Chapter 14
We attended the Viceroy's ball on Wednesday evening, and enjoyed the brilliant scene. The uniforms of British officers as well as those of the Civil Service are gorgeous, and set off a ball-room effectively. We saw more ladies here than upon all other occasions combined during our travels, and their general appearance was certainly better than elsewhere, showing the climate to be less severe upon them. Lord Lytton is a small man of unimposing appearance, and entirely destitute of style, but the Commander-in-Chief, General Haines, seems every inch a soldier, as do many of his subordinate officers. Native princes were formerly invited to these balls, and their presence, attended by their suites in Oriental costumes, added much to the brilliancy of the scene, but it was found desirable to discontinue the practice; they could not partake of European refreshments nor understand the appearance of women in public, and especially their dancing, nor, I fancy, could they look with becoming gravity upon dignitaries so engaged, as they employ people to do their dancing. I confess it struck me as bordering upon the farcical to see Lord Lytton, charged with the government of more than two hundred millions, and General Haines, Commander-in-Chief, with an active campaign on his hands, Sir Thomas Wade, Her Majesty's Ambassador to China, and the Lieutenant-General, all in uniform, and the two former in knee- breeches, "all of ye olden time," doing "forward four and turn your partner" in the same quadrille. Imagine President Lincoln, Secretaries Seward and Stanton, and General Grant so engaged.
The Viceroy of India has certainly to do his part in the way of ceremonial. Flaming handbills of an English circus announce that the performances are under his direct patronage. "Victoria, the Empress of the Arena," is to-night to perform her unparalleled feats in the ring in the presence of His Excellency. This was the only tribute we saw paid in India to Her Majesty's spick-and-span brand-new title of Empress. We attended the performance, which was really creditable, but the natives sat unmoved throughout every scene; so different from the conduct of the Japanese, who scream with delight like children under similar circumstances. The Indians seem to take their pleasures sadly, like ourselves.
We did not fail to visit the famous banyan tree of Calcutta, by far the largest in the world. Vandy and I started and paced it around until we met, counting three hundred and thirteen steps, or, say, three hundred yards; the main trunk is probably about thirty feet in circumference, but from each main branch roots have descended to the earth and become supporters of these branches, allowing them to extend still farther. In this way a branch may have in its course three or four supporters at intervals of twenty or thirty feet; the leaves are thick, and much resemble those of the rubber tree in size and character.
We see numerous native barbers engaged in shaving the people. Victim and operator squat down in a corner on their "hunkers," facing each other, and the operation then begins, the utensils being laid out upon a rag on the ground. It seems the most unnatural posture in the world for shaving or hair-dressing, but as it is the custom there must be some advantages in it which we cannot even guess.
One morning we drove to the burning ghat, and from personal examination of cremation, I am able to express my preference for Christian burial. The business of burning the dead--for in India it is a business like any other, and belongs to a low caste--is carried on in the most heartless manner. A building is erected upon the river-bank, about a hundred feet in length and twenty-five feet in width, and open on the side toward the river. The dead are brought there upon stretchers wrapped in a little cloth, and are first shaved by the attendants, who open the mouth and pour down a vial of the water of the sacred Ganges. The body is then bent into a sitting posture, carried out to the middle of the building, and wood built around it. We saw the embers of several piles which had just done their work, and one pile blazing, through the interstices of which parts of the body were plainly visible. It was all horrible to me as conducted here, but I can conceive of the grand funeral piles of the high priests being made most impressive; and so I am told they are, but the cremation of the poor lacks every element of this nature. My heart bled for a poor widow whose husband had just been taken to the pile. She was of a very low caste, but her grief was heartrending; not loud, but I thought I could taste the saltness of her tears, they seemed so bitter; but she has this consolation to comfort her after the outburst, that she insured the eternal happiness of her mate by having his ashes mingled with the sacred river of God. No one will touch or associate with the caste who dress and burn the dead, nor could any one be induced, save one branch of this caste, to furnish the fire which lights the funeral pile, for which sometimes large sums are exacted, in case the relatives of the dead are wealthy.
The absence of women, other than coolies, which has struck us everywhere in the East, is if anything even more marked in India, where, so far, we have scarcely seen one woman of high caste. The Mohammedans do not permit their ladies ever to leave the house, and upon rare occasions, when temples must be visited, they are closely concealed from view and driven in a close carriage or carried in a sedan chair. The Hindoos are not quite so strict, and we have seen a few in secluded streets going a few steps, but closely muffled up and with faces covered.
Do you remember with what laughter the sun-spot theory was received? At least I know I laughed when I first heard of it--but here in India, where the rainfall is the prime condition of existence to millions and the sun is much more powerful than with us, the Meteorological Department has just reported that there is apparently a sure connection between the rainfall and its distribution and the spots upon the sun. When these spots are at the minimum there is a tendency to prolonged excessive pressure over the land and an unusual amount and irregular distribution of rain.
"There is blood upon the moon,"
still stands as a poetic expression; but "there are great spots upon the sun" must pass as presaging famine. There seems to have been an element of truth after all in "the signs of the heavens" of the astrologer, only the great law which governs them was unknown.
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THURSDAY, February 6.
We left Calcutta for the Hindoo Mecca, Benares, tonight, and had our first experience of Indian railway travel, which proved to be very comfortable. We had all to ourselves a first-class carriage compartment containing two sofas lengthwise of the car and one across; above these were three upper berths, to be let down, if necessary, and used as beds. A smaller compartment contained dressing-room, etc., for all of which there is no extra charge. Evidently there is no field here for my enterprising friend Mr. Pullman. Our route lay through the opium-growing district, and the white poppies were just beginning to bloom. I did not know before that only the white variety is grown, but, curiously enough, the red flower is not nearly so productive. This set us to thinking that there may, after all, be something in the Chinaman's preference for a black dog to one of another color. By all means let us have the two kinds analyzed and see whether the blood be just the same. The opium question has given rise to much angry discussion upon which we do not propose to pass an opinion. My readers may safely assume, I think, that the difficulties we encounter in restraining or abolishing the use of liquor among ourselves, also surround the opium question in the East. It is their liquor. China grows most of what she consumes, and I believe would grow it all if the Indian drug was not admitted. Its exclusion by the Chinese would not therefore seriously lessen its use. Still it places England in a false position before the world to enforce its admission by treaty stipulations. The sum involved to the Indian revenue exceeds seven millions sterling per annum ($35,000,000); that is the net yearly profit made out of the growth of the poppy. It would not all be lost, and perhaps not be seriously reduced, were China free to exclude it, for large quantities would be smuggled in, and the people would have it. I wish England's hands were entirely free from all stain in connection with this business. China should not be compelled by England to admit a drug which is considered pernicious.
The total exports this year were ninety-one thousand chests, valued at thirteen millions sterling, most of it to China. The growing of the poppy is a government monopoly in the Bengal province (Calcutta). Each year government enters into contracts with cultivators to devote so many acres to its cultivation--an advance upon the expected crops is made and final settlements at the end of the season according to amount and quality produced. The drug is extracted at two government factories. In the other district, the produce of which passes through the Bombay presidency, the cultivation of the plant is free, but a duty is collected upon the opium.
We are in the dry season, and where not irrigated the vast plains of India are parched. The soil is a light brown clay, and turns readily to fine dust, which seems to blow over everything and make all of one hue. Even the scanty muslin clothing of the people becomes of this dusty color. The houses are only mud huts one story high and roofed with coarse straw; an opening in one side serves as a door, but with this exception the hovel is closed; neither window nor chimney appears, and when fires are made the smoke escapes through all parts of the roof, and when the roof is closer than usual, through the door. This dusty, dirty mud color of soil, streets, houses, dress, and people gives one an impression of a more squalid poverty even than that of the overcrowded Chinese in Shanghai. These latter have more clothing and no dust, and their dirtiness seems a less objectionable form of dirt.
One remarkable difference between these people and the Chinese is that we never see the former eating, while the latter eat frequently. I am told that the Indians have but two meals a day--at noon and at eight in the evening, with a bite early in the morning. As is well known, the Hindoos are strict vegetarians, neither meat, fish, poultry, nor even eggs being allowed. The result of a vegetable diet, if they are to be taken as a fair example, is not such as to favor its general adoption. The Mohammedans, on the other hand, eat everything but pork; like the Jews, they forbid this one article, and I am informed that the Mohammedans are a far sturdier race than their neighbors the Hindoos; but they should be superior, as the advance from Hindooism, with its numerous gods and idolatrous worship, to Mohammedanism with its one god is an immense one. The claims which Mohammed has upon the gratitude of mankind rest upon a solid basis, for he it was who proclaimed to the East that there is but one God, and announced himself as his prophet only, instead of demanding that he himself should be worshipped as divine; but he performed another great service, for he abolished the abominable system of caste, and thus it comes that the most popular religion in existence hails all its disciples, from the peasant to the Sultan, as of one brotherhood, as Christianity does with hers. There are nearly fifty millions of Mohammedans among the two hundred and fifty millions of India's population, and it is to them we must chiefly look for the regeneration of the native races.
As we pass through the country we are surprised at the crowds of gayly-dressed natives waiting at the crossings to pass the line, and at the stations to take the trains. All the colors of the rainbow are to be seen in their wraps. It is the season of idleness just now, their two months of rest in the country, and the entire population seem to be running about in holiday attire, forming a striking contrast to their fellows in the towns, who sit in their hovels hard at work, one crowding another in his seat. Before England established free dispensaries for these masses the rate of mortality must have been something incredible; even now it is very high, although last year in the two provinces alone no fewer than eleven hundred thousand patients were treated or prescribed for by these institutions, which we rejoice to see scattered throughout the country wherever we go. Nor in all her illustrious record do we know a brighter page than that which chronicles the rise and progress of these truly English organizations.
Manufactures in India are not profitable at present: during the scarcity of cotton, owing to the American war, large quantities were grown here and fortunes made in the business; eventually cotton mills were built in Bombay and jute mills in Calcutta, which prospered for a time, but now that America, under the system of free labor, has demonstrated her ability to supply cheaper and better cotton than India, these enterprises languish. I counted thirty-eight spinning and weaving companies in Bombay, and twenty- one cotton-press companies; the shares of which were quoted in the market, and found that on an average these would not command to-day one-half the actual capital paid in. It is much the same with the seven Calcutta jute companies. Cotton, both as to growth and manufacture, in India, I believe has no future, save one contingent upon the interruption of the American supply, of which there does not appear much danger. But it must be borne in mind that the fall in the value of silver so far is a direct gain to native productions. The planter and manufacturer alike pay in the debased currency and sell the product as far as it is exported for gold, upon which they realize a handsome premium. America needs a continuance of low rates for transportation to counterbalance this advantage of her Indian rival.
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BENARES, Saturday, February 8.
We started from our hotel early this morning to see the Hindoos bathing in the sacred waters of the Ganges. Benares is to the pious Hindoo all that Mecca is to the good son of the Prophet, and much more beside, and he esteems himself happy if it is vouchsafed him to die in sight of this stream and this city. Pilgrims flock here from all parts of India, and thousands are carried from long distances, while dying, that their eyes may behold, ere they close, the holy city of God. At the junction yesterday, six miles out, we came upon our first band of pilgrims, for they now patronize the rail freely, men and women, each with the inevitable bundle of rags which serves as his bed _en route_ and as a change of clothing, to be blessed by washing in the Ganges. It requires about a month to worship at every temple and do all that the priests persuade these pilgrims to be essential for their salvation, every ceremony, of course, producing revenue for this class. Each Rajah of India has his temple upon the bank of the river, and it is these handsome structures, situated on the cliff which overhangs the river, that give to Benares its unparalleled beauty. In each temple a priest is maintained who prays constantly and bathes every morning as a substitute for his master, the Rajah, but the latter comes in person also for one month each year to perform the sacred rites. We were fortunate this morning in seeing the Rajah of Nepaul at his devotions. He has a small covered boat of his own, and we found him on his knees, in front of it, gazing upon the sun, as we pulled slowly past in our boat, his staff standing behind him in reverential attitudes. For one full month this intelligent ruler, who speaks English fluently and is well informed of the views Europeans hold of his religious ideas, will nevertheless work hard, visiting daily the temples, going through various exercises, and bathing every morning in the Ganges. One other Rajah is here, and others are shortly to come and do likewise. It seems so strange that these men still remain slaves to such superstitions; but how few among ourselves succeed in rising beyond what we happen to have been taught in our childhood! It is very different, I am told, with those who have received English ideas in their youth at the government colleges. They make quick work of the Hindoo idols; but so far every one here agrees with the Rev. Dr. Field when he says: "It needs very little learning to convince the Hindoo that his sacred books are a mass of fable. But this does not make him a Christian. It only lands him in infidelity, and leaves him there." The _Encyclopedia Britannica_ says that "the progress of Protestant missions amounts at present to almost nothing." In Dr. Mullen's report, down to 1871, the "whole force of English missionaries--579, and of native preachers, 1,993--had produced a native Christian population of only 280,600. There was probably a much larger number in the south of India about the middle of the eighteenth century." I heard everywhere corroborations of this statement.
The wife of the Rajah, we heard, had yesterday performed the most sacred of all the ceremonies under conditions of considerable popular excitement. The sacred well, the stairs leading from it to the river, and the bathing place at the river, were all covered in; the crowd could only see the sedan chair which carried the queen to the well, but the spectacle attracted great numbers. This well is simply a trench about twenty-five feet long and not more than three feet wide, but it must be thirty feet below the surface. Broad steps lead to it from all sides. In this well every Hindoo of good caste is permitted to wash, and there are always many in it. The water is foul and offensive, yet such is its reputed sanctity that no sin can be committed so heinous that it cannot be washed away by it. The ceremony, fortunately, is incomplete until one, rising from its stench, walks to the pure water of the Ganges and bathes there. I think the ceremony must typify man before purification, foul with sin, and then cleansed by bathing in the pure Jordan afterward; but no one could give me any information upon this point. At all events it was into this sink that the Rajah's wife bravely immersed herself yesterday, and it is here, too, the Rajah himself must come before he leaves--poor man!
The place where the dead are burned was pointed out as we drifted past in our boat, but it was then unoccupied. As we returned, however, one body was in the hands of the attendants, who had taken it into the river and were just in the act of pouring the sacred water down the throat preparatory to the final scene. One woman alone sat on the shore weeping, and two small children at her side seemed not to understand why. It was still early morning, and all was quiet. Our guide pointed out some who were evidently friends, in conversation with men on a parapet above. They were bargaining for the sacred fire to light the funeral pile. Government prohibits the burning of the forlorn widow with her husband's body, as was formerly the custom, but it is said many widows wish this privilege even yet, nor can I blame them much. I'm sure I don't see why, beyond the mere instinct of self- preservation, they should have a wish to live on. Those educated people among us who commit suicide have prospects before them which might be called blissful compared with what confronts poor widows in India.
We visited the principal temples and shrines in succession, but I do not propose to rehearse their names and special virtues. There is a great sameness about them, but the Monkey Temple differs from the others in having several hundred monkeys running over it in every direction. Like the rest, this is owned by a number of people, and its shares are marketable property. Dr. Lazarus, the chief of the medical department, tells us that the "river people," a term embracing those who own the temples on the stream--just as we would say the "steel rail" or the "pig metal" people at home--are very much depressed, complaining bitterly that the revenues have fallen away. One owner in the Monkey Temple, probably the most prosperous of all, had some time ago asked what this trouble meant. He was advised to sell his monkey stock as soon as possible, but up to the present day he has found no one willing to invest in the property. One of the high priests of another sacred shrine said to my informant that he had seen in his day three ages--one of gold, one of silver, and now he had reached the age of copper, and was only thankful when he saw a few pieces of that. "The people still come as of old, to worship, which costs nothing," he said, "but they don't pay the gods more than a pittance. I wonder what we are coming to?" While great allowance has to be made for the changed condition of affairs throughout the world, which has seriously affected the revenues of religious establishments everywhere, and which India has had to share, aggravated by the loss of her cotton industry, still it can hardly be doubted that Hindooism as a vital force is crumbling slowly to pieces, and that the priests are losing their sway over the masses. Caste also goes slowly with the tide of change, and Brahmans are now occasionally found taking employment below that of their caste; and while a high-caste Hindoo some years ago would have considered himself defiled if even the garments of a low-caste person touched him, he now rushes into the same railway compartment among the general crowd and struggles for a seat with various castes, and says nothing about it. One stand the English home Government took, in deference to English ideas as opposed to those of the Anglo-Indian authorities, which alone dooms caste, sooner or later, to extinction: it would not permit different classes on the railways to be established for Hindoos or Mohammedans, or for castes of the former. Many residents in India feared that this would prevent the natives from using the lines, but the result has wonderfully belied these fears and vindicated the sagacity of those who ventured to inaugurate this system; and now one sees Hindoos and Mohammedans, high caste and low caste, jostling each other in their efforts to get desirable seats in the third-class compartments, where, by the way, they travel for less per mile than anywhere else in the world, third-class fares in India being uniformly one-half of a cent per mile. First-class fares, with such sleeping-car luxuries as I have before described included, are just about our rates with sleeping-cars not included--viz., three cents per mile.
While Hindooism is thus passing away, but little progress is made with Islam. The fifty millions of Mohammedans stand to-day where they have stood for ages, and cry from their mosques morning and night, "There is but one God, and Mohammed is his prophet." No idols, no drunkenness, no caste. The contrast between their faith and that of Christians is therefore much less marked, and our guide says to us, with evident pride, "Hindoos believe many gods, worship idols. _I believe like you_, one God, no idols."
India is thus in a state of transition, her caste and religion both passing away. The work before this generation and probably the next is to pull down and destroy. It will remain for those who come after to begin the more difficult labor of building up.