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Title: Between the twilights
Being studies of Indian women by one of themselves
Author: Cornelia Sorabji
Release Date: June 21, 2023 [eBook #71004]
Language: English
Credits: The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BETWEEN THE TWILIGHTS ***
BETWEEN THE TWILIGHTS
BETWEEN THE TWILIGHTS:
BEING STUDIES OF INDIAN
WOMEN BY ONE OF
THEMSELVES
BY
CORNELIA SORABJI
[Illustration]
LONDON AND NEW YORK
HARPER AND BROTHERS
45, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1908
CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.
DEDICATED
TO
THE HOUR OF UNION
COVER AND END PAPER
DESIGNED BY
J. LOCKWOOD KIPLING
PREFACE
In the language of the Zenana there are two twilights, “when the Sun
drops into the sea,” and “when he splashes up stars for spray,” ...
the _Union_, that is, of _Earth and Sun_, _and_, again, of _Light and
Darkness_.
And the space between is the time of times in these sun-wearied
plains in which I dwell. One sees the world in a gentle haze of
reminiscence--reminiscence of the best. There, across the horizon,
flames the Sun’s “good-bye.” Great cave of mystery, or lake of liquid
fire: anon pool of opal and amethyst, thoughts curiously adjustable to
the day that is done, memory of joy or sorrow, of strength of love,
or disregard of pain. Gradually the colour fades, now to a golden
fleece of the softest, now to wisps of translucence, blush-pink,
violet: oft-times the true ecstasy of colour is in the east, away
from the Sun’s setting. Or, now again, the sky is a study in grays
and blue-grays, in that peculiar heat-haze which belongs to May and
September, and the pale curve of the new moon looks old and weary. Is
not all Life marching towards the Silence? it seems to say.
Yes, the manner of its loitering is varied, but always, always, is it
an hour of enchantment, this hour Between the Twilights: and it is my
very own. I choose it, from out the day’s full sheaf, and I sit with it
in the Silences on my roof-tree.
It was in this hour, through a hot summer, that the thoughts which
make this little book came to me, and were written down. I had spent
my days going in and out among my friends of the Zenana, and a great
yearning was in my heart that others should know them as I did, in
their simplicity and their wisdom.
The half is not yet told: much would not bear telling--I had no
business to take strangers into the walled garden of our intimacy--and
some things were too elusive for speech, but the sounds which have
thridded the Silence have been echoes of reality, and I can only hope
that they may convey some impression of the gently pulsing life of the
Zenana.
Not by any means are the Studies meant to be exhaustive. I have left
out of count the Anglicized and English-educated Indian, the capable
woman who earns her own living, the cultured woman of the world or
philanthropist. There was little to learn about her which a common
language and the opportunity of intercourse might not teach any
sojourner in India at first-hand.
But these others of whom I have written seemed to justify in a very
special sense the hour of my meditation.... They float elusive in the
half-light between two civilizations, sad by reason of something lost,
sad by reason of the more that may come to be rejected hereafter....
And none but God knoweth when will toll for them that final Hour of
Union, and whether, when it is here, we shall be able to see the stars
through the blue veil of the Light that lies slain for all Eternity.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE vii
I. THE STORY OF WISDOM 1
II. THE STORY OF DESTRUCTION 12
III. THE STORY OF A WOMAN 21
IV. _DEVI_--GODDESS! 30
V. THE SETTER-FAR OF IGNORANCE 44
VI. THE KING OF DEATH 53
VII. THE WISE MAN, “TRUTH-NAMED” 74
VIII. THE NASAL TEST--A STUDY OF CASTE 89
IX. THE MOTHERS OF FIGHTERS 106
X. THE QUEEN WHO STOOD ERECT 115
[1]XI. PORTRAITS OF SOME INDIAN WOMEN 128
XII. GARDEN FANCIES 150
XIII. A CHILD OR TWO 156
XIV. THE TIE THAT BINDS 176
[Footnote 1: “Portraits of some Indian Women” is reprinted from “The
Nineteenth Century and After,” by the kind permission of the late Sir
J. Knowles.]
GLOSSARY
_Amla_, officer of a household.
_Bina_, a musical instrument (stringed).
_Brahmin_, highest or priestly caste.
_Didi_, elder sister.
_Guru_, spiritual guide.
_Jog_, Hindu Vedantic system of meditation and of acquiring sanctity.
_Kincab_, gold brocade.
_Khattriya_, the fighter: of the fighting or second highest Caste.
_Mali_, gardener.
_Mantras_, incantations.
_Munias_, small speckled birds.
_Namascar_, the salutation to the learned: and to a superior.
_Pandas_, pilgrim guides at holy places.
_Pooja_, worship of a God.
_Pujari_, a Temple servant.
_Purdahnashin_, she who sits behind the curtain: the secluded.
_Sais_, groom.
_Saree_, a long winding-sheet, which forms the drapery worn by women.
_Shastras_, sacred writings.
_Sudra_, the server; of the fourth or Serving Class.
_Takht-posh_, a wooden plank on four legs used as a bedstead.
_Veishya_, originally of the third or agricultural, now often of the
professional caste.
BETWEEN THE TWILIGHTS
I
THE STORY OF WISDOM
She comes with the Spring--a two days’ guest in an Indian household.
Nor has frequency bred either carelessness or coolness of reception.
Early on the morning of her arrival you will see the women hastening
from the Bathing Ghat, their garments clinging about their supple
limbs, their long hair drying in the wind. They bear full water-pots,
for nought but Gunga-Mai to-day suffices--no slothful backsliding to
nearby pump.
In the house of my friend, it was Parvati, the oldest serving-woman
who undertook to make ready the guest chamber. I watched her as she
crossed the courtyard--a handful of the precious liquid for Dharti-Mai
the Earth Mother, and the rest--a generous swob, for the black marble
veranda. Soon had she helpers, and to spare--the most practised among
them made the white chalk marks of good luck--tridents, fishes, flames
of fire; and the tidiest made the little inclosure--white cotton
“railings,” the posts being balls of Ganges mud, in which were buried
swiftly-flying arrows--threat for daring devil.
But the centre of interest was naturally the Altar. This was just
a plain raised platform of wood, carrying bravely its variety of
offering. Great mountains of yellow and white flowers, with fruits,
chiefly the cocoanut, fruit of healing, old Sanskrit manuscripts,
lettered palm-leaves, thumbed and blotted copybooks and tattered
“primers”--the prayers of children--the pointed reed, and ink-horns,
glass ink-pots and steel pens from the “Europe” shop across the way;
a school edition of “The Vicar of Wakefield,” Ganot’s Physics, quaint
combs and mirrors, powder-boxes, and perfumes, “the tears of scented
grass,” or that more subtle “scent of red rose leaves.” Why not? Is she
not woman, even though a Goddess and learned? The “Europe” products,
I notice, carry milk in place of ink. “Sanctify to us this Western
Education”--is that what it means in this country, where deepest
feeling finds outlet other than through doors of speech? So her
worshippers made ready, not in private chapel but here where the life
of the days pulsed and languished through the years; here, where friend
or passing stranger might alike turn to greet her; for Wisdom is one,
though her hosts be many. Moreover, She who is called Wisdom loves the
voices of little children, and nothing is hushed, or ordered otherwise
for her coming. The most unregenerate rogue romps at her feet, the
most thriftless housewife, the most rebellious daughter-in-law has
access to her Altar, and through the day one after another will come
bearing her gift; and, lingering a while, will go away softly even as
she came. Sometimes, by no means generally, there will be an image of
the Goddess. One such I have seen in the house of a rich merchant. It
was a life-sized figure dancing on a lotus, the full bloom, pink-edged,
in her hand she bore a _bina_ for the Goddess of Wisdom is also Queen
of Harmony; and the rich man’s friends had honoured her as was meet,
with priceless gifts of _Kincab_, of gem, of trinket. Now Wisdom of
necessity has yet one more aspect, she is Goddess of Perfect Speech.
It is of her that the tongue-tied prays eloquence, the scholar success;
and the offering to her in this capacity you will find absent from no
Altar, rich or poor. To omit this would mean the curse of the dumb for
ever. It is a little cake of rice and milk, this oblation for lapses
from accuracy, for “benevolent falsehood.”
“Oh Guest of the hours, remember the past, the puzzling need of the
tangled moments, remember--and forgive.”
A list of benevolent falsehoods must needs vary with the age. Manu
includes (viii, 130) “The giver of false evidence for a pious motive,
for such an one shall not lose a seat in heaven,” his lapses being
called the “Speech of the Gods.”
“To save a life,” “To protect a cow,” “To counteract the thriftless
ways of husbands,” have added Hindu women of my acquaintance.
Simple is the ritual of the worship of Wisdom. “With folded hands
I bow before the Goddess, the Goddess who provides all wealth, and
vouchsafes the power of speech.” “May the Goddess of Wisdom protect me,
the Mother of the Vedas, who from the crimson lotus of her hands pours
radiance on the implements of writing, and on the works produced by her
power.”
“May the Goddess of Wisdom protect me--She who robed in white, sets
far all ignorance. She who abides with the Creator may she abide with
me ...;” and the rest of the prayers are either said by the Priest, or
found in the heart of the worshipper. The battered lesson book, the
oft-used pen, are these not prayers in themselves?
The last time I saw the Goddess was at the Children’s Festival. Wisdom
danced on her lotus flower, in a little bower of bamboos and marigolds,
out in the open courtyard. At her feet sat children, row upon row,
ranging in age from three years to twelve. I watched them come so
happily, tripping hand in hand with some friend or comrade. They wore
their best gay little saree, gold-spangled and bordered, in their hair
thread of gold, or great heavy ornament, or just some flower among
the light close braidings. And, as they took their seats in the Great
Cathedral roofed by God’s sky, the Priests moved among them anointing
each little forehead with oil of sandal wood from off the altar of her
who is named Wisdom.
Then the musicians beat their drums and rang the bell of worship, and
every single forehead was on the ground before the Goddess. The worship
had begun.... First be consecrate, then bring your offering--is the
creed.... I heard no prayers, but there-after, one by one, the Babies
passed before her, throwing at her feet sweet-scented wreaths of
Jasmine. I needed not then to hear their prayers.... And that was all
the Service. The play of the children at the feet of Wisdom.
Thus then the Hindu honours his Guest. And, on the second day--for
even Wisdom must share at length the waters of oblivion--with music
and singing with the happy laughter of children and a gay following of
the faithful, her image is taken to the Ganges; and with love and much
injunction as to next year’s journey from the Mounts of Blessing, is it
set afloat on that sacred river whose bourne is the Eternal Sea.
Wisdom, in Sanskrit story, is Creative Power to the Great God himself,
his energy--without her he is but a great incommunicable passive force.
“I make strong whom I choose--originating all things I pass even as a
breeze. Above the Heavens am I, beyond the Earth, and what is the Great
One, _that_ am I. I make holy the Great God Himself. For the Great
Archer it is I bend the bow; it is I who stay evil in the name of the
Destroyer. Few know me, yet near to all alike am I. God is he from whom
Wisdom and Speech--after reaching Him--return.”
Unravelling it all, what quaint teaching may we not piece together?
That is true wisdom which puts man in touch with God--creature with
Creator. And the same power of God refrains not from blessing the
things that are of value to the Earth--the written, the spoken word,
all arts and harmonies and science.
Then, is it not a parable that the Goddess of Speech is primarily the
Goddess of all Learning? Let the ignorant keep silence.
The _Tulsi_ spirals stirred in the hot wind, and the great white
red-throated Sarus flapped his wings as he walked about the women’s
courtyard. The men of the house had taken the Image to the water, and
we sat by the empty altar in the hour between the Twilights. “Tell me
more about Wisdom,” said I to my Wisest of the Wise, and she told me of
how Vishnu gave her as wife to Brahma, and how Brahma put a slight upon
the Lady of Wisdom--a slight which she never forgave.
A great sacrifice was going forward, and the Priest bade Brahma call
his Lady. For is it not the wife, and she alone who must hold the
sacred grass, must sprinkle the offerings. “But Saraswati is engaged in
dressing,” was the answer.
Then the Priest “without a wife what blessing can come?”
So Brahma turned to Indra, and bade him find a substitute in hedge or
highway.
Indra soon returned, leading by the hand a milkmaid, beautiful and
happy. She bore a jar of butter on her head. “She shall become the
Mother of the Vedas,” said the Priest; and that is how Gayatri, the
Milkmaid, was wed to the Great God Himself.
Then came forth Saraswati all unconscious, and very gorgeous, attended
by the wives of Vishnu, Rudra, and other of the Gods--a worthy train.
When she heard what had happened, she was wroth beyond power of words
to tell.
Said the Great God, shamefaced, “The Priest did this thing; the Priest
and Indra.”
But Saraswati said, “By the powers I have obtained, may Brahma never be
worshipped in Temple or Sacred Place--except one day in each year--and
since Indra, thou didst bring that Milkmaid to my Lord, thou shalt be
bound in chains by all thine enemies and prisoned in a strange and
distant country, thy power over the winds and thy station on high,
given to others. Cursed also be ye--Priests. Henceforth shall ye
perform sacrifices solely for the desire of obtaining the usual gifts,
and for love of gain alone shall ye serve Temples and holy places;
satisfied only shall ye be with the food of others, and dissatisfied
with that of your own houses. And in quest of riches shall ye unduly
perform rites and ceremonies.”...
In great wrath she called for her peacock, to leave the assembly, but
the Goddess of Wealth refused to accompany her; and her also did she
curse.
“May you always abide with the vile and the inconstant, the
contemptible and foolish, the sinful, cruel and vulgar.”
After her departure Gayatri modifies all the curses; so neither need
all Priests nor all the wealthy be base and contemptible.
When the youngest daughter-in-law in the house is listening to the
story-telling my Wisest of the Wise adds a variation--Saraswati is
appeased, and Brahma says he will do with the Milkmaid what the Goddess
commands, while the Milkmaid herself falls at the feet of Wisdom, who,
raising her, says, “Let be--let you and me both serve my Lord!”
* * * * *
And now for a year her Altar is empty but she is not forgotten, and in
the practice and devotion of the faithful still does the third watch of
the night belong to Wisdom.
“Let the home-keeping ones wake in the time sacred to Saraswati, the
Goddess of Speech; let them reflect on virtue and virtuous emoluments;
and on the whole meaning and essence of the words of Wisdom.”
* * * * *
“So desirable, and yet she may be only a two days’ Guest in a Hindu
household,” I mused aloud.
“Ah, but,” answered she who worshipped Wisdom, “were Wisdom always with
us, how should we live among the sons of men!”...
II
THE STORY OF DESTRUCTION
When the world was young there were two Giant Demons--Shumbo and
Nishumbo, who made great discord both in heaven and upon earth: nor did
victory bring harmony, for when all who opposed them lay vanquished,
they fought with each other.
Then did the Gods and Godlings take counsel how they might slay them.
“Go to the Destroyer,” said the Great God, and so said also the
Preserver--“It is his business.” But Shiva, the Destroyer, owned to a
dilemma. “I have promised them,” said he, “that no _man_ shall prevail
against them. What shall I do?” Then upon meditation--“I am resolved
what to do. One shall I create in the form of a woman, that this strife
might be ended.”...
And that was how Creation came near to Kali the Mother. Very beautiful
was she, the strength of the strong, and the attractiveness of that
which was to conquer strife: and her did Shiva name _Jugatdatri_--Nurse
of the World. None could stand before her, and it came to pass that at
last was left only one enemy--the King of Demons; and he, seeing her
beauty, sought her in marriage; but she laughed saying, “I wed none but
him I cannot conquer.”
And Shumbo maddened by her laughter vowed victory, and her very glory
was a peril, for he seized upon her hair, and impeded her much.... Then
did the Gods take counsel again together. It was the Destroyer who
found help. “Let us each give her of our strength,” said he, “that evil
may be smitten for ever.”
And they did all even as he suggested, and the incoming of this great
strength made her so that she lost some of her comeliness. And now was
she called _Kali_ ... She that is black.
And the strength of the Gods was as wine to her, and she fought
intoxicate. And behold, while all the Gods and Demons watched, they
fought--those two--the Nurse of the World and the King of Evil, and
Kali won.
Then was there great rejoicing on earth and in heaven, and Kali joyed
no less than her creatures, and she danced in her joy, drunk with the
blood of her victim.
And for the third time the Gods took counsel, for they said, “The thing
we have ourselves made strong will at last destroy even us.”
And the Great God said: “She is wife to the Destroyer. This is his
business.” And Shiva thought long and earnestly, for even he could
not causelessly retake the strength that he had given.... And the end
of the meditation was that he went forth from Heaven and lay in her
path as she came down from the Snow mountains in her dance of Death.
And she, mad with victory and blood, seeing nothing, danced on to his
chest exultant, when looking down, she recognized her husband, and was
shamed and sobered. And this final vision of Kali is the one worshipped
by her children--Kali, the four-armed, the Conqueror of Demons,
vanquished only by the husband who lies under her feet. In one hand
beareth she the head of a victim, in another a sword, with a third she
blesseth, and with the fourth she holdeth out fearlessness to all her
followers. She wears a garland of skulls, and a waistlet of hands,--and
no more danceth she the dance of Death. Yet to her, the Mother, come
alike all who are drunk with blood, righteous or unrighteous, for she
understands; and all who would have the strength of the Gods to slay
the Evil in the world--for was not this the purpose of her being, in
the old, old days when the world was young?...
Thus to me one of my gentle friends of “The Inside” in this land of
legend and silences.
Then we turned to her of many years and long meditations, who sat by
listening--“Is that how you know the story, Mother?”
“Yea, my children,” made she answer. “Even so--and when mine eyes are
shut these are the thoughts that come to me--blessing and cursing,
destruction and creation, death and life--are not both companions of
Time?”
“But the skull and hands, Mother--read that parable.”
And she--“All is destroyed save intelligence and work--these outlast
us.”
So, museful, I took my way to the Mount of Kali, which lies without
the City, past many ancient tanks grown rank with vegetation, past
flowering trees, and swamps of mat huts and malaria.
A bright-eyed baby played upon a log, see-sawing over a nauseous
drain--Was this one measure of the dance of Death?... An avenue now
of shops--the Precincts--Gods and Godlings and sacrificial vessels
were for sale, with the beads of the Sacred, and water-bottles made of
Ganges sand blown fine as glass.... I lingered among the women making
purchase. Images of Kali seemed most popular, with bright red and
yellow horses for the children, nor was the picture shop neglected--and
I laughed softly to myself to see a German print of Romeo and Juliet in
the balcony scene selling clamorously for “Radha Krishna,” the gay God
with his favourite lady.
Seated under a _pipal_ tree, hoary with age, was an ash-smeared Priest,
at his feet a heap of yellow marigolds. No woman passed him without
some offering, and sometimes he spoke, but most often kept silence,
noting all things through the matted hair that veiled his slits of
eyes. Of such begging Priests there was a great collection--the
ascetics sat still, but were gifted for fear of curses; others ran
after the women, teasing, traducing each other; and these were gifted
for their importunity. One, half-mad, I think, had a few words of
English and followed me cursing the Priest-guide I had chosen for a
“stupid-’umbug-flatterer”--said all as one long word, which sounded a
potent curse indeed.
The Image is in a small brick and stone building behind closed doors,
which are opened at fixed times. In the ante-room sit the faithful,
reading sacred books or preparing their offerings for the Goddess.
There seemed a separate Priest for each devotee.
One man only did I see whom my heart convicted of holiness: and looking
on his face I knew that it was possible even here to forget all the
grossness to which the ignorant had degraded the Kali-legend.... The
place of Sacrifice ran red, and already the Priests had sold the flesh
of Kali’s tale of goats to eager bidders. The poorer applicants sat in
a circle, a gory head on each lap.... It was a gruesome sight.
By the Bathing Ghat was a great crowd. Here were two young women in
charge of a chaperone. They had come far ways measuring their length
along the ground. It was in the rains, and they were all mud and slush
from the exercise. The woman stood by, policing them, seeing that they
abated no jot or tittle of their vows, where the head had been the feet
should lie--there, and not an inch further.
“What was the vow?” I asked.
A prayer for one--that the child then on its way might live.... Oh! the
pathos of it. The other woman was giving thanks for the recovery of her
reason.... “The dance of Death,” “The dance of Death”--a minuet....
“If I were God, I should pity the heart of man ...”
They were travelling at the moment towards the drain behind the Image
of the Goddess. Oh! the water, oh! the water!--it was black with
impurities. It had washed the feet of the Goddess, and the flowers of
her Temple, and the refuse of the Sacrifice; but they drank eagerly--at
full length still--content.
It was a parable on the power of Faith.... And truly, the Temple of
Kali opens many doors to reflection. Evil, we notice, is conquered by
Time in the end. Of Love, which conquered Time, there is no Gospel
in Hinduism. Inherent strength is the last vanquisher, the Great
Gods themselves helping in the conquest, even parting with their own
strength to the fighter. And that which God inspires may be as God.
Yet, in spite of the Hindu doctrine of works, there would seem to be a
caution against too great activity. Kali drunk with activity was shamed
by Gods and men....
* * * * *
I went back to my Wise Woman of many years.... “To the ignorant,” she
said, “Kali but wants a life--Kali slays and Kali makes alive. Said I
not once before, blessing and cursing, death and life, these are the
Soul’s eternal doors. In the house of Kali the doors are ever open....
But, for us women, the lesson to hide in the heart is this--Kali,
the Great Destroyer, the Nurse of the World, the Dread-Inspirer, is
vanquished only by--her husband.”
* * * * *
Here, then, meet ancient story and modern history, the history of every
Hindu woman throughout the Land. The last stage of perfection is wifely
submission.
III
THE STORY OF A WOMAN
Now Dokhio, the Father of Durga, was wroth because Shiva, to whom he
had given his daughter in marriage, though he had the reputation of a
God, was as poor as any beggar. And in his wrath he devised revenge.
He made a great Feast, to which he bade Gods and Goddesses, Godlings
and baby Godlings--all, save Shiva and his wife Durga. And Narod, the
Mischief Man, was made the voice to bear the message to each guest.
So Narod went to Shiva, and “This is what your Father-in-law hath
planned,” saith he, inciting.
But Shiva, “What is that to me?” “Dishonour, insult, affront--see you
not?” said the Mischief Man.
And Shiva, again, “What is that to me? They who do not honour cannot
hurt me.”...
Narod then went to Durga, Shiva’s wife: “A Feast of Gods and
Goddesses,” saith he. “Let be,” said Durga; “What is that to me?”
“Such display of dresses and jewels, such cackling of women’s tongues.
‘Why is Shiva not there? Why not Durga?’ Surely a daughter may go to
the house of her Father, by chance, on the day of the Feast, ignorant
of what is forward?”...
Durga sought her husband. But he was firm. “They will make sport of you
to spite me.”
“What matter? It were worse not to be seen there--things happening
behind our backs.”...
But Shiva was firm.
Then did Durga use all the wiles of women--coaxing, sulking,
flattering--Shiva was firm; so, finally she used the wiles of a more
than human ...
She took unto herself ten forms each more awful than the last,
and ten-headed she passed before Shiva, threatening and mocking.
Till--“Go!” said Shiva; “Let happen what will happen.”
And Durga, a little fearfully, in that she had got at last her heart’s
desire, arrayed herself in garments gorgeous and becoming, and made her
way to her Mother’s house. And her Mother embraced her right gladly, so
that a great contempt was in Durga’s heart for the trouble at which she
had been in coming.
But the Mother said within herself: “It is well my Lord is away and
busy, it is well ... else might he hurt this child of mine.”
Yet soon the question came: “And where is my Father?”
“At the Place of Sacrifice, where he makes a great feast,” said the
gentle Mother. “Stay with me, my child; leave such-like things to the
men-people.”
But Durga: “A Feast? Nay, then must I go and see” ... and she heeded
nothing.
And Dokhio was furious, in that after all his insult would be robbed of
point.
“Why art thou come hither?” he thundered. And she: “Because my Father’s
daughters may not be kept from my Father’s Sacrifice.”
Then Dokhio cursed Shiva and all that belonged to him, which Durga
hearing, passed out of life with grief inconsolable.
And Shiva, who had cared nothing for the slight to himself, revenged
the death of his wife most mightily. He sent forth his lightning and
consumed that great sacrifice ere they who were bidden had arrived
to make it; and so the guests found nothing save charred wood, and a
wizened old Dokhio with the head of a bearded goat.
For this was Shiva’s little joke to keep the matter for ever in the
mind of Durga’s Father, Dokhio.
* * * * *
We sat on the great quiet roof in the cow-dust hour while the latest
Mother-in-law among us told the story.
She meant it, I think, for the special benefit of Boho, the
ten-year-old Bride; and she was gratified, for Boho caught her breath
in great gusts at this bold coercion of a husband. Nothing did the
story mean to her save that--punishment for such sacrilege.
But Kamalamoni looked up smiling from a game with the household
tyrant--her Nagendra--aged four.
“It is not thus the story hath its ending,” she said.
“Then tell the rest, Kamal.” But Kamal was better occupied.
“And how calls the horse, my son? and how the dog? and the cat?
and sheep? And,” roguishly--“and how the great grandmother when in
anger?” Till she of many years claimed Nagendra as her fee for such
impertinence and Kamala was forced to tell her tale.
“And how should story end which wails no dirge for death of wife?”
said Kamala, hotly. For opinion is but experience crystallized. “When
Durga’s soul left her body thus early, it wandered to the mountains
of snow, and finding on the threshold of sense, the empty house of a
new-born babe, it entered it.”
Uma was the name by which its parents chose to know the child; and Uma
grew strong and beautiful, gentle and good, with no memory of Durga the
Ten-Headed.... And, one day when she had come to her woman’s estate in
our kingdom of life, and was playing with her waiting-woman among the
swans beside the lotus-beds, an aged Priest-man appeared before her,
and falling at her feet, said, “Durga Mother, thy Lord of Destruction
fasts and prays sorrowing for thee: go and tend him.”
And Uma ran to her mother, wrathful.... “An old Priest-man fell at my
feet Mother,” she said, “and said unto me words which are not fit to be
heard by me before my maidens.”
So Uma’s Father went out forthwith, and finding Narod--for he it was,
the Mischief Man turned Priest in old-age, he heard the wondrous
God-news about his daughter.
Shiva, it seemed lived a life of prayer and fasting--close by in the
Cave of the Cow’s mouth.
“Send Uma to tend him,” said Narod, “and haply he will look and love,
and they be man and wife once more.”
Thus Uma was sent to Shiva, and tended him night and day; and the
woman’s love for the thing that she tended, grew in her heart.
But Shiva, full of self-pity for loss of a jewel which he might better
have preserved (for this was his thought), saw not that same jewel
lying burnished and re-beautified in the dust at his feet. And Uma’s
heart was sad, till even the Great God himself was moved to pity, and
sent the little God of Love to wake Shiva the Monk from his trance of
bead-telling.
Then, fearfully--for is not Shiva the Destroyer himself?--went the
Godling of the arched bow, and hiding in the bracken he shot forth his
arrows--not without success. And Shiva, furious, saw one upturned foot
in flight, and the fire from his eye burnt up the thing he saw, so that
Kama Deva comes no more among the haunts of men.
But, and when his anger was dead, he looked up, and his eyes being
opened, he beheld Uma, knowing her for Durga his own possession.
And so, once more was fulfilled the destiny of a woman.
“But for three days in every year does Uma go back to her parents and
her swanlets in the mountains of Snow; and this journeying of Uma
is always at _Durga-pooja_ time when we make feast for many days to
worship the Ten-handed.”
In the silence which fell upon us after this story, she of many years
was heard to yawn, while all the women snapped their fingers till her
jaws met again.
From Shiva’s Temple gleaming white among the yellow-green of the date
palms came the sound of the _pooja_ bell--some one, a woman probably,
praying for her Lord to the Lord of Killing and Cursing. Clear against
the gray-blue sky stood the cross-crowned spire of the Christian
Cathedral; and almost at our doors, rang out the prayer-keeper’s call
to the faithful Moslem: “There is no God so great as God.”...
“There is no God so great as--my God.” It is what we are all saying;
and it makes at once the strength and the tragedy of human lives. “No
God so great as my God.” What different things we mean when we say
that--we of the bustling outside world.
The Hindu woman means one thing only.... “No God so great as my God.”
That was the lesson each was taking from the story of Durga and Uma.
Did not almost every fable and legend chant that chorus? “No God so
Great.”... In punishment may be sometimes, or in penitence (see the
miracle of the Destroyer himself turned monk for Durga)--but most of
all in _graciousness_....
“He knew Uma for her who went to Dokhio’s feast, and yet he forgave,”
said Boho Rani, “Oh! the wonder.”...
But the Mother of Nagendra laughed, sure of her possession.... “The
Godling of the arrows was not really burnt,” she said, “the flying foot
belonged to Kama’s sheaf-bearer and rival, the less-than-godlet of
unlawful love.”...
And the Wise Woman smiled to herself in the growing dusk. “The ignorant
are incapable of receiving knowledge,” was what she said.
IV
DEVI--GODDESS!
A young unmarried girl is by some in Bengal called _Kumari_--Princess,
and when married, _Devi_--Goddess.
I was musing on this, and all it told of the feeling of a Nation,
and of the true beauty of that feeling at its best, when an old
Prime-Minister friend of mine in a Native State came to invite me to a
Ceremony.
It is known how I love all things primitive and individual, and my
orthodox Hindu friends are very good to me in remembering this. “But of
course I will come,” I promised. “What is it this time?”
“The worship of young girls,” said he. There was the idea again, the
central idea in all Hindu thought in relation to women.... The worship
of the _Life-Bringer_.
It was very simple, as all such Ceremonies are, and free from all
manner of false shame or conventionality. There was remembrance of the
Creator; for the creature--the gentle little girls, such babies all of
them--there were garlands of gay flowers, feastings and anointings with
perfume of rose-leaves.
There was also towards them in the manner of these kindly elders who
had long looked on the face of Nature, a pretty dignity and reverence
which could not fail to beautify the fact of Creation whenever it
should draw nigh.
Not long after, the youngest Bride in the household--she is but ten
years of age--had a joy-making on her own account. She worshipped the
Aged. They came in happy groups, the same who had so lately blessed
her--toothless grandmother, great-aunt, cousins’ Mother, wife of
Mother-in-Law’s Spiritual Guide--each had a name of her own in the
dictionary of relationships. She received them charmingly, standing at
the head of the Zenana stairs--the baby-hostess! falling at the feet
(_parnam_) of those to whom she owed this courtesy, saluting others
with joined hands raised to forehead (_numuscar_), and each made answer
“Blessings,” hand on the child’s head. Then they sat in rows on little
mats along the floor, and ate sweets and vegetables off green plantain
leaves, their hostess waiting on them.
This little exchange of religious obligation is all the etiquette, and
makes all the social amenities known among orthodox women in India.
It is hard to convey the idea, state the fact as one may, but the Hindu
woman acknowledges no claims save those of religion. No social, no
communal claims. Her worship of the Gods, of her husband, her children,
they are all the same, part of her religion, and they make her life.
Even the ordinary business of the day, bathing, dressing, eating, is a
religious act.... To cook her husband’s food an orthodox Hindu wears
a special silk garment: the only gardening she ever attempts is to
water and tend the sacred basil (_Tulsi_). If she travels, it is on
a pilgrimage to this shrine or that, to bathe in this or that sacred
river. Of course she gives dinner parties as did my ten-year-old Bride,
on special occasions, or on feasts of Gods and Goddesses through
the year, also in memory of the dead; but there is no machinery of
calls, no social entertaining for entertainment sake, no interchange
of civilities to acquaint young people and make marriages. Marriages
are made by the Priests and your map of stars, not by the social
broker. For births and deaths you may have a house full of women,
your relations or “spiritual” relations, come unbidden on a visit of
congratulation or sympathy. To these you may never suggest departure,
and only innate good manners in the visitor has saved from bankruptcy
many a house in which the doors of Life and Death were often open.
This involuntary hospitality may become quite tiresome in practice. I
remember one great Feasting. It was a ceremony for the dead. A Maharani
had died, and we made her “praying-for-the-soul” budget, buying her
sinlessness for 1,000 lives at a cost of Rs. 20,000. Part of the
penalty was feeding Brahmins. Our budget provided for 3,000 guests: but
it was not etiquette to shut the gates, and when 5,000 had been fed, my
business soul did really take alarm.
“If the gates were shut by my order no ill-luck would betide the house,
would it?” I asked of her of many years, who kept our abstract of
right action. “Luck or ill-luck concern only the Believer” was her
verdict ... so my way was clear. In the courtyard great caldrons of
food were steaming. Here was one stirring the rice and ever boiling
more and yet more. On the veranda sat Brahmin cooks, cutting up red
pumpkins or brown-green _brinjals_, slicing potatoes, grinding curry
stuffs, dancing red-yellow grains of pulse in the winnowing fan. Other
Brahmins ran to and fro, serving the food as it was made ready: all
was orderly confusion, at which the women peeped from the third floor
balcony.
They were the disciples of Priests at the expense of whose appetites we
were buying merit, and they sat in rows, hungry and clamorous. Scarce
could they be served fast enough.
“But how long will they sit there?” I asked of my old Dewan.
“Till they are fulfilled,” was his delightful answer; and it gave me
courage for the shutting of the gates.
It was but the day before that we had prayed for the soul of the Lady,
at thirteen altars of holy Ganges mud. Four of these altars were
arranged round a great central place of prayer, under an awning, to
which were four “Gateways.” At each gateway hung a looking-glass to
hold the shadow of the spirit.... Beside the awning stood a wooden
image of the dead, and to this was tethered a cow. So we bought for
her blessings. This was also the purpose of the final ritual--gifts
to Priests--silver vessels, beds with silken hangings, jewels of
gold, and precious stones;... for the apostles of the order, whole
travelling-kits--neat rolls of matting, drinking-gourds, umbrellas,
begging-bowls....
But, after all, it was in the Zenana that regret and longing were
prettiest rendered.... In the hour of Union (as we call the Twilight in
Bengal), when the glories of the West had died into silence, and earth
and sky were gray and still as life at the passing of a friend--she who
was now Maharani--my ten-year-old Bride, crept out on to the landing of
“the Inside” to sprinkle with holy water the place where soul and body
parted, and to light the death-light of welcome.
“She will come back, and know that we have not forgotten.”
It is interesting, the definite place in the scheme of life, allotted
to women in a country where woman is of no account, except as
hand-maid to her lord man. I am always finding illustration of this
truth. No spite, no resentment can rob individuals of the right to
perform certain religious acts. The death-light, for instance, was
the province of Boho-Rani, the daughter-in-law, the youngest in a
household including three generations, and many collaterals.... But
the most passionate love for the dead never suggested any variation
of etiquette. The old Mother bent with grief, sisters, daughters sat
huddled in the living-room, looking with hungry eyes at Boho, who alone
could relieve the tension of that quiet-coloured hour by service.
Now it is the turn of one, now of another, the women know; there is
no wrangling.... But a few days past there had been the Spring games,
and the Festival of the Spring. The children-wives swung to and fro
under the big tree in the women’s courtyard. It was a pretty sight--the
graceful little ladies in their bright draperies, clinging with their
toes to the board (for they swing standing), holding to the ropes with
tiny hands.... The sun peeped at them through the screen of leaves,
and set on fire the rough-cut jewels at throat, at wrist, at anklet.
To and fro, to and fro ... so rhythmic was the motion, I found myself
thinking of a field of grass, rippling in the wind. Some brides, too
small for the exercise, were gravely swinging their dolls, and here was
a “religious” fondling the baby Krishna in his cradle ... but none of
them played really: it was only--_Oberammergau_--how the god Krishna
grown to manhood sported with the maidens; that was the reason given by
all for the evening’s gaiety.
Another day, with laughter and shy importance, the youngest Bride
and Bridegroom were led to a place of prominence. It was their first
Springtime since the marriage ceremony, and they sat side by side,
bound together with silken cords; while the mother and grandmother
threw at them little soft cushions of red powder, the same that is
used in religious sacrifices for dusting the idol; with it is made
the mark on the head of the Bride: perhaps the colour is symbolical,
the women do not know, “it has always been so,” they tell you. And,
as to the games--why it is Springtime, children should be merry, and
the shy pelting with red pellets is Zenana merriment in italics. Next
year, maybe, the Bride will be a mother, and such boisterousness will
not become her. Let the children play while they may, and let the old
Grand-dame pillow-fight with red powder cushions. Is she not nearer
to the children in spirit than that grave-eyed Madan Mohun, of three
Springtides, for instance, who is having his baby feed, in greedy
solemnity. For is she not the wise woman of many years? and only the
years can bring true youth and wisdom. Ignorance dies after decades of
convention, of pain, of mistakes, and from the dead bulb springs this
wonderful flower of youth and wisdom. The ignorance, the pain, the
mistakes,--they had to be. Do they not make the fragrance of our Spring
plant? The pity is when the original shrub knows no decay, when in the
smug satiety of its ever-greenness it journeys to no winter, and finds
no aftermath of Spring.
On yet another day the youngest sister was chief lady. I found her
sitting before a brass tray of glass bangles and silver ornaments.
It was a first visit to her childhood’s home since marriage, and her
husband would break her old bangles and refit her. The Wise Woman
says it is symbolical of the fact that even in her Parents’ house
she remains the possession of her husband. So he is admitted to the
parental “Inside,” and the women other than his wife, peep at the
bangle-play from behind doors and curtains.
“What do Indian women do with their time?” how often I have been asked
the question. Custom and religion make the day’s programme--a woman’s
husband, and a woman’s God, are occupation in themselves, and then
there may be the children. The good Hindu will have her house of Gods,
her private Chapel. Sometimes there is an image in it. I have known
God-houses without any image. The name of the particular God it is
right for her to worship will be whispered in her ear by the family
Priest, and not even to her husband may she reveal the secret. But in
her Chapel you will find most often in Bengal, an image either of the
Baby God a-crawling, or of Kali, the Mother. In Krishna Chapels there
will be a little crib, fashioned in these Western-Eastern days like
an English bedstead, with mosquito nets: and just as in the morning
the devotee bathes and anoints the baby, leaving food beside it on the
little altar, so at even-tide she lights the nursery lamp and puts it
to bed.... Is this Hinduism? I do not know. In practice it seems to me
but the Mother-worship of the Child.
But in truth there is no one form or stage of Hinduism to be found in
India, or, for the matter of that, in Bengal.... The great truths are
eternal and prevail in every religion: yet all men are not capable
of receiving the truth, and Hinduism recognizes this. In the actual
worship of the idol are the illiterate and ignorant encouraged. “It
would be sin to disclose to these the mysteries of a God not made with
hands,” so says the wisest of my wise women ... “for he who has heard
and hearkens not, and understands not, hath the greater sin.” Yet that
even a child may be capable of instruction she proves to you. I have
seen many hundreds of babies under her roof, babies ranging from three
to twelve years of age doing their morning _pooja_. It is “the worship
of the possible” that she teaches them, “the worship of the Might-be.”
At 9 o’clock they come hastening to the hour of prayer, like the
birds and lizards of the Moslem legend: each little devotee, lips
pursed in serious earnestness, is carrying her “basket of worship,”
and sits cross-legged to unpack it--an incense-burner, the bowl for
Ganges water, flowers, bits of half-eaten fruit and vegetables, the
sacrificial powder, often a remnant of some favourite saree, the Ganges
mud with which to make her “idol”--all this she unpacks gravely,
daintily, moulding her lump of clay into a cone.... Now she will make
comparison with her neighbour, a little wistfully, perhaps, perhaps
exultingly: often she shares her gifts.... Anything may be given to the
God; the teaching here is to give what costs something, and when the
_pooja_ is over, the Pujari carries round a food-collecting plate for
the animals within the gates, and the crows on the housetops. Now she
is threading garlands of the sacred white jasmine, and the Priests have
come for the chaunting.
The children sit in rows facing each other, along the walls of the
veranda. My Wisest of the Wise explains to me that the God who dwells
within us is to be invited to inhabit that lump of mud (the clay on the
potters’ wheel), for His better worshipping by the children of men. So,
the opening ceremony is a movement of the hands--the invocation! Each
little worshipper sits wrapt before the God in the clay.... Now the
Priest takes up the Sanskrit word, and the Babies chaunt it after him.
“Oh! Great God, bless us, forgive us, remain with us.”
“Oh, Great God, I offer thee this incense, these flowers, this holy
water,” etc.
And the fingers are busy with the offering while every now and again
“_Dhyan karo_” (meditate) will be the order: and five hundred pairs of
Baby eyes are puckered into concentration and five hundred pairs of
arms are tightly folded.
The earnest tension of the attitude moves one to tears.... Of what are
they thinking? Oh! but of what?
“The worship of the Possible?”
_That_ is the Wise Woman’s thought, not theirs. I put it to her.
“Of what should they think,” said she, “but of the whole duty of
womanhood--to be a good wife: to omit no act of ceremonial Hinduism.”
The sequence showed her wisdom. And being a good Hindu wife means
fulfilling the duty of a Life-Bringer, thinking no evil of the lord who
bears to you God’s message of creation, counting his most temporal want
as superior to your own most spiritual craving, making a religion of
his smallest wish; and when the Gods, for your sins, take him from you,
holding to his memory with prayer and fasting and self-suppression....
So we end, whence we set out _Devi--Goddess!_
V
THE SETTER-FAR OF IGNORANCE
I have tried to indicate the women’s attitude towards the man in
India. His towards her is more difficult to determine--partly
because she is not his whole existence, as he is hers; she is his
occasional amusement, and always his slave and the physical element
in the eventual saving of his soul, that complicated machinery which
necessitates a son who will pay your material and spiritual debts.
Comradeship, as we have seen, there can be little between orthodox
Hindu husband and wife. Love we will not deny--these things are between
soul and soul; show of affection would be insult in the presence of
third persons; courtesy, in the thousand little ways required in the
West, is shown rather by the woman to the man than by him to her. And,
indeed, the very fact that he allows all this is proof of respect. To
accept service is the compliment--and he respects her after his kind.
But certainly he respects her. Does he not arrange that himself shall
be her chief interest in life and her chief care and memory in death?
Is she not allowed to be at once his “parasite and his chalice.” But
certainly he respects her. Her name may not be in the mouth of a man,
even in the form of polite inquiry after her health: no strange man may
see her face, and often he may not even hear her voice. Is it not her
husband who guards her from contact with the outer world, from sight of
God’s most beautiful creation, from knowledge of the way he lives his
life, or works, or plays?
But certainly he respects her. He eats the food she cooks for him, he
gives her complete control of his household, and he sees that she lives
up to his ideal of her place in the scheme of life.
She, too, has her ideal--the worship and service of her husband, and
if he gives her opportunity to realize this, what more will she ask?
When she is the mother of a son greater respect is hers, from the other
women in the Zenana, and greater love and respect no doubt from her
lord. Men do not like to be connected with a failure, and she has been
successful, has justified her existence. The self-respect it gives
the woman herself is most marked. She still is faithful slave to her
husband, but she is an entity, a person, so far as that is possible in
a Hindu Zenana; she can lift her head above the woman who taunted her,
her heart above the fear of a rival. I have seen her parallel in the
ugly duckling of the family who suddenly develops to the recognition
of the outer world an unsuspected talent. We all know how she seems
mysteriously and instantly to grow taller, smarter, more dignified;
how she knows her own mind and has an opinion even in the regions
remote from her special subject--whereas hitherto all had been vague
discontent and vacillation. Both women are saying unconsciously in
their hearts--“I am of use in the world,” only I doubt whether, causes
reversed, either would say it as triumphantly.
And, for a Hindu woman, “the best is yet to be.” When she arrives at
the dignity of Grandmother, ruling a household of daughters-in-law,
she has indeed entered upon her kingdom. The son, who as infant
first added to her stature, lavishes upon her in old age respect
and affection which any woman might envy. Indeed, the relation of
mother and son, even of widowed mother and son in India now, when
her life is near its close, is the most beautiful perhaps of all
Indian family relationships. She is respected, almost worshipped, as
the Life-Bringer, and when she holds her grandson in her arms she is
forgiven for the widowhood which for so long has been counted against
her. At last she is loved as only those women are loved who have given,
and given, and given all their lives seeking nothing in return.
I remember an old gray-headed Hindu saying to me, when we were
discussing _Gurus_, “After all the true Guru in every house is
the Mother; and are there not only three important things in the
world--God, the Word of God, and the Guru, he who brings the Word?” ...
Of the intellectual capacity of a woman a Hindu has a very poor
opinion; but he will yield to, and even refer to, her about all matters
of religion and--the kitchen.
It is the masculine attitude the world over. And sometimes he will
consult her about things she cannot possibly understand, from a
superstitious belief that her virtue may give her insight. She is his
toss of a penny.
It has often amused me to compare the men’s and women’s versions of
some old-world story. It is extraordinarily enlightening. Once, in
order to get a little nearer to the man’s conception of a woman, I
entrapped an orthodox friend of mine into telling me the story of the
Ten-handed Durga. My friend was chewing betel-nut, which meant that
he had dined, and was in genial mood, and clean white draperies. He
sat cross-legged on a mat in a room all delicious cool open spaces.
He leaned his elbow on a great white bolster. There were other
bolsters and mats about the room, for it was his wont to sit here of
an afternoon and receive visitors. It was his “Setting-far-ignorance”
time, as he explained to me. One or two women sat beyond the mats;
they were disciples of holy men, and allowed therefore to gather up
the crumbs which fell from the table of the great philosopher. The
scene pleased me. Every face in the room was worth study; some for the
hall-mark of sainthood, many for the evidence of self-restraint and
meditation; a few for an exactly contrary reason--the possibilities of
a certain unholy strength, the best degraded to the worst.
There was a storm without, but the Setter-far of Ignorance heeded it
not, even so much as to shut the windows, and the rain splashed in, and
the lightning caught now one face, now another, now the pink garb of an
ascetic, now the veiled form of a woman.... The thunder crashed, and
ceased but to let in the noise of the street, with the tram of English
civilization running under the windows.
My question about Durga set the heads wagging. It was close upon Durga
Pooja time, and every Hindu would be provisioning his kitchen against
guests, and adding to the house of Gods that image which presently
he would carry down to the waters of forgetfulness. The question was
popular.
“There are many versions of the story,” said my friend. “You will have
heard what the women say; the true tale is this. Not all the Gods could
prevail against the powers of evil, so they united their several wills
and energies, and the union of strength produced _Durga_. She is
energy or will--the beautiful Ten-handed--and she undertook to fight
the demons.
“They came just in the form of beasts, and then of men; but both she
slew. There lay at her feet the buffalo, typical of all that is coarse,
and the lion, typical of all that is best in the animal world; and out
of the slain beasts rose one in the likeness of a man, and him also she
slew--victorious. It is in this form that the instructed worship her at
Durga Pooja time.”
Then I: “Expound the parable.” And he: “See you not, the spiritual
conquers the bestial and animal, thus gaining strength to conquer the
human also. God conquers evil. And yes, I own it, the ultimate conquest
of evil is by the agency of a woman, for the Creator so ordained it;
she alone is capable of conquest _for others_--but they were the Gods
and not the Goddesses who gave her the power to conquer. The Great God
but accepted the service, the devotion in this matter of the woman, and
so, has he not honoured her for all Eternity?”
“She alone is capable of conquest for others”; “To accept service and
devotion of any is the highest honour you can pay her.” With that for
key-note how many things are capable of understanding in the relation
of Hindu man to Hindu woman!
“I see more still in your story,” said one who sat by. “Does it mean
also, perhaps, that only when we have renounced our wills can they be
effectual for conquest, that when we give the best of ourselves to
others, they afterwards, by these very means, bring back and lay at our
feet that very thing we would ourselves have conquered and mastered?”
For of course the Gods had their part in Durga’s victory. The Hindu
remembers only that conquest, salvation may be bought for him by
another. Suppose now the Hindu Mother to teach her son recognition of
his part in that parable--that it is he who must cultivate the will and
energy wherewith to gift the woman for conquest, possess himself of
something worth giving--what a nation we should have!
But “Everything is in being through ignorance--when we are awake our
dreams are false,” was the only remark made by my friend to these
heroics: and he yawned politely, and seemed to have lost all interest
in the Ten-handed.
VI
THE KING OF DEATH
It is in the villages, remote from railways that I have found the rarer
God-tales, villages got at by long journeys of road and water, past
lotus beds, the pink-white blossom growing waist high among leaves
large as sun-hats; past groups of mat huts tottering against each
other, past palm trees and green swamps of mosquitoes; past stretch of
brown earth waiting patiently, face upturned, for the rain that comes
not; once, past the quaintest requiem ever written in Nature.... It is
a moment worth recall. A slow newly-constructed railway was making its
weary way on a hot afternoon in June from mango-grove to river-bank and
ferry steamer. It was the usual up-country landscape, one barely looked
at it, till, suddenly a change--a great zone of sand, lying in _waves_,
waves patterned like the ripple of water, and glistening--Earth’s
diamond tiara--in the fierce white light of the Sun-God.... A hot wind
smote the face like a furnace-blast; the glare was a flame-red brand
across the eyes ... no relief anywhere, and yet, a strange sense of
freedom in this sea of sand waves.
Under a bare tree of white thorns lay a small bundle of pink rags,
a child with a shock head of hair, the only bit of life and colour
anywhere it seemed at first. She lay quite still, on her back,
motionless.
In the distance across the sand walked a woman, slowly, painfully; on
her head was a water-pot, she walked away from the child, but every now
and then she turned to look at the tree of white thorns. You knew what
she sought ... would she find it? and having found would she be in time?
The train crawled on to the river, and there was the woman ever walking
away and away, and ever turning to look back; and the child under the
shelter of a handful of thorn-needles still, so still, and the sun
smiting on the gleaming sand....
From the river in the growing dusk I saw my diamond tiara changed to
moonstones.... The great zone was now but a soft white sheen, a City
of Light, and the minarets of some place of Saints towered above the
battlements. “A very holy man lived there,” they told me later. It is
where holy men should live, it seemeth me, on the Sands of Time, their
faces to that other fleeting Earth-force the River of Life....
And it was travelling by ways such as these that finally I found
myself in the canvas home of the wilderness, among people who had
leisure to conserve the past, to remember. I sat with them, now on
some spacious roof-tree, the sky for dome, now in some little box of a
room, jealously guarded from light of day, or sight of man, or I went
in and out with them to their Garden-houses, to their house of Gods, to
the women’s courtyard, which respect for hornets’ lives had rendered
dangerous to man! We were sitting in this same courtyard, my eye on the
hornets’ nest in the pipal tree, when “the slave of Kali” told me the
tale of _Shoshti Devi_, the protector of women and children.
“It was a house-cat who first had knowledge of her,” she said. “In
a King’s palace all the Queens were barren, and none could break the
spell. So the cat chose her who oftenest thought upon her stomach’s
need, for the whispering of a secret.”
“Go at midnight,” said she, “and tend the turnips in the potter’s field
beyond the Gates.” So, the youngest Queen went as she was bidden,
and in six moons she had her desire. Shoshti Devi lives in trees, a
different tree for every month; and the truly religious worship her in
all these several forms--but it is enough if you make an image, just
a head with a long red nose, and place it under one of the four most
sacred trees. And, if you tie a rag to a branch as you go away, Shoshti
Devi will look at it, and remember all about you and your prayer, what
time you most may need her.... That was a wise cat. People unacquainted
with the Indian temperament can have no conception of the pathological
value of suggestions such as these. Be a woman never so ill, she comes
back heartened and therefore better as an actual and visible fact
for her visit to the Shoshti tree. Think of the faith it implies. No
vision of the Goddess was vouchsafed her, no Priest comforted her, no
wonder of music, no beauties of chancel or cloister drugged her soul
or shampooed her senses: drawn by a legend not in itself necessary to
salvation she but crawled to some dust-laden tree standing, may be, by
a sun-baked highway. Perhaps she found there an image of _Shoshti_:
perhaps not, it mattered nothing: and she tied to one of the branches
her little prayer of rags, that was all....
Such people should be easy to kill or to make alive. They are, and
there lies the pity of it, in a world where you may die as well as
live, be cursed as well as blessed. The Gods curse, but only through
human agency. This is interesting since you may be blessed directly.
Knowledge on the subject of “sending devils” is the property of the
Priesthood, Royal Fellows of the Society of Hellologists! but magic men
and women, non-diplomaed and unlicensed also abound, and every dweller
in town or village who has ever known or inherited a hate, has his own
little stock of demonology for home consumption. It is my pride that
on the one occasion when I was consciously operated upon, it was by
the specialist. I had helped to secure protection for a child who had
enemies, I was naturally therefore hated of these same. When back from
her Estate, in the comparative civilization of my own little home,
I got a much-thumbed message which had been thoughtfully left in my
post-box.
“Twenty Priests learned in magic,” so it ran, “are sending a devil into
you.” It was true. On the remote scene of thwarted vengeance, they
were “making magic”--cursing a clay image made in my likeness, walking
over every square inch of ground I had trod at the Palace, or in the
Gardens, and--breathing curses.
My answer was a message, “To the Chief Priest among the twenty Priests
most learned in magic, who sit in the Grove of Mangoes, at the Monkey
Temple, in N ..., ‘keep the Devil, till I come.’”
This was treated as a ribald tempting of the demon, and a man was sent
to sit at my gate and curse me so that the flesh should wither from my
bones, and my house be desolate.... But my household and my dear yellow
“Chow,” and my little gray mare, and my red-speckled _munias_, all the
live things within my gates, did, with me, flourish exceedingly ... and
in a fortnight my twenty Priests withdrew their man, no doubt deciding
that I had already a devil bigger than any at their command!
They were, alas! more successful with my little friend. First, they
threw mustard before her as she walked, and she--sneezed.... “What
would you?” It was Colman’s mustard that you buy in yellow tins at the
“Europe Shops.” ... But she sneezed--that meant a devil had entered,
and the Priest spared not the picturesque in description of him. Then,
one morning on her doorstep she found a little box--in it was a human
thigh bone and three packets of powder--red, yellow, blue. This was a
very potent curse, and she trembled exceedingly, so that she could not
even name its meaning.[2]
[Footnote 2: A knowledge of curses is a useful asset to Legal Advisers.
I have known a serious family dispute composed on this wise. _A._ I
could forgive everything but the bone under my bed, for this I will
fight _B._ even till I am penniless. _Adviser_ (Soothingly). Certainly,
certainly--and now let’s have the bone ... which, produced, instead of
being that powerful to curse, is merely a harmless leg-of-mutton bone!
The way to peace is open.]
But worst of all was the manner of cursing parallel to mine. There were
at the moment great hopes of an heir to the Estate: the birth of a son
would settle many political and domestic quarrels. The Priests chose
the moment when the Mother’s mind would be most open to suggestion, and
cursed the thing that was to be! and it died.
So I have known another happening. A widow of fifteen had promised her
Priest, at his desire, ornaments of a certain value for the Festival
of Durga Pooja. But her Trustees did not sanction the expenditure.
The Priest cursed her. She had two children--the youngest girl just
eighteen months in age. The Priest was explicit in his curse--the Baby
would die. I found my widow in an agony of grief. The child was her
boy husband’s last gift to her: and it was dying of pneumonia.... It
was touch and go, but medical skill saved the little life, only the
Mother’s firm belief is that not science but the reconsidered decision
of the Trustees, setting free her priest gifts, worked the cure.
And here I would mention one important article of belief in the Zenana.
It is that not only a man himself but that which he owns or loves or
values may be affected by magic. “So-and-so has put a curse upon your
cattle,” will be a message followed by mysterious deaths, not to be
accounted for by poison. The form of the message varies--it may be
sent in words, it may be sent like the thigh bone or the mustard, in
kind--that is of small moment, the result is always the same.
My Wisest of the Wise, asked for explanation, is politely full of
wonder that I should wish for explanation of such things. “Is it
possible that I doubt? If these things were capable of understanding
would they be worth a thought? Is not the supernatural of necessity
beyond reason? Would you plough the stars with bullocks? Has anything
any existence at all, except in our belief? All we are or seem is a
dream. Those who doubt and argue would seek to dream waking; and they
lose so all the pleasing restfulness of sleep.”
Then musingly, she turned to me with her rare smile. “Once, I also
doubted. I was then of few years, and the questionings which belong
to the changing part of me were many. I was in Benares, and I said
to a holy man there, who is of one fellowship with me: ‘This
thing--cursing--is of the evil one. Do not practise it. Besides I
do not believe you can curse. I believe it is only magic, like the
gypsy folk do use. And he: ‘Nay, Mother, I do it in the name of the
Writings--try me.’ And I wished to test this thing, but because I had
said it was wrong, I could not then consent. Yet on the third day I
said: ‘Well, if you can work a curse in a good cause.... I will be
witness.’
“The Gods sent the occasion. A poor man, threader of flowers for the
neck of a sacred bull in a rich man’s temple, came to me the next
day. He and his family were starving. The rich man had out of caprice
dismissed them. My holy man turned to me.
“‘This is the occasion of your seeking, Mother,’ he said. ‘That rich
man is known to me. I will hurt him--but not much--for this poor man’s
sake.’”
She smiled again whimsically. “I was in the body--what would you? It
was wrong: but I consented.
“So the holy man sent for a little dust from off the feet of the rich
man, and with the help of this, and some earth and flour, he made an
image, saying _mantras_ the while; but the most powerful mantras said
he over five nails lying in the bottom of a pot.
“‘Now,’ he said, ‘the curse is ready; but first go and see the rich
man. Is he well? bring me news.’
“So I went, even as I was bid, and I sat in the courtyard and saw for
mine own self that he was well, and vaunting himself in his health and
riches.
“It was dusk when I returned and made my report. ‘Then here begins the
magic,’ said the holy man; and taking one of the nails he had cursed,
he drove it with many more curses into the knee of the image.
“‘A little curse,’ he said, ‘only a little curse in a good cause: but
he shall feel it.’
“And I ran back to the great house and found all in confusion--servants
running for doctors, Priests reciting prayers.... ‘The Master was sick
unto death,’ they told me. We waited that night; and in the dawn hour,
I, being holy myself and privileged, went to the rich man and told him
as he lay in agony, that to my mind, not the doctor, but expiation
would cure him.
“‘What!’ he said, startled, for his sins I think were not few, ‘must I
bear penalty in this life, when I am willing to carry my burden in the
next.’ ‘Oh! a small matter,’ I suggested; ‘something easy of expiation.
Think--a wrong perhaps to some private or Temple servant.’ But he
remembered nothing. So I, pretending I had seen the thing in a dream,
told him, and instantly the threader of garlands was sent for and
honoured with gifts and feastings. When the holy man heard of this he
took the nail from the rich man’s knee and he recovered immediately....
Yes, I believe in curses. But they are not good, they belong to the
things of the body.”
“_Sitting dharna_” is the Curse Coercive. I thought the practice
extinct, till last year I found a half-mad thing mechanically telling
his beads in a Raj courtyard of my acquaintance, as he sat beside the
image of Ganesh the luck-bringer, under the pipal tree where lay the
offerings of red and yellow flowers and sacred grass-tufts. It was
midday and he sat bareheaded in the sun, unkempt, unshaven, blear-eyed.
So had he sat a fortnight, touching neither food nor drink. The lady
of the house disputed a debt claimed by him in the name of an ancestor.
She bade him sue, but he, wise man, preferred this method. At the
moment he was only just alive, and his wits seemed to have preceded him
to the new genesis. We called him back, with kind words and chinking of
money under the trunk of the Luck-Bringer himself. It was the money I
think that reached him on the Border Land. He laughed for joy and wept
many salt tears into his first spare meal of rice and watery pulse; but
the family borrowed more money to make a great feast because the house
was saved from a Curse!
Another variety of compelling your desire is the burning of a cow or an
old woman. While, for a woman, the simplest way is the time-honoured
custom of sulking. Early Indian domestic architecture provides for
this. There was always a sulking-room in the “Inside” (compare
_boudoir_), and here sat the woman who insisted on her own way; and
here no doubt came husband or father with gift of shawl or toe-ring to
release her....
My wise ones tell me many stories as we sit on the roof in the hour
between the Twilights. But the story of my Wisest one herself is one
of my favourites. You must know that she is a very holy woman indeed.
At her birth, so many years ago that her devotees bring you data to
prove her a hundred years old, it was prophesied that she would be “a
religious,” and her Father built her a Shrine, and taught her things
which only Priests may know. She can perform every _jog_, and can read
one’s thoughts in any language. Her face is the face of her who has
attained, and her dignity and self-poise I have nowhere seen surpassed.
She dresses oddly--the sex of the devotee must not be proclaimed--in
the nether garments of a man, _i.e._, loose white drapery about the
legs, and a long coat. Her hair is worn in coils on the top of her
head, and round her neck hang sacred beads, and Kali’s necklet of
skulls in gold and enamel work. To her the symbol is not gruesome.
Kali, she will tell you, was the power of God, the “Energy of the
Gods,” and the heads represent the Giants of wickedness whom she has
slain.
She is extraordinary in her dealings with people, so quick to discern
true from false; so fearless in her denunciation of hypocrisy, withal
that she is never aught but courteous. I love sitting beside her
when pilgrims come, pilgrims from all parts of India who fall at her
feet and pass on to other shrines, or linger in the outer courtyard
on the chance of a word; the meaning of a text, some family or caste
difficulty, advice as to the moment’s physical or worldly need, all
are brought to her; for she shuts out nothing, and is a dear _shrewd_
Saint about business other than her own. I have known her wave off a
pilgrim--“She would not insult her feet” was the reason given. She
seemed to gather all that mattered about this type of person in a
single glance. To one who came in curiosity pure and simple, though he
pretended interest in some Sanskrit text, she said, quietly looking
him in the eyes while he fumbled over his unveracities: “No! you
shall not hear whence I came, nor anything about me.” But to another
more sincere, though equally curious, she said--he had spoken no
question--“I come from a land where women ride and men wage war.”
In 1857 she was already a famous Sanskritist, so powerful that her
influence, purely religious, was mistaken for political. She was
suspected of collusion with Khande Rao Peishwa, and a guard of soldiers
was stationed round her cell and Temple. When the country settled down,
she wandered to the different places of pilgrimage all over India,
meditating and buying merit. Everywhere had she been, everywhere that
is holy, and as an old woman, eyes dim with prayer, throat drawn with
fasting, she has settled in Bengal and devotes herself to the religious
education of her community. “I have spent a lifetime in prayer: now I
am ready to work,” she explains. But the praying is not over.
From 5 to 9 of a morning, she shuts herself away in her House of Gods,
and no one dare disturb her. Here in India, where shrines are many, and
there is no false shame about entering and praying--doors wide--nay,
where the Godling sits by the wayside, and where it is a common thing
to see a woman stand on a highway, head against some outer wall of a
Temple--the moment’s contact a prayer, or bowing to the Earth on some
crowded pavement--it is curious that not one of her devotees or friends
has any knowledge of what is within her House of Gods--whether it is
empty or has the whole panthology. Yet all alike--alien in faith,
disciple, or visiting devotee--have seen her face as she leaves that
house after her communings with eternity; and well--is there not a
story of the Mount of Transfiguration?
So, she cured herself of a serious illness during which, thinking it
(perhaps meaning it) to be her last, she had summoned to her side by
some telepathic power the faithful from all parts of North India. I say
“meaning,” because I am forced to believe that the Indian woman who has
her will in training can die at will: more rarely she can live at will.
Probably the latter is the rarer because, poor thing, she has so much
more incentive to die than to live.
Well, this time my Wisest of the Wise had elected to live after all.
Her choice was not incompatible with her faith in a God who held the
keys of Life and Death. It was only that, being given free will, it was
within her power to steal the key of the House of Death.
“Has one ever stolen the key of the House of Life?” I asked.
“I know of none such,” was the cautious answer of wisdom.
Then I--“Talk to me, Mother, of Life and Death. What is Life?”
And she--“A dream in the heart of a dream.... It is as if one should
sleep, and sleeping dream that he was dead. That dream within a dream
is this, that men call Life.”
“And Death?”
“To-morrow’s dream. The next-door house. God’s tenant am I in this
house in which you find me. But agreement I have none. God will tell
me to quit, nor give me notice. Death is but the house I next inhabit.
There will be other houses after that.” Death, it would seem, is but
a change of house, we have failed to repair the present tenement, or
it is too small for us, or our neighbourhood is unsuitable, so we are
given the chance of another, and after that, perchance, yet another and
another, through all the lives appointed to us. But our personalities
remain. We can never sink those.
Once again, she talked of Death as “the Innermost Dream--but we shall
wake.” “The end of the Death dream is only sleep, that is Life: when we
wake from life, it is to Life Eternal.”
“And what is that?”
“Rest--in the perfect attainment of all truth, of all knowledge and of
all reality.”
The body, I gather, is degradation to the soul. Any “house” is in a
measure degradation and belongs to the state of progress. Some day we
shall be free of all houses. We shall lose ourselves in the Great Soul.
That is the final “Twilight”--the time of Union for each individual
soul.
“Then shall there be no more Death.”...
She ceased speaking, my Wisest of the Wise, and silence fell between us
as we looked together at the dying Sun.
Oh! the gray and silver gray on the water. Oh! the gold, limpid,
liquid, lambent gold in the sky and on the water....
“And the King of Death is but the first Sunset.”...
_P.S._--Since the above was written, my Wisest of the Wise has arrived
at her Sunset hour. Her going was very beautiful and very simple:
shortly before her time was come, she left the Town where she dwelt,
for the holy city of Death. She was no worse and no better than she
had been any day the year and more, but she knew, apparently. Then, one
morning, she said quite calmly to her disciples, after the ceremonial
bath and _pooja_, “This is the last time I shall worship in this house”
(her body); “now, waste no time in regret, let us talk the things we
should be sorry to have left unsaid.”... And all that day the faithful
gathered about her, and she expounded the scriptures with an insight
unequalled even by herself. She ate nothing--“Why prop up the house
that is tumbling?”
At night she asked to be taken down to the Sacred River--a Hindu dies
with her feet in the water; and there she sat among her friends on the
stone steps of the Ghat, claiming no support, no physical comfort,
now silent, now setting afloat some beautiful thought in words that
will always live for those who loved her ... and then just in the gray
mystery of the dawn hour, “It is right,” she said, and fell back....
They put her into a boat and took her across to the Ghat of the Soul’s
departure, and here they slipped her gently into the Stream ... for
that is all the burial service for one who is holy.
Later, her disciples came to me with faces radiant. “She has attained,”
they said. “Yes!” said the Holy Man, Truth-named, “she has attained in
that she elected not to attain;” and then they told me that, sitting
that night of stars and dark spaces by the River of Death, one had said
to her: “You are blessed; you have attained.” And she made answer:
“Nay! it was given me to attain; but I put it aside, desiring re-birth
once more for the sake of the work, to which I have put my hand, here
among you.”
“And a man’s future is even as his desires. That is true truth, Miss
Sahib!” concluded the Wise man, Truth-named.
VII
THE WISE MAN--“TRUTH-NAMED”
It was at the house of my Wise Woman that first I saw him. He wore a
straight long robe, the colour of the pilgrim flag, or of the inner
lining of the fruit of knowledge when you break through the sheath in
which it shelters from the world.
About his head were wound fold on fold of muslin of the same mystic
hue, and the way of winding, and his speech, bewrayed him of the Punjab.
But as I have said, you must never locate the holy. He walked with head
erect, straight as an arrow, nor receiving nor giving salutation to
any; and he came to me where I stood talking to my Wisest of the Wise,
and “When,” said he, “may I come to talk with the Miss Sahib of the
big-little things?” And I: “How know you that I like to talk of these
things? and what are they?”
“I know; the Miss Sahib knows. When may I come?”
So we found a convenient season; and he, the free, made of himself for
the sake of removing ignorance, a slave of time, coming punctually
Sunday after Sunday to talk the big-little things, “Life and Death,”
and “Whence we come,” and “Whither we are bound.”
With eyes screwed together in earnestness, one finger on the tip of
his nose as he meditated, he would talk hour after hour; nor did
he discourage discussion, he begged it. It was one way he said of
teaching us to know ourselves. “And how shall we know God until we know
ourselves?” “Be self-knowers. God is within, and it is the God in us
that seeks to find God.” ... “God! by what sign shall we know Him? how
conceive? Imagine a world without space or place or time or anything
created. Imagine only light and light and light, everywhere pulsing,
throbbing.... From the beginning was that, and only that, and that was
God. But with God exists the Power and Mercy of God, not separately,
but as closely allied as sweetness to sugar, as the scent of the rose
to the rose, as the colour of a flower to the flower.... Men talk
of one God as if there could be two or three. There’s just God--the
All-pervading, the Essence of Being, the heart of the heart of Beauty,
the great first Flame which lights every flame that leaps into life....
Light and light and light, brilliance at the soul of brilliance ... the
God-spark in every soul, in everything created ... only by recognizing
this shall we recognize God, there is no other way.
“... Yes! the windows of the soul get dimmed and the flame gives no
light. Is that the fault of the flame? Clean the windows of the soul;
such work is allowed to man, such only, not his to create Light, _that_
was and is from Eternity.
“One day all the several sparks of light will go back to the Great
Central Light whence they came, the soul will find God.... What need to
make haste? What need to fret? Every soul must find God at long last
... light will return to Light.”
In countries loved of the Buddha one sees by the roadside a little
shrub with white leaves among the green. The Buddha passed that way,
is the legend, and the shrub has kept memory of the passing. I have
sometimes thought that so among the leafy professions of mankind there
are some white souls that keep the memory of the passing of the Great
God. The “Truth-Named” is one such.
I remember on one occasion thanking him when he had said things which
gave food for thought.
“Huh!” he said, “Miss Sahib, that was not yet talk of God. I did
but try to make a clearing in the jungle where we might sit down
and meditate about these things.” Another day he said: “There are
three diseases in the world--_Actual Sin_” (the breaking of what
we call commandments), “this disease can be cured by good works;
_Restlessness_, to be cured by meditation; and _Joylessness_, to be
cured by making occasion to give joy to others. The mark of a true
religion is Joy.”
Referring to the first cure, I said: “Then you believe in the efficacy
of good works, oh! Truth-Named Singh.” And he said: “Good works are
fetters, fetters of gold, but still fetters.”
* * * * *
When the Datura tree hung out its burden of bells, and the pilgrim
season had begun, he came to me with as much excitement as his calm
abstraction from all emotion permitted. And, “There is a _Lat_ (Lord)
Swami,” he said, “sitting in a grove at Dum Dum. Would the Miss Sahib
like to talk with him?”
“Is he holy?” I asked.
“I know him not, but he is called a _Lat_ Swami, he should be so. He
has been teaching the people of the farther England (America) about God
and the one religion, it is said, and he has many disciples in every
country. Besides, he speaks the language of the Miss Sahib’s friend
(English), and it is a chance for the Miss Sahib’s friend to question
in her own tongue, as she cannot me.” ...
So we went, and the first time lost our way. We met strolling minstrels
and were offered seats at wedding feasts, and fighting rams for our
diversion, but no Swami sitting by his Lake of Lotuses.
Our Wise Man was distressed: “I gave my word you would come. Even by
mistake we cannot break a word, it is damage to Sainthood”--one’s own
he meant. “Make a speedy occasion to remove the disease of this error.
I myself will conduct you.”
But no! he would not arrange the train by which we were to go. “Shall
I who am free, compel any to be slaves to time? Come when you will, I
will sit at the Station all day.” It was late afternoon when we could
make the expedition but the “Truth-Named” was there. He had awaited
us since morning, meditating undisturbed by the bustle of a Railway
Station. We were soon in the suburbs among palm-trees, and rank
undergrowth, and we found the _Lat Swami_ clad in yellow-silk robes,
sitting cross-legged in a grove of mango-trees, beside a bed of white
lotuses. His face did not appeal, but that we mused, might be prejudice.
“Ask him the big-little questions,” prompted our Wise Man--himself
retiring deferentially to the level of the least of the Lat Swami’s
disciples. And we asked, only to hear in pompous English, “I refer
you to my book, which has been well-reviewed by the ‘Daily Mail.’ My
Disciple will explain.” And before our gasp of astonishment had spent
itself, came the disciple, a follower from that “farther England” who,
grovelling before the Master, produced the book.
But we were busy inventing excuse for flight. Silence, as we walked
away. Then said our Truth-Named, tolerant humour in his eyes, “So the
Miss Sahib’s Friend, and the Miss Sahib liked not that Holy Man?”
“_No!_” I said, “we did not.” Pause--then, “I am glad the Miss Sahib’s
Friend, and the Miss Sahib did not like that Holy Man. I am glad that
they gave not their discrimination a sickness by liking him.”
“But you took us!”
“How could I know? Besides, in a garden one should smell every
flower.... To me it seemeth that the foolish ones of the Farther
England have robbed him of his virtue by their admiration and praises.
It is ever so. Of virtue do women rob even the holy. Once that Swami
had excuse for knowledge.”
“What is the name of her whom he called Disciple?”
“How can I know? Foolish one--what need for other name?”
On the way back we had proof of our Wise Man’s reality of religion. He
would not travel in our carriage behind the “fire horse,” politely
went next door: but just as the train was about to move we saw him
literally kicked out by some non-Indian, masquerading as a gentleman.
The poor old “Truth-Named” found room elsewhere, and nothing could be
done till we arrived at our destination, when we waited for him to
apologize and atone for the unknown.
“Huh,” he said, “_that_, that was nothing. Forget it, Miss Sahib. It is
not. It could not hurt me, since I did not resent it.” ... “His mind
carried not fruit of ignorance,” as he said on another occasion. Even
so, in his simplicity has he often enunciated the greatest of truths.
I have talked in a book of women of Holy Men, for priests and women
are allies the world over, and in India, particularly is the influence
noticeable. A priest is often the only man with whom a Purdahnashin
may talk, before whom she may appear unveiled: and, as I have said
before, there is a secret, albeit about things religious, between wife
and priest to which even the woman’s husband may not be party. Not
backward has the Priesthood been in availing itself of its privileges.
Where his learning is not likely to attract, the man of ashes has an
inheritance of superstition to which no woman is proof, and from which
there can be no appeal.
The “Truth-Named” is fearless in denunciation of the ash-smeared and
degraded type of Priest. “In the golden age the only Priest was Prayer.
If we would only study ourselves, travel in the unknown country of our
minds and souls and personalities, we should need no Guru, save God.
Priests, of all religions, keep men’s eyes bandaged that they should
not see except through the Priest: but the written word and the book of
ourselves is open to all.”
“There is but one religion--the service of man and personal holiness
by realization of God. No need for rules of conduct, for commandments.
Realize God and even the desire to transgress is slain. But realize God
and the place even of sin in the scheme of the world will be clear.
There is nothing which is outside God. Yes--this is a hard doctrine, to
be learnt only by sitting aloof from men, sitting in a place of green
trees, in solitudes where blow the winds of God, fresh and pure.”
Perhaps one reason of the ascendency of the Priesthood was that at one
time the priests were the moneylenders of the Community. We know this
was so even as late as the eighteenth century. Say a man wished to
borrow £3: he went to the Faqir who put the sum into his hand in the
presence of witnesses, but about 15_s._ had to be returned to himself
as a present. Interest was never less than 12 per cent. and the lender
kept a watch-dog at the expense of the borrower, to see that he did
not run away! So the poor wretch seldom got more than half the sum he
borrowed, while, to compel repayment, children were often sold, and
most cruelly tortured.
It is curious to recall in this connection the old Sanskritic tale of
the learner who went to the Sage to ask what might be the best penance
for deeds of evil.
“Gifts of Cows, of land, and especially of gold to Brahmins.”
“Why specially gold?” “The purifying power of gold. Oh! Purusurama,”
was the answer, “is very great. They who bestow it, bestow the Gods.”
“How so?” said the obstinate Learner.
“Know, oh! Hero, that _Agni_ (fire) comprehends all the Gods, and gold
is of the essence of Agni.”
Women Priestesses there are; but not as a regular institution of the
Purdah. If it is right to conclude that the system of seclusion is
encouraged and italicized by the Priests in order to preserve the man’s
monopoly, the reason will be obvious.
Also it would seem as though except as a religious elect before or
from birth, or remarkable for peculiar learning, like my Holiness,
the Priestess chooses the humbler position of the service of a Guru,
leaving guidance to her male counterpart. Some act procurator in
positions not possible of relation; but there must be exceptions,
and one charming young Priestess at least have I known who owed her
attractions neither to the sacred learning nor to prophecy. She was
from the North country, and appeared suddenly one pilgrim season in the
vicinity of Nasik, in Western India. Tall and beautiful, of commanding
presence, clad in shell-pink draperies; a close-cropped head,
discoloured to a brilliant copper by the fumes of the opium fire--such
was the figure that stood, pilgrim flag in hand, by the roadside,
asking protection of a passing stranger. Remarkable to look upon she
would have been in any costume, but thus, against the glow of a low
sun-setting, she was arresting.
And her story? full of humour and pathos. She and a younger Brother,
orphaned early in life, were left to the care of an Uncle. The property
was the Brother’s with reversion to herself. The Brother died while
still a child; helped out of life, she conceived when old enough to
understand these things, and the property was hers and she bride-elect
to her cousin. She had loved her Brother passionately--Oh! you saw
that, in her eyes and in the picture she left with you of her attempts
to push Death away from the threshold. “Stroke the brindled cow,” was
the last prescription of the old Priestess, who sat in the near-by
forest: and the child brought in the old cow to the neglected bedside.
Then, in a frenzy, she ran to the old Priestess: “Cut off my hair”--she
was but ten years old--“and initiate me. It will, maybe, please
the Gods, and spare the life.” And the Priestess, alleged seller of
God-favours, initiated the child, being not unaware of her position and
prospects.
But when the beloved Brother died, and the Uncle sought to recover the
child, she refused to come, nor could she now as initiated Priestess be
bride to the cousin. So a bribe to the opium eater procured silence,
and the disciple her freedom.
It was a wandering life--now grove, now cave, now hill
camping-ground--the little Priestess sitting over the opium fire, her
head on a prayer-stick, meditating--her instructress raking in the
offerings. A prayer-stick is shaped so--T: and the head lies on the arm
stretched across the bar, while the fumes of the opium fire produce
drowsiness. But the life of prayer and meditation, in the name of her
Brother, became very real to the Baby Priestess: and as she grew, and
her Old-Woman-Guru used her to attract devotees to the Shrine, there
was many a tussle between righteousness and unrighteousness, till
policy suggested the Child’s sanctity as the more lasting bait.
She must have been about twenty when they made the pilgrimage to Nasik;
and here the old woman met her own one-time Guru, and he claimed the
prayer-stick of the beautiful grand-disciple as a talisman. Perhaps
he claimed more, we were not told; but the rupture on refusal brought
her to that wayside throwing of herself on the mercy of a stranger....
She was wonderfully adaptive to the demands of civilization, cast away
her opium pipe, and even struggled bravely with forgotten memories of
reading and writing; but she loved best to sit huddled up in the dusk
and tell stories of her wanderings. What stories they were!
“In every house a Father, in every house a Mother”--a great phrase with
her; and soon, the wander spirit proved too much for her. The road
called her, and she went--comet-like. This was many years ago; but I
still hope to come upon the copper-headed owner of the prayer-stick.
Once I thought I had found her at a place of pilgrimage in company
with a holy woman who had gained her reputation for sanctity in a way
unusual. She was an untaught Mathematician, sat at the mouth of a cave
drawing geometrical figures in the sand, and spelling out for herself
the problems which the world of books has dedicated to other names than
hers. The pilgrims thought the triangles and parabolas magic, and would
wag wise heads over the Mathematician at work; quite content if after
the cabalistic musings which had nothing to do with their goods and
ills she announced to the inquirer that there would be a good harvest,
or that his son would die and his enemy be degraded in rebirth.
But if it were indeed my Comet whose copper head hung over a
prayer-stick behind the Mathematician, I got not opportunity for speech
or sight. Yet, I am thinking that some day, when the sun is low,
that column of burnished light will wait for me once more beside the
Pilgrim’s way.
VIII
THE NASAL TEST
A STUDY OF CASTE
Caste in its origin was merely a guide to marriage, _i.e._, a man was
distinguished from his fellow-men simply in order to determine into
what families a woman might or might not marry.
Moreover, a “County” family was known by the width of its nose, caste
varying inversely as the width. For the only question with which caste
dealt in the long ago, was: Are you an Aryan or are you a Dravidian?
There were later stages, influenced, who can say, by what motives?
providing, how know we now, for what momentary need? serving, who
shall tell us, what personal spites or conveniences? and caste came
finally to denote not only a man’s place on the social ladder, but
his privileges in a spiritual kingdom and his value in a professional
market.
It is a little difficult to explain because there is, I think, no
exact parallel in the institutions of the West. It is a combination
of several determining causes of exclusiveness--the social Western
conception of the right instinct and the appropriate culture, the
interests of labour as represented by trade-guildism, and the Judaic
idea of a chosen people as something peculiarly the care of a God who
nevertheless made all the world.
And, at the present day, the social and economic distinctions are
merged in the religious, so that the feeling, as we find it, is of a
barrier placed by God, not man. Is it not exactly otherwise in the
nearest parallel afforded by the West? Your neighbour may, in Church,
I take it, assume the privileges of an equal; in the Park he may not.
The Hindu high-caste man might joke and laugh with his inferior in
the Park; but he will not go to Church with him, _i.e._, he will not
eat with him because this is a religious act, and he will not “pray”
with him in the sense of admitting him to certain mysteries of the
religion, or the performance of certain sacrifices. Again, caste
implies breeding, only relatively. Indeed, even the lowest person in
the scale of life will talk of his caste. “I am of the caste of the
sweeper,” he will say quite proudly; and he has further been known to
say: “I am of the caste of--the Outcast”; because he knows of some one
who will do what is tabooed even to him. Caste--that is--denotes a
man’s place on the ladder of life, but not of necessity his place on
any one rung rather than another. In this sense, it is a mere label.
Further, we must remember that with Caste as a rule--_nascitur non
fit_. There have been known people who used a semblance of tribal
name to climb into a caste above their own; or again, take the
“Eaters-in-relief-kitchens,” a caste in Orissa made, we are told, of
those who lost their original caste by accepting relief in famine time;
and there are at our doors others, who by persistent self-restraint and
imitation of the customs of a higher caste pass by courtesy for such;
but these do not deceive the elect into intermarriage. A man may buy
himself salvation, a higher place in the world to come by his spiritual
re-genesis. There is no bribe of whatever kind which in this world,
will put him on to even the very next rung of that ladder of Caste.
Now, is it clear that with all this machinery of exclusiveness there is
no condemnation one of another? If I am of the highest caste, in this
genesis, sitting on the top step of our socio-religious ladder, and
you, say, on the fourth, I must of necessity exclude you from “bread
and water.” That rule our religion, which is greater than either of
us, has made; but that does not mean that I will not associate myself
with you in other ways. True, I would not let my Zenana visit yours--my
women are part of my religion--but you and I might play together, buy
and sell together, work together, travel together....
And yet, again, this contamination against which I am bound to guard
myself is ceremonial not moral. It is not because you would teach me to
swear or lie or thieve that I cannot dine at your table, but because
drinking water at your hands, and eating what has been cooked at your
fire, is within the canonical “Thou shalt not.” The odd thing is that
until English education brought other ideas to the country, no one
resented his place in life. “Why kick against the inevitable?” he would
argue. “I shall come again; who knows but that in my next genesis I
might not myself be sitting on that topmost step?” All is in a man’s
own hands--he will reap hereafter, as he sows now this minute....
And Hindu women? How has caste affected them? We have seen that it was
invented primarily for their benefit, for though a man might marry
beneath him, no woman was allowed like liberty. The natural result of
this arrangement was that there were too few men to go round in the
higher castes; and in a scheme of life and after life which has no
room or use for spinsters, the only resource was to marry them off as
quickly as possible, whence, in the opinion of some, infant marriage,
though the instinct of self-preservation against Mahommedan raids must
have done something.
Of course, no woman realizes this, and the reason she will give you for
Baby marriages is that a Father’s class of Heaven depends on the age
at which his daughter was married. If she is settled between three and
five he goes to a first-class heaven, if between five and eight to a
second class, eight and eleven to a third class--after that to hells,
only to hells! For herself she is content with the most detailed and
minute table of procedure, nor questions how it was made. She knows far
better than any man the difference between +A and -A. She will tell you
also quaint exceptions to the God-rules. “You may stand by So-and-so
when she is cooking a dish of green (but not red) pulse, and never
_never_ when she is cooking rice. It would all have to be thrown away,
it and the vessels, even if the shadow of a shadow fell across it.” In
South India I have heard tell of a caste of Brahmins so strict that no
lower caste may come within thirty yards of its elect; and when the
high-caste woman walks abroad, she has a fore-runner clearing the way
before her face.
Again, with some castes not only must you, being alien or of a lower
caste, not touch their water or water vessels, but you must not enter
the room which holds the drinking-water. If you do, the water is
defiled. They have too good manners to tell you this. It may be their
last drop of water in a drought, nevertheless, when you have gone
away, the water is faithfully rejected. Nor, again, may they drink
water even at the hands of the elect if the alien or outer-brother is
in the room.
Different civilizations, different notions of cleanliness. The point
seems to be to learn each other’s aversions and respect them. The
Hindu is horrified at the use of tooth-brushes. “What! use the same
brush twice?” She herself uses a twig of the _Neem_ tree, no fatter
than her own smallest finger, and of course there is a fresh twig for
each using. Again, at the use of tubs, “You go dirty into the water
from which you expect to come out clean,” she exclaims. You refer
gently to the bathing in the Ganges. “Ah, but that is different,” she
will answer, “that is holy water, however apparently impure, however
apparently contaminated, it is holy.” Her reasoning explains what
hitherto puzzled me--how little particular the Hindu is about the
intrinsic cleanliness of water, despite her belief in sacred streams.
The Founders of the religion, knowing the value of water in a hot
country, called it sacred, no doubt in order to keep it clean. Their
thought was, “It is sacred, do not defile it.” The modern Hindu says,
“It is sacred--even the thing that most defiles, cannot defile it.”
The same Hindu who will bathe before touching the sacred basil, will
be absolutely indifferent as to the water in which she bathes. If it
is a sacred river, a sacred tank, it may be thick as pea soup with
impurities. That is no matter.... Again, another incongruity. The
eating of the flesh of the cow revolts a Hindu--you do not realize how
strongly till it is something other than yourself--as a dog, suspected
of a meat diet, who sniffs at them; and yet the sacrifice of goats at
Kalighat, for instance, cannot be seen unmoved by the most inveterate
eater of flesh.
The fact is, that with the Hindu the root of all aversion is
traditional religion, and this it is which overlays the ordinary
aversions of instinct or culture. At the present day purely arbitrary,
too, seems the table of clean and unclean, though, as in all religions,
no doubt it had its one-time significance. In an agricultural country
the cow was a useful animal. If you wished preservation, the only way
was to declare it sacred. The religious sanction appeals most strongly
to peoples in their infancy, and in India we find a nation which
still keeps its nursery rules, so to speak.... And, as is proper, the
women know far more about these rules than do the men. A Hindu will
often say, appealed to on this point or that of religious custom or
religion: “I do not know, but information may be had in _the Inside_.”
One such Inside produced the fact that the sanctity peculiar to the
Ganges applies to one town at least, to Puri by the Sea. As the Ganges
receives all castes--in death, so does Puri--in life.
Here such holiness does the very fact of residence give, that it
over-rides distinctions. A Brahmin would eat at the hand of a sweeper
in Puri, would eat and keep his caste. In theory, of course, a man
should eat at the hand of a sweeper anywhere, a sweeper, say, turned
_Sanyasi_ (a world-renouncer or holy man); but my same information
adds as rider that no Sweeper, even in Puri, would dream of thrusting
himself on a Brahmin.
I referred the point to my Wisest of the Wise. “It is true,” she said,
“and only the holiest Brahmin, he who has got so far past the trammels
of his body as not, say, to be conscious of even heat or cold--for
caste is only a distinction of this body--only such a man would say
to the Sweeper, ‘Come, friend, the God in you and the God in me is
one: let me eat at your hands,’--and such an one could take no sin
eating with the Sweeper. But as long as you are conscious of repulsion,
aversion, there is sin in disregarding it--sin which will affect the
after-genesis, which will annul a life-time of merit.”
This same penalty, loss of caste, is the reason for what has been
called in official documents “enforced widowhood.” The Priests attached
excommunication to re-marriage. And since, as we have seen, things
social and things religious overlap in Hinduism, the Priests had the
opportunity of banning in both ways. No more invitations to caste
dinners, as well as no more visits to the Temple, to sacred Tanks
and Wells and Bathing Ghats, for the excommunicated. Few women and
fewer men will face excommunication of this type, and one reads with
amusement of the ardent reformer who, before proposing marriage to a
charming widow of his acquaintance, wrote a hundred notes to friends
and acquaintances, “Will you dine with me if I marry So-and-so?” There
were not fifty righteous found willing, even on paper! But in truth
the number of those who wish or would countenance re-marriage is very
small. The feeling of the orthodox about marriage is this: It is a
Gift--the gift by a Parent of a daughter to a husband. The Gift must
be a _first_ Gift, no one must have had earlier use of it, no one must
even have had earlier chance of longing for it. You must be certain
the possession is your very own--wherefore the giving in infancy.
Wherefore again, even if you died after mere symbolic and before actual
possession of your gift, the Gift was nevertheless yours.... Infant
widowhood. How can it be given again--that Gift? If it would be sin in
infancy, it would be worse sin later on. And the woman’s reasoning is
of the same class. The best believe in the sacrament of marriage: they
worship their husbands as the life-force: for his using or abusing,
his pleasure or neglect they exist. He being gone, what is there? In
the old days there was suttee, and who shall say but that the moral
strength it represented did not make for something in the national
consciousness? No one ever enforced widowhood. No one enforced suttee:
no one to-day can really restrain suttee. One old test was putting
your smallest finger into the fire and burning it to the bone: if you
could stand that, unflinching, you were worthy to be suttee. Another
was stirring boiling hot rice with your bare hand. I know a woman whose
proudest memory is that some Great-Aunt or Grandmother stood the test.
Of course misuse of the practice crept in. Some women became suttee
because it was expected of them. What tragedies there must have been!
How the other women must have whispered: “Will she be suttee? Oh! will
she?” or, “She surely will be suttee!” And in each case it would have
determined the undetermined. Again, one can imagine the woman who
did not love suffering suttee in expiation, or in terror at her own
gladness of release; or she who was not loved enough seeking it in
pride or hunger of heart. Oh! the tragedies in that handful of ashes on
the suttee stone. Then, again, there would be the Priest-made suttees,
an increasing number as the years carried life further and further
from the original ideal.
But, as I said above, the real suttee was never compelled, nor is she
now. Only this morning I have heard of a woman, within a four-mile
radius of where I sit writing, who soaked her _sari_ in oil, and
falling upon her dead husband’s body set fire to herself; and of
another just saved from a like attempt. Who could prevent them? Now and
again, as lately in the Punjab or Gaya, cases are brought to light, and
convictions point anew to the law; but Police administration Reports do
not represent the tale of suttees in any one Province.
The class of woman who for the kingdom of Heaven’s sake became suttee
before the Act of 1829, still is suttee, either actually in the
old-time way, though by stealth and unnerved by the admiration of the
onlooker, or in the life of religion and unselfishness. We have all
known at least one such Saint living between her house of Gods and the
cares of other people, a burden-bearer who bears without railing, nay
often with cheerfulness, and who has learnt to live without any hope,
save for him with whom she was forbidden to die. Perhaps the living
sacrifice began when she was but twelve years of age ... perhaps she
lived to seven times twelve.... “What did you do?” I asked of one such,
“in the long ago when life pulsed in your veins?” She smiled at me
the smile of her who has attained. “There were the children of other
people who needed love; there is always my house of Gods.... I am a
_Swami-bakht_ (worshipper of my husband).”
She to whom I refer was loved and honoured, the high priestess, so to
speak, of her family. “She was too holy for life’s commonplace, so the
Destroyer set her free to pray,” as said her Father. Yet, she also was
accursed, a thing of ill-omen, not to be seen on occasions auspicious,
barred then, even from the Temple. If aught went wrong in the house,
even her staunchest friend would say: “I must have looked at your face
this morning, _Didi_.” And, to be the bringer of bad luck, that must be
the hard part of the lot of these women. That they keep their faces to
the Light, in spite of this, seems to me the very crown of Sainthood.
I have spoken of one type of widow, the rarest; some there are who
identify themselves with the thing accursed, who have not the strength,
like that other, to falsify the curse by every moment’s life of blessed
service, many who accept misery as their portion; some who distract
themselves from misery by vice or by lapses from virtue.... The odd
thing is that modern Hinduism, as represented by the Priesthood, would
wink at the last-named, while excommunicating the virtuous widow
who re-married. I said “the odd thing,” but wrongly, for of course,
if my earlier conclusion be true, and modern Hinduism is a system
of canonical “Thou-shalt-nots” and not of refined ethics (as in the
_Shasthras_), the Priests are quite consistent.
“You shall be outcast. I will not dine with you.”
It is but another anomaly in this land of anomalies that _that_ should
be the strongest possible sanction in a community where there is no
social intercourse in the Western sense, where individual families live
so entirely aloof, that their womenkind do not visit each other.
But the fact is, there is nothing more unassailable than caste. In the
second century before Christ Buddha strove to break it down--Gautama
Buddha, who was so reverenced by the Hindu that he is considered an
incarnation of Krishna.... Yet, to-day, in Buddha Gaya, the preacher
of the brotherhood of man sits in the beautiful old Temple, to which
Hindu and Buddhist alike come on pilgrimage, with a caste mark on his
forehead! And under the very shadow of the image the Brahmin will throw
away the food or water defiled by contact with the outer-brother.
We see men travelling by the same train (and of course this and all
the other cohesive tendencies always being quoted to us do effect
something), and we think this represents a breaking down of barriers.
Does it, of the real barrier? Listen to the Water-Carriers on the
platform: “Water, water for the Mahommedan”; “Water for the Hindu”;
“Water for _the Brahmin_.” The Brahmin may “water” any caste, the
highest may stoop to serve the lowest; but the highest may not accept
service of any but the highest.
To my mind this caste problem is one which will need grapplement before
any single other object or aim or ambition can be made national,
representative. There is neither speech nor language in orthodoxy, yet
its voice is heard by those who live among the masses away from the
Anglification of the great cities; and it is a voice that asserts,
that none dream of disobeying. It is a voice that curses; men fear
to disobey, even when they writhe under the curse. And all the full
ecstatic organ stop of the handful of vociferating Reformers in the
Metropolis would not drown one silent syllable of its perpetual
invocation!
One word more. I have called this study _the Nasal test_. We all know
what happens when a Hindu wife lapses from rectitude. There is no
scene in a law Court, but she goes through life self-betrayed; she has
lost the tip of her nose. The pain of the punishment is obviously its
publicity; but it would be interesting to know whether in origin it had
any connection with caste. Is it possible that the mutilated nose was
but symbolical of the husband’s right to excommunicate? “For this sin
you are to me outcast. I know no greater punishment. Reap even as you
have sown!”
IX
THE MOTHERS OF FIGHTERS
Rugged hills, all stone and cactus bush, and brown-white dust and
grass the colour of dust; and, from the desert beyond the hills, hot
dry winds smiting the face.... Such is the country which breeds the
warrior caste--grim and gaunt and attractive. Nothing of softness in
man and soil, even the very fold of the hills where elsewhere in the
smiling uplands of the Deccan or the rhododendron-clad Himalayas, or
the jungle-veiled hills of Central India, you expect a handful at least
of grass, green and succulent for the sheepfolk: even this here breeds
stones to hurl at the invader when other missiles fail. The Rajput
hill-giant opens his mailed fist and shows you David’s weapons.
“Nothing of softness in man or soil.” And yet once you are inside those
hill-fortresses the grimness relaxes--you get the very romance of
beauty--lace work in marble, water palaces and walled gardens. Thus
at Oodeypore, at the foot of that wonderful rock-hung fortress of the
King who was saved by his Nurse, is the _Suggun Niwas_, sitting like
a lotus flower on its broad green leaf--a series of marble lattices
and balconies and exquisite turrets, built round the quiet peace of a
water garden of fruit trees, gorgeous study in orange and green, or the
_potpourri_ of the flower garden of my Lady Rosebody. Or there again,
is the Queen of Cities, the Universal Mother standing to greet you at
the mouth of a great mountain gorge. The road winds higher and higher,
the gates of the outer world close upon you; you are at home here in
the peace place of “the heart’s true ease,” beside the lake of pink
mimosa and sweet-scented thyme....
You walk in the dead cities--the walls have outlived the rivalry of
Kings--the white palaces glitter on the hill tops, and the priceless
mosaics still hide in the niches.... The fierce upstanding men of the
divided beard, their swords girt upon their loins, are fighters still.
You know that when you meet them in the Cities of the Living, they
have not lost their cult of the sword, their love for the soil, these
earth-born. But, what of the women? The gardens are deserted and the
baths and robing-rooms, the summer palaces, and the sandal-wood halls
of pleasure, and all the dainty or thoughtful arrangements which prove
the Rajputni an individual in the eye of her lord--all deserted....
Here, when the King held his moonlight Durbar on the roof of the
palace, she had hidden to watch the pomp and circumstance of feudalism,
the glitter of jewelled daggers, the soft richness of brocade, or the
sheen of those richer garments of light ... and the Lake lay peaceful
at her feet, and the twin fortresses frowned watch and ward.... Here
she was suttee when her Lord died fighting at the Gate; here she led
his armies to victory; here she drank smiling, the poisoned cup, which
was to save the honour of a line of Kings....
Down this dusty road, between the high walled mountains, she walked
in the procession of women, all garlanded with roses and jasmine, to
make oblation before the Goddess of Children. Or, now again it is “the
Festival of Flowers” itself; the grain has sprouted and the women go
with singing and dancing to bathe in the sacred Lake before they carry
to their lords the green sprig which, worn in the turban, is sign of
love and unity. It is the Women’s Festival. No man may take part in
it; but the grim men of the grim mountains, with love and reverence at
their hearts, stand at the salute--a guard of honour for the women as
they pass.
Or now she is in trouble--her lord is at the wars, and her little ones
are defenceless in the Fortress which overlooks the desert ... what
shall she do? She sends her bracelet, and a strand of silk, a circlet
of gold--it is but a symbol, to him whom hereby she calls her Brother,
“Bracelet-bound-Brother”--and hereafter her soul knows no fear.
And he? the Brother--whose but hers is his devotion, his life; and he
gives both willingly, albeit knowing he may never even see the face of
her he serves. Not the crassest mind would attach the smallest scandal
to the relationship.... And perhaps selflessness in love, the love of a
man, has seldom in India reached a higher level.... And that brings me
to a reminiscence.
It was a hot day in an extra oppressive June, and I was making my way
through the Bazaar of a Raj Town--to the rabbit warren where burrowed
the workers in enamel. The Bazaar itself was full of interest--open-air
booths, gay with glass bangles and draperies; quaint ox-carts, tied up
in gorgeous red “lampshades” to shelter the bargaining Purdahnashin;
wedding processions; priests with begging bowls, and pontifical bulls,
small and white and saucy, moving from grain stall to vegetables,
exacting toll at will.... But my Master-worker had more still to chain
me. The artists sat on the roof, dreaming their colour dreams. They
told me they worked on the roof because in a busy town you cannot get
near enough to the Earth-Mother; and you are reduced to lessening the
distance between you and the sky. “What would you?--something living
must watch a man at work--if he wants perfection.”
They sat before queer little tables; some beat out on the rich gold
trinket the pattern which was to hold the colour--mixed to some secret
prescription, old as the City, of precious stones ground fine as
powder; others painted--their pallet, slabs of brass with five finger
marks for hollow; their brush, steel needles. All the light and colour
in the sky seemed entrapped in that workshop. And now, suddenly the
light has gone, and the workmen grope after their tools and pack them
away; and the roof is left to the women and me.
They were telling me a story--the old-time one of that Queen who full
of grief at her lord’s cowardice in refusing to stand by his overlord,
had buried herself alive under a sour plum-tree, which ever after grew
and flourished exceedingly in appraisement of her deed. “Tchut”! said
one: “Bury herself--what work! Better far have girt his sword upon that
not-man, and sent him forth in the name of his Fathers, and of all the
fighters yet unborn.”... And all the other women wagged their heads in
appreciation of this sentiment.
Now I had heard that story last in Bengal. But far other was the
comment. The Bengal variant tells of the clever subtlety with which the
husband avoided the battle, and how it was only the wife’s action which
betrayed him to the overlord, who said, “Because this woman had shame
in her heart for a man’s cowardice, the women of this house shall for
ever be called ‘Queens,’ but their husbands shall not be Kings.”
And when they get as far as that, the women say: “What! can any desire
widowhood? Alas, what little love the Ranee had, not to rejoice that
her lord was saved the danger of death! Alas! what defect in love to
cast blame upon him in dying!”
But it is never in Bengal that the story is followed by another old
as the Sack of Chittore. The Rajput widow is about to spring into
the flames when she sees the boy who saw her husband die. She pauses
awhile, and “Oh Badal,” says she, “tell me ere I go hence to join my
lord--tell me how he bore himself against his enemy.” And Badal: “He
was the reaper of the harvest of battle. I followed his steps as the
humble gleaner of his sword, on the bed of honour he spread a carpet
of the slain--a barbarian Prince his pillow, he laid him down: and he
sleeps ringed about by his foes.”
Hearing which she of the warrior caste, goes smiling through the fire
to her tryst.
The fact is, you see, the ideals of the women are not the same.
Both have given to the world, do give to the world, new types of
perfection in love; but to one, love means the service of the world,
and compulsion of the highest in her Beloved to that end; to the other
it means just the service of her lord, it means self-abnegation and
worship to the exclusion of all criticism.
She of Rajputana although giving royally, demands something, and gets
it: she of Bengal demands nothing, she is here to give, not to get; and
if by chance she is thrown a crumb, she is grateful to pathos.
The one type, if I may so put it, is masculine, the other the
quintessence of femininity ... and it is a difference easily explained.
It is the outcome of the history of the two peoples. The Fighter
demands that his womenkind should be of the stature of the Mothers
of Fighters. So to the beauty of subjection, she adds the beauty of
self-respect. In the other, self is so submerged that there is no room
even for respect of self. And, the sainthood of the women apart, one
questions the wisdom of the second type, for the man.
The _Khettrya_ Rajputni of to-day though very strictly Purdahnashin is
still _an individual_: still does she claim and keep the spirit which
is hers by inheritance. The festival and practice of the Bracelet has
its place in her life even now, though the fighting days are over ...
still is hers the reverence of the Flower Festival. But the custom of
the Mahommedan has affected her also: she lives much in the Zenana,
attending to her gods, her house, and children.
The _Shudra_, who has no purdah, and the _Veishya_, whose purdah
means two veils and a number of women attendants, may be seen in the
street: and, as we look at her in her pretty red draperies, carrying so
gracefully her pyramid of water-pots, or trudging sturdily through the
burning dust to the shrine beside the Lake--we see in level brow, in
frank open countenance and carriage, the spirit of the free--and we say
to ourselves, “No! the personality of the Rajputni is not dead, it is
only domesticated.”
But we carry our questionings no further: “By God, I am a Rajput and a
King. I do not talk of the life behind the curtain!”
X
THE QUEEN WHO STOOD ERECT
It was a spacious roof-terrace--large even for the house of a King:
for an earthquake had destroyed almost an entire story, and no one had
troubled to do more through the years that followed than move away the
_débris_.
So the Zenana had a whole wing of open spaces at the top of the
landing, and here it was that we sat, under a sky that was like a pink
opal, while the swallows and the yellow-beaked _mainas_, and crows,
flew overhead to roost. Bats there were too--“devil’s mice”--flapping
the sleep out of their wings: and now, a red-brown throated, red-brown
coated _brahmini-kite_, to whom the women made prayerful salutation. A
kingfisher had just flashed past, bright as the sea at noonday, bright
even in that darkening light, and knowing the reverence of the Rajputni
for the kingfisher, I thought the gentle courtesy his.
It was _Nanni-Ma_, Baby’s Grandmother, she who had the face of victory
over death, who explained. “_Kali Ma_ chose once to take that form,”
she said, inclining her head towards the red-brown one. A sudden swoop
brought him almost within reach of the baby plaything and those lonely
widow-women, and with terror in loving eyes the child was clasped
close. Who shall tell what mixture of dread was in their hearts? dread
of the big bird’s talons and dread of _Kali_ the Destroyer, to whom if
she wanted a life, that one life which was theirs, it must be yielded,
cost what it might.... But the love which was the parent and the
offspring of that terror was spilling out of their eyes as they handed
the child each to each--first Mother clasping him, and then Big-Mother,
while the white-sheeted waiting-women huddled on their haunches, cloth
drawn beseemingly over mouth, gurgled “Hi! hi!” wagging their heads,
and swaying with sympathy. It is unique, the attitude of a Hindu widow
to her baby, unique in its beauty even among baby lovers. For the child
represents more to these lonely ones than just a soft lovesome bit of
flesh and laughter, of pretty pursed lips and rounded limbs, and great
mop of soft black hair; more too than the gift of him they love. It is
now in itself their passport to heaven, their token of the visit of God
to the world: it is to be, presently, the saviour of those who have
been closest to them in life--husband, father....
“One small flicker in the lantern of the body--should any put out this
light, who will relight it? For us, not even the Creator himself, in
this life, not even the Creator....”
And the home of Love was the eyes of those two women as they passed the
boy back and forth between them; and the home of tears was their heart.
And he?--darling rogue of but a dozen or so bright fortnights of the
moon, would tyrannize in his manhood even as he tyrannized now; nor
would he hear reproach in that household of devoted women. Did not his
Father likewise?--who, dying, confessed to _Nanni-Ma_, that the sins
he had committed would need many sacrifices and much offering of the
sacred cake for expiation. And she, blaming him not, set patiently
about his bidding, sparing nothing--the one note of joy in that chaunt
of sorrow being this: “He came to his Mother, he loved her enough to
come, to trust her;” ... and, as the half-understood regret passed like
a shadow over the dying mind, she used all her art to brush it away.
“Fear not, my Son; was it not written? Is this not fruit of that past
birth of which you have no remembrance. All is illusion even sin; all
is good, yes, even sin could we know it ... and your death-ceremonies
shall be to be envied of men, buying you sinlessness through many
future births. Fear not.... And, when he is of age, the boy, he also
shall perform your ceremony ... a new birth to righteousness. Do not
fear, my Son.”
It is this memory which is in the soul of Big-Mother, as she plays with
her son’s son on the terrace in the mystic hour between the lights.
But the boy will grow, and there will be a bride to be found for him.
What great excitement this means for the Zenana, few know who have
not gone in and out among the women. There is the search among caste
folk near at hand, or at a distance. Often the Priest of the family
goes a tour to consult the horoscope of likely candidates.... There
are tragedies when Priest meets Priest and doctors the horoscope to
fit desire or sloth; but that chance must be faced by all alike.... No
need, at any rate, to fear that marriage will take the boy away, it but
brings one more daughter to Big-Mother ... a shy, small person--among
the orthodox, aged ten or thereabouts, who keeps eyes on floor demurely
the first year of marriage, in the presence of whomsoever; and
always, always runs out of the room, or hides face and head, standing
reverently in the presence of her lord. Even many years of marriage do
not relax this reserve when third persons are by. I have known mothers
of grown sons who will carry one aside to whisper what is necessary
to be said, but which cannot be said direct to their husbands in the
presence of others.... “Let the women be silent.” That a wife may not
take her husband’s name is a very general rule throughout India.
Out of all this knot of etiquette, born, it seems to me, of some
distorted view of danger to modesty, as well as of a becoming respect
and reverence, it is hard to disentangle the Indian conception of the
love of a maid for a man. But this is certain, it is unlike what is the
ideal in the West. There is worship; he is her God; he has brought God
close to her. She is created to serve him with all her powers of mind
and body, to serve and never criticize or question. The habit of her
life is expressive of the relationship. The day is planned round his
needs. She brings water to wash his feet, cooks for him, anticipates
his smallest want while he eats; if he leaves on the green plantain
leaf of orthodoxy one mouthful for the faithful slave, how happy she is
the day long!
At his hands she holds her life.... I remember a poor little woman who
had been induced by some modern-minded friend to resent the drunken
belabourings of her husband.... She ran away to the protection of
a relative, and all the Zenana held up hands of horror, not at the
beating but at her resentment of it. “What! did she not know that Hindu
wives belonged to their husbands, to be done with as they would? Would
she not give her body to be burned at his desire? Why not then give
it to be beaten at his desire?” And no reasoning would convince them
of a difference. That this conception of devotion can rise to great
heights one knows. It is not uncommon for a Hindu wife to make way of
her own accord for some younger wife, even though retaining her passion
of love for her husband, or rather perhaps, if one could conceive it,
because she has arrived at Love’s perfection.... And I have seen her
charming to the second lady: “Whom my Lord honours, shall I not love?”
But there is little _camaraderie_, except sometimes in old age, when
the grandchildren are growing up; there can be little between such
differences of levels--and very little community of interest either in
work or play--where one is educated and the other not, where one may go
about the world unveiled, and the other is hedged round with protection
of wall and curtain.
Again, as there is no choice in marriage, since the orthodox marry
in childhood, there is little chance for love except after marriage.
“We grow up to think that such an one belongs to us,” explained an
Indian girl to me of her boy husband; “we take the relationship as
you do brothers and sisters; you do not choose them; you do not,
however, therefore of necessity, resent them.” That attitude then is
the beginning. That it does lead, as a rule, to loyalty and worship we
know; that it often leads to a very high type of love, where each goes
with each, all the way, in perfect sympathy, has also been known.
And the man? “English people,” said a Hindu to me, “do not understand
our relationship to our wives; they treat their wives as we
treat--left-handed relations.” It is true, the Hindu considers any
show of feeling an insult; he almost neglects his wife in the presence
of third persons. Necessary courtesies are left to brother, father,
trusted old servant.... As they grow older she graduates in giving, he
in taking. Is he paying the highest price possible to him in--_taking_,
I wonder? Who shall say? My own impression is that he does not think
about it at all, seeing it has been the habit of generations of Indian
men. One does not think about what is natural. The pity is that the
standard of ethics is different for men and women--and this surely is
wrong in principle. “As you sow, so shall you reap,” is orthodoxy for
the man. “As you sow, so shall they reap whom you best love--your son,
your husband”--is the woman’s religion. She reaps herself, yes, but as
a secondary result, and her own benefit certainly never enters into the
calculation of the individual woman.
Do good if you can, but if you cannot, or will not, stand up to your
penalty like a man; or rather lie submissive under the full flood of
it. Count the cost, the degradation to the lowest order of creation,
the weary re-start through the gradations of re-genesis. At least there
has been no deceit. Sometimes you may buy back part of the penalty
by counter-balancing good deeds. An Eastern loves a bargain, and the
business of salvation is one great mercantile transaction; but only men
are allowed on this Rialto.
Vicarious _suffering_ with a woman for chief actor is one of the tenets
of the male.
Vicarious _pleasuring_ with a man for chief actor is the woman’s.
I said that you took your penalty, you paid your price. True, but not
always. In the highest scheme of punishment, whether for man or woman,
some one else pays. The Gods strike at the thing you love best. If the
Gods are angry with a woman they take away her husband. Is not the very
treatment of the widow in India recognition of the fact, and does she
not so accept it?
But to return to the husband’s respect for his wife, that is a good
thing to record. Say it is only policy; “where women are honoured,
there the Gods are pleased; but where they are not honoured, no sacred
rite yields reward.”... Say it is grounded in the fact of her being his
possession; possibly, but at any rate it is there. How pre-eminently
he regards her as his _property_ there is proof upon proof. He leaves
to no other hand punishment for encroachments; he shuts her away, lest
eyes of others who do not own her should see and covet--it takes more
than one generation to kill the anger in the eye of a man at a glance
of admiration from another, honest though it be; and when he dies she
remains his property still, that is the reason of perpetual widowhood;
and till it was forbidden did she not, as suttee, acknowledge that she
was his property, useless when no longer needed?
There is a temple on a City wall in a country of sand and low scrub,
gray with dust. The Temple is beautiful with its outlook on the sea of
sand, and the little earth holes of water where the women dig in the
sand. It is a Temple to a woman. She was beautiful beyond words, and
Kings sought her in marriage, and fought for her with the King to whom
she was betrothed. And at last one of the Kings slew the Betrothed, and
claimed the hand of Ranak Devi. But she, rather than betray the trust
of him whom she had never seen, but whose she was nevertheless, sought
refuge in suttee. It is her Temple which you find on the City wall, and
round about it have gathered other women--there is a very forest of
Suttee Stones. You may know them by this sign--the hand and arms of a
woman graven in the stone, always the right hand, palm outwards.
And you find here also the _pallias_ or memorial stones to warrior
Kings and to great rulers among women. For the place of memorial
stones, of the dead, of silence, is a place of glory. To it come the
bereaved, the empty-handed, to give thanks for those who have attained;
to it come the young, bending beneath blessings; death and life walk
ever hand in hand, and the white jasmine triangles of the newly-wed
make a fragrant carpet in the Temple of Memory.
But one cannot write truly of the conception of Love in any nation
without writing a book without end of the conception of each loving
soul in its loneliness and aloofness. And, when I said this to my
Wisest of the Wise, she made answer: “So it is, even so” ... and there
was such beauty in her face that I wished it had been possible to hear
her parable of Love. But silence of words was between us, naturally, on
the things we most held sacred.
And it was one who sat by who took up the thought.
“There was a King who loved his Queen with all his soul, and one day,
overcome of this love, he fell at her feet in an ecstasy, even in the
presence of the co-wives, who being jealous, said: ‘Shameless one! lift
up the hands of the King to your head.’
“And the King said: ‘Yea, my Queen, so even shouldst thou, when I have
done thee this honour.’
“But she stood erect, smiling gladly. ‘Nay,’ said she, ‘not so; for
both feet and head are my lord’s. Can I have aught that is mine?’”
XI
PORTRAITS OF SOME INDIAN WOMEN
Take first the Indian wife. Was there ever the world over a like
conception of the married state? Chief priestess of her husband, whom
to serve is her religion and her delight. One with him in the economy
of the household, certainly, but moving in a plane far below him for
all other purposes--religious, mental, social; gentle and adoring,
but incapable of participation in the larger interests of his life,
incapable of participation even in his games.
“We are richer,” “we are poorer”--that the bounds of a joint
intelligence. To please his mother, whose chief handmaiden she is in
things domestic, and to bring him a son--these her two ambitions; but
the latter chiefly, for to the mother of a son will a husband forgive
even wrangles in the house-place.
Oh, the worshipping of Gods, the consultings of oracles, the stealthy
working of charms to this end! And if the Gods prove gracious, proud
indeed is the little lady, a creature of good omen, a being to be
welcomed at feasts, to be invoked by the childless. No longer is she a
failure; even widowhood would leave her with the chastened halo of that
son who is worthy to offer sacrifices.
Such an attitude of mind may seem irrational to the alien, but it
should be remembered that the whole idea of marriage in the East
revolves simply on the conception of Life; a community of interests,
companionship--these never enter into the general calculation. Nor is
this strange when one reflects on how large a place life must fill in
the thoughts of a people believing in re-incarnation. As a life-bringer
alone has a woman her place in the scheme of Hindu philosophy. For life
and religion are inextricable in the loom of Time; and woman never did
have a Vedic value.
Look at her, then, our little Hindu type of wifehood--gentle,
submissive, a perfect house-mistress, moving softly about the women’s
domain, “the Inside.” Up with the dawn, she bathes and worships,
worships her own special godling and tends her sacred plant, then draws
from some ancestral well the water for the household needs, scorning
no domestic duty. A picture good to see is she on these occasions--her
pretty red draperies girt out of harm’s way while she heaves aloft the
shortening rope with subtle grace. Mark the poise of head, the turn of
slender wrist, as the first shafts of daylight strike brilliance from
mystic amulet or jewelled armlet. Further domesticities occupy the
day, with perchance a little gossip in the house-place ere the evening
meal brings fresh need for a skilful house-mother. She waits upon her
husband while he feeds; silent in his presence, with downcast eyes,
to look him in the face were bold indeed. Perhaps he talks to her of
village or family interests; she would not think it strange did he not.
The boy! Ah, yes, he is a tie. Encouraged by her husband, she will
quote his sayings or boast his feats and feignings. But there is no
evening home life as in the land across the seas. After feeding, the
man seeks his men companions, with their talk or their gambling. So,
watch the little lady clean her pots and hie her safe to bed--content.
I would not have you think the picture one of shadows. Often, and
especially where love has entered into the contract, ’tis a twilight
study, softly lustrous. A wife respected as competent house-wife, as
counsellor, as triumphant mother, sharing her husband’s anxieties
for the upkeep and shepherding of their little family, aware of
his ambitions, if little understanding them, and happy in their
joint observance of orthodoxy--that sheet-anchor of safety to her
conservative soul. You must be careful how you dress this lady in your
picture. Wind her garments about her in established fashion, even to
the smallest fold; make the red mark of wifehood on her ample forehead;
oil her hair and plaster it tightly down behind her ears; forget not
the ornaments for ear, for nose; and never, pray, forget that gold and
ivory bangle--“marriage lines” to her. About her toe rings you may suit
yourself. Some find them irksome, and anklets jingle pleasingly in any
case. You must make her plump, there has been no chance of exercise to
tone down outlines; uxorious, too selfless for vanity; placid, never
roused except in defence of her man or her brood, but with a reserve of
obstinacy which all the wild horses in the empire would fail to move.
She is the true guardian of the past; and uneducated, the true enemy of
Progress in India. This is our lady of the middle class. The peasant’s
wife has compensation, for often she shares her husband’s work in the
fields, and that makes common topic. Moreover, being unlettered, he has
fewer temptations than his wealthier brethren to live an individual
life.
For our studies in sad monotone we must go to the wives of one section
of the “England-returned,” as they are called.
Try to picture this lady. She can speak her own vernacular, perhaps
read it, but Western influences have passed her by. Greatly skilled is
she in things domestic. She has watched her husband with awe through
the throes of his local university, and then he sails away out of her
ken to that unknown land beyond the “black waters” of separation. Dimly
through the years does she hear of him, and great fears are at her
heart as she thinks of the women he must meet in that land of “the
unveiled”; but these are fears she may tell to none. What pre-emption
can she have in his affections? Then he comes back, wearing a bright
pink shirt, an English top-hat, and patent leather shoes. He drives
a dog-cart, and divides his time between his office and his club; he
dines at English houses--new fears here for breach-of-caste rules....
But she worships nevertheless. To buy him blessings is still left to
her, and Indian wifehood was ever a school for altruism; but in a
family group you will grant the inharmoniousness of the anachronistic.
Let it be ceded here, however, that there is another sketch possible
of that “England-returned” one. Some diversity of interests cannot be
avoided; but I have known a few little wives whose Anglicized husbands
did their best to educate them, led them painfully through the new
ideas, brought them somewhat into the “reformed” life.
To myself the attempt has often seemed pathetic, trying “to walk with
one foot,” to “clap with one hand”; but our little lady is painted
this time in a glad luminosity of gratitude that, having seen the
world, he should still deign to care.
But sometimes the woman, too, has had chance of Western education. I
have known one or two of her kind in Bengal and Madras, more in Bombay.
Perhaps she passed through the stage transitional herself once; at any
rate, she has arrived all safely, keeping her pretty national dress,
keeping also her vernacular. A great part of her day must be re-made
for the ceremonies of orthodox Hinduism which she has discarded; yet,
something solid she has in its stead, since no influence will ever make
a Hindu woman irreligious, thank God.
She will talk to you of the struggles of the great Indian reformers,
of Ram Mohan Roy, of Chaitanya. She will separate for you, with true
discrimination, the symbol from the spirit in ancient Hindu philosophy.
I have even found her reading Jowett’s Plato, Emerson, Browning.
“My husband recommended these,” she explains. Him she companions as
sufficiently as does any woman of the West her husband, walks with him,
drives with him, and is not watched with hungry, jealous eyes, as are
the newly “emancipated” women of other Indian communities, whom some of
us have seen abroad for the first time in mixed assemblages of men and
women.
Perhaps she is not as good a head domestic as her great-grandmother;
but service is merchantable, and, at any rate, she takes an intelligent
interest in the education of her children.
This much has Brahmoism (_i.e._, Hindu Theism) done at its best; and,
mistakes apart, it is not a bad “best” for a nation in transition.
The recoil from a too servile imitation of the West is bringing about a
wise admixture that may eventually prove really useful to the progress
of the nation.
Not yet have I touched upon the strictly veiled woman--the Hindu woman
in palaces or of certain parts of India, and the Mahommedan woman.
As queen, she is multiple; subtle tones of colour here, the peculiar
living tincture of great joys, great sorrows. I have known her bitter
with the consciousness of growing years and barrenness, lording her
seniority over her young and beautiful rivals--a shrew for whom surely
there is much excuse; and I have known her gentle to her co-wives as
to much-loved sisters, admiring of their graces, living with them in
kindly, humorous companionship. Nay, I have known better. I have known
her at so great a height of saintliness that, her own arms empty, she
will pray the gods to grant her rival the gift of motherhood.
Sometimes she is very young. I recall a pretty child of seventeen who
came to this particular queendom because her husband was successful in
procuring a white peacock!
“You may marry her,” had said the King, her father, to the suitor, “if
you can bring me a white peacock.”
He had not known that such things were, and when the expectant prince
produced a spotless ghost-bird, the King, for the sake of his word, had
to give him his daughter.
She was very happy in her new home; as it chanced, she was a unit,
and not one of a group. She had her own gorgeous apartments and
waiting-women. All day she turned over her pretty trinkets and
possessions, or made charms against the evil eye, or listened to
endless stories from the Court gossip; and at nightfall she played
hide-and-seek on the roof overlooking that garden where the peacock had
his place of honour.
Sometimes her husband would pay her a visit of ceremony, when she
would sit, eyes cast down, to answer his questions in monosyllables.
Sometimes she herself would visit her mother-in-law, falling at the
great lady’s feet in graceful salutation. I have known her very merry
when this formality was overpast. These visits were her only interludes
in monotony. Yet she was not unhappy. She had expected nothing else,
and more light and air fell to her lot than to that of many.
Seclusion is sometimes so rigid that it has been little better than
intermural imprisonment from one year’s end to another; no garden to
stroll in, no chance of ventilation of any kind or sort; no outside
interests or companionship. Nor would the women themselves thank you
for suggesting innovation. “Did our great-grandmothers live otherwise?”
they would ask.
The question now is, how far should the enlightened members of the
community strive to better the Purdahnashin custom? In the days when
it came to stay in India there were alleviations. You have but to look
at the architecture of the older towns, of Agra, of Jaipur, to prove
the fact. Every courtyard had its marble lattices, from behind which
the ladies of the house, securely screened, might watch the bear and
tiger-baiting, the wrestling, the ancient games. They had their private
gardens and their baths.
The long pilgrimages in palanquins made change and movement in their
lives. The system was less injurious to health than it is now. In a
town like Jaipur the whole city is one running commentary in rubric
on such alleviations. For the secluded lady there were perpetual
peep-holes on to the life of the street, with its daily pageantry and
frequent carnivals. The more modern house-holder builds blind walls in
his jealous passion of keeping.
Is it any wonder that the race grows degenerate?
Thrown back upon herself, robbed of air for mind and body, marvel is
the Purdahnashin is as nice as we know her.
Take for instance one trait, the loyalty of wives to their husbands.
All who know the orthodox Hindu Zenana will have pathetic instances in
mind of a loyalty which dignifies all womanhood. Nor often however, I
hope, is loyalty put to such severe test as with the little lady whom I
found imprisoned in a fortress in Northern India.
Her story was interesting--she was the daughter of a King, and educated
beyond ordinary. “She shall be as a son to me,” had said her Father,
and he taught her to read and write and figure, and rumour said that
even the local magazine was edited from behind the Purdah. When she
was of an age to marry, her family Priest went a horoscopical tour to
secure her a husband.
At Benares he met the family Priest of another Raj in search of
a bride, and the two Priests agreed to end their wanderings, and
accommodate each other. But alas! the bride-groom’s priest had not
revealed that his patron was half-witted, nor that the Ministers of the
estate were in negotiation for a lady from among themselves. So, on her
wedding day the Raj candidate learnt both that she was wedded to an
idiot, and that she had a co-wife.
She afterwards said that the first six months of her life were almost
happy, though she did not realize this till the contrast of the
afterwards had come upon her. They killed her babies--as they were
born, they were both boys--one they smothered in tobacco fumes, the
second had less merciful handling. For the birth of the third she
requested protection, taking care to explain that her husband was not
at fault, “God had made him a fool.” She was given a fortress not far
from the Capital, a Guard was put on the gate.... All this happened
nine years before help reached her. In the meantime the Guard had
become her gaoler. Food she had none, save the remnants of stores laid
in nine years previous; servants or companions she had none. For nine
years had she had speech of no one.
Her father had died; all attempts made by her old Mother to get to
her, or to get news of her, had failed. Then, in penitence for making
the marriage, her old family Priest brought me to her. I have never
forgotten what I found at the end of that difficult journey ... a
fortress in ruins, the home of bats, and so unsavoury that the only
clean spot was a small roof-terrace furnished with a string bed and a
broken chair or two. Here lived the Ranee and her son; he was alive and
safe--in this she had her reward; but provisions were reduced to one
earthen pot of grain, and endurance was much strained.
She told me her story, with pitiful entreaties not to hold her husband
to blame; how could the poor creature, God-blasted, be responsible?
The ministers were responsible, who held her liable for the fact
that her co-wife had daughters only, always daughters! Even calling
the last--“_No more of this_ Kalidevi”--had brought no improvement.
Yes, she had seen her husband; once he made his way into the Fortress
through a private gate while out hunting, and he climbed up to the
roof-terrace and sat on the broken bed, and said: “Let me go, lest I
be moved to compassion and help you.” And she had helped him to go
secretly, swiftly, even as he had come.
Poor man, what further proof were needed that he could never be to
blame. “Had not God Himself made him a fool? she blamed him not,” but I
noticed that she devoted herself passionately to providing against like
misfortune for the son. We took her servants and supplies, and later
brought her away in safety to her Mother. The Fool lives. The co-wife
must now be dead, for when last I heard of my Ranee two significant
things were reported of her: one was that she worshipped an empty
earthen pot with the left hand (that was to show contempt), and then,
to protect herself, offered the first mouthful of every meal to an
amulet which hung round her neck. And are not both these things known
to the initiated as referring to ghosts of co-wives alone?
Yet another type is the woman who rules a State, whether in her own
right (as with the Begum of Bhopal), or as widowed regent.
History tells us of one such lady, whose diary of statecraft an emperor
of India was glad to consult. Shrewd, wise, far-seeing, responsible,
the Purdah has hardly been any drawback to the women born with a
talent for ruling, though even for these exists the chief danger of
seclusion, namely, that they may get to view life through the eyes of
one person--their chief adviser.
Where he is unreliable and the woman is weak the danger will be
apparent to all.
It is the chief adviser who rules in reality, manipulating her
revenues, surrounding her with creatures bound to him by ties of
relationship or purchase; as likely as not her spiritual guide is also
of his choosing, and the lady is in a coil from which extrication is
well-nigh impossible. I have seen her struggle to get free, and fall
back again helpless; but most often she is dangerously unconscious of
the subtle influences abroad. Her day is spent grossly, lying on her
elbow among brocaded cushions, chewing betel-nut, while her maidens fan
her, or amuse her with tales of Court rivalries and jealousies. Her
Prime Minister brings her documents to sign, and she hears perhaps an
occasional account of his administration of the estate, but there is no
sense of obligation towards her people; no interest, even parochial,
in their daily life; no thought for their welfare. It is not to the
advantage of the chief adviser to encourage feelings of this kind, and
the woman herself has too little imagination to care about the wants of
subjects whom she never sees.
But all Indian widows do not rule estates. What then of the rest? What
of the ordinary widows, of the highest caste, for instance, the type
of woman who, in the olden days, would have fed the flames of the
funeral-pyre bound to a husband’s corpse? What of her.
For the most part she lives the life of a willing drudge in the house
of her mother-in-law. “For it is so alone now,” as one explained to me,
“that we can win merit for our lords.”
I have never forgotten the agony of this little lady, sent home to her
own mother to live in luxury, robbed of her chance of service.
It is not, I think, untrue to say that the orthodox Hindu widow suffers
her lot with the fierce enjoyment of martyrdom and a very fanaticism
of selflessness. But nothing can minimize the evils of that lot. After
all, a widow is a thing of ill-omen, to be cursed even by those who
love her. That she accepts the fact makes it no less of a hardship.
For some sin committed in a previous birth the Gods have deprived her
of a husband. What is left to her now but to work out his “salvation,”
by her prayers and penances to win him a better life-place in his
next genesis? So even the “cursings” of her are in their way a
satisfaction. They are helping her to pay her debt to Fate.
For the mother-in-law what also is left but the obligation to curse,
exaction of that debt? But for this luckless one her son might still be
in the land of the living.
Now, how shall I make it clear that there is no determined animosity in
this attitude? The person cursing is as much an instrument of Fate as
the person cursed. Are we not all straws blown by the wind of Fate, and
of our own past actions? Little room is there in Hindu ethics for the
sense of personal responsibility for wrong-doing.
Indeed, the widow is often, especially as she gets on in years, and in
the house of her own mother, a person loved in spite of her fatal gifts
of ill-luck. She fills the place of a good home-daughter, is at the
service of everyone, from the eldest to the youngest. Often she is a
devotee, most religious, and greatly supported by the consolations of
her faith. She will herself say on some occasion of rejoicing: “Let me
not be seen, I am luckless.”
And there is certainly no denying that the sum of self-sacrifice which
she represents is, at its best, some solid good to a nation--the salt
leavening the lump. One can imagine how the practice of suttee helped
to maintain this high Hindu ideal of altruism, so comparatively easy
was it to face that one final act of pain and of glory. But in these
days, and under the petty tyranny of a mother-in-law, the altruism of
the little widow is worn threadbare.
It is all very well in theory to assert no personal animosity towards
her whom you hold it a religious privilege to curse, and to burden with
every unpleasant duty imaginable. Your practice is apt to mislead. Even
Hindu widows are but human, and a lifetime of such dissembling of love
must leave them slightly bruised at the foot of the stairs.
Again, with the laxity of modern times and the lapses from orthodoxy,
there comes to the chief sufferer the wonder whether after all she is
dealing vicariously in this spiritual rialto; whether she is buying
gifts for her husband after all. The morbid consciousness that she is a
thing of ill-omen gnaws at her. Admit the doubt and you admit inability
to bear what is put upon her; you admit discontent, consciousness of
hardship, of ill-treatment. Yet all these tyrannies, this very doubt,
has the march of time brought to the Hindu widow. There lies the
tragedy. From whatever cause, she is losing faith in her own sacrifice,
in her old attitude towards life; and therefore is she to be pitied
indeed.
How can we help the fact that the number of women in this class must
increase daily? The age marches forward towards personal and individual
dignity, and the old ideals of the vicarious are being pushed into the
background of the unregenerate.
The majority suffer in silence; some gloriously, some ingloriously and
sadly rebellious. Some fall into the hands of the Widow Re-marriage
Committee, and are re-married. It is not for the onlooker to say
whether this solution is sufficient. A few are now beginning to find
that life has some use for a woman unmarried, even for her. They are
learning to earn their own living and to bless the world with honest
labour. She is buying back the curse, this widow who works, in a way
which must surely conserve for the nation much of that selflessness
which we claimed in the suttee, and certainly much more apparent
usefulness. As doctor, teacher, nurse, and in humbler walks of life,
which of us who know modern India have known and not blessed the
Hindu widow? For the first time, too, since the Vedic era, do we find
in India unmarried girls over ten years of age. This is the nearest
approach to spinsterhood in the East, and the spinster--she is very
rare--is almost always a self-respecting woman earning her own living.
I have said that the impetus of the age is towards individualism. How
can we keep the Hindu woman out of the great current?
The time when the nation could be served by a grovelling womankind--if
ever such time there was--is past.
A woman’s place in the National life will now best be filled by the
realization of herself; she must grow to her full stature, taking
as her due her share of God’s light and air, of the gifts of the
Earth-Mother.
She need lose none of those qualities which made her loved in
mythology, in the times of the Vedas, in history. Indian women have it
within their power to prove to the world that gentle womanly graces
are not incompatible with independence.
What a redemption of that curse of the widowed, what a revenge on Time,
if the widow herself take the foremost place in this regeneration of
Indian womanhood!
XII
GARDEN FANCIES
Everyone in India is familiar with the homely little _Tulsi_--the
sacred basil--with its aromatic brown spirals and dull green leaves. It
was sprawling across the drive of a house I had newly come to tenant,
and while my _Mali_ and I did tidyings in the Garden, I spoke to him
gently about the plant. “Move the sacred garden-person. Suppose some
day we drove over it and hurt it, quite by accident, what sin! See,
put it in a new hole yonder, by your own hut if you wish.” He is a
holy man, my _Mali_, from Puri, where dwells Jagannath of the Car with
his Brother and Sister; and he will not touch the _Tulsi_ till he has
bathed, saving for it his first draught of water of mornings. I could
only hope that my good intentions were credited. But he made no sign
beyond a reverence to the _Tulsi_, and a wagging of his head from side
to side, which I interpreted as “Forgive me” (to the plant), “do I not
eat the Huzoor’s salt? It is an order” (for me).
Notwithstanding, the _Tulsi_ moved not, and frequent reminders at last
elicited a reason. “It would take a ceremony and a very holy man to
transplant the sacred _Tulsi_.”
“Bring him; make the ceremonies,” I entreated, stipulating only that I
should be present.
So, next morning he brought the holy man, and they sat, both of them
on their heels, beside the bush, and read it some sacred texts about
Jagannath and his colleagues; then they explained to it the situation,
my wishes, its own danger ... and with many mutterings of magic words
they carried the plant to the new place.
The rest of the ceremony was fixed for “the hour of union,” and when
all was ready I was duly summoned. Little earthen pots, fed with oil,
in which floated a cotton wick, made great illuminations about the
Mali’s hut.
The _Tulsi_ sat in its hole, and gathered about it in apology and
propitiation were the Mali’s gardening tools; the basket, mouth to
earth, holding a light, a brass plate of sugar biscuits and parched
rice, and a pot of Ganges water.... He made an offering of the tools
and foodstuffs, and last of all of a handful of lovely white lilies.
These he crushed among the brown roots, bruising them, burying
them--who shall say what symbol he had in his mind? then he watered the
plant, muttering, and finally settled once more on his heels and read
it a little pink book of invocations to the God of the Car--read it
from cover to cover--there by the light of the little earthen lamp on
the basket.
When he made himself into a huddled-up pillow before the tree, head
pressed against the newly-raked earth, I knew the ceremony was over.
What was most extraordinary was his utter unselfconsciousness. He
had been pleased that I should come, had begged it; but at his
“God-worship,” my presence was completely forgotten. The ritual was
more than form of game. How cruel to suggest to such as he, then, the
thought in my mind, that the _Tulsi_ probably owed its sacred origin
and place in every Hindu courtyard to its efficacy in keeping away
mosquitos!
I wondered what reason my Purdahnashin would give me for the worship
of the _Tulsi_. I would ask. Curiosity was rewarded with a beautiful
story. Why did she hold the _Tulsi_ holy? It was only because it was
the wife of the Great God. Did I not know the tale? Listen then. Once
upon a time lived a great Giant who had a beautiful wife, and was
successful in conquering and possessing himself of everything he wished.
In his pride of conquest he forgot all limits and claimed the wife of
the Destroyer himself. Then the Great God, angry, came himself to earth
to punish the Giant, and slew that powerful one as he lay beside his
bride in all his security of possession. But when the poor lady walked
forth to make living sacrifice of herself, as was meet, upon the dead
body of her lord--it was the Great God himself who was enamoured of
her, and he sat by the burning corpse disconsolate. None could drag him
back to heaven; nor moved he night and day till the object of his love
had found new form in the sweet-smelling _Tulsi_, with its soft green
leaves and brown flowering spirals, struggling upwards to the light.
“Forget not the perfume of the _Tulsi_. The customs of your race, in
marrying, in dying, in loving....” sang my friend. “It means all that
to us who sprinkle it with water in the morning.”
* * * * *
But in my little garden there was no holy _Tulsi_ to sprinkle with
water in the morning! Transplanting suiteth not the aged: and the
friend of the Garden-people appeared before me sad and shaven.
“My Mother is dead, and at my hands: have I leave to carry her to the
waters of oblivion?”
Leave, of course: but let the blame be rightly fixed; not the
worshipper, but the Huzoor, she who ordered, carried the sin. This
did not satisfy, as I would have wished: and it was not till many
days later that the faithful slave brought me a cleared brow, and his
mountain top of philosophy.
“But to him who does not deem it sin it is not sin.”
Now is that what the sacred plant will now say henceforth and for ever
to my lover of ceremonies in his garden, and am I responsible for the
dangerous doctrine? I wonder.
XIII
A CHILD OR TWO
In an orthodox Hindu house of mine acquaintance are to be found
two darling Babies, aged four and five. They are girls, one named
“Lightning-Beloved,” the other after a Greek Goddess.
I made their acquaintance first in the Summer, and they were most
seasonably dressed in gold waist-bands and an amulet a-piece--for
the Goddess of Learning, a bear’s claw, and for “Lightning-Beloved,”
a little gold box of mystic “spare-me-s” against the blue sword of
her tempestuous Lord.... I was much in request for games, and daily
beguiled into longer and longer visits; how could one resist Babies who
were just being introduced to the joys of childhood? And, when I left
the “Inside,” there would be one Baby on my hip--they taught me that,
and it is quite easy, I assure you--and one clinging to leg and hand
as I walked downstairs.
But joy was at the full when I invited them to come and see me. The
hour fixed was at a distance of a week, and every day I was asked “has
it come?” When it did come I was sitting at my window, and seeing the
Raj carriage and pair, with all its pomp of liveried attendants, dash
up the drive, I smiled to myself, thinking of the semi-nude atoms which
would presently issue thence. Little did I know. The atoms, my very own
Baby friends of the waist-band and necklet, were translated. At the
door, hand in hand and very shy, stood two of the quaintest oddities
I have ever seen--_my_ Babies, sure enough, but dressed as English
widows, crêpe veil and all, with long false curls of rusty black hair
adown their poor little black-gowned backs. Oh! but how I laughed! And
they stood by, rueful and disappointed, while I stripped them, even to
their natural clothing.
“Then the Miss Sahib loved not the English clothes; nor” (with a gasp
of wonder) “the hair of another.”
“_No! No!_”
And two pairs of brows knit themselves in solemn puzzlement over this
contrariety. Then, “But the Miss Sahib said she loved the children
people of the English.”
“Yes! what then?” (but I had guessed). “We want the Miss Sahib to
love us.” ... The darlings! Then it was all made clear, helped out by
the _Amla_. They had, even as they said, laid their little plot to
win love. They would dress like the children-people of the English.
But how to compass this! Their Mother undertook to arrange; and a
clever _Amla_ went to a second-hand clothes shop near by, which often
supplied Theatrical Companies. “No! they had no dress of the English
children-people; but stay--an English Mem-Sahib had sold them a dress
not long since. They could make two small copies of this.” And the
Babies were reproduced in the sad image of some English widow (curls
and all), who had evidently fallen on evil days or the brighter days of
second marriage, and got rid of her panoply of mourning.
I think my Goddess of Learning and “Lightning-Beloved” know by now that
these foreign arts are unnecessary in the way of love. I have had no
widow repeats, but in my heart I hide the realization of a pathos and
charm hitherto unsuspected in the consciousness of Babydom.
It was in connection with “Lightning-Beloved,” whose Mother was seeking
a husband for her four-year-old, that I came across the “orphanless
child,” as he was described in a petition. She explained to me that
as she was sonless, “Lightning-Beloved” must be married quickly to
someone without fortune or family, though of the right caste. He would
then be even as her son, and be supported by her in return for the
honour of an alliance. This extraordinary position, “domesticated
son-in-law,” as it is called, has been accepted even by adults, and is
very familiar in Bengal. I know of one instance where a man waited to
propose to the lady of his choice (it was a reformed Hindu family),
till he could prove himself capable of supporting her, only to discover
that a younger and rather lazy brother had forestalled him by accepting
the position of the “domesticated.” However, it was useless arguing
the indignity of dependence with “Lightning-Beloved’s” mother, and
one’s only chance lay in expounding Sanskrit scripture as to the
possibility of waiting for marriage till a later age. Unfortunately, it
is a question of Priest-gifts desired at this particular moment, and
counter-texts are produced for my consideration, proving that delay
means risk of a first-class heaven; so that nothing but the woman’s
faith in my assurance that I will use my influence with the spiritual
Powers to secure her the coveted position, nevertheless, saves the
situation.
For the Goddess of Learning is desired an adopted son, heir to a Raj. I
am pleased with this choice, the boy has a face like Rossetti’s Blessed
Damozel, and a charming disposition; and we have just been in time to
save a threatened repudiation of him by his adoptive Mother. It would
have been a dreadful thing, for having by adoption lost for ever all
spiritual rights in his natural family, he would, on repudiation of
adoption, be left without ancestors for whom to pray; and this, for a
Hindu, is terrible indeed.
A new little settler has lately sought the shelter of this Raj, a
six-year-old Baby in self-protective exile from her own Estate.
Under local law she succeeds as the only unmarried “female” to
a considerable inheritance, and as a consequence all around her,
grandmothers and sisters included, are interested in her death. They
have been drugging her, and she has been brought into headquarters
under Police guard. I found her in a wretched house set down in a
swamp, and furnished with a hard plank-bed and a box. “Lotus-born,”
that is her name, is a miserable shrimp of a Baby, arms like sticks,
and a plaintive long-suffering little face, like a cry for help
sounding in my ears to this day. She was very ill indeed, burning with
malarial fever, and aching, she said, in every limb. She lay on the
hard “_takht-posh_,” and beside her sat her nurse, another baby, eight
years old. She sat like a frog, legs crunched up, and her nursing
consisted in giving the sufferer a loving pinch every now and then,
murmuring, “There! that makes it better.” And the six-year-old, in a
monotonous little voice which struggled after cheeriness, would answer,
“Yes! Oh! yes.”
I found that the Nurse had tied herself to “Lotus-born” in friendship
by a ceremony peculiar to this part of the country. Two tanks are
dug, contiguous, and the children make a play with fishes and boats,
floating them in the water, and offering rice and feastings on the
grass. Quaint songs are sung.
“Who is worshipping the water with garlands of flowers while the sun is
overhead?”
“It is I, chaste and virtuous, lucky sister of a Brother. May I have
sons who will not die.”
But “Lotus-born” lived not long enough to find fulfilment of her
prayer. Better nursing came too late, and the petals of the Lotus
curled together in eternal sleep.
* * * * *
The mother of “Lightning-Beloved” is in great spirits this morning. The
son-in-law elect was ill, and I had pointed the moral about letting
children get past baby troubles before you betroth them; it is so one
lessens the risk of widowhood.
“Well! at any rate,” she said, “you should be pleased with me. Your
‘Lightning-Beloved’ is not yet a widow. I saved her from being _born_ a
widow.”
This was startling, but I waited explanation.
“When ‘Lightning-Beloved’ was on the way to life,” she said, “there
came a Guru from a far country who told my Guru of a game the women
play there. Two women who are friends, and are about at the same time
to be dowered with the life-gift, betroth two balls of flowers. If both
children are of the same sex there is no result of the ceremony, but if
of opposite sexes and one die the other is a widow.... She may even be
_born_ a widow.”
“But you would not hold to that?”
“Where it is the custom who can escape? Yet ‘Lightning-Beloved’ was not
born a widow; for this I should have praise from the Miss Sahib.”
“But it is not your custom.”
“What matter? I should have praise. She is not a widow!”
* * * * *
I was musing sadly on children-widows that morning, because of a story
told to me by a friend. Someone visiting a local prison was attracted
by the misery of a woman who had murdered her child. He spoke to her,
and she said she wished that her own life had been taken, for she
loved her child, and all she had done was to right the wrong of early
widowhood. “Her husband died when she was five. Do not I, who have
lived a lifetime of widowhood, know what that means? Was I wrong to try
to save her from misery like to mine?”
In truth, apart from the written law, it is difficult to judge the
woman. She loved her child, and in her own opinion did no more than
pull her gently away from under the wheels of that Jagannath Car of
Hindu widowhood.
There was my “Dog-girl,” now just dead, poor child. What of her Mother?
she who has made war upon her only daughter since her second year. What
of her? There is no law to meet her case. What of her? “God has not
said a word.”
It is a graphic quarrel in three generations of women, and of women
living in the same Palace, only a courtyard dividing each from each.
Sullenly they lived, silently year in year out, not a single interest
coming from the outside world to distract their attention from their
hates and resentments. Traffic indeed with the world they had none.
Palace walls shut them in securely, shut them in with their broodings
and bemoanings, with the intrigues and loyalties of their several
waiting-women, and with one gray-white _Sarus_, the red-throated, a
ghost-bird, walking restlessly on his high stilts from courtyard to
courtyard.
I saw the solitary creature first in the cow-dust hour before the stars
come out, and he seemed to me somehow the embodiment of that quarrel,
the lost soul of the inharmonious.
I have said the quarrel was in three generations--daughter, mother,
grandmother--and, of course, like all Raj quarrels, it had been made
by a third person to suit his own purposes. My connection with it was
an attempt at Peacemaking, when the daughter was about fifteen, and
could speak for herself. Not soon shall I forget my journeys ... flat,
mud-coloured country, with mud huts rising out of the ground, as if you
had pinched up the earth into hiding holes ... mud-coloured humans like
detached pieces of their own houses herding undersized goats, or urging
miserable beasts and an unwilling plough over the baked earth: little
vegetation, but here and there a palm-tree, standing straight and
solitary against the heat-hazed, pewter-coloured sky, as if even Nature
had need here to throw herself on God.... This was before the rain. In
a week all was changed, the road was under water, and I had a weird,
mysterious drive through the rivers of streets. The suspicion of a moon
was overhead, and a glorious fresh breeze wandered the world. Silently
we drove, _swish, swish_, fifteen miles of--a call to secrecy, as if
all the world had finger on lip--“_hush, hush_” ... the trees said it,
the feathery bamboos whispering head against head, and the soft gray
clouds, and that veiled moon, and that wistful breeze, and those muddy
streets, they all said “_Hush!_” ... even the bare legs of the saises,
as they ran by the carriage, seemed to say the same. “_Hush!_” ... All
the world was slipping into a delicious forgetfulness and oblivion,
and there was none to see, none save I, thrilling with sympathy, and
that palm or two against the horizon looking on stiff-necked and aloof
as if refusing to have part or lot in this flirtation of Earth and
Cloudland. I did not mind the palms. I hugged myself with the delicious
feeling of being in the secret of the world-things. Once or twice in
our pathless journey we passed through a village, so close that I could
reach a hand and scratch a soft pink nose of cow or buffalo at its
tethering. The peasant house-holder lay stretched in his winding-sheet
asleep on the unguarded threshold. No reason for worry or watch-dog
when all your wealth is in dear Mother-Earth, guarded by the floating
fluid come down from Heaven for that same purpose. How good will be the
rice crop after this soaking he knows full well, that slow-minded one
who sleeps so blissfully.
But it is after midnight, and we have arrived. And next morning there
are secrets again, but of a different kind, in the air, and my work is
cut out for me.
It was the little daughter who was most difficult to manage. “How
could she visit her Mother?” she would be bewitched. Had they not on
such-and-such a day--it was the fifth day of the dark fortnight in the
month of the Spring games--had they not, her Mother’s minions, thrown
mustard in her path as she walked? Did the Miss Sahib not know that
_that_ was a powerful breeder of demons? Oh! but yes! Colman’s mustard
that you get in yellow tins from Europe shops.... And,--“once they bade
her to a ‘peace-making meal,’ but there was poison in the food....
How did she know it? Oh! she was not without sense, who does not know
poison when they see it!”
The Grandmother spoke a more forcible tongue; charges under the Penal
Code, with quaint excursions into the family history of the past for
parallel to this unworthy widow of her son.
The Ranee herself was dignified. You can afford dignity when you hold
the purse-strings, and your accusations take the form of reduced
allowances. She entertained me much this lady. As soon as word was
brought her of my arrival she went to bed, feigning sickness. How did
she know what manner of woman I might be! It were best to be on the
safe side; if you were ill and in bed you could, with courtesy, avoid
seeing visitors. So she went to bed. But she sent her Prime Minister
and her most confidential officers to call upon me, that they might
report. Was their report favourable, or did curiosity get the better
of discretion? I know not; but early next morning a long procession of
Palace servants in red and gold liveries came with gifts of welcome.
Each man bore a tray of fruits and things auspicious; one touches
the trays, leaving a silver coin behind. They bore also a letter of
compliments praying an early visit. “Such was the beneficent nature of
my visit to her State, she was well....” For me, after writing back
elaborate congratulations on the quick recovery, I stood at the window
watching the messengers. Their lithe, smooth bodies glistened in the
sun, and on each tray reposed the red and gold livery of that visit of
ceremony! Once through my gateway, what need to carry superfluous mark
of civilization.
The days that followed brought their own burden ... visits, morning
and evening, to this lady or that at the Palace, and visitors calling
all day, each one with some tale against his neighbour, some story of
Court intrigue.... “Where all is unknown, best be on the safe side
and accuse” was their motto. And silent patience in the hearer led to
this much knowledge at least, that there was one man’s name held in
detestation by all alike.... And when the sun set there was solitude,
and I walked in the Temple Garden, a garden which was a wild bed of
Indian jasmine and other sweet-scented flowers loved of the gods, or
played with the children of the old Priest at the Monkey Temple; or
anon, sat still, in the cleft of some low branch, while the Priest
himself told legends of the country-side--quaint tales of miraculous
cures, or gruesome tales of living corpses.... And once an old Mutiny
soldier recited Persian verses to me in a voice that should have
reached his old battlefield at Delhi, many miles away; and once again,
on a dark night of stars, they showed me the King’s games of by-gone
days--little green parrots turning somersaults in circles of fire,
and torch-bearers dancing a wild tattoo.... So the days passed.... Of
what account was Time to the believers in Eternity? They would not be
hurried. But every day we gained ground, and at last all was ready for
the great peace.
Etiquette of the strictest was imperative: it needed some care to
secure this without friction. As a personal favour the old Grandmother
promised to come with me to the Ranee’s apartments; likewise the
little daughter clinging tightly to my hand for fear of those same
mustard demons.
As a personal favour also, the Ranee agreed to welcome her
Mother-in-law in orthodox fashion.
Five o’clock of an afternoon, and a long dark room lined with
waiting-women standing erect and silent, each waving a huge glittering
fan planted like a flag in front of her ... _flap_, _flap_, went the
fans, like an elephant’s ears; and the serving-women’s ornaments shone
like stars on arm or forehead. I had just arrived, the first and third
generations in either hand, myself a little fearful as to possible
backsliding. The old lady I seated; then going across to the Ranee at
the other end of the room, “Your Mother-in-law,” I said, “has come to
visit you. May I take you to her?”
It was thus, you see, we adjusted reconciliation, met each other half
way, without too much sacrifice of pride ... and, as I led my Ranee
forward, “I want to see,” I whispered, “if your ‘falling at the feet’
is as pretty as ours in the West Country.” “Prettier,” she said.
“Look!” And, covering her face, she fell three times at the feet of the
old dame, who stood there stern as an irrevocable sin. And she? She
might have blessed the prostrate woman, but, at least, she cursed not;
and so as not to strain forgiveness too far, I made excuse of heat and
else, and had her conveyed back to her own courtyard.
The Mother and daughter were less ceremonious; the Mother wept much,
and to seal the peace, made over to her daughter jewels of gold and
precious stones, silver palanquins, silver bedsteads, silver toilet
sets ... all of quaint Indian patternings--the jewels, magnificent sets
of emeralds and pearls, of rubies and topazes--nose-rings, ear-rings,
armlets, bracelets, circlets for hair and forehead, decorations for
the little bare feet, showers of emeralds and pearls falling from a
band round the ankle, over the instep, and ending in a ring for each
separate toe.
And behind the Curtain sat the Prime Minister and Treasurer reading a
list of the gifts--a _price_ list! totalling item by item, calling “Is
it there?” “Is it there?”
The darkness deepened, we finished our inventory by the light of tall
brass lamps--cotton wicks floating in open pans of oil--the handmaidens
still lined the walls, still waved their jewelled fans. Once the
daughter spoke. “A pearl is missing in this nose-ring!” she said.... Do
not be hard on her, my poor little dog-girl. At first, I will own, I
was so myself, chiding her gently for her attitude. All she said was,
“I have known my Mother since I was two years old.” Then wonderingly,
“So the Miss Sahib thought her tears true tears!”
* * * * *
Later I saw more of the child, and watched her grow human and
childlike. The “dog-girl,” I called her, because she had a passion for
dogs, would rescue the most mangy pariahs off the streets and care
for them herself, fearless of consequences. I promised that my own
dear “Chow” should visit her, but as he was, I explained, a high-caste
dog, it could only be when the outcasts were out of the way! It was
so I got rid of the yapping pack in the days of heat; but watching
from her window, one later day of hail and thunder-showers, she saw
some ill-treatment in the street, and re-admitted the “outsiders from
Caste.” It was on this occasion she rebuked me. “Is the spark of life
in Caste-Brother and outcast, in Chow dog and Pariah? Then why should I
not care for these?”
“But you are a Hindu, Caste is your religion?”
“That is man’s invention; where man has not invented, let me hear the
voice of God calling me to have compassion on a fellow life.”
And now she has heard the voice of God calling her out of this life of
fellowship, perhaps, who knows, in supreme compassion of her own little
stunted, shadowed life of high-castehood....
So, after all, God has spoken.
* * * * *
I had taken these thoughts out for a walk on a sunny day in the hill
country, and had now arrived at my destination, where I meant to leave
a card.
It was a house which boasted an electric bell, and unlike Indian
houses, had a closed door, overlooking the street. As I pressed the
button two hill children, in blue and red kimonos, and long plaits of
hair, stood watching me.
“Poor Miss Sahib,” said one to the other, “she is pressing a piece of
wood, and thinks to open the door that way.”
The babies came nearer. “Poor Presence--pressing the wood at the side,”
and they laughed.
I turned round and smiled at them, which gave the younger courage.
“Doors,” she said, “open not with pressings of wood at the side; by the
turning of yellow balls in the middle do the foreign people open doors.
We have seen with our eyes.”
Then, as if apologizing for instructing me:
“Shut doors were ever a foolishness,” she added, and ran away.
XIV
THE TIE THAT BINDS
“The Hour of Union”--with the west, a red gold lake of fire, turning
to the colour of smoke--there, behind the tall gray steeple from which
comes the Christian’s call to prayer.
The crows which have been so noisy all day long spread their wings for
flight; the palms across the road and the great star-flower tree at my
gate are among their bedding places, I know of old. All things travel
toward the Silence, and my soul stretches herself at ease, up here in
the open spaces of my roof.
What is it saying, the Christian Bell? “_Vivos Voco: mortuos plango:
fulgura frango_,” speaking its unknown tongue to a people that
understandeth not, nor wishes to understand. _Vivos voco, vivos
voco...._ But no bell calls the Hindu to worship. She worships when
she will, not necessarily in groups; she rarely passes a temple without
worship, most often just silent prostration: sometimes she will creep
in and ring the bell that hangs beside the bull, her timid call of
ceremony on the god: or she will run in to leave a flower, or to
comfort her heart, poor soul, with prayer for the moment’s need. Nor
need she pray always in a Temple. I have seen her light a light at
cross-roads--the very tragedy of a prayer--among the wheels of traffic
in a busy town, a special prayer this, for a new little life that is
to be. _Vivos voco._... No need to call where religion is not imposed,
rules of a school whose head master is God. The head master will punish
infringement of those rules, so teach the ushers sometimes.... But to
the Hindu sin is not an offence against any Being; it is but putting
one’s self out of harmony with one’s highest attainment. Do it, an you
will, you anger none. You but travel so many more rounds of the wheel
of life ... on and on ... on and on ... reaping in the next cycle what
you have sown in this ... Oh! the weariness of the pain of birth and
re-birth! Oh! the helplessness of trying to escape. There _is_ no
escape. Life is inexorable. Life is more inexorable than Death.
* * * * *
And now the gray overhead is tinged with rosy pink. How long after the
sunset lives the memory of the sunset? This is the marriage of day and
night, the twilight hour, the time of affection, the time of peace....
Now the clouds are staining the great roof of the world--their bridal
congratulations. Soon, they also will have fallen back upon silence
(for is not colour speech after its kind?) and then the God of Night
will sprinkle stars all over the floor of the bridal chamber where
day and night lie hiding while we sleep. For while we sleep, night
walks with day in three great strides across that star-strewn floor,
back to the east where we find her again. “As the Sun sets, but never
dies, even so shall the Sun of my Life set; but I shall not die.” ...
“_Mortuos plango_”.... But why wail if I do not die? Death is release:
death is but the next chance: the new start. Who wails the dead? going
where all the sunsets go to come again, even as they.
Say I have done evil: well! I made my choice. Now I go to pay like a
man. Say I have done well: I go to my reward, through the same door
as had I sinned, for but two doors has this House of Life for all,
the same exit the same entrance. And but two doors will have the
next house, and the next ... the many mansions on the way of Peace.
For Peace comes _at long last_; there is always that; we may make it
come now, this minute, if we choose, if we lay aside desire.... “He
attaineth Peace into whom all desires flow as rivers flow into the
Ocean, which is filled with water, but remaineth unmoved ... not he who
desireth desire.”
But, the chances are endless, why come so soon to the Peace-place. Let
us enjoy all enjoyment, this house and that, _and that_.... Oh! the
weary wander to the House of Peace. Oh! the loneliness of the way: for
none may hold my hand as I walk. None may even be my sponsor. No man
shall save his Brother’s soul. This journey to God, to Peace, must
be my own journey of discovery. Oh! the loneliness of this constant
converse with Fate! It is the loneliness which men are wont to
associate with death: when the Eastern ceases for this--dialogue--he
has attained Heaven, absorption into the Divine.... Oh! the loneliness!
Oh! the joy of loneliness and solitude; the joy of aloofness, each
for each. The Soul and God together, alone together side by side, and
at last, alone and one ... one Great Soul. For our souls are carrier
pigeons, homing to God. _Mortuos plango._ No, the carrier pigeon has
brought its message through all the worlds, to God Himself. The pigeon
rests at peace in the home of Light.
_Fulgura frango.... Fulgura frango._ But what need to break the
lightning, what need? What is, is good; what happens is ordained. Fight
not with Fate. Love it. Conquer by loving it.... Never resent, never
resent. Submit to the evil, and behold it is good. All is illusion in a
world of dreams; who can tell if the lightning be good or bad? Better
not break it, lest worse befall; better not.
* * * * *
Even as one looks the illusions of vision are fading, steeple, trees,
house-tops, are only blurs of grayness, and the other voice of prayer
smites the stillness--“There is no God, but God”....
Beware, beware of resisting Fate; beware, there is who kills and who
makes alive. None may oppose Him; why break the Lightning?
* * * * *
Oh! the time Between the Twilights is good: one floats on the sea of
silence, and is nothing--just part of the Great Creation--absolutely
at rest, at one with Nature, at peace with one’s self, with one’s
neighbour.
Shall we remember in the next House, the furnishings of this? I asked
of my Wisest of the Wise.
“It will be as you desire, as you intend,” was the answer; and then,
musingly, “Most wish to forget, most wish to forget.” ...
There is in her the strangest mixture of ritual and freedom from
ritual. That is because she is a woman. Hinduism, as we find it in
India now, is but a tradition, of which the women keep the record.
You may believe what you will, there are no articles of belief,
there are idols for the ignorant, there is poetry, allegory, which
you may interpret as you will; there are the beautiful songs of the
_Bhagavad Gita_, there is the propitiation of evil spirits, there
are the extortions of the ash-smeared; there is the ecstasy of the
wife-worship of Life, of her husband, her child. There is the crown of
self-sacrifice, and there is the demand of the stronger for the service
of the weaker. All stand for Hinduism; but none connote Hinduism. Of
its essence is caste ... and here we are back again at our marriage
register. The one fear of the Hindu is, lest so-and-so will not marry
into his family. If he does that which would prevent marriage he has
ceased to be a Hindu....
And the things which might prove a bar to marriage among Westerns
do not of necessity prove here a bar to marriage. There is no
excommunication for sin; there is excommunication, out-casting for
breach of a ceremonial rule. The man under Western influence may be
ashamed of a son-in-law who has served his time for a crime. Not so the
orthodox Hindu: has he not paid the penalty for his sin, why cast it up
against him? That account is closed.
If you wish to know what things would out-caste, ask the women. They
have learned from their grandmothers, and they from theirs.
In the long ago travelling Priests would wander from house to house,
telling tales from the old Epics, or building up that great fabric of
folk-lore which we find in all parts of India. Often they would act the
tales they told or sing them, and this made great entertainment in the
lives of the women--Mystery Play, Oratorio, brought to their doors. In
these latter days your Priest will whisper in your ear the name of the
God you must worship, and he will direct your worship, and chiefly your
charity; but he gives you no bundle of ethical maxims, no credo: and in
a woman’s private chapel her own temperament supplies the religion. As
I have said, most usual is the worship of the Baby _Krishna_, though
there is also the Shiva cult which I have described, both with the same
idea running through them, the reverence for Creation. Then to the
timid, religion is often but a faggot of superstitions--what to avoid,
what brings luck ... every home provides some old dame learned in this
lore.
In one thing, however, all are alike. They will keep faith with Gods,
not always with men; that matters little, for no one has taught them
that sense of honour, product of the self-corporate, got from living
in masses in the world. But the Gods are another matter, the Gods can
punish. And the courage with which the frailest will keep faith, at
what cost, offering a child in performance of some vow to a Temple,
measuring her length along the ground in pilgrimage ... this is one of
our paradoxes in India.
In the lives of most there is room for little beside the worship of
the husband, with its perfection of self-sacrifice, which seems to
exhaust all of altruism that the religion holds. And that is perhaps
the chief difference between the standpoint of the West and Hinduism.
When you benefit your fellow-men, it is more to buy merit than out of
compassion. I suppose compassion dries up at the fount, so to speak,
in the consciousness or sub-consciousness that misery is only another
illusion, that in a way you have elected the present suffering,
that at any rate you might have the very best of times in your next
genesis. But however it may be, philanthropy among the orthodox is an
acknowledged soul-saving arrangement. Listen to the very beggar in the
street. “Gift me and buy merit,” is his prayer. He is not ashamed to
beg; you are climbing to heaven on his shoulders. In a way it is you
who are in his debt.
This absence of altruism is a fact which experience is always
emphasizing; and I deem it the more noteworthy, inasmuch as in the
field of thought and meditation the heights climbed are very great
indeed, it is quite common to come across a mysticism parallel to the
mysticism of the West. But I would not be misunderstood; though the
doctrine of works and merit is the most general kind of Hinduism, I
have met a higher. “Good works are fetters of gold, but still fetters,”
as said my orthodox interpreter of religion, and he went on to explain
that even the desire for goodness could be an obstacle on the way to
God. Whereafter he told me this beautiful story.
There was once a woman who had lived an evil life. She was a
Mahommedan, and she said to herself, “I will go the Pilgrimage and wipe
out my sins.” So she set forth, taking with her a dog she loved. And
as she wandered, her face Mecca-wards, the other pilgrims shunned her,
for they knew her ill-repute. But she heeded them not, her mind being
full of the so-soon purchase of sanctity.... And it came to pass that
a few miles from Mecca the dog fell ill, and she said within herself,
“I cannot leave it behind. I must needs stay and tend it.” So, albeit
with a sigh, for Mecca was almost in sight, and she had longed so great
a while to be holy even as those other women by whom she was shunned,
she turned away from the path in search of water. But it was a place
of sand, and it was long before she found a well, and then she had
perforce to make a rope of her hair and a bucket of her clothes to draw
water for the poor beast ... and, in tending him, day changed into
night, but she heeded not--her whole soul in the desire that he might
live.
And when the pilgrims reached the Holy City, and were preparing for the
evening prayer, a voice forbade the recital.... “This,” said the Voice,
“is not the place where God is to be found; go back to where she whom
you deem evil tends a fellow life, for there to-day dwells God Himself.”
Faith is naturally a large factor in the religion of the Hindu women.
Belief is so easy to her. She is troubled with never an intellectual
doubt. Indeed, intellect, in her opinion, is an interloper in the
regions of Faith. Where is the scope for Faith if you use your
intelligence? she will argue.
There is a story told, one of many such, of a South-Indian woman, who
believed that upon a certain day of the new moon, the God at a certain
shrine would work whatever miracle were claimed by the faithful as
a proof of his power; so, being drunk with ecstasy after long years
of meditation, she set forth to the Shrine, having first cut out her
tongue.... “My tongue which has often,” said she, “spoken words of
unwisdom, will be given me anew of the God. This is the miracle I
claim.” Day after day of her pilgrimage she trudged cheerfully, joy in
her God at her heart. Day after day she carried but her water gourd and
a small quantity of grain tied in the end of her saree, and she walked
with the help of a tall bamboo pole, for she was bent with age; but the
wisdom light streamed from the gates of her body, so that all knew her
for holy, and crowds gathered about her, curious as to the faith that
was in her, but she heeded them not; day after day through tracks of
burning sand, through jungle or by river bed ... and at last the temple
was in sight.
* * * * *
The miracle was that her faith failed not when her tongue did not
grow. After the first shock of realization, her mind groped after some
explanation which satisfied, and the God lost no worshipper.
So, in Western India, I have known one--a Queen and a daughter of a
King--also bowed with years, who had waited half her life for the
fulfilment of a promise.
God would see to it that the promise was kept. Why waste resentment on
him who seemed a breaker of promises; God would resent for her. She
was brought to the verge of death, she had long been the house-mate of
poverty; her faith was proof against all. When I saw her last she sat
among the squirrels on a dung-smeared veranda in a courtyard, where
cows and buffaloes were stalled. The squirrels played about her; she
had been herself a squirrel, she told me, in her last generation,
wherefore they loved her; and she sat telling her beads as she had sat
for fifty years, her hand in the embroidered sock of orthodoxy.
Had any devil prompted me to suggest to her justification for unfaith,
I should simply not have been believed. For--of these is the kingdom of
heaven.
* * * * *
One more memory stands out from the crowd. It is the lamp-lighting
hour in the Temple of the Foot. We have come through the narrow
streets, past the sellers of old brass and copper, past the gold and
white pyramids of flower-sellers. The air is heavy with the perfume of
jasmine, the sacred bulls are sauntering up the steps from the river,
pushing through the worshippers with the arrogance of the beloved. A
kind priest has lighted us under the archway, and we are in the inner
courtyard. Yes, we may come through the forest of columns, standing
straight and white and cool in the cloisters, and we may linger close
by the great carved door to watch the _pooja_. It takes some time to
see in the darkness ... everything is still, so still. There is a
great basin of black marble, and in the middle of it the impress of a
great foot.... A priest sits on his heels beside the basin, anointing
the foot with sandal-wood oil, washing it, offering it flowers and
incense.
Another Priest walks round and round the basin crooning _mantras_. The
real worshipper is a poor woman in an advanced stage of leprosy, the
flickering light from the little shells of cocoanut falls upon the
masses of white and yellow flowers, upon the fruits and incense, upon
the costly offerings, upon the poor mis-shapen face. It is still, so
still, so full of mystery, her face, the flowers, the Priest, leaping
into life like a pulse-beat, with the flare of the cotton wick....
Shiva’s great white bull sits watching his master’s symbol in the
Temple beside us: other worshippers there are none, and the _pandas_
have wandered to the bathing ghat, to encompass the unwary.... Sudden
my soul hears through the stillness the message of a child in the
strains of that beautiful anthem of Stainer’s. His voice rises clear
and exultant so that I can hear it across the seas from the Cathedral
of old gray stone in the City of Cities.... “God so loved the
World.”...
The Priest is passing the shell-lamp over the foot itself, in the
circles of some ritual, and the leper bends forward out of the darkness
to see the sacred markings.... Oh! the horror of the ravages of the
flesh!... “God so loved the world.”...
The Priest sprinkles the foot with holy water, spooning it out of
his copper vessel with practised hand, and the perambulating Priest
redoubles his _mantras_.... The face of the leper is a-quiver with
peace, and with a joy that is without dissimulation.... “God so loved
the world.”...
The _pooja_ is over, the officiating Priest has pressed the little
cotton wicks into darkness. The leper makes her timid way out of the
Temple, ringing the great bell in the cloisters, as she returns to
her pilgrimage of pain in a world of illusions.... “God so loved the
world,” ... and it was the leper in the Temple of the Foot who first
gave me a glint of the probable meaning of these glad tidings.
[Illustration]
CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.
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