Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official Part 5

17. The heaven of Siva, as distinguished from Vaikuntha, the heaven of Vishnu. It is supposed to be somewhere in the Himalaya mountains.

The wonderful excavated rock temple at Ellora is believed to be a model of Kailas.

18. This 'notion' of the author's is not likely to find acceptance at the present day.

CHAPTER 2

Hindoo System of Religion.

The Hindoo system is this. A great divine spirit or essence, 'Brahma', pervades the whole universe; and the soul of every human being is a drop from this great ocean, to which, when it becomes perfectly purified, it is reunited. The reunion is the eternal beat.i.tude to which all look forward with hope; and the soul of the Brahman is nearest to it. If he has been a good man, his soul becomes absorbed in the 'Brahma'; and, if a bad man, it goes to 'Narak', h.e.l.l; and after the expiration of its period there of _limited imprisonment_, it returns to earth, and occupies the body of some other animal. It again advances by degrees to the body of the Brahman; and thence, when fitted for it, into the great 'Brahma'.[1]

From this great eternal essence emanate Brahma, the Creator, whose consort is Sarasvati;[2] Vishnu, the Preserver, whose consort is Lakshmi; and Siva, _alias_ Mahadeo, the Destroyer, whose consort is Parvati. According to popular belief Jamraj (Yamaraja) is the judicial deity who has been appointed by the greater powers to pa.s.s the final judgement on the tenor of men's lives, according to proceedings drawn up by his secretary Chitragupta. If men's actions have been good, their souls are, as the next stage, advanced a step towards the great essence, Brahma; and, if bad, they are thrown back, and obliged to occupy the bodies of brutes or of people of inferior caste, as the balance against them may be great or small. There is an intermediate stage, a 'Narak', or h.e.l.l, for bad men, and a 'Baikunth', or paradise, for the good, in which they find their felicity in serving that G.o.d of the three to which they have specially devoted themselves while on earth. But from this stage, after the period of their sentence is expired, men go back to their pilgrimage on earth again.

There are numerous Deos (Devas), or good spirits, of whom Indra is the chief; [3] and Daityas, or bad spirits; and there have also been a great number of incarnations from the three great G.o.ds, and their consorts, who have made their appearance upon the earth when required for particular purposes. All these incarnations are called 'Avatars', or descents. Vishnu has been eleven times on the globe in different shapes, and Siva seven times.[4] The avatars of Vishnu are celebrated in many popular poems, such as the Ramayana, or history of the Rape of Sita, the wife of Rama, the seventh incarnation;[5] the Mahabharata, and the Bhagavata [Purana], which describe the wars and amours of this G.o.d in his last human shape.[6] All these books are believed to have been written either by the hand or by the inspiration of the G.o.d himself thousands of years before the events they describe actually took place. 'It was', they say, 'as easy for the deity to write or dictate a battle, an amour, or any other important event ten thousand years before as the day after it took place'; and I believe nine-tenths, perhaps ninety-nine in a hundred, of the Hindoo population believe implicitly that these accounts were also written. It is now pretty clear that all these works are of comparatively recent date, that the great poem of the Mahabharata could not have been written before the year 786 of the Christian era, and was probably written so late as A.D. 1157; that Krishna, _if born at all_, must have been born on the 7th of August, A.D. 600, but was most likely a mere creation of the imagination to serve the purpose of the Brahmans of Ujain, in whom the fiction originated; that the other incarnations were invented about the same time, and for the same object, though the other persons described as incarnations were real princes, Parasu Rama, before Christ 1176, and Rama, born before Christ 961. In the Mahabharata Krishna is described as fighting in the same army with Yudhishthira and his four brothers. Yudhishthira was a real person, who ascended the throne at Delhi 575 B.C., or 1175 years before the birth of Krishna.[7] Bentley supposes that the incarnations, particularly that of Krishna, were invented by the Brahmans of Ujain with a view to check the progress of Christianity in that part of the world (see his historical view of the Hindoo astronomy). That we find in no history any account of the alarming progress of Christianity about the time these fables were written is no proof that Bentley was wrong.[8]

When Monsieur Thevenot was at Agra [in] 1666, the Christian population was roughly estimated at twenty-five thousand families.

They had all pa.s.sed away before it became one of our civil and military stations in the beginning of the present century, and we might search history in vain for any mention of them (see his _Travels in India_, Part III). One single prince, well disposed to give Christians encouragement and employment, might, in a few years, get the same number around his capital; and it is probable that the early Christians in India occasionally found such princes, and gave just cause of alarm to the Brahman priests, who were then in the infancy of their despotic power.[9]

During the war with Nepal, in 1814 and 1815,[10] the division with which I served came upon an extremely interesting colony of about two thousand Christian families at Betiya in the Tirhut District, on the borders of the Tarai forest. This colony had been created by one man, the Bishop, a Venetian by birth, under the protection of a small Hindoo prince, the Raja, of Betiya.[11] This holy man had been some fifty years among these people, with little or no support from Europe or from any other quarter. The only aid he got from the Raja was a pledge that no member of his Church should be subject to the _Purveyance system_, under which the people everywhere suffered so much,[12] and this pledge the Raja, though a Hindoo, had never suffered to be violated. There were men of all trades among them, and they formed one very large street remarkable for the superior style of its buildings and the sober industry of its inhabitants. The masons, carpenters, and blacksmiths of this little colony were working in our camp every day, while we remained in the vicinity, and better workmen I have never seen in India; but they would all insist upon going to divine service at the prescribed hours. They had built a splendid _pucka_[13] dwelling-house for their bishop, and a still more splendid church, and formed for him the finest garden I have seen in India, surrounded with a good wall, and provided with admirable pucka wells. The native Christian servants who attended at the old bishop's table, taught by himself, spoke Latin to him; but he was become very feeble, and spoke himself a mixture of Latin, Italian, his native tongue, and Hindustani. We used to have him at our messes, and take as much care of him as of an infant, for he was become almost as frail as one. The joy and the excitement of being once more among Europeans, and treated by them with so much reverence in the midst of his flock, were perhaps too much for him, for he sickened and died soon after.

The Raja died soon after him, and in all probability the flock has disappeared. No Europeans except a few indigo planters of the neighbourhood had ever before known or heard of this colony; and they seemed to consider them only as a set of great scoundrels, who had better carts and bullocks than anybody else in the country, which they refused to let out at the same rate as the others, and which they (the indigo lords) were not permitted to seize and employ at discretion. Roman Catholics have a greater facility in making converts in India than Protestants, from having so much more in their form of worship to win the affections through the medium of the imagination.[14]

Notes:

1. Men are occasionally exempted from the necessity of becoming a Brahman first. Men of low caste, if they die at particular places, where it is the interest of the Brahmans to invite rich men to die, are promised absorption into the great 'Brahma' at once. Immense numbers of wealthy men go every year from the most distant parts of India to die at Benares, where they spend large sums of money among the Brahmans. It is by their means that this, the second city in India, is supported. [W. H. S.] Bombay is now the second city in India, so far as population is concerned.

2. Brahma, with the short vowel, is the eternal Essence or Spirit; Brahma, with the long vowel, is 'the primaeval male G.o.d, the first personal product of the purely spiritual Brahma, when overspread by Maya, or illusory creative force', according to the Vedanta system (Monier Williams, _Religious Thought and Life in India_, p. 44).

3. Indra was originally, in the Vedas, the Rain-G.o.d. The statement in the text refers to modern Hinduism.

4. The incarnations of Vishnu are ordinarily reckoned as ten, namely, (1) Fish, (2) Tortoise, (3) Boar, (4) Man-lion, (5) Dwarf, (6) Rama with the axe, (7) Rama Chandra, (8) Krishna, (9) Buddha, (10) Kalki, or Kalkin, who is yet to come. I do not know any authority for eleven incarnations of Vishnu. The number is stated in some Puranas as twenty-two, twenty-four, or even twenty-eight. Seven incarnations of Siva are not generally recognized (see Monier Williams, _Religious Thought and Life in India_, pp. 78-86, and 107-16). For the theory and mystical meaning of _avatars_, see Grierson, _J.R.A.S._, 1909, pp. 621-44. The word avatar means 'descent', _scil_. of the Deity to earth, and covers more than the term 'incarnation'.

5. Sita was an incarnation of Lakshmi. She became incarnate again, many centuries afterwards, as the wife of Krishna, another incarnation of Vishnu [W. H. S.]. Reckoning by centuries is, of course, inapplicable to pure myth. The author believed in Bentley's baseless chronology.

6. For the Mahabharata, see _ante_, note 11, Chapter 1. The Bhagavata Purana is the most popular of the Puranas, The Hindi version of the tenth book (_skandha_) is known as the 'Prem Sagar'. The date of the composition of the Puranas is uncertain.

7. The dates given in this pa.s.sage are purely imaginary. Parts of the Mahabharata are very ancient. Yudhishthira is no more an historical personage than Achilles or Romulus. It is improbable that a 'throne of Delhi' existed in 575 B.C., and hardly anything is known about the state of India at that date.

8. It is hardly necessary to observe that this grotesque theory is utterly at variance with the facts, as now known.

9. The existing settlements of native Christians at Agra are mostly of modern origin. Very ancient Christian communities exist near Madras, and on the Malabar coast. The travels of Jean de Thevenot were published in 1684, under the t.i.tle of _Voyage, contenant la Relation de l'Indostan_. The English version, by A. Lovell (London, 1687), is ent.i.tled _The Travels of Monsieur de Thevenot into the Levant, in three Parts_. Part III deals with the East Indies, The pa.s.sage referred to is: 'Some affirm that there are twenty-five thousand Christian Families in Agra, but all do not agree in that'

(Part III, p. 35). Thevonot's statement about the Christians of Agra is further discussed post in Chapter 52.

10. The war with Nepal began in October, 1814, and was not concluded till 1816. During its progress the British arms suffered several reverses.

11. The Betiya (Bettiah of _I. G_., 1908) Raj is a great estate with an area of 1,824 square miles in the northern part of the Champaran District of Bihar, in the Province of Bihar and Orissa. A great portion of the estate is held (1908) on permanent leases by European indigo-planters.

12. For discussion of this system see post, Chapter 7.

13. 'Pucka' (_pakka_) here means 'masonry', as opposed to 'Kutcha'

(_kachcha_), meaning 'earthen'.

14. Native Christians, according to the census of 1872, number 1,214 persons, who are princ.i.p.ally found in Bettia thana [police-circle].

There are two Missions, one at Bettia, and the other at the village of Chuhari, both supported by the Roman Catholic Church. The former was founded in 1746 by a certain Father Joseph, from Garingano in Italy, who went to Bettia on the invitation of the Maharaja. The present number of converts is about 1,000 persons. Being princ.i.p.ally descendants of Brahmans, they hold a fair social position; but some of them are extremely poor. About one-fourth are carpenters, one- tenth blacksmiths, one-tenth servants, the remainder carters. The Chuhari Mission was founded in 1770 by three Catholic priests, who had been expelled from Nepal [after the Gorkha conquest in 1768].

There are now 283 converts, mostly descendants of Nepalis. They are all agriculturists, and very poor (Article 'Champaran District' in _Statistical Account of Bengal_, 1877).

The statement in _I.G._ 1908, s.v. Bettiah, differs slightly, as follows:

'A Roman Catholic Mission was established about 1740 by Father Joseph Mary, an Italian missionary of the Capuchin Order, who was pa.s.sing near Bettiah on his way to Nepal, when he was summoned by Raja Dhruva Shah to attend his daughter, who was dangerously ill. He succeeded in curing her, and the grateful Raja invited him to stay at Bettiah and gave him a house and ninety acres of land.' The Bettiah Mission still exists and maintains the Catholic Mission Press, where publications ill.u.s.trating the history of the Capuchin Missions have been printed. Father Felix, O.C., is at work on the subject.

CHAPTER 3

Legend of the Nerbudda River.

The legend is that the Nerbudda, which flows west into the Gulf of Cambay, was wooed and won in the usual way by the Son river, which rises from the same tableland of Amarkantak, and flows east into the Ganges and Bay of Bengal.[1] All the previous ceremonies having been performed, the Son [2] came with 'due pomp and circ.u.mstance' to fetch his bride in the procession called the 'Barat', up to which time the bride and bridegroom are supposed never to have seen each other, unless perchance they have met in infancy. Her Majesty the Nerbudda became exceedingly impatient to know what sort of a personage her destinies were to be linked to, while his Majesty the Son advanced at a slow and stately pace. At last the Queen sent Johila, the daughter of the barber, to take a close view of him, and to return and make a faithful and particular report of his person. His Majesty was captivated with the little Johila, the barber's daughter, at first sight; and she, 'nothing loath', yielded to his caresses. Some say that she actually pretended to be Queen herself; and that his Majesty was no further in fault than in mistaking the humble handmaid for her n.o.ble mistress; but, be that as it may, her Majesty no sooner heard of the good understanding between them, than she rushed forward, and with one foot sent the Son rolling back to the east whence he came, and with the other kicked little Johila sprawling after him; for, said the high priest, who told us the story, 'You see what a towering pa.s.sion she was likely to have been in under such indignities from the furious manner in which she cuts her way through the marble rocks beneath us, and casts huge ma.s.ses right and left as she goes along, as if they were really so many coco-nuts'. 'And was she', asked I, 'to have flown eastward with him, or was he to have flown westward with her?' 'She was to have accompanied him eastward', said the high priest, 'but her Majesty, after this indignity, declared that she would not go a single pace in the same direction with such wretches, and would flow west, though all the other rivers in India might flow east; and west she flows accordingly, a virgin queen.' I asked some of the Hindoos about us why they called her 'Mother Nerbudda', if she was really never married. 'Her Majesty', said they with great respect, 'would really never consent to be married after the indignity she suffered from her affianced bridegroom the Son; and we call her Mother because she blesses us all, and we are anxious to accost her by the name which we consider to be at once the most respectful and endearing.'

Any Englishman can easily conceive a poet in his highest 'calenture of the brain' addressing the ocean as 'a steed that knows his rider', and patting the crested billow as his flowing mane; but he must come to India to understand how every individual of a whole community of many millions can address a fine river as a living being, a sovereign princess, who hears and understands all they say, and exercises a kind of local superintendence over their affairs, without a single temple in which her image is worshipped, or a single priest to profit by the delusion. As in the case of the Ganges, it is the river itself to whom they address themselves, and not to any deity residing in it, or presiding over it: the stream itself is the deity which fills their imaginations, and receives their homage.

Among the Romans and ancient Persians rivers were propitiated by sacrifices. When Vitellius crossed the Euphrates with the Roman legions to put Tiridates on the throne of Armenia, they propitiated the river according to the rites of their country by the _suovetaurilia_, the sacrifice of the hog, the ram, and the bull.

Tiridates did the same by the sacrifice of a horse. Tacitus does not mention the river _G.o.d_, but the river _itself_, as propitiated (see [_Annals_,] book vi, chap. 37).[3] Plato makes Socrates condemn Homer for making Achilles behave disrespectfully towards the river Xanthus, though acknowledged to be a divinity, in offering to fight him,[4]

and towards the river Sperchius, another acknowledged G.o.d, in presenting to the dead body of Patroclus the locks of his hair which he had promised to that river.[5]

The Son river, which rises near the source of the Nerbudda on the tableland of Amarkantak, takes a westerly course for some miles, and then turns off suddenly to the east, and is joined by the little stream of the Johila before it descends the great cascade; and hence the poets have created this fiction, which the ma.s.s of the population receive as divine revelation. The statue of little Johila, the barber's daughter, in stone, stands in the temple of the G.o.ddess Nerbudda at Amarkantak, bound in chains.[6] It may here be remarked that the first overtures in India must always be made through the medium of the barber, whether they be from the prince or the peasant.[7] If a sovereign prince sends proposals to a sovereign princess, they must be conveyed through the medium of the barber, or they will never be considered as done in due form, as likely to prove propitious. The prince will, of course, send some relation or high functionary with him; but in all the credentials the barber must be named as the princ.i.p.al functionary. Hence it was that Her Majesty was supposed to have sent a barber's daughter to meet her husband.

The 'Mahatam' (greatness or holiness) of the Ganges is said, as I have already stated, to be on the wane, and not likely to endure sixty years longer; while that of the Nerbudda is on the increase, and in sixty years is entirely to supersede the sanct.i.ty of her sister. If the valley of the Nerbudda should continue for sixty years longer under such a government as it has enjoyed since we took possession of it in 1817,[8] it may become infinitely more rich, more populous, and more beautiful than that of the Nile ever was; and, if the Hindoos there continue, as I hope they will, to acquire wealth and honour under a rule to which they are so much attached, the prophecy may be realized in as far as the increase of honour paid to the Nerbudda is concerned. But I know no ground to expect that the reverence[9] paid to the Ganges will diminish, unless education and the concentration of capital in manufactures should work an important change in the religious feelings and opinions of the people along the course of that river; although this, it must be admitted, is a consummation which may be looked for more speedily on the banks of the Ganges than on those of a stream like the Nerbudda, which is neither navigable at present nor, in my opinion, capable of being rendered so. Commerce and manufactures, and the concentration of capital in the maintenance of the new communities employed in them, will, I think, be the great media through which this change will be chiefly effected; and they are always more likely to follow the course of rivers that are navigable than that of rivers which are not.[10]

Notes:

1. Amarkantak, formerly in the Sohagpur pargana of the Bilaspur District of the Central Provinces, is situated on a high tableland, and is a famous place of pilgrimage. The temples are described by Beglar in _A.S.R._, vol. vii, pp. 227-34, pl. xx, xxi. The hill has been transferred to the Riwa State (_Central Provinces Gazetteer_ (1870), and _I.G._ (1908), s.v. Amarkantak).

2. The name is misspelled Sohan in the author's text. The Son rises at Son Munda, about twenty miles from Amarkantak (_A.S.R._, vol. vii, 236).

3. 'Sacrificantibus, c.u.m hic more Romano suovetaurilia daret, ille equum placando amni adorna.s.set.'

4. [Greek text]--_Iliad_ xx, 73.

5. _Iliad_ xxiii. 140-153.

6. Mr. Crooke observes that the binding was intended to prevent the object of worship from deserting her shrine or possibly doing mischief elsewhere, and refers to his article, 'The Binding of a G.o.d, a Study of the Basis of Idolatry', in _Folklore_, vol. viii (1897), p.134. The name is spelt Johilla in _I.G._ (1908), s.v. Son River.