LIBRARY 
 
 OF VHK 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 DONATION OF 
 
 Letter 
 
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CHAPTERS ON MISSIONS 
 
 IN 
 
 SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 y 
 
 BY THE REV. HENRY W. FOX, B.A. 
 
 LATE CHURCH MISSIONARY AT MASULIPATAM . 
 
 FLEET STREET, AND HANOVER STREET, 
 LONDON : MDCCCXLYIII. 
 
L. Sedey, Printer, Thames Dillon. 
 
INTKODUCTION. 
 
 The following chapters were written during 
 a short visit I paid to England in the summer 
 of 1846. A variety of delays has arisen to 
 prevent their publication till the present time, 
 when it has pleased God to bring me back again 
 after a second voyage to India, and after I had 
 recommenced my work among theTelugu people. 
 The cause of these chapters being written was, 
 the want of information and comparative want 
 of energetic zeal regarding Missions, which ap- 
 peared to me to exist on the part of a large 
 number of religious persons in this country. I 
 entertained the hope that an increase of informa- 
 tion would occasion an increase of interest and 
 
IV 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of activity ; and I also felt my heart stirred 
 within me to direct the religious energy of 
 young clergymen and students for orders towards 
 the great field into which God is manifestly 
 calling many of them. 
 
 That He may accept this offering, and in spite 
 of its many faults, make it instrumental in call- 
 ing forth the prayers of his faithful people, and 
 their active Missionary exertions at home, and 
 in deciding many labourers to go abroad into 
 His harvest, is my only wish and frequent 
 prayer. 
 
 June, 1848. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 General duty of Missions, 1 — Peculiar duty of the Church of 
 England, arising from our commerce and dominion, 7 — 
 Danger of neglect, 13 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 Missionary duty of the Church of England towards India, 17 
 — Divisions of South India, 21 — Intercourse of Europeans 
 with natives, 28 — Social condition of the natives, 31 — 
 Appearance of the country, 35 — A native town, 42 — 
 Pagodas, 48 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 HINDU RELIGION. 
 
 Caste, 54 — State of learning among the Hindoos, 61 — Hindu 
 deities, 63 — The village goddess, 70 — Her festivals, 72 — 
 Swinging feast, 76 — Objects of worship, 82 — Hindu ignor- 
 ance of common matters, 88 
 
VI 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 HINDU PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 Notions regarding the divine and human natures, 94 — Con- 
 versation with Hindus, 97 — Expiation of sin, 107 — Trans- 
 migration, 100 — Miracles, 114 — Devotees, 117 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 HINDU WORSHIP AND SOCIAL HABITS. 
 
 Methods of worship, 122 — Festival, 123 — Car procession, 
 126 — Morality, 128 — Lying, 129 — Uncleanness, 134 — 
 Suicide, 136 — Murder, 136 — Degradation of the women, 
 137 — Widows, 140— Swearing, 143 — Burning a dead body, 
 145 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MODE OF CONDUCTING MISSIONARY WORK. 
 
 Difficulties of the work, 149 — A new Mission, 153 — Conver- 
 sations with the poorer people, 156 — Chapels, schools, 
 162 — Visiting the villages, 166 — A superior English school, 
 177 — An old Mission, 179 — Tinnevelly, 180 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 The state of heathen females, 189 — Girls’ Schools, 194 — 
 A boarding school, 196 — A scene in Tinnevelly, 198 — A 
 letter from a Hindu Schoolmistress, 200 — A day school, 
 202 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Vll 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS TO BECOMING A MISSIONARY. 
 
 l.“I am wanted at home,” 206. 2. ‘‘Want of ability, 
 
 health &c.,” 211. 3. “Anyone will do for a Missionary,” 
 
 215. 4. '* I am engaged among the heathens at home,” 218. 
 5. A missionary standard of Christian faith, 220. 6. Fear, 
 
 221. — An account of a Missionary’s comforts in South India, 
 223. 7. Objections from relatives, 227. — The glaring 
 inconsistency of Christians in this matter, 228. 
 
 
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 HEOIiQGIC& 
 

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 pRUPtR/y (_?yr ' 
 
 PEIHCfiTOII "\ 
 
 THEOLOGICAL^ 
 
 I. 
 
 THE MISSIONARY DUTIES OF THE 
 CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 I. The doctrine, that missions are a prominent 
 and chief duty of the church of God, is not a 
 novel or unauthorized one. Books, Charges, 
 Sermons, Speeches, have been employed in 
 maintaining the principle. There is scarcely one 
 of our Bishops now living, who has not advo- 
 cated it by his pen or his tongue. That which 
 is needed is action. Commendation of missions 
 is scarcely so much our work, as the conducting 
 of missions. To laud a missionary is not so 
 much a part of obedience, as to send out or to 
 become a missionary. This is the spirit to which 
 we need to be raised. At present we are content 
 to act the Priest and Levite’s part, and while we 
 look with pity on the poor wounded heathen, 
 
 b 
 
2 
 
 THE MISSIONARY DUTIES 
 
 “ to pass by on the other side.” When shall we 
 have grace, both as a church and as individuals, 
 to act as the good Samai’itan ? 
 
 If this duty be not acted upon, the church 
 can only stand in the position of a disobedient 
 servant of God. “ Go ye into all the world and 
 preach the gospel to every creature/’ was Christ’s 
 parting command to the ministers of his church ; 
 the very terms of it shew that the sphere in 
 which his people are to work for his glory, is 
 the whole globe : “ all the world, every crea- 
 ture,” are words which will not allow us to stop 
 short of the whole eight hundred millions of 
 human beings who people the earth. And lest 
 any should imagine that his command extended 
 only to the days of the Apostles, and to the cen- 
 turies immediately succeeding them, He makes 
 His injunction as perpetual as time itself, and 
 connects with His command, the promise “ Lo I 
 am with you alway, evenunto the endof the ivorld .” 
 
 2. Not only are individual Christians likened to 
 lights or candles set upon a hill : every church is 
 also a “ light of the world.” To the whole 
 church is the command given, “ Arise, shine, for 
 thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is 
 risen upon thee.” Just as a candle throws its 
 light as far as it is possible for it to reach, 
 struggling as it were with darkness, and causing 
 its brightness to penetrate through every chink 
 which there may be in the object which confines 
 
OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 3 
 
 its light, so is it with the believing body of 
 Christ. The church, if it is really a living body, 
 if it is in a healthy state, will be continually strug- 
 gling and striving even beyond its strength, to 
 send abroad the knowledge of Christ to hea- 
 then nations. A church which is not actively 
 and essentially missionary is deficient in one of 
 the chief marks of a true church. “ This may 
 be esteemed the true character of a church, which 
 may lay claim to our Lord’s promise that he will 
 abide with it : in the first place it must go and 
 teach all nations. It must be animated with the 
 Apostolical, the missionary spirit. It must not 
 rest satisfied that Christ should be preached to 
 those to whom he has been preached of yore. It 
 must not let sloth creep over it, so as to count 
 that it has already attained. It must not be con- 
 tent with taking care of itself, of its own souls, 
 of its own flock. It must so prize the treasure it 
 has received, as to desire above all things to im- 
 part that treasure to others. It must have some- 
 thing of that spirit which will leave the ninety 
 and nine sheep in the fold, to seek after and 
 bring back the hundredth that is lost, — of that 
 spirit which moved our blessed Lord himself to 
 leave the throne of heaven, and the choirs of holy 
 angels, and the rule of all the worlds, to seek after 
 and bring back this poor wandering ball of an earth 
 to the fold of his heavenly Father. It must have 
 something of that spirit, with which Jesus Christ 
 
4 
 
 THE MISSIONARY DUTIES 
 
 yearned for the salvation of souls, for the con- 
 version of sinners, for the shewing forth and 
 spreading of the glory of God.”* 
 
 3. Christianity is in its very nature expansive ; 
 Judaism was not so. The children of Israel had 
 the part to perform of nursing and taking care of 
 the truth of God committed to them. The 
 church of Christ has the work committed to it of 
 diffusing the knowledge of God. The knowledge 
 of Christ is as a fire both in an individual and in 
 a church : if it burns at all, it cannot remain 
 shut up within the bosom ; the man who has 
 learnt the way of salvation has no peace in him- 
 self, until he communicates that knowledge to 
 others around him ; a silent Christian, is a dead 
 Christian. Similarly a Christian church dare not, 
 cannot confine the word of God to its own bosom ; 
 a church which is content with labouring at 
 home, working merely among its own members, 
 resembles a mass of fuel in w 7 hich the fire is 
 smouldering, but not burning ; which sends forth 
 smoke not heat, which is not indeed actually and 
 altogether unlit, but which in no degree answers 
 the purpose of him who instituted it. Individuals 
 within the visible churches of Christ, may speak 
 of that love of Christ which has warmed their 
 own hearts, to others who, though they profess 
 to be Christians are little better than the heathen ; 
 and so each man for himself, even at home, has 
 
 * Archdeacon Hare’s Sermons. 
 
OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 5 
 
 opportunities of “ letting his light shine ; ” but 
 viewed as a body, they can only obey this com- 
 mand of their master, by engaging in the work 
 of converting the heathen. Thus individual mem- 
 bers in the Church of England may be actively 
 obeying Christ, while the church as a body may be 
 disobedient, and unfaithful. 
 
 4. In ancient days the blood of the martyrs 
 was counted the seed of the church ; and it was 
 unheard of, for any one to be entreated by his 
 friends to deny Christ before the heathen tribu- 
 nal on the grounds that the church would by his 
 death lose one of her ministers. But now it is 
 too common a saying, in every one's mouth, 
 “ Why should you go abroad to the heathen, we 
 cannot spare you at home : ” in other words, 
 “ We shrink from giving you up to do God’s es- 
 pecial work, at his command, because we don’t 
 know how to fill your place amongst ourselves.” 
 We cannot claim for all missionaries the title of 
 martyrs, yet many of them go to their work in the 
 spirit of witnesses and victims for Christ’s sake, 
 and some by their early death — occasioned by the 
 climate to which they have gone — are joined to 
 that “ noble army of martyrs,” who praise 
 Christ. Unwillingly and almost unheedingly as 
 we have sent them abroad, we yet may speak of 
 our martyrs of these days : when we hear that in 
 in a period of about 20 years no less than 53 
 missionaries or, missionaries’ wives have died at 
 
c 
 
 THE MISSIONARY DUTIES 
 
 Sierra Leone ; that they went there, knowing the 
 early death that probably awaited them — for in one 
 instance, out of seven who landed from one ship, 
 in the year 1823, at the end of six months only 
 two remained alive, — when we know that they 
 went in faith to do Christ's work to which he called 
 them, we cannot find any other title to give them 
 than that of Christ’s martyrs. Our church is not 
 the poorer because they have died ; were their 
 number increased an hundred fold, we dare not, 
 as believers in God’s promises, fear that we at 
 home should be sufferers. 
 
 5. In the Apostles' days and in the centuries 
 immediately following them, the church was es- 
 sentially missionary. We know more of the 
 church in this light than in any other : of the 
 majority of the apostles, we know little else than 
 that in obedience to Christ’s commands they left 
 their country, which was still unconverted and 
 unbelieving, to go and preach the gospel to the 
 heathen. The larger part of the Acts of the 
 Apostles is occupied by the history of the first 
 missionary ; the greater number of the Epistles 
 are from his pen. The stay-at-home objections 
 to missions, which are so abundaut now, are not 
 to be found in all the New Testament : nor 
 could they find room to stand along side the 
 practical contradiction which they receive from 
 the conduct of all of Christ’s servants as related 
 in that book. In the 2nd century, the church of 
 Alexandria forgetting its own wants, and remem- 
 
OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 bering only Christ’s command, did not hesitate 
 to send out as a humble missionary to India, 
 Pantoenus who presided over the celebrated 
 school or college of that place. 
 
 II. The duties incumbent upon Christians 
 in great Britain in regard to the heathen are 
 peculiar. To those who are content to confine 
 their thoughts to the narrow limits of our small 
 island, it will doubtless appear otherwise. But 
 let any one in imagination take his stand in the 
 midst of the Atlantic, and look first to Great Bri- 
 tain, and then to the relations she posseses with the 
 rest of the world, civilized and uncivilized, let him 
 note all the tribes of the tvorld waiting for and de- 
 siring that intercourse with her merchants, which 
 they monthly or daily receive ; and he must feel that 
 as a nation, a Christian nation, we have been placed 
 by God in a most extraordinary position. The 
 churches of Germany, Sweden, and the rest of the 
 continent have general missionary duties common 
 to all churches ; ours are peculiar ; with them the 
 subject is a chief one, with us it should be regarded 
 as the chief, the foremost, the most imperative 
 which God has given us. Out of all the world he 
 has by bis providences selected us to be the one 
 missionary nation, marking his purpose by first 
 giving us his pure gospel, and then bestowing 
 upon us unheard-of means and facilities for com- 
 municating it to others. God is as the master, 
 
8 
 
 THE MISSIONARY DUTIES 
 
 we the workmen : He has sent us into the vine- 
 yard, he has put the tool into our hands, he points 
 to the work he would have us do. Shall we wait 
 and delay to do his bidding, till we hear an audi- 
 ble voice from heaven ? Or has the providence 
 of God no voice for us to hear ? For all nations 
 God has appointed some particular work. To 
 other churches he has portioned out this or that 
 peculiar work, the one especial work he has given 
 to us, is that of being his missionary pioneers. 
 
 1. By our commerce we have become the neigh- 
 bours of every living soul on the face of the globe. 
 Those who sit at home, and who have not jour- 
 neyed over the wide waters can have but little 
 idea how large our trade is. The British channel 
 is alive with our merchantmen ; it almost resem- 
 bles with its crowded shipping, the streets of 
 London with their thousand vehicles. At the 
 island of St. Helena, which is the house of call 
 for those ships only which come round the Cape 
 of Good Hope, no less than 1400 homeward 
 bound vessels, most of which were British, came 
 to an anchor during the last year. The lines of 
 regular traders to America, to the East and West 
 Indies, and to the Australian colonies, are as 
 punctual as our coaches used to be. Two or three 
 hundred British ships trade annually with China ; 
 the ports of India are perpetually crowded with 
 them. Those countless islands in the China seas, 
 several of them many times larger than our little 
 
OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 9 
 
 home, inhabited by savage nations, and their very 
 names unknown in England, have our ships con- 
 tinually threading their channels and anchoring 
 in their ports for purposes of trade. There is 
 not a coast nor an island on the habitable globe, 
 which does not receive visits from our seamen. 
 
 And we at home are living in dependance upon 
 distant and generally heathen nations. Our clergy 
 ascend their pulpits, with their coats and their 
 gowns dyed with Indigo from Bengal : a large 
 portion of our cotton articles of dress are of mate- 
 rial grown in Tinevelly, Bombay or other parts of 
 India. We cannot pass a day without our tea 
 from China, and our Coffee from Arabia, or Cey- 
 lon or Jamaica. Some portion at least of our gay 
 silks, and of our wax candles come from China 
 and the China seas ; our sealing wax is of Indian 
 lae ; our railway cars could not move were it not 
 for the palm oil from the coast of Guinea, which 
 is applied to their wheels ; our medicines are ga- 
 thered in from the four quarters of the globe ; 
 we build our houses with foreign timber, we carve 
 our food with knives whose haudles remind us of 
 the Elephant hunters of Africa or Ceylon, we 
 season our dishes with spices from Travencore or 
 the Malaccas. Bengal rice is sold in our shops. 
 Our whale oils were brought home by men who 
 have lingered among the islands of idolaters. Our 
 manufactories must, many of them, be shut up, 
 and their teeming thousands must starve, many 
 
10 
 
 THE MISSIONARY DUTIES 
 
 of our Liverpool merchants, and Manchester 
 manufacturers must be content to live in poverty, 
 were it not for the markets where idolaters and 
 Mahomedans traffic, and where they find a 
 ready sale for their English goods. It were mon- 
 strous to affirm that all this brings upon us no 
 particular duty : it were infidelity to deny that 
 God, by this gift of extraordinary commerce, and 
 by these close ties of common interest which He 
 has formed between idolatrous nations and us, 
 has given us in an especial manner the work to 
 do for him, of carrying the knowledge of salva- 
 tion to the heathen. 
 
 2. But our commerce is not all. God has not 
 only sent us as wanderers over the face of the 
 globe, (a means indeed sufficient for carrying the 
 gospel every where ;) but he has placed us and 
 our authority in every quarter of the globe, and 
 given us strongholds in every land, where the 
 British missionaries may take their stand among 
 pagan natives in perfect security. Our monarch 
 has a dominion on which the sun never sets. She 
 has the keys of the Mediterranean in the possess- 
 ion of Gibraltar, Malta, and the Ionian islands. 
 She commands the Bed Sea, and has an entrance 
 into Arabia, by the possession of the strong post 
 of Aden, at the extreme south point of that con- 
 tinent. The occupation of Singapore and Penang 
 secures to her the command of the China seas. 
 
 The absolute authority she maintains over the 
 
OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 11 
 
 greater part of Hindustan, and over her large 
 dominions on the Eastern coast of the Bay of 
 Bengal, not only give to her a sphere for glorify- 
 ing God among the Gentiles, which might gladden 
 the most despondiug mind, but they force her 
 subjects into continual intercourse with Egypt, 
 and oblige her to hold a pacific position towards 
 that Mahomedan nation. Within the last year, 
 we have made a fine British settlement in the 
 island of Borneo ; we command the Canton l’iver 
 and its commerce, by the island of Hong kong ; 
 far away to the south, Australia, Van Dieman’s 
 Land, and New Zealand form subject empires in 
 themselves. British Guiana, with its aboriginal 
 Indians, and its negroes, forms for us a dominion 
 in South America as large as England. The 
 Cape colony in Africa is scarcely smaller : Sierra 
 Leone gives us intercourse with the varied tribes of 
 West Africa; the fairest of the West Indies are ours, 
 and in North America, the Canadas reach back- 
 wards into the undiscovered regions where territo- 
 rial limits are unknown, save by maps and charts. 
 The responsibility which these possessions, in the 
 midst of millions of Heathen nations, lay upon us, 
 is tremendous to think upon. Our monarch has 
 more than ten times as many heathen subjects, as 
 she has Christians. The honour of our position 
 is very great, the work of it exceedingly laborious, 
 the privileges such as the most gifted might covet ; 
 but the responsibility and danger of it are greater 
 still. 
 
12 
 
 THE MISSIONARY DUTIES 
 
 Here, then, is the duty of the Church of 
 England, a duty impressed upon her, both by 
 the general commands of Christ to every church 
 as revealed in the Scriptures, and by his parti- 
 cular commands to us in the capacity of the chief 
 church of this nation, as revealed by his provi- 
 dence. To say that we have obeyed this com- 
 mand, or fulfilled this duty, were simply to deny 
 the evidence of facts. 
 
 The Church of England has about sixteen 
 millions of people to care for in our own little 
 island; she has 16,000 clergymen employed in 
 this care. The Heathen, to whom God bids us 
 to go, amount to about 200 millions, about 
 twelve times as many as our own people at home. 
 One thousand clergymen would seem to be but 
 a small proportion to devote to the heathen. The 
 actual number of Church of England clergymen 
 who are employed among the heathen may be 
 stated as 124 ;* and yet even this estimate is too 
 
 * The number of ordained English Missionaries to the heathen 
 in connection with the Church Missionary Society is not more 
 than eighty : of those who arc in connection with the Society 
 for the Propagation of the Gospel, forty-four. In this estimate I 
 have omitted from the lists of these two Church of England So- 
 cieties, 1 st, Those that are employed among English colonists ; 
 2nd, The German, native, and country-born clergymen ; 3rd, 
 The Englishmen who are employed as schoolmasters and catechists, 
 but are not ordained. Once for all let it be said, that the omis- 
 sion of the mention of the labours of our Dissenting companions, 
 and of Christians from foreign lands, does not arise from under- 
 valuing their great importance, but from the fact that their 
 existence does not affect the duty of the Church of England. 
 
OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 13 
 
 large ; the number of our own clergy, of men who 
 have been previously engaged in the ministry in 
 our own church, and whom we have sent abroad 
 to the heathen, is probably not more than a fourth 
 of that number. 
 
 We then, of the Church of England, have 
 greatly neglected, and are neglecting, that great 
 work which God has peculiarly committed to us. 
 Whereas, if we only moderately neglected it, we 
 should be maintaining our 1,000 missionaries, we 
 now only maintain our 124. 
 
 Many turn away from missionary calls with 
 indifference, they little know the danger we 
 incur by such neglect. If our foreign domi- 
 nion and our commerce were taken from our 
 nation, in what state should we be left ! Mise- 
 rable, starving and despised, we should hold a 
 third-rate position in Europe : like Portugal 
 and Holland, we should fall from our high estate 
 to be trodden under foot by all. Yet what 
 other result can we look for, unless forsaking our 
 sloth, we spring forward to hold our true posi- 
 tion of an essentially Missionary church and 
 nation. Along with God’s gifts come responsibi- 
 lities ; we cannot be rich without also accepting 
 the duties which the rich have to perform ; we 
 cannot hold India without also taking upon us 
 the duty of evangelizing India; it was not God’s 
 purpose, in giving us so great possessions, that 
 the only use we should make of them should be our 
 
14 
 
 THE MISSIONARY DUTIES 
 
 own aggrandizement, our own comfort, our own 
 glory; he has work for us to do by means of his 
 gift : we are not doing it, and we have only to 
 read our future course in the history of the Scrip- 
 tures, and of God’s past providences towards 
 men and nations. “ Thou art weighed in the 
 balances, and art found wanting,” is the judg- 
 ment which even a child may see must come 
 upon us as a nation, unless we entirely alter our 
 course. 
 
 Were God, in the course of a few years to 
 take from us all India, the Canadas, New 
 Zealand, the Cape Colony, and all our other 
 dominions great and small, to raise up some 
 other nation which should supersede us in com- 
 merce, so that our ports should be empty, and 
 our ships cease, we should be obliged to confess 
 that the act was one of the strictest justice, — and 
 that he who had given these great powers had 
 most righteously taken them away, because we 
 had stubbornly refused to use them for the fur- 
 therance of his one great object, the evangelizing 
 of the world. 
 
 A thoughtful man will feel, that even now, our 
 danger is near : it was not yesterday we received 
 these gifts ; God is long-suffering, but our 
 neglect has been that of generations : we have not 
 now so much to expect that God will bear with us 
 longer, as to admire his goodness in that He has 
 not overwhelmed us before. Portugal, Spain, 
 
OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 15 
 
 and Holland, each in their turn were tried ; their 
 gifts were not so great as ours, yet failing 
 of the great end for which God set them the 
 foremost among the nations, they have fallen; 
 their time of probation was barely so long as 
 ours has been ; we of this present generation must 
 tremble lest the time of our probation be nearly 
 at an end. We are yet a polished shaft in God’s 
 hands, but should we prove a blunted one, he will 
 and must throw us aside, and draw another from 
 his full quiver. The world of heathens must 
 have the Gospel preached to them : this greatest 
 of all privileges and glories is still offered to us : 
 if we continue to refuse it, we must be thrust 
 away to make room for some more faithful people 
 who will obey God and receive honour and bles- 
 sings in obedience, while we lie in disgrace and 
 misery, and perchance in spiritual darkness. 
 

II. 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 ‘ It is a fact so uniform and characteristic, that 
 it may well be entitled to rank as an historical 
 law, — that whatever city or nation has, in the 
 lapse of past ages, held in its hands the keys of 
 Indian commerce and Indian influence, that city 
 or nation has for the time being stood forth in the 
 van of the civilized world, as the richest and the 
 most flourishing.* By this means Arabia was 
 enriched till it justly acquired the title of * Araby 
 the blest as the mart of Indian merchandise, 
 Palmyra raised its marble columns from the de- 
 sert ; Tyre holds her position in history as the 
 first of merchant cities, because she was the 
 carrier, though at second hand, of Indian trea- 
 
 * Duff's India and India Missions, p. 2d. 
 
 C 
 
18 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 sures. The eagle eye of Alexander led him to 
 change the emporium of trade to the mouth of 
 the Nile, where Alexandria flourished for genera- 
 tions, in wealth the rival city of Rome, because 
 she carried in her streets the produce of the East. 
 By the same means rose and flourished Bagdad ; 
 by their loss, she decayed. Nothing but the sort 
 of monopoly which Genoa and Venice, and 
 other Italian cities were able to retain of the 
 carriage of Indian goods, raised them from the 
 rank of small towns to that of the queens of the 
 West. By the discovery of the passage to the 
 East by the Cape of Good Hope was Portugal 
 raised from her obscurity ; when this trade was 
 wrested from her by the Dutch, she fell back into 
 her mean position, and Holland for a while blazed 
 forth with splendour from the East. The last 
 nation which has enjoyed the treasures of India, 
 has not been the least raised to unnatural impor- 
 tance and splendour by the gift. May God in 
 mercy grant that perceiving in time her high 
 calling, she may discharge the responsibilities, 
 and accomplish the glorious work committed to 
 her, and not fall from the possession and the 
 brilliant results of a gift ; — which other nations 
 before her have enjoyed, but having enjoyed it 
 only for their own glory and gratification, have 
 been rejected by Him who rules over all. 
 
 India is one of the brightest jewels of the 
 British crown, it contains about 100 millions of 
 
DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 19 
 
 Hindoos and Mahomedans, who are subjects of our 
 queen ; besides many more millions who are under 
 British control and protection : from it we derive 
 large stores of wealth ; in it are abundance of lu- 
 crative professions for the sons of Britons. Yet 
 no one but an infidel ever thought that these 
 were the ends, by which the purpose of God in 
 committing that large continent to our care was 
 fulfilled ; it is not that the holders of Indian 
 stock may receive their dividends with regularity, 
 it is not that our London merchants may add 
 riches to riches ; it is not that a secure provision 
 may be made for the younger sons of our influ- 
 ential families, that God has made such great 
 and important changes in one of the largest con- 
 tinents, and one of the most populous nations 
 of the globe. Other purposes he may have had, 
 yet a believer in revelation can see that the one 
 great and peculiar purpose of God, in so disposing 
 of India and placing it in the hands of a protes- 
 tant Christian country, is the imparting the high- 
 est of all gifts, the knowledge of salvation through 
 his Son, to the millions of idolaters in that land. 
 
 The natural and intended result of the close 
 tie between the two countries of Great Britain and 
 India, is the mutual benefit of each : from India 
 we are to derive the lesser good of temporal power 
 and wealth, this is the secondary object ; from 
 Great Britain, India is to derive the greater good 
 of religious knowledge, and the consequent bene- 
 
20 DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 tits of moral and political advancement ; this is 
 the primary object. The former of these two is 
 partly obtained ; India has greatly enriched our 
 nation ; the latter is mainly forgotten, we have 
 only of late years begun, and are still with feeble 
 hands carrying on the religious instruction of 
 India. About forty thousand Britons find wealth 
 or maintenance in India, from purely Indian re- 
 sources ; the number of ministers of all protestant 
 denominations from Great Britain engaged with 
 the natives, amounts to less than 150 ; those of 
 the Church of England who have gone from this 
 country, amount to about sixty. 
 
 The size of India is much greater than is 
 supposed : the scale on which it is drawn in the 
 maps and atlasses, where it is commonly seen, con- 
 veys a reduced impression of it. It covers as 
 much space on the globe as the whole of Europe, 
 Russia excepted ; in extreme length from the 
 Himalayas to Cape Comorin, it measures between 
 1700 and 1800 miles, in its extreme width about 
 1200 miles. It contains 1,300,000 square 
 miles, and a population of more than 130,000,000 
 people. 
 
DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 21 
 
 I. POLITICAL AND NATIONAL DIVISIONS OF 
 
 SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 1. The Presidency of Madras, to which this 
 tract is to be peculiarly devoted, includes the 
 larger part of the peninsular portion of India. 
 It commences at Ganjam on the East Coast ; and 
 from thence to Cape Comorin, the South point 
 of the peninsula, it possesses a coast of nearly 
 1,000 miles in length. From Cape Comorin to 
 the confines of the Portuguese state of Goa, its 
 western coast extends for a distance of 560 miles. 
 Its northern boundary is an irregular line, com- 
 mencing at Ganjam on the East coast, running 
 to the North of Nagpore in the heart of the 
 country, thence sweeping westward till it passes 
 the city of Jaulnah, and afterwards descending in 
 an almost due south direction, till it reaches the 
 river Toombudra on the borders of the Goa terri- 
 tory : here it turns westward till it reaches the 
 coast. 
 
 Within these limits is included a surface of 
 above 350,000 square miles, and according to 
 the best calculations, a population of 32 millions 
 of inhabitants. Perhaps a better idea of its ex- 
 tent may be gained from the fact that the area 
 of the presidency, is more than four times as large 
 as that of England and Wales ; and its population 
 about twice as numerous as that of those countries. 
 
22 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 2. About half of this large territory is in every 
 sense subject to the British government ; the 
 management of the country, the military autho- 
 rity, the administration of justice, the collection 
 of revenue, the imposition of taxes, the protection 
 of life and property, are all immediately in the 
 hands of the East India Company, under her 
 majesty’s authority. It is as much a British 
 dominion as the Canadas are. The remainder of 
 the Presidency consists of four native kingdoms ; 
 the two largest are subject respectively to the 
 Hindoo Bajah of Nagpore, and the Mahomedan 
 Nawab of Hyderabad, (usually called ‘ the Ni- 
 zam,’) and occupy the centre portion of the north 
 of the Presidency. The two smaller states lie in 
 the extreme south west of the Peninsula, and are 
 subject to the two petty Hindoo Rajahs of Tra- 
 vancore and Cochin. The subjection of these 
 native states to the British authority, is by no 
 means so complete as that of the districts com- 
 prised within the East India Company’s territory. 
 The administration of justice, the collection of 
 taxes, the imposition of duties, the protection of 
 life and property are all in the hands of the na- 
 tive powers : but in each state the ruler is effec- 
 tually and closely controlled by the British 
 Resident at his court, and by bodies of the 
 Company’s troops quartered in his territories. 
 Consequently, although an European might be 
 subject to some annoyances, arising from the less 
 
DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 23 
 
 settled condition of the states of Hyderabad and 
 Nagpore, his person and property would be per- 
 fectly secure from ill-treatment on the part of the 
 government. In the small kingdoms of Travan- 
 core and Cochin, the position of an European in 
 regard to safety, comfort, and respect, does not 
 much differ from that in the Company’s dominions. 
 
 3. The large native population of the Presi- 
 dency consists of three classes. The first is that 
 of a variety of wild aboriginal tribes scattered in 
 small numbers, on various less accessible moun- 
 tains, and in forests. Little is known regarding 
 them, their condition is usually that of harmless 
 savages. The second consists of the Mahome- 
 dans, descendants for the most part of the races 
 of northern invaders who successively overrun 
 India. They form but a small part of the whole 
 mass of the people, the proportion of them being 
 supposed to be in South India, no higher than 
 one in thirty; in northern India it is much larger. 
 The largest division, and that which forms the 
 main part of the population is usually known by 
 the generic title of Hindoos. 
 
 The Hindoos, even of the Madras Presidency, 
 do not answer to the idea usually entertained of 
 them in Europe, — that they are of one nation, 
 bound together by the common ties of blood, 
 nationality and religion. The Hindoos entertain 
 a similar idea regarding the inhabitants of 
 Europe, and with about equal correctness. Vary- 
 
24 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 ing ill race, language, habits, dress, appearance, 
 and government, the different nations of Hindoos 
 have been divided on the subject of religion, into 
 as many and hostile parties as can be found 
 among Christians : many of their sects are more 
 opposed to each other, both in doctrine and feel- 
 ing than Protestants and Romanists. There is 
 perhaps no country in which a feeling of nation- 
 ality or patriotism is so entirely absent as in 
 India : and if it did exist, it would be as unwise 
 to expect any two of the distinct nations to en- 
 tertain the feeling towards a common object, as 
 it would be to expect Englishmen to have a pa- 
 triotic zeal in regard to the national interests of 
 Prance or Russia. The congratulation of the 
 princes of India upon the wiping out the insult 
 of Guzerat by the restoration of the gates of 
 Somnauth, was about as wise as would have been 
 the congratulations which Napoleon might have 
 offered to the Sultan of Constantinople upon the 
 success of the British Navy at Copenhagen. 
 
 4. The Hindoos included in the Madras Pre- 
 sidency, consist of four separate nations and a 
 portion of a fifth. 
 
 (1.) The Teloogoo Hindoos, commonly by 
 Europeans called Gentoos, occupy the country 
 bounded by the coast extending from Ganjam in 
 the north, to Pulicat, a town a little above 
 Madras, on the East coast. A semicircular line 
 drawn by placing one leg of a pair of compasses 
 
DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 25 
 
 at the north of the river Godavery, and drawing 
 the other round from Pulicat to Ganjam would 
 without any great error, mark the limits of the 
 nation on the land side. They are computed to 
 amount to ten millions of people : rather more 
 than half of whom have been in the company’s 
 territories for two or three generations, the re- 
 mainder are still subjects of Hyderabad or Nag- 
 pore. The Church of England has one Mission, 
 consisting of two English clergymen, with some 
 assistants, at Masulipatam, established in 1841, 
 and another consisting of one native clergyman 
 at Secunderbad. Other bodies of Christians from 
 England, America and Germany, have sis other 
 similarly weak Missionary stations, of which most 
 are very recently begun. The Bible is only par- 
 tially translated into the Teloogoo language : 
 though many tracts and small books have been 
 published in it. 
 
 (2.) The Tamil nation is the next in position, 
 and nearly equal in population to the Teloogoo, 
 although it does not occupy quite so large an ex- 
 tent of country. Its eastern boundary is the sea 
 from Pulicat to Cape Comorin. Its northern 
 line is the same as that which forms the southern 
 boundary of the Teloogoo people, for about eighty 
 miles inland. Its western line from this point 
 follows the boundary of what, in maps, is usually 
 marked as the district of the Mysore ; from the 
 point where it reaches the line of the Western 
 
26 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 Ghauts, it turns due south along the mountains till 
 it reaches the Cape Comorin. It thus includes the 
 greater part of what is commonly known as the 
 Carnatic, the nation is altogether included within 
 the limits of the Company’s territories, and con- 
 tains about eight millions of souls. 
 
 Among the Tamil people were established the 
 old missions of Swartz and Fabricius in the last 
 century : and the more recent and much blessed 
 mission of Tinnevelly in the present. The Mis- 
 sionaries of the Church of England amount to 
 about forty, of whom twenty-two have gone from 
 England ; those of other denominations of pro- 
 testant Christians are twenty-five in number. 
 The whole of the Bible and the Common Prayer- 
 book, and a considerable number of tracts and 
 books, have been published in this language. 
 
 (3.) The Canarese nation inhabits the district 
 usually marked in maps as the Mysore, together 
 with the belt of land which lies between it and 
 the west coast. Its population amounts to about 
 five millions, and it lies altogether within the 
 Company's territories. In this nation there is no 
 mission of the Church of England : the Germans 
 and English dissenting societies maintain twenty 
 six Missionaries within its limits. These have 
 translated the Bible and many tracts into 
 Canarese. 
 
 (4.) The Malayalim nation occupies the Ma- 
 labar coast and the two small kingdoms of Cochin 
 
DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 27 
 
 and Travancore, which lie between the southern 
 part of the Ghauts and the west coast. The 
 population is estimated at one million. It is in 
 this nation that the Syrian Christians, about 
 100,000 in number, are to be found ; the Ro- 
 manists are still more numerous : the main seat 
 of the Portuguese power was here : at Cochin are 
 found the small colony of white Jews, supposed 
 to be descendants of a few Israelites who made 
 their way from Judea to India after the destruc- 
 tion of Jerusalem by Titus. There are in this 
 nation eight Missionaries of the Church of Eng- 
 land, and seven of the London Missionary 
 Society. 
 
 (5.) A portion of the Mahratta Hindoos oc- 
 cupy the north and westerly districts of Hydera- 
 bad and Nagpore : their boundaries towards the 
 south and east being the same as those of the 
 Teloogoo nation on their north and west frontier. 
 The Mahrattas however extend considerably be- 
 yond the limits of the Madras Presidency. No 
 part of the Mahrattas within that presidency, are 
 included in the Company’s dominions ; they pro- 
 bably do not in these parts amount to four 
 millions. 
 
 There are I believe, three Scotch Missionaries 
 at Nagpore, but no others in the rest of this 
 extensive district. 
 
28 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 II. — INTERCOURSE OF EUROPEANS WITH THE 
 NATIVES. 
 
 The influence which Europeans living in India 
 exercise over the Hindoos for religious or moral 
 good is very trifling ; it is much less than is in 
 England usually supposed. The reasons are 
 various : First, although a very wonderful change 
 has taken place in European habits in India, and 
 the proportion of moral and religious men is per- 
 haps fully as large as in England, yet in India, as 
 elsewhere, the majority of those who profess the 
 name of Christ, know but little of real religion — 
 and practise still less. Secondly, the number of 
 Europeans in the country is very small, and 
 although they are scattered about in many places, 
 yet a very large proportion of Hindoos have pro- 
 bably never so much as seen a white face. In 
 the Madras presidency the Europeans are as fol- 
 lows ; Private soldiers and non-commissioned 
 officers amount to 9000 men ; Military officers of 
 all ranks, both in the Queen’s and Company’s ser- 
 vice, together with medical men, deducting those 
 absent on furlough &c., amount to about 1600. 
 The civilians resident in the country are 170 
 in number ; the chaplains vary from twenty-five 
 to thirty.' These are all in the service of the 
 government. Besides these, there are about 100 
 
DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 29 
 
 or 120 other Europeans of all ranks and occu- 
 pations in Madras or in up-country stations ; and 
 European Missionaries 130. So that the entire 
 number of Europeans in the Presidency amounts 
 to less than 11,000, while that of the Hin- 
 doos is about thirty millions. Thirdty, the inter- 
 course which Europeans have with Hindoos is 
 not of a character to convey decided or direct 
 Christian influence. The body of 9000 soldiers, 
 almost to a man, may be said to be entirely igno- 
 rant of any Hindoo language. The next body in 
 point of size, the military and medical officers, 
 are required to possess some knowledge of Hin- 
 dustani, and many of them are excellent scholars 
 in that language ; but this is the language of the 
 Mahomedans, and is but very partially available 
 among Hindoos, beyond the simplest purposes ; 
 the officers who have acquired a sufficient know- 
 ledge of any Hindoo language to make use of it 
 freely, are very few indeed. The civilians form 
 the only portion of the East India Company’s 
 servants who are necessarily or usually familiar 
 with any Hindoo language : their position in re- 
 gard to religious intercourse with the natives is 
 one of peculiar difficulty, and unless there be 
 marked zeal and judgment does not admit of 
 many opportunities for good. The chaplains are 
 too much occupied with their English congrega- 
 tions to have any regular personal intercourse 
 with natives at large. The Europeans uncon- 
 
30 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 nected with the East India Company’s service are 
 not usually familiar with the Hindoo languages ; 
 and where this familiarity is wanting, the Christian 
 knowledge or the Christian character of the most 
 holy European, can have no more than a very tri- 
 fling and indirect influence upon the natives 
 around him : for the English language as yet, is 
 so little known by Hindoos, that it opens but a 
 narrow door for Christian communication. Con- 
 sequently the work of religious instruction and of 
 direct religious influence on about thirty millions 
 of the heathen in the Madras Presidency is left 
 almost exclusively to the small number of Mis- 
 sionaries. When it is remembered not only that 
 a Missionary in most neighbourhoods is the sole 
 European who is able to carry the Gospel to the 
 heathen, but also that his lips form the sole 
 channels of grace to tens of thousands around 
 him, the paucity of means is still more discerni- 
 ble. In any parish in England, there is the 
 clergyman, his preaching, his reading the Bible 
 in church, his conversation and character, — 
 there is perhaps a dissenting minister, then reli- 
 gious friends and acquaintances, religious books 
 and publications, in almost every house a copy of 
 the Bible, a certain amount of religious know- 
 ledge floating in most circles, and chance words 
 spoken even by a stranger in season ; so numer- 
 ous are the means in all but the very worst parts 
 of our towns, that scarcely a man or woman can 
 
DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 31 
 
 say, that during their lifetime they have never 
 had an opportunity of hearing of Christ, or that 
 their conscience has never been roused. In most 
 parts of India, even in a Missionary neighbour- 
 hood, unless a Hindoo actually hears the voice of 
 the Missionary, or receives a tract from his hands, 
 he has no means at all : a Missionary may spend 
 years in a town, and yet thousands of the people 
 may never enjoy an opportunity of hearing the 
 offer of pardon of sin. 
 
 III. — SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE NATIVES. 
 
 The social condition of the Hindoos of the 
 Madras Presidency, in the districts governed by 
 the East India Company, is very low : in the 
 native states it is worse. The feature which 
 strikes the eye from the first, and which, on exa- 
 mination, proves to be too true, is abject poverty. 
 The greater part of the country people live very 
 nearly from hand to mouth. The wealthier 
 classes, with a few exceptions, would in England 
 be called persons of small means. The practice 
 of living upon relations increases habits of po- 
 verty, and checks the advance of independent 
 wealth and civilization ; if a Hindoo is a man of 
 some standing, and possesses an income of 50 
 rupees a month (equivalent to .£60 a year) he 
 not only has to maintain himself and his family 
 
32 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 upon these means, but also to support a number of 
 idle relations who make his house a hive of drones. 
 If his income becomes increased to 60 or 70 ru- 
 pees, it is a signal for some three or four more 
 distant connections to come and quarter them- 
 selves upon him : and much as he may dislike it, 
 it is the e custom of the country,’ and he cannot 
 resist supporting them. The Moonsiff, a native 
 local judge, of Masulipatam, told me he had taken 
 considerable pains to discover the amount of po- 
 pulation, and the means of support of the people 
 dwelling in the town and its suburbs over which 
 his authority extended, and the results which he 
 had obtained were these. The population amounted 
 to 90,000 souls : 10,000 of these were in service 
 of one kind or another, 10,000 more in trade, 
 10,000 were handicraftsmen, 10,000 were profes- 
 sional beggars, and as for the remaining 50,000, 
 he could not make out how they lived. This was 
 pf course a very great exaggeration, yet was not 
 without truth. 
 
 The Hindoos, though not admitted into any 
 share whatever of the government of the country, 
 are allowed to take part in the management of it. 
 The army consists mainly of native soldiers, or 
 sepoys, and there are several grades of native 
 commissioned and non-commissioned officers : 
 the subdivisions of each collectorate or county is 
 managed, under the English Collector, by native 
 Tahsildars, or Hindoo collectors, who derive 
 
DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 33 
 
 from their European superior certain powers in 
 reference both to magisterial and revenue busi- 
 ness. The judicial department also admits of 
 Sudr Ameens, MoonsifFs and others, who exercise 
 the power of decision in cases of smaller impor- 
 tance, both criminal and civil : of course all the 
 underlings, who are very numerous, both in reve- 
 nue and judicial departments, are appointed al- 
 most exclusively from among the Hindoos. 
 Amongst Hindoo officials, bribery is the habit ; 
 to refuse a bribe is the exception : it is not diffi- 
 cult for a rich man to carry the day against a 
 poor one, however just his cause, by bribing the 
 native officers of the courts, in spite of the vigi- 
 lance, the firm justice, and the ability of the 
 English judge. It is a hopeless task for the Eng- 
 lish, either as a government or as individuals, to 
 attempt any effectual check to the oppression on 
 the part of all native inferior officials towards the 
 mass of the people. It cannot be accomplished by 
 any other means than by raising the moral condi- 
 tion of the Hindoos : for this end, the Christian 
 religion is the only engine. As long as oppres- 
 sion and the receipt of bribes is counted in no 
 wise improper or unbecoming by the most res- 
 pectable and honourable of the nation, no coer- 
 cive means, no vigilance, no skill, can possibly 
 reach the evil. The peons or petty constables, 
 exact fowls or food from the villagers through 
 threats of false accusation : those about the 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 courts obstruct petitions, keep back witnesses, 
 threaten plaintiffs till their friendship is purchased 
 by a gift. 
 
 The following conversation, extracted from a 
 journal, written at the time it occurred, will serve 
 to illustratrate the subject : — 
 
 “ While staying in the Choultry (a halting place 
 for the heat of the day) I had abundance of com- 
 pany in a set of palanquin bearers, and in a num- 
 ber of cooly men, (i. e. hired labourers) who took 
 up their quarters and laid down their loads in 
 the verandah. When I had had enough of reading, 
 and they of sleeping, I had a long conversation 
 with two of them. The coolies were engaged as 
 carriers; on my talking with them about their 
 occupations, they said that they were small far- 
 mers, and that their proper business was cultiva- 
 tion, but that in preference, whenever they could, 
 they went as carriers ; they were now carrying on 
 their shoulders bales of coarse cottons, from some 
 merchant at Palcole, to another at Masulipatam, 
 a distance of 45 miles : for this they each receive 
 one rupee (two shillings) ; the value of each 
 man's burden varying from 30 to 40 rupees 
 (£3 to £4) ; the journey they accomplish in four 
 days. When I asked them why they preferred 
 this carrier’s work to cultivating the ground, they 
 said that in this work they got their whole hire 
 to themselves ; but that in cultivation, after pay- 
 ing all proper dues and rent, the Tahsildar’s 
 
DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 35 
 
 peons (petty officers, of the rank of constables) 
 unjustly exacted from them at the rate of one 
 anna on the rupee, (that is, one sixteenth.) “ But 
 why do you give it to them, if it is unjust ? ” 
 “ If we do not give it, they beat us.” “ If 
 so, why do you not go and complain to the 
 Tahsildar ? ” (He is the native collector and 
 magistrate of a small district.) “ It is he that 
 sets his peons on, and encourages them to do it.” 
 “ Go to the English Collector then, and complain 
 to him.” “ We can’t do that, he lives 40 miles 
 off, and the Tahsildar would stop us on the way, 
 and drive us back.” “ But can’t you go without 
 letting any one know what your purpose is ? ” 
 “ Yes we can do that ; but what is the result ? the 
 Collector writes to the Tahsildar to enquire of him 
 about our complaint, and he will write back to 
 say that he has beaten us because we would not 
 pay our rent, or some such story as that ; and 
 then we come back again with nothing for our 
 pains ; perhaps we get another beating for making 
 the complaint, and get turned out of our bit of 
 land.” 
 
 IV. DESCRIPTION OF THE FACE OF THE 
 
 COUNTRY. 
 
 The appearance of the country to the East of 
 the great Ghauts or mountains, is in many parts 
 D 2 
 
36 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 very dreary and bleak, except during the two or 
 three last months of the year, when the green 
 crops are on the ground. There is as much 
 variety in the surface of the ground, as there is 
 in different parts of Europe ; rocky hills, and 
 even mountains are numerous in some parts. It is 
 a very common and peculiar feature of these, that 
 they rise abruptly from the centre of a plain in a 
 conical form ; they look as if they had by some 
 convulsion been thrust up, and had pierced the 
 dead level of the surrounding country : except 
 when they run to the height of 1,000 feet and 
 more, they are painfully barren, presenting either 
 sloping sheets of living stone, or broken masses 
 of rock piled one on another, up to the very top 
 of the hill : and interspersed with a few dry 
 bushes, and drier blades of long grass. In some 
 districts, the traveller may be journeying for an 
 hundred miles together, in the midst of these 
 hills, often close to the very foot of them : and 
 yet not rise a single foot perceptibly. In other 
 districts there are extensive plains, as level as a 
 table, and very rarely pierced by any of these 
 conical hills. The following description is appli- 
 cable to many extensive localities. 
 
 The country spreads out before the eye, as an 
 unbroken level, bounded by an indistinct horizon 
 at the distance of from two to five miles. The soil is 
 a strong black clay, in which during the wet season, 
 the wheels of the bullock carts cut furrows afoot 
 
DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 37 
 
 in depth, and over which the horse laboriously 
 travels, sinking to the fetlock at each step ; dur- 
 ing the dry weather it becomes as hard as iron, 
 with cracks in it in every direction, an inch or 
 two in width : the ruts and the tracks of animals 
 impressed during the rain, remain stamped in the 
 hard clay, and are gradually worn to a less harsh 
 edge by th,e traffic on the rude causeway, or the 
 track which serves for a road. Grass there is 
 none : unless it be a patch here and there in some 
 more favourable spot, or by the side of a pool 
 which is fast drying up ; hedges are nowhere to 
 be seen : the gaunt black-stemmed palmyra, with 
 its stiff tuft of fan-like leaves, suits the character 
 of the scene ; at a distance are a few clumps of 
 trees, each partially concealing a village of mud 
 huts; a few half-starved cattle are seeking for 
 any blades of grass or dead leaves they can find, 
 attended by a long naked boy. 
 
 There are other districts, where the only variety 
 is the substitution in the place of the hard black 
 clay, of a lighter soil, more remarkable for the 
 very great number of stones on it, than for any 
 thing else : and occasionally dotted with a few 
 small bushes, whose scanty and parched leaves 
 give a greater impression of dryness than could 
 be excited by their absence. 
 
 There are others, as for instance, the mis- 
 sionary district of Tinnevelly, where the scene is 
 different. The same extensive levels prevail, but 
 
38 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 the soil during most of the year, consists of a 
 loose, dry, sea-shore sand, relieved by very scanty 
 blades of grass in some spots, and very dry 
 bushes here and there in others. From out of 
 this plain there rise up myriads upon myriads of 
 the gaunt Palmyras, either in single trees, or 
 in crowded clumps of a quarter of a mile across. 
 I remember being amused at the commencement 
 of the rainy season, when a heavy shower had 
 fallen over night, to see a farmer engaged in 
 ploughing a tract of bright yellow sand, which 
 resembled nothing so much as the sea beach when 
 the tide is out, but which, in the course of two 
 or three months, would produce him a crop of 
 grain. 
 
 There are still other spots more pleasing to the 
 eye ; a level plain covered during a few months 
 in the year with short green grass, and bounded 
 at the distance of a mile with a varying line of 
 palmyra trees, interspersed here and there with 
 some more comely timber, affords a relief to the 
 wearied eye. Elsewhere a tank presents its 
 sheet of water, rippling to the breeze, and most 
 refreshing to the eye in a sultry climate ; it is 
 skirted at its shallow end by a border of bright 
 green grass, and perhaps dotted by a few cattle 
 enjoying the coolness of the water, or by some 
 dazzling white cranes standing by the side. At 
 the deeper end, whei’e the water is retained by an 
 artificial mound, the embankment is not unfre- 
 
DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 39 
 
 quently planted with bushes and trees, which form 
 a very pretty green fringe to the sheet of blue 
 water. 
 
 The following descriptions, taken from a journal, 
 may convey impressions of a still more pleas- 
 ing character, and represent some of the better 
 parts of the undulating country of the Mysore. 
 
 ‘ We left our sleeping quarters before day-light, 
 and after riding about three miles quietly along 
 the high-road, found that we had just enough 
 light from the opening day to find our way 
 through a quagmire, extending for more than 
 half a mile, and in parts almost knee deep. 
 When the day fairly broke, we found ourselves in 
 a pretty country ; every thing was fresh and wet, 
 in consequence of the rain which had fallen the 
 preceding day, and many little villages, embo- 
 somed in luxuriant green trees, were scattered 
 about. At one spot, ive came upon the river 
 Cauvery, rolling its stream along rapidly and 
 muddily, not less than 200 yards in width ; we 
 crossed it by a fine bridge of 70 arches, built 
 previous to the occupation of the country by the 
 British ; the view from the top of it was pretty ; 
 a broad reach of the river extended for about half 
 a mile before us, shut in by fine trees, above 
 which rose the towers of two pagodas. We skirted 
 the river for a mile or two, and after eight or ten 
 miles more, reached the city of Mysore/ 
 
 ‘ As we approached the town of Seringapatam, 
 
40 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 the views became very interesting : we had been 
 travelling along a good road under fine avenues of 
 trees, and now crossed two or three canals of 
 water, which were drawn off from the river Cau- 
 very, to irrigate the country; the abundance of 
 water gave the whole scene a delicious freshness 
 and luxuriance both in the foliage of the trees 
 and in the underwood. The rice fields with their 
 brilliant green, were numerous, and diversified 
 with plots of the tall corn-like cholum, maize and 
 other grains. Here and there was a clump of the 
 feathery cocoa-nut tree, interspersed with the 
 graceful areca palm, with its lofty slender stem, 
 and soft tuft of leaves at the top : or with the 
 pretty sago palm, while underneath were the 
 broad bright green leaves of the plantain. Pre- 
 sently we crossed some full rapid streams, spanned 
 by picturesque bridges, and adorned by beautiful 
 pagodas, with their broad flights of steps leading 
 to the water, and breaking the line of green 
 foliage on the banks ; starting out from these 
 pagodas were boldly devised figures of horses cut 
 in stone, the size of life, and yoked four abreast, 
 pawing and straining as it were to drag the build- 
 ing into the stream over which they reached. We 
 then crossed the main stream of the rocky rapid 
 Cauvery, and entered the fortifications of the 
 city, passing across its deep ditches and through 
 its massy gates, and so on through its shabby 
 streets, till we reached the palace which had once 
 
DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 41 
 
 been the royal abode of Hyder Ali, and his son 
 Tippoo Sahib. ****** 
 . . . ‘ We reached Closepettah, after a ride of 
 several miles through a jungle, which reminded 
 me very much of some of our English roads ; the 
 bungalow commands a very beautiful view : im- 
 mediately in front there is quite a forest of green 
 foliage skirting the sides of a river, which runs un- 
 seen in its deep channel, and continuing for a mile 
 or two till it is bounded by a small range of rocky 
 hills, 500, or 1000 feet in height : these were 
 partly wooded in their lower part, but above their 
 green sides rose up enormous heads of rich purple 
 or brown rock many hundred feet in height, yet 
 fringed here and there with green bushes. To 
 the left of the foreground, the brown tiled roofs 
 of the houses of the town, and parts of a bridge 
 peeped out from among the luxuriant and fresh 
 leaved trees/ 
 
 Except perhaps during the first hour of the 
 dewy morning, or the last hour of sunlight, during 
 the cool months of the year, the perpendicular 
 glare of light destroys much of the beauty which 
 exists. An Indian sun, bright as it is, is not 
 calculated to throw those varied lights and sof- 
 tened tints which form so large a share of the 
 beauty of our scenery in temperate climates. 
 
42 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 V. — A NATIVE TOWN. 
 
 The neighbourhood of towns, especially those 
 near which any Europeans live, is usually much 
 greener, in consequence of the numerous small 
 trees, which skirt the suburbs, and are planted 
 irregularly in the heart of the town. The follow- 
 ing description of Masulipatam, one of the largest 
 native towns in the East side of the Madras Pre- 
 sidency, may be taken as an example of many 
 others. 
 
 The town is an old one, being referred to by 
 the early traveller Marco Polo in the 14th cen- 
 tury, and during the period of the East India 
 Company's trade, it was one of the great empo- 
 riums for cotton goods. The native part of it is 
 a'bout three miles in length, and in its widest part, 
 which is the centre, is not less than one mile 
 and a quarter wide, but toward each end it nar- 
 rows considerably. As we approach it we find 
 ourselves on a better road than the track by 
 which we had been travelling through the coun- 
 try, thanks to the European residents, who living 
 in the outskirts of the town, have made some 
 good roads for their own convenience. The 
 town is however not discernible ; we are only 
 aware of an approach to it by the less wild ap- 
 pearance of the country, by the increased number 
 
DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 43 
 
 of natives on the roads, and particularly by the 
 thick clumps of palmyra, mixed with tamarind 
 and other ornamental trees : these however, though 
 not large, conceal the extensive, but low town, 
 which cannot boast of tower, minaret or spire. 
 We enter now one of the chief streets, which runs 
 right through the town, but not quite in a 
 straight line, and we find ourselves in what might 
 be an English alley, wide enough to admit two 
 carts to pass with ease. 
 
 The houses in this street are mainly of the 
 better sort. They are not what are called ‘ up- 
 stair or two-story houses/ (in all the town there 
 are not twenty which have a second story) but 
 they are all on the ground-floor ; the very best 
 are of the following description. The outside 
 wall is about ten feet in height, built of brick 
 and lime and perhaps plastered ; the roof is of 
 rough tiles, and projects about four feet beyond 
 the wall, so as to form a small verandah, in which, 
 on a raised mound of brick and mortar, the owner 
 and his friends may often be seen sitting. The 
 summit of the sloping roof is perhaps fifteen feet 
 from the ground. Entering by the door, we find 
 ourselves in a small court from 15 to 30 feet 
 square, surrounded on most of its sides by open 
 verandahs, in one of which we discover a mat, 
 perhaps an old couch, and probably a few coarse 
 English engravings, or worse daubs of native art, 
 hung on the walls. This forms the furniture of 
 
44 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 the drawing room of the house ; the rest of it is 
 an irregular building broken up into numerous 
 little closets six or eight feet square, ill lighted 
 by small windows, in which the members of the 
 large family sleep and take their meals. 
 
 The houses of the second class are not very 
 unlike the former, but are more numerous ; these 
 instead of having their walls made of brick and 
 lime, can boast of nothing but mud for their 
 material; occasionally white-washed, and con- 
 tinually repaired where the rain has washed part 
 of them away. I have seen a palmyra or a coco- 
 nut tree growing in the wall, or projecting from 
 the centre of the tiled roof. As we proceed along 
 the street, we come upon the ‘ bazaar/ or place 
 where the shops are to be found, the ‘ Oxford 
 Street ’ of the town ; these shops have no glass 
 windows, and do not dazzle the eye by the pro- 
 fusion or brilliancy of their wares. A very small 
 verandah, reaching beyond a tiny store-room six 
 or seven feet square, and so low that a European 
 can barely stand upright in it, is enlarged by the 
 erection of a shed, formed of one or two mats 
 fastened on a frame work, supported by two bam- 
 boo sticks — this is the shop. Within squats the 
 shop-keeper on his mat, around him are his 
 goods, bales of native cottons, or piles of the 
 common earthenware vessels, or a variety of 
 country vegetables, gourds of every shape and size, 
 cucumbers large and small, round and long, the 
 
DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 45 
 
 brinjal or purple egg-plant, leaves of various trees 
 and shrubs, coarse plantains and others to suit 
 the taste or poverty of his customers, — or baskets 
 full of grain, red rice and white rice, vetches, peas, 
 and the endless variety of pulses, black, green, 
 grey and white, w r hich the poor who cannot pur- 
 chase rice are glad to obtain. Coarse canvas for 
 bags, or hard ware, consisting of old rusty bits, 
 iron rings, knives, and an hundred articles 
 of which it requires some ingenuity to guess 
 the use ; there are in others, strings of white or 
 coloured bags, from those large enough to 
 contain a single penny, to those capable of 
 holding bundles of betel leaf, hung down from 
 the edge of the shed, which make the shop 
 look gay. Further on in the street we pass the 
 walls of a pagoda, and are probably disgusted at 
 the indecency of some of the figures on the out- 
 side, or we come upon a cluster of the huts, in 
 which the more respectable classes of the labourers 
 live, and which remind us of the village abodes. 
 The best and most tidy of these are circular : a 
 mud wall three or four feet high, encloses a space 
 of about ten feet diameter ; from the top of it 
 rises a peaked roof thatched with the large fan 
 like leaves of the palmyra, to the height of fifteen 
 or sixteen feet ; the whole reminds the English 
 eye of a diminutive circular corn stack with very 
 low sides. Windows there are none; a low door, 
 the height of the wall, allows of egress and in- 
 
46 
 
 DESCRIPTION OP SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 gress for the members of the family whose abode 
 this small building forms. 
 
 Of these various classes of houses and huts the 
 town consists : perhaps a dozen streets wide 
 enough for carts to intersect each other at differ- 
 ent points ; but between them are numerous 
 small alleys running between the houses, and just 
 wide enough to allow two persons on foot to pass 
 each other without touching, and turning at right 
 angles every ten or twenty yards. In the town, 
 there are not a few pretty spots, especially during 
 the wet and cold season : in the more retired 
 parts, many houses have a few feet of garden at- 
 tached to them, surrounded by a mud wall, and 
 just large enough to hold a small tree which rises 
 above the enclosure, and which brings the brown 
 tiled roofs into pleasing contrast with the green 
 foliage. In others, a space of an hundred yards 
 is quite open, on which the grass and wild flowers 
 are growing, the village pigs are grubbing, and 
 the lank ownerless pariah dogs are skulking : it 
 is overshadowed at the side by some spreading 
 tamarind or banian tree, beneath which the little 
 brown naked children are playing ; a few plantain 
 plants with their broad, soft, and bright green 
 leaves, peep out from some adjoining garden ; and 
 a cocoa-nut tree or two, affords a place where the 
 screaming green and yellow parroquets may alight. 
 Elsewhere the open space is occupied by a small 
 pond, overhung with the boughs of the surround- 
 
DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 47 
 
 iug trees, while in the early morning the scene is 
 enlivened by a number of washermen standing at 
 the edge, and dashing the clothes they wash with 
 the greatest violence against rough stones, placed 
 in the water at a suitable angle. The spot re- 
 sounds with a not unpleasant sound of beating ; 
 the clothes are purified and at the same time at- 
 tenuated. 
 
 Around the outskirts of the town, in and out 
 among the trees, are scattered numerous clumps 
 of a species of hut, distinct from those already 
 described, and inhabited by a very numerous divi- 
 sion of the poorest lowest classes. Such a hut 
 costs its owner, from one to two shillings ; if he 
 builds it with his own labour, the cost is probably 
 less : he procures a number of bamboos, some as 
 thick as a man’s wrist, others as small as two 
 fingers : cutting the stronger ones into pieces 
 about six feet in length, he drives one end of 
 them a foot into the sand, so as to form a sort of 
 enclosure ten or twelve feet square ; small bam- 
 boos are tied across these with strips of leaves or 
 fibres instead of rope, and a sloping frame work 
 of a similar kind is added for the roof, supported 
 within and in the middle by a stout post : on this 
 bamboo framework, a number of the large pal- 
 myra leaves are tied, and the house is completed. 
 It serves for kitchen, parlour and all ; during the 
 hot weather however, the males of the family en- 
 joy on the soft sand outside the door, a cooler 
 repose at night than they could find within. 
 
48 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 Such is a native town, as yet unaltered by 
 English impi’ovements : some dozen or twenty 
 large well-built upstair houses of two stories in 
 height, are the only marks of real civilization in 
 regard to building. The rest of the town con- 
 veys the impression of great poverty, absence of 
 comfort, and little knowledge of the arts of civi- 
 lized life. Outside the town are a number of 
 small fields called compounds, in each of which 
 is a well built house suited for the residency of 
 Europeans. 
 
 VI. — PAGODAS. 
 
 Nothing so frequently meets the eye, either in 
 town or village, as the place of worship or pagoda. 
 In England, even in towns, thecliurches areamong 
 the largest, best, and most conspicuous buildings; 
 so in India, the pagoda, large or small, is remarka- 
 ble as being more substantial, lofty and promi- 
 nent than the surrounding dwelling houses. It 
 is true that in some villages and hamlets this is 
 not strictly the case, at least in reference to the 
 building erected in honour of the numerous vil- 
 lage-goddesses. These are usually very humble : 
 I recal to mind one of a usual style : it is erected 
 in a similar way to the poorest sort of hut : a 
 framework of bamboos covered with palmyra 
 leaves, and enclosing a dark confined space of six 
 
DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 49 
 
 or seven feet square forms the abode of the god- 
 dess ; it has a small doorway but no door, and I 
 have in the early morning disturbed a goat or a 
 pig, overlaying the goddess : the idol consists of 
 a small stone with an uncouth figure of a man on 
 horseback rudely carved in relief upon it. The 
 villagers, as they go to their work in the morning, 
 pass by it, and bowing to the ground prostrate 
 themselves before the shed, say a few words to 
 Amma ( ‘ our mother/) and pass on. 
 
 The pagodas of larger villages and of towns, 
 are more substantial and more important, though 
 still paltry to European expectations, — a few 
 famous ones excepted. An inferior one con- 
 sists of nothing more than a single building : it 
 is a house built in a square form of brick and 
 lime, and plaistered over with a variety of raised 
 ornaments or figures : it is ten or twelve feet in 
 diameter, twenty feet in height and roofed with a 
 sort of peaked irregular dome also plaistered, or- 
 namented and whitewashed. This is the abode 
 of the god : for the object of a Hindoo temple is 
 so far distinct from that of a Protestant Christian 
 church, that it is the house or dwelling place of a 
 certain deity, and not merely a convenient place 
 in which his worshippers may assemble. Conse- 
 quently as a pagoda twenty feet high and ten 
 feet wide is large enough to hold an image of 
 three or four feet in height, the god’s-house or 
 shrine is no where larger than this, whether it 
 
 E * 
 
50 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 form the meanest or the most magnificent temple. 
 The difference does not consist in the size or 
 shape of the building itself, but in the presence 
 or absence of surrounding buildings : usually 
 a town pagoda consists of an open square court 
 yard surrounded by four high straight walls : if 
 it be devoted to Siva, each corner is surmounted 
 by the figure of a bull : over the gateway, in the 
 centre of one of the walls, is erected a tower 
 called a goprum, merely for ornament, narrowing 
 towards the top, and covered with ornamental 
 ' plaister work, or figures often indecent. Inside 
 the court, there are two or three of the above 
 mentioned god-houses, in which are respectively 
 images of the god Siva, or Vishnu, whichever 
 of these claims the temple as his abode, and of 
 his wife and sons. Besides these there is usually 
 a small mantapam or piazza, with a flat roof, sup- 
 ported on four pillars, under which the idol is 
 exhibited on festival days ; the rest of the court 
 is open ; a flag-staff hung with small hand-bells 
 usually stands in the centre. 
 
 In the great and most famous temples there 
 are as many as three walls, one within another, 
 forming as many regular open enclosures. The 
 lofty goprums or gate towers are repeated in each 
 wall, and are as much as 200 feet in height, 
 formed of eight or nine stories, each diminishing 
 in size towards the top, and richly ornamented 
 with figures as large as life. The open spaces 
 
DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 51 
 
 between the walls, each contain several god-houses, 
 several of the flat roofed piazzas, and a small pond 
 or two surrounded by stone steps. At both the 
 great pagodas of Madura and Conjeveram, there 
 are famous piazzas said to be supported by 1000 
 columns, but as the columns are not more than 
 twelve feet high and closely crowded together, 
 the building though large is dark, and devoid of 
 beauty. At Conjeveram, the ponds are filled with 
 clean water, and present really refreshing places 
 for the many persons who are constantly perform- 
 ing their religious ablutions in them. At Madura, 
 there is only one pond ; it has been receiving 
 perhaps for 1000 years the washings and off- 
 scourings of the hundreds of thousands of Hindoo 
 men and women, who on festival occasions in 
 crowds, and on ordinary days by twos and threes, 
 are washing themselves in it. It has a thick 
 bright green scum upon it, and when this is re- 
 moved by the motion of the bathers the water 
 below is discovered to be of a similar hue ; yet 
 the bathers are continually dipping their heads 
 into it, taking mouthfuls of it and squirting it 
 out again : I know of no other creatures but a 
 hog and a brahmin who would not be disgusted 
 by the manifest impurity of the liquid. 
 
 India is full to overflowing of scenes and ob- 
 jects to interest any European ; a thoughtful 
 person, fvho takes the trouble to learn a native 
 language, and who makes himself familiar with 
 e 2 
 
52 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH INDIA. 
 
 native habits, abodes, and mind, may spend a life- 
 time in adding to his stock of information. He 
 will not find much that is beautiful, or cheering, 
 or ennobling \ but he will daily have his sym- 
 pathies drawn out towards his suffering, ignorant 
 or deceived fellow-men ; and if he himself 
 knows that one remedy for sin and its conse- 
 quences which God has provided, the know- 
 ledge of God in Christ, he cannot but continually 
 yearn and strive that those whose sorrows or 
 whose sins he is beholding, may be partakers of 
 the same great gift. Counting intellectual edu- 
 cation, civilization, and good government, the 
 introduction of the arts, and whatever else man 
 may devise, to be truly desirable subsidiary means, 
 he will not be content unless, both first and last, 
 the pure gospel of Christ be brought to the ears 
 and understanding of the people. 
 
 May God in mercy to them and to us, hasten 
 the time when his people in Great Britain shall 
 awake to the sense of the one great duty He has 
 laid upon them. 
 
III. 
 
 THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 The moi’al character of the Hindoos is so degra- 
 ded, as to make every good man mourn who 
 knows of it. It forms an additional incitement 
 to exertions for their deliverance. A high state 
 of civilization, cultivated intellect, great progress 
 in the arts and sciences, the comforts and luxu- 
 ries of life, these are perfectly compatible with 
 a state of heathenism, and of degraded immo- 
 rality, as we see in the case of the Greeks and 
 Romans ; hence the folly of those is manifest 
 who would endeavour to raise the Hindoos by 
 mere political, social, educational or temporal 
 improvements : these may all effect their work 
 most completely, and yet the nations may be as 
 far as ever from the true end of their existence, 
 
 F 
 
54 
 
 THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 — the knowledge of God, and the holiness of 
 life resulting from that knowledge. The Christian 
 religion is the one instrument capable of effecting 
 a reform in India. 
 
 The ideas entertained in England regarding 
 the moral condition and the religious belief of 
 the Hindoos, are usually gathered more or less 
 directly from their sacred books, and are conse- 
 quently full of mistakes. To expect to find in 
 modern Hindoo life and belief, a close represen- 
 tation of the religion and customs of the Yedas 
 and Puranas, the institutes of Manu, and their 
 other Scriptures, is as great an error, as to look 
 for Bible Christianity among Romanists, for the 
 religious tenets and observances of the Koran 
 among Indian Mahommedans, or the religion 
 and ordinances of the Old Testament among 
 modern Jews. In each of these cases the sacred 
 books are indeed the basis of the religion, but 
 are largely departed from, much forgotten, very 
 frequently contradicted, and made to suit the 
 convenience of the believers in them. 
 
 i. — CASTE. 
 
 1. The most prominent feature of Hindooism is 
 caste : The old story is that from the head of 
 the god Brahma, sprung the Brahmans, or 
 religious class ; from his shoulders were born the 
 
THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 55 
 
 Kshetrias or military caste, from his thighs the 
 Yaisyas, or mercantile body, and from his feet 
 the Sudras, or servile and agricultural division. 
 The leading character of this tale is to deny the 
 doctrine that all men are of one blood ; by it the 
 Brahman and Sudra are no more fellow men, 
 or of one common origin, than a man and a pig 
 are : produced indeed from the same substance 
 of deity, as all creation was produced, they yet 
 have no tie of common race or common hu- 
 manity. 
 
 The old tale however, though still preserved, 
 has been so overlaid in the course of time as to 
 have almost died out of memory, although the 
 pernicious effects of it still exist. In the oldest 
 books, a fifth class is spoken of : in point of 
 fact, in most parts of South India scarcely a 
 member of the second, or military caste exist ; 
 the Pariah or meanest and outcast division form a 
 large portion of the community ; a more popular 
 division of castes is into eighteen, while in reality 
 the number of castes is endless. The Brahmin- 
 ical subdivisions are numerous, those of the 
 Sudras, unlimited and ill-defined. 
 
 2. Connected with the origin of caste, is evi- 
 dently the idea of the exclusive confinement of 
 each class to some particular profession ; to some 
 extent this still exists, the father’s trade becomes 
 that of his son : the barbers are generally of the 
 barber caste, the washing caste confine them- 
 
56 
 
 THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 selves to washing clothes, the cow-herd caste 
 tend cattle, the weaver caste make cotton goods, 
 the fishing caste live by the sea-side on the pro- 
 duce of their lines and nets, or embark on board 
 of ships as lascars, i. e. sailors. The breach 
 however of this rule is very common : thousands 
 and tens of thousands of Brahmans, whose pro- 
 fession is that of religion, or at least of writing, 
 are wholly occupied in the meanest employment 
 of agriculture : Sudras are schoolmasters (the 
 Brahminical profession) or merchants, or shop 
 keepers ; all classes except Pariahs find employ- 
 ment as writers, translators, or government offi- 
 cials. I have heard of a Brahman huntsman, 
 and many of this caste are sepoys in our army. 
 
 3. The chief tangible points on which the divi- 
 sions of caste affect the people, are those of 
 eating, marriage, and religious festivals. No 
 person will for a moment think of eating food 
 which has been prepared, or water "which has 
 been carried, by another of inferior caste to him- 
 self : to be seen by an inferior in the act of 
 eating, is counted a serious evil ; if an inferior so 
 much as sees the food, or passes close to it, it is 
 immediately thrown away as unclean. 
 
 Milk, as being one of the five products of the 
 sacred animal, the cow, forms an exception to 
 this rule ; and if a Brahman parched by thirst, 
 is compelled to ask for a draught of water of a 
 man of lower caste than himself, he may drink 
 
THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 5 7 
 
 it without being polluted, if only he pours a few 
 drops of milk into it, or mixes a small piece of 
 cowdung with it. No one dares to marry into a 
 family of inferior caste : illicit communication 
 with such persons conveys no contamination, but 
 marriage involves loss of caste and all its atten- 
 dant penalties. The divisions connected with 
 religious festivals, are endless and absurdly 
 minute; certain castes may perform them in this 
 way, other castes only in that ; a very serious 
 disturbance, accompanied with loss of life, oc- 
 curred about eight or nine years ago, between 
 the members of two very low castes, because the 
 one party had poured four vessels of water over 
 a dead body whose funeral rites they were per- 
 forming, whereas their caste did not allow them 
 to pour more than three. 
 
 4. The four higher divisions of caste, may • 
 mingle with each other in most of the relations of 
 life ; but the line between them and the Pariah is 
 a broad one. A Pariah may not live in the town 
 or village occupied by families of the upper 
 castes : at a short distance from the outskirts of 
 their habitations, is a separate village of mean 
 huts, called Malapatam or Parcherry, or Pariah- 
 town, where this lowest class of all live. 
 
 On one occasion I sought to purchase or rent 
 from a native, a large Hindoo house in the centre 
 of a respectable neighbourhood in a large town, 
 for the purpose of inhabiting it. The neighbours 
 
58 
 
 THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 were in the greatest alarm ; my Pariah servants, 
 they said, would not only have to be passing 
 frequently through the street, a thing which 
 stricter custom as retained in the villages would 
 not allow, but they would be spending the day, 
 perhaps sometimes the night, within the large 
 enclosure round the house ; the whole atmosphere 
 would be impregnated with Pariah-ism, and the 
 locality be polluted : the owner who was a Brah- 
 man, and lived sixty miles distant, would not 
 let me have the house. A case occurred not long 
 since of a company of sepoys being sent as usual 
 to an out-station : one day it happened that it 
 was the turn of a Pariah sepoy to stand as senti- 
 nel outside, but near the court house of the 
 native collector, (Tahsildar) of the district, where 
 the officials, mostly Brahmans, had to resort for 
 their business. The uproar was great, they 
 would not pass near the Pariah sentinel ; his 
 presence polluted them, and the oppression and 
 insult was not to be borne ; the officials drew up 
 a petition to the officer commanding the regiment 
 at head quarters, requiring that the Pariah senti- 
 nels should not be placed near any spot where 
 they might have to pass ; of course the officer 
 would not listen to them. 
 
 5. The loss of caste is the most tremendous 
 loss which can be conceived : the putting out of 
 the synagogue among the Jews, excommunication 
 in the dark ages, were not to be compared to it. 
 
THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 59 
 
 The offender is at once cut off from every tie 
 and relation in life : his parents will not see him, 
 they perform his funeral obsequies counting him 
 as a dead man, often his wife will reject him, his 
 friends will not speak to him, he may not live 
 in the part of the town where the uncontaminated 
 dwell, he loses his land or his trade, and if he 
 is a member of a wealthy family, his share of 
 inheritance is confiscated : he may not enter a 
 temple, no religious rites are open to him ; in 
 every social relation he is a dead man. 
 
 Though the occasions by which a man may 
 incur this loss are very numerous : I do not 
 know that there is any one moral offence or sin 
 by which a man loses caste ; he may be a liar, 
 a thief, a murderer, an adulterer, a notorious 
 villain, he may have been imprisoned for his 
 crimes, yet he does not therefore lose his place 
 in his caste. If however he is known to have 
 broken any of those ceremonial observances which 
 are commanded by his religious books, and re- 
 tained or added by modem custom, the penalty 
 must come upon him, unless due purification is 
 gone through. If a Brahman eats meat, or 
 drinks any intoxicating liquor, if he touches a 
 Pariah or is touched by a dog, and does not 
 purify himself afterwards ; if he neglects certain 
 family ceremonials and commemorations, he has 
 committed the offence. Of course baptism ne- 
 cessarily involves the loss of caste : a man of 
 
60 
 
 THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 respectability cannot become a Christian, without 
 suffering the loss of all things. 
 
 On one occasion, a Brahman of high caste and 
 reputation for learning was sitting beside me ; I 
 saw him suddenly lift his bare foot from the 
 floor, and looking at it with horror, immediately 
 rise ; he went outside the door and carefully 
 wiped it ; I enquired if a scorpion had stung 
 him, or an ant bitten him, he said, no, but that 
 he had inadvertently put his toe upon a grain of 
 boiled rice, which had fallen from the table and 
 was lying on the floor ; that when he went home 
 he must purify himself. The rice had been 
 cooked by a Pariah, and it had formed part of 
 the meal of an Englishman. No one saw the 
 pollution but I and the Brahman himself, and I 
 have no idea that he would trouble himself about 
 his purification. It is notorious that Brahmans 
 often indulge in secret both in forbidden meats 
 and drinks. 
 
 A man who has lost caste may easily be re-ad- 
 mitted, provided he can make favour with the 
 elders of his caste ; this is of course a matter of 
 no difficulty if he possesses money. He has, 
 however, to undergo a variety of purifications and 
 degrading ceremonies : burning the tongue, forms 
 a part of them ; the most important are these : — 
 The penitent must first rub his body all over with 
 the sacred cowdung; next having prepared a 
 quantity of the same material, so that it is mode- 
 
THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 61 
 
 rately liquid and eight or nine inches in depth, 
 he throws himself into it with his face foremost : 
 after other disgusting acts, he must bathe in some 
 sacred river, and finally he must retain his breath 
 according to religious prescription, till he can 
 bear to do so no longer. 
 
 II. — STATE OF LEARNING AMONG HINDOOS. 
 
 The Hindoos of South India are excessively 
 ignorant of their religious books. The oldest of 
 them, the Yedas, exist in a cramped and difficult 
 dialect of Sanscrit ; the other works, which are 
 numerous and ponderous enough to occupy a life 
 time in reading them, are in the same language ; 
 only a very few of them are translated or para- 
 phrased into the vernacular languages. The 
 knowledge of Sanscrit is a very rare acquisition : 
 not a few Brahmans have a very slight smatter- 
 ing of it : here and there a man may be found 
 who has read and got up some one book written 
 in it ; but the number of those who know enough 
 of the language to be able to read and under- 
 stand any book written in it, is according to the 
 best informed authorities, not one in a million. 
 A learned Hindoo, means a man who has picked 
 up a little Sanscrit, and who has studied some of 
 the old poems in his own tongue. However Hin- 
 doo learning is synonymous with pedantry : it 
 
62 
 
 THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 extends only to an acquaintance with certain 
 formal grammatical rules, a knowledge of the dis- 
 tinctions of letters, and cases, and inflexions. A 
 man named Marcandeyaloo, who had a fair fame 
 among his learned brethren, was engaged in 
 teaching me the native language : in the course 
 of translating a passage from English, we had oc- 
 casion to look in the dictionary for some word ; 
 amongst other translations of it, my teacher 
 found one word that was long, difficult of pro- 
 nunciation, and which he had never seen before ; 
 he immediately said, “ Let us employ this word, 
 it will look fine, and if any person reads this 
 passage, they will say, What a learned man Mar- 
 candeyaloo is !’ J 
 
 The ability to read and write varies very 
 greatly in different parts of the country : in towns, 
 a fair proportion of the upper and middle classes, 
 and a few of the lower are able to read with 
 facility ; but in some districts, a village possesses 
 but a small number of such, and perhaps not more 
 than one or two persons who can write distinctly. 
 However, the mass of readers scarcely ever read 
 anything except letters or papers of business : 
 all the native books are composed in verse, and in 
 a style as little intelligible, as Chaucer to our 
 English middle classes. The habit is to read 
 without understanding : all boys at school are 
 expressly taught in this manner : it is a rare 
 thing for the school-master to be able to inter- 
 
THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 63 
 
 pret the meaning of the books he uses in the 
 school. ‘ Can you read, my little man ? ’ is a 
 question naturally asked of a boy ten or twelve 
 years old, who is carrying his books over his back, 
 on his way to school. ‘ Oh yes, I can read,’ is 
 the answer. ‘ What books have you read?’ 
 1 The Rukmini Kalyanan, the Bal-Ramayanan, 
 and others/ ‘ Well, but do you understand the 
 meaning of them V ‘ Oh no, I dont go to school 
 to do that ; if I want to do that, I must wait till 
 I am older, and go to a higher school.’ 
 
 III. HINDOO DEITIES. 
 
 Few systems of idolatry can be at once so com- 
 prehensive, so multifarious, so vague, and at the 
 same time so practical, so prevailing and pene- 
 trating into every action of life, so extensive in 
 their objects and their worshippers, as that of 
 Hinduism. It is not one system, it is rather a 
 compound of many : it is not one religion, but it 
 is multitudes of religions, adverse sects, contra- 
 dictory philosophies, varying practices, united to- 
 gether by one thread which runs through them all. 
 
 All Hindoos, high and low, the philosophic 
 Brahman, and the stupid Pariah, express their be- 
 lief in one God. But he is the Nirgunudu, or 
 ‘ the being without qualities/ ‘ He cannot do 
 evil, neither also is it in Him to do good. He 
 
64 
 
 THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 is not tbe Creator, bat the subtle substance from 
 whence both matter and spirit have emanated. 
 He is not awake or conscious, He is not near us. 
 He has no concern in the affairs of time ; the 
 hour of his awaking is the hour of the dissolu- 
 tion of all things/ The consequence of this creed 
 is, that the one God has no sort of reverence, re- 
 gard, worship or honour paid to him by any class 
 or individual. He is systematically rejected : in his 
 place are substituted, ( The gods.’ Three hundred 
 and thirty millions of deities is the number of 
 which Hindoo exaggeration boasts. The real 
 number is more than any one knows, it probably 
 amounts to many thousands. 
 
 1. The elements still retain their position as ob- 
 jects of worship. When the Brahman boy is 
 initiated into the right of caste by his investiture 
 with the sacred thread, the most solemn invoca- 
 tion is addressed to the sun. The rising of the 
 sun is waited for by many to offer their prayers 
 and to prostrate themselves before him. He is 
 supposed to be a powerful god, who is driven in his 
 chariot with fiery coursers, by his charioteer 
 without legs, represented by the red clouds of 
 sunrise and sunset. He starts from the ‘ Morn- 
 ing mountain/ and continues his journey all day 
 till he hides himself behind the ‘ Evening moun- 
 tain.’ How he gets back again so as to be ready 
 to start the next morning, is a question of diffi- 
 culty : some think he drives back over the same 
 
THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 65 
 
 course by night, but invisibly ; others suppose 
 he goes round the other side of the world till he 
 reaches his starting post. It is seriously related 
 in one of their religious books, that the sun had 
 a wife, but as she was greatly annoyed by the in- 
 tensity of his rays, her father, Viswakarman, 
 who was the carpenter of the gods, put the sun 
 into his turning lathe, and cut off an eighth of his 
 rays : of the chips of these he fabricated several 
 weapons for different other gods. 
 
 The moon is also an object of worship : it is 
 supposed to be a male deity : when the new 
 moon first appears, the beholders lift up their 
 hands towards it in adoration. Sometimes a 
 person will take a thread from the cloth they 
 wear for dress, roll it up in their fingers, and 
 throwing it towards the moon, salute the lumi- 
 nary with the words, ‘ 0 moon, take away my old 
 clothes, and give me new ones/ Regarding 
 eclipses of the moon, the following is the popular 
 and almost universal belief of all classes : — among 
 the constellations, which are, for the most part, 
 supposed to be superior beings, are some evil 
 disposed ones ; one of which, Rahoo, has an old 
 quarrel with the moon : being in the form of a 
 snake, he takes it into his head every now and 
 then to devour the moon ; in his attempt, he 
 partially swallows it, hence the dark shadow : and 
 he would succeed in destroying his victim were it 
 not for the shoutings and drunnnings of the people, 
 
66 
 
 THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 and more particularly for the charms and impre- 
 cations muttered by the Brahmans : terrified by 
 these he disgorges his victim and flies ; the moon 
 recovers his former lustre, and all the people are 
 in high glee and keep festival. 
 
 When a lamp is lighted and placed in a house, 
 those who come in prostrate themselves to it, as 
 an incarnation of Agni, the god of fire. 
 
 2. They are not content with personification of 
 elements and heavenly bodies ; they must needs 
 have deification of heroes. Here it is that the 
 endless variety of gods is to be found. Human 
 in their form, filled with human passions and 
 feelings, they exhibit impotence, unholiness, and 
 subjection to the bounds both of time and space : 
 the time was, when they were not — and is coming, 
 when they shall cease to be : they dwell in pecu- 
 liar localities, and are ignorant of what is dis- 
 tant from them. They are usually clumsy em- 
 bodiments of some human feeling, energy, or 
 desire. Devised by heathen minds, and the 
 patterns of heathen hearts, they are mostly rather 
 conspicuous for their monstrous vices than for 
 any other character. 
 
 Of the three chief gods, at least of the more 
 modern Hindoo mythology, Brahma, Vishnu, and 
 Siva, the first is now scarcely any where wor- 
 shipped, the other two have their distinct and rival 
 religionists. A follower of Vishnu is every where 
 known at a glance by the broad lines of white 
 
THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 67 
 
 and yellow paint, which are drawn perpendicularly 
 on his forehead, a Sivite by the horizontal daub- 
 ings of ashes on the same part. Some of each 
 class will pay adoration to both gods, but on the 
 whole they confine their honours to their res- 
 pective deities. 
 
 Brahma was once the chief of the three gods : 
 but one of his five heads was cut off by Siva in 
 angei’, and a curse laid upon him that he never 
 should be worshipped any more. The reasons of 
 Siva’s anger are variously related, but every story 
 concurs in ascribing it to Brahma’s sin. 
 
 Siva, however, cannot boast of wisdom or righ- 
 teousness : having, in the course of some dis- 
 guise, placed himself as the porter at the gate of a 
 religious man, he was highly pleased with the 
 austerities practised by this person : in reward he 
 conferred upon him the boon that on whosoever’ s 
 head he shall lay his hand, that man shall perish : 
 no sooner was the gift conferred than the ingrate 
 endeavoured to lay his haud upon the conferrer 
 of it : Siva fled affrighted, and hid himself 
 within a pumpkin. 
 
 He is sometimes represented as a drunkard ; 
 at others as a naked and unclean beggar lying 
 on dunghills. He is related to have debauched 
 the wives of some holy Rishis (a sort of semi- 
 divine men) ; these in return inflicted on him 
 an ignominious curse. 
 
 The favourite form in which Vishnu is wor- 
 
68 
 
 THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 shipped is his incarnation as Krishna. Hindoos 
 will join in any irony levelled at other gods, they 
 will laugh at or confess the vileness of others ; 
 but when Krishna is brought forward, they turn 
 grave, and always defend him ; they account for 
 his immoralities by saying ' his acts were freaks 
 of the god : ’ ' he was God, and, consequently, 
 whatever he did was right, however wicked it 
 would be for man to do the like ; ’ 'he was a 
 child, and knew no better,’ or, 'he was a child, 
 and it was necessary for him to thieve and lie like 
 other children, or his divine character would 
 have been too soon discovered.’ The most fre- 
 quently related stories of him are these : being 
 the reputed son of a cowherd and his wife, his 
 infancy and early youth were spent in the forest, 
 with a hut for his home, and the poor children 
 of a nomade tribe for his companions. His first 
 feat was one of disobedience : when he was yet 
 too young to walk, but could crawl about on all 
 fours, his mother one day had occasion to go 
 about her work at a distance from the hut, and 
 bade the child not to go outside the door : ex- 
 pecting his disobedience, she further secured him 
 by tying him by a long string to a heavy mortar 
 of wood, such as is used to this day to pound 
 rice. No sooner was she gone than the divine 
 child, disobeying her commands, began to crawl 
 to the door : the heavy log was no obstacle to 
 him, he easily dragged it after him, and thus he 
 
THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 69 
 
 issued on the green before the door. Here, as 
 he was crawling- about at his ease, it happened 
 that he passed between two tall trees, which 
 grew so close together that they only just allowed 
 room for the infant to pass between them : on 
 he went, till the log which he was dragging 
 behind him, and which was much larger than 
 himself, came crossways against the trees, and 
 would not pass through. The mighty child 
 would not be stayed, nor would he return, so 
 with a vigorous pull he dragged down the two 
 trees, and went on with his play as if nothing 
 had happened. This is the first proof of his 
 deity. The second is of a different kind. As 
 he grew up he was the leader of the other boys, 
 and the delight of the girls of the tribe ; unres- 
 trained by rules, untaught by pedagogues, they 
 wandered about in happy glee through the woods 
 and glades in all the joy of boyhood : the wo- 
 men of the tribe, however, used to milk the cows 
 and keep their milk, and curds, and butter, in 
 a hut which served as a dairy, and which was, 
 probably but slightly secured against intruders. 
 This was too great a temptation for the boy 
 Krishna, and time after time would he wait for 
 the absence of the owners, and stealing into the 
 dairy, he would greedily devour all he found. 
 The men and women missed their treasures, and 
 naturally suspecting the boy who was foremost in 
 all mischief as well as in all games ; they 
 
 G 
 
70 
 
 THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 charged Krishna with the theft. He, in the 
 expectation of a beating, concealed the act by a 
 lie, and denied he had taken what was missing. 
 The Hindoos seldom tell this tale without ex- 
 pressing their delight, and drawing the hearers’ 
 attention to the skill and cunning of the young 
 god. 
 
 The manhood of Krishna was in keeping with 
 his boyhood : most truly does it bear out the 
 frequent Hindoo argument ; ‘ He must be a 
 god, for none but a superhuman being could have 
 been so unbounded in his licentiousness.’ Such 
 is the favourite god ; his exploits are recited to 
 admiring crowds, as they gather round the reader 
 on a fine moonlight night ; they are publicly 
 represented with every addition of indecency by 
 dramatic performers at the expense of the wealthy ; 
 they are carved on the cars of the gods, moulded 
 in the images of the temples ; they are the themes 
 on which old and young, men and women de- 
 light to expatiate. 
 
 IV. VILLAGE GODDESSES. 
 
 The gods who are derived from the Brahma- 
 nical mythology are known and reverenced among 
 all classes. I have seen a miserable out-house- 
 looking pagoda to Krishna, under his common 
 name of Gopal-swamy, or the Cowherd-god, in a 
 
THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 71 
 
 poor village of fishermen. However the objects 
 of worship which chiefly engross the attention of 
 a large part of the lower orders of Hindoos, 
 especially in the villages, do not appear to 
 derive their origin from the above source, nor to 
 be more than very slightly countenanced by the 
 Brahminical books. 
 
 The deities of the mass of the lower Hindoos, 
 are the village goddesses. This title is, in 
 Telugu, Ammavaru, or, ‘ Our Lady Mother/ 
 The Brahmans do not worship them or acknow- 
 ledge them as a part of their system : neverthe- 
 less with the usual vague superstition of hea- 
 thens, they sometimes fear them and make offer- 
 ings to them. Their priests are always of the 
 lower orders ; if the goddess belongs to a Sudra 
 division of the village, a Sudra officiates at her 
 festivals ; if she is among Pariahs, a Pariah is 
 her priest. 
 
 The Ammavaru is supposed to possess great 
 powers both for good and evil : from her is 
 sought, wealth, new clothes, jewels, a family, or 
 any other temporal gift. She is also peculiarly 
 regarded as the being who brings and inflicts 
 diseases, particularly those of an epidemical kind. 
 
 When the cholera is making its ravages 
 through a district, it is, ‘ The Ammavaru is tra- 
 velling this way/ when a person is seized with 
 the smaH pox, ‘ The Ammavaru has caught him j ’ 
 the chicken pox is known only by the name of 
 g 2 
 
72 
 
 THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 ‘ the little Ammavaru.’ She is propitiated by 
 those suffering or dreading her attacks by 
 bloody offerings ; buffaloes, sheep, and fowls are 
 slaughtered in her honour. 
 
 1. Her great festivals in the village, throughout 
 the northern parts of the presidency, only occur 
 at long intervals of one or two years : at such 
 seasons large sums of money are contributed by 
 the villagers to supply the victims, the rice, and 
 the fruit which are offered to her, and to pay 
 the inharmonious musicians ; the festival is a 
 scene of riot, and debauchery. Sometimes 
 Ammavaru is carried about in procession from 
 house to house : on such an occasion, the 
 stone image, or the stake of wood which re- 
 presents the goddess in her usual place of 
 abode, is not brought out; but in its stead a 
 figure of a woman with four hands, made of that 
 conveniently plastic and sacred material, cow- 
 dung, painted and adorned with clothes and 
 jewels, is placed in a box with one side open, 
 something like a punch-and-judy show. The 
 brittle material of which she is composed some- 
 times offers a temptation to bad fellows in the 
 street to pelt her with stones and break her to 
 pieces. As the image in its box is carried along 
 from street to street or through the village, the 
 attendants continue to beat their discordant 
 drums, and the people come out of their houses 
 and sprinkle a little water on the ground before 
 
THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 73 
 
 the procession to lay the dust and cool the air 
 that the goddess may not suffer any annoyance. 
 
 Meanwhile the priest and the men who beat 
 the drums run scampering about, and the former 
 continues to lash his naked body with a thick 
 rope till it is all bruises and wales, protesting the 
 while that the good goddess does not let it hurt 
 him. At every house where they stop, the priest 
 receives a little kunkam , (a favourite red pow- 
 der,) a handful of rice or a few farthings ; some- 
 times it is so contrived that the image is made 
 to nod its head ; at this great delight is ex- 
 pressed by the bystanders, while perhaps a little 
 boy in his amusement makes a joke at the 
 Ammavaru, for which he receives a sharp repri- 
 mand and a blow from his mother for making 
 fun of the good goddess. Sometimes she is made 
 to bend her body forward graciously out of her 
 box : on which some spectators would say, f Oh 
 the rogue of an Ammavaru, they are pulling her 
 strings/ while others would say, ‘ Hush ! don’t 
 say so, you'll make her angry.’ At another 
 time a woman will approach and place her hand 
 under the chin of the image : on this the drums 
 are beaten with increased violence, the shouting 
 and noise is redoubled, and the image by some 
 comrivance is made to drop its large nose-jewel 
 into the woman’s hand : this is an especial favour, 
 and cannot be obtained -without paying for it : 
 
74 
 
 THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 the jewel is replaced by the priest, and the pro- 
 cession moves on. 
 
 2. The private or family festival of the Amma- 
 varu was thus described by one who had wit- 
 nessed and taken a part in it. 
 
 ‘ At certain periods, which vary from two to 
 five years, according to the will of the individual, 
 most persons who can afford it, celebrate the 
 festival in their own house. On the day of the 
 feast, a small image of mud, representing the 
 goddess, is prepared, and carried out in proces- 
 sion with musicians, to the burning ground, 
 (i. e. the place where corpses are burnt) and 
 there placed, if possible, under a tree. The 
 procession then returns to the house, and in the 
 evening, the relations, caste-people, and other 
 guests of the master of the feast, assemble at 
 his house beneath a large shed erected in front 
 of it for the occasion. Here they find a great 
 uncouth figure traced out on the ground with 
 powdered chalk, and incense burning in a pot 
 before the door. Every guest as he arrives 
 makes a present of cocoa nuts, jessamine flowers, 
 red powder, or other things to the figure, until a 
 great heap is formed near its head. When all 
 have arrived, the host, who has previously pre- 
 pared his kitchen by rubbing streaks of red and 
 yellow powder on its walls, brings forward two 
 live sheep and cuts off their heads at a blow : 
 the bodies are carried away, to be skinned, cut 
 
THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 75 
 
 up, and cooked, the heads are kept in the shed, 
 and the people amuse themselves by making 
 jokes about them, such as presenting grass or 
 water to the mouths, or bidding them speak. 
 About this time a party of people of the cow-' 
 herd caste come prepared to dance with tink- 
 ling anklets fastened on their legs, the musicians 
 immediately begin, the pipes squeak and shriek, 
 the drums are beaten madly, and the dancers set 
 to work furiously until they have danced to pieces 
 the figure of chalk, and scattered about the 
 cocoa nuts, the flowers, the red powder and the 
 other presents which had been made to it. At 
 this period one of the bystanders pretends to be 
 suddenly possessed by the goddess, and falls on 
 the ground panting and gasping, with his hair 
 hanging loose : at this the musicians redouble 
 their exertions, which are already great. After 
 a while one of the older persons in the house goes 
 up to the prostrate man who lies gasping and 
 foaming at the mouth, and asks him, as if ad- 
 dressing the goddess, what she wants ? The man 
 answering in her name demands clothes or a 
 sheep to be given to her, but more commonly 
 asks for a frequent repetition of the festival. 
 Her requests are always granted, and the sheep 
 and the clothes are given to the musicians. 
 Presently the man seems to recover from his 
 trance ; he rises and goes apart from the rest 
 quite exhausted. This scene goes on all night : 
 
76 THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 * 
 
 when one chalked figure is danced out, another 
 is made, and the whole business is gone over again 
 and again, with intervals spent in feasting on the 
 sheep which wei’e killed at the commencement. 
 “At day-break the musicians, who have prepared 
 a little image of the goddess made of paste, 
 carry it round to the spectators and get a few 
 pence from them : they also collect subscriptions 
 of. food, and retire for a while to refresh them- 
 selves. The pause, however, is not of long dura- 
 tion : for, with daylight the whole feast is re- 
 newed, and the dancing, the raving, the feasting 
 are continued till midday, when the festival is 
 ended by a man, dressed as a woman, carrying 
 a vessel full of cooked rice to the burning ground, 
 where he deposits it near the mud image which 
 had been placed there the previous evening. This 
 is the family festival, and stands in strong and 
 painful contrast with the quiet and holy devotion 
 of a Christian family in their daily worship, or in 
 their occasional holy feasts.’ 
 
 3. It is in honour of the Ammavaru that the 
 abominable Swinging feasts are celebrated. The 
 following is an account, written at the time of a 
 visit paid to one of these festivals, at the village 
 of Peddana, about five miles from Masulipatam. 
 
 ‘ As soon as our tent was pitched just outside 
 the village, my companion and I went to look at 
 the pagoda of the goddess which was to be the 
 scene of the festival. It lay about 600 yards dis- 
 
THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 77 
 
 tant from the village, and was rather prettily 
 situated on the raised mound of a large tank ; 
 it consisted of one small room, about eight feet 
 square, with the usual irregular and peaked 
 dome, and had a few rude pillars in front, upon 
 which a shed might be erected. Its materials 
 were of brick and mortar, and it was altogether 
 of a superior character to the ordinary temples of 
 the village goddesses. Some men who were 
 loitering about, very willingly opened the low 
 door at our request, to let us see the idols : there 
 were two of them, both representing the same 
 deity ; the oldest and most sacred one, was a 
 stone about three feet high by two broad, on 
 which was rudely carved a female figure : it was 
 for the occasion daubed all over with a yellow 
 powder and dotted with red spots to look fine. 
 The other image, though less sacred, was much 
 gayer: it was the wooden figure of a woman 
 about three feet high, and had only just come 
 from Masulipatam (the neighbouring town) where 
 it had been in the painter’s hands, and had been 
 freshly bedizened with every bright colour. It 
 was dressed with a cloth like a Hindoo woman, 
 and had a few garlands of flowers hung about it, 
 and a nosegay placed in one of its four hands. 
 The people who shewed us them, maintained that 
 these idols were the very goddess herself, and 
 that she was deserving of all honour and worship. 
 About four o’clock in the afternoon, we were 
 
78 
 
 THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 made aware of the approach of the Swinging Car 
 by the rude music and the shouting of the people 
 who accompanied it from the village. It consisted 
 of the wheels and axle of a large cart, with 
 a long beam placed lengthways across the axle to 
 steady it, and a stout timber ten feet high 
 placed upright in the axle : on top of this timber 
 was another long beam, working on a pivot, 
 from which the victims were to be suspended. 
 We accompanied it towards the pagoda, but 
 found that nothing could take place until the 
 offering of rice was ready for laying before the 
 idols : while this was being boiled in four large 
 earthen vessels, we mingled with the crowd, who 
 amounted to about two hundred people, and 
 talked with them about the folly and wickedness 
 of the idol worship. Some earnestly expressed 
 their belief in the deity of the idols, and in the 
 mighty power of the goddess ; but the majority 
 treated it as a laughing matter. When we urged 
 them to abandon at least the brutal swinging, 
 the answer was repeatedly to this effect, * Why 
 should we give it up ? The East India Company 
 have hitherto encouraged us in it; till a few 
 years ago the collector used to give money to the 
 festival, and gentlemen used to come out from 
 Masulipatam and sit down on their chairs to look 
 at it along with us.’ We fell in with the man who 
 was going to be swung that evening, and used 
 every argument to prevent him from swinging, 
 
THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 79 
 
 and at times he seemed half persuaded : but he 
 was already somewhat stupified by liquor, 'and his 
 answer was, ‘ I have often swung before/ and so 
 saying he shewed us about a dozen scars on his 
 back, ‘ and besides, I have received four rupees 
 (equivalent to eight shillings) to swing, and have 
 already drank half of it.’ While we were talking 
 with him, the man who was to act as executioner 
 came up with the hooks in his hand, to call him 
 away to the village to prepare for the ceremony ; 
 so taking off his dress, and giving it to his 
 daughter, a girl about twelve years of age, he 
 went off. 
 
 He was a man of the very lowest of all the 
 subdivisions of castes, and lived at Masulipatam, 
 about five miles from the village ; he was em- 
 ployed as a substitute by some richer man who 
 cared more for his skin than for his money, and 
 who had during the past year, been induced by 
 illness to make a vow to the Ammavaru, that he 
 would swing at her festival, in case she cured him. 
 
 In the course of twenty minutes the poor 
 victim made his appearance in the distance, pre- 
 pared for action. He was rubbed all over, from 
 his head to his feet with yellow turmeric, and had 
 his feet striped red : a small cloth round his 
 waist, and a turban on his head, formed the 
 whole of his dress, while round the calves of his 
 legs were tied strings of little bells, which rattled 
 as he moved. He came along alone, dancing and 
 
80 
 
 THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 leaping, flinging his arms and legs about like a 
 maniac, sometimes bellowing, sometimes scream- 
 ing, sometimes shouting in praise of the goddess, 
 and altogether presenting a very disgusting and 
 degraded appearance. The crowd of spectators 
 were highly delighted, and called out, ‘ See the 
 power of the Ammavaru/ ‘ Great is our goddess,’ 
 with many like expressions : they told us the man 
 was now possessed by the goddess, and actually 
 represented her. As he drew near he was evi- 
 dently the worse for liquor and excitement, but 
 he still so far had his wits about him as to be 
 able to distinguish my companion and myself, 
 and to come and make his bows to us. After a 
 short time, during which one sheep was swung, 
 and another had its head cut off at a blow, as a 
 sacrifice to the idol, it came to the man’s turn to 
 be swung; the car was rolled back a couple of 
 hundred yards from the temple, the man dancing 
 and skipping before it all the way ; he was then 
 brought under the end of the horizontal beam, 
 and the executioner drew near with his hooks. 
 He first struck, but not smartly, the part of the 
 back which was to be pierced, and then pinched 
 up the flesh two or three times, in order to get 
 a good hold of it : after fixing on a little move- 
 able lancet to the hook, he ran it through the 
 skin of the small of the back of the man, taking 
 up the flesh about an inch wide and a quarter of 
 an inch in depth ; with a little twisting and 
 
THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 81 
 
 wrenching, in consequence of the shanks of the 
 hooks being joined together, the second hook was 
 similarly inserted. At this time several men 
 with drums kept up a great noise, and the crowd 
 round about shouted as they saw the hooks ap- 
 plied. It is their belief, and common saying, 
 that the man does not feel any pain, in conse- 
 quence of the protection of the good goddess ; 
 but on this occasion I heard the cry of pain which 
 the poor man uttered as the hook entered his 
 skin, clear above all the noise of the bystanders ; 
 and the expression of pain in his face, was not to 
 be concealed by all the daubing upon it. When 
 the hooks were well secured in his back, the 
 rope attached to them was fastened to the hori. 
 zontal beam, about two feet from its end, and 
 then with no other support for his body, the poor 
 wretch was hoisted up aloft. At first he seemed 
 to suffer a good deal, for he held himself steady 
 with both hands by a rope which hung from the 
 beam over his head ; but as the car was being 
 rolled along towards the pagoda, he let go the 
 rope, and kept throwing his arms and legs about, 
 so as to make us fear, lest by his exertions and 
 jerkings the skin of his back might give way, 
 and he be thrown to the ground. As soon as the 
 car was brought back to its original position near 
 the pagoda, he was let down, and the rope un- 
 loosed from the beam. The time during which 
 he was suspended, was exactly two minutes, but 
 
82 
 
 THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 after he came down, he continued to run wildly 
 about, with the hooks hanging in his back. This 
 ended the day’s ceremony, and the people re- 
 turned to the village to prepare for a greater cele- 
 bration and more swinging on the morrow.’ 
 
 V. OBJECTS OF WORSHIP. 
 
 The worship of Images and other visible ob- 
 jects, is a thing but very little understood by 
 those who have never left England : travellers in 
 Italy and other parts of the continent, probably 
 see as much of it as those who live in India do : 
 yet even they beholding the gaily dressed Bona; 
 dece, and jewelled Bambinos, and the ornamented 
 Pietros and Francescos, can scarcely estimate 
 the meanness of Hindoo Image worship. 
 
 The Images of the Hindoos are of every size, 
 shape, and material. “ They have changed the 
 glory of the incorruptible God, into an image 
 made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and 
 to fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.'” 
 There is the famous image of Vishnu, under the 
 popular name of Venkateshwaraloo, at the maiden 
 pagoda of Tiripati,* described as being that of a 
 man as large as life and composed of gold ; and 
 there is the still more famous image of the same 
 god, under the name of Jagannaut in Cuttack, 
 
 * Usually spelt by English writers, “Tripetty.” 
 
THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 83 
 
 in the shape of a rude block of wood, surmounted 
 by an angular head, and possessed of neither 
 arms nor legs. 
 
 In the Vestibule of the great pagoda at 
 Conjeveram, there is a stone figure of Ganesha, 
 the elephant god, or as the natives in their broken 
 English call him, ‘ the belly god,’ because of his 
 clumsy and unsightly corpulence : it is ten or 
 twelve feet in height, although the beast is re- 
 presented as sitting on its haunches, and it pro- 
 bably weighs seven or eight tons ; there is again 
 the little lingum, worshipped as God by multi- 
 tudes of the followers of Shiva,* which is worn 
 on the person, enclosed in a silver case not two 
 inches long. There are images of stone in the 
 god-houses in the temples, there are images of 
 brass a span long, which are wrapped up in long 
 clothes, from whence the little head of the idol 
 ludicrously peeps out, when it is carried out in 
 procession, seated upon its hobby-horse, or its 
 wooden monster-lion. 
 
 Again, there are the little images not a hand- 
 breadth long, which the people keep in their 
 houses for adoration at home : and there are the 
 myriads of clay idols made on great occasions, 
 sold in the shops, worshipped for a few days, 
 and then thrown away. 
 
 In speaking to a person who had detailed to 
 me mauy mean things as objects of worship, I 
 * Vide Herodotus, b. ii. c. 49. 
 
84 
 
 THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 said, f You might as well worship a dog as these 
 things/ the answer was, c Some of us do worship 
 dogs/ For it is not merely to images that wor- 
 ship is confined. Bulls and cows are sacred, 
 almost divine : The Cobra da Capello, the most 
 poisonous of our snakes, is reverenced as a god. 
 There is a day late in the year, when the women, 
 especially Brahman women, go out early in the 
 morning carrying with them boiled rice, curds, 
 milk, and such dainties ; they hasten to the mud 
 heaps which mark the white ants’ nests ; for in 
 these almost universally a snake has taken up its 
 abode : with prayers and praises addressed to the 
 reptile, they pour out their presents before the 
 hole where they suppose it is secreted. Monkeys 
 are sacred, particularly certain sorts of them : 
 they are allowed to run tamely about the build- 
 ings of the pagoda, and cases have occurred 
 where great anger has been expressed by the 
 usually servile Hindoos of a village, when a 
 young officer has wantonly shot one of these 
 animals. Hunamau, the monkey-god, is exten- 
 sively worshipped : his long-tailed, baboon-faced 
 image is made as large as a man, and he seems 
 to be the tutelary deity of the forests. There 
 is a small building containing such an image in 
 the forest at the top of the Nackanairy pass, on 
 the road from Madras to Bangalore : scarcely a 
 native traveller passes that way, but he leaves the 
 road to ascend the few steps which lead to the 
 
THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 85 
 
 temple ; he buys a cocoa nut, breaks it on the 
 threshold before the idol, prostrates himself 
 before it, and then goes on his way comforted 
 with the prospect of a safe journey. Even the 
 bearers who carry our palanquins put them 
 down for this purpose, for the space of a few 
 minutes. 
 
 The Brahminee kite, a common and handsome 
 bird, is counted not only as the bird on which 
 Vishnoo rides, but is itself deified and worship- 
 ped as a god. On Sundays, Hindoos are in the 
 habit of getting small pieces of meat, taking 
 them outside the doors, and then making signs 
 to the hundreds of kites which are sitting upon 
 the ridges of the houses, or lazily soaring round 
 and round over head ; immediately the birds 
 swoop down and devour the meat which is thrown 
 to them. This is accounted a very religious 
 act, and productive of much merit. 
 
 On one occasion an Englishman had shot one 
 of these birds in his garden, and left it to lie 
 there. A Hindoo, of the Vishnoo sect, saw the 
 dead bird, and going by stealth obtained posses- 
 sion of it ; he carried it home with care, and 
 after due preparations, he put it upon a brazen 
 dish and covered it over with a piece of silk for 
 a pall ; he then got a boy whose body he rubbed 
 over with ashes, as is usual in a religious cere- 
 mony, and made him carry the dish about the 
 streets in procession, with the usual attendants 
 
86 
 
 THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 with their drums, fifes, and other inharmonious 
 instruments. Having by this means obtained a 
 good many pence, he went to a shop and bought 
 a sufficient quantity of chips of sandal wood, 
 which is very costly : he performed the funeral 
 obsequies of the bird with due ceremony, burning 
 the body with the scented wood, and adding 
 butter to increase the flame. 
 
 We not unfrequently see two trees, the Peepul 
 and the Margosa, growing so close together that 
 their trunks in part touch each other, and their 
 boughs are intermingled : they are in such a 
 case sacred ; they are a married couple, the one 
 being the husband, and the other the wife, and 
 accordingly we find the lower part of their 
 trunks striped red and yellow, by Hindoos, who 
 are in the habit of coming and worshipping 
 them. 
 
 At the great festival of the Dusserah (so called 
 from its lasting ten days) which occurs in the 
 autumn of the year, and is common in every 
 part of India, the principal goddesses are par- 
 ticularly the objects of worship. At this time 
 the ordinary pot, of brass or earthen ware, ac- 
 cording to the wealth of the family, which is used 
 for cooking food, is scoured and cleaned : it is 
 daubed over on the outside with the peculiar 
 religious marks of the sect of the family ; it is 
 then filled with boiled rice, and has some flowers 
 stuck in the top. After this a Brahman is paid 
 
THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 87 
 
 for saying his charm over it, and the goddess is 
 brought down to dwell in the pan : henceforth 
 the pan is the goddess in every house, and all 
 divine honours and worship are paid to it, just 
 as the Romanists adore the wafer after the priest's 
 charm has been said over it. There is a cere- 
 mony for invoking the goddess to enter the 
 vessel, and there is a ceremony, at the end of 
 the ten days’ feast, for letting her go again, and 
 for attending her on her departure with the idols 
 of other gods in procession. At this same 
 festival all Hindoos worship the tools or imple- 
 ments by which they usually gain their liveli- 
 hood : the Brahman writers and officials in the 
 government courts, march in procession to the 
 court, place the deeds, the depositions, the 
 stamped papers, and the other judicial or revenue 
 documents in due order, and then make offerings 
 to them and adore them. The reason which 
 they give for this, is, that the letters of the 
 alphabet are so many incarnations of the goddess 
 Saraswati, the wife of Brahma, and patroness of 
 wisdom. 
 
 The soldier takes his musket and any sword 
 which he can procure, and to their shame be it 
 spoken, he too often procures the swords of his 
 European officers for this express purpose, and 
 worships them, and lifts them up in honour of 
 Betala, the being who in Hindoo mythology, 
 bears the closest resemblance to Satan. The 
 II 2 
 
88 
 
 THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 fisherman collects his nets and fish hooks, and 
 worships them ; the tailor his needle and thimble 
 and does the same : even the women take their 
 rolling pin, and the stone on which they grind 
 their curry, and make their adorations to them. 
 Having occasion to go into a carpenter’s shop 
 at Madras, to buy some furniture during this 
 festival, I saw a table laid out in one corner ; 
 upon it were arranged the saws, the gimblets, 
 prickers, chisels, and other work-tools, in neat 
 order : a little mud lamp was burning before 
 them, though in the open day ; flowers were 
 strewed about them, broken cocoa nuts were lying 
 before them as offerings, and a Brahman, who re- 
 ceived a trifle for the occasion, was in the most in- 
 different manner going through a variety of mani- 
 pulations, and making a number of offerings, 
 muttering all the while some Sanscrit verses. 
 The carpenter, who was thus getting his religion 
 done for him, was standing about two yards off, 
 bargaining with me for a chest of drawers. 
 
 VI. — HINDOO IGNORANCE. 
 
 The upper classes of Hindoos are remarkably 
 intelligent and clever : ignorant as they are of 
 any thing like true religion, they are yet exceed- 
 ingly well acquainted with all that concerns their 
 own interests : few Europeans can outwit them 
 
THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 89 
 
 in their dealings with them : it is not easy to avoid 
 being cheated and circumvented by them. They 
 are also close observers of characters, and treasure 
 up every sort of information which may advance 
 their object, or add to their wealth or power. At 
 the same time it is curious how entirely ignorant 
 they are of the commonest things which do not 
 promise them gain. I one day had some skins 
 of a few of the most common birds, and enquired 
 the names of them from my native teacher, a 
 learned Brahman : he rather contemptuously told 
 me he did not know them, if I wanted such infor- 
 mation I must apply to a shikaree man, a profes- 
 sional sportsman. I have frequently amused 
 myself by asking natives of every class and age 
 how butterflies were produced : when I pointed 
 to them a chrysalis and told them how it had 
 once been a caterpillar, and would soon become 
 one of those beautiful winged insects (for in 
 Telugu they have no name for a butterfly) which 
 they see flying about in such numbers, it was 
 curious to see how they received the statement ; 
 one man would listen in polite but incredulous 
 silence, another would open his mouth with a 
 gape of astonishment and exclaim ‘ Aboh ! y 
 My teacher begged of me to let him carry home 
 some of these chrysalides, for if he was to tell his 
 people about them, without shewing them to 
 them, they would say he was a liar. On another 
 occasion this same man, a person of great acute- 
 
90 
 
 THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 ness, and a man of note amongst his people as 
 a learned character, but who had been very little 
 among Europeans, saw a small alarm clock which 
 I had that day suspended against the wall of my 
 study. When he heard the ticking, and saw the 
 swinging of the pendulum, he started up in asto- 
 nishment, ‘ Is it alive ? 3 he asked : for a few 
 minutes I would give him no satisfactory answer, 
 but he came to the conclusion that it was not 
 alive, but that there was some person on the other 
 side of the wall who was moving that swinging 
 thing through a hole in the wall. In a MS. 
 book which a native at Madras was preparing for 
 the purpose of conveying some Eui’opean infor- 
 mation to his countrymen up-country, and which 
 was arranged in the form of a dialogue between 
 a Brahman from the country, and one living 
 among Europeans in the city, the following ques- 
 tion occurs on the part of the former, ‘ How is it 
 that the English people are white ? do the nurses 
 chalk them over when babies, and so change 
 their natural complexion ? 3 The writer of the 
 book told me that the idea was an ordinary one 
 among his people. 
 
 One day when I was sitting with a high caste 
 and learned native, I casually asked a fine gen- 
 tlemanly boy of twelve years of age who stood 
 beside us, w'hat was the difference between a 
 squirrel and a snake : after a little thought he 
 answered that the one had fur, and the other had 
 
THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 91 
 
 not. I suggested that a still more conspicuous 
 difference was that the one had legs, and the 
 other had none. But my native friend inter- 
 rupted me by saying that such a distinction was 
 incorrect, for snakes had legs. When I could 
 not restrain a smile, and tried to convince him of 
 the contrary, he assured me that indeed all snakes 
 had legs, a great many legs ; they were small it 
 is true, but if they had not legs how could they 
 move so rapidly as they do ? 
 
 Another day a young man of twenty, son of a 
 learned native, of good family and high caste, 
 was sitting with me ; and I was trying to suggest 
 to him habits of observation, by conveying to 
 him a little information about natural history ; 
 among other things, I was pointing out the dis- 
 tinction between beasts and birds, that the one 
 class produce their young alive, the other lay eggs 
 and hatch them. This distinction however, did not 
 please the young man ; it did not hold good, he 
 said, for tigers were beasts, and yet they both 
 laid eggs and hatched them : he was sure they 
 did, he had been told so by several well informed 
 people. 
 
 One young man, twenty-two years of age, had 
 never so much as seen a native plough ; another 
 had never seen a ship, although the greater part 
 of the year several are lying in the roads, and 
 visible from the beach, not three miles distant 
 from the town where he lived : yet these were 
 
92 
 
 THE HINDOO RELIGION. 
 
 young men from a class which is the best in- 
 formed, most intelligent and superior among the 
 native population. 
 
 The acquaintance on the part of the natives 
 with European habits, inventions and knowledge, 
 is about on a par with the acquaintance of most 
 Europeans in India, with the habits and belief of 
 the Hindoos. The one know no more than they 
 did before Europeans were seen in the country : 
 a large proportion of the latter possess as little 
 real knowledge of the subject as if they had never 
 left England. 
 
 The higher Hindoos are consequently exceed- 
 ingly proud and contemptuous ; they count them- 
 selves to be very wise, and think all wisdom, and 
 all knowledge is comprised within their own 
 circle ; they regard Europeans as powerful, but 
 so very ignorant of all scientific, mataphysical, 
 and celestial knowledge. Much of this is laugh- 
 able ; but the one serious point, the root of all 
 ignorance, is their unacquaintance with the true 
 God, and his Christ whom He has given for 
 man's salvation. The right end to begin at in 
 dealing with the ignorant Hindoo, is the subject 
 of religion ; the only lamp by which to illuminate 
 him is the light of Christ’s Gospel. 
 
1Y. 
 
 THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 The mind of a Hindoo is filled with a great 
 variety of philosophical notions : not only is this 
 the case among the upper ranks, some of whom 
 may be supposed to have had more or less indi- 
 rect access to written works ; but there are to be 
 found among the very lowest and most ignorant 
 classes, fragments and contradictory glimpses of 
 similar views. 
 
 The residence of a few years in India has not 
 been sufficient to enable me to give a systematic 
 account of these philosophies, nor would it 
 agree with my present purpose to do so. Por I 
 wish to present to the reader simply an account 
 of that stated tone of mind, those thoughts and 
 views which a Missionary himself observes in his 
 
 i 
 
94 
 
 THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 heathen acquaintances. The systems of philo- 
 sophy which existed in ages past, may be found 
 in the books of the learned; it is the fragmentary, 
 distorted and popular views of them, existing 
 among the people at large at the present day, 
 which are to be gathered mainly from a Mis- 
 sionary journal. 
 
 I. NOTIONS REGARDING GOD AND MAN. 
 
 One of the prevailing Hindoo dogmas is Pan- 
 theism in its wildest form. “ God is all, and all 
 is God/’ is the ordinary notion. When the Mis- 
 sionary states that “ God is in all things,” the 
 Hindoo listener catches at the words as a corro- 
 boration of his own views, until he is reminded 
 that the Christian belief is, that “ God is present 
 everywhere,” and not according to the Hindoo 
 view, that “ God is in every thing, so that the 
 substance of it is God.” They illustrate their 
 view, that all things are actually composed of 
 God, and that yet God is only one, by referring 
 to metals: “Gold,” they say, “is one, yet of 
 gold we make rings, ornaments, money aDd other 
 articles : the substance is still the same ; the 
 forms however are different.” 
 
 1. Closely connected with this is the view that 
 every man is a portion of Deity ; nor does the 
 circumstance of the sinfulness of men invalidate, 
 
THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 95 
 
 iu their opinion, this doctrine. For they would 
 evade the objection, on the one hand, by stating 
 that sin is after all only a fancy, a theory, a 
 thing arranged according to a freak of God ; that 
 the individual separated for a while from the 
 mass of Deity, commits, it is true, what we call 
 sin, but he does so only in his imperfect blinded 
 state ; that in reference to God sin does not exist, 
 and so the divine particle does not in its divine 
 character commit sin. On the other hand they 
 evade it in the follovving way. They state, “ The 
 soul is God, and at the same time is the indivi- 
 dual : this pure divine soul being separated for a 
 while from its divine whole, is attached to, but 
 not mingled with, a body over which it rules. 
 The soul however, like an eastern despot, does 
 nothing but issue some general commands which 
 are to be carried out by the body. Under the 
 term “ body,” is not to be understood the mere 
 material frame of flesh and blood, but in addition 
 to this, it includes the senses, the mind, the in- 
 telligence, feelings, passions, energy, and indeed, 
 every thing which Europeans suppose go to 
 form the man. However, in this composite body, 
 there are two parts or principles of action, the 
 one named Wisdom, the other Folly ; and ac- 
 cording to the success which one or other of these 
 two obtains in the struggle to obey or disobey 
 the commands of the sovereign soul, the body is 
 said to do righteousness or commit sin. Con- 
 
 I 2 
 
96 
 
 THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 sequently the man, the individual, the divine 
 soul, never sins nor is capable of sinning; for 
 he feels neither joy nor sorrow, desire nor aver- 
 sion, inasmuch as he partakes of the general 
 character of that divine being who is without at- 
 tributes or action, and of whom nothing can be 
 stated, except existence.” By this doctrine the 
 Responsibility of man is entirely eluded, and the 
 immortality of the soul (in the European sense 
 of the word) is denied : for while the divine in- 
 active part of man is said to be eternal, yet the 
 composite body, including all that we call the 
 soul, is supposed to perish at death. 
 
 2 . Another very common Hindoo doctrine is 
 that of Maya or delusion. They state that all 
 the world is a vast lie : it presents the appear- 
 ance of reality, but it possesses no existence : to 
 tbe eyes or minds of men it seems to exist, but 
 these men are themselves only fantasies ; all is a 
 dream, the dreamer as well as the thing dreamt ; 
 we all are lighter than smoke. They assert, 
 “ I who am speaking, you who are listening, have 
 no existence ; ” they sum up their belief in the 
 short creed of “ There is nothing. ’’ If charged 
 with the doctrine of Atheism ; they excuse them- 
 selves by saying, that God is an exception, 
 “ Except God, there is nothing.” “ We are all 
 a lie, and God, the producer of this vast decep- 
 tion, is the Arch-deceiver.” They relate a story 
 of a philosopher, who advocated this doctrine in 
 
THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 97 
 
 the presence of an ancient Hindoo king : the 
 monarch listened patiently, aud after dismissing 
 the wise man, gave orders that an elephant 
 should be made to run at him, as he crossed the 
 court of the palace : the philosopher fled in terror 
 and escaped out of the gates ; on his next visit, 
 the king ironically enquired, “ 0 sage, if all that 
 is, is not ; if we are but a dream, wherefore 
 didst thou flee from the beast who pursued thee ? 
 why didst thou exhibit terror at a shadow ? ” 
 The philosopher, they triumphantly relate, did 
 not betray his cause, “ There was no elephant, 
 0 king ; I did not run ; it was all a dream, all 
 false.” 
 
 3. The following are specimens of conversa- 
 tions with men of learning and respectability. 
 
 One morning early in the spring of 1845, 
 three learned friends of my native teacher, them- 
 selves Brahmins, came to pay me a visit. One 
 of them had been to Benares, and had conse- 
 quently acquired much importance in the eyes of 
 the people ; I wanted to obtain some information 
 from him regarding the place, but on my asking 
 him some questions about it, by way of informa- 
 tion, one of his companions thought I was going 
 to attack their religion, and in a warm and noisy 
 manner took up the cudgels in defence of idolatry. 
 He first set upon me in order to try my learning, 
 and asked me, if I believed that man consisted 
 of any thing more than the body ; I said that 
 
98 
 
 THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 I, of course, believed that he had a soul also : he 
 then asked me regarding the state of a man during 
 sleep, where the soul went during that time ; for 
 the Hindoos have a curious notion, that during 
 sleep the soul leaves the body and goes to God. 
 I told him I believed it went nowhere ; and I 
 mentioned the case of which I had heard, of a 
 man writing a letter in his sleep, and also the 
 common instances of our walking and talking 
 while asleep ; but added, that it was an indistinct 
 subject, upon which I must confess my ignorance. 
 “ Well then/’ he said triumphantly, “ if you do 
 not understand such a simple matter as this, 
 you are not capable of understanding the reasons 
 for worshipping idols.” I acknowledged my little 
 capacity, and said, that I had consequently gone 
 to one who was much wiser than I was, to obtain 
 information on deep subjects : he immediately 
 asked with curiosity, where that person lived ? I 
 said, that I had sought for information at the 
 hands of God. This led to a question of the 
 comparative authority of the Scriptures of our 
 two creeds, and I mentioned, in favour of ours, 
 that even our enemies had witnessed to the truth 
 of the circumstances contained in them. Of 
 course he could bring no similar evidence in 
 favour of the Vedas, for the pretension that they 
 were born from the mouth of Brahma, before the 
 creation of the world, puts an end to all attempts 
 to find external evidence for them. He said 
 
THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 99 
 
 however, that his religion was the true one, 
 because it was believed by the vast majority of 
 the world : so I simply answered him by rising 
 and pointing out in a large map which hung in 
 the room, the little figure which India makes, in 
 comparison with other parts of the globe. Foiled 
 here, he said that was not his meaning, but in 
 the course of a long illustration, he maintained 
 that as those organs which are contained in the 
 best part of the body, such as the ears and the 
 eyes in the head, are worth more than those in 
 all the rest of the body, although small in pro- 
 portion, so the religion which is believed in this 
 choice portion of the globe must be the best. I 
 asked him how he knew that India was the best 
 of all countries, (they call it the “ Holy Land,”) 
 for any nation might say that their own land 
 was the best. He did not seem to have thought 
 of this before, but answered that it was the best, 
 because it contained the best and greatest things 
 to be found in the world. I asked him to name 
 them. He said, they were many ; when I pressed 
 him, he said_ that it was in India that they had 
 the Sanscrit language, and it was the best and 
 most ancient of all languages. I acknowledged 
 its great value and antiquity, but enquired how 
 he knew that there was none better than it : he 
 said, it was the language of the gods, but having 
 no proof of this, he then said it was the best 
 because it contained more letters than any other. 
 
100 
 
 THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 “No,” I said, “the Chinese has more letters 
 than it.” He said, that was not his meaning ; 
 it had more sounds : but this he could not prove. 
 He then said, all nations had confessed to the 
 superiority of the Sanscrit ; when I denied the 
 fact, and pressed him on it, he had nothing but 
 his assertion to refer to : and I urged him to be 
 more modest, and not to speak authoritatively 
 on subjects, regarding which he knew almost 
 nothing. He went away however with his com- 
 panions, saying that Sanscrit was the best of all 
 languages. He and a friend, some days after- 
 wards, paid a similar visit to my colleague, Mr. 
 Noble ; they said that they had come to enquire 
 what he knew about the nature of God. After 
 he had spoken on this point at some length, he 
 added, “ After all, we must confess that we are 
 so weak and ignorant that we know very little 
 about him.” “ You may say so for yourself, if 
 you like,” they rejoined, “ but we cannot allow 
 that we are ignorant of Him.” When they had 
 heard what he told them regarding the Godhead, 
 they added, “ Why, that is no more than what 
 all the common fellows in the village know ; have 
 you got nothing else to tell us ? ” He said he 
 had no more to tell them on that head, but he 
 would be glad if they would favour him with 
 some further information. They had not expected 
 this, for they sat talking to each other a long 
 
THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 101 
 
 time enquiring wliat they should say, and at last 
 went away without giving any answer. 
 
 Another day I was honoured by a visit from 
 the most learned Pundit in the town or neigh- 
 bourhood : he was really a gentleman, a circum- 
 stance which, considering he was a Brahmin, 
 agreeably surprised me : he also really knew some 
 Sanscrit, and displayed with pride the testimo- 
 nials he had received from the college at Madras 
 to his proficiency in that language. I have always 
 understood that he is the chief referee in all 
 doubtful matters of religion or caste which oc- 
 cur in the town. I found, during a conversa- 
 tion of some length, that the idea of the soul 
 being uncreate and a portion of the God-head, 
 was a difficulty in his way of understanding 
 Christian truth. Referring to infants who die as 
 soon as they are born, he asked “ Why did God 
 make them ? if his object was only to take them 
 to heaven, why need he first bring himself 
 (meaning the soul of the infant) into the world, 
 just to go out again ? ” He asked me what be- 
 came of the soul immediately after death, and 
 when I told him I believed that souls remained 
 in- a state of joy or sorrow till Christ’s second 
 coming, he asked incredulously, “ How can that 
 be ? A spirit without a body is incapable of 
 feeling either joy or sorrow.” * Again he asked, 
 
 * In support of this Hindoo view, I was once addressed by an 
 intelligent Brahmin. “If I take a small quantity of gunpowder. 
 
102 
 
 THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 “ Why does God make men, and then cause them 
 to sin ? ” I told him he must not say that it 
 was God who caused them to sin, for it is the 
 devil who has ruined and still tempts men : but he 
 evidently held the common doctrine that we are 
 so utterly devoid of free will as to be irresponsi- 
 ble, and that God is the author of our sin as well 
 as of our righteousness. The idea of the resur- 
 rection of the body was a little startling to him : 
 he believed in transmigration. He was, he said, 
 a Vedanti , — a man who sucked the essence and 
 true philosophy of the Yedas — an Adwaita reli- 
 gionist, that is, he denied the existence of two 
 eternal principles, spirit and matter, and so ran 
 into the other extreme of believing all matter to 
 be a deceptive form of the one eternal Spirit. I 
 thought, if this is the wisdom of the wise man of 
 Masulipatam, the folly of a Christian fool is vastly 
 preferable to it. 
 
 A short while before I left Masulipatam, a 
 native friend of mine, a very respectable man, 
 of the Sudra caste, came to call upon me : he 
 presented to me a case of fresh difficulty in com- 
 ing to Christ. He was a worshipper of Vishnu, 
 and of the sect of Ramanuja, a reformer, who 
 
 and putting it into a gun, ram it down tightly, and then fire it, 
 it explodes with a great noise ; but if I take the same quantity, 
 and, laying it down on a table, apply fire to it, it goes off with a 
 noiseless puff, and a little smoke : just so, the soul compressed in 
 p body can feel, hut released from it, is insensible.” This he 
 intended not by way of illustration, but of proof. 
 
THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 103 
 
 was bora at Conjeveram, in the Tamil country, 
 some 700 or 800 years ago. The two points of 
 difficulty in my friend’s mind were, first, man’s 
 inability to do good : “ If he cannot by his own 
 power do good, how can he do evil ? He is a 
 mere machine in God’s hand.” When I pointed 
 out to him that in so saying he was going on at 
 once to the doctrine of God being the author of 
 sin, he said, No, he did not hold that doctrine, 
 nor could he think otherwise than that so good a 
 God must desire that his children should do well. 
 But he was much puzzled to think that, in spite 
 of that being the case, men were doing ill : in 
 fact he seemed to have no distinct idea on the 
 subject, but to vacillate between believing man to 
 be led to commit sin by God, and thinking that 
 God’s will was thwarted and contradicted by 
 man. When I told him how the Bible declares 
 to us that God placed Adam and Eve within the 
 reach of temptation, and with the free choice of 
 good and evil, he interrupted me by saying, 
 “ What ! would you leave poison in your child's 
 way, in order to try his obedience ! ” I tried to 
 make him understand that as he is not the brave 
 soldier who has not been wounded or defeated 
 only because he has never fought, but he is to be 
 so accounted who having fought has conquered ; so 
 the good man is not he who has never been ex- 
 posed to temptation, but he who having been 
 exposed has triumphed over it. His second 
 
104 
 
 THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 difficulty was the temporary character of hell. 
 He believed it was a painful place of punishment, 
 but regarded it as simply a place of purifying 
 fires, from out of which God would, after a while, 
 deliver his creatures, and bring them into eternal 
 bliss. So that when I pressed him with the 
 necessity of the Atonement, if we would reconcile 
 God’s mercy with his justice, he turned my words 
 aside by saying, he believed God used hell, not 
 in wrath, but as a merciful, though painful, means 
 of doing good to his creatures ; and he thought 
 that the spirits in hell were all repentant. It 
 was in fact just Purgatory, without masses or 
 saint-worship. I tried to point out to him, and 
 I think he felt it, that hell must be eternal : for 
 the souls in hell, however repentant, will still be 
 continually disobeying and falling short of God’s 
 perfect law, which is as eternally binding on them 
 as they are eternally God’s creatures : for in hell 
 they certainly will not be loving God perfectly, 
 which is the chief law : and consequently instead 
 of purifying themselves in the fire, they will only 
 he hourly adding to the number of their sins 
 which have to be expiated. 
 
 4. The Hindoo’s religious belief extends to 
 other subjects than those of God and man. One 
 day I had a long conversation with my teacher 
 about the elements : he told me that it was 
 written in his scriptures that these are five in 
 number, earth, fire, water, air, and space. While 
 
THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 105 
 
 I was pointing out to him the incorrectness of 
 this division, he told me that oil belonged to the 
 element of fire because it was easily ignited; 
 but he was sadly puzzled under what head he 
 ought to arrange ardent spirits, which though 
 more easily ignited than oil, yet manifestly be- 
 long to the division of water : up to that time he 
 was not aware that spirits would burn. When I 
 told him of the divisible character of water, he 
 seemed in doubt whether it ought to be classed 
 as belonging to its own element or to that of air. 
 He also added that each element had some parti- 
 cular quality or nature attached to it : for exam- 
 ple, cold wa6 the nature of water, but he would 
 not allow it to be also that of air ; the nature of 
 iron he supposed to be heat. All these, however, 
 were not his own notions : for clever and intelli- 
 gent and enquiring as was his character, he had 
 never cast a thought upon the subject, but they 
 were the dogmas of his religious books. With 
 them religion and science are all classed under 
 the same head, and stand upon the same autho- 
 rity, that of Revelation : and it is equally here- 
 tical to deny the elementary character of mud, 
 as to state that Vishnu is a false god. Their 
 answer has often been to me when speaking on 
 scientific subjects, “ Your religion says so and so, 
 mine says otherwise ; ” and I have had difficulty 
 in making them understand that our scientific 
 
106 
 
 THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 knowledge is not derived from revelation but 
 from experience. 
 
 It results from this, that to unravel the follies of 
 Hindoo science, to shew that the world does not 
 consist of seven concentric circles of land, sepa- 
 rated from each other by similar seas of butter- 
 milk, sugar, spirits, or water, — to demonstrate 
 that the earth goes round the sun, or that the 
 moon is a world and not a god, serves at the 
 same time to undermine the authority and regard 
 for the religious books, in which these circum- 
 stances are taught as realities in the same page 
 as the mythologies or philosophies of their vari- 
 ous creeds. 
 
 From the same circumstance is demonstrable 
 the exceeding lack of wisdom in those who ad- 
 vocate the infidel system of education, promoted 
 by the government in India, on the ground that 
 we have, as a government, no right to teach the 
 Hindoos to disregard the religion of their ances- 
 tors, nor to shock their prejudices by bringing 
 to their notice anything opposed to their religion. 
 For the same parties engage eagerly in conveying 
 scientific and medical knowledge to the Hindoos ; 
 a knowledge which is no less calculated to dis- 
 gust them with their ancestral creed than is 
 the bright light of the pure gospel. If we in- 
 struct a Hindoo in the Bible, he cannot remain a 
 believer in Hindooism, but he may become a 
 Christian : if, rejecting the Bible, as they do in 
 
THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 107 
 
 the government institutions, we teach him Euro- 
 pean science alone, he cannot remain a believer 
 in the Vedas and Puranas, but he must become 
 an infidel. The result of the experiment has 
 fully borne out the truth of this fact. 
 
 II . — NOTIONS OF EXPIATION OF SIN. — 
 TRANSMIGRATION. 
 
 In Christianity, the starting point of religion 
 is this, — that all men are sinners by nature and 
 in deed; and the great question is, how can they 
 be cleansed from their sin, and how can the 
 punishment due to it be removed ? In Ilin- 
 dooism it is otherwise : sin, and the expiation of 
 it do occur in their creed, but the grand ques- 
 tion with the Heathen is, “ How can I obtain 
 such a stock of merit and desert as may justify 
 me in laying claim to such and such rewards ? ” 
 The story of the curse of Kehama is an exact 
 illustration of this ; the mighty king, in spite of 
 all rules of right and justice, in spite of the will 
 of all gods, great and small, is able, by his meri- 
 torious sacrifices, to force himself up to the posi- 
 tion which is the object of his ambition. There 
 is, consequently, a certain scale of rewards, and 
 a parallel one of merits : for a certain sum a man 
 may purchase a certain stage in the states of bliss. 
 The smallest amount will enable him to be born 
 
108 
 
 THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 in the next birth in a happier and more exalted 
 position ; a Brahmin instead of a Sudra, a man of 
 wealth instead of a beggar, a prince instead of a 
 peasant. A higher amount will enable him to 
 reach some of the many heavens, where he may 
 dwell in sensual enjoyment among deified men and 
 gods, for a certain period, namely, until he has 
 worked out in pleasure the value of his merits ; 
 and he then is obliged to descend again to earth 
 to be reproduced as a living creature. The high- 
 est amount of merit obtains for him the bliss of 
 annihilation : for in no other terms can we speak 
 of such absorption into the inert sleeping essence 
 of Deity, whence the soul had once proceeded, as 
 that the whole individual ceases to exist and is 
 lost, just as a drop of water is lost in the sea. 
 
 There is accordingly a first-class, and a second- 
 class religion. The first consists of abstraction : 
 a contemplative life is one of the highest merit. 
 To accomplish this, the man must forsake every 
 tie on earth ; parents, wife, and children must be 
 cast from him as positive evils ; clothes and food, 
 except such as are given to him, are to be re- 
 jected. He is to sit in the midst of the forest 
 day and night, unceasingly meditating on the 
 abstract Supreme One, until he becomes aware 
 of the fact, that he, the man, is not, — that indi- 
 vidual existence is the great lie, — that he is God, 
 and God is he ; and having attained this precious 
 knowledge, he at once becomes absorbed. Or 
 
THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 109 
 
 the same class of religion may be performed by 
 the most painful austerities : nevertheless, this 
 first-class religion exists more in theory and in 
 story books, than in practice. The second-class 
 religion, is the religion of Works : under which 
 head are peculiarly classed all ceremonies, prayers, 
 and the like. By the learned, this religion is 
 spoken of with great contempt, and it is in con- 
 sequence of this feeling, that the priests who 
 minister about the temples, are so much despised, 
 and are considered to rank at the bottom of all 
 the subdivisions of Brahmins : nevertheless, it 
 is the religion which is usually followed in the 
 present day. 
 
 At Masulipatum we have frequent instances of 
 one method by which Hindus both wash away 
 their old sins, and acquire a stock of righteous- 
 ness. Living near the sea, they have not only 
 the opportunity which others have of obtaining 
 merit by feeding insects or birds, or by offering 
 cakes to the dead, and the like, but at certain con- 
 junctions of the planets they have grand sea- 
 bathings. Early in the morning of the blessed 
 day, they pour out by thousands from the popu- 
 lous town, across the usually lonely plain of 
 parched black clay, which separates the town 
 from the beach by a distance of two miles. 
 The wealthy go in their covered carts or palan- 
 quins, the mass proceed on foot. Arrived at the 
 beach, they make use of the services of one of the 
 
 K 
 
110 
 
 THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 many high-caste Brahmins who, like the kites 
 near the shambles, are hovering round to obtain 
 their perquisites, and get him to write with his 
 finger on the sand, the words, “ The bow of 
 Rama,” enclosed in a circular line or bow. For 
 this he receives the gift of a farthing or half- 
 penny, and the worshipper at once goes through 
 the usual modes of adoring the inscription, as if 
 it was a god. Hundreds may be seen doing this 
 at a time, while others, having performed this 
 service, have walked into the sea, about knee- 
 deep, and there are engaged in first receiving 
 vessels of water poured over their heads by some 
 of their friends, or by some Brahmin on the look- 
 out for fresh gifts, or afterwards in going through 
 a series of dippings, sprinklings, spirtings and 
 throwing of water. They make their offerings 
 to the muddy ocean by throwing into it flowers, 
 or red powder, or rice, or clothes ; and then, the 
 ceremony being over, they return to the beach, 
 and either walk home in their wet clothes, or re- 
 tire to their vehicles to change them. They have 
 thus finished their short pilgrimage to their satis- 
 faction. The cause of merit in this ablution, is 
 the sacred character of the sea : it is supposed 
 to be a god in itself ; this goes for something ; 
 but as it also receives the waters of all rivers, 
 every one of which is a goddess, the concentra- 
 tion of holiness in the ocean is beyond calculation. 
 
 2 . The doctrine of Transmigration is one of 
 
THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 Ill 
 
 universal belief ; it is made use of as the method 
 of explaining the unequal fortunes of men in 
 this life. One man is rich and prosperous : the 
 reason of this is, that in a former birth he ob- 
 tained a fair stock of merit : another man re- 
 ceives a heavy reverse of fortune, or is diseased, 
 or a cripple : “ See what a wretch the man is,” 
 they will say, — “ in his former birth he must have 
 been a precious rogue.” An amusing illustration 
 once occurred to my notice : the Collector of 
 Tinnevelly had proposed to mark the undiscernible 
 tracks across the sandy plains of his district, by 
 planting them with avenues of trees ; he accord- 
 ingly had branches of trees cut down and placed 
 in the ground at proper intervals ; but somewhat 
 unwisely he began his planting in the burning 
 month of May. However, some showers fell un- 
 expectedly, sufficient to moisten the ground and 
 to enable the branches to shoot. At once it was 
 the saying of the heathen in the district, “ What 
 a righteous man our collector must be ! What a 
 stock of merits he must have amassed in his last 
 birth ! The skies have, in honour of him, 
 poured down their showers upon his trees.” 
 
 The same doctrine supplies the Missionary 
 with an answer to the objection which a Brahmin 
 will sometimes make to Christians eating animal 
 food. “ You eat the bodies,” they say, “ which 
 have been inhabited by the souls of men, and 
 which souls you have violently driven from their 
 
112 
 
 THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 abode.” The Missionary may answer the objec- 
 tor, “ Oh most unholy man, do you bring this 
 objection against our habit ; and what shall I say 
 to your dinner of herbs ? The death of one 
 sheep suffices for the meals of many of us, but 
 you, though you believe your fathers 5 souls have 
 not only migrated into the cows, and sheep, and 
 birds, and reptiles, but are also inhabiting the 
 trees, and giving life to the plants, you do not 
 hesitate, for every meal which you make, to 
 slaughter an hundred souls by the tearing-up of 
 as many roots; you shrink not from torturing 
 and wounding, without mercifully terminating 
 their sufferings by death, the bushes, whose leaves 
 you thoughtlessly devour, and the creeping plants 
 on whose fruits you dine.” 
 
 3. In a Protestant and Christian country, the 
 irreligious part of the community shrink from the 
 observance of religion : feeling doubtless that it 
 stands in too harsh contrast with their worldly- 
 mindedness or vicious habits. In Roman 
 Catholic and Heathen countries it is not so ; the 
 same difficulty does not exist : the whole mass of 
 the people are consequently religious ; there is 
 no such condemnation of their lives by their re- 
 ligion as to prevent the ungodly from bringing 
 their religion into their daily life. A Hindoo, 
 accordingly, quite irrespective of his moral or re- 
 ligious feelings and habits, introduces his religion 
 into all the circumstances of his business or 
 
THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 113 
 
 amusement. The following is an illustration of 
 this ; I was one evening walking among the ship- 
 building yards at Narsapore, a small port, about 
 forty miles to the north of Masulipatam, when 
 one of the head-workmen at the slips told me 
 that they were going the next day to lay the keel 
 of a new vessel, and that they would begin it by 
 some religious ceremony, at three o’clock the fol- 
 lowing morning. When I went therefore for my 
 morning walk, I proceeded to the spot, and found 
 a crowd of workmen and others still lingering 
 about the place where the keel had been laid. 
 They told me, that at an early hour, they had 
 called there some Brahmins, who had made puja 
 (worship) and repeated some charms over the 
 keel. The worship consisted of rubbing a yellow 
 powder on it, tying to it a small plank, (under 
 the notion, as I supposed, of commencing the 
 ship,) and hanging three or four pairs of cocoa- 
 nuts upon it. The charms were prayers to 
 Ganesha, the Elephant god and the deity of 
 wisdom, to the effect that he would prosper the 
 work, and ever remain by the vessel : or rather 
 they- were charms to compel him to do so. For 
 this service the Brahmins had received a present 
 of two dubs apiece, equivalent to a penny, but in 
 Indian value equal perhaps to sixpence. A little 
 flag was tied on a bamboo hard by ; that day w r as 
 to be a holiday, the next they would begin the 
 work in earnest. 
 
114 
 
 THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES, 
 
 III. MIRACLES. 
 
 The Hindoos are very fond of miracles : their 
 old stories are almost made up of them, nor have 
 they any lack of them at the present day ; and 
 although they are of the most ridiculous kind, 
 and utterly destitute of evidence, they have great 
 weight in the unthinking mind of the Hindoo, 
 to satisfy him of the truth of his religion. 
 
 1. At Tiripati, one of the most sacred tem- 
 ples, and the most favourite resort of pilgrims 
 in all South India, is the shrine and golden 
 image of Venkateshwaradu, one of the forms of 
 Vishnu. About fifteen miles off among the hills, 
 is a smaller temple, where there resides the wife 
 of this god. Every evening the priests of this 
 latter temple, previous to closing the doors for 
 the night, place within the goddess-house an 
 enormous pair of shoes, and the usual supplies of 
 betel leaf and nut. In the morning, on opening 
 the door, they find the betel leaf and its accom- 
 paniments consumed, the new shoes removed, 
 and another pair considerably worn put in their 
 place. The cause which they assign is this : the 
 god walks over every evening all the way from 
 Tiripati to see his wife ; he of course chews 
 betel-leaf all night, and having considerably 
 injured his shoes on the stony mountain-tracks 
 
THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 115 
 
 which he has traversed, leaves them behind him, 
 and returns before cock-crow, wearing new shoes, 
 which the piety of his worshippers had prepared 
 for him. 
 
 2. Twice during the short time that I have 
 been at Masulipatam, there have occurred in- 
 stances of the miracle of cutting off the tongue, 
 and having it cured without human means. The 
 case is as follows : a man, usually a stranger, 
 enters the court-yard of a temple of Shiva in' the 
 town, and watching his opportunity when there 
 are only a few boys present, he cuts off, in their 
 sight, a considerable portion of his tongue, 
 having previously made them understand that he 
 is going to do so in devotion to Shiva, and that 
 through the mighty power of the god, his tongue, 
 instead of causing him to bleed to death, will be 
 healed without man’s power in twenty-one days. 
 The boys immediately run off, half in wonder, 
 half in terror, and spread the news : it is not 
 long before the temple-yard is thronged with 
 wondering visitors, who find the devotee sitting 
 quietly on the ground before the image of his 
 god ; he is unable to speak to them, he shews 
 them the blood that flowed from the wound, he 
 does not show them his wounded tongue, but he 
 exhibits the piece which he has cut off. Of 
 course he is highly honoured as one who has 
 performed a sacrifice to their god, and doubtless 
 receives substantial proofs of their admiration ; 
 
116 
 
 THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 the event is a nine-days-wonder ; and I never 
 heard of any one waiting to witness the conclusion 
 of the miracle at the close of the twenty-one 
 days. On the last occasion of such a miracle, 
 the young men in our English school, who had 
 been learning the proper tests and evidences of 
 miracles in their study of the New Testament, 
 ridiculed the whole account ; “ If it is a true 
 miracle,” they said, “ why does he not cut off 
 some more conspicuous part than his tongue ; his 
 finger or arm for instance ? Or why does he not 
 do it in public, and not conceal himself in a 
 temple to which only the friends of his religion 
 can find access, and whither Mahommedans and 
 Europeans cannot enter to investigate the truth 
 of the matter.” 
 
 3. When I was once relating to a Brahmin 
 the miraculous evidence of Christ’s deity, he told 
 me that his religion also had its miracles, and 
 related the following. “ About seventy years 
 ago, large crowds from this and other towns were 
 assembled at the annual festival, at Sullapully, 
 on the banks of the river Kistna, fifteen miles 
 from hence. Just then the clouds gathered up 
 thick and dark, and a very heavy shower, which was 
 evidently falling at a distance, threatened speedily 
 to descend upon the worshippers and wet them 
 all. They began to cry out to Shiva, whom they 
 were worshipping, to keep the rain from them, 
 for there was no shelter for so large a multitude : 
 
THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. ] LT 
 
 the rain however drew on nearer and nearer, and 
 the people became more vehement in their en- 
 treaties, till at last a Zemindar, (a land-holder, 
 and sort of petty noble) sprang forward with his 
 gun in hand, and presenting it to the image of 
 the god, threatened to shoot it, if it did not keep 
 the rain from falling on them. Wonderful to 
 relate, the rain fell in torrents all round about ; 
 but within the enclosure where the people were 
 assembled, not a single drop was seen to fall.” 
 
 IV. DEVOTEES. 
 
 I have already referred to instances of self- 
 devotion, or immolation on the part of a Hindoo 
 to his god : I believe that in Northern India 
 these instances are much more numerous ; still 
 in the South we have our share : cases might no 
 doubt be found, where the party undergoes pri- 
 vation and suffering from a real sense of devotion 
 and religion : but most usually it is a mere trick, 
 though a serious one to the party who practises it, 
 to acquire influence or money for the unrestrained 
 indulgence of his passions. At first I could not 
 divest myself of the idea that those poor beings 
 who lived with shrivelled outstretched arms, or 
 tortured limbs, were serious salvation-seeking 
 devotees : but the first with whom I came in con- 
 tact, was in the sacred town of Conjeveram, near 
 
118 
 
 THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 Madras, and he wholly undeceived me. When 
 I saw his little skinny figure, and his right hand 
 held in one position until it had shrivelled into an 
 immoveable state, and the nails of the fingers 
 were grown into long corkscrew rings, I felt a 
 peculiar compassion for him, and stopped him to 
 speak to him on the subject of salvation, and to 
 tell him that God had provided a free way by 
 which every one might come to Him, and be 
 saved. Hearing me speak of sin, and finding I 
 was not going to give him any money, he turned 
 off with a sneer, and spoke to this effect, 
 “ What’s the odds ? What’s the difference be- 
 tween right and wrong, sin and righteousness ? 
 it does not matter what we do, so long as we are 
 happy.” 
 
 There is a numerous class of devotees roaming 
 all about the country : just outside the hospital- 
 gate at Madras, there usually sits such an one ; 
 he has matted filthy hair, a body daubed over 
 with ashes, a striug or two of beads about his neck, 
 and not six inches of clothing are expended on 
 his person ; he sits by the road-side as aD holy- 
 beggar. There are two particular orders of per- 
 sons who devote themselves to this life; the one 
 are celibates, the others have wives and families ; 
 but both have bound themselves never to remain 
 for more than one night in the same place ; they 
 are consequently ever on the move, and answer 
 strictly to our tramping beggars, with this differ- 
 
THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 119 
 
 ence only, that while we do not count ours to be 
 peculiarly religious persons, such is the character 
 given to them by their countrymen. 
 
 Not unfrequently we see in some town or 
 village a little child four or five years old, whose 
 head presents a curious appearance. Instead of 
 all the hair being shaved clean off, or only one 
 or two oily shining tufts being left for ornament, 
 as is usually the case, this child’s hair resembles 
 a dirty brown woollen door-mat ; it is uncombed 
 and uncut, and has grown into matted and 
 clotted brown tails, disgusting to look at. On 
 enquiring the reason, we find that the child has 
 during infancy been very ill, and the parents 
 have vowed to some god or goddess, that if it 
 recovers, they will dedicate the child to that deity, 
 call it by his name, and up to a certain period, 
 preserve the child’s hair untouched and unshorn, 
 till they cut it off and carry it along with other 
 presents, to lay it before the image of the deity. 
 Adults sometimes make similar vows regarding 
 their own hair, and travel two or three hundred 
 miles in accomplishment of their vow. 
 
 Such are some of the prominent features of 
 the Hindoos, viewed in their religious relations. 
 Prince and peasant, Brahmin and Pariah, they are 
 equally ignorant of true religion, somewhat vary- 
 ing in their tenure of philosophical creeds, consi- 
 derably different in their modes and observances 
 of ceremonial rites, yet all equally subject to them. 
 
120 
 
 THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 and bound by the same general principles in regard 
 to them. The whole nation presents the appear- 
 ance of the poor Jew in the story of the good Sama- 
 ritan, “ stripped, wounded, and left half dead,” by 
 the arch-robber Satan. Among the people who 
 “ journey that way,” and are spectators of the 
 miserable condition of the heathen, are the whole 
 people of Great Britain, w r ho either by sight or 
 hearing are made acquainted with it. Hitherto 
 we have been acting the part of the Priest and 
 Levite : the larger number of the natives of India 
 we have seen for forty, fifty, or eighty years, but 
 have “ passed by on the other side.” May God 
 change our hearts speedily to act the better part. 
 
HINDOO WORSHIP AND SOCIAL 
 HABITS. 
 
 “ God is a Spirit ; and they that worship him, 
 must worship him in spirit and in truth,” is the 
 Bible description of the nature of true religion. 
 The morality of a people will be always found to 
 be in keeping with its religion. Where there 
 is formalism and untruth, there is also pecu- 
 liarly a state of vice. The holiness of the few 
 who in the most favoured nation truly serve God 
 in sincerity, is a salt which preserves the mass 
 from utter corruption : it keeps up the moral 
 standard and tone of the whole people. The 
 Hindoos do not possess even those few : they are 
 altogether corrupt; their moral standard can 
 scarcely fall lower than it now is. 
 
122 
 
 HINDOO WORSHIP 
 
 I. — METHODS OF WORSHIP. 
 
 Hindoo worship is altogether one of forms. 
 
 1. The Hindoo, if indeed he performs any 
 daily devotions at all, begins by taking out of 
 its box or down from its shelf a little image ; 
 setting it before him, he repeats to it a formulary 
 of prayer, sometimes in an unknown but sacred 
 language, sometimes in his mother-tongue. 
 
 Public worship is of a similar kind. Their 
 pagodas are places where the god is kept, and 
 whither individuals may resort, either alone or 
 in company for purposes of worship. The 
 method of worship is this ; a man, either singly, 
 or sometimes with other members of his family, 
 proceeds to the temple : there he enters the court- 
 yard, goes to the god-house, and seeing the 
 greasy image, prostrates himself before it ; he 
 lays down before it his handful of fruit or flowers, 
 or he breaks his cocoa-nut on the threshold and 
 presents it to the idol, or he offers his pence, and 
 repeats a prayer ; sometimes as a peculiar act of 
 worship, he walks round the god-house several 
 times: these forms being finished he goes away, 
 pleased at having done his religion. 
 
 2. Public festivals, at which vast crowds as- 
 semble at or near a pagoda are common ; but I 
 cannot learn that on any of these occasions, the 
 
AND SOCIAL HABITS. 
 
 123 
 
 crowds are supposed to join in any united prayer 
 or worship of the idol : certain ceremonies and 
 forms are gone through by the priests, while the 
 people are lookers on : just as I have heard in 
 the Syrian church the people speak of having 
 been “ to see mass,” not to partake in it. 
 
 There is a great festival celebrated all over 
 India, called the Dusserah festival. On one 
 occasion I witnessed at Masulipatam the last day’s 
 ceremonies, which commenced at four in the 
 afternoon, and consisted mainly of carrying 
 about the images of several of the gods. I ex- 
 pected to see some little display of pomp, and 
 some amount of tinsel finery, but I was disap- 
 pointed. As I rode down towards the native 
 town, I saw strings of people all moving towards 
 the scene of action ; old and young, men and 
 women, were gathering in, just as one might see 
 a crowd collecting for a prize-fight or a horse- 
 race. I presently fell in with an idol procession 
 coming down a street ; it consisted of a rabble 
 of a few hundred people headed by a dozen 
 Sepoys, who though only sent to keep the peace, 
 looked more as if they took a part in the pro- 
 cession than any thing else : about the middle of 
 the crowd were a dozen or two of men, holding 
 spears or swords above their heads, and three or 
 four more piping and drumming : close behind 
 them came the idol, trotting along, inside a sort 
 of gewgaw shrine made of slips of cane, covered 
 
124 
 
 HINDOO WORSHIP 
 
 over with pieces of coloured paper and tinsel, 
 and looking very gay. The idol was not visible, 
 being concealed inside in a vessel of water ; be- 
 hind the shrine came some men with unlighted 
 torches, to be used when it grew dark ; a few 
 more people in an irregular crowd, and two or 
 three of the upper ranks on horseback, brought 
 up the rear. We were directed to a spot, about 
 a quarter of a mile distant, where they said 
 several idols would assemble ; we repaired thither 
 and found the crowds attendant on the different 
 idols running into a sort of field, which was 
 surrounded by an irregular and probably natural 
 hedge of the prickly pear, and contained in its 
 centre a small stone building open on all sides, 
 and a pond. There might be as many as a 
 thousand or fifteen hundred people collected ; in 
 the middle of them a ring was cleared and a 
 number of athletics exhibited their skill in the 
 sword -exercise. Leaving these, we went to 
 look at the idols ; one of them was placed in 
 the open stone building, the others were set 
 down near it, and had their large red umbrellas 
 reared over them, although the evening was 
 cloudless, and the sun was already set. All the 
 idols, except the one which we had seen travel- 
 ling in its shrine, were mounted on their hobby- 
 horses. At a little distance, I exclaimed, “ They 
 have got no heads,” but on coming closer, I 
 found that the image, which had seemed about 
 
AND SOCIAL HABITS. 
 
 125 
 
 two feet long, was composed of a little brass 
 idol six inches in length, wrapped up in long 
 clothes from the neck downwards. Every now 
 and then a man in the crowd fired off a pistol, 
 and a large drum, drawn in a common bullock- 
 cart, kept rumbling the whole time ; there was 
 one man who had a thing like a watchman’s 
 rattle, which every now and then he whirled 
 round and round to increase the noise. These 
 foreign sounds, added to the talking of so many 
 people in a loose crowd, made such a clamour, 
 that it was almost impossible to hear my com- 
 panion speak. The grand ceremony of the even- 
 ing was the breaking in pieces with a sword a 
 small branch of a sacred tree ; it took place under 
 the open building, but as a number of men had 
 crowded on the steps we could not see it done ; 
 the act was announced to the crowd, who seemed 
 to be anything but expectant of it, by the shout- 
 ing and clapping of hands of those on the steps. 
 As soon as it became dark, they began to throw 
 up a few rockets, lighted the torches, twenty or 
 thirty in number, lifted up the idols from the 
 ground, and set off to perambulate the town for 
 the greater part of the night. The indifference 
 to the idols, expressed by the careless manner of 
 those who stood near them, shewed how very 
 little feeling was entertained which could at all 
 be denominated “ religious.” 
 
 I was reminded a good deal of an English 
 
 M 
 
126 
 
 HINDOO WORSHIP 
 
 fair ; in one spot was a knot of gamblers, squat- 
 ting on the ground instead of standing round a 
 table ; in another an old woman with an heap of 
 sweetmeats spread out on the ground instead of 
 on a stall. The same carelessness, merriment, 
 crowding, noise, and I believe debauchery, attend 
 both occasions. 
 
 At another time I witnessed the procession of 
 a car in the neighbouring town of Narsapore; it 
 is a common species of religious celebration, and 
 for several nights before, there had been festivals 
 celebrated in this manner in honour of Gopal 
 Swamy, an incarnation of Vishnu. The car was 
 a cumbrous wooden machine, moving on six 
 wheels ; it was somewhat of a pyraraidical shape, 
 and consisted of five or six diminishing stages ; 
 the whole machine was about twenty-five feet 
 high ; the lower part was made of solid timbers, 
 but the upper works were composed of a light 
 framework of carved wood. When in procession, 
 all the wood-work of the upper part was con- 
 cealed bv coloured cottons, wrapped round or 
 nailed to the posts ; the lower parts were adorned 
 with two or three plantain plants with their 
 broad green leaves, and with festoons of the 
 leaves of the mango and other trees. On the 
 lowest stage in the front, were two rampant hobby 
 horses gaily painted, and between them, sitting 
 on the car, was the figure of a man half as large 
 as life, and intended to represent the charioteer. 
 On this same lower stage sat one live man beating 
 
AND SOCIAL HABITS. 
 
 127 
 
 a large sonorous kettle drum, and five or six more 
 clashing cymbals, all for the purpose of making 
 as much noise as possible. Immediately above 
 these, within the open frame-work of the stage, 
 was a board suspended by ropes from the roof of 
 the stage, and swinging to and fro with the 
 motion of the car. The board was concealed by 
 a quantity of cloths heaped upon it, from the 
 top of which peeped out the very god himself, a 
 little dirty copper idol, about ten inches long. 
 The contrast of the god and of his paraphernalia 
 was ludicrous ; it reminded me of a monkey on 
 an elephant’s back. Two long cables were at- 
 tached to the front of the car, and about an 
 hundred men were at work dragging it along : 
 but this was a matter of no small difficulty : for 
 though, when once in motion, the car rolled on 
 down the street easily enough, yet in consequence 
 of its stiff straight axles and six wheels, and of 
 the winding and narrow character of the street, 
 it first ran so as to threaten a house on one 
 side, and when that danger was escaped, it pre- 
 sently rolled towards a wall on the other : and 
 each fresh start was a matter of much shouting 
 and pulling. When I saw the procession, the 
 sun had not set, and there were not above two or 
 three hundred people following it, but as night 
 drew on, the numbers would increase. A short 
 distance behind the car came an interesting group 
 of spectators, consisting of some twenty or thirty 
 
128 
 
 HINDOO WORSHIP 
 
 native ladies of respectability. They might not 
 be the very highest in the place ; but they were 
 Brahmin and Yaisya females in good circum- 
 stances : they were in their best clothes, and a 
 good deal adorned with jewels, especially with 
 the golden crown, or circular plate of gold, on 
 the top of the head. I could not help being 
 grieved at the sight of them, — the respectable 
 ladies of a large town — without a countenance 
 among them to mark an intelligence superior to 
 that of a low Pariah woman-servant : there was 
 very little beauty among them, though some were 
 quite girls, but their countenances were heavy, 
 inanimate, thoughtless, helpless. 
 
 II. — SOCIAL HABITS. 
 
 Hindu morality is quite in keeping with 
 such formal, unspiritual worship, as I have just 
 described : the false, unsettled, and low character 
 of the creed of the people has increased their 
 degradation. An European would not at first 
 sight be struck with their immorality : it re- 
 quires a person to be acquainted with them, in 
 order that he may know their habits, their feel- 
 ings and their thoughts, as exhibited among 
 themselves. In this respect I feel my own 
 ignorance ; I know I have reached but a small part 
 of the depth to which in my acquaintance with 
 
AND SOCIAL HABITS. 
 
 129 
 
 them, I must descend : the result however of my 
 observation I shall here set down. 
 
 A Hindu has occasionally said to me, “ How- 
 ever much our creeds disagree, yet our codes of 
 morality are the same : we like your Ten Com- 
 mandments very much, and you will find very 
 similar ones in our books.” I have acknow- 
 ledged the truth of the last part of the state- 
 ment, but added, “ Yes, but there is not one of 
 our Ten Commandments, the contradiction of 
 which does not find a prominent place in your 
 books : we find there, either justified or com- 
 manded, the worship of many gods, and the 
 adoration of images ; the breach of our third com- 
 mandment is every where spoken of as a method 
 of procuring great merit ; regarding the fourth, 
 of course, there is no notice whatever, favourable 
 or otherwise ; disobedience and lying, under cer- 
 tain circumstances, are commanded ; fornication 
 is expressly allowed, and commended by ex- 
 ample ; murder and covetousness are made out 
 to be very pardonable crimes.” The Hindu has 
 been unable to deny the fact. 
 
 1. Abundant as is deceit in Great Britain, we 
 know little of it till we go to India : there the 
 atmosphere is full of it. Political slaves ever since 
 they had a political existence, the weapon of de- 
 fence of the Hindus is not violence or resistance, 
 but deception and fraud. Lying is forbidden in 
 some parts of the Hindu scriptures, but in other 
 
130 
 
 HINDOO WORSHIP 
 
 parts there are exceptions made to the rule in 
 Jive cases, such as when the matter refers to 
 money, or to a woman, or a man’s own interest, 
 or where his safety is involved, and in short, 
 in every possible case in which a man can be 
 tempted to lie. I was discussing the subject 
 with a very respectable Brahmin, who defended 
 the doctrine that falsehood was allowable in some 
 positions, and added, “ A man was once sent to 
 hell, for not telling a lie.” On my enquiring the 
 circumstance, he said, “ It is related in one of 
 his sacred books, that a certain devotee had re- 
 tired to the forest as an anchorite, and among 
 other restrictive vows, had sworn that he would 
 never tell a lie. It chanced one day that some 
 travellers who were pursued and hard pressed by 
 robbers, fled to the hermit's hut, and begged per- 
 mission to conceal themselves in his little garden. 
 They had scarcely done so, when their pursuers 
 came up and demanded of the hermit if he knew 
 where the travellers were. The hermit con- 
 sidered in himself, “ If I tell them I do not know, 
 I shall be speaking falsely, and break my vow, 
 but if I tell them where their victims are, they 
 will take and kill them.” The alternative was 
 painful, and the hermit decided on speaking the 
 truth : the end was that the travellers were 
 murdered, and the hermit was cast into hell by 
 God for not having told a lie to conceal them.’' 
 
 In daily practice the lies which are told us by 
 
AND SOCIAL HABITS. 
 
 131 
 
 our servants, by our tradesmen, and by our native 
 acquaintances, are numerous and often barefaced. 
 When a man is charged with uttering a falsehood, 
 he is not offended : the term “ liar,” is one of 
 little reproach among them. 
 
 False evidence in the courts of justice is the 
 rule, not the exception. At Masulipatam I have 
 understood that the price of a false witness in a 
 petty case is four-pence or five-pence, that is, 
 about two days’ wages for a labouring man. The 
 universal account which I have received from 
 European judges, is, that they never decide a 
 case according to the statement of the witnesses, 
 and that they pick out the truth of the matter as 
 well as they can from the midst of false evidence. 
 They add, that however good and self-evident a 
 cause a man may have, he is not contented unless 
 he bolsters it up in court with a number of false 
 witnesses. One judge informed me that he had 
 discovered in a town within his jurisdiction, a 
 house where false evidence was systematically got 
 up. If a cause was coming into court of suf- 
 ficient importance, one of the parties would resort 
 to this house, and have his whole case tried in a 
 mock court. One man would sit as judge, others 
 as pleaders : there would be a mock plaintiff and 
 a mock defendant, and the false witnesses who 
 were to give their evidence in the real court, were 
 taught, night after night, to rehearse their tale ; 
 they were cross-questioned, and bullied by the 
 
132 
 
 HINDOO WORSHIP 
 
 mock pleaders, and thoroughly trained till there 
 was no fear of their breaking down when they 
 came before the English judge. And this was 
 notorious among the natives, and habitually 
 practised by the respectable people in the place. 
 
 An instance of this kind occurred lately in a case 
 at Mangalore : a young man of the highest caste 
 and rank and family in the place, had, through the 
 means of the faithful and excellent German mis- 
 sionary of the station, become a Christian and cast 
 off heathenism. His relations were both enraged 
 and grieved ; among other methods, they wished 
 to obtain possession of his person, and compel 
 him to renounce his new religion : he was, how- 
 ever, living in the missionary’s house, and so 
 they sent in a petition to the chief English officer, 
 praying that they might have their young rela- 
 tive delivered into their hands, for (so unblushing 
 was their falsehood) he was under age, and they 
 were his legal guardians. His father-in-law, the 
 Moonsiff of the town, an officer, though not the 
 same in kind, yet in rank quite as high as the 
 Chairman of the county sessions, and several other 
 leading native gentlemen, signed their names to 
 the lying document. It needed only to be an- 
 swered by the young man referring the English 
 collector to the official records of his court, where 
 it was at once seen that he had not only been of 
 age for two years, but as such had been in the 
 habit of transacting public business in the courts. 
 
AND SOCIAL HABITS. 
 
 133 
 
 I merely mention this ease as one on record : 
 similar instances are of daily occurrence. 
 
 2. Connected with falsehood, is bribery. A 
 Native, familiar with the courts of revenue and 
 of justice, told me he knew there was not one 
 native officer in them who did not live by his 
 bribery : “ If I had an appointment/'’ said he, 
 “ worth seven rupees a month, I should make at 
 least thirty-five out of it.” When I asked him 
 whether those who notoriously followed these 
 practices were not infamous in society ; “ So far 
 from that being the case,” he replied, “ there 
 would be more chance of a man getting a bad 
 name who refused bribes, than he who took 
 them.” When I asked him the method by which 
 the various officers in the courts could get people 
 to give them bribes, he said, “ The lowest peon 
 (constable) whose duty consists only in waiting 
 outside the gate, and who gets his poor pay of 
 four rupees (eight shillings) a month, has oppor- 
 tunities of increasing it : he sees some country 
 fellow coming up with a petition, he calls out to 
 him and tells him he won’t let him go in to pre- 
 sent it : the badge of office gives authority to his 
 words, the poor petitioner must slip a few annas 
 into his hand before he can pass. The man w T ho 
 reads the papers aloud to the European judge, or 
 collector, can very easily manage to omit a name, 
 or add a circumstance, or suppress a fact as he is 
 reading the petition, or bill of indictment, or 
 
134 
 
 HINDOO WORSHIP 
 
 other paper, for which he gets well paid by the 
 party who benefits by the fraud. And of course 
 the sheristadar (the highest native officer in the 
 court) has no difficulty about the matter : the 
 English gentleman must frequently refer to him 
 for facts or names of persons, to which he can 
 readily give a colouring, or even a statement 
 altogether false : or he can delay presenting 
 papers of importance until the day on which 
 they are needed is past.” The only doubt that 
 I have in inserting this account is my total want 
 of confidence in the truthfulness of my informant : 
 I seldom believe any account given by a native 
 until corroborated : however, the present case is 
 well borne out by other reports. 
 
 3. The uncleanness of thought and practice 
 among the Hindoos is a subject which cannot be 
 dwelt upon in detail in a Christian land : the 
 comparatively pure tone, even of worldly people 
 in England, could not bear so much as a reference 
 to many of the heathen habits. “ It is a shame 
 even to speak of those things which are done by 
 them.” “ They not only do the same, but have 
 pleasure in them that do them.” 
 
 In conversing with natives of respectability, 
 who have not previously been in the habit of 
 intercourse with Europeans and learnt our feel- 
 ings, I have frequently had occasion to check 
 them, when they were beginning in a most un- 
 blushing manner to speak on subjects which no 
 
AND SOCIAL HABITS. 
 
 135 
 
 decent ears could listen to, or to reprove them 
 for indelicate language. 
 
 The stories in their religious books, which 
 they delight both to hear and to see represented, 
 abound in lasciviousness. Nor are they content 
 with passing representations of them. On the 
 walls of houses in public streets, on the temples 
 in similarly exposed situations, and on their idol 
 cars, are carved groups of figures which are painful 
 to look at. While travelling from Madras to 
 Masulipatam,I stopped one day at Singaraicondah, 
 where there is a pagoda prettily situated on a 
 rocky hill above the village. On going up to see 
 it, I found the whole front of it covered with 
 statues representing the most disgusting scenes. 
 When proceeding on my journey the same even- 
 ing, I overtook, outside the village, a little party 
 of men, apparently of the rank of farmers, and 
 on falling into conversation with them, they said 
 they had been spending the afternoon at the 
 temple. I asked them for what purpose they 
 had gone there, and they told me it was to look 
 at the “fine images on the temple gateway.” 
 And there they had been sitting staring at 
 the vile figures, and filling then’ hearts with every 
 unclean and wicked thought. 
 
 It is to be noticed that not only the people are 
 immoral, for so also are thousands and tens of 
 thousands in our own land, but it is their religion 
 which encourages, patronizes, and incites their 
 
136 
 
 HINDOO WORSHIP 
 
 immorality. The whole caste of dancing-girls is 
 an instance of this : they hold a respectable posi- 
 tion among the lower castes ; marriage is un- 
 known among them, the men are usually idle 
 musicians, the females are born and professedly 
 brought up as courtezans : no shame is attached 
 to them : they are in some sense regarded as 
 holy characters : the Hindoo maintains that they 
 were created by God for this very purpose : they 
 are attached to the pagodas, and form a part of 
 the religious establishment of Hindooism, and no 
 religious procession or festival takes place with- 
 out their presence. At Shrishailam, a temple of 
 great note in the Telugu country a few genera- 
 tions ago, and a great resort of pilgrims, there 
 was an establishment of not less than three hun- 
 dred and sixty houses of dancing-girls. 
 
 I may leave this subject with the single re- 
 mark that it is sickening to contemplate the 
 habitual state of immorality in which Hindoos 
 of all ranks and caste are unblushingly and 
 notoriously living. 
 
 4. Suicide is not an uncommon resource for 
 those who suffer much trouble, or are incited by 
 sudden fits of passion or jealousy. “ I will throw 
 myself down a well,” is not an unfrequent or an 
 unmeaning threat. 
 
 An assistant-collector informed me that when 
 he held an appointment in the Tamil country, 
 numerous cases occurred of child-murder for the 
 
AND SOCIAL HABITS. 
 
 137 
 
 sake of the children’s gold ornaments. A man 
 would find a little child running about a short 
 distance from home, adorned with several shil- 
 lings or even pounds’ worth of jewels in its nose 
 or ears, though perhaps it could not boast of a 
 thread of cloth on its body : he would seize the 
 child, or entice it a little further from home, rob 
 it of its jewels, and throw it into a well. The 
 crime became so common that the government 
 issued an order prohibiting parents from allowing 
 their children to go about with jewels on their 
 persons. 
 
 5. It is Christianity alone which has raised 
 woman to her proper position in society. Among 
 the heathen she always has been degraded, oppres- 
 sed, and employed only as a means of ministering 
 to the wants of the stronger and coarser sex. It 
 is well known that this is the case in India. 
 
 A female’s degradation begins with her birth. 
 A Brahmin especially, on hearing that a daugh- 
 ter is born to him, will lament, “ Alas ! that a 
 son has not been born.” For a daughter cannot 
 perform those rites after death which may give 
 the father’s soul an easy passage through purga- 
 tory, or a higher step in heaven. 
 
 The following stanza was repeated to me by a 
 young Brahmin, as a common saying among his 
 people, and as containing a sentiment in which 
 he concurred : — 
 
138 
 
 HINDOO WORSHIP 
 
 “ Let the tree be born in the forest, 
 
 “ But let not a female be born in the family. 
 
 “ Let the great stones be bom on the hill, 
 
 “ But let not a female be bom in the family. 
 
 “ Let beasts and birds and all be bom, 
 
 “ But let not a female be bom in the family.” 
 
 No females, except the dancing-girls, ever 
 receive any education : I have heard of one or 
 two who could just spell out a few words, or 
 clumsily make a few stitches, but this is the fur- 
 thest limit to which any go, and even this is very 
 rare. On urging a man of caste and family to 
 have his little girls instructed, and offering to 
 have them taught by an English lady, the answer 
 was, “ I dare not begin the custom, it would be 
 a reproach to my family.” Another answered, 
 “ If I educate my daughter, she will then be no 
 better than a dancing-girl.” 
 
 When a man and his wife are travelling, or 
 simply walking along the road, the woman inva- 
 riably walks behind the man, never by his side : 
 if there is a bundle or a child to be carried, we 
 almost always see the woman bearing it. The 
 Hindoos express great astonishment, not unmixed 
 with pleasure, at the respect with which English 
 ladies are treated, and at the equal position in 
 which they stand with their husbands : I have 
 also noticed, especially among the more gentle- 
 manly of the young Hindoos, a gallant behaviour 
 and really respectful manner to an English lady. 
 
AND SOCIAL HABITS. 
 
 139 
 
 It is no reproach to a Hindoo man, to strike a 
 woman. A Hindoo wife does not take meals 
 with her husband, she humbly waits on him, till 
 he has finished. 
 
 Females are married in infancy : among the 
 upper castes it is counted a reproach for a girl to 
 reach the age of seven or eight years without 
 being married : even among the lower ranks, in 
 the poorest and meanest villages, I have frequently 
 seen little naked girls running about who were 
 not seven years old, but yet wore the little plate 
 of gold round their neck, which shewed that they 
 were “ married women.” Among Hindoos I be- 
 lieve there are no unmarried women, except the 
 dancing-girls, or orphans. They are often much 
 amused when I tell them of unmarried ladies in 
 England, of 20, 30, or 40 years of age : “ Why are 
 they not married ? ” they enquire. Marriage, 
 though attended with many expensive ceremonies, 
 is not a religious act, nor is it counted a religious 
 tie. Divorce is not unfrequent, especially among 
 the lower ranks, and is easily managed. On the 
 woman’s part it is very simple : she has only to 
 take off the tali, say she will be wife no longer, 
 and then leave her husband's house. An absence 
 of a few days seals the divorce, and caste strictly 
 forbids the parties living together again as man 
 and wife : a woman who acts thus, is not thought 
 much the worse in consequence : if she goes 
 directly to her parent’s house, she is received 
 
140 
 
 HINDOO WORSHIP 
 
 among her friends and caste-people as respecta- 
 ble : if indeed, she leaves her husband to go and 
 live with another man, she is disgraced, but this 
 is chiefly on the ground that she has contracted 
 a second marriage, a thing strictly forbidden by 
 Hindoo rules under any circumstances. A man 
 cannot so easily divorce his wife : for she can 
 appeal to the neighbours or caste-people, and 
 unless he has some reason sufficient to satisfy 
 them, they will, by the force of public opinion, 
 compel him to take her back again. The form, 
 however, of divorce has the merit of simplicity : 
 he says to her, “You shan’t be my wife any longer, 
 get out with you,” and turns her out of doors. 
 
 The treatment of widows is peculiarly a dis- 
 grace to Hindoo morals. As all women are 
 married when children, and many of them to 
 boys, great numbers become widows in child- 
 hood, and as no widow may under any circum- 
 stances remarry, they form a very numerous 
 class. The feeling against their remarriage is 
 very strong. Some five or six years ago, a rich 
 Hindoo in Calcutta, who had received an English 
 education, and had in consequence partly imbibed 
 English feelings, offered a very large sum, quite 
 a fortune to a Hindoo, to the first native who 
 should marry a widow : fond of money as Hin- 
 doos are, and numerous as is the class of free- 
 thinking natives in Calcutta, I believe that no 
 one has yet come forward to claim the reward. 
 
AND SOCIAL HABITS. 
 
 141 
 
 The following is extracted from an Indian 
 Missionary periodical.* At Calcutta, “ a gen- 
 tleman of the ‘ orthodox , 5 that is, the genuine 
 unsophisticated class of Hindoos, brought before 
 its grand council, the Dharma Sabha, a proposal 
 which shews that ,’ 5 in that city “ orthodoxy is 
 seriously giving way even among the orthodox. 
 He proposed to the meeting, the sanctioning of 
 the remarriage of Hindoo windows. His motion 
 was crushed by an overwhelming number of 
 opponents ; some of whom said, ‘ If you wish 
 our votes, move the restoration of the immola- 
 tion of widows, not the recognition of their 
 remarriage : better far they should die than 
 remarry . 5 55 Immediately after the death of her 
 husband, whether he is a boy or a man, whether 
 she has lived with him or not, the widow is a 
 degraded creature. Her hair is shaved off, her 
 ornaments, and armlets are taken from her, and 
 she resides in her father’s, or father-in-law’s house, 
 as a permitted nuisance. As many of them are 
 young women, and as whole clans of people 
 often live together in the same house, cousins, 
 and second cousins, as well as grandfathers, and 
 fathers, to the number of twenty, thirty, or fifty 
 persons, great immorality is said to exist among 
 
 * “ The Overland Summary of the Oriental Christian Specta- 
 tor,” published in Bombay monthly, hut to be had at J. M 
 Richardson, 23, Comhill, London, price 4s. per annum , is a very 
 useful and well-written compendium of Missionary proceedings 
 in all India. 
 
 N 
 
142 
 
 HINDOO WORSHIP. 
 
 the widows. Od my making enquiries on this 
 subject from a Brahmin, he stated that the con- 
 dition of the widows among the lower castes was 
 very bad, but that in Brahmin families they were 
 respectable ; a short while after, I put the same 
 question to a Sudra man : “ the Sudra widows,” 
 he said, “ are not ill-behaved, but among Brah- 
 mins they are very dissolute/’ 
 
 The following is an extract of a letter from a 
 Missionary in the Tamil country on the subject. 
 “ I asked a Brahmin the other day whether in 
 their regular ablutions three times a day, they 
 were obliged to resort to cold-water-bathing every 
 day, whether well or ill.” “ No/’ he replied, 
 “ not when ill ; they may then bathe at home 
 and use warm water for the purpose ; ” but he 
 added, “ Our widows must go to the river whether 
 well or ill.” “ I said this would be dangerous.” 
 “Yes,” he answered, “but our Shasters (religious 
 books) require it, and they must do so under any 
 circumstances, or they can't come into our 
 houses.” “Well,” I added, “this is too bad ; 
 suppose that they should become worse and 
 die ? ” The Brahmin’s answer to this was, 
 “ What of that? they are hut burdens on society." 
 
 A widow is accounted an accursed being : her 
 calamity is supposed to be the punishment for 
 grievous sins committed in a former state of 
 existence, and thus she is supposed to lie under 
 God’s wrath, and to deserve no other but bad 
 
AND SOCIAL HABITS. 
 
 143 
 
 treatment from man. As her former existence 
 was evil, so the poor widow has to look forward 
 to a worse one ; for her soul after death is sup- 
 posed to become a Pishachi, a sort of demon or 
 hobgoblin, unhappy in itself and creating misery 
 to others. A woman who dies before her hus- 
 band, is counted happy, and supposed to enter 
 into the class of Perentalu or “ good folk.” The 
 sight of a widow is an ill omen : as a man leaves 
 his house in a morning to go about his work, 
 if the first object which meets him should happen 
 to be a widow, he curses her, and turns back 
 again, to leave his house a second time under 
 better auspices. 
 
 When reading with my teacher a book of 
 popular and epigrammatic verses, I noticed a 
 good many terms of abuse, such as “ The man’s 
 an ass.” “You son of a widow,” and the like : I 
 asked my teacher what was the worst term of abuse 
 which one man could use to another; — “Was 
 it rogue, thief, liar, or what was it ? ” “ No,” he 
 said, “ these are abusive terms ; but if you call 
 a man “ a widow,” you can say nothing worse.” 
 
 6. The Hindoos treat the precept of the third 
 commandment in a curious manner. 
 
 An oath is continually on their lips. The 
 “ Per Plerculem,” or “ Jovem,” or y-y A<a of the 
 ancients was not more common. Does a man 
 hear something to astonish him ? with gaping 
 face he exclaims, “ Narayana ! Narayana ! ” one 
 
144 
 
 HINDOO WORSHIP 
 
 of the highest names of deity ; or “ Rama ! 
 Rama ! ” a name of oae of the favourite gods. 
 Is he angry ? he swears “ by God.” Is he in 
 pain ? lie continues exclaiming, “ Swamy ! 
 Swamy ! ” (0 God ! 0 God !) without ceasing 
 and without meaning. 
 
 As we pass along the street, we not unfre- 
 quently hear a man repeating some of the names 
 of his gods, as he walks ; he is doing it to obtain 
 merit. “ He thinks he shall be heard for his 
 much speaking.” Sometimes it is given as a 
 sovereign recipe for the ill effect of past sins, to 
 repeat a god’s name several hundreds of thousands 
 of times. 
 
 A large number of Hindu names terminate in 
 Swamy, “ God ; ” there is Ramaswamy, Venka- 
 taswamy, Krishuaswamy, and many others : of 
 the remainder a majority are also those of their 
 gods. A little dirty boy whom I had in a day 
 school, was called Adi Narayanudu, the highest 
 of the high names (not of any inferior god, but) 
 of the one great supreme God. So the women 
 are called Maha Latchmi, Yellamma, Nagamma, 
 and other names of the goddesses. This is not 
 merely accidental profanity, like the similar use 
 of the name of Jesus among continental Roman- 
 ists, but it is a purposed breach of the priuciple, 
 “ Thou slialt not take the name of the Lord thy 
 God in vain.” For on enquiring the reason, I 
 was told, “ There is great merit acquired by re- 
 
AND SOCIAL HABITS. 
 
 145 
 
 peating any divine name, even thoughtlessly ; so 
 we give the gods’ names to our children, that 
 while we call to them in our daily intercourse 
 with them, we may, without thinking of it, be 
 benefitting ourselves by calling on the god.” 
 
 III. BURNING A DEAD BODY. 
 
 The termination of a Hindu’s sojourn on earth, 
 is a painful one to witness. Some few sects, the 
 members of which are not numerous, bury their 
 dead, but the mass of the people burn them. 
 Children below the age of six or seven are buried, 
 that is to say if their parents are willing or able 
 to pay the few pence to have it done : not seldom, 
 as I was told by an eye-witness, do poor parents 
 take the dead body of their infant, and throw it 
 into the next hedge or waste piece of ground. It 
 has not to wait there : there are too many jackals 
 by night, and hungry pariah dogs, kites and 
 crows by day, to allow any thing to remain twenty- 
 four hours, which they are capable of eating. 
 
 The climate necessitates a speedy burial or 
 burning : the Hindus expedite the matter rather 
 too much : no sooner is the breath out of the 
 body, than it is washed, arranged for the funeral, 
 lifted on a sort of rude bier, and carried away to 
 the bleak burning-ground. Two hours after the 
 moment that the man was alive and moving, his 
 body may be fast becoming reduced to a cinder. 
 
146 
 
 HINDOO WORSHIP 
 
 One evening my walk led me near to a burning- 
 ground, where a body was in the act of being 
 burned ; though I had often seen the bodies as 
 they were carried to the ground for this purpose, 
 and the smoke of the pile at a distance, I had 
 never seen one close at hand, and so went up to 
 witness it. It was a pile of wood, about five 
 feet long, two feet wide, and as many high’; it 
 was already in a blaze, and many of the logs 
 burnt through : in the middle lay the body, that 
 of an old woman, as we soon learnt, of the 
 Vaisya caste, and of a wealthy family. At the 
 one end appeared the round crown of the skull, 
 black, and charred, just projecting from the 
 burning mass; at the other were the black 
 shrivelled feet and ancles appearing beyond the 
 flame. Close by the pile stood an elderly man, 
 who proved to be the brother of the deceased, 
 with a long bamboo in his hand, with which he 
 stirred up the logs, and from time to time gave 
 the black skull a push further into the flame, or 
 broke off the ancles to push them into the fire ; 
 he did this with the composure of a farm-labourer 
 stirring up a pile of burning weeds. About a 
 dozen yards off stood four or five men : one of 
 them was an old Brahmin, who had come to say 
 the charm at the time of lighting the fire, for 
 which he would get a present, and the soul of 
 the deceased would receive benefit ; the others 
 were the grandson and other relatives of the 
 
AND SOCIAL HABITS. 
 
 147 
 
 dead woman : they were talking and chattering 
 just as if it was an ordinary business that they 
 were engaged in ; and when I went to speak to 
 them they shewed no sort of grief or concern. 
 It was now about six in the evening ; the woman 
 had died about two o'clock that afternoon, and 
 as usual, the body had been hurried off to the 
 ground, a rupee and a half (three shillings) 
 worth of wood procured, and then set fire to. 
 “ She was only an old woman," they said ; and 
 when they were asked if they did not dance for 
 joy when their old people died, they laughed and 
 said, “of course they did." After the burning 
 was finished, and the ashes were cool, these rela- 
 tions were to throw the ashes of the body along 
 with those of the wood into the sacred river 
 Godavery, on the banks of which the pile stood. 
 
 On looking back upon what I have written 
 regarding the moral condition of the Hindus, 
 I feel satisfied that I have not stated any thing 
 but what I know, or have the best reason for be- 
 lieving to be true. Missionaries often shrink 
 from the description of the degraded state of the 
 heathen which they may be giving ; but they are 
 reassured by falling back on the memory of what 
 they have witnessed, and on the frequent ac- 
 counts given in Scripture of the same state of 
 things among the same class of people. 
 
 At the same time it is not fair to present the 
 dark side of the picture without calling to mind 
 
148 
 
 HINDOO WORSHIP. 
 
 that there is also a bright one. And here I have 
 pleasure in remembering instances of many vir- 
 tues which have come before my notice. I have 
 seen husbands affectionately attached to their 
 wives, parents dotingly fond of their children, 
 young men paying due respect to their fathers : 
 I have occasionally met with honesty, open 
 dealing, and honourable bearing : I have seen 
 friends walking together who were friends in- 
 deed : I have seen hearty good will and kind- 
 ness, gratitude and attachment to those from 
 whom they have received kindness. Whoever is 
 willing and ready to love the poor Hindoos in 
 spite of their faults and moral degradation, will 
 soon find much in them to love : their Maker’s 
 image is sadly defaced, but it is there ; they are 
 steeped in crime and vice as well as in sin, but 
 they are those for whom Christ endured bitter 
 agony on the cross, and among them are many 
 whom he will bring to his glorious light, and 
 who shall be bright jewels in his eternal crown. 
 We cannot but love those whom Christ has loved, 
 and I feel pleasure in looking to Masulipatam 
 as a place where I not only have very dear and 
 valued Christian friends and fellow countrymen, 
 but where there are not a few whose faces are 
 dark, yet whom I can love almost as brothers. I 
 would that some others of my countrymen could 
 be persuaded to do the same, and to go forth to 
 do God’s work among them. 
 
YI. 
 
 MODE OF CONDUCTING MISSIONARY 
 WORK. 
 
 I have found great difficulty existing in the 
 minds of friends in England, in the way of then- 
 understanding the nature of Missionary work : 
 they know that a Missionary does not stand up 
 in a large gothic church and stone pulpit, and 
 read the prayers and a sermon in a white surplice 
 and black gown, and afterwards go visiting from 
 house to house in his neighbourhood ; but what 
 the Missionary does all day they do not know : 
 nor is it to be expected that they should. I pur- 
 pose therefore to dwell upon this topic. 
 
 I. To commence with the preliminary difficul- 
 ties, which a Missionary in his office of apostle 
 in South India has to encounter, distinct from 
 those which a clergyman in his pastoral office in 
 England meets with ; they are as follows : — 
 o 
 
150 
 
 MODE OF CONDUCTING 
 
 1. The climate is a trying one. Indian heat 
 during the greater part of the year is not relax- 
 ing ; it does not make us languid, nor bear us 
 down with a sense of oppression, as heat in a 
 moist climate does. The heat of the hottest day 
 is rather exciting than otherwise, in consequence 
 of its dryness. The effect of the heat however 
 is such as to fatigue ; we cannot work so long or 
 with so much energy as we might in a cool 
 climate : we are obliged to rest somewhat more, 
 and to be careful not to do any needless work, 
 which by fatiguing, might incapacitate us from 
 performing more important duties. 
 
 The heat of the sun keeps us much more in 
 the house than we should wish to be : A mis- 
 sionary or any one else may brave the midday 
 sun during many months of the year : many 
 sportsmen do so : but it is the worst economy : 
 the sun always has its effect on the English 
 frame ; in many cases very rapidly. From this 
 cause our opportunities of reaching the people 
 are narrowed ; but still they are not few. 
 
 2. The foreign language which has to be ac- 
 quired is a considerable obstacle : it takes much 
 longer time to learn an Indian, than a European 
 language : and this for two reasons, first the 
 w'hole cast of oriental mind is diverse from that 
 of the western nations, and the general resem- 
 blances of the languages, where they exist, are 
 too trifling to be of any assistance ; secondly, we 
 
MISSIONARY WORK. 
 
 151 
 
 have not the same freedom of access to the na- 
 tives. If any one wishes to learn French or 
 German with ease and rapidity, he settles him- 
 self as a boarder in a family and town of the 
 country whose language he desires to acquire ; 
 servants, children, and neighbours, are all his 
 teachers by their conversation ; he sits listening 
 at meal-time to the family circle : in six or eight 
 months he is familiar with the language as far as 
 regards powers of conversation. In India, the 
 Hindoo is very suspicious; caste forbids that 
 free intercourse which we wish to have ; if the 
 nature of a Hindoo house would allow us with 
 safety to live in it, yet no decent Hindoo would 
 live in it with us. We see them in our house, 
 but we do not obtain family intercourse with 
 them. It takes most persons a period of about 
 two years to make a sufficient progress in the 
 language. Nevertheless I find people in England 
 very much overrate this obstacle ; it is one which 
 any man of ordinary powers can and will over- 
 come. It ought not, — as I have sometimes heard 
 of it doing, — to deter men from becoming Mis- 
 sionaries. 
 
 3. A considerable Missionary difficulty lies in 
 the Hindoo character. Weakness and want of 
 moral courage is their characteristic. Custom 
 rules them with a rod of iron. “ Who can go 
 against custom ? ” — is the answer often given. 
 “ We only do as our fathers did, and can this 
 o 2 
 
152 
 
 MODE OF CONDUCTING 
 
 be wrong ? ” is a frequent reply. The two fol- 
 lowing anecdotes, related to me by a Missionary 
 in the Tamil country, will serve as illustrations. 
 “ A few years ago an assistant-collector, who 
 took considerable interest in the improvement of 
 the people of his district, introduced some wheel- 
 barrows as substitutes for the little baskets in 
 which people carry burdens on their heads. The 
 people received the gift without grumbling, but 
 it was not long before they were seen carrying 
 wheelbarrow, contents and all, on their heads, 
 having previously knocked out the wheel as in- 
 convenient.” 
 
 “ The same gentleman on another occasion, 
 stood watching the people at a well drawing up 
 large skins full of water by means of bullocks : 
 he observed however that before the skins reached 
 the top of the well, nearly half the water had 
 run out at the seams, which being sewn on the 
 outside, opened with the pressure. He suggested 
 the reasonable improvement of having the seams 
 sewn on the inside : this method was soon adop- 
 ted, and the water pressing on the seam rather 
 closed than opened it. However the same person, 
 on making another visit to the well not long 
 afterwards, found the old plan restored, the 
 seams outside, and the skins leaking. On en- 
 quiring the reasons why they had given up the 
 improved plan, he was told that if half the water 
 did not run out as the skin came up the well. 
 
MISSIONARY WORK. 
 
 153 
 
 it was too heavy for the bullocks to raise to the 
 top.” 
 
 II. A Missionary’s position may be one of two 
 kinds, each very distinct in character, or it may 
 possess the features and circumstances of both 
 united. 
 
 It may be in an entirely new field, where his 
 work lies exclusively among Heathens : 
 
 Or, it may lie in an old Mission, whei’e he is 
 mainly engaged with Christian converts and 
 catechumens : 
 
 Or, he may have occasion to labour among the 
 Heathen, and at the same time to watch over and 
 feed one or more Christian congregations. 
 
 I shall endeavour to describe the characteristics 
 of the two first positions, and leave it to the 
 reader to imagine the third, as consisting of the 
 others combined. 
 
 A NEW MISSION. 
 
 A single Missionary, or in some cases, two 
 young Missionaries together have to commence a 
 new Mission. Soon after reaching Madras, they 
 proceed to the spot selected by the wisdom of 
 local residents, as that best suited for the pur- 
 pose. They settle themselves there, usually in 
 the immediate neighbourhood of other Europe- 
 ans, and on the outskirts of a large native town. 
 
154 
 
 MODE OF CONDUCTING 
 
 The first thing they have to do, is to devote 
 their whole energies to the acquisition of the 
 language. During the year or two in which they 
 are engaged in this work, they are also becoming 
 acquainted with the climate, and the method of 
 preserving their health, — with the habits and 
 appearances of the different classes of the people, 
 — with their mythology and creed to some extent, 
 — with their style of mind and ways of thiuking 
 — and with other very necessary points of know- 
 ledge. When the young Missionary has acquired 
 a sufficient power of conversing in the native 
 tongue, so as to make himself intelligible, and 
 to understand what is said in ordinary conversa- 
 tion, he commences his work. 
 
 The spheres in which he may employ himself 
 are various. Some imperatively require that he 
 should give much labour and care to them, even 
 to the rest it would be desirable that he should 
 devote a certain share of time and attention ; 
 but it is physically impossible that one or two 
 men can adequately enter upon all those lines of 
 occupation, which would put a Mission into a 
 complete state of efficiency. The consequence 
 is that, by reason of the cold and hard refusal 
 which men in England make, to give their own 
 personal services to do this work of God, almost 
 every Mission is short-handed, and much ground 
 is lost. 
 
MISSIONARY WORK. 155 
 
 1. The Missionary commences by preaching 
 the Gospel in the town or village where he re- 
 sides ; this he does by sallying out of his house 
 at day-break : being yet weak in his conversa- 
 tional powers, he probably selects some part of 
 the town where he will meet quiet simple people. 
 When he arrives at the intended spot, he finds a 
 few men, just rising from the ground where they 
 have been sleeping all night, or creeping out of 
 their houses, rubbing their eyes, or commencing 
 their day’s occupation. He stops to speak to 
 one of them, and opens a conversation upon 
 general topics; other natives who are in sight, 
 or who may be passing that way, stop also, to 
 see the unusual sight of a European speaking to 
 a Hindoo in his own language ; and according to 
 the character of the neighbourhood, he soon has 
 from six to a dozen persons standing round him, 
 listening to him, and entering into conversation 
 with him. Some of these will remain half an 
 hour ; others leave sooner, while fresh ones come. 
 He thus has an opportunity of telling the people of 
 their sins, of Christ, his life, death, resurrection 
 and coming again, and of pardon through his 
 means. He has many questions to answer, and 
 many mistaken ideas to correct. The people 
 have their minds filled with gross and heathen 
 notions, and it is with these that they grasp most 
 inaccurately the Christian truth declared to them. 
 For instance, when I have been speaking of our 
 
156 
 
 MODE OF CONDUCTING 
 
 being received into the family of God, I have 
 found that the impression on my hearers’ minds 
 was, that there was one great god, and a whole 
 family of little gods and goddesses, and that I 
 was telling them we must become one of these- 
 Again, when speaking of Christ as the Son of 
 God, I have been asked, “ Who was his mother ?” 
 meaning, “ since a god was his father, what 
 goddess was his mother ? ” The Missionary 
 remains conversing with the people he meets 
 for an hour or more, according to the season of 
 the year, and then the increasing heat of the 
 sun obliges him to make the best of his way to 
 his house. In the evening, as soon as the sun 
 has descended low enough, he again sallies out 
 to some other part of the town, and spends an 
 hour or two more in a similar way to what he 
 did in the morning. I have usually found more 
 ready and willing hearers at this time of the day. 
 
 I add some specimens of conversations which 
 1 have had on occasions of this kind, the better 
 to illustrate this part of missionary work. 
 
 “ One morning I visited a suburb of the town 
 called Yallandapalim, close behind my house. 
 Here I fell in with two old men, and gained some 
 information from them relative to the village. 
 On enquiring about a little god-house which I 
 had just passed, they told me it belonged to 
 Ganganamma, (i. e. Mother Ganges) : there was 
 also a temple to Siva a little further on, so I 
 
MISSIONARY WORK. 
 
 157 
 
 began to ask them bow it was there were two 
 gods, and whether there were any more. “ No, 
 only those two,” they said : but as I began to 
 enumerate several others, they allowed that there 
 were many gods : by this time about twenty 
 people gathered round us, and I found them all 
 acknowledge the force of the illustration, “ One 
 father of a family, one God of the world.” They 
 also acknowledged with a smile the helplessness 
 of their images : so I told them they must no 
 longer worship images, but turn to the true God. 
 “ How can we do that,” said they, “ for we can- 
 not see him ?” I replied, “Do not people here 
 in Masulipatam write letters to the great people 
 at Madras, whom they have never seen ? ” After 
 a few more words, I called to all present and 
 asked them if they had ever committed sin ; 
 they confassed they had done so. “ Is sin 
 good ” ? “ No.” “ Does God like it ? ” “ No.” 
 
 “ Can a man, stained with sin, go to God ? ” 
 “ No.” “ Where then will he go ? ” “ Down- 
 
 wards to hell.” Then I told them of the horrors 
 and eternity of hell, and asked them how they 
 could get rid of their sin. At this one man 
 exclaimed, “ Who can tell the difference between 
 righteousness and sin ? ” But I stopped his 
 mouth by asking him if lying was a sin. He 
 acknowledged that it was. “ Well, then,” I 
 replied, “ you now know what sin is, and have 
 answered your own question.” Another man 
 
 p 
 
158 
 
 MODE OF CONDUCTING 
 
 said that people committed sin without knowing 
 that it was sin. “ What ! don’t they know that 
 lying is a sin, at the time that they tell lies ? ” 
 “ To be sure they do,” was his reply, and so he 
 was settled. He however said that they must 
 get rid of their sin by doing some meritorious 
 action. So I asked them what man w r as able to 
 do anything meritorious: and illustrated my 
 question by enquiring if they had ever found 
 sweet water come from the brackish w'ells in the 
 neighbourhood : so this point also was settled. 
 I went on to tell them in a brief w r ay, that God 
 himself would take away sin : that he had become 
 incarnate and suffered punishment for our sin in 
 order to remove it. And after a while I came 
 away happy at having had an opportunity of 
 telling them of Christ.” 
 
 “ Another evening I entered the cluster of 
 huts belonging to the Golla people, or cowherds, 
 and found a man who had just finished milking 
 a cow, with an earthen vessel in his hand, con- 
 taining about a quart and a half of milk, which 
 he said w r as the produce of no fewer than eight 
 cows : it was however in the hot season, when 
 pasture is not to be had. I entered into conver- 
 sation with him about his cows and other mat- 
 ters, and presently noticed a little shapeless 
 wooden ornament, hanging to a string of beads 
 round a child’s neck, who stood between his 
 legs. He said it came from Tirapati, which is 
 
MISSIONARY WORK. 
 
 159 
 
 the great place of pilgrimage for all the people 
 of these parts, although it is between 200 an d 
 300 miles distant. He had been there, he said, 
 and brought this back : ‘ they sell such things 
 for a few farthings ; it was a bit of the god’s 
 property, but there was no particular use or vir- 
 tue in it.* ‘ What did you do at Tirapati ? * I 
 asked. He said he had gone there in fulfilment 
 of a vow, to visit the god : he had gone to the 
 temple, and prostrated himself at the doorway, 
 seen the god, made his olfering, and he then 
 came away. I asked him what the god was like : 
 he said he was stout, but not quite so large as a 
 man ; the god had said nothing to him, and he 
 had done nothing, but he was told that at times 
 he ate. He spoke of him as his god, till I be- 
 gan to ask him whether it was an image only, 
 and then he said, ‘ Yes, it is a golden image.* I 
 asked him why he need go so many miles to 
 worship God, who was always present and round 
 about him : on my speaking of God being in 
 every place, he was astonished : this is an unu- 
 sual thing, for the natives commonly chime in 
 with such a statement, though their meaning is 
 that every thing is a piece of God. He acknow- 
 ledged it was not right to pray to an image, and 
 added, ‘ Yes, I must pray to the God who lives 
 in my belly ; ’ by which he meant his own soul, 
 as a piece of God. I afterwards pointed out the 
 love of God towards him, (a thing which he said 
 
160 
 
 MODE OF CONDUCTING 
 
 lie had never before thought of,) both in his out- 
 ward gifts to him, and in the death of Christ for 
 him : this last circumstance interested him, and 
 he said it shewed that God was kind. While we 
 were conversing, several other persons came up, 
 and I turned to speak about the Ammavaru, or 
 village goddess, whose hut or temple was about 
 an hundred yards distant. I said it was only a 
 shapeless stone. ‘ Oh no,’ cried two or three of 
 them, ‘ she has great power : and, as a proof of 
 this, every third year we sacrifice a number of 
 sheep, and offer a great many rupees’ worth of 
 rice to her.’ Another said he had been ill for 
 several years, but was now better, all by the help 
 of the goddess. Another told a story of a sepoy 
 who had wantonly carried off an image of an 
 Ammavaru, and whose sin had been punished by 
 his hut taking fire and being burnt down, while 
 none of his neighbours were injured. I asked, 
 ‘ Why has she not hurt me ? thei’e is an image of 
 the same goddess in Vallandapalim, which I have 
 struck several times on the nose with this very 
 stick which I hold in my hand ; and there is the 
 same goddess in the adjoining hamlet, whose 
 image I have turned upside down and set on its 
 head, while the people of the place looked on and 
 laughed ; and see ! I am no worse for it.’ They 
 said, ‘ Oh, Sir, you are a great person, she is 
 afraid of you : she is the goddess of the black 
 people, she can do nothing to the white people.’ ” 
 
MISSIONARY WORK. 
 
 1C) l 
 
 A Missionary of greater experience and full 
 powers of speaking the native language, instead 
 of confining himself to the outskirts of the 
 town, goes into the most public and crowded 
 parts of it, and there standing in the street 
 addresses the crowds who gather round him. On 
 such occasions he has to encounter cunning, vul- 
 gar, or even impudent and noisy opponents, to 
 deal often with difficult questions, and to defend 
 Christianity from objections brought against it. 
 The Hindu opponent continually endeavours to 
 draw the discussion into wild questions of a 
 metaphysical character, or regarding the uature 
 of the godhead ; if we allow ourselves to be drawn 
 into them, we find ourselves in a quagmire, out of 
 which we cannot come with satisfaction or suc- 
 cess, inasmuch as the disputing parties differ on 
 their first principles. We believe that God is the 
 creator, man the creature ; they state that both he 
 and we are one, that man is an emanation, not a 
 creation : we believe in the holiness of God, they 
 have no objection to state that he both commits 
 and encourages sin ; we speak of all men being 
 of one blood, and possessed of one nature, they 
 regard one part of the human race as of separate 
 origin from the rest, and possessed of as many 
 natures, good and bad, as there are individuals. 
 I need not however give illustrations of discus- 
 sions of this character, as this has already been 
 
162 
 
 MODE OF CONDUCTING 
 
 done with eminent success by Mr. Leupolt, in 
 his recent work.* 
 
 2. A good many Missionaries adopt the plan 
 of erecting chapels in some of the most public 
 places of resort : here they commence with re- 
 ligious worship, and then go on to address the 
 people who have assembled, on the subject of the 
 Gospel. Others make use of their schools for a 
 similar purpose : commencing by addressing or 
 catechizing the little heathen boys, they soon 
 have an audience of the parents or neighbours to 
 listen to them. 
 
 3. The distribution of tracts usually accom- 
 panies these conversations : some Missionaries 
 distribute them by handfulls, and congratulate 
 themselves on the thousands they have given 
 away ; others with more wisdom, give away a 
 single tract at a time, only where there seems a 
 probability of its being valued and read. In the 
 former case, the people often become nauseated 
 with tracts ; we hear of their being used to fold 
 up parcels in the bazaar ; being easily obtained, 
 a few of them only are read. Given with dis- 
 cretion and selection, they form a very useful 
 addition to the Missionary’s preaching. It would 
 not however, be right to estimate the desire for 
 religious instruction by the eagerness of the 
 people for tracts ; if we were to hold out a 
 
 * “ Recollections of a Missionary,” by the Rev. C. Leupolt, 
 Church Missionary at Benares. 
 
MISSIONARY WORK. 
 
 163 
 
 bundle of pictures they would struggle to obtain 
 one with similar or even greater eagerness. 
 
 About a year after we had reached Masuli- 
 patam, we found on a sudden, an extraordinary 
 demand for copies of the Gospel of St. Matthew 
 in Telugu ; and we distributed many of them in 
 the form in which we had them, namely, that of 
 neatly half-bound volumes. We could not un- 
 derstand w^at gave rise to the demand ; we 
 could scarcely suppose it arose from any religious 
 stir among the natives, for as yet we had not 
 begun our work among them. In a short while 
 the motive of the applicants was told to us : 
 they wanted not the Gospel, but the neat book- 
 back which contained it ; they tore out the leaves, 
 and turned the back into a portfolio for holding 
 their own papers. 
 
 There are some tracts for which the natives ex- 
 press a great liking. A certain number of Hin- 
 doos are willing to read tracts : but a serious ob- 
 stacle exists in the Hindoos themselves, to their 
 very extensive distribution. They are a nation 
 capable to some extent of reading, but not a 
 reading nation. There is but little habit of 
 reading among them ; the mass of them have 
 never read a printed book, but only manuscripts ; 
 the few books they do read, are unintelligible 
 poems, which they recite in a chanting tone, and 
 admire chiefly for their rhythm. Whenever I give 
 a stranger a tract, I ask him to commence reading 
 
164 
 
 MODE OF CONDUCTING 
 
 it ; and as soon as lie lias finished a page, I re- 
 quest him to stop, and tell me the meaning of 
 what he has read. Almost invariably the man, 
 without answering my question, begins to read 
 the page over again. The reason of this is, that 
 he acquired as a schoolboy the habit of read- 
 ing without thinking of the sense of what he 
 reads : he consequently needs a second perusal 
 to understand the page he has alrea^Jy read once. 
 
 4. Itinerating in the neighbouring villages is 
 also a part of Missionary work. I am not aware 
 of any Missionary in South India who makes 
 itinerating his chief occupation ; we are all settled 
 in a home, and our home duties occupy the 
 largest charge of our time ; but partly for change 
 of air for himself, partly in order to spread in- 
 formation round about, so that there may be a 
 reaction of the country on the town, as well as of 
 the town on the country, and partly so to preach 
 the Gospel that if there he any poor soul in the 
 villages, who is seriously anxious about his sins, 
 he may not die without hearing of a way of de- 
 liverance, — a Missionary occasionally visits the 
 villages in the neighbourhood, or makes a longer 
 excursion up the country. To conduct an itine- 
 rating Mission, it would be necessary that a 
 small district of country should be selected as 
 the sphere of work, and that three or four Mis- 
 sionaries should devote themselves exclusively to 
 the same district ; so that each village might be 
 
MISSIONARY WORK. 
 
 165 
 
 visited for three or four days at a time, three or 
 four times every year. The necessity of this is 
 obvious, because a single visit only enables the 
 Missionary to convey some very vague notions 
 of Christianity, and unless it is soon repeated 
 the impression is altogether lost, and the whole 
 work has to be begun again from the commence- 
 ment. 
 
 A Missionary excursion into the villages is 
 very interesting : much simplicity and readiness 
 to listen is displayed by the inhabitants ; they 
 have never seen a white face before, except that 
 of the dreaded collector, (who is removed in posi- 
 tion further from them than Queen Victoria from 
 an English beggar,) or that of a young officer on 
 a shooting excursion. To find an Englishman 
 come into the village, capable of speaking their 
 language, is not only a subject of astonishment 
 to them, but appears to them to be an act of 
 condescension. Of course, after a time, this 
 wears off, but at first its effects are marked. 
 
 The Missionary either sends forward his 
 servants with his tents, or moves on the line of 
 high road, and lives in the public bungalows 
 provided for travellers : the former is the best 
 plan, because he is able to place himself so close 
 to the village that the people come readily to 
 him, and his tent is as good as an advertisement 
 of his presence. All the day long he has visitors 
 old and young, and he has opportunities of 
 
166 
 
 MODE OF CONDUCTING 
 
 speaking to them in companies from sun-rise to 
 sun-set. 
 
 The following are accounts of some of the first 
 visits which I paid to heathen villages. 
 
 “ Early in the morning I left the bungalow, 
 and entered the village, purposing to go to the 
 pagodas, and hoping to find some one near them 
 to speak to : but on my way I met a boy, with 
 his palmyra-leaf books under his arm, going to 
 school ; so I made him shew me the way to the 
 Pantaloo’s (schoolmaster) house, where the 
 school was kept. I then set the boys, ten in 
 number, to read, promising to give a book to the 
 one who read best. While they were reading, 
 several persons, on seeing an Englishman, came 
 up, and presently the schoolmaster came out of 
 his house. I began to speak to the people about 
 their idols, asking very gravely whether they 
 ate, smelt, saw, and the like, till they laughed 
 and said they could give me no answer ; there 
 was none of them who attempted any sophistry, 
 and they gave in to all I said. So I passed on 
 to the subject of sin, and asked them if there 
 was any man among them who had never com- 
 mitted sin. They all confessed they had sinned, 
 and then came the question how they could get 
 rid of it, and the statement that unholy men 
 could never be allowed to approach the holy God, 
 followed by the illustration of a boy who has 
 fallen into the dirt, and is not allowed to come 
 
MISSIONARY WORK. 
 
 167 
 
 near bis cleaner friends till he is washed. Then 
 I spoke of the sinful, helpless state of man, 
 illustrated by the fact, that milk, which has been 
 turned sour by lime juice, or tamarinds, is unable 
 to restore its sweet nature, and by the impos- 
 sibility of drawing sweet water out of a salt well. 
 They seemed struck with my speaking of man’s 
 nature as corrupt, but allowed it when I shewed 
 it to them. When I asked them again, how 
 they could get rid of sin, they confessed their 
 ignorance, and asked me to tell them. This I 
 was the more astonished at, as the spokesman 
 was the schoolmaster, who had a character for 
 learning to maintain, both as a brahman and as 
 schoolmaster ; however I was thankful for the 
 opportunity, aud so went through the history of 
 Christ, briefly pointing out bow bis death took 
 away our sins, and his life wrought out righte- 
 ousness for us. The only objection made was 
 this ; when I was speaking of Christ’s immacu- 
 late conception, the schoolmaster asked, what 
 need there was of God’s incarnation ; and he was 
 satisfied when I shewed him that Christ could 
 not have suffered death except as a man. When I 
 had done, they allowed it was “a good way.” 
 I proceeded to impress upon them the great love 
 of Christ to them. As it was becoming hot, I 
 turned to go away, but six or seven of them fol- 
 lowed me, and began to speak about their poverty, 
 “ How could they serve God when they had such 
 
168 
 
 MODE OF CONDUCTING 
 
 difficulty in filling their bellies ? It was all very 
 well for the rich to do so.” So I told them the 
 Gospel was for the poor, and the poor have but 
 little of this world’s goods to draw their affec- 
 tions earthwards. At last the schoolmaster en- 
 quired, what must they do if they believed 
 Christ ? I told them they must leave their old 
 way and walk in Christ’s way.” 
 
 On another occasion I visited a small village near 
 the coast, named Samuldivy. It is inhabited ex- 
 clusively by people of the fishing caste, and con- 
 sists of about twenty or thirty circular thatched 
 huts, crowded close together. I met about a 
 dozen men who were loitering outside the village, 
 and their number was soon inci'eased by as many 
 boys crowding in between them. They told me 
 that though they were all of the fishing caste, 
 only some of them employed themselves in fishing, 
 others went to sea as sailors, while others again 
 exclusively gave their time to agriculture. I 
 asked where the cultivated ground was, and they 
 pointed to the spot on which we were standing, 
 and to other ground further off : it would have 
 made an English farmer laugh to have been told 
 that the thin powdery and dry bed of sand, which 
 had not so much as a weed to adorn it, was to 
 produce crops : but so it was, from July onwards 
 they would obtain crops of grain, oil-plant, and 
 other dry grains. They told me that they had 
 no temple in the village, but that their village- 
 
MISSIONARY WORK. 
 
 169 
 
 goddess’ house was in another village a mile off : 
 that their god was Narasimlia-swamy, (Yishnu) 
 whose pagoda was ten miles off. “ Are there 
 then no prayers offered up in this village, no 
 worship paid to any god, at any time ? ” “No, 
 none.” I asked them to whom they ought to 
 pray : at first they did not know or understand, 
 but presently they answered that they ought to 
 pray to the Supreme God, while they acknow- 
 ledged they had never yet done so. While I 
 spoke to them on some of the chief religious 
 topics, they listened attentively and seriously, 
 and a few assented with much interest to what I 
 said. One of them however suggested the com- 
 mon excuse, “ I have got no sense : what you 
 say will do for people of understanding; what 
 can I know about it ? ” I reminded him that 
 God had given him sense for the very purpose of 
 comprehending these things, and not only that 
 he might employ it in catching fish : for that the 
 seagulls had sense enough for this, and his sense 
 was greater, it was man’s sense. They were 
 pleased with this : and I spoke to them for some 
 time about God’s mercy as shewn by Christ 
 dying to take away our sins, and urged them to 
 begin to pray that very night. When I found 
 that they agreed to do so, I added, “ Let us then 
 pray while I am here,” and I bid them follow me 
 in their minds and pray as I prayed : then, as I 
 stood, I prayed aloud to God to renew their 
 
170 
 
 MODE OF CONDUCTING 
 
 hearts, to take away their sin, and to have mercy 
 upon them : they behaved very quietly and reve- 
 rently, and one man grunted assent to each of 
 the short clauses of the prayer. It was doubt- 
 less the first prayer offered to God in that place 
 since the world began : may it not be the last ! 
 They promised that they also would pray ; one 
 of them suggested it was growing dark for my 
 finding my way home ; but I told them it did 
 not matter, for God had sent me from Europe 
 just for the purpose of telling them these things. 
 They were astonished at this, and added, “ Then 
 tell us something more : ” so I went on to speak 
 more in detail about Christ ; they expressed great 
 wonder at hearing of his resurrection. I pre- 
 sently came to speak about the forsaking the 
 true God to worship the false gods : they did 
 not at all defend the village- goddess, but one of 
 them himself suggested that she w r as no better 
 than a ddyam, or hobgoblin. I told them that 
 their Narasimha-swamy was just the same : they 
 wondered at this, but did not deny it, though 
 they asked me further about it. I referred to 
 the helpless image which was incapable of doing 
 any thing, and they soon allowed that he was no 
 god. One of the party, with a good deal of 
 interest in his manner, then asked what I could 
 say about Venkateshwaralu, down in tfie south 
 at Tirapati. I said he was one of the same kind ; 
 “ Is he really ? Then why do the East India 
 
MISSIONARY WORK. 
 
 171 
 
 Company people give him rupees ? ” I could 
 only speak the truth, and say “ The Company 
 people have been foolish ; however, of late years 
 they have got more sense, and have begun to 
 think that the idol is a very silly thing to pay 
 money to, and that it is wicked to worship it, and 
 they have left off paying it.” I could not judge 
 how far the party got the ideas into their heads 
 which I endeavoured to impart, but one of them 
 continued to repeat several times. “ It is right 
 to pray to the true God : ” others began to prove 
 to each other that the village goddesses were not 
 divine, “ Look,” said one, “ every village has a 
 different god, and how does that agree with what 
 we say, that God is one ? ” 
 
 The Hindoos almost always argue by illustra- 
 tion : to meet them we must either unravel their 
 illustration, or bring a counter one to oppose it. 
 There is this facility in doing so, that their illus- 
 trations are not their own, but are handed down 
 from father to son ; they are consequently limited 
 in number, and are often repeated ; so that we 
 are able to have our answers ready prepared 
 before-hand. 
 
 One very common argument is this, “ God has 
 made different religions for different races : the 
 Mahommedan religion for the Musselman, the 
 Roman for the Roman, the Christian for the 
 Englishman, and the Hindoo religion for us : we 
 are each to walk in the various ways of our res- 
 
172 
 
 MODE OF CONDUCTING 
 
 pective nations : our religions are so many diffe- 
 rent roads to heaven. Do you not know that 
 there are two roads from here to Madras ? If you 
 go the direct road, by the coast, and I go by the 
 Guntoor rood, though our paths have been diffe- 
 rent, our end will be the same. So there are 
 many roads to heaven.” 
 
 Another is this, “ The earth-beetle burrows 
 aud lives in the soil, it is always passing through 
 it, yet it is never contaminated by the dirt, and 
 it preserves its bright shining coat : therefore, 
 the soul of man, which is divine, may dwell in 
 the midst of worldly concerns, mix in sin, and 
 yet remain un defiled.” 
 
 Again, “ Ghee (i. e. prepared butter) and 
 butter are not the same, yet the one is contained 
 in the other, and air and water are different from 
 each other, yet one of them is produced from the 
 other, therefore, God, or the divine soul, may 
 dwell in a sinful man, as a part of him, and yet 
 not be implicated in his sin.” 
 
 Again, “ Quicksilver will lie in most intimate 
 contact with other substances, but will, under no 
 circumstances, mix with them, therefore, the 
 divine soul lives in most intimate connection with 
 the frame of man, but is not mingled with it.” 
 
 5. The Missionary has enough to occupy the 
 whole of the time between his early morning 
 work and his evening expedition. He has his 
 servants to collect together, and with them the 
 
MISSIONARY WORK. 
 
 173 
 
 children in his compound-school, (that is, the 
 school attached to his house ;) and to address 
 them at morning-worship. He has his own 
 studies to prosecute in the native language, and 
 after his knowledge of it is adequate for the pur- 
 pose, he has to spend much time in labours of a 
 literary character, preparing a translation or im- 
 proved version of the bible, tracts or small books. 
 He may frequently receive native visitors, and 
 find opportunities of conversing with them on 
 religious topics ; they are either young men who 
 come to gain his favour or obtain something from 
 him, or respectable men, who, knowing that he is 
 on good terms with the European judges and 
 officers, think that it is well to be on good terms 
 with him. He also has occasionally to make or re- 
 ceive calls from his fellow-countrymen, and some- 
 times to spend an evening with them, and enjoy, 
 it may be, profitable Christian intercourse with 
 some of them. 
 
 6. The plan of small schools for instruction in 
 the native language, either in the town or neigh- 
 bouring villages, used to be carried out exten- 
 sively in many missions, but it is less so now. In 
 a new mission, if a school of this kind is to be set 
 up, the mission schoolmaster must be a heathen ; 
 it is only occasionally that a Christian by profes- 
 sion could be found to occupy the place. The 
 advantage to be looked for consists in the hea- 
 then master teaching the boys to read in the 
 Q 
 
174 
 
 MODE OF CONDUCTING 
 
 Bible : as the habitual plan of a native school- 
 master is to teach reading without understanding, 
 this advantage is of a limited nature. Such a 
 school indeed sometimes affords a good begin- 
 ning for a missionary’s own exertions in any 
 neighbourhood, and if he had time to visit each 
 school frequently, so as both to see that the chil- 
 dren understood what they read, and also to give 
 them religious instruction himself, such a school 
 might be of very great value ; but where there 
 are twenty schools, and the one Missionary 
 has his hands fully occupied in other ways, the 
 school is barely worth its expence and the labour 
 bestowed upon it. This is a plan which often 
 makes us lament the insufficient number of Mis- 
 sionaries : for want of more men this important de- 
 partment in a new mission must be altogether 
 given up, or conducted in a manner productive of 
 little good. A few instances have occurred in which 
 the schoolmaster has been converted to Christ- 
 tianity, by the books put into his hands and by 
 his intercourse with the Missionary ; but the 
 cases where direct effects have appeared among 
 the many boys in such schools, are very rare. 
 
 7. In all the above departments the Mis- 
 sionary’s work is done entirely through the 
 medium of the native language. They may be 
 called collectively one of the arms of the mission, 
 — the other is the English School. 
 
 There are some Missions where the whole 
 
MISSIONARY WORK. 
 
 175 
 
 strength is devoted exclusively to this depart- 
 ment, they are one-handed Missions, and always 
 seem to be experiencing a considerable want. 
 In others the department has been entered on 
 with insufficient instruments, and has conse- 
 quently failed. It is one which must be efficiently 
 conducted, or it will be of no use. 
 
 Since the introduction of the English language 
 into public and official transactions, there has 
 been a great demand in tbe government courts 
 for natives who have some knowledge of our 
 language. As an appointment under government 
 is the one object of ambition in every Hindoo's 
 mind, there has grown up in the large towns, an 
 exceeding craving for English instruction. It is 
 not a desire for English literature, knowledge, 
 or religion ; but the English language is the 
 high road to preferment, and accordingly a Hindoo 
 will do any thing or suffer any thing to acquire 
 it. From our first going to Masulipatam, we 
 were beset by entreaties on the part of fine young 
 men to teach them English ; we daily had young 
 visitors begging for an English book, or asking, 
 “ Please, master, to correct this exercise/' or 
 “ Please, master, to set a copy." It is to Dr. 
 Duff, of the Scotch Free Kirk, that the honour 
 is due of being the first to make use of this 
 desire for Missionary purposes. The success has 
 been great and decided. 
 
 The objects in view are twofold, 1. By this 
 Q 2 
 
176 
 
 MODE OF CONDUCTING 
 
 school the Missionary is able daily to preach the 
 gospel to a number of young men of the higher 
 ranks : by it he reaches the rich, with whom he 
 would find it difficult to have much intercourse 
 by other means. The Missionary engaged in the 
 streets and villages influences the lower and 
 middle ranks ; the upper classes must be influ- 
 enced through an English school. 2. Again it 
 is hoped, and the hope has never yet proved 
 vain, that it may please God to convert the hearts 
 of some of the young men, who in the school 
 are daily having the Scriptures opened to their 
 understanding, and pressed upon their con- 
 sciences by those teachers whom they have early 
 learnt to love and to value. And from these it 
 is further hoped, that some may be chosen to be 
 Missionaries and schoolmasters to their own 
 countrymen. Sincere, because they have given 
 up all that is dear in life to cling to Christ ; wise, 
 because they have received an education such as 
 all the teaching of their most learned country- 
 men could not impart; vigorous, because with 
 Christian truth and English literature, they have 
 imbibed also a spirit of English energy, — they 
 will be suitable, so far as men can judge of 
 qualifications, to be the commencement of that, 
 whose place nothing else can supply, a native 
 ministry. 
 
 In the present movements in India, and in the 
 prospective changes to be produced by railroads, 
 
MISSIONARY WORK. 
 
 177 
 
 the Hindoos will not remain contented with their 
 own learning ; they will have English instruction : 
 if the Missionary cannot give it to them, they 
 will seek it from infidel or irreligious sources. 
 The one cause, which prevents Missionary Socie- 
 ties from entering in at this wide door which is now 
 opened to them, is the want of men and money. 
 What Society dares to commence an extensive 
 system of Missionary schools, each of which 
 must be superintended by an educated English 
 Missionary, at the time when its existing Mis- 
 sions can barely be supplied with enough men 
 to fill up the vacancies which occur ? 
 
 In our English school at Masulipatam, which 
 is at present conducted by the Rev. Robert 
 Noble, and two valuable country-born assistants, 
 there is a limited number of from sixty to seventy 
 young men, whose ages vary from fifteen to 
 twenty-five. If the number of teachers was en- 
 larged, so that the limit could be extended, and 
 yet Christian teaching be communicated, the 
 school would in a few days contain more than an 
 hundred pupils. They are young men, who 
 from the position in society of their families, and 
 from the education which they are receiving, will 
 in a few years take the lead among the natives of 
 the town and neighborhood : most of them are 
 fine, intelligent, industrious young men, whom 
 it is a pleasure to teach, and towards whom our 
 affections are readily drawn. They all have a 
 
178 
 
 MODE OF CONDUCTING 
 
 little knowledge of English previously to entering 
 the school, where they receive instruction in the 
 grammar and elements of the language, in history, 
 geography, arithmetic, and Euclid : the Scrip- 
 tures form the chief book, and the Scripture 
 lesson is not only the most regular and important 
 one of the day, but, I believe the one best liked 
 by the pupils. They write short themes in Eng- 
 lish, draw maps, and translate from one language 
 to another. The school is yet in its infancy ; 
 the limit of the education given in it will be only 
 that of the powers of the teachers ; it soon will 
 be, as similar schools already are, analogous to 
 our English public schools. The desire to ob- 
 tain admission into the school is very great : 
 there is a long list of candidates for the next 
 vacancies, which would be longer, but that many 
 do not put down their names through mere hope- 
 lessness. Many a promising young man has 
 called on me, to gain favour with me, in order 
 to obtain from me a recommendation to my col- 
 league for admission into the school, thinking 
 that, as among the natives every thing goes by 
 interest, my recommendation will supersede the 
 rule of the school. 
 
 Such a school requires the undivided attention 
 and the entire strength of one or two Missiona- 
 ries : it is a place of exceeding promise, it is a 
 noble sphere of daily preaching Christ to willing 
 hearers, it possesses an interest which few Eng- 
 
MISSIONARY WORK. 
 
 179 
 
 lish schools can have, for whatever is done in it 
 will have effect upon millions, and during cen- 
 turies, and that probably in a visible manner. 
 
 AN OLD MISSION. 
 
 * 
 
 In attemp^ng to describe the state of a South 
 Indian Mission which has been established for 
 several years, and on which God’s blessing has 
 rested, so that not only many individuals, but 
 many congregations are formed within its circle, 
 I cannot do better than refer to the Mission 
 which is most conspicuous in all India, the 
 Tinnevelly Mission. The account of an eye- 
 witness, though not a worker in that sphere, may 
 have its value, however liable to inaccuracies. 
 
 A few neglected Christian villages existed in the 
 Tinnevelly district, from the close of last century : 
 the present Mission takes its date from the year 
 1820, when the Church Missionary Society sent 
 thither Mr. Rhenius and Mr. Schmidt. Down 
 till about the year 1834, the plan of Mr. Rhenius 
 and his three or four companions, was to have 
 Palamcottah, the chief European town of the dis- 
 trict, as their head-quarters, and to make itinera- 
 ting excursions up and down the district, either to 
 preach in heathen villages or to watch over and 
 instruct Christian congregations. Up to that 
 period about 12,000 Hindoos had from one cause 
 
180 
 
 MODE OF CONDUCTING 
 
 or another, put themselves under Christian in- 
 struction, of whom a small proportion were bap- 
 tized, and professed themselves to be Christians. 
 
 Since that date the district has been subdivided 
 into smaller parts, and the Society for Propaga- 
 ting the Gospel has strengthened its Mission 
 there, an$ has joined the Church Missionary 
 Society in carrying on the good # work in that 
 neighbourhood. At present (1846), there are 
 fifteen ordained Missionaries in connection with 
 the Church Missionary Society, and five in 
 connexion with the Society for Propagating the 
 Gospel. With the exception of two or three who 
 are engaged in educational departments, or who 
 are preparing for future work by learning the 
 Tamil language, each Missionary of both Societies 
 has a distinct district entirely under his own 
 charge, and separate in every respect from that of 
 his neighbour. 
 
 The Missionary district of Tinnevelly is an 
 irregular triangle, of which the longest part 
 is about 110 or 120 miles in length, and the 
 widest about ninety. The subdivisions of it, 
 each of them under the care of a single Mission- 
 ary, are also irregularly shaped, and vary from 
 ten to twenty miles in length and breath, one or 
 two being still more extensive. Each district 
 contains numerous heathen villages, and from 
 twenty to forty others, which are inhabited either 
 wholly or in part by Christians or catechumens. 
 
MISSIONARY WORK. 
 
 181 
 
 Each village containing such is under the charge 
 of a native catechist or teacher ; it possesses a 
 church of mud, brick, or stone, and usually 
 boasts of a boy’s school and master : it is one 
 of the brightest features of the Mission, that 
 many of the villages possess also a girl’s school. 
 These villages vary greatly in size, from the little 
 hamlet to the important village of 1000 or 1500 
 inhabitants. The entire number of Hindoos who 
 have come over to the Missions of both Societies 
 is above 40,000, of whom about 15,000 have 
 been baptized ; the remainder are either not suffi- 
 ciently desirous of the rite, or have not attained 
 to the amount of knowledge required by the Mis-^ 
 sionaries. 
 
 As the work of all the Missionaries is much 
 alike, the description of the proceedings of one 
 will be sufficient. 
 
 The Missionary lives with his family in a 
 comfortable house, somewhere about the centre 
 of his district. At the commencement of the 
 month he begins his circle of visits. Leaving 
 his home on horseback before day-break, he rides 
 over to the village which he intends to visit ; as 
 he approaches it about sunrise, he hears the 
 sound of the drum, which from the inside of the 
 church is calling the inhabitants of the village 
 to morning prayers. The drum being made out 
 of the boll of a palmyra-tree, with a sheep-skin 
 stretched across it, costs nothing but labour, a 
 
182 
 
 MODE OF CONDUCTING 
 
 bell costs money ; and hence the preference for 
 the former. Soon after he has entered the little 
 church, it is more than half filled by the catechist, 
 schoolmaster, and boys and girls from the school, 
 who sit in the front row, by a number of women 
 with their little children seated on the floor on 
 one side, and a smaller number of men on the 
 other. The majority of the male inhabitants of 
 the village, have gone out to their work at a still 
 earlier hour. They then have morning service, 
 consisting of portions of the liturgy, a psalm or 
 two, and a chapter of the Bible, followed by a 
 short address or exposition from the clergyman. 
 Of course on such an occasion there do not exist 
 the forms of surplice, reading-desk and pulpit. 
 When the morning service is over, the Missionary 
 looks over the catechist’s list of attendants at 
 daily service : makes enquiry about, or reproves 
 the negligent, and enters into any ecclesiastical 
 or spiritual subjects which arise. As the congre- 
 gation is going away, he has a few words with 
 some of them, and perhaps he has to converse 
 with, or examine, some candidates for baptism or 
 the Lord’s Supper. By the time this is finished, 
 he has to prepare for and to take his breakfast. 
 The church forms his house for the day : he 
 occupies the hot hours of it by calling before 
 him for examination the village-school, by going 
 out into the village to visit the sick and other 
 persons, and by conversation and enquiry from 
 
MISSIONARY WORK. 
 
 183 
 
 the catechist regarding the affairs of the village. 
 He has enough to occupy him actively till late 
 in the afternoon, when, unless the village be a 
 large and important one, he rides over to some 
 other village and spends the evening in a similar 
 way there, to that in which he spent the morn- 
 ing. The history of one day is that of the 
 greater portion of the month : in this way he 
 visits and supervises each village under his charge 
 once in the month. Of the Sundays he spends 
 some at home, and some at one of the larger vil- 
 lages in his district, where from time to time the 
 Lord’s Supper is celebrated : he is at home also a 
 week or ten days out of the month ; during which 
 time he requires some rest after the fatiguing 
 work of visiting the villages ; and he also collects 
 all the catechists of his district, from twenty to 
 forty in number, around him for their instruction, 
 and for more minute enquiry regarding their 
 conduct, and the state of their congregations. 
 The village adjoining his house, also receives a 
 share of his attention, and he has to take the 
 charge, both as Treasurer and Secretary, of the 
 various charitable societies of his district, the 
 Poor-fund, the Catechist’s Widow Society, the 
 Book and Tract Society, and the Church Building 
 Society, all of which are mainly supported by the 
 congregations. 
 
 The Missionaries lament their more direct want 
 of pastoral work, which is of course unattainable 
 
184 
 
 MODE OF CONDUCTING 
 
 in so large and scattered a sphere ; they state that 
 they have but few and casual opportunities of talk- 
 ing to heathens, for their whole time is occupied 
 with their own people. 
 
 The Catechists form a large class, amounting 
 to 300 or 400 persons : they are all natives ; 
 varying greatly in their amount of education, in 
 their abilities, and in their Christian character. 
 Those who have received the best education are 
 they who have spent some years in the preparandi 
 class ; that is, in the little class of young men, 
 whom some of the Missionaries keep about them, 
 whose studies they direct, and to whom they give 
 a portion of their own time when at home; and 
 who had previously been brought up as boys in 
 the seminary at Palamcotah, where a more regular 
 and higher education, including some knowledge 
 of English, is given them by the Missionary who 
 devotes his whole time and strength to them. 
 
 A Catechist resides in the village inhabited by 
 the congregation under his spiritual care : it is 
 his duty to assemble the people, who consist of 
 about one-third Christians, and the rest catechu- 
 mens, for morning and evening sendee daily : he 
 conducts the service, expounding to them or cate- 
 chizing them : he has to look after the school, to 
 visit the sick, to teach the catechumens to say the 
 catechism inquired to be learnt : this he does by 
 word of mouth, for it is but a very small number 
 of the adults who are able to read. On Sundays he 
 
MISSIONARY WORK. 
 
 185 
 
 reads the greater part of the service and preaches 
 to the people ; sometimes reading a sermon pro- 
 vided by the Missionary, more frequently one of 
 his own composition. He performs the service 
 over the dead, he has to report all irregularities 
 to the Missionary, and is responsible to him in 
 every particular, being liable to dismissal by 
 him for any grievous fault or evident inefficiency. 
 
 Besides the seminary above mentioned, at 
 Palamcottah, which is intended for the instruction 
 of Christian boys, there is a similar one at Saw- 
 yerpooram, under the Missionary of the Society 
 for the Propagation of the Gospel : and there has 
 been recently established by the Church Mis- 
 sionary Society, an English school, of the character 
 I have before mentioned, when speaking of a new 
 Mission, which is particularly intended for the 
 heathen inhabitants of the town of Palamcottah. 
 
 Fuller details of the style of work in an old 
 Mission, will be found in the second part of that 
 very interesting and peculiarly faithful little book, 
 “ South Indian Sketches/’ * 
 
 The larger number of Missions in South India 
 partake more or less of two kinds of work which 
 I have described ; some require the larger portion 
 of a Missionary’s time to be given to the Chris- 
 tians, others leave more of his time for his 
 evangelizing the heathen, while the Christian 
 
 * “ South Indian Sketches by S. T.” Pajts I. and II. pub- 
 lished by Nisbet. 
 
186 
 
 MODE OF CONDUCTING 
 
 congregation still takes some of his time and 
 much of his interest. 
 
 The whole department of female improvement 
 I postpone to another place. 
 
 In reviewing the difficulties and discourage- 
 ments of a Missionary in South India, I feel it 
 to be my own impression, and I believe it to be 
 the impression of most other Missionaries, that 
 the chief difficulty arises from the very insufficient 
 number of Missionaries in any given sphere ; the 
 chief and peculiar discouragement is the indif- 
 ference which our brethren in England shew to- 
 wards this want ; we have to wait year after year 
 to no purpose, sometimes seeing our little number 
 smaller at the close than at the beginning of the 
 year, sometimes increased by an accession of only 
 two or three in a year throughout the whole 
 country. 
 
 That our English clergy can conscientiously 
 leave one, or at most two of their brothers in 
 God’s ministry, to stand up in the midst of hun- 
 dreds of thousands of heathens, as the only and 
 the weak advocates of Christ’s Gospel, and this 
 too when many of them are spending their lives 
 and their strength in quiet country villages, with 
 only 600 or 1000 souls under their care, is a 
 painful circumstance. That they can bear to see 
 their fellow-ministers labouring beyond their 
 strength, in cultivating the ground in Tinnevelly 
 already prepared, and see the heathens coming 
 
MISSIONARY WORK. 
 
 187 
 
 over annually sometimes by thousands, while there 
 is no one to teach them or superintend the native 
 catechists, who, without supervision are but of little 
 use, and yet shelter themselves in their country 
 villages behind the pretext of our crowded Eng- 
 lish towns, is also painful to contemplate, both 
 in regard to themselves and to the heathen. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
VII. 
 
 FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 The state of the female population in any coun- 
 try is of the greatest importance. Not only do 
 the females form half of the entire population, 
 that is 65 millions out of the 130 of all India, 
 but their influence is greater upon the remaining 
 portion, than that of the men on each other. 
 The first impressions on a child’s mind are inde- 
 libly made by its mother ; a boy’s sisters exercise 
 an unavoidable influence upon him ; the wife, 
 whether she be an equal or a slave, cannot but 
 produce great effects upon her husband. All 
 this influence works for good or evil, according 
 to the state of the women at large. Where the 
 females are degraded, the men must by conse- 
 quence grovel : where the women remainhea- 
 thens, the men cannot be Christians. The 
 
 K. 
 
190 
 
 FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 attempt to carry on a mission in which the 
 female population was altogether neglected, would 
 be like endeavouring to make a rope of sand. 
 
 The best preface to an account of missionary 
 exertions among females in South India, is a 
 description of the state of the heathen females. 
 Their position in society, and the opinion of the 
 male sex regarding them, has been already men- 
 tioned : I purpose in the following pages to give 
 the best picture that I can of the state of Hindoo 
 women, drawn from my observation and experi- 
 ence ; but I will first mention that many of the 
 habits of social life among the Hindoos, tend 
 naturally to prevent that domestic intercourse 
 which is so important to the well-being of society. 
 For instance, not only are the women excluded 
 from taking their meals with their husbands or 
 sons, but the men themselves have no fixed time 
 for their food ; each takes it when he likes, and 
 endeavours, while eating it, to conceal himself as 
 much as possible ; he never converses while 
 eating, partly that the food may not get cold, 
 but partly from some superstitious feeling.' 
 
 It is perhaps a fact worth recording, that many 
 of the most prevailing superstitions among the 
 Hindoos are the same as those of uneducated 
 persons in European and Christian lands, and 
 seem to point to one common source. They live, 
 for instance, in continual dread of the influence 
 of the evil eye, (or “ Drishti,” as they call it) to 
 
FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 191 
 
 injure the objects they most value and admire : 
 they think the sight of the new moon an omen 
 of good luck, and they believe in the presence of 
 “ Pishachis,” or hobgoblins, which makes them 
 afraid to venture out of the house in the dark. 
 
 The minds of the females in the lower classes 
 are so degraded and stupified, that they seem to 
 have few or no ideas on the subject of religion 
 beyond these and similar superstitions and fears ; 
 but those of the more respectable classes add to 
 these a number of other equally absurd fancies, 
 all connected with their religious belief. 
 
 To mention a few of these ; they speak of the 
 sky as the interior of a stone mountain, and say 
 that thunder is caused by the rattling of the 
 chariots of their gods as they drive over it, and 
 that lightning is the flashing of their wheels 
 against the stone, though they do not explain 
 how this can be seen through the stone. The 
 wind is, according to them, occasioned by a god 
 waving his hand, and if he uses both hands it 
 produces a storm enough to shake the earth ; the 
 clouds are living beings, and they come down on 
 the hills for the purpose of feeding; an eclipse 
 is occasioned by a large snake-god eating up the 
 sun or the moon. Both of these are considered 
 as inferior deities, and when the moon sets they 
 will say, “ He is gone to his mother,” but who 
 his mother is does not appear. 
 
 They attribute a degree of deity to many other 
 
192 
 
 FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 inanimate things, speaking of the earth as a god, 
 and declaring that it has been heard to speak, 
 and on certain occasions to laugh ; the bushes, 
 too, must not be beaten, as they suffer pain when 
 any of their leaves are knocked off. 
 
 The Hindoos are very fond of sandal-wood, of 
 which, however, they know nothing, except that 
 it comes from a far distant country, where there 
 is one large tree of it, which no one can reach, 
 on account of the number of snakes and Pishachis, 
 which are attracted by the delicious scent. The men 
 who go to procure the wood are, they say, obliged 
 to content themselves with trees of other species, 
 which, by growing in the neighbourhood of the 
 great tree, have become impregnated withits odour. 
 
 Brahma is supposed to write every man’s lot, 
 and the length of his life, on his forehead as 
 soon as he is born, and at the same time he takes 
 a slip of a palmyra-leaf, (the Hindoo substitute 
 for paper,) and putting it behind his back, writes 
 these circumstances upon it : when the number 
 of days is expired, he breaks the leaf, and the 
 man dies ; hence the common expression, “ His 
 leaf is broken,” meaning, he is dead. Brahma 
 is said to write with his hands behind him, lest if 
 he wrote in front, so as to look at it, he should be 
 moved with pity at thinking how short the man’s 
 life was to be, and should lengthen it indefi- 
 nitely. He lays up these records of men’s lives 
 on the sky-mountain. 
 
FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 193 
 
 Beyond the Himalaya mountains they place 
 their Devaloka, or “ world of Gods.” Man has 
 never penetrated thither, for the mountains are 
 an insurmountable, as well as invisible, barrier. 
 
 Below the earth is the Naga-loka, or snake- 
 world, all these snakes are governed by a king 
 called Nageshwara (lord of snakes); they are 3600 
 miles in length, and occasionally raise themselves 
 on their tails and wave their heads round in a circle 
 of 200 miles in diameter ; picking up sheep, and 
 whatever else may fall in their way. They believe 
 also in beings half men, half snakes, who live in 
 the water and are very good and benignant. 
 
 Those females who are raised above the neces- 
 sity of daily labour, pass a considerable portion 
 of their time in repeating or listening to these 
 and similar legends ; the rest of the day they 
 spend in sleeping and eating, except that the 
 younger ones amuse themselves with some pet 
 animal, while the elder women play at some 
 game of chance; but any useful employment, either 
 for mind or body, seems unknown among them. 
 
 Their religious worship consists chiefly in at- 
 tending occasional festivals in honour of their 
 gods. On some of these occasions they rise 
 before day-break, and make an early meal, after 
 which they must not eat all day. Sometimes a 
 whole day is passed in swinging, of which they are 
 very fond, till it is dark ; at others they take the 
 deity in whose honour the feast is held (on one occa- 
 
194 . 
 
 FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 sion it is the stones theyusefor grinding theircurry- 
 powder !) and worship it, after which they feast. 
 
 The whole body of Hindoo females are de- 
 graded, uneducated, more ignorant even than the 
 men, and more attached to the grovelling super- 
 stitions and religious rites of the nation. 
 
 In order to convey the light of Christian 
 truth to females in so benighted and degraded a 
 state, there is no other method, which, so far as I 
 know, either has been or can be put in force, ex- 
 cept that of giving a Christian education to them 
 when girls. English ladies in general see no- 
 thing of Hindoo women, except their own servants; 
 even if they did see them, little would be gained, 
 for without a knowledge of their language, inter- 
 course with them would be limited to signs. It 
 might be supposed that the wives of Missionaries 
 would find access to the native ladies in their own 
 houses ; but this is very rarely done, for oppor- 
 tunities occur but seldom. I have known en- 
 deavours to this end thwarted by the objection, 
 
 “ We should be very glad to see Mrs. at 
 
 our house, and should like that our wives and 
 sisters should know her, but the thing has never 
 been done before, and we dare not begin the 
 custom : it would bring great ill will against us 
 from our neighbours.” However, if the oppor- 
 tunity were obtained, as it sometimes may be, I 
 know of only a few Missionary ladies in South 
 India, who possess such a free use of any native 
 
FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 ]95 
 
 language, as to make such visits available occa- 
 sions for clearly communicating religious truth. 
 At first I was inclined to think that this general 
 deficiency arose from a want of zeal and energy, 
 but I soon found that the cares of a family, and 
 household duties, added to the heat of the climate, 
 were reasons to prevent even the most zealous ladies 
 from making much progress in a native language. 
 
 At first if is very difficult to get parents to 
 send their little girls to school : it is an unheard- 
 of novelty to them, and the object to be obtained 
 is not comprehensible. The upper ranks altoge- 
 ther refuse to send their daughters ; it is only in 
 a few cases, and after a length of time, that girls 
 of this class find their way to the Missionary 
 school. At first we are obliged to take the 
 children of the lowest and poorest parents whom 
 we can induce by personal influence, or by the 
 temptation of being relieved from the child’s ex- 
 pences, to give up their girls for the lady to 
 take care of. The influence which these will 
 have upon the people at large must of course be 
 small, but there is the prospect that, when the 
 natives of higher rank see that a female is capable 
 of being educated, and notice the effects of then- 
 education, they will be induced to bring their 
 daughters to the Missionary’s wife. 
 
 The usual sort of school is a boarding-school ; 
 in which from a dozen to fifty little girls are. kept 
 and taught, free of expence to their parents. In 
 
196 
 
 FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 consequence of the prevalent feelings about caste, 
 which would be injured by the girls living and 
 eating in a Eui’opean establishment, these schools, 
 in a new Mission, are filled either with orphans, 
 or with the daughters of the meanest of the 
 people. When they first come, they not un- 
 frequently resemble dirty little savages, rather 
 than children of civilized parents. Cleanliness 
 of person, and of dress, (which is* supplied to 
 them,) soon makes a great alteration in their ap- 
 pearance, and after a few months no sight can 
 be more pleasant than that of the little Hindoo 
 school-girl, with her shining black hair, her 
 bright laughing eyes, and dressed in her tiny 
 jacket and petticoat. In the Mission-compound, 
 or field round the Missionaries’ house, there is 
 erected for the girls a substantial building, con- 
 sisting usually of two rooms ; in one of them they 
 all sleep on the floor, the other serves as a school- 
 room. A native woman acts as cook to the whole 
 party, assisted by the elder girls in turn : she 
 exercises also a general care over them, sleeping 
 in the same room at night, and accompanying 
 them to the river or to the pond two or three 
 times a week when they go to bathe. The 
 school-hours are usually from nine till twelve, 
 and from one till four ; between these two periods 
 they take their dinner. One of these periods is 
 usually occupied by the native school-master, 
 who teaches them to read and write, and who, if 
 
FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 197 
 
 he is a Christian, as he is in all the old Missions, 
 gives them a little instruction in their bible 
 lessons : the other period is devoted by the lady 
 to the children ; they usually assemble in the 
 verandah of the house, and there she teaches 
 them to spin, sew, or knit, and converses with 
 them as well as she can. They learn to sing 
 hymns, and are ready scholars at their books ; 
 their little supple fingers enable them soon to prove 
 very clever with their needles. Their opportuni- 
 ties for direct religious instruction are those of at- 
 tending the family teaching given by the Missionary 
 every morning, and the Sunday services. In 
 Tinnevelly they attend the daily service in Church. 
 
 The result of such a school is particularly en- 
 couraging, especially where the children are 
 daughters of Christian parents, as in an old 
 Mission. They grow up quite different and 
 superior beings to the women of their own class, 
 and a marked improvement takes place in the 
 management of their families, when they are 
 married. Many cases occur, where the conduct 
 of the young women gives their instructors 
 every reason to believe that they have become 
 altered in heart as well as in outward habits, and 
 are true daughters of Christ. 
 
 When I visited Tinnevelly I had very pleasing 
 opportunities of witnessing the beneficial results 
 of a very excellent Mission school at Satankulam. 
 
 “ The most interesting thing we have seen in 
 
198 
 
 FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 this or in any other of the districts, is the educa- 
 tion of the girls in the villages ; it was begun by 
 Mr. B., and the Rev. J. Devasagayam has been 
 adding to it : there are no less than seven village 
 girls-schools, containing in all 250 scholars : 
 yesterday the Rev. J. Devasagayam had two of 
 the schools marshalled out in his verandah for us 
 to see and examine ; there were sixty girls in one, 
 and thirty in the other : it was a most pleasing 
 sight to see the verandah tilled with native girls, 
 all able to read : the larger school was taught by 
 two schoolmistresses, who had been educated in 
 Mrs. B’s boarding school, and were evidently 
 very much superior to other native females : the 
 eldest of them was a very tine intelligent young 
 woman, of eighteen or twenty, who questioned 
 the girls in our presence satisfactorily. The 
 mistress is required to compose and write out 
 eighteen questions every month to ask the girls : 
 she went through some of these, and it was 
 amusing and novel to hear little black girls talk- 
 ing about Asia, Africa &c. The other school 
 was examined similarly, but the questions of the 
 young schoolmistress, who had been a pupil of 
 Mrs. B. in a day-school, were of a very superior 
 character, and calculated to draw out the atten- 
 tion and thoughts of the children. I was told 
 that, on the introduction of these schools into the 
 Christian villages, there was some difficulty in 
 getting the girls to come to school ; but the pro- 
 
FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 199 
 
 mise of a half-penny-worth of cotton a month 
 for each girl, induced the parents to let them 
 come. The schoolmistress is always the wife of 
 the schoolmaster or catechist of the village.” 
 
 The Rev. John Devasagayam (a native clergy- 
 man), in a letter dated March 31, 1845, thus 
 writes regarding some of these schools. “ I 
 frequently witness in many of the children a 
 promising Christian spirit ; they value the word 
 of God, and shew a pleasing delight and attention 
 when it is expounded to them. I trust many of 
 them are praying children, and I know they 
 teach to their parents and friends what they learn 
 from the word of God, and do their best to 
 advise them to keep the Sabbath holy. Our 
 Christian friends, who now and then examined 
 and directed the schoolmistress to catechize the 
 children, greatly approved it, and considered her 
 as one who truly loves her Saviour. I feel also 
 happy to say, that two young women who are 
 married to two members of our Kadatchapuram 
 congregation, have been instructed at Serappoor, 
 when the Retford school was kept there by Mrs. 
 B. ; they are not only my regular communicants 
 and members of our Bible class, but also exemplary 
 Christians, and regular attendants of our morning 
 and evening (daily) prayers. One thing I will 
 boldly say, that you and your dear people will see 
 many of our Retford school-children in heaven.” 
 He forwarded also the following letter, from 
 the teachers of the school above-mentioned. 
 
200 
 
 FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 TRANSLATION. 
 
 t{ An bumble address made by presenting 
 many salaams (compliments), to tbe Rev. Mr. 
 B. at Retford, by Nyanapragasee the school- 
 mistress in Ambinagaram, a village belonging 
 to tbe province of Tinnevelly, and by her 
 husband Nyanapragasam, catechist. By the 
 great mercy of our Lord God, and by your pious 
 prayers, we are all enjoying good health, and 
 instruct the school-girls of Retford-school dili- 
 gently. When we consider your loving compas- 
 sion upon us, we feel our great debt of gratitude 
 to you, and our obligation to render hearty thanks 
 to God. Although we are in a far country, and 
 that we are a strange people, you have kindly 
 pitied our poor condition, and lamented the 
 ignorance of our nation. We know that you 
 kindly pray to the Lord Jesus, who suffered and 
 died for us on the cross, to remove that heathen 
 darkness, and that the light of Christ’s gospel 
 may shine upon us. You have opened the way 
 of knowledge by spending your own money in 
 our country, that we and our countrymen may 
 be saved from ignorance and obtain good know- 
 ledge. We have been several years ago like blind 
 people, who are ignorant of letters and unac- 
 quainted about our Creator, but now those 
 unhappy days are far removed. Our country- 
 women are, by your benevolence, instructed to 
 read the Gospel of salvation, and derive special 
 
FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 201 
 
 benefit from it, and learn to know God and our 
 Lord Jesus Christ. Besides our school-girls 
 being accustomed to read good books to their 
 parents, (who do not know reading) they listen 
 attentively to the sermons they hear in the church, 
 and tell them to their parents when at home, 
 and are able to say sacred hymns. We are also 
 thankful to God for the temporal and spiritual 
 benefits we receive from him in this school. We 
 trust you will be informed of the fruit of your 
 benevolence, by the letters of our worthy minis- 
 ter, and by several pious gentlemen and ladies 
 who visited us. Rev. John Devasagayam, our 
 respected Missionary, takes great pains that the 
 children may have a good education. Thirty- 
 four girls are now instructed in the “ Retford 
 school/’ of whom twenty-two read the Gospel, 
 and make good progress in knowledge. Three 
 of the elder girls, who were instructed in this 
 school, have been already married. One of them 
 is now appointed as a schoolmistress, under the 
 Rev. G. Heyne, at Moodaloor. My husband and 
 myself and our school-girls who are supported 
 by your benevolence, are praying to the Lord 
 daily for your prosperity. Beside favouring us 
 with the continuance of your benevolence, we 
 beg you to pray to God that he may graciously 
 give to us his Holy Spirit, and his invaluable 
 blessings. The benefit of your loving charity 
 increases greatly ; it is a tree in a garden that 
 receives attention, shoots, gives flowers and good 
 
202 
 
 FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 fruits ; so the children, who by your benevolence 
 learn in this school, read the Gospel, and improve 
 in knowledge and piety. We humbly beg you, 
 our father, to consider us as your children, and 
 commend us in your constant prayer to the grace 
 < and blessing of God.” 
 
 Signed Nydnapragdsam, 
 
 Catechist. 
 
 Nyanapragasee, 
 
 Feb. 18, 1845. Schoolmistress. 
 
 The plan of a female day-school with heathen 
 children, is very rarely adopted, on account of its 
 difficulties ; the girls remain but a short time, are 
 irregular in their attendance, and on leaving school 
 are lost sight of among their heathen families. 
 
 In Madras however, there are one or two 
 valuable schools of this kind. One contains 
 more than a hundred children, the daughters 
 chiefly of heathens and Roman Catholics ; they 
 are well instructed in reading and writing, and 
 particularly in the Bible and in religious know- 
 ledge, also in needle-work of various kinds, by 
 Mrs. Winckler, who is a proficient in the Tamil 
 language, assisted by several native schoolmas- 
 ters, and schoolmistresses. The latter have been 
 brought up in the school themselves. The girls 
 come to school morning and afternoon, and their 
 tidy appearance is very pleasing to the visitor. 
 When I last saw them, it was during the half 
 yearly examination ; and it was indeed delightful 
 
FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 203 
 
 to see about 150 little girls, (for two schools were 
 gathered for the occasion) with their bright black 
 hair, and sparkling eyes, and neat dresses, and 
 to follow them in their sensible answers to the 
 questions put to them in Tamil, by tbe Missionary 
 who examined them. Their cheerfulness and 
 their superior condition to that of their little 
 sisters or relatives who staid at home, and the 
 promise of good fruit, and of the dissemination 
 of the truth in their families by their silent influ- 
 ence, made the heart glad. They generally make 
 great progress, but the difficulty is to learn what 
 becomes of them after they go away. There is 
 however reason to hope that they are helping to 
 leaven the class of persons from whom they come, 
 and w r ho consist almost entirely of those of low caste. 
 
 Within the last few years, the experiment has 
 been tried by the Free Kirk Missionaries, of es- 
 tablishing a high-caste girls’-school, wffiich has 
 succeeded beyond expectation. The success may 
 be traced to the large and excellent boys’ school, 
 in which the same Missionaries have been at work 
 for ten or twelve years past ; the boys and young- 
 men who have passed through this school, gradu- 
 ally became so impressed with a feeling of the 
 degraded position of their women, and acquired 
 such confidence in the Missionaries, that they 
 were induced to send their sisters and daughters 
 to them for instruction. In a great many cases 
 the brother or tbe cousin brings his little relative 
 to the school-house with him, and takes her back 
 
204- 
 
 female EDUCATION. 
 
 again on his return. They receive very systematic 
 instruction, first in their own language, and 
 afterwards in English : they read the Bible in 
 both, and sing English hymns : several of these 
 dear children have boldly professed their faith in 
 Christ, and been received into his church. The 
 school prospers more and more, and as years 
 pass by, with the blessing of God on the insti- 
 tution, fairly-qualified female teachers will be 
 raised up in the school, to assist and to extend 
 the work. About 250 respectable girls attend 
 daily. There is the more encouragement from 
 this success, because it gives reason to hope that 
 a similar result will attend the movement in other 
 English schools : in the school at Masulipatam, 
 the notions of the young men on the subject of 
 female education are already much altered, and 
 we can look forward to the time when they too 
 will bring their female relatives to the Mission- 
 ary’s wife for instruction. 
 
 Female education in India is peculiarly inter- 
 esting in whatever form it is carried on, but yet 
 on the whole, there is the greatest amount of 
 pleasure derived from seeing the daughters of 
 a Christian community being led onwards by 
 teaching : for not only is it in this class that a 
 school can be most efficiently conducted, but it 
 is also of vast importance that that body, which 
 is to be the leaven and salt of the whole neigh- 
 bourhood, should be soundly and thoroughly 
 raised from the degradatioin in which it once lay. 
 
VIII. 
 
 ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS TO BECOM- 
 ING A MISSIONARY. 
 
 The old saying is true, “ Where there is a will 
 there is a way.” Now it is too evident that 
 among the clergy of the Church of England there 
 does not exist a will to become missionaries ; for 
 the painful fact is only too plain, that they have 
 not yet found out the way. Out of our 16,000 
 clergymen, about thirty have proved their will by 
 their conduct. Our clergy will do anything for 
 the heathen, except go to them : they will preach 
 for them, they will pray, they will make speeches, 
 they will beg, they will go about the country 
 on their behalf, they will become district secre- 
 taries, they will toil, but they will not them- 
 selves go. They will do every thing except that 
 which is most needed : they will procure every 
 s 
 
206 
 
 ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS 
 
 thing except that which is most necessary, a 
 supply of men. We ask for men, we entreat for 
 them ; but they will not come forward : in pub- 
 lic and in private we press the subject upon our 
 young clergy, but they prefer any curacy or any 
 charge in England, rather than go abroad for the 
 heathen. 
 
 In spite of all the interest and sympathy every 
 where expressed at missionary meetings, and felt 
 in the hearts of so many Christians in England 
 on behalf of the heathen, the Hindoos, the 
 Chinese, and the hundred other tribes of the 
 earth are still lying by the road-side, robbed and 
 left half dead by Satan, — still good Samaritans 
 cannot be found among our clergy to pour wine 
 and oil into the wounds of those who are annually 
 brought before their notice and thoughts, and 
 who are in so many ways their neighbours. 
 
 There are too many words, there is too little 
 work amongst us. Every young man has some 
 one very good reason why he should not be the 
 missionary. With one it is, “ I have married a 
 wife, and, therefore, I cannot come,” his family 
 ties hold him back : another has “ bought a piece 
 of ground, and must needs go and see it,” ties 
 of property restrain him, and he is unwilling, 
 like Barnabas, to give up all, and be the Lord’s 
 Apostle. The excuses, be they good or bad, are 
 numerous. Among them are the following. 
 
 I. “ I am wanted at home : look at our large 
 
TO BECOMING A MISSIONARY. 
 
 207 
 
 towns ; see how r inadequately they are supplied : 
 I cannot conscientiously go abroad and neglect 
 these nearer wants : To do so would be to take 
 the children’s bread, and to give it to the dogs, 
 or at least to strangers. We must not neglect 
 our heathen at home.” 
 
 1. This objection, which is so very commonly 
 brought forward by those who ought to know 
 better, must mean one of two things. It either 
 asserts, that we are not to send our forces of men 
 and money to the heathen at all, until our own 
 people are fully supplied ; or else it states that 
 our duty towards the heathen is as well per- 
 formed, or at least, no more neglected, than that 
 towards our own countrymen at home. 
 
 Let the first assertion be allowed to stand as 
 possessing any truth whatever, and what is the 
 result ? Simply this ; that all Missionary Soci- 
 eties are wholly in the wrong : we ought to recal 
 all our missionaries, in order to employ them at 
 home, and to send out no more ; we ought to 
 destroy the Gospel Propagation Society, and the 
 Church Missionary Society, and every other 
 Society for Missionary purposes : nor may we stop 
 there : for mere consistency’s sake, we must blot 
 out the two last verses of St. Matthew’s gospel, 
 “ Go ye therefore, and teach all nations ,” or we 
 must apply some ingenious sophistry to shew 
 that they do not mean what they evidently ex- 
 press : we must plainly declare that Paul and the 
 
208 
 
 ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS 
 
 other Apostles were wholly in the wrong in going 
 to foreign lands before ministers were settled in 
 every town and village of Judaea ; we must pity 
 Brainard, Schwartz, Martyn, and others, whose 
 praise is in all the Churches, as good, well-mean- 
 ing, devoted men, but as wholly mistaken re- 
 garding their path of duty, and as having im- 
 poverished the Church of God by their absence, 
 rather than enriched it by their missions. All 
 this, and a good deal more, is the plain meaning 
 of one side of this objection. 
 
 The other side, viz., that our duty abroad is 
 already performed in its due proportion to our 
 duty at home, is a view which rests only on 
 ignorance. Doubtless the children have the 
 first claim to the bread, and a claim to the 
 largest part of it, but the dogs are not to be 
 denied their share. For while our countrymen 
 amount to sixteen millions, and the heathen, 
 towards whom we have a distinct Christian duty 
 to perform, amount to at least 500 millions, our 
 foreign obligations must claim some large pro- 
 portion of our means. Allowing that our coun- 
 trymen have fifty times as strong a claim upon 
 us as heathens have, this would not reduce the 
 amount of men and money to be given to the 
 heathen to a lower proportion than one third of 
 what we are able to give to our own people. At 
 present the existing proportion of what we do 
 give is about one eightieth. Nor must it be 
 
TO BECOMING A MISSIONARY. 
 
 209 
 
 forgotten that of the heathen nations to whom 
 we are commanded to preach the gospel, there are 
 at least three fourths in which the work is not so 
 much as begun ; while of the more favoured and 
 remaining fourth, scarcely half a dozen have had 
 the work completed among them. 
 
 It can only be ignorance of the position of 
 Great Britain in the midst of the world which 
 will allow any one to suppose, that out of our 
 16,000 clergymen, we owe to the heathen in all 
 lands no more than 124 men. No one who will 
 give ten minutes’ consideration to the responsi- 
 bility which God has laid upon our nation by 
 commerce and dominion, can satisfy his mind 
 that our due proportion of existing means is 
 already given to this work. 
 
 Till, then, our missionaries are increased at 
 least five-fold, let this objection about wants at 
 home be laid entirely aside. At present it has 
 no meaning, but a bad one, or a mistaken one. 
 
 2. The objection may be met in other quar- 
 ters. Those who urge it usually allow the general 
 duty of missions. Hence they bring themselves 
 to a point from which they would most heartily 
 shrink : they allow that God has given our coun- 
 try a duty to perform, but they assert that he 
 has not given it means to do it. They imply 
 that God will allow his church to suffer, in con- 
 sequence of zealously performing a duty he has 
 himself given it to do : or, in other words, that 
 
210 
 
 ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS 
 
 God’s promises will not hold good : that the 
 Church of God may act liberally, yet not be 
 made fat ; that by giving, it may become poor. 
 If there is any truth or meaning in the Scrip- 
 tural commands to liberality, or in the commen- 
 dation which our Lord gave to the conduct of 
 the poor widow, who gave her last mite to the 
 Lord's treasury, then the objection which any 
 individual makes to becoming a missionary, be- 
 cause the church at home cannot spare him, is 
 nothing more than one of unbelief. It may be a 
 paradox, but it is a Christian paradox and full 
 of truth, that if we w r ould have our supplies of 
 godly ministers increased at home, w r e must 
 hasten to send many of them abroad. The 
 miserly spirit which would keep all our good 
 things at home ; the anchorite spirit of a church 
 which would lead it to labour only within itself, 
 was never blessed, and has no word in all the 
 Scriptures to commend it. It is the spirit of 
 unbelief and of cold want of confidence. 
 
 3. The sphere which many who make this ob- 
 jection are content to fill, is not such an one as 
 that on which they rest their objection : they are 
 content themselves to keep aloof from the crowded 
 town : the sphere in which they work, is some 
 country village, containing a few hundred people ; 
 which, if they w r ere to leave it, w r ould not, under 
 the worst circumstances, be left entirely destitute 
 of all means of grace. The sphere which is 
 
TO BECOMING A MISSIONARY. 
 
 211 
 
 offered to them, is a nation of millions : the work 
 to which they are called is that of an apostle : 
 their labours will bear fruit, not among hundreds, 
 but among hundreds of thousands ; not for their 
 life-time, but for all generations. If they go not, 
 millions will die without the possibility of hear- 
 ing of salvation, who would otherwise, in this and 
 succeeding generations at least, have the Gospel 
 preached to them. The country clergyman who 
 refuses to be a Missionary because of his present 
 sphere, is refusing to enter on a work whose 
 greatness cannot be measured, in order to cling 
 to one, which in comparison, shrinks into but 
 small importance. 
 
 II. Another objection is this, “ I have no 
 ability for being a Missionai’y : I am not ready 
 at learning a foreign language ; ” or, “ I have 
 not those peculiar talents required for being a 
 Missionary; ” or, “ I have but indifferent health.” 
 
 1. The short answer to this is, that if a man 
 has no ability for being a Missionary, he has 
 just as little for being a parish minister. While, 
 of course in some Missionary spheres, there is 
 need for peculiar talents, energies, and skill ; in 
 many others, the humblest talents, the most or- 
 dinary powers may be of the greatest service. 
 The man who can labour in simplicity, weak in 
 energy perhaps, and not brilliant in his mental 
 powers, yet preaching Christ’s Gospel to a few 
 poor country people — the man who can break up 
 
212 
 
 ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS 
 
 the bread of life in his poor way, from door to 
 door, will find an ample sphere and fit occasion 
 for doing the very same work among the young 
 Christian congregations of Tinnevelly or Krish- 
 nagur. The master-mind, the man of energy will 
 not find his labours thrown away in the same 
 fields, or in struggling among the opposing 
 heathen. There is room in the Missionary field 
 for every sort and style of labourer, just as there 
 is in the ministry in England. The one great 
 requisite is, devoted love to Christ. The follow- 
 ing are the views on this subject of the two men, 
 who of those now alive, are perhaps best qualified 
 to express a judgment upon it, “ A heart devoted 
 to Christ, — an entirely evangelical spirit, — a love 
 to the souls of the heathen, — a tender cast of 
 mind, — good sense, (a most rare quality, but 
 most invaluable,) and superiority to indulgence 
 and secular aims, are the chief qualifications. 
 Amongst a variety of men different measures of 
 talent and piety will prevail, but the essentials 
 must be the same in all.” * “ It is not talents 
 
 or learning, or wealth that can qualify or fit you 
 for so exalted an honour [that of being a Mis- 
 sionary] ; it is simple faith, genuine repentance, 
 holy love, stedfastness of heart, and a single eye 
 to his glory, — these are what are wanted, and 
 these are given from above.” + 
 
 * Letter of the Bishop of Calcutta to the Society for Propa- 
 gating the Gospel, 1834. 
 
 t Sermons preached at Southborough, by the Rev. J. Tucker. 
 
TO BECOMING A MISSIONARY. 2] 3 
 
 2. Few persons in England are at all capable 
 of judging of their powers of learning a foreign 
 language ; even the modern languages, which we 
 learn in England, are learnt as dead languages ; 
 those which Missionaries have to acquire are 
 living ones. The person who may be most in- 
 capable of acquiring the one, is often very ready 
 at the other. But at the worst, the objection 
 ought to weigh very little : a person who is very 
 quick at acquiring a living language, may, in the 
 course of a single year, be able to make himself 
 useful in a Mission among heathens : a person of 
 average powers will probably be two years ; and in 
 case any one be really slow in acquiring it, he may 
 be two years and a half or three years in making 
 the same progress ; it is merely a question of time. 
 Nor is the time so spent to be counted as lost : it is 
 also occupied with gaining an acquaintance with 
 the heathen mind and religious views, without a 
 knowledge of which a Missionary may do more 
 harm than good. 
 
 3. The question of health is one which often 
 needlessly frightens people in regard to Missions. 
 People talk as though there was something un- 
 healthy in the very fact of being a Missionary. 
 It is true, a person in certain states of weak 
 health, may be ill suited to stand the hotter 
 parts of India, yet what scenes can be more 
 suitable for a tender or invalid clergyman than 
 New Zealand, the Neilgherry hills of India, the 
 
214 
 
 ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS 
 
 Cape of Good Hope, or Ceylon ? The simple 
 fact that a clergyman is an invalid in England, is 
 so far a presumption, that his sphere of work 
 lies in a more healthy climate. One who suffers 
 from the cold raw damp of our country, who is 
 tried by the effects of sluggish circulation, why 
 should he hesitate to seek the warm, the genial, 
 and dry atmosphere of a tropical land ? How 
 many persons are labouring on in England in 
 weakness and discomfort, who in India, or some 
 other climate would be full of life and activity. 
 The consumptive cough, the relaxed throat, bid 
 a man to seek for health abroad. Italy is not 
 the only healthy spot, Madeira is not the only 
 island, where strength may be sought. One who 
 shrinks from the heats of India, often overstated, 
 why should he not gladly welcome the delicious- 
 ness of New Zealand ? Only a few months has 
 elapsed since an acquaintance of my own was 
 hurried away by his medical advisers to Ceylon : 
 they regarded him as a comsumptive patient, they 
 dreaded an English autumn and winter, but in 
 the warm soft air of Ceylon they anticipated for 
 him health, long life, and enjoyment. Not long 
 ago there appeared an advertisement in the 
 “ Times,” from a medical man returning to 
 India, who proposed to escort any consumptive 
 person who might be desirous of “ taking ad- 
 vantage of the sea voyage, and the beneficial 
 
TO BECOMING A MISSIONARY. 
 
 215 
 
 effects of that climate for the recovery of their 
 health/’ 
 
 At furthest, no man can conscientiously allow 
 this point to operate as a positive obstacle to his 
 undertaking Missionary work, until he has con- 
 sulted an able physician upon the subject, and 
 one ivho is personally acquainted with the 
 climate to which it is proposed to go. Until a 
 negative has been pronounced by a fit medical 
 adviser, the objection is scarcely an honest one. 
 
 III. At other times the objection is made, 
 “ Any one will do for a Missionary sphere ; you 
 need not look among our clergy for Missionaries ; 
 surely you do not need an University man for 
 this purpose/’ Or, “ We will not grudge you 
 any men you may find in our University, but you 
 know you have no right to expect them here ; 
 they have come here to receive a high education 
 for exercising the ministry in England, you cannot 
 expect them to throw this away on India.” 
 
 The simple matter of fact is, that, as far as 
 human means go, Missions essentially want a 
 proportion of University men. If the question 
 were to arise whether our highly-educated Chris- 
 tian men are most needed in the work of the 
 Church at home, or of that of Missions abroad, 
 the evidence of Scripture would decide in favour 
 of the latter being the greatest need. The un- 
 educated Peter, James, and John, remained for 
 the purpose of building up the Church at home : 
 
216 
 
 ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS 
 
 Paul the learned, Barnabas the country gentle- 
 man, and Luke the physician, were selected, in 
 the wisdom of God, for the Missionary employ- 
 ment of extending the church abroad. 
 
 However, the details of Missionary work are 
 such as ought to convince us of the serious mis- 
 take of this objection. 
 
 1. We want men ready and capable to plunge 
 into the midst of heathenism, and there alone 
 and on their own responsibility, fight the fight 
 of God against an hundred opposers. The Hin- 
 doos are, it is true, unlearned, ignorant, and 
 unskilled in European tactics of discussion ; yet 
 they are an exceedingly acute and clever people, 
 and occasion the necessity of a corresponding 
 tact and acuteness in those who have to deal 
 with them in their heathen state. An acquaint- 
 ance with our western philosophies, can be no 
 mean advantage in giving to us a more rapid 
 understanding of the kindred metaphysics and 
 religions of our eastern friends. The systematic 
 habit of making ourselves familiar with the 
 minds, and belief, and mythologies of nations 
 foreign to ourselves, which a high education will 
 have given us, will give the best assurance that 
 we will not shrink from becoming familiar with 
 the heathen minds and tone of the Hindoos. 
 
 2 . In England, a clergyman walks in a path 
 chalked out for him : he begins by working under 
 a rector, or in the plans of a predecessor : if 
 
TO BECOMING A MISSIONARY. 
 
 217 
 
 sudden difficulties or doubts come in bis way, he 
 has ready opportunities of seeking the advice of 
 some one who has experienced similar ones ; 
 nothing is new in his career, although it may 
 be novel to him. But a Missionary is often like 
 a traveller placed without a guide in a trackless 
 desert ; by his own wisdom must he mark out 
 the course in which he has to walk ; in the 
 majority of cases he is almost alone in his min- 
 isterial position, or his companion is as inexperi- 
 enced as himself ; he has no pattern according to 
 which he may work ; all must come from him- 
 self ; there arise daily new questions and points 
 to be decided, which he had little dreamt of in 
 England ; and yet many reasons make it desirable 
 that a Missionary should begin his work when 
 young. Whatever preparation therefore will give 
 a man knowledge of others, wisdom, prudence, 
 and habits of decided action, that is the train- 
 ing which is fitted for a Missionary among the 
 heathen. 
 
 3. A Missionary may be called to be not only 
 an Apostle and a pioneer, but a Bishop ; with 
 his thirty or forty catechists, and as many con- 
 gregations under his superintendance, with his 
 schools, and “ care of all the churches/’ he is 
 one whom we are bound to provide, shall be 
 stored and prepared by the "best means in man’s 
 power. 
 
 4. The work of translation, of translating the 
 
218 
 
 ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS 
 
 Bible, or books of instruction, is one which 
 necessarily falls upon the working Missionary. 
 It has never been supposed that this is a talent 
 which came by intuition ; for what purpose are 
 our ripe and sound scholars growing up in our 
 Universities, if some of them are not to devote 
 the talents given them in their education, first to 
 the acquisition of a thorough knowledge of a 
 language spoken by heathens, by working among 
 them, and then to the translation of God’s word 
 into a form intelligible, and agreeable to the 
 reader, and faithful to the original. Surely it is 
 for this purpose, and not for easy enjoyment as 
 tutors or professors, that many of them have 
 received their education. 
 
 5. The schoolmaster is abroad in India as 
 elsewhere. The people in the large towns are 
 not and will not be content with inferior village 
 education : it is not fair to leave our young 
 churches in Sierra Leone, in Hindoostan, or 
 New Zealand, with no higher instruction than 
 that which an elementary school affords. Supe- 
 rior schools, in which English literature is opened 
 to the pupils in English, are being established, 
 and must soon be more widely spread. If we 
 require for our grammar and public schools in 
 England, men of a highly furnished education, 
 why should not the same be most suited for 
 schools of similar calibre among heathens ? 
 
 IV. Many a young clergyman when urged to 
 
TO BECOMING A MISSIONARY. 
 
 219 
 
 consider the personal duty of becoming a Mis- 
 sionary, finds a ready reply in stating, “ I am in 
 an important sphere of usefulness, I am in a 
 Missionary position at home, I have a new dis- 
 trict church, I have a parish given to me; I can- 
 not leave this to go out of my own accord to seek 
 for other work.” 
 
 It is true some persons may, from the circum- 
 stances of their position, be called to remain 
 where they are, but a vast number are by no 
 means called to do so, nor do they themselves 
 think that they are, except when the proposed 
 removal is to a Missionary sphere. 
 
 How many are there of those that easily satisfy 
 themselves with this answer, who either really 
 contemplate permanently remaining in their pre- 
 sent sphere, or will actually remain there five 
 years, or would remain there five weeks if a 
 valuable and important opening were to be made 
 for them in some other part of England ? For 
 example, of these permanently fixed curates who 
 cannot leave their important spheres of work to 
 be missionaries, how many would positively re- 
 fuse to accept, I do not say a rich, but an impor- 
 tant living ? Which of them would not leave 
 his interesting country curacy, where “ every 
 thing is to he done, and he is the chief means of 
 carrying the knowledge of Christ to the people,” 
 in case there should be offered to him a large 
 church and parish in Birmingham or Manchester? 
 
220 
 
 ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS 
 
 Only a few would refuse to leave, a very few. 
 Or again, a man is already settled as incumbent 
 in an important parish, lie has curates under him, 
 and he daily feels more and more how much is to 
 be done, and how much he may do. But from 
 some unexpected cause he receives the offer of a 
 vacant Bishopric in England, or in the colonies. 
 Will his parish withhold him ? The instance 
 would be a rare one. 
 
 Yet when, not a Bishopric, but an Apostle- 
 ship,* when not the superintendance of some 
 English diocese, but the planting the gospel 
 tree in the midst of a nation of millions is offered 
 to him, he finds a ready reason in the fixity of 
 his present position, or in the importance of his 
 present duties. 
 
 When this reason has been presented to me 
 by any one, I have often felt inclined to ask, 
 “ Brother, are you dealing honestly with your 
 conscience ? ” 
 
 V. Some excuse themselves or their friends on 
 the ground, “ You want men of peculiar faith, a 
 missionary spirit ; indeed I do not think I have 
 
 * “ I trust it will not be deemed overstraining an argument to 
 observe that so far are the Apostolical and Episcopal offices from 
 being identical, that they are essentially different : the special 
 business of the former being to found new churches, and to bring 
 unbelievers to the knowledge of the gospel ; that of the latter, to 
 govern the churches already established, and to take care that 
 the word of God be rightly divided to those who are already in 
 the faith.” — Archdeacon Hare’s Victory of Faith and other Ser- 
 mons. Sermon x. p. 328. 
 
TO BECOMING A MISSIONARY. 
 
 221 
 
 faith to be a missionary, I could not make the 
 sacrifice.” 
 
 It is true the missionary field does need men 
 of faith ; so also does the pastoral sphere equally ; 
 so does the whole life of a Christian. There is 
 not, as some would seem to suppose, a mission- 
 ary standard, and a “ common-Christian ” stand- 
 ard ; nor is it allowable for men to remain satis- 
 fied with the latter and not aspire to the former. 
 God’s requirement is an entire surrender of the 
 heart, and any one who willingly and knowingly 
 is living at a lower stage of faith, or in a state 
 in which he will not make a sacrifice for God, 
 has reason to doubt not only of his possessing 
 a missionary spirit, but a Christian spirit at all. 
 When God called Moses and Jeremiah, he would 
 not hear of their excuses on the ground of their 
 deficiencies. He who made the man, will He not 
 give him faith to do the work to which he calls 
 him ? Is the pastoral work in England, the 
 charge of a parish containing some thousands of 
 ignorant souls, so easy an employment that a man 
 can be satisfied to remain in it in a state of weak 
 faith, and yet refuse to enter upon missionary 
 work, because it needs a higher exercise of faith ? 
 
 VI. Akin to this objection is the honestly- 
 spoken one, “ I dread the hardships of a mis- 
 sionary life, for myself or for my wife,” or, “ I 
 am married, and a missionary life is too trying 
 for one in such a position.” 
 
 T 
 
222 
 
 ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS 
 
 However, the easiest answer to this, at least 
 in reference to India, is, that these hardships do 
 not exist. In my visits to some fifty or sixty 
 missionaries in South India, I have not seen, nor 
 in my four years of residence in that country 
 have I experienced, nor in reference to modern 
 days in that land, have I heard of, one peculiarly 
 missionary hardship or suffering. There is the 
 trial of the climate, it is true, and that also of 
 absence ; but these are European, not missionary 
 sufferings ; that is, every European in the coun- 
 try, the Governor-general and the youngest en- 
 sign, undergoes them equally with the missionary, 
 and no one has peculiar reason to complain of 
 them. Again, there are the sufferings and sor- 
 rows and anxieties of a ministerial character, but 
 these we only have in common with most of our 
 brethren in England, and we do not hear them 
 blazoning their sufferings to the world at large. 
 These united form the beginning and the end of 
 the sufferings of a missionary life in South India, 
 and it were indeed a reproach to our Christianity, 
 if men should shrink from undergoing these, 
 while hundreds of their brothers and relatives 
 are annually rushing into them, merely for the 
 sake of a maintenance, or from some vague feel- 
 ing of the pleasure of a foreign life. 
 
 However, the simplest plan of dissipating a 
 groundless fear, is to describe the details of a 
 missionary’s life and his position in South India. 
 
TO BECOMING A MISSIONARY. 
 
 223 
 
 A missionary, after a passage in a magnificent 
 ship, or still finer steamer, arrives in Madras to 
 find himself welcomed among strangers with even 
 greater warmth and more kindness than he has 
 enjoyed among friends in England. A few days 
 or weeks enable him to prepare for his journey 
 to his up-country station : he travels thither 
 either in the wearisome palanquin, or by the still 
 more tedious method of riding, and lodges in some 
 lonely yet comfortable bungalow, at the end of 
 every stage of ten or twenty miles : but he knows 
 that if he were the highest grandee in the land 
 he could travel in no other way. Arrived at his 
 station, he is again kindly welcomed by the 
 Europeans who may be resident there : if the 
 station is an entirely new one, he may, in a few 
 cases, have to superintend the building of a 
 comfortable house to live in, but more usually he 
 either occupies one which has been built by his 
 predecessor, or rents one of those which are 
 ordinarily occupied by the higher ranks of the 
 Europeans. He has now a good house over his 
 head, containing two or three large sitting-rooms, 
 and as many bed-rooms, with adjoining dressing 
 and bathing-rooms, and situated in a field, (called 
 “ a compound ”) where he may make his flower 
 garden, and have his vegetables and his fruit-trees. 
 
 His furniture is similar, allowing for the dif- 
 ferences of climate, to that which he has been 
 accustomed to in England. Well-made tables, 
 
224 
 
 ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS 
 
 chairs, couches, book-cases adorn his sitting 
 rooms, while his bed-rooms have their large com- 
 modious beds, hung round with musquito cur- 
 tains, and all the other usual furniture. The ap- 
 pearance of the whole house bears to that of the 
 wealthiest European officers in the place, the 
 same relation which a commodious rectory bears 
 to the Hall of the Squire of the parish : the style 
 of it is neater, more tidy, more comfortable, than 
 that of many of the residences of his fellow- 
 countrymen. He now surrounds himself with 
 servants; probably he has come out to India 
 with the resolution of dispensing with the crowds 
 of attendants who, as he has heard, fill an Indian 
 house, but he soon learns that it is true economy 
 to employ servants to do that which can be done 
 by them, rather than to waste his own valuable 
 time or that of his wife in mere household de- 
 tails. If a married man, he possibly may have 
 his gig or small carriage, at all events he must 
 have a horse or stout poney for his own use. 
 His dress is just the same as that of the civilians 
 in India ; his food is plain but good, and very 
 similar to what he has been used to in England. 
 During the day, his comfortable house is his 
 home, and he is but little more exposed to the 
 sun than his countrymen in the civil service, and 
 not so much so as those in the military service. 
 From the Europeans who reside near him he re- 
 ceives the greatest of kindness ; among them he 
 
TO BECOMING A MISSIONARY. 225 
 
 often possesses dear, valuable, and Christian friends; 
 he is treated with the respect due to his posi- 
 tion, and not unfrequently a Missionary has more 
 honour, and more attention paid to him than he 
 would receive as a clergyman in England. Some 
 Missionaries are stationed at a distance from all 
 their fellow-countrymen, whom they consequently 
 see only at intervals, but most of those in South 
 India have opportunities of seeing more Euro- 
 pean society of their own rank than they have 
 time to make use of. At Masulipatam we have 
 had an advantage over several Missionary stations 
 in the number of our countrymen residing there, 
 though there are other places again where the 
 number is greater ; we have always about thirty 
 Europeans of the upper ranks there, military 
 officers, civilians and medical men, and though 
 the society changes with a rapidity unknown in 
 England, we have scarcely ever been without 
 several valued friends with whom we enjoyed much 
 profitable religious intercourse. On the whole, 
 Missionaries in South India are as well, or better 
 off, in regard to society, than the English clergy 
 who are settled in country-parishes ; in regard to 
 medical attendance, they have a decided ad- 
 vantage. When the Missionary goes among the 
 natives, he is received with respect and deference : 
 unless he foolishly, by his own conduct, destroys 
 these feelings towards him ; his white face, and 
 European dress will always procure for him the 
 
226 ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS 
 
 respectful “ salaam ” from the passer-by, and 
 obtain in conversation the address of “ your 
 worship/’ “ your honour/’ “ my lord,” or even 
 “ my god.” It will depend upon himself whether 
 he preserves the acquaintance, and respectful 
 friendship of the natives of the highest ranks, 
 who will from the first, be ready to honour the 
 “ European gentleman.” 
 
 The Missionary in South India enjoys com- 
 forts which very many clergymen in England are 
 without, and as far as his outward convenience 
 is concerned, he is as comfortable, — heat and other 
 annoyances of climate excepted, — as any Christian 
 man could wish to be. In these respects I could 
 not desire to exchange places with any one in 
 India. A Missionary has this advantage over a 
 chaplain, that while the latter is frequently re- 
 moved to a new station, hundreds of miles dis- 
 tant from his old one, and in the course of his 
 annual duties, has to make fatiguing journeys to 
 the amount of a thousand miles or more in the 
 hot plains of India, the former is settled in one 
 spot, his operations lie for the most part in a 
 narrow sphere, he possesses what no other Euro- 
 pean in all India ever enjoys — a home ; and he 
 is able to surround himself with home comforts, 
 and to indulge in home feelings and associations. 
 
 His income is amply sufficient to supply every 
 needful comfort as well as want, and to maintain 
 him in his proper position and rank. In South 
 
TO BECOMING A MISSIONARY. 
 
 227 
 
 India the Missionaries of the Church Missionary 
 Society, receive from £160 to £300 a year, 
 varying according to the circumstances of their 
 family; besides a house, travelling expences and 
 several contingent advantages for themselves and 
 their family, which considerably increase the 
 available value of their income, and set their 
 minds at rest in regard to money-matters. 
 
 VII. The objection however, does not always 
 come from the party himself, who is urged to be 
 a Missionary. It is his parents, his relations, 
 his friends, in perhaps a few instances his wife, 
 who strongly oppose his leaving his native land. 
 
 This indeed, is not an excuse, nor is it an ob- 
 jection ; it is nothing else than plain disobedience 
 and opposition to God’s will. 
 
 A young man about to enter orders, has 
 reason to believe that God is calling him to do 
 the work of an Apostle to the Gentiles rather 
 than that of a pastor in his Church : his parents 
 however, no sooner hear of it, than they expressly 
 withhold their consent to it, or his sisters entreat 
 him not to take so rash a step, or his friends sug- 
 gest every argument that they can think of to make 
 him take a different view of the subject. Their 
 motive is, their own wishes and feelings : they 
 will feel pain at the continued absence of one so 
 dear to them : they consequently would rather have 
 their own feelings spared, and their own com- 
 fort undiminished, than give up what is very pre- 
 
228 
 
 ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS 
 
 cious to themselves, in order that thousands on 
 thousands of idolaters, in this and in coming 
 ages, may have the Gospel preached to them. 
 They quietly and deliberately prefer their own 
 temporal advantage to the eternal profit of 
 thousands : they do not hesitate to choose rather 
 that they should be comfortable, than that 
 Christ should be glorified : they care not how 
 God’s great purposes of making Christ a light to 
 lighten the Gentiles be thwarted, so long as their 
 own purposes of convenience, or of love, or of 
 comfort, be carried out. 
 
 Where the friends or parents are professedly 
 worldly-minded, there is no occasion for wonder- 
 ing that they should put every obstacle in the 
 w r ay of one who is dear to them going abroad as 
 a Missionary. If he was going as a cadet, or a 
 writer, or a chaplain, or a surgeon, they could 
 understand an object in it : it is within the limit 
 of their comprehension ; if money or rank is to 
 be gained, they see a good reason for the depar- 
 ture of their son : but if it is only the saving of 
 the souls of the heathen, — if it is only fulfilling 
 God’s command, — if it is only adding to the glory 
 of Christ’s name, — if it is only helping forward 
 the accomplishment of the most magnificent 
 prophecies, — if it is only preparing the way of the 
 Lord and hastening his second coming, they 
 cannot understand how a young man can be so 
 foolish as to sacrifice his prospects in life, and 
 
TO BECOMING A MISSIONARY. 
 
 229 
 
 leave his affectionate family for no better object 
 than this ! The course of worldly-minded 
 parents is consistent; their thoughts being of 
 the earth, earthy, it is not to be expected that 
 they should comprehend spiritual or heavenly 
 objects. But what shall be said regarding the 
 religious parents or friends who take a similar 
 course ? I know an instance of a young man 
 ■who had just finished his university career, and 
 was preparing for orders ; his attention had long 
 been drawn to Missionary subjects, and at last 
 he came to the conclusion that he was called to 
 offer himself as a Missionary ; on mentioning it 
 to his parents, who were, I am told, religious 
 persons, they would not hear of his going abroad 
 as a Missionary, they could not part from him, 
 and the consequence was that he staid at home. 
 Within three years from that period, I met his 
 younger brother, who had just arrived in India, 
 and for whom his parents, refusing an elder 
 brother to Christ’s service, had sought and ob- 
 tained a cadetship in the East India Company’s 
 service ! With such cases as this before their 
 eyes, what can the worldly-minded part of our 
 people think of the honesty of our religious 
 classes, when they profess a zeal for Missions, 
 and declare that no post is so honourable as that 
 of a Missionary ? How can we expect irreligious 
 people to regard or honour a Missionary’s life, 
 when they see its warmest advocates refuse to 
 
230 
 
 ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS 
 
 enter upon it themselves, or to allow their sons or 
 daughters to do the same. 
 
 Do such parents, month by month, declare, 
 that “ they submit themselves wholly to God’s 
 holy will and pleasure,” and feel no sting of 
 conscience in refusing a son to Christ’s service ? 
 Have they never read how that the Bishop at the 
 ordination of this their son, declared to him that 
 the office of presbyter into which he was entering, 
 required he should “ seek for Christ’s sheep that 
 are dispersed abroad,'’ as well as “ for his chil- 
 dren who are in the midst of this naughty world ? ” 
 Do they not know that when he gave himself to 
 be God’s minister, he a second time devoted him- 
 self to be a soldier of Christ to do his bidding, 
 to go where he sent him, to speak what he com- 
 missioned him to say, and to labour where he 
 placed him ? Surely these our religious friends 
 and parents must be walking altogether by sight 
 instead of by faith ; for has not God promised, 
 “ There is no man that hath left house, or breth- 
 ren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or 
 children, or lands, for my sake and the gospel’s, 
 but he shall receive an hundred-fold now in this 
 time, with persecutions ; and in the world to 
 come life everlasting ? ” The parent who refuses 
 to let his son go to be a Missionary, because of 
 personal feelings, has by so doing “ set to his 
 seal that God ” is false. God promises in the 
 plainest terms that he shall not be a sufferer by 
 
TO BECOMING A MISSIONARY. 231 
 
 the sacrifice : the parent deliberately disbelieves 
 God, feels sure that he will be a sufferer, and 
 consequently will not make the sacrifice. Little 
 do such parents know how great privileges they 
 are refusing for themselves, and what happiness 
 and grace they are denying to their offspring. The 
 evidence of a family who have believed God, and 
 made the sacrifice, may be taken to the effect 
 that God has fulfilled his promise, that blessings 
 both temporal and spiritual have come down on 
 those that went abroad, and on those who wil- 
 lingly sent them, that to recal those whom they 
 sent, would be a greater grief than it was to bid 
 them “ God speed,” on their first departure. 
 
 When children ask their fathers for bread, they 
 do not give them a stone ; yet the churches at 
 home act with less humanity. Missionaries 
 abroad write home with earnest entreaty for more 
 men, the churches answer their request by send- 
 ing them money : the language of one now in 
 India is this : “ You are quite right in making 
 it a point wherever you go, of urging the want 
 w r e feel, not so much of funds, as of actual and 
 personal service. How amazing is it that so few 
 should be found ready to sacrifice any thing in 
 this cause ! The poor make sacrifices, I believe, 
 and give up their comforts, and would be ready, 
 many of them, to forsake their houses, for they 
 are “ rich in faith,” says St. James. But that 
 so few educated men of respectability, of family. 
 
232 
 
 ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS 
 
 of good prospects come forward, startles me. Is 
 it that there is little love of souls among them, 
 little and but superficial views of their obliga- 
 tions to Jesus, little apprehension of his glory 
 and of peace in believing, little knowledge that 
 self-sacrifice is the greatest and most exquisite 
 pleasure upon earth, when made for Jesus ? I 
 wonder that clergymen in full orders do not come 
 out ; why should they not ? I see nothing in 
 the world to hinder them. They will come as 
 Chaplain's, why not as Missionaries ? I cannot 
 understand how they can stop at home : they 
 will plead with their people for Missions, and 
 give of their substance, why not give them- 
 selves ? ” 
 
 When a Missionary, in the midst of his work, 
 looks back to his native land, longing for com- 
 panions in his work, and wondering that none 
 come, the various objections which men make to 
 becoming Missionaries themselves, or to giving 
 those dear to them to be Missionaries, come into 
 his recollection ; and with a heavy heart he re- 
 members that though some of these objections 
 may be valid in some particular cases, yet taken 
 as a whole, and as coming from the lips of the 
 mass, they mean nothing, and are nothing but a 
 cloak for unwillingness to suffer for Christ, and 
 an opiate for the conscience. Unwilling as he 
 is to think hardly of his brethren at home, he 
 cannot hide from himself the fact that, in every 
 
TO BECOMING A MISSIONARY. 233 
 
 other branch and department of foreign service, 
 except that of a Missionary life, these very objec- 
 tions are felt to be lighter than air, and are 
 blown to the winds by both parents and sons. 
 He remembers the comfortable parsonages of 
 England, with their flower-gardens and fruit- 
 trees, and the quiet country village lying close 
 at hand, and the sunny May evenings, and the 
 bright green fields glowing in the yellow light, 
 and the cheerful winter-evenings, when the cur- 
 tains are drawn close and the little children are 
 playing beside their father and mother by the 
 light of the fire ; he remembers all this with a 
 sigh. Not that he regrets the loss of it ; God 
 forbid he should do so, when he has given up 
 the lesser comforts in order to receive higher 
 blessings ; but he remembers them with a sigh, 
 because he knows that it is the possession or the 
 prospect of these comforts that makes a mission- 
 ary life so uninviting to our young clergy. It 
 was the saying of a very valued friend, “ The 
 reason why you cannot get more missionaries to 
 return with you to India is that every one in 
 England is seeking to make himself comfortable .” 
 And yet this is not the worst : the love of com- 
 fort doubtless is strong, but it is sacrificed from 
 time to time to other motives. In India I have 
 been grieved to hear Christian friends attribute it 
 to the love of money ; “ Offer them large in- 
 comes,” they have said to me, “ and you will 
 
234 
 
 ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS 
 
 have as many Missionaries, of the right sort, as 
 you can find room for : they will leave England 
 for a chaplaincy of £600 a year and a retiring 
 pension ; and if they will not come to be Mission- 
 aries on £200 or £300 a year, what other reason 
 can be given for their refusal but a pecuniary 
 one ? ” I have been grieved to hear this, because 
 I could not contradict it. 
 
 I have known men come to India as chaplains, 
 and gladly rejoiced in their coming as true and 
 faithful servants of Christ, who were the sons of 
 widowed mothers, others who already had a 
 family of children, others who had sickly wives, 
 or whose own health was not strong ; others who 
 had left large spheres of usefulness in England 
 to come to minister to a few hundreds of Chris- 
 tians in India ; others who were men of high 
 talent and honours ; it is plain that these and 
 similar objections, weighed but little with them 
 or their relatives : nevertheless, each of these 
 objections have more than once been urged to me 
 as insuperable, nay, as objections connected with 
 duty, by men whom I have asked to become 
 Missionaries. 
 
 The plain truth is this, that when a cadetship, 
 a writership, a surgeoncy, a chaplaincy, or any 
 other lucrative appointment, is offered to any 
 one in England, neither he nor his friends 
 can see any obstacles in the way : but if the 
 appointment be that of a Missionary, which is 
 
TO BECOMING A MISSIONARY. 
 
 235 
 
 less lucrative, obstacles arise so rapidly as to 
 compel the parties hastily and decidedly to deter- 
 mine to refuse it. Yet it so happens that there 
 is not one objection (save the pecuniary one) 
 which can be urged against the latter appoint- 
 ment, which is not equally valid against all the 
 former ones. 
 
 The conclusion of the Missionary’s homeward 
 reverie is full of melancholy; his prayer is, 
 “ Stir up, 0 Lord, the wills of thy faithful 
 people.” 
 
 FINIS. 
 
 LEONARD SEELEY, THAMES DITTOX. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Date Due 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 s, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 <|) 
 
 PRINTED 
 
 IN U. S. A.