Part 2
The religious books of India are written in Sanskrit, the tongue of Aryan conquerors who came into India across the northwestern mountains nearly two thousand years before Christ. The Aryans brought with them the worship of the powers of nature, the “devas,” or bright ones. From the Rig-Veda, or collection of hymns to various gods, which were composed for the worship of the Aryans during the earliest centuries of their dwelling in India, we learn something about these deities. Some were simply forces of nature, such as Father Heaven, Mother Earth, the Dawn Goddess, the Sun God, and the Wind God. With other deities new trains of ideas became connected that tended to obscure their original character. The Fire God, for instance, personified the fire of sacrifice and domestic use, the atmospheric fire of lightning, and sometimes even the sun. Thus he became the priest, mediating between man and the gods. Similarly Varuna, who at first apparently typified the open sky, whose eye is the sun, subsequently grew into a mighty guardian of the laws of nature and morality. This earliest age of Hinduism, the age to which the Rig-Veda belongs, is known as the Vedic Age, and the gods of this age were worshipped with sacrifice. In the Vedic period Aryan society probably divided itself into the soldier-yeoman and the priest. The soldier and yeoman, desirous of winning the goodwill and active assistance of the gods of the sky and earth, would hire the priest, who thus came to be regarded as the master of the rites which cajole or constrain the invisible powers. As the Aryans extended their sway over India, the influence of the Brahmans or priests increased, and in their hands religion underwent a profound change. Personal worship gave way to ecclesiastical ritualism. The idea of sacrifice as a means of compelling the gods grew to an enormous degree, and the welfare of the world was imagined to depend upon ritual, the key to which was in the hands of the Brahmans.
There was, however, another side to this religious development. Even in the Vedic Age, while the popular mind was imagining a deity in every startling natural phenomenon, there were thinkers who discovered behind all the “devas,” or gods, the one Supreme Power, the Creator, Ruler, and Preserver of all things, the Divine Soul of which we spoke just now. This Supreme Power, who became known as Brahma, is not only the real self of the whole Universe, but also, as we have seen, the real self of each individual soul. The one Supreme Power could, however, only be discovered after a severe moral and intellectual discipline, and those who had not yet discovered it were allowed to worship lower gods. In one of the Hindu Scriptures the Supreme Lord is represented as saying: “Even those who worship idols worship me.” No one can have any conception of Hinduism unless he realises that throughout it there runs a wide distinction between the popular faith and the philosophical faith which underlies it. This distinction continues to this day. Countless gods are still worshipped in India, but the few still hold and always have held that all gods to whom worship is offered are but names or masks of the Supreme Lord of the Universe.
The two principal gods of Modern Hinduism are Vishnu, the Preserver, and Siva, the Destroyer and Recreator; but they are worshipped under many different attributes. These two gods came into prominence after the Vedic Age, and their cults have passed through many phases; but a large number of Hindus still belong to sects which are called by their names. The sect to which a Hindu belongs is indicated by a coloured mark, erroneously described as a caste mark, made on the forehead. Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva are sometimes regarded as three persons of a Trinity.
Animals are still sacrificed in certain parts of India, and in honour of certain gods, but the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, and the teaching of various religious reformers, of whom Buddha is best known, has tended in the direction of humanity to all creatures; and the great majority of Hindus are unwilling to take life, and abstain from animal food. The cow is to all Hindus an object of veneration.
An elaborate mythology is connected with the Hindu religion, and the incidents of this mythology form the basis of Hindu sacred art, especially of the rich sculpture of the temples. Siva rides Nandi the Bull, and Vishnu rides Garuda the Eagle. Vishnu in some of his avatars, or incarnations, takes the form of a fish or of a man-lion, or for vast numbers of his followers he becomes Rama, the hero of the epic poem the Ramayana, or he is Krishna—another hero-God. Siva has a wife Kali, who is terrible, though at other times she is Parvati, the goddess of beauty; and Siva has sons, of whom one is Ganesh, with a fat human body and an elephant’s head.
[Sidenote: 14. A Marriage Procession, Trichinopoly.] [Sidenote: 15. A Group of Brahmans.] Religion goes deep into the life of the Indian. It governs all his social relations. Here is a street at Trichinopoly, a hundred miles north of Madura. There happens to be the spire of a Christian church in the background. In the foreground is a temple elephant, heading a marriage procession. In white paint on the elephant’s head is the sect mark of the contracting parties. The Hindu community is divided not only in sects but also into castes, which are sternly separated, so that a man may not marry into another caste, or even eat with those of a lower caste. The tradition is that originally there were four castes; first the Brahmans, or priestly stock; then the Kshattriyas, or soldiers, the royal stock; third, the Vaishiyas, or merchants; and fourth, the Sudras, or artisans, labourers and agriculturists. But all these castes became sub-divided, and there are now more castes than callings.
[Sidenote: 16. Processional Car, Trichinopoly.] A curious characteristic of Hinduism is the mixture of the squalid and crude with the grandeur of an architecture which in some respects is unsurpassed in the world. Not merely are the maimed and the beggars importunate in the temple passages, as in the church entries of Roman Catholic countries, but in every vacant corner of the outer courts of the temples are established little tradesmen. The properties of religious ceremony are often decrepit and tawdry. Here, for instance, we have a wooden processional car, rough roofed, awaiting the annual ceremony amid the live-stock of the yard. These warm-natured Southern people have the child’s power of making believe, and can worship the doll even when battered out of all recognition. They easily let loose the imagination and give devotion to the spirit embodied in a shapeless stone as sincerely as to that in the most finished allegorical sculpture.
[Sidenote: 17. Arch of Welcome to Prince of Wales, Trichinopoly.] It is this sense of the spiritual and the allegorical in all things that makes the Indian so ready for loyal devotion to the person of the ruler. Here at Trichinopoly we have a triumphal gateway erected in honour of the visit to India of the Prince and Princess of Wales, which still bears the words “Glorious Welcome to our Future Emperor.” The Prince and Princess are now the Emperor and Empress. With us the gateway would have been demolished when it had served its immediate purpose. Here it remains, as does the memory of the visit. Ceremony rises in India to the rank of an historical event.
[Sidenote: 18. The Main Bazaar Street, Trichinopoly.] [Sidenote: 19. The Tank and the Rock, Trichinopoly.] [Sidenote: 20. The Same—another view.] [Sidenote: 21. The Rock temple, Trichinopoly.] In the distance through the archway is the Rock of Trichinopoly which we approach nearer by the main bazaar of the town, and then, nearer still, we come to the tank which lies beneath the Rock. Amid the water is a pagoda or shrine. In the foot of the Rock itself there is excavated a temple. Such rock temples are frequent in India, perhaps because rock is less costly to carve where it lies undisturbed than it is to quarry and to remove and to build and to carve.
[Sidenote: 22. Trichinopoly, looking east from the top of the Rock.] [Sidenote: 23. Trichinopoly, looking south from the top of the Rock.] [Sidenote: 24. The Bull Nandi, Tanjore.] [Sidenote: 25. The Fort, Tanjore.] [Sidenote: 26. The Temple, Tanjore.] [Sidenote: 27. Police drilling on the Maidan, Tanjore.]
Here we have views from the summit of the Trichinopoly Rock, looking eastward over the city, and then southward over the roof of the great temple to the tank and the Christian Church. Bishop Heber died at Trichinopoly. In each aspect we see the unbroken plain which surrounds the City. Do you notice the Bull Nandi as an ornament along the edge of the roof of the temple? Here we have him again carved from a great block of granite at Tanjore, a place not far from Trichinopoly. Other scenes at Tanjore follow. One shows us the wall of the Fort with the moat outside, and the gopura of the Great Temple. Another is a vista within the temple walls, and gives some idea of the great spaces which the larger temples occupy. Then suddenly we become conscious of one of the sharp contrasts which characterise the India of to-day. These are Police drilling on the Maidan, or public place of Tanjore, and away on the horizon are the semaphores of the railway.
In the plain of the Carnatic, which surrounds Madura, Trichinopoly, and Tanjore, we are not merely in the midst of the Hindu religion and caste system, but we are also near scenes rendered memorable by the struggle for India, a hundred and fifty years ago, between the French and the English. Two trading companies, the one seated in London and the other in Paris, obtained leave from the local princes to establish trading posts on the Coromandel Coast. They presently fortified these posts and became ambitious rivals.
[Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 3.] At this time there was a disputed succession in the Carnatic State, and the English supported one aspirant for the throne of the Nawab, the French another. The Nawab of the English party was besieged in the Fort of Trichinopoly by the French and their Nawab. To effect a diversion, a young Captain, Robert Clive, in the British company’s service, seized the Fort of Arcot, a hundred miles to the north, and by a prolonged heroic resistance to the siege which gathered round him, succeeded in relieving the pressure on Trichinopoly. That Captain Clive became Lord Clive, Baron of Plassey, the founder of the British Empire in India. He went out as a writer or clerk in the service of the East India Company, and rose to be Governor of Bengal.
It must be remembered, however, that in the time of Clive, no less than to-day, the number of the British in India was surprisingly small. As we saw just now, the Police, a great force, are not British but Indian, and the Indian army, though with British officers, is twice as numerous as the British garrison. The British have organised the peace and unity of India, rather than conquered it in the ordinary sense.
The life of the white man in India is governed by the seasons. Here in the south the temperature is at all times high, though the heat is never so great as in the hot season of northern India. On the other hand there is no cool season comparable with that of the north. In most parts of India, however, there are five cool months, October, November, December, January, and February. March, April, and May are the hot season. The remaining four months constitute the rainy season, when the temperature is moderated by the presence of cloud, but the moisture is trying to the European constitution.
[Sidenote: 28. The Nilgiris, near Ootacamund.] In all parts of India the white population seeks periodical relief by a visit to the hills. Here in the south the favourite hill station is Ootacamund, in the Nilgiri Hills. It is scattered over a wide space, with the bungalows in separate compounds or enclosures.
[Sidenote: 29. Ootacamund, The Bazaar.] [Sidenote: 30. Ootacamund, General View.] [Sidenote: 31. Ootacamund.] [Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 3.] “Ooty,” as it is familiarly called, stands some seven thousand feet above the sea in the midst of a country of rolling downs rising yet another thousand feet. This lofty district forms the southern point of the Deccan plateau where the Eastern and Western Ghats draw together. A deep passage, twenty miles broad, known as the gap of Coimbatore or of Palghat, lies through the Ghats, immediately south of the Nilgiri Hills, from the eastern plain to the Malabar Coast. Other hills, equally high, lie southward of the gap and extend to Cape Comorin. We saw these last hills to our left hand as we travelled northward from Tuticorin to Madura.
[Sidenote: 32. On the Railway to Ootacamund.] [Sidenote: 33. The Same.] [Sidenote: 34. The Same.] [Sidenote: 35. The Same.] The railway from the east coast goes through the Gap of Coimbatore to the Malabar cities of Cochin and Calicut, and from this railway a mountain line has been constructed up into the Nilgiri heights. We have here a succession of striking views on this mountain line. It is a rack and pinion railway, up which the train is worked on the central rail.
[Sidenote: 36. The Drug in the Nilgiri Hills.] There are magnificent landscapes at the edge of the Nilgiris, where the mountains descend abruptly to the plains. This view was taken from a point called Lady Canning’s seat. It shows the Drug, from the top of which prisoners of war used to be thrown, in the days of the tyranny of Hyder Ali and Tippu Sultan, the Mohammedan sovereigns of Mysore, of whom we shall hear more presently.
[Sidenote: 37. Tea Plantation, Nilgiri Hills.] [Sidenote: 38. The Same.] [Sidenote: 39. Hill Tribe, Nilgiri Hills.] [Sidenote: 40. Toda People, near Ootacamund.] The vegetation of the heights is naturally different from that of the lowlands, and the cultivation of the Nilgiris is chiefly tea and cinchona, from the latter of which crops quinine is prepared. Amid the great forests of the slopes large game is numerous, such as sambur, or Indian elk, and tiger. Here also tribes of savage peoples have survived through all the centuries of history practically untouched by the civilization of the plains. One of these tribes, the smallest but the most interesting, are the Todas, who number less than a thousand, but have their own strange, unwritten language.
[Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 3.] [Sidenote: 41. Madras from the Sea.] [Sidenote: 42. The High Court, Madras.] [Sidenote: 43. St. Mary’s Church, Madras.] [Sidenote: 44. The Law College, Madras.] [Sidenote: 45. Y.M.C.A. Building, Madras.] Northward of the group of temple cities, and eastward of the Nilgiris and of the plateau country of Mysore, on the low coastal plain is the great city of Madras, four hundred miles from our landing place at Tuticorin. Like the other seaports of modern India, Madras has grown from the smallest beginning within the European period. Its nucleus was Fort St. George, built to shelter the office and warehouse of the East India Company, in the time when Charles I. was king of England. To-day Madras has half a million people, and magnificent buildings in the European style. We have here a view looking northeastward over a corner of Fort St. George, and across the public grounds, to the High Court of Justice, whose lofty tower serves the purpose of a lighthouse for ships approaching the port. To the right of the High Court in the distance are the buildings round the harbour. Next we have St. Mary’s Church, standing within Fort St. George, the oldest British church in India, though the present structure was erected to replace an earlier church. And here we have the Law College, which stands beside the High Court, and close to it the building of the Young Men’s Christian Association. There are many Christians in southern India among the natives, indeed more than in any other part of the Indian Empire, although even here they are but a small minority. One Christian community on the Malabar coast is of the Nestorian sect, who came to India many centuries before the sea route was opened round the Cape.
[Sidenote: 46. Madras Bank.] [Sidenote: 47. The People’s Park, Madras.] [Sidenote: 48. Banyan Tree.] [Sidenote: 49. The Same.] Madras has a Corporation much after the European plan, and is a clean, well drained city with many public amenities. Here, for instance, is the electric tramway in front of the Madras Bank. Here we have a view in the People’s Park, with a group of sambur within an enclosure. One of the most remarkable and typical of ornamental trees in India is the banyan, with drooping branches, whose suckers take root when reach the ground, giving the effect of a grove, though in fact but a single tree.
[Sidenote: 50. Banyan Avenue.] Here is a banyan tree seen from without and from within, and here a banyan avenue at Madras.
[Sidenote: 51. Grain Sellers, Madras.] [Sidenote: 52. Men ploughing, Madras.] [Sidenote: 53. Covered Bullock Cart, Madras.] Before leaving Madras, let us look at three scenes of native life. Here are grain sellers, and here, outside the city, are men ploughing. Here we see the typical covered bullock cart.
[Sidenote: 54. Map of India, distinguishing Madras, Mysore, Cochin, and Travancore.] [Sidenote: 55. Coffee Planters, Coorg.] Lastly, let us consider the map, and learn what part of India is ruled from Madras and Ootacamund. We have in the first place, coloured red, the territory of the Presidency of Madras, which is ruled directly by the Governor and his Council. In purple are shown the important native state of Mysore, separated from both coasts by British territory, and the two little native states of Travancore and Cochin along the Malabar Coast southward to Cape Comorin. Mysore is directly under the general supervision of the Government of India, but Travancore and Cochin are under that of the Government of Madras. Beside Mysore is the diminutive territory of Coorg, no larger than the County of Essex, in England. But Coorg has a certain importance for the growth of coffee. Here we have a group of native coffee planters.
[Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 3.] Then we look again at the map in which the lowlands were shown green and the uplands brown. We see the plain from Tuticorin to Madras city. We see the southern end of the Deccan plateau, with the state of Mysore upon it, and the Nilgiri hills at its extremity. We have the lowland passage of Coimbatore, to which we referred in describing Ootacamund, and south of this afresh the hills extending to Cape Comorin. The native states of Cochin and Travancore are on the westward descent from these southernmost hills. Note again how the railways take advantage of the lowland passages, especially the line from Madras leading westward to the Malabar Coast.
The Cauvery flowing eastward over the plateau is the most considerable river of Southern India. As it descends the Eastern Ghats it makes great falls, and these have been harnessed, as the phrase is, and made to supply power which is carried electrically for nearly a hundred miles to the Kolar goldfield, within the Mysore boundary. The engineer who superintended the construction of this work was a French Canadian officer of the Royal Engineers—interesting evidence of the increasing solidarity of the British Empire.
Bangalore is the chief military station of southern India. It is connected by rail with Madras, but is situated on the plateau within Mysore. From Bangalore the line runs on to Seringapatam on the Cauvery, and to Mysore city beyond. These were the seats of the Muhammadan Sultans, Hyder Ali and Tippu, father and son, who, a generation later than the time when Clive fought at Arcot, held Madras in terror from their highland fastness. The threat to the British position in India was a real one. Hyder Ali leagued himself with the French, with whom we were then at war, but he was defeated under the great Governor-General, Warren Hastings. Tippu, Hyder’s son, was also an ally of the French. He lived into the time of Napoleon, and made his chief attack on British power when the French were in Egypt, but he was defeated and killed. Colonel Wellesley, afterwards Duke of Wellington, first rose to notice in this campaign. He was appointed to command “the troops above the Ghats.” After the death of Tippu, the civil administration of Mysore was also assigned to Wellesley, and splendid work he did as civil administrator.
[Sidenote: 56. Southern India, showing rainfall of S.W. Monsoon.] [Sidenote: 57. Pykara Falls, Nilgiri Hills.] [Sidenote: 58. Gairsoppa Falls.] A third map shows you the rainfall which is brought by the west winds of the summer time to the Malabar Coast. These winds strike the Western Ghats and the Nilgiri hills and drench them with superabundant moisture, so that they are thickly forested. At this season magnificent waterfalls leap down the westward ravines and feed torrents which rush in short valleys to the ocean. One of the grandest falls in the world is at Gairsoppa, in the northwestern corner of the state of Mysore.
[Sidenote: 59. Southern India, showing rainfall of N.E. Monsoon.] [Sidenote: 60. Southern India, showing density of Population.] A fourth map indicates the rainfall on the east coast brought by the Northeast Monsoon of the winter season. Finally, a fifth map shows that the population is densest down on the lowlands precisely in those regions, on the east coast and on the west, which are best supplied with moisture. Throughout India the supply of water for agricultural purposes is the key to the prosperity of the country, for everywhere there is heat enough for luxuriant vegetation. It is only drought which is in places the cause of sterility. With all its vast population there are none the less great spaces in India very sparsely peopled. Once more let us remember that India is rather a continent than merely a country.
LECTURE II.
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=BURMA.=
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THE BUDDHIST RELIGION.
[Sidenote: 1. Map of India, distinguishing Burma.] In the last lecture we visited Madras, the southernmost and oldest province of the Indian Empire. In this lecture we will cross the Bay of Bengal from Madras to Burma, the easternmost and newest of the provinces, if we except a recent sub-division of an older unit. Politically, Burma is a part of India, for it is ruled by the Viceroy, and commercially it is coming every day into closer relation with the remainder of India. In most other respects, however, Burma is rather the first land of the Far East than the last of India, the Middle East. In race and language probably, in religion and social customs certainly, it is nearer to China than to India. Geographically, however, though placed in the Indo-Chinese peninsula beyond the Bay of Bengal, Burma is in relation with the Indian world, for it has a great navigable river which drains into the Indian Ocean, and not into the Pacific as do the rivers of Siam and Annam, the remaining countries of the southeastward promontory of Asia.