^\\ she has /// c'sxc a right to refuse motherhood. She has tlierefore the right to go down to the grave still withholding from the world its immortality, still denying to it vast possibilities. For it must not be forgotten that to every woman in the world the Angel of the Annunciation brings the divine message, proclaiming that of her. perchance, a saviour shall be born. For the greatest poet, pauiter, musician, statesman, teacher, remahi still amongst those unliorn. In the East this is not so. The ideal there, is of a humai\ being who is not the equal of man ; who cannot be so. since the man and the woman together niake the perfect human being to whose guardianship is entrusted the immortality of the race. Outside marriage there should be no sex. and not to marrv is wilfully to murder the possi- bilitv of life. 1S8 INDIA That is one point of divergence. The next shows even greater cleavage. The Western w^oman is taught that she has the right to monopolise the whole body and soul of a man. She can demand his love — that mysterious something over and above duty, over and above mere sexual attrac- tion or friendship, which is the sole sanctifier of marriage. The ideal Eastern woman knows nothiuff of monopoly or love. The sole sanctifier of her union with a man is the resulting child ; the sole tie, the tie of fatherhood and motherhood. Therefore if she has no children she has two courses open to her : either she must bring a more fortunate handmaiden to her lord, and cherish the children as her own ; or she must yield her place in hearth and home, in prayer and offering, give up her spiritual union with her husband, and live apart. Marriage to her, as to her husband, is no personal pleasure : it is a duty to the unborn — a duty which involves self-restraint on both, — on her, since she has voluntarily to give up any personal right on her sex ; on the man, because he also has to yield his Hberty, since the woman who hands on his immortality is as his mother, and must be treated with absolute respect. WATER-CARRIERS AT NUTHA "?^^sm. THE WOMEN OF INDIA 159 Now there can be no question as to which of these two ideals chiinis the greatest amount of self-abnegation. Undoubtedly the Eastern. In other ways also the Eastern outlook on life demands more moral courao-e. The Western o-irl is taught that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander ; the Eastern girl is taught that this is not so. Her chastity, for instance, is of infinitely greater importance to the home than is the man's, and she accepts the undeniable fact ; and by doing so recognises the supreme importance of her own position. Before passing on to practice, it will be in- structiye to consider how flatly Western law denies the attitude of the AVesteru woman towards marriage. She proclaims that unless she can find diyine loye, marriage is no marriage ; it asserts that she may loye whom she chooses, provided the sexual relationship A\ith her husband remains unimpaired. The husband cannot object to her failure to be to him companion, helpmeet, friend ; he cannot eyen complain if she refuses to be a mother. She may neglect his house, his children, play skittles with his money, his reputation. She stands immune from interference on the rock of her sex ; all the rest is mere talk. 160 INDIA This curious antagonism between faith and works makes her position oddly undefined. Like a shuttlecock she bandies, and is bandied over the network of sex which constitutes modern society, claiming a point here, repudiating it there, clinging to the bat of marital faithfulness with one hand, with the other wielding the doctrine of spiritual affinities, until it is no wonder that the Divorce Court is full. Lucky is it that in normally healthy cases love follows on marriage, else we should require more judges, more courts ! To come now to practice. It may be conceded at once that the Indian woman falls further from her ideal than the Western one ; but then her ideal is higher. Besides, it is conceivable that were, let us say, some few hundred Eastern mothers-in- law of the uttermost-utmost type to descend on London with an eye to its conversion, as our unmarried Mission ladies do on India, full of sympathy born of their own needs, full of reproba- tion born of their own ideals, they would find quite as much at which to hold up holy hands of horror as we do — say in Calcutta and Bombay. What is more, were they to go into our country towns and villages, they would find far more at which to cavil than we can in rural India, A NATIVE WOMAN OF JEYPORE 5* y" A: x^r THE WOMEN OF INDIA 161 wliere life remains singularly pure, singularly simple. The intolerable indignity of a woman's position generally, prey as she is to familiarities, to coarse words in the streets, to gigglings and screechings in corners, even to her husband's or lover's public endearments, would shock them utterly. For there is nothing of that sort in India. Vice may thrive, but it is silent. Except in the bad- cliaracter bazaars, and even there but seldom, there is nothing to suggest sex in an Indian city. The horse -play of hooligans, the open challenge of Tam-o'-Shanter ijirls, the ticklinos and titterings of "Arry and 'Arriet, are alike unknown. There is outward decency at least, and that is great gain. Then the flaunting abroad of girls claiming atten- tion by their dress, ready to rouse elemental passions in all and sundry — if all and sundry are foolish enough to be so roused, — while they smile, securely anuising themselves, Avould be terrible. That is not the ^voman's portion. If she spends hours over her dress, it must be for the father of her children, to attract him. The drunken husbands, slatternly wives, miserably-neglected children, would all be an oft'ence indeed ; while the fact of a bride havhig often to work hard, instead •21 162 INDIA of being set free from care, would seem real cruelty. Last, but not least, the solitude of home life and the husband's incessant claim on his wife would be great hardships. To us, on the other hand, it seems horrible to be screened, secluded, shut out from all outside pleasures, and we point out the pettinesses, the quarrelsomeness, which such idleness breeds in the Eastern women. It is true, they are quarrelsome, they are petty, they are idle ; indeed, idleness in the women of the towns — for in rural India the women do a lion's share of outdoor work — is responsible for much. I have known a large houseful of well-to-do native women do nothing at all from year's end to year's end, but talk, eat sweetmeats, and quarrel. Small wonder, then, if they spend their leisure in the formation of what their men-folk helplessly call " the woman's law " ; that is a code of conduct, etiquette, ceremony, and observance, to comply with all the provisions of which would tax the resources of a Japanese general. To live as I have done in a Hindu house, especially when the real house-mistress is a masterful and deeply religious widow who is grandmother to the babies and mother to their parents, is no longer to wonder at MARKET WOMEN OF AJMERE THE WOMEN OF INDIA 163 the absolute terror vnth which men speak of the stri achchar. There is to be carrot stew for dinner, and the little cosmos licks its lips, until suddenly a child gets the hiccough, and straightway the fiat goes forth : carrot stew is unlucky, it must be pease porridge once more. The latest little bride per- chance stumbles on the threshold, and hey presto ! such a to do. Red pepper must be burnt, soot smeared, and the whole household propitiate the little brass godlings on the roof with sweetmeats and flowers, lest evil befall high hopes. The wretched husbands in such houses, when they come home or go forth, have to submit to pattings, sprinklings, tying of knots in the hair, and are lucky if they liave not to carry concealed about them to court, office, or workshop the most incon- grous and sometimes revolting things, such as the half-chewed morsel of bread on which baby has cut his last tooth ! For the men of India are — poor souls ! — the most henpecked in the world. They — especially the IMahonnnedans— make a brave show ; they may even, should they have some slight knowledge of English, stigmatise their women-folk as "poor itrnorant idiots," but once behind the purdah in the 164. INDIA women's apartments. Bob Acres' courage is stable in comparison with theirs. I know no more pitiable object on this earth than an elderly Turk having his beard dyed blue by his female relations ! Fatma and Ayesha wink at each other while the other wives look on, and when the farce is over they retire to the cupboard and lock themselves up and give him the key, with strict injunctions to be home punctually and not to look in at the club. Of course, there are exceptions, but the general form of Home Rule is feminine despotism veiled by a slavish subserviency in trivial details. Nothing, however, emphasises the different out- look of the Eastern and the Western women more than the feelings with which, as a bride, the Eastern and the Western girl goes to her husband's home. The latter, no doubt, puts the husband first in the list of agreeable novelties, but the new house, the new position, the new liberty, run him very close. She has herself chosen everything, the cretonnes, the colour of the bridegroom's wedding tie ; she has high hopes of her cuisine, of charming dinners when she shall be admired as high priestess ; and in these latter days there lurks deep down a vague hope that motherhood may not come over- soon to interfere with these pleasures. Frankly, she THE WOMEN OF INDIA 165 goes to the new life as she would go to the theatre, expecting to be interested and amused. The Eastern bride goes to a restriction of liberty in a cloister ; goes self-dedicate to duty. For her there is no new house, no new position, nothing but the extremely doubtful pleasure of a husband whom she has not chosen. No degrada- tion could be deeper to her Western sister than being forced to marry a perfect paladin if she happened to prefer a pawnbroker ; but the Indian woman is nine times out of ten quite content with the choice of others. There are indeed few happier households than Indian ones ; or rather, one should perhaps use the past tense, since the native girl is fast learning to read novels, and ere long will doubtless grasp the fact that love makes the world go round — perhaps by turning people's heads ! It seems a pity ; even the purdah is preferable to the titter of the Tam-o'-Shanter girl. One thing is certain : the AVestern woman has quite as much to learn from the Eastern woman as the Eastern has from the Western. Were they both to set their minds to the task, they would come near to perfection. JMeanwhile they — sisters of our Empire — eye each other, and, woman-like, complain ot each other's manners. 166 INDIA Certainly one is free to confess that there are few more ill-mannered creatures on God's earth than a native lady travelling in a first- or second- class railway carriage, who considers her ticket entitles her to smoke, chew pan, suckle her baby, eat sweets, spit, and clean her teeth when and how she chooses. But all women lose their manners when they are herded together, and so do men. Sex has its benefits. Go to a Jat or a Sikh village where the women live in bon camaraderie with the men, and you will find yourself in a different atmosphere. Dip deeper down into the innermost thoughts of the women, and you will recognise that a good woman is a good woman all the world over. And in India she is certainly none the less good, because behind all the senseless details, the almost revolting habits, and trivialities of real life, there lies an ideal of what woman should be, which is the highest that the world has ever known. A NATIVE BRIDE CHAPTER XV THE ASCETICS OF INDIA No sketch of India would be complete without some mention of its ascetics, for they are the outward and visible sign of its inward and s.pu-itual mind. Long centuries of endless wars, conquests, famines, plagues, pestilence, have borne in upon this mind the \anity of earthly existence. All things are Mava or Illusion. The Secret of Life is how to escape from life. The bodv is the tirst obstacle in the road ; therefore let the body be got rid of by denying the desires of the body. Here at once we get the sad/iu. the man who has forsaken all things except that spark of the Divhie which is himself Xaked. homeless, he eats onlv when food is ortered to him. drinks only from the cup of cold water Avhich is given in the name of the Lord. 168 INDIA In return he speaks to the givers, of the Great Secret and passes on, a wanderer. In the days of Alexander the Great he was hoary of years ; prac- tically all Indian history has been enacted before his eyes. " Naked he came, naked he has gone," is the death-wail of India. The Sadhu anticipates it. There are many kinds of ascetics in India, and they have many kinds of self-torture, but the true Sadhu is the one who simply forsakes all worldly things and wanders. Smeared with ashes, their only dress (and that often out of fear of the police) a wisp of rag, they are generally dismissed by Anglo-Indians as ignorant, uncultured savages, or half- crazy fanatics. But they are neither ; they are often extremely well- educated, deeply versed in metaphysics and specula- tive lore, with a dialectic skill which is surprising. They will knock a false argument into a cocked hat with easy ability. Some of them — these naked savages — -will astonish you by quoting Herbert Spencer ; for even nowadays they are recruited from all classes, and they belong by rights to the most thoughtful of each class. In the West the thinker becomes an agnostic, or a parson, or a philanthropist ; in India he becomes a Sadhu. MID-DAY, JEYPORE *~^ ^i'l THE ASCETICS OF INDIA 169 Naturally the maiority of them — they may be roughly estimated at fifteen per cent of the total population — are not of very high mental calibre ; but. as a rule, these men whom you meet at e\ ery turn have all some kind of a hold on the spiritual life — they have all left something to follow nothing. And they follow it far. Up in the mountain wilderness of Kashmir among the Eternal Snows. vou may conre upon a man who has journeyed on foot almost from Cape Cormorin, who has slept out under the stars, who has passed tlu-ough the world, as it were, and carried nothing away with him. save the one Divine spark which he seeks to unite once more with the Great Mystery which lies behind all worlds. That man. count him how you will — let ignorance, superstition, even laziness and greed, be his chief uiotiA'C powers — is yet a different being from the man who is absolutely occupied by this world. And many of these i/ogis are mighty thinkers. The fineness of their philosophical reasonings, the subtiltv o( their dialectics, leave one amazed. 1 remember, on the way to the caves of Amar- nath. camping bv chance i^and mistake) on a plot of o-reen sward which, it afterwards appeared, was a tavourite resting-place of such ascetic pilgrims. Thev had no right to it, of course, but shortly after 170 INDIA our two small tents were up, a group of the naked ones arrived, and began to grumble and cast sullen looks at our Mahommedan servants. They settled down, however, for there was really plenty of room for all, under their quaint mushroom-like white umbrellas ; but as others kept dropping in until there were a hundred or more of them, and the murmuring grew to open cursing of the cook as he returned with food from the gram-seller's shop, I thought it time to interfere. So, wrapping my dress carefully round me, I started to walk through their encampment affecting terror, and calling: out " Touch me not ! touch me not ! " without the additional bad words which they had used. They stared, until one laughed. And then we were friends. As other pilgrims drifted in I could hear the word passed on," She will not hurt, she is a daughter of the Sun." That evening there was a regular symposium in the shade of a big banyan-tree, and we talked politics for quite a long time very amicably. They left next morning, some of them calling down blessings as they went. I often wonder if any of them succumbed to the snow- drifts higher up, as countless numbers do, year after year ; for they will take no precautions against the THE ASCETICS OF INDIA 171 cold, except perhaps a drink of " charrus "" or Indian hemp. Drug-drinking is a terrible temptation to these men, possibly, as Professor James remarks, because the ettect of all intoxication is first of all to deaden the "spirit of fell denial" and bring counnunion with the Everlasting Yea. Certain it is that the drunkard begins nearly ahvavs bv being a man of imagination : it is that, indeed, which makes drunkentiess so great a cm^se. since it is par cicl'/- h'ncr the sin of the salt of the earth. The Sadhu plays a heavy role in the dailv life- history of India. He is generally the ^m-ii or godly teacher of every Indian household. To hear liis call " Alakli .' Alakh .' " in the street is to rouse a pleasurable commotion in manv a sheltered dove- cot ; for it is a pious dutv to feed sad/ius, and even the sternest house-mother will give a dole of cake and pease-pudding for that purpose. Then they are still credited with miraculous powers, and many are the vows registered, as it were, in their name. Whether thev have anv occult knowledge or not, they certainlv strive after it, especially those who pass their lives in self- torture and who hope thereby to gain a spiritual ascendancv over themselves and others. That the 172 INDIA people believe them to possess such power is indubitable. A Yogi's curse is not a thing to be put aside lightly. Indeed, there are too many curious coincidences following an interference with their rights and privileges, even amongst Europeans, not to make wonder grow as to whether some of them, at any rate, are not passed masters in what we Westerns have begun to dabble in — hypnotism. That nearly all the so-called occultism of India is due to this possibility of getting hold of the minds of others, and making them see what you wish them to see, hear what you wish them to hear, is extremely likely ; for the native is peculiarly prone, by reason of his emotional, mystical, and imaginative temperament, to follow any mental lead -over. He is, in fact, impressionable to an exaggerated degree. In Indian folk-lore the Yogi is the Giver of Gifts, the fairy godmother, and even in everyday hfe he is believed to have many beneficent arts. He has the power of bestowing children, of turning the baser metals to gold, of bringing good or bad luck. Naturally these yielded pretensions are the parents of much fraud and deception. Half the idle tales of India are concerned with disreputable yogis of sorts who generally manage to get themselves out A STREET IN PESHAWUR i THE ASCETICS OF INDIA 173 of deserved scrapes by the quickness of their wits. But these very stories, taken in conjunction with the persistent belief in some occult power obtain- able by praj'er, lasting, meditation, tend to shoAv that such a eon-viction has some firm basis on which to rest. Otherwise, long ere this the belief would be confined to the ignorant. But it is not. Educated natives are often loth to speak of such tilings, but deep do^^^l in their hearts they have no doubt that by practising i/oga all things are possible. These wanderers, then, begging their way from house to house — often not even begging, but pausing at a reverential call to take a handful of parched corn, a drink of water, — are the outward and ^'isible signs of India's inward and spiritual grace, the grace of vivid realisation of the Higher World in which all things live, and move, and have their being. It is difticult even to imagine what may be termed the sadlii/ system applied to the West ; to think of John Jones. Stockbroker, suddenly struck by tlie mutability, the instability of shares, getting up one morning and saying good-bye for ever to his portlv wife, his many children, slipping off his decent go-to-city suit, and, without a penny in his 174. INDIA pocket, starting to walk from Mincing Lane to John o' Groat's House, and so round by the Giant's Causeway and the Land's End. He would be in an asylum before the first week was out. But in India this happens every day. Out of one family and another, some one possessed by a hunger after righteousness drifts away, and his place knows him no more. In his stead there is one more wanderer, one more ash-smeared figure which may appear suddenly in the shade of a village mango tope, silent, immov- able, inscrutable. The years may pass on, and still he may sit there eating so little that by and by the legend grows up that he eats not at all, and the people from the neighbouring villages come and worship the Mystery of all Things behind the visible mystery. Then one day the place knows him no more. He is not there. He has vanished whence he came, and whether he is dead or whether he has wandered on, none know. CHAPTER XVI THE MORALS OF INDIA JNIegasthenes, who lived in India three hundred years before Clu-ist, records, through the pen of Arrian. his impressions of the Hindu race. " They are remarkably brave. They are also remarkable for simplicity and integrity ; so reason- able as never to have recourse to a law-suit : so honest as neither to require locks to their doors nor writings to bind their agreements. No Indian was ever known to tell an untruth." Now this is an account at wliicli most Anglo- Indians would laugh scornfullv. or exclaim, " How are the mighty fallen ! "" for the impression that our Aryan brother is far beyond us in deceit, un- truthfulness, and general untrustwortluness is very strong. In such matters, however, one can but appeal to one s own personal experiences, and my own bear out the assertion that trutli lies at the 175 176 INDIA bottom of a well. It certainly has no home in East or West ; but one suffers more from this fact in the latter, because telling a lie is there looked upon in a much more serious light. In India the utterer is not by any means bound to support the lie ; he can take it back and make it over again without much loss in personal dignity. Discovered in an untruth, he can hold his ears with both hands, say " tobah " (I repent), and there the incident ends. In the West, once a lie, always a he, which must be upheld at all costs, even to the making of more lies. Absolutely false and quite irresponsible witness on oath is undoubtedly more common in India than it is in England ; but there is equally no doubt whatever that Abstract Truth as seldom finds its way into an English Court of Justice as it does into an Indian one. The amount of dis- ingenuous bias and almost wilful failure to see things as they reaUy are, is greater with the more complex mind. The Indian He, briefly, is more conscious ; the Enghsh one is glossed over by inaccuracies, wilful blinding of the eyes, wilful cooking of the mental accounts. Then in regard to the adulteration of food and general untrustworthiness in commerce, there can THE MORALS OF INDIA 177 be no question as to where heinousness of offence lies. It is rapidly becoming impossible to rely on the word of any tradesman in England, while the only way to secure food that you have chosen and bought is to take it away with you. A recent discussion in a daily paper has produced the assertion that without some measure of fraud it Avould be impossible in England for a small trader to live by his trade. India can scarcely go " one better "" than this. In fact, the only point on which to advance on that one is to substitute for our proverb which bids us believe but one half of what we hear, the advice to l-)elieve but one half of what we see and nothing of what we hear. All tins may tail to convince many that the native of India is not a more inveterate liar than is his European brother ; but if they consider how comparatively easy it is to lind out a lie when but little stigma attaches to the telling of it. and also how comparatively difficult it is to the more simple mind to evade the more complex one, the con- clusion may be reached that all over the world Truth nms a poor chance in the mouth of manv men. Whole races, like that of the ^Velsh and the Maltese, are given over to an absolute incapacitv for telling it. so that insistent asseveration of a 178 INDIA thing having or not having occurred is the strongest ground for beUevnig the contrary to be the case, and a mistress, when her maid, on being asked for something, repUes, " May God strike me dead if I ever see it," can say with confidence — and the best results — •' Go and fetch it at once." There is another blame thrown wrongfully, so far as my personal experience goes, on the native of India : that is ingratitude. It is even asserted that so marked is tlie absence of the positive virtue that no term exists in the vernacular ex- pressive of "thank you." This is hardly accurate. No one who has lived with Mahommedans can have failed to hear the word Shukr used exactly as our recognition is used for any action that requires specific thanks, while the cheerful " Good " which one hears so often everywhere holds in it a hint of all-round praise not far from personal gratitude. Under any circumstances the ignoring of a claim to thanks for the performing of small kindnesses may conceivably be due to other things than a lack of gratitude ! In regard to actual gratitude for favours received, one must admit that in India, as else- where, it is apt to be alloyed by the hope of A NARROW STREET THE MORALS OF INDIA 179 favours to come. On the other hand, such o-ratitude is very real, very absorbhig. Nothing deUghts the soul of a native move than to have a patron. He begins hero-worshipping early by giving himself heart and soul to his g/ini or teacher. It is part of his creed. So. when in after life he rinds anv one Avhoni he can call his father and mother, he does so promptly, and with appalling simplicity flings himself and his familv on their care. " But you are my patron — my father and mother." is often a pained reproach when some quite impossible favour is refused. There is, however, one absolute refutation of this charge of ingratitude against the native of India, and that is the penny post ! Every mail- day brings to England, to Englishmen on leave, or CN en to those who have retired from the services, a perfect cataract of letters. Indeed, the per- sistencv witli which the native will ■\ATite to his patron is quite pathetic : so is the number of persons to whom he will confidently look up as his father and mother. Twenty, rive and twenty vears of absence is no bar to his remembrance of them, and long after the memories of Bishan Das. Moolchund. Afzool Khan, and half-a-dozen other clerks, contractors, and chuprassies have 180 INDIA become inextricably mixed up in the mind of some retired Anglo-Indian, mail-day will lay on his breakfast -table letters which will set him thinking " Where was it that I knew that fellow ? " In regard to theft, of which the native is universally accused by his Anglo-Indian masters. In this, again, an appeal to personal experience would bring forward one solitary case of theft in the Kast as against innumerable cases in the West. Each person must judge by their own experience ; but mine is, emphatically, that for pure pilfering the native servant is not in it with English servants. Possibly it is only the restriction of caste and creed which keeps the fingers of the former oflF the larder, but if any one wants to test the relative position let him put out some chocolate creams as if for dessert and note the results ! Of course, for absolutely unutterable dishonesty there is no race in the world like the Latin race. And they have no respect of persons. Now in India one thing is certain : the native seldom steals from his own master. But then a master is to him a personality. He is not a mere employer, who, like a corporation, has neither a soul to be THE MORALS OF INDIA 181 damned nor a body to be kicked. There is still in India the old-fashioned virtne of faithfulness to the salt YOU eat ; a virtue that has long since become unfashionable in England. Another accusation against the native is that he is detestably litigious. This is true. And he becomes more so day by day. But this is a o-roAvth of later years, and it is instructive to consider how it came about. To begin with, doubtless, there were high hopes of justice. The idea of a fair field and no favour brouglit endless disputes into oin- courts. These hopes were ful- tilled in a percentage of cases. The odds between the old-tashioned bribery of the lower officials and the new inaccessibility of the higher were sufficiently even to make a lottery out of a la^v- suit. There was. there could be, no foregone con- clusion. So a game ensued in which the devil Avould take the hindmost in skill. To the majority of litigants in India a law-suit is a form of sport, and it is high time that the court fees should be raised. The most serious aspect of our legal administration is the ease with which talse criminal charges can be trumped up. Given a single friend in the police, and your enemy is at your mercy absolutelv. 182 INDIA INIurder bulks largely£in the criminal statistics, doubtless because of the disregard of death which the religion of India brings with it. As a unit, the native is not afraid of death, and he will deal it out with comparative calm to others. The institution of Thuggi, now happily repressed, is a case in point. Here men vowed themselves to a religion of murder, and made an often pre- carious liveHhood by it, their death-dealing serv- ing the double purpose of satisfying their stomachs and the Great Death-mother's claims on all men. It was a curious cult with its casting of lots before the Lord for the exact day, hour, and place in which the deed was to be done. To pass on to what is generally hinted at when the word morality is vised. There can be no question that hi the villages all over India sexual morality stands excessively high. Even our missionaries admit that compared with the conduct of our rural and working classes the standai'd is good. My own experience is that it is very good. The very measure of infinite dis- grace which attaches to infidelity and illegitimacy is proof positive of this. In all my years of life in India I never came across but one girl, amongst all the thousands of girls who passed through my A STREET IN JEYPORE THE MORALS OP INDIA 183 limids, who had, as tlie phrase runs, '-got into trouble," and she literally wept herself to deatli over the shame of it. Here grandmothers accept the charge i>f their illegitimate grandcluldren will- ingly, because they are paid half-a-crown a ^veek for their keep. It is well to tell the truth solidly sometimes, and the truth is this : in sexual matters, despite the hoary old wickedness of Indian towns, their almost inconceivable vieiousness, and the open claims of the coiu'tezun class, the standard of national morality is far higher in India than it is in England. Then they are inconceivably kind to children. The ill-usage, at any rate to the beating point, of Avives, is rare, while their affection and care for their parents sets an example to every Christian countrv in the Avorld. Tliere is in India no squeezing of a son by the I'oor Law to produce a miserable shilling a week for the support of an aged and widowed mother, and the father to extreme old age is still the honoured patriarch. We Westerns need to consider all these good points ere we reach out our hands to the mote in our brother's eye. There are plenty of motes. Heaven knows ; but the AVest has its beam. CHAPTER XVII "1857 " The date has an ugly sound to English ears, and yet it marks our flood level in India. Never before had we touched, never again shall we touch, that height of heroisin which once and for all branded India as part of the Empire. We had held it till then as a commercial speculation. Glossed over by much philanthropical policy, the ultimate sixpence still sat enthroned as the real ruler of India, if only because it was the lineal descendant of the "mutual and friendly trafique " of Queen Elizabeth's first famous letter to Akbar ; in which, by the way, she comments on the " singular report that is of your Imperial Majestie's humanitie in these uttermost parts of the world." In fact, if we are to understand the position which led up to the great Mutiny, we must face 184 "1857" 185 tlie trutli. namely, that for two lunidred and fifty years our tenure of India had liad a monetary basis, although certainly for the last fifty of those years Ave had done our level best to combhie business with justice. Curiously enouirli. it was this awakenino- of the national conscience in regard to India which led to tlie terrors of 'd7. In the old days we had taken our money, justly or imjustly, and gone on our way. Now we stayed to criticise, to iitquire. to amend and alter the way in which that nioney had been made. A princeling, if devoid of money for tribute, would have a Resident sent to his court to spy out his actions if he was suspected of laying wholesale hands on his subjects' savhigs ; yet the money had to be forthconihig all the same. Heading the history of the English iu India, it is impossible not to admit that their eyes were ever e>pen to the main chance and that the trend of their mind was towards annexation ; the mere fact that by 1857 we had absorbed almost the Avhole of India proves that this was so. That manv. nay. most of its rulers were utterly unworthy, dissolute to a degree, does not alter the evidence which shows that we took advantage of every point we could to get a 186 INDIA grip on the land. The right of adoption admitted by Hindu and Mahommedan law — a very lenient law it must be confessed, leaving no less than three years to a disconsolate widow in which to bring- forward an heir to her dead husband — stood in our way many a time, and so adoption had to be, not a right, but a special privilege. This was a blow at the whole status of these petty chiefs. Childless- ness was no uncommon result of their depraved habits, and this right of adoption had been, so to speak, the safeguard of the libertine. Now the Company stepped in, appropriating the fiefs. In 1852 Sattara was so annexed. In 1853 the case of the Rajaship of Kerauli was the cause of much heartburning, and though that was finally decided in favour of the adopted heir, it left its mark in the bitter controversy which the very next year arose concerning Jhansi. Here once more the argument that the Company, though bound by treaty to uphold "heirs and successors," was not bound to consider the claims of a successor other than a lineal descendant, prevailed against the widow's assertion that the Persian word employed included not only heirs of the body but of the mind — that is to say, "any one whom the chief adopted as his son to perform those PESHAWUR :^>:^^ ~»*^ ^ ^ ' 'M i "1857" 187 ftineral rites wliich are necessary to insure beatitude." .Thansi therefore shared the fate of Sattara, to be followed in the very same year by the annexa- tion of Nao-pur. Conceniino- this, the view of one member of Council innocently lets the cat out of the bag. "Believing in the dispensation of Providence," he writes. " I camiot cohicide in any view of this matter Avhich shall have for its object the maintenance of native rule against the progress of events which throws undisputed power into our possession." Xo more is needed. " God is on our side, let His enemies be scattered. " Against that con- viction naught avails : not even truth. And this belief, almost fanatical in its yearning to "gather the heathen into the fold." had come to India with the wave of Evangelicalism which about this time literally s^vept the services. And so we find the names of many truly Christian heroes as partici- pators in the greatest act of injustice that was ever perpetrated in India, the annexation of Oude on the 0th ]May 1856 — just one year before the outbreak at 31eerut on the 10th ^Nlay 1857. The facts are too clear for any doubt whatever. In 1837 we entered into a distinct treaty with the 188 INDIA Nawabs of Oude in which certain penalties were set forth in the event of bad government. Annexa- tion was not one of them. In '57, nearly twenty years after, we politely tendered to the Nawab our regret at having failed to inform him that this treaty had never been ratified by the Directors, though it had been by mistake "included in a volume of treaties which was published in 1845 by the authority of Govern- ment." We admitted this to be " embarrassing " ; not sufficiently so, however, to prevent " action." No notice was awarded to the fact that if the treaty of 1837 was null and void, the previous one of 1801 stood unabrogated, liy this we could either force tiie Nawab to comply with our demands for better government, or withdraw our guarantee for support, giving back the territories ceded in exchange to us for this guarantee of military aid. This did not suit our policy. We therefore, without one shadow of excuse, annexed Oude. This same wave of Evangelicalism had brought about other dangers. Our officials, after acquiescing in Indian manners in the past, had begun to busy themselves over the moral welfare of those entrusted to their cliarge. Missionaries were '• 1857 " 189 coming out in shoals, girls' schools being started, zenana classes thought of, and. nat\irally, with the advent of English ladies a great outcry was raised regarding the position of women. Suttee had already been made illegal, and though the Emperor Akbar had issued precisely the same order without raising any dissatistaction. our methods w^ere not so successful. The last straw" was the passing of the AVidows" l?emarriage Act ; an absolutely inoffensive Act in itself But tlie times were bad. xVnd yet when revolt did come, it was a purely military revolt — one which might, which should have been crushed. The least forethought, the least understanding, the least just, stern consideration would have averted it. To grasp the truth of this, let us imagine a man like .Tohn Nicliolson at the head of every native regiment. AVhere would the chance of mutiny have been then ? There is nothino; in the wide world more sicken iuir than to read the minutes of evidence hi the Barrackpore courts -martial. ]Many of the English orticers were evidently unable to speak the language of their subordinates. But it came — came suddenlw almost imex- 190 INDIA pectedly ; and assuredly none who read the plain, unvarnished tale of that fatal parade at Meerut can wonder that it did come. And then — then it is a story for tears, a story of utter incompetence. For there was really no plot, really no settled collusion between Meerut and Delhi. The long six weeks of the King's trial, during which no stone was left unturned to implicate him if possible, prove this beyond measure of doubt. But, as I have written elsewhere, " Englishmen live to make mistakes and die to retrieve them." So the incompetence was paid for ; ay, and more than that— even the ultimate sixpence was blotted out of the record. East versus West, by the river of blood which flowed for close on two years. It was that fateful pause of close on a month before the first blow was returned which, for a time at least, turned the purely military mutiny into an organised revolt ; though, even then, the mass of India went about its patient, humdrum life, heedless, even ignorant, of what was happen- ing, it might be but a few miles off. " Did you see anything of the * Great Evil Days ' ? " I asked an old woman once. " Huzoor, yes ! " was the reply. " We women "1857" 191 were sitting spinning at the door one day when a band of riders appeared. We screamed ; but they only took everything to eat that w^e had in the luHise, and then galloped on their ways. We wondered avIio they were. The grandmother said they Avere Toorks, for sm-e — they used to come in the old days. But afterwards we heard that wickeil men liad rebelled. Hai hai ! '" That Avas all which tliousands, ay, millions, of the people of India knew of the storm which shook England to its foundations — to its very founda- tions. For only those who went through it can ha\ e any idea of the flood-tide of passionate sorrow, and indignation, and hate, and desire for revenge, which swept through the land from one end to the otlier. There is no sadder reading in the world than the dailv papers of .Tune, July, August, and September 1857. especially the Anglo-Indian papers. Even clergymen rushed into print, denouncing the Laodicean Government, pointing to the massacres as Gods punishment for trafHcking with the Devil, and calling on the nation to smite and spare not. And it smote ; how deep it is perhaps wiser not to say, for it was unavoidable. Only the clear- sighted and strong-minded kept their heads, with 192 INDIA the cry of women and little children in their ears ; and these clear-sighted, strong-minded ones were those who, overtopping their comrades, fell the first beneath Death's levelling scythe, leaving the less masterful minds to take the lead when the time for revenge had come. Regarding the outbreak itself, it is extremely difficult to give anything like a consecutive history. Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, Cawnpore, and, later on, Jhansi, were all centres round which a series of coeval and yet totally distinct incidents gathered. Delhi gains in significance, because here we faced our foe as the assailant. Here we struggled, not desperately for dear life, but for conquest. That is what gives the Red Ridge at Delhi its distinction. There we were really fighting — though for a while we did not seem to realise it — not as a lioness defending her cubs, but as a lion waiting for its spring of revenge. I have often wondered, indeed, if the one woman who, thrusting herself upon the Ridge, remained there with indomitable coura2;e through thick and thin, ever realised how that perfectly useless courage spoilt what should have been the red rock's inviolable manhood ; but then one grows hypercritical in dreaming over what will surely go NATrVE CHIEFS IN DELHI ? & ■ ^ ^k«av«D««n^ ** )>%,j^i-w **" * **'*^ " 1857 " 193 down to the last limit of time as the highest flood- mark of the Anglo-Saxon race. To return to history. Beginning, as all know, on Sunday the 10th ]May, the outbreak had a month of inaction in which to spread. It was the 7th of .Tune ere a single retaliatory blow was struck ; and even after that we hesitated and vacillated for two long months, until John Nichol- son appeared, and straightway began the attack. On the 14th of September he took Delhi, losing his life needlessly, uselessly, in himself trying to rally a regiment that was spent past repair. It is sad to walk in the full blaze of the Indian sun down the narrow lane leading to the Burn Bastion and measure the distance which must have lain — full of that blaze of yellow sunshine — between the man who cried, " It can be done," and those whose every fibre gave out the note, '' It cannot." Saddest of all to realise that, whether we see it or not. there is always an aureole of empty sunlight between men like John Nicholson and their fellows. He died on the day after the Palace was occupied, the King taken prisoner, and the Princes shot. Reoardiuir the latter incident, let each decide for himself if Hodson was right or wrong in what he did. But two things seem fairly certain : 25 194 INDIA Hodson's orders regarding any promise of safety were stringent, and there was no attempt at swift rescue. There stands on the Ridge now a terribly Gothic (not to say VandaUstic) Memorial to that third of the total force of Englishmen who fell before Delhi. But an edict cut on the red rocks would have been more to the purpose. One can dream how it might have run, modelled on the lines of Asoka the Loving -minded One's rock- inscribed decrees : — I, the Beloved of my People, Victoria, do hereby declaie peace on earth and goodwill towards all men. It would have been better than strings of un- meaning names,— names that even in life only represented units of an attacking force. But we need to learn from the Japanese how to die, not as units, but as one great whole. For the rest, in almost every large station in India there are relics in story or site of some heroism on the part of the Masters. It is well that this should be so ; well also that neither the white face nor the dark one should forget the struggle of '57. But there is one thing which the white face needs to remember. " 1857 •' 195 Tf ever a race brought revolt on itself, we did so in India. Therefore we should remember with glad- ness that for every native who even inactively sided against us. there were a hvmdred who remained loyal. CHAPTER XVIII THE ANGLO-INDIAN England does not half appreciate the full value of her Anglo -Indian sons. Authors have sung their vices rather than their virtues, and the steady doggedness with which a man, bereaved of wife and children, a prey to discomfort and dejection, will plod through the weary work of a long hot- weather day remains stiD without its due crown of laurel. Yet nothing is finer ; nothing in the whole history of the world is more worthy praise. One has to read the impressions of foreign visitors to India before grasping this. Scarcely one of them has not spent a page or two in un- stinted admiration of the ordinary Anglo-Indian official. In truth, his patient endurance of much evil is marvellous ; for it is only given to the few to feel India anything but an exile. 196 A CORNER OF THE FRUIT MARKET, DELHI THE ANGLO-INDIAN 197 To most men fresh from the universities, brim- ful of culture, instinct with desire to live, the dull round of Indian duty, the impossibility of any real intercourse with the natives, and the prohibition which the climate, for a large portion of the year, puts upon games and sports, must all be dreary indeed. And yet behind all the dreariness lies the glamour. ]Most of them feel it. if not during the time of their service, at least when that service is over. Then India, giving up the bodv. claims the soul. One of the most curious points about the work which the Anglo-Indian does is the absolute ignorance concerning it which exists in England. Here we have a community ^vhich for generations on generations has sent sons and daughters to this dependencv of the Cro'wm : which has not sent them out once and for all as it might have done to Canada or Australia, but which has received them and their children back again to its verv heart, full as they must be of strange new life, and which has not in anv wav grasped what that life is or realised its procedure. Even most Englishwomen know parti;TJly how Eno-land is ijoverned. but few Englishmen who 198 INDIA have not been in India have the faintest idea of how we rule it. The curse of forgetfulness seems on them. You tell them, you elaborately explain the system, and the next time you meet, lo ! they have forgotten entirely, or at most remember that Lord Macaulay, in addition to writing a History of England, compiled India's Penal Code. A fine compilation too, in its broad concurrent lines of law and justice. This curious inability to assimilate India is still more striking when we deal with Englishwomen, who often return from a lifetime spent there absolutely untouched by its influence. This is a far more common state of affairs than it used to be. Possibly the closer touch with the home country which has been brought about by improved communications may have something to do with this. On the other hand, signs are not wanting that the patience of English men and women will not long outlast the many privileges which in the old time made exile endurable. The value of money has decreased enormously, yet pay remains the same ; the power which was more to many a man than gold has been largely curtailed. To feel that you have the welfare of thousands in your grip, and to know yourself a mere machine, paid inade- A VEGETABLE MARKET, PESHAWUR K !"•: ff V f='-»v -'^ .^ ■>_ _,-•■ ' :' , -. .*j. ■"'^i ft) ^ THE ANGLO-INDIAN 199 quately to grind out so-called justice to suit the hair-splitting of "bannisters" fresh from the petti- nesses of English procedure, are two very difterent postulates. Small wonder is it that in India itself the gulf between the rulers and the ruled is widen- ing. There is a half-hidden race hatred nowadays which did not exist iifty years ago, — no ! not even ■when the shambles of the JMutinv were fresh in mens minds. Then, both the white and the dark faces forirave. Now they pass each other by with a challenge on one side, the cut direct on the other. For this education is largely responsible. In the hands of scientilic experts it is last becoming the curse of lunnanity. To them a scholar is a scholar whether he be Esquimaux or Hottentot, and must be turned out to pattern at all costs, regardless of the uses to which he will subsequentlv be put ; and — what is even more disastrous — quite regardless of the germ-plasm which lies at the back of all education. So, not until manv nianv generations of slowly acquired mental and physical de\'iation from the type have come to obliterate much that lies at the back of the Eastern brain, can we hope to educate it on ^Veste^n lines to a Western ideal. The 200 INDIA attempt to turn the two hemispheres out to one pattern by superficial education is Uke attempting to dye cotton and wool in the same vat. The sooner we learn this the better. In the meantime, rightly or wrongly, there is every day growing up amongst Anglo-Indians the feehng that in any dispute with a native they will, for political reasons, be put to the wall. It does not tend to soften manners or promote fellowship, and its existence is a sign of ineptitude on the part of authority. For the English, taking them as a whole, are a just race, and to rouse a general sense of injustice in them needs injustice. Yet even so curtailed, as they doubtless are, of power and position, there is still to be found, generally in remote districts, soine Anglo-Indian who is literally a father to the people under him ; who in cholera or plague time will issue absolutely illegal orders for their benefit, which are as absolutely obeyed ; who drives a coach and four through silly High Court circulars ; who lives beloved, and dies to be canonised,— unless, indeed, to some such man, capable, full of common sense, instinct with a desire for duty, there comes some hair-splitting stickler for rules and regulations, and in the ensuing quarrel the best man goes down disgraced. THE ANGLO-INDIAN 201 Such things have happened, are happenmg, and the result is naturally to exalt the commonplace. Even in his free day John Nicholson lived in con- flict with the authorities ; but three months ere he took Delhi and saved India he had begged to be transferred from the Punjab while he could still go with honour. John Nicholsons are a product of the past. They would be an impossibility to-day ; and yet India would be none the worse for them. Nothing is more striking than the way in which any excess of vitaUty above the normal impresses the native. It does not matter in what way the vitality is displayed, whether in work or play, mind or body, the native follows on instinctively. And if to the vitahty we add imagination, the result is such legendary hero-worship as that accorded to the Emperor Akbar and to many an Englishman besides John Nicholson. Takinoj him all in all, the Ana;lo-Indian is a product of which the Empue may well be proud. It is no small task for an alien race to govern close on three hundred millions of people dispersed through close on two millions of square miles, especially when, in the process of government, no less than one hundred and forty-seven different gOg INDIA dialects have to be considered, — more especially when we grasp the amazing fact that there are under one hundred and fifty thousand of that alien race all told, or one to every two thousand natives of India. That the government is expensive goes without saying. The question remains whether a cheaper one would be as effective, or whether the cheap- ness would simply be on paper, and the pockets of the people sufifer privately instead of publicly. Certain it is that in almost every part of India the cry is still " Send not my case to the court of a black judge." It is an unfair cry, since there can be no question as to the increase of probity in the newer race of native officials ; but it will be a long, long time before bribery and corruption is swept away from an Indian court, white or black. At present the distinction between them is purely one of degree ; that is to say, how high the scale of bribery can rise. It is to be doubted whether any case in India was ever decided without some money — even if it only be eight annas — changing hands, below board. If not in the court itself, then in the police office ; for a purging of the police force from its present abuses is one of the most pressing problems in India. How to give it THE ANGLO-INDIAN SOS sufficient power and at the same time limit its possibilities of oppression has hitherto been an insoluble puzzle. Higher pay may do something. At present it is idle to ask, as we ask, an educated man to wield authority and keep his hands free of palm oil, on a salary at which a household drudge would grimible. So much for the Anglo-Indian, — a hard-worked maTi, whether he be judge or tax-collector, canal officer, doctor, policeman or soldier. There remains his wife, of whom so much has been written and might still be written. Of this, however, there seems to be no manner of doubt : it is between the women of England and the women of India that the solution of the problem " How to rule and be ruled " lies. The one great unalterable split between East and West is in their relative Ideals of Perfect Womanhood. Let, then, the sister subjects take heed to their ways ; let them remember that all give and no take is quite as demoralising to both parties as the converse. I do not thmk that we women have yet made up our hands decisively for the Great Game of Life. There is time yet for cards to be cast away and fresh ones taken in. We in the West are talking of discarding 204 INDIA marriage ; but, played in Eastern fashion, marriage has guarded much that woman holds most dear. So if nothing else is yielded to that Eastern fashion, it may at least be granted a cool and courteous consideration. ON THE RIVER STEPS AT AGRA i. t J! ^w. CHAPTER XIX THE PROBLEM OF INDIA India is full of problems, tlie first and greatest of all beiiiiT to the Englishman how to get through each successive hot weather ; for hidden away hi this mere question of personal discomfort lies a very large question. How long can we— a race who. owing to the climate, cannot bring up our children in India — remain lords paramount of the soil ; for ice are the Government, and the Government is absolute owner of e^erv inch of land ? It is true that what with permanently assessed land-tax here, and the rights of hereditarv tenants there, we have frittered awav much of our sovereign power uselessly, idly ; but the land from time immemorial was tlie Crown's, and only the Crown's. But it is evident Ave cannot colonise it. Nature has decreed that we remain in India on sufferance. 206 g06 INDIA Are we to remain so always, spending our best years, giving our best lives to India, or are we by and by to take off our hats and say politely, " That is enough, you can fend for yourselves " ? That is a great problem ; and the second is like unto it. In what condition ought we in this case to leave India ? Shall she be attired in the latest Paris fashion, or should she be dressed in a manner more suitable to the climate ? So far the answer has been unhesitatingly " the Paris frock." For the last fifty years we have done our best by every means in our power to " raise " the standard of personal comfort in India. To a certain extent we have succeeded. It is not nearly so easy for the very poor to live as it used to be. There is a greater variation between their status and the status of the rich. In the old days, from one end to the other of India, the people, rich or poor, lived mostly on the food staple of their par- ticular country — wheat where it was wheat, rice where it was rice. A little more clarified butter and sugar for the rich, a little less for the poor — therein lay the chief difference between them. They were housed in much the same fashion. The palace was larger than the hovel, more decorated, but both alike were devoid of luxury. Even now A BULLOCK-CART, AJMERE K THE PROBLEM OF INDIA 207 in conservative palaces there is no furniture, — ■ a table, a chair or two tor tlie convenience of Europeans or Europeauised natives ; for the rest, often tattered carpets and string- beds. Some years ago wl;en tlie chief of perhaps the richest State in India lay sick of typhoid fever, the English doctor asked for a teaspoon. There was not one. Salt, sugar, everything was laid before His High- ness in a leaf, and he helped himself with his ringers. Only the other day some philanthropical ladies were shocked at their horriried complaints that the poor plague patients actually had no sheets to their beds being met by a hearty laugh. There are no sheets or towels in India. Fine clothes, rich jewels, and a redundancy of fat dirterentiated the Kaja fr7 Fprijhana, 44, 45 Festival, (i.i, ()7, 7<', 70 Five (5tfts, ()7 Fiuiiullina; liospitalp, 20;1 Funeral pyre, lOo, lol rites, lii7 FVUot, ;!•: Gautema Biuidlia, lI4 Genu -plasm. 101) (ieriuany, 04 Ghuzui, iMahnuid of, 43 Giver of Gifts, 17- GoiUless of Smallpox, l>7 Gold thread. 110 tissues. O.i. I'Jl Goldsmith. W Good wouiau. lH(i Gospel of Ease, 207 Grain, parched, 08 Grain-sellers, 80 "(.ireat artificer, " 1:12 Great Ciame of Life, -O'A Great AIoa:liul, o7 . 40. .^l. o,5. Greenaroeer's. 08 Guavas, 00 Guru. 170 Hakim, Oil Hall-of-the-Four-\\"inds, 100 Hard war, 71 Hastinirs, '\\'arren, .i8 Hea\en, (iO. 70 Heher, llishop, .55 Heir. lrt(! Hell, (!0 Hereditary craftsman, 1-0 tenants, 205 trades, 14 Hii::h Gourt circulars, 200 Himalayas. ti7 Hindu, '52, H5, 60, 70. 10:5 Hinduism, (io History, hurierl, 10, 20 Hodsou, lo4 Hormuzd, 85 Hottentot, 100 Houris, 70 lluhni, 100 Human sacrifices. 8() Humayun, .'17. 88, 48, .'lO. 134, 13(1 Husbandhood, Oli Ideal, 180 Idleness. 182 Ill-mannered creatures, 186 Illusion, 6.3, 68, 167 Imajfination, 54 Immortal money, 130 India, buried, 15 people of, 101 Indian army, 210 Ocean, 1 Indra, lli Inarratitude, 178 Instability of shares. 173 Interest. 00 Islam, 74 Ispahan, 05 Italian adventurer, 110 Jack fruit. 00 Jahau, Shah. 43. 138 Jahanarir, 43, 55, 120, 143 Jain, 52 Jainlsm, 22. 81-87 James the Second, 57 Japan, 200 Japanese. 108, 162. 208 Ja^sulmer, 34 Jats, 30 Jehanffir, 43. bo, 120. 143 Je/ktbh, 100 Jewellery work. 117 Jevpore.'84, 120 Jhausi, 186, 102 .lodhpore. 138 .ludire. 20;i 214 INDIA Jumna Masjid, 136, 14.3 Justice, 181 Kababs, 103 Kali devi, 111 Kasva, 87 Kerauli, 186 " King of Kings/' 23 Kishna Komari, 41 Knight-errant, 38 Knight-errantry, 46 Kohariya's, 103 Kohan, 130 Koh-i-haba, 46 Koran, 76 Krishna, 114 Kurnavati, 38 Kutb, 134 Laodicean Government, 191 Light of Life, 149 Lingam, 153 Litigious, 181 Local colour, 17 Love, 158, 165 Macaulay, Lord, 198 Mahabarata, 25, 32 Maham, 48 Mahamed Amin, 53 Mahmud of Ghuzni, 43 Mahommedan, 31, 43, 52, 73, 79, 80, 92, 101, 103, 110 Mahommedanism, 73-80 Manchester, 93, 94, 96, 106, 109 Mangala, 102 Mango tope, 174 Mansarobar Lake, 24 Marriage, 12, 66, 157, 204 Maya, 63 Meerut, 187, 190 Megasthenes, 165, 175 Melon, 45, 99 Member of Council, 187 Mewar, 33, 152 " Middell-fail," 87 Military mutiny, 190 Miracles, 153 Missionaries, 188 Missionary reports, 156 Moghul, 43, 44, 74, 134 Great, 37, 40, 51, 55, 57 Mohurrum, 79 Monserrat, Anthony, 142 Morality, sexual, 182 Morals, 176-183 Motes, 183 Motherhood, 157, 158, 164 Mount Abu, 32, 84 Murder, 182 Music, 112 Musical instruments, 113 Mutiny, 60, 136, 184 military, 190 Naga-Maurya, 22 Nagabansis, 21 Nagas, 20 Nagpur, 187 Name-giving, 64 National conscience, 185 Native newspapers, 9 regiments, 71 Nawabs of Oude, 60, 188 Newspapers, native, 9 Nicholson, John, 189, 193, 201 Nirvana, 68, 83 Noble, Margaret, 166 Nurjehan, 55 Oodeypore, 128, 132 Opium, 92 Oude, Nawabs of, 60, 188 Outlook, 159 Padmani, 34, 36 Pagoda tree, 59, 118 Paladin, 165 Panch-Mahal, 140 Panchiyat, 29 Pandava, 26 Panmri, 91, 93 Parched grain, 98 INDEX 215 raiontUood, 66 Pariahs, 85 Tarsceism , ai-87 I'auper asylums, 209 I'aupt'rism, liOii I'awnbi'okev, 1(!5 lVai-1 Mosque, 143 IV-iial iiule, 198 reus, .57 I'eople of Iiulia, liH Personal eonifort, 206, 207 riieasant, -16 I'lliVriniiiges, 67 I'iyadarsi, 21 Pliissey, .58 Police', 181 Police-officer, 10.5 Poor law, 183, 207 Potter, 14. 1.5, 16 Power, 198 Prince AbooHuikr, 13.5 Princess Beautiful, 131 Private Hall of Auilieuce, 137 Problems, 20.5 Public-lunise, 102 Punjab, 73 Punnia, 39 Purdah, 163 Races, 73 ll;ija Birbal, 138 iWja Dhava, 133 Raja Rasalu, 24 Ra'jputs, the, 27, 3t1-42, 43, 48, 132 Ram-dakkan, 154 Finn rukki, o7 R;imayaiia, 2.5, 32 Ranizan, 70 Red Holi powder, 91 Red Kidtje, 192 Retriments, native, 71 Relic-vendor's, 1.52 Reliiifions, 68 Reniarrl;ii:e Act, 189 Reports, missionary, 156 Restaurant, 103 Rice, unhusked, 65 Risbaba Deva, 82 Ritual, 148 liumm:ijj;e sales, 104 Sacerdotalism, 149 Sacred thread, 65 Sacrifices, huniau, 86 Sadhu, 168, 171 St. Josapbet, 25 Saintship, iiiy Sakyamuni, 24, 81 Sali'fcrama, 152, 1.53 Salim Chisti, 138 Salivahana, 23 Samarkand, 46, 95, 96 Sanchi, 81, 128 Santhal, 87 Saraswati, 10 Sarsuti, 10 Satin, 9() Sattara, 186 Sculpture, 109 Serpent, 82 Serpent race, 20 Sexual morality, 182 Shah .'ehan, 43, 136 Shamanists, 85 Shavina:, ii5 Shawl, 125 Sliects, 207 Sherbet-seller's, 101 Shesh-nag', 24 Shiv', 111 Shrine, 145, 149 "Sbukr," 178 Sikhisni, 85 Silks, 95 Silver, 91, 96 Sisters of our Empire, 165 " Sky-clad ones," 83 Snake, 20 Kinij-s, 134 Soojee, 89 Sotor Meg'as, 23 Spinninif wheels, 102 Stock Exchange, 209 216 INDIA Stri achchur, 112, 163 Stucco, 78 Suraj-ud-dowla, 58 SuD6-i, 94 Sutlej, 23 Suttee, 18!) Swami Baskeranund, 62 Swastika, 82, 83 Swayamvara, 26 Sweet tooth, 100 Swords, 57 Syuds, 74 Taghluk, 134: Taj Mahal, 65, 136, 143 Takkas, 21 Takkashila, 21 Talisman, 67, 92 Tax collector, 203 Teaspoon, 207 Temples, 111, 128, 145-155 Tenement houses, 76 Tliakoors, 42 "The Joining-," 149 " The King's Feast," 149 "The Uprising," 148 Theft, 180 "Third-class tikkut," 150 'Diuggi, 182 Tinsel, 76, 119 Tom-tom, 113 Tommy Atkius, 98 Total abstinence, 48 Touchstone, 90 Towels, 207 Trades, 124 guild, 14 union, 208 Trajan, 139 Treaty, 188 Truth, 177 Tulips, 45, 47 Turmeric, 88, 91 Turquoises, 45 Udaipore, 32, 33 Udaipur, 32, 33 " Ultimate sixpence," Unhusked rice, 65 Unity, 63, 68, 208 56, 184 Valley of the Shadow, 61 Vedas, 62 Veil, 108 Vikramaditya, 23 Violets, 45, 92 Visheshwar, 151 Vitality, 201 Wazir Khan's Mosque, 143 Weavers'-walk, 121 Weaving, 120 Wedding stools, 102 West, 6, 61, 109, 113, 203 Wheeler, Talboys, 32 Whisky and soda, 101 " White-robed ones," 83 Witness on oath, 176 Woman, 168 a good, 166 Womanhood, 166, 203 Women, 66, 77, 78, 156-166 Workhouses, 207 Yama, 70 Yarn, 120 Yogi, 33, 169, 172 Young Bengal, 87 Yunani, 23 Zahir-ud-din, 45 ZtmuT, 65 I Zunlogi, 122 Printed by R. & K. 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