-» «. .^\^^ N C- ■•"\; . ' 3 [-i 4 \ V ^^'^/. .3^% .-^^^ .<^' ,0o .^^' ^V'^y> gale xtcetitetinial pnhlmtiQm INDIA OLD AND NEW gale I3(centennml publications With the approval of the President and Fellows of Tale University^ a series of volumes has been prepared by a number of the Professors and In- structors^ to be issued in connection with the Bicentennial Anniversary^ as a partial indica- tion of the character of the studies in which the University teachers are engaged. This series of volumes is respectfully dedicated to K)^t ^ratiuates! of t^e mniUersit^ INDIA OLD AND NEW WITH A MEMORIAL ADDRESS i BY E. WASHBURN HOPKINS, M.A., Ph.D., Prof essor of Sanskrit at Yale University NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD 1901 ■fHI: <-!BRARY OF Two CoHiES Received DEC, 1 1901 CSPV^IGHT ENTRY CLASS '^' XXo. No. o©pY a C<}pyright, 1901, By Yale University Published^ December, iqoi TTNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. PREFACE. Of the eleven separate papers here brought together, three have previously been published in full, — that on Guilds in the Yale Review, May and August, 1898; that on Land- tenure in the Political Science Quarterly, December, 1898; and that on Gods, under the title, " How Gods are made in India," in the New World, March, 1899. The editors of these journals have kindly granted me permission to republish the articles. I am also indebted to the editor of the Forum for the same courtesy in respect to the political paragraphs in the account of the Plague which, excerpted from the unpublished original, appeared in the Forum, August, 1897. The essay on Land-tenure, owing to Mr. Baden-Powell's last book, has been changed in some regards ; and, as editor of the Journal of the Oriental Societ}^, I have given myself permission to add to the article on Gods a complementary paper, which was published in the Journal the same year under the title, "Economics of Primitive Religion." The rest of the vol- ume consists of addresses delivered before sundry general audiences during the last two years. One, that on Christ in India, was first read before a small club in 1898, and afterwards expanded to its present form as parts of lectures delivered at the Harvard Summer School of Theology and the Yale Divinity School, in the summer of 1900 and spring of 1901, respectively. viii PREFACE. Since this book is not intended for a special public, I have made no attempt to give a scientific transliteration of Sanskrit letters, except in the rare cases where a whole text is cited. There seems to be no reason why a popular exposition should retain diacritical signs which are meaningless to the reader, or mark quantitative values in Sanskrit vowels any more than in the Greek. Since we write Athene and Electra, we may properly write Rama and Krishna, as the confusion of quan- tities will scarcely disturb the specialist, and will disturb the non-specialist still less. My simple rule has been to give the simplest form ; but in the index, and here and there in the notes, to satisfy a possible curiosity, I have added to this popular form a more precise rendering of its phonetic values. Anglo-Indian terms like cherry-merry have been kept as they are written in Anglo-Indian, — that is to say, as they are sometimes written, for the same book or newspaper will fre- quently transcribe the same original in two or three ways. As Sanskrit c is pronounced like cJi in church, I have preferred 1c in such words as Kutch ; but in other respects I have not tried to be pedantically consistent at the cost of clearness, and have, for example, written Poona, as it is usu- ally written, not Puna, as it logically should be written by one who, out of the Anglo-Indian versions of the word for town, pore, poor, pur, selects the one nearest to the native form. The Sanskrit sonant aspirates hJi, dh, gh, are pro- nounced as in ahJior, adhere, leghorn; the corresponding surds, ph, th, hh, as in uphill, at-home, oak-hall. OCTOBEE, 1901. TABLE OF COKTEKTS. Page Memorial Address in Honor of Professor Salisbury . 3 The Eig Veda 23 The Early Lyric Poetry of India 36 Sanskrit Epic Poetry 67 A Study of Gods 92 Christ in India 120 Ancient and Modern Hindu Guilds 169 Land-tenure in India 206 The Cause and Cure of Famine 230 The Plague 265 New India 333 Index 337 MEMORIAL ADDRESS IN HONOR OF PROFESSOR SALISBURY. EDWARD ELBRIDGE SALISBURY. The subject of the following memoir was born April 6, 1814, in Boston, Mass. He was the son of Josiah and Abigail (Breese) Salisbury. On his father's side he was of English ancestry ; on his mother's, of Hugue- not descent. He was graduated from Yale in 1832. He passed four years thereafter in study, particularly theological study, at New Haven. In 1836 he married his cousin, Abigail Salisbury Phillips, daughter of Edward Phillips of Boston, and immediately afterward went to Europe, where he spent nearly four years in the study of Oriental languages. He was a pupil of de Sacy and Garcin de Tassy in Paris, and of Bopp in Berlin. Soon after his return to America, in 1841, he was appointed Professor of Arabic and Sanskrit at Yale. He accepted the appointment, but did not at once assume the duties of the office, as he wished to spend another year in study. He therefore went to Germany in 1842, and spent a winter reading Sanskrit with Lassen in Bonn and Burnouf in Paris. He surrendered his Sanskrit work to his former pupil, W. D. Whitney, in 1854, at the same time establishing the Sanskrit professorship by mak- ing a permanent provision for the chair. The Arabic chair he retained till 1856, when his official connection with the University ceased. The years 1857 and 1870 he spent in travel in Europe. Professor Salisbury's first wife died in 1869. In 1871 he married the daughter of Judge Charles J. McCurdy of Lyme, Connecticut, Evelyn McCurdy, who survives him. Professor Salisbury died in his eighty-seventh year, February 5, 1901. He was a life-member of the American Oriental Society for nearly sixty years. From 1846 to 1857 he was its corresponding secretary, and president of the Society from 1863 to 1866, and again from 1873 to 1880. This memorial was presented February 16, 1901, at Yale University. MEMORIAL ADDRESS IN HONOR OF PROFESSOR SALISBURY. It is fitting that on the death of a man who has lived revered we should pause in our busy work and for an hour at least make piety our occupation. Whether such a token of respect mean anything to him we honor, we cannot know ; but for ourselves it is a gratification to pay the tribute, though this be merely to recall his past. Yet what better tribute can we offer to the memory of any man than with thankful thoughts to look back upon his life, knowing that he has spent it well and that not age alone has made him venerable ? For so his life becomes its own encomium. But to review completely the career even of a contemporary is not easy, and it is more difficult in the case of one who has labored chiefly during years so long gone by that they seem to belong to an epoch already far distant. To envisage such a life, to recognize its true value, we must begin with seeking to understand the environment in which it started. Let us, then, consider first of all the conditions under which Mr. Salisbury rose to be the leader of Oriental scholarship in this country. For in awaking and directing the energies of those under him, as in opening to his colleagues in America vistas of which they had been practically ignorant, he well deserves this title of leader. It was a time when the intellec- tual activities of the country, in so far as they concerned themselves with the Orient at all, were busied almost exclu- sively with missionary work abroad and with the wisdom of the Hebrews here. Indian and Arabic literatures were ignored well-nigh completely, and Persian antiquities inter- ested none. There was no medium of communication between 4 MEMORIAL ADDRESS IN HONOR OF Oriental scholars, neither a society for mutual intercourse and exchange of ideas nor a journal for the propagation of new knowledge. Such a thing as a Sanskrit professorship was unknown in this country and scarcely known elsewhere. It is true that Oriental scholarship had already been placed upon a firm basis, and that, for example, our own President Woolsey studied Arabic abroad in the twenties. But there was no one in this country who had entered con amore into the newly blazed path of study, nor was there yet, even in Europe, any general recognition on the part of the Universities of the intrinsic value of Hindu and Iranian literatures. To wake an interest at home there was required some one who should primarily appreciate the value of Oriental research, and then, quite as important a point, make others appreciate it. The man was needed and he came ; a scholar by instinct, who, self-impelled, sought his own training and got it from the best masters. To do this, as is clear from the conditions I have just outlined, it was imperative to seek teachers abroad. When he returned, after he had acquired from Bopp, Garcin de Tassy, and de Sacy the knowledge he had sought, he came back the only scholar of his kind in America. Let me not be misunderstood, however, for I would not seem to exaggerate. Mr. Salisbury was at that time the only scholar of his kind in America, but he was not a Rama com- parable only with Rama, in the sense of being a great special- ist, a recognized maker of science. He himself would have smiled gently at the ascription of such futile praise. He never tried, for example, to take the place later occupied by Mr. Whitney. His work was not such as to control the course of scientific inquiry ; but he was leader, and at first unique leader, not only in being best fitted, but in actively calling others to Oriental work. Moreover, his taste was literary and historical rather than philological in the narrower sense. But when our philological work is completed, then the old knowers of literature will appear more clearly than now as precursors over this new province, and we shall not ask what strictly linguistic work Mr. Salisbury accomplished, or PROFESSOR SALISBURY. 5 whether he edited any Sanskrit texts ; but we shall wonder the more at the ripe scholarship which understood and appre- ciated Sanskrit literature, and not only Sanskrit but Arabic literature ; which scholarship, as a labor of love or duty, did even edit Arabic texts ; while also, in a missionary spirit, it expounded Persian cuneiform inscriptions ; and yet found its chief pleasure not in such work as this, but in absorbing through the medium of the literature the life and thought of antiquity — so thoroughly that it was able to give a clear synopsis of special linguistic work ; so broadly that it com- prehended with appreciation the characteristics of two great and dissimilar nationalities. " Professor of Arabic and San- skrit," — that is a title as incongruous to our modern ears as would be professor of Greek and Chinese, He who bore such a title bore more than our specialists would venture to assume, even in name ; but he bore it in reality, worthily, conscientiously, as he did all things, and despite the increas- ing weight of the intellectual burden, though he eventually abandoned both titles, he ever retained his interest in these two fields and took note as far as it was possible of what was doing in both. Mr. Salisbury, though not a specialist, yet shared, as I have said, in the more recondite labors of his profession. And I would emphasize the fact that in so doing he never failed to be scrupulously scientific in his method ; nor did ever the genial plea of " having a more general interest in the subject " serve him as excuse for slovenly work. But there is more to add, for Mr. Salisbury not only entered into abstruse sub- jects, but, standing midway in age between President Woolsey and Professor James Hadley, he joined with them in that uplifting of professorial aims which leads the scholar to look on investigation and the publication of the results of study, not merely as works of supererogation, but as a requisite concomitant of his professorship. But what at that far-distant day was this elevation of aims? It was nothing less than the creation in America of the University ideal in contrast with that of the school and college. So I think it is no little 6 MEMORIAL ADDRESS IN HONOR OF glory to Mm that, favored by fortune to be beyond the need of toil, Mr. Salisbury should not only have devoted himself to unremitting labor from the outset of his career, but also have been foremost in publishing the results of his special studies in stimulative essays ; and it was no accident, but the logical outcome of this, that, to his own honor, but also to the honor of Yale, he virtually made himself the first " University Professor " in America ; for such from its inception was really his academic position. Among the cherished possessions of my library is a volume, the Miscellanea published by Mr. Salisbury between 1840 and 1876, from the age of twenty-six to sixty-two. I prize it, not as a mine of information, but again not merely because of personal associations ; for it is at the same time an index of the growth of Oriental studies during the last century, and a reflex, not without its lesson, of the mind from which these essays sprang. There are here no technical studies, no statistics, almost no investigation in the confined sense we give to that word to-day. The articles are in general descriptive, resumes of knowledge, maps of thought. Mr. Salisbury's scientific bent was, as I have said, pre-eminently historical. He loved, moreover, to survey from the height the road made by others, rather than dig at that road him- self. For this reason he has left little in the way of subtle monographs, but many comprehensive reviews. Yet just this attitude of mind, when such a mind devotes itself to in- struction, is especially valuable, not only in giving a fasci- natingly broad view at the outset to the student who is to toil upon the road of progress or the field of research, but in revealing to him, as he advances, the bearing of each form of work toward every other. But you must not think that Mr. Salisbury, in rather avoiding the technique of science, lacked a just estimate of this side of scholarship. His was not the complacent mind that boasts of breadth and betrays its narrowness by belittling the word of the specialist. In fact, from Mr. Salisbury's Inaugural Address I think it is clear that he intended to PROFESSOR SALISBURY. 7 devote himself as a duty to details of study ; but this would have been impossible in his case even had he possessed the temperament. For when the appointment to the professor- ship of Arabic and Sanskrit was made, that bipartite province could still be controlled by one man. But almost synchron- ously with the appointment began to appear in both fields a series of studies so special and elaborate, each province be- sides became so enlarged, that no single scholar could longer command it. A general knowledge of what was going on in each was all that any one could attain unless he sacrificed one of the two. I should like, however, to read you an extract from this Inaugural of 1843, when the young scholar of twenty-nine years was just entering upon his life-work, and I think you will admit not only that he had a generous conception of scientific work, but also that he intended to exercise all the functions of a scholar. After " sketching the department of Sanskrit and Arabic literatures," he says : " You perceive, gentlemen, that my field of study is broad and requires much minuteness of research in order to know it thoroughly. I profess only to have set foot upon it, to have surveyed its extent, to have resolved to spend my days in its research, believing as I do that it may yield rich and valuable fruits, and to do what may be in my power to attract others into it, though I am aware I must expect to labor, for a time, almost alone." And let me add, as characteristic of the modesty and breadth of the true scholar, the words that follow these : " I would earnestly ask of you all to bear with my weaknesses, to be patient with my slowness in doing all that I ought to do to honor my place, and to allow me to find refuge from the feeling of loneliness and discouragement in your sympa- thizing recognition that each department of knowledge is kindred with every other, — the sentiment which should pervade every great Institution of learning, — and which I would myself cultivate, while I shall eagerly seek to add brightness to my flickering lamp from the shining lights about me." 8 MEMORIAL ADDRESS IN HONOR OF In a note to this address, besides the arguments adduced in the Inaugural itself, an additional reason for the study of Sanskrit is offered in the missionary's want of proper native words with which to present the claims of Christianity, a want that can be filled better by scholars in this country than by the busy missionary in India, " and thus might one at home with his Sanskrit serve the living God." On the side of Mr. Salisbury's character which is shown in his simple Christian spirit I have no competence to speak. This is the part of those who have been privileged to know him longer and more intimately. But it was so much in and of him that I cannot ignore it altogether even in speaking of his position as a scholar, and this quaint note on serving God with Sans- krit is perhaps sufQciently expressive to show how to him a useful life was inseparable from one of religious endeavor. The year after this Inaugural was written, the young pro- fessor, then just thirty, read at the Meeting of the American Oriental Society held on May 28, 1844, a long paper on the history of Buddhism. He had " heard a Memoir on the Ori- gin of Buddhism read by M. Burnouf before the French Institute in the spring of 1843," and fresh from this personal impression made by the great foreign scholar, he who had heard Burnouf attempted the task of inspiring others with his own interest. Such independent observations as are strewn through this long study are thoroughly sound. They show, not new knowledge of detail, but insight. Many of them are such as to pass unnoticed to-day, but that is only because we know more than was known in 1844. Of this sort, for example, is the remark that Buddhist doctrines are an outgrowth of Brahmanism, a statement which only subse- quent work could verify. Another point touched upon is in the refutation on four formal grounds of the theory that Buddha was the creation of a philosophical mythology, a dis- cussion which anticipates by decades recent investigations and theories. The studious care of the writer of this article is shown in the many references to works consulted by him, German, PROFESSOR SALISBURY. 9 French, and English, up to the time of its delivery. Some of these works are now classics ; at that time the young scholar had just seen them fresh from the press and thought they " promised to be valuable." It is of this paper that Mr. Whitney said that it was the first really scientific paper pre- sented to the Oriental Society. How wide was Mr. Salisbury's interest in the Orient may be seen from his painstaking study on the Chinese origin of the compass, read before the Connecticut Society of Arts and Sciences in 1840. It is an abstract from Klaproth's letter to Humboldt, but it involves a careful investigation of an intri- cate subject. Again, in 1848, in a report of the Directors, which is virtually a recommendation to the Oriental Society, Mr. Salisbury urges the importance of Egyptology and the desirability of making excavations at Nineveh ; while in the same recommendation occurs the following notable paragraph, which I think will be of especial interest to ail classical stu- dents : " But as an indispensable condition of this advance of knowledge, the writings of the Greeks and the Biblical records relating to Assyria and the data of the newly- discovered Assyrian monuments, must all be brought together, for mu- tual explanation, and to supply each other's deficiencies. . . . The concentration of oriental and classical studies has shed light upon many obscurities, and is destined to do this still more in the future. There is then an evident propriety in oriental and classical scholars being associated together, for the more successful prosecuting of those investigations in which they have a common interest, and accordingly this Society embraces classical members, besides such as interest themselves in oriental researches, specially considered. " But something more seems necessary, in order that these two elements united in our association may be brought to a reciprocity of action. It has, therefore, been proposed [i. e. Mr. Salisbury proposes] to create within this Society, a special organization for the promotion of classical learning, in its various bearings upon oriental [sc. subjects]. The sim- plest method of executing the proposition in question, would 10 MEMORIAL ADDRESS TN HONOR OF seem to be to create by election from among the members of the Society a Classical Section, to have in view especiall}^ and to have charge over, the classical side of oriental subjects." I have read this long extract, not only to show you Mr. Salisbury's catholicity, but because I think it of peculiar interest that he who has done so much for Orientalists should also be the one to initiate the founding of the Philological Association. For our present Philological Association is but the later growth of the Classical Section which Mr. Salisbury here- with brought into existence. It is perhaps to be too curious to ask whether the Modern Language and Dialect Societies, or again the Archaeological Society, all offshoots of the Philolog- ical Association, may not be traced to the same source ; and it must, of course, be admitted that the creation of a philo- logical society, either as a Chapter of the Oriental or as an independent body, could not have been long delayed, and that such an association as we have now was not dependent upon the action of the Oriental Society. All this is true, but the fact remains that all these societies, historically consid- ered, sprang from the Report to the Directors of the Oriental Society, which was accepted at the Quarterly Meeting on January 5, 1848, twenty-one years before the Philological Association became incorporated ; for till then the latter remained, under the name of Classical Section, a minor at home with the parent society. Although Mr. Salisbury's title was " Professor of Arabic and Sanskrit," he included in his studies, with his usual breadth of vision, Persian as a close relative of Sanskrit, and in the fourth part of the first volume of the Oriental Journal he published a remarkably clear and correct essay on the Identification of the Signs of the Persian Cuneiform Alpha- bet (1849). The writer, to repeat his own words, will only " communicate results obtained " by other scholars, and the paper is not a contribution of original material ; but it de- serves mention particularly because it shows that Mr. Salis- bury had already worked his way through Lassen, Burnouf, PROFESSOR SALISBURY. 11 Rawlinson, and the more recent Beitrdge zur ErJdarung der Persischen Keilinschriften of Adolph Holtzmann, Die Per- siscJien Keilinschriften of Benfey (1847), and to have known of Oppert's Lautsystem des Altpersischen (1848), although, properly speaking, the whole subject lay apart from his official field of research. On the Arabic side, Mr. Salisbury was particularly active, publishing first a Translation of unpublished Arabic Docu- ments, with introduction and notes, first read before the Oriental Society in October, 1849, an independent but not the most original work presented by him ; since in 1852 he read a critique of the genuineness of the so-called Nestorian monument of Singanfu. Here he had to give a digest of the views of Abel-R^musat, Neumann, Ritter, and Neander, and then " exhibit the true state of the evidence," which he does clearly and concisely. Another paper on the Science of Moslem Tradition (read in 1859 and published in 1861) is one of his most scholarly efforts, being " gathered from original sources, either only in manuscript or so little accessible as to be nearly equivalent to unpublished authorities " (referring to Delhi lithographs). The first of these documents is a manuscript in the de Sacy collection, which was now in Mr. Salisbury's possession. This was soon followed by a paper on The Muhammedan Doctrines of Predestination and Free Will, from original sources. These were, I think, articles especially agreeable to him to write, essentially historical, and in that one of his two fields in working which he took perhaps the greater satisfaction. The same year, however, in which was published the former of these papers, appeared in the New Englander an article apparently written in 1858, printed by especial request of the editor and entitled Sketch of the Life and Works of Michael Angelo Buonarroti, in which Mr, Salisbury gave a popular account of the great artist, quoting at the end with especial admiration the words of the sonnet composed by the poet in his old age : — 12 MEMORIAL ADDRESS IN HONOR OF "Ne pinger ne scolpir fia piu che queti ; L'anima volta a quell' amor divino, Ch' aperse a prender noi in croce le braccia." Mr. Salisbury, it may be observed, had more than a reading knowledge of Italian, and though he never prided himself upon possessing linguistic attainments, yet it is worth re- cording, especially in view of the fact that such ability was very rare in the first half of the last century, that he not only read Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, and Hebrew, besides, of course, Greek and Latin, but spoke German, French, and Italian. Spanish he knew but slightly, and I am not sure whether he could speak it. Another historical article was published in the same magazine — then one of the leading literary journals of the country — in 1876, on some of the Relations between Islam and Christianity. But in the meantime Mr. Salisbury had published in the Journal, to which he contributed, in all, thirty-two papers, his most extensive scientific article, a " Notice of the Book of Sulaiman's First Ripe Fruit " (read at the Meetings of May and October, 1864), a revelation of the mysteries of the Nusairian sect, the article being a critical interpretation of the titular work (which had appeared that same year in Beirut), according to copies forwarded by Dr. Van Dyck, the able local missionary. This very original tract was written by Sulaimg,n 'Effendi, who appears in it as a zealous convert to the Christian religion. But this was by no means the first time that Sulaiman had undergone the mental distraction of conversion. Starting out as a Nusairy, but soon growing dissatisfied with this religion, he soon became a convert to Judaism. This faith, however, also failed to content him, and he converted himself again, this time becoming a Moslem; after which, for he had not yet found peace, he became converted to his fourth religion and entered the Greek church. His fifth religion was his last, and as a member of the Protestant Christian church he re- views the iniquities of his original faith in the diatribe PROFESSOR SALISBURY. 13 translated and published by Mr. Salisbury. Such a work would be considered by many a find to exult over, and had it been discovered recently we should doubtless have had the Sunday papers advertising the odd facts therein chronicled, such as the present existence of Syrian moon-worshippers and of "trinitarian Muhammedans." But forty years ago such methods were unknown, as they were ever incon- ceivable in connection with the dignified scholar who quietly published his most extraordinary discovery in the current number of the Oriental Journal, knowing that, though never noticed by others, it would be seen by those whose opinion seemed to him of worth. This last essay was published after Mr. Salisbury had retired from his professorship. It is a tradition that his pre- diction of loneliness was in so far fulfilled as to give him but two students. You know, however, what the lion said : " I have only one child but he is a lion." Mr. Salisbury at least reared two lions. In 1851, the elder of his whilom students, James Hadley, had already succeeded Mr. Woolsey as Professor of Greek, and to the other Mr. Salisbury in 1854 resigned his Sanskrit work. The teacher's influence is clearly perceptible when we read that Mr. Hadley was not only versed in the classics, but acquainted with Hebrew, Arabic, Armenian, Sanskrit, and Keltic ; and of Mr. Whitney it need only be said that when as a youth, after studying Sanskrit for some years by himself, he sought in 1849 for one to guide him further in his studies, his adviser, who, it is pleasant to add, was our own venerable Dr. Day, then Whitney's pastor in Northampton, naturally referred him to Mr. Salisbury, as the only man in the country who could teach him. After the publication of the last article to which reference has just been made, Mr. Salisbury's mind turned to new fields of investigation. To him is due the very complete sketch of the Trumbull Gallery in the Yale Book of 1879 ; while in 1877 he had read before the Art School a lecture on the Principles of Domestic Taste, which was printed the 14 MEMORIAL ADDRESS IN HONOR OF same year in the New Englancler — parerga of a scholar ; but Mr. Salisbury, for many years one of the Elective Members of the Yale Art School, was always interested in art, nearly as much so as in the Orient, and allowed none of his faculties to become atrophied, so that when his eyes could no longer peruse texts his active mind could still work in other, yet not unfamiliar fields. The studies of his later years were, however, still of historical sort. In 1875 he read before the New Haven Colonial Historical Society a paper, full of minute inves- tigation, on Mr. William Diodate and his Italian Ancestry (printed in 1876). Thereafter genealogical research was his chief occupation, especially as fast failing eyesight pre- cluded further Oriental study, whereas in genealogical work he had the skilful and devoted assistance of his wife. In 1885, when over seventy years of age, Mr. Salisbury pub- lished his (own) Family Memorials ; and in 1892, the Family Histories and Genealogies (of his wife), in several large volumes, sumptuously prepared, and edited with such atten- tion to details that he is said to have ordered a whole volume reprinted because of one typographical error. Mr. Salisbury says of his own contributions to Orientalia that lie published his papers in the Journal of the Oriental Society " more as an amateur-student than as a master with authority." But, as we have seen, there was real and rigid scholarship in all that he presented. Moreover, though not perhaps " master with authority," his abilities were fully recognized by learned confreres, as bears witness the fact that he was elected a member of the Asiatic Society of Paris when he was twenty-four years old (1838) ; of the two Academies of Art and Sciences of Connecticut and Boston in 1839 and 1848, respectively; a corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences and Belles Lettres at Constantinople in 1855 ; a corresponding member of the German Oriental Society in 1859; and of the Antiquarian Society in 1861. He was twice given the degree of Doctor of Laws, once in 1869 by his Alma Mater, and again in 1886 PROFESSOR SALISBURY. 15 by Harvard. It is characteristic of his modest estimate of his own ability and of his love of truth that he refused to accept the latter degree mitil the terms (employed in be- stowing it) in praise of his own services to science were so modified as to make it possible for him to admit that they might refer to himself. In 1869 Mr. Salisbury was strongly urged to accept the chair of Arabic at Harvard, but no inducement could tempt him away from New Haven. In the sketch I have given of Mr. Salisbury's more impor- tant writings you have seen what he was as a scholar. But the energies thus early devoted to philology were not allowed to remain selfishly employed. The young professor was ap- pointed in 1841, and after studying abroad a second time, with Lassen in Germany and Burnouf in France, as previously he had studied with Bopp in Berlin and Garcin de Tassy and de Sacy in Paris, he assumed the duties of his ofiice in 1843. The year before this, chiefly in the interest of missionary work, had been founded the American Oriental Society (1842, three years before the organization of the German Oriental Society). Into this opening for new labor Mr. Salisbury, on his return from abroad, flung himself with ardor. To him it was to be a society which should concentrate activities till then scat- tered and unorganized. There are few living who know how much Mr. Salisbury has done for this Society. As has been said by one of his colleagues in a recent review of his life : "No notice of Professor Salisbury would be complete without an emphatic recognition of his invaluable services in the development of that Society by the unstinted expenditure of time, labor, and money." For Mr. Salisbury not only sup- ported the Society, but he contributed besides the constant spur of his own example in offering memoirs, in suggesting improvements, and last but not least in being present as a duty at the meetings of the Society. For eleven years he was its corresponding secretary (and practically the editor of its Journal), filling an arduous and thankless office with constant fidelity and self-sacrificing devotion; and for ten years he was the Society's honored president. 16 MEMORIAL ADDRESS IN HONOR OF Of his own work in behalf of the Society he himself says merely that he " labored to make its Journal the vehicle of some valuable contributions ... as well as for the e:eneral prosperity of the Society — not wholly without success, due in largo measure to the co-operation of learned American mis- sionaries '' (^Olass-book of 1832), — a characteristically humble appraisement. But let us add this to it, that of his long ser- vice in behalf of the Society, an active membership from almost its beginning to his death, nearly tlu'ee-score j'ears, is itself witness. Nor does that testimony stand alone. Just ten years ago Mr. Whitney, who knew well what Mr. Salisbmy had done for the Oriental Society, and was the best judge of its value, wrote as follows: "Professor Salisbury, by his own writings and by the active correspondence which he kept up with American missionaries, . . . provided most of the ma- terial for publication ; he also himself procured a number of fonts of Oriental type — mostly the tirst of this kind in the country, and still in part the only ones — for use in printing the Journal; and, not less in importance, he met the expenses of publication of volume after volume. . . . For some ten years. Professor Salisbury was virtually the Society, doing its work and paj'ing its bills. He gave it standing and credit in the world of scholai-s, as an organization that could originate and could make public valuable material" (April, 1891). Such also is the testimony of a younger colleague, Mr. Lanman, who, six yeai-s ago in liis address in memory of Mr. Whitney, alluded to ]Mr. Salisbury as the " life and soul of the Society," during the period of its earlier growth. Nor has the Oriental Society, either individually or as a body, ever forgotten him, and when by good chance its meet- ing fell on his birthday, as has happened twice witliin the last few years, it has been with a sense of personal gratitica- tion, even on the part of members who knew him only by his works, that this Society honored itself by sending him a eon- gmtnlatory telegram. In reply to one of these despatches, sent two years ago, on his eighty-fifth birthday, Mr. Salisbury responded by sending his own congi-atulations to the Society I PROFESSOR SALISBURY. 17 "on what it has grown to be from its small beginnings of more than fifty years ago," — and there was none that heard the answer who did not add to these unassuming words, " Thanks largely to him that sends the message." To appreciate fully what Mr. Salisbury has done for Yale University is no easy task. Nearly sixty years ago, in 1842, he gave considerable sums for the erection of a library build- ing, and subsequently for the erection of East and West Divinity Halls, and for the income of the Art School. But aid for building, great as was that, was the least of his numerous benefactions. For it was through him alone that two of Yale's most distinguished professors were permanently located where, in the case of one, it was most proper that he should be retained, at the seat of the labors that had already made him famous ; as in the case of the other it was most fortunate that the University could thus secure for itself the promise of his future greatness. Gladly would the University have been first to induce the one to remain and the other to come, but on neither occasion when the need arose were funds available for the purpose. In each case the prospect was that Yale would fail to gain its end. But Mr. Salisbury was here, and quietly, unostentatiously, as he did everything, he said, " Let this be my office." And not once but twice, out of his own means, he accomplished for the University what the University left to itself would have been unable to do. What glory remains to Yale in the names of Dana and Whitney, — and the measure of a university's renown is not in the num- ber of its students, but in the reputation of its teachers, — this glory as an abiding possession is due to him whose memory we are here assembled to honor. " It is a thought that may interest us all," said President Dwight in his Memorial Ad- dress on Professors Dana and Whitney (June, 1895), "that the two men were alike secured for our University by the generous interposition of a friend of the institution, one and the same friend, whose liberal gifts made the remaining here possible for them. This friend, now in his serene old age, 2 18 MEMORIAL ADDRESS IN HONOR OF survives them both, having witnessed with deepest satisfac- tion the rich fruits of their work. His scholarly life within the University for many years, and his benefactions bestowed during the long course of half a century, have accomplished much for its well-being in many ways. But the student of our history will ever recognize with a peculiarly grateful feel- ing, as he traces the progress of this institution for the last forty years, the service which was rendered by this benefactor when he gave these two generous gifts, and the names of Professors Dana and Whitney will be closely associated in his mind and memory with the name of Professor Salisbury, their honored friend and ours." There is another factor in the totality of a university's completeness. The foundation of its scholarship lies in its library. A universit}^ without books, the best and latest, is like a factory filled with workmen but without works. Against this deficiency Mr. Salisbury supplied the University out of his own store, first of books and then of ever-present assistance. The treasures of learning accumulated by the great Orientalist de Sacy were bought at his death by Mr. Salisbury, who thus more than sixty years ago laid the foundations of the unrivalled Oriental library of which Yale boasts to-day. For he did not wait, as many would have done, to leave this collection to the University, but robbing himself of his treasure gave it thirty years ago to Yale. Nor has there ever been a time since then when in furthering the good work thus begun he has failed to respond most generously to appeals for aid. Only two years ago a collection of Oriental books was offered for sale and there was no chance of the University being able to purchase them. I went to Mr. Salisbury and laid the case before him. The sum demanded was large. "I can scarcely afford it," he said, " but," he added, " Yale, must have the books and I will pay for them." This was his spirit always, and as long as he lived he continued to give annually for the support of the library. Without show or exploitation, almost se- cretly, he aided continuously for more than half a century, PROFESSOR SALISBURY. 19 by his munificence as well as by his sage suggestions, the development of this University. Thus as scholar, as member of the Oriental Society, and finally as benefactor of Yale and of the Society alike, Mr. Salisbury lived his noble life, — a life of fulness to himself and of much benefit to others, not only in material things but also in the mental stimulus imparted by it until its very close. Such is his record as a public character. But to us who knew him there was more than this, the charm of his personality. For he himself, the aged scholar, was ever crowned with such a gentle dignity and antique stately courtliness that even to meet him gave great pleasure, as to know him was an intel- lectual gain. But of his kindness and of the love felt for him I may not speak, lest I come too near the heart of some here present; yet even in the case of those not of his family the reverence felt for him was indissolubly associated with affection. In the ancient burial service of the Rig Veda it is described how the survivors of a dead man must raise at his grave a wall, separating the living from the dead, and sing these words : " Now are the living sundered from the dead ; (there lies the dead) but we go on " (to life). Fortunate is it that the living can thus turn again to the varied interests of life ; but fortunate also are they who, in thus turning, feel that not all which once was theirs is sundered from them, but that through the dividing wall of death there still extends, in memories linking together the present and the past, an im- pulse that does not die with the dead, but is still a vital force among the living. INDIA OLD AND NEW. INDIA OLD AND NEW. THE RIG VEDA. MoEE than a generation has now passed since the work called Rig Veda, that is, Verse-Wisdom, was first completely published in print. The first half appeared just forty years ago, and the second half followed two years later. But although the Rig Veda has been in the hands of schol- ars for so long, there is no unanimity on their part as regards either the time and place of origin, or the character of this Verse-Wisdom. There are, however, already at hand certain data the consideration of which should tend to solidify opinion on these points. Some of these can be explained without bringing in technical details, and the general problem may easily be stated in such a way as to be comprehended by any student accustomed to deal with the history of literature. In a narrow sense the Rig Veda is one of four Vedas ; yet since two of the other three are merely the Rig Veda itself, arranged for chaunting, sdman, and for a sacrificial liturgy, yajus, while the fourth is also a collection of verses, many of which are simply taken from the older Rig Veda, we may say that in a wider sense, for historical purposes, there is only one Veda, that is, a body of hymns composed separately in remote antiquity and afterwards brought to- gether and arranged in various groups called " Collections." But in this wider sense the Verse-Wisdom of ancient India is itself a heterogeneous combination of old hymns, charms, philosophical poems, and popular songs, most but not all of which are of religious content. ,/ 24 INDIA OLD AND NEW. As the starting-point of our critique we may take the admission made in the Vedic literature itself that the va- rious Collections known to us are parts of a more primitive Veda, Something more than philosophical and religious in- terpretation is contained in this statement. It holds a bit of literary history, and the view here advanced is supported by a careful study of the structure of our extant texts. For not only is it true that the three oldest Collections are merely various arrangements of Verse-Wisdom, in the main the Collection or Rig Veda, but it is also indisputable that this Rig Veda Collection itself is a composite consisting largely of the same material disposed in various ways. The same whole verses and a still larger number of parts of verses are found repeated in different hymns, while in almost every hymn occur phrases which are used elsewhere in other situa- tions. All this points to the fact that the hymns are founded on older material, the wreck of which has been utilized in constructing new poetic buildings, just as many of the tem- ples of India are to a great extent built of the material of older demolished temples. The extant Verse- Wisdom Collection, then, far from being a group of primitive hymns, is probably in part the later remnant of older hymns (which in course of time were changed both in substance and in form), while in part it is merely more modern imitation of these hymns. By such re-handling of older material literature has in fact always been preserved in India. We need look only at the later form of hymns of the Rig Veda Collection as they appear in the Atharva Collection to see that in order to be intelligible the poetry of the ancients had to be brought down to date, so to speak ; or, again, at the verses of the Upanishads that still preserve archaic forms, as they in turn are passed along through the medium of the epic, with the sense kept but with the outer form remodelled to suit a later age. It is for this reason that attempts to discover dialectic dif- ferences in the Rig Veda have as good as failed completely. THE RIG VEDA. 25 Some few traces of a primitive dialectic divergence in the use of certain grammatical forms have been thought to be percep- tible, but they are mostly imaginary ; that is, the divergence in any one case is too small to establish a dialect upon, and all the supposed traces taken together fail to show any special dialectic difference between the different parts of the Veda. This is true both in regard to other dialectic distinctions and in regard to a distinction between priestly and popular lan- guage. All that has been shown is that some of the hymns are nearer than others to the norm of the later language, that is, are themselves later. The reason why the Veda Collection was made at all was doubtless the very fact that the form of antique hymns was continually changing. As the Athenians wished to preserve the tragedians, so the priests of India made at last an authorized edition of their hereditary material, as it had been handed down in their different families by that much belauded Hindu memory which has foolishly been supposed to be always infallible, whereas, in point of fact, wonderful as it was when so trained as to absorb all other intellectual powers, by nature it was untrustworthy ; for in citing older material by memory the Hindus, as I have just shown, are constantly unreliable as far as regards the exact reproduction in stereotyped form of the verses they repeat. And this must have been the case always till the Vedic ma- terial began to be felt as something ancient enough to be divine. Previously there is no reason at all to suppose that the repeaters of old songs were themselves very nice in this regard, or that they were estopped from making indi- vidual alterations in the text. On the contrary, we must believe that the hymns with other poetic tradition of older Verse-Wisdom were at first handed down in just the way in which the later hymns and other poetic literature were handed down in the Upanishads and epic, — that is, modified, transformed, freely altered. On this point, as on many oth- ers, a study of what has actually happened is far more likely than a priori argument to direct historical research rightly. In regard to the Vedic verses, the very case taken to preserve 26 INDIA OLD AND NEW. them exactly as they were, the extraordinary machinery in- vented solely to this end, such as dislocating the complete words and repeating the parts separately, saying them again by an overlapping process, and finally repeating them forwards and backwards — all this anxious solicitude shows not only, what has often been commented upon, that the priests held the text in veneration, but also, what is more important and is not sufficiently recognized, that they were sure the text would continue to be corrupted, modified, modernized, as without such precaution it had been changed in the past. From what I have already said it follows that hymns of very different periods originally, but reduced pretty much to one linguistic level, will be found in the Verse-Wisdom, which, at some time in its natural development, was thus arrested. For the older hymns, as they passed through generations of reciters, would have been steadily modified, not indeed to the very level of the reciters, but, so to speak, to within easy reaching distance. We see the same thing exactly in our successive editions of hymn-books. The quaint old hymn loses its oldest, perhaps incomprehensible or re- pugnant features, but it is not reduced quite to the same form as those written in this generation. Sufficient antique flavor is preserved to conserve its sanctity, as it were, but at the same time sufficient change is introduced to make it appeal to the intelligence and sympathy of the modern worshipper. How far this has gone in the actual Veda Collections has been shown by Professor Aufrecht. The evidence is valuable; but before there was any such Collection the same process must have resulted in the linguistic and syntactical modifica- tion of the older hymns of the Verse-Collection. The present Rig Veda Collection consists of ten groups, which may be roughly divided into three main divisions, in- dicating two earlier groups and a later (completed) Collec- tion; the first comprising the second to the seventh book inclusively, the second containing additions set round the older group, and consisting of the first to the eighth books (inclu- sive), and the third, or final redaction, consisting of the former THE RIG VEDA. 27 groups witli thie addition of the ninth and tenth books. These two last added books differ more in character than in age from the preceding, though generally speaking the latest hymns (linguistically judged) are found in these two books. But as the books differ in character they contain also a great deal of old material, which had not previously been incor- porated because it did not correspond to the character of the earlier books. While, therefore, the books ii-vii are the oldest group and books ix-x the latest books, i and viii being inter- mediate, some parts of the latest group are nevertheless proba- bly earlier than the earlier groups as such ; and likewise the eighth book does not quite suit the character of the first group, and may for this reason have been preserved apart before it was finally tagged on to it. But since its vocabulary is dis- tinctly later than that of books ii-vii, as its rhythmic arrange- ment is more refined, it is most likely that it really is a later product ; nor is there anything in its content similar to the antique content of certain of the hymns of the tenth book to counterbalance the lateness of vocabulary, style, and arrange- ments. The most important book chronologically is the ninth, which has a character all its own in that it comprises nearly all the Vedic hymns to Soma ; that is, it is exclusively oc- cupied with a cult that is pre- Vedic, and yet as a part of the Collection it is clearly a late addition to the first two groups ; and the individual hymns, some of which must in their orig- inal form have been among the oldest hymns of the whole Veda, are in their group-form all reduced to the same lin- guistic level, which in general is that of the end rather than the beginning of the Collection. The time when the Verse-Wisdom Collection was made cannot be much earlier than the sixth century b. c, and may be considerably later. That the individual hymns of which the Collection consists are in their original form older than this is unquestionable, and scholars have referred the date of the hymns, in distinction from the date of the making of the Col- lection, to the tenth, twelfth, fifteenth, and even thirty-fifth century before our era. The last date is the result of certain 28 INDIA OLD AND NEW. astronomical factors supposed to be valid as determinants and applied with mucli ingenuity to the solution of the problem. But the premises on which rests this theory of the date are scarcely admissible and the theory neither has had nor is likely to have the support of other critics, though the in- ventor of the theory is himself an extremely able and sober- minded critic. But it is a well-known fact that when one makes what appears to be an important discovery one's critical faculty is almost sure to be unduly influenced by one's en- thusiasm for the idea, — very fortunately, for otherwise there would be no advance in science, since caution would so check as to palsy invention. As to the other dates proposed, they have no other basis, as may be seen by their fluctuating nature, than the vague belief that a certain, or uncertain, number of centuries must elapse before a thousand hymns of varying chronological value can be written and explained ; for other data of change re- quire no very long period. But the chronological values are based not so much on the number of hymns and elucidations (for no one knows how many authors were concerned in the making of the Veda, and the number of elucidations, Brah- manas, does not represent time so much as schools) as on sundry allusions of the poets themselves to older poets and hymns, and on an assumed difference in age between some of the hymns, which have a more antique vocabulary and gram- mar, and those that come nearer to the later standard. It is obvious, then, that the first factor may be admitted and yet largely discounted by the admission of only a few genera- tions of poets, not more than two centuries. Nor are the linguistic differences so great as to make it necessary to as- sume anything like half a dozen centuries for their formation. Again, the chief reason for believing that circa 600 b, c. is the date of the Collection as such, is that the older explanatory Brahmanas do not show any acquaintance with such a Collec- tion, whereas the later do, as do the early philosophical Upani- shads. Now the linguistic changes arising between the time of the Brahmanas in their oldest form and the Upanishads THE RIG VEDA. 29 which belong to them are not much less than those between the Brahmanas and the hymns, and there is no reason what- ever for supposing that all the changes between the oldest hymns and the Upanishads of the first and second period (the old prose and verse Upanishads) could not have been effected in the course of two centuries. Two hundred years are a long time in the course of a language unrestricted by written litera- ture, and even when handicapped by the drag of writing, which naturally impedes change, it needs but this to turn the language of Cato into that of Quintilian ; nor does the lan- guage of the Upanishads compared with that of the Rig Veda show greater changes than those that mark the language of Milton when compared with that of Chaucer, two centuries earlier. Further, as I have said, the development of the literature is not so great as to oppose this narrower limit, nor are the ethical, philosophical, religious, and sociological factors of the sixth century b. c. such as to preclude the prob- ability that they represent the evolution of six generations, without revolution of religion or state, after the earliest hymns were written. On the other hand, there is a very important factor which tends to restrain the assumption that many preliminary cen- turies are essential in this reckoning. As long as Zoroaster was indefinitely remote all similarities between Veda and Avesta could be explained on the basis of an indefinitely remote relationship. But now that Zoroaster's date is fairly well determined, we must face anew the fact, which has never been denied, that the language of the Avesta and that of the Rig Veda are too closely related to admit of the possibility of any great chasm in time between the two works. But the Avesta, as Professor Jackson has shown, cannot be referred to a period much earlier than 600 B. c, and as we are prob- ably safe in saying that in part of the seventh century even the Gathas of Iran were still unsung, so we may well believe that the earliest hymns of the Rig Veda were not much earlier. A couple of centuries would meet all Indie requirements and be as much as can be granted in view of the religious and 30 INDIA OLD AND NEW. linguistic ajfifinity with Iran, One thousand B. c. is, then, not the lowest, but the highest limit that we can reasonably set to the Rig Veda, and 800 b. c. is probably nearer the mark, as far as the bulk of the Rig Veda is concerned. The home of the Rig Veda has been located in almost as many places as Paradise. Now it is by the Caspian Sea, now it is in Kandahar, but the Punjab is the favorite place, and quite naturally ; for the poets are familiar with the Punjab, sing of it, talk of crossing its rivers, and in many ways show that they occupied, in part at least, the country stretching from Peshawar to Delhi. Only, in this ready solution there is one fact which arrests the attention of those who know India from seeing it, as well as from its ancient literature. When one traverses the district just mentioned, one crosses in going from east to west, from Delhi to Peshawar, from the extreme limit of the monsoon's influence, over a bare sandy plain, remote alike from the effect of seasonal rains and from the view of any mountains. And then one remembers, at first with wonder, that the climatic conditions of the Rig Veda are quite differ- ent from those of the Punjab ; that the poets are continually extolling the furious battles of the storm-gods and live ever in sight of the great mountains. As I have written on this subject elsewhere,^ I will here merely sum up what I have said previously. Apart from a few hymns where the Indus and streams west of the Indus are mentioned, the life of the Vedic Aryan, as depicted in his earliest literature, reflects not so much a wandering life in a desert as a life stable and fixed, above all, a life in sight of mountains and within the influence of the monsoon storms. Further, the poets sing of having crossed the very last river of the Punjab, and between this and any possible abiding-place there is only a plain that is practically a desert. But when one retraces his steps and, turning east to the old " limit of India," Sirhind, passes still east of this, one arrives for the first time at a 1 Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. xix, p. 21 ff. THE RIG VEDA. 31 district where monsoon storms and mountain scenery are found, that district, namely, which lies about Umballa or Ambala, south toward Thanesar, Kurukshetra, between the Sarasouti and Ghuggar rivers. In this district noble moun- tains are visible, which recede from sight as one approaches Thanesar. Here the monsoon still breaks in violence, while the Punjab has only showers and dust-storms. Here are softly sloping hills and verdant pasturage, such as the Vedic poets besing. It is here that, in accordance with these facts, the Rig Veda as a whole, as I think, was composed. In every particular this locality fulfils the physical conditions under which the composition of the hymns was possible, while it explains the lyrics of the priests in regard to the crossing of the Punjab as having been composed after the event; whereas any other assumption carries us west of the Punjab, for only here do we come again upon a mountain- ous and storm-beaten country. One point more. In the usual sunset in India there is a sudden red glow followed by a dull copper-yellow, which soon fades. At sunrise there is the same quick succession of colors reversed. Only in the Punjab can one see a really beautiful sunset, or a sunrise such as is marked by bright yellow, gradually deepening into rose, and this continuing with a long, slow flush of crimson. Now why is it that among the oldest hymns of the Rig Veda we find such beautiful Hymns to Dawn, and why is it that this erst so well-beloved Damosel of Heaven, who is especially invoked to give " good paths to the sojourner," is entirely neglected in the later Vedic and liturgical literature ? First, because Dawn was dawn indeed only in the watery northwest, with its cloud-making atmosphere. When the sun leaps at a bound out of cloudless night and makes daz- zling day, as it does generally in India, there is no dawn to speak of, much less to sing of. And second, because she who is especially invoked to give good paths is the right leader of those whose journey begins with the first light in the east. Then Dawn is invoked by those who still live to 82 INDIA OLD AND NEW. the west of the great rivers, otherwise she would not be addressed as one who " in shining light before the wind arises comes gleaming o'er the waters, making good paths." Again, those that tend their flocks upon the great plains are they who are most apt to keep in religious reverence the God of the Sky. He too, Varuna, was a great god to the early poets, but the bulk of the Vedic Hymns pass him over in favour of the Rain-and-Storm-god, Indra, a new creation, for the Punjab has no place for him. Varuna and Dawn belong to the Punjab ; Indra to the East. Varuna and Dawn are more antique than Indra, as the Punjab is the older habitat of the Aryans. But the bulk of the Rig Veda belongs to Indra and his cult. The Vedic poets always represent the rivers as rising sud- denly in consequence of Indra's slaying the demon of drought. This applies to the rivers above Umballa, but not to the Indus nor to the Punjab rivers, which rise long before the monsoon breaks (in June), in consequence of the melting of Himalayan snow. Consequently, when in one of the Vedic lyrics we find Indra addressed as the god that makes the Sutlej rise, we must remember that this lyric was composed to the east of the Punjab and long after the event. The poet credits Indra with having the same power over the Sutlej as over the rivers he himself knows. The implication made in the distinction here suggested between the mass of Vedic hymns and the few that belonged to an older age and more western habitat will not be acceptable to those who hold that all the Vedic hymns were composed in the same ritualistic environment. But such a view is as yet merely a theory, and though it is a popular fad of modern criticism, — for criticism has its passing fashions, — it should not be accepted on that ground, but be held sub- ject to the facts we can control. But it fails to conform to the data. For not only does it take no note of a difference in the religious attitude of the various poets, — evidence of any such difference is with magnificent scorn said to be due to " merely subjective " criticism, — but it assumes, what is THE RIG VEDA. 33 not true, that all the hymns show traces of having been " made for baksheesh " and mechanically ground out to subserve the purpose of a ritual essentially the same as that of the later Brahmanas. Historically this claim is about on a par with a theory which should start with the assumption that because the Psalms are rubricated they were all written for the use of the Church. It is even more daring, for all the Psalms are rubricated, but not all the hymns find a place in the later ritual. The absurdity is increased when it is neces- sary to dispose of hymns that were clearly never meant for any service at all, or such as have been violently twisted out of their original meaning to subserve the purpose of the very ritual which this facile theory declares was in existence when the hymns were composed, as when the later ritual distorts a burial hymn into a service for a burning-ghat. If the theory means only that when the Vedic hymns were com- posed there was a Soma-sacrifice, sacrificial grass, and Kavis, or seers, all this is not a new idea but a platitude, for we know that such was the case when the Indo-Iranians were one people, before the Iranians drew back from the Punjab (into which as far as the Beas they probably at one time had penetrated). But if it claims, as it appears to do, that the service of the later Brahmanas was identical with that of the earliest hymns, and that all these hymns were composed simply for that service, then in view of the facts just men- tioned it may be dismissed as sufficiently unhistorical to break with its own weight. No theory which holds that every one of the thousand disconnected hymns of the Rig Veda is as late or as ritualistic as every other deserves serious consideration. Such a view represents merely an extreme, and therefore incorrect, reaction against the pre- vious exaggerated notion of antiquity and simplicity, traits ascribed to the Rig Veda as a whole by earlier scholars. But the Rig Veda is neither very naif and primitive nor wholly late and ritualistic. Differences of time may be almost obliterated linguistically, for the reasons which I have already given. But differences in thought and be- 84 INDIA OLD AND NEW. lief are still so marked as to demand an explanation; nor does the only other solution suggested, that a monotheistic trait in Varuna was a loan from Semitic sources, seem so probable as that the Rig Veda itself contains different strata. The chief reason given for believing that the later ritual underlies all the Vedic hymns is that the ritual fre- quently explains the hymns. But it is an unwarranted induc- tion that therefore all the hymns, whether reflecting the later ritual or not, and even those which stand opposed to that ritual, must have arisen in the same ritualistic environment. If in separating the strata and differentiating the elements it is impossible to be sure of judgment in detail, it is better to make mistakes in detail than to err in one's general estimate. An objection that might be urged against what I have said about the Punjab is that, whatever the Punjab is now, it may have been quite different in ancient times. Its rivers may perhaps have run in different courses and there may have been more of them, for it is difficult to-day to see why Seven Kivers was the original name of the Punjab (that is. Five Rivers). But this name. Seven Rivers, may have been, as it was an older name, the designation of an older group of rivers ; while the Vedic poets often allude to the " desert," so that the country was probably much as it is now, especially as it is improbable that the monsoon has backed away from its former scene of operations. In short, as far as we can judge on the evidence, there seems no reason to doubt that the Verse-Wisdom of the Hindus dates in general from about the eighth or ninth cen- tury, and, while a few hymns come from further west, was composed near Umballa, where finally, about 600 B. c, the different hymns were made into what is now known as the Verse- Wisdom Collection, in which, however, we may detect three redactions, made at different times. This Collection as a whole contains some old and some more recent material, the former more or less levelled to the style and language of the latter, as it floated down to the later period, much tampered with before being caught up in a collection, and still tarn- THE RIG VEDA. 35 pered with till after tlie final redaction, when greater care began to be exercised in regard to preserving all the hymns ; for there is no reason to suppose that the first collection was due to a desire to preserve the form, but only the matter. The idea of a sacrosanct form is much later. The title " Hymns " may serve, as it has served in the past, to designate the Collection of the Eig Veda ; but that work contains not only the mechanical hymns of a later day, but the spontaneous songs of an earlier period, as it contains worldly poetry, heroic lyrics, epic beginnings, and philosophical studies. THE EARLY LYRIC POETRY OF INDIA. Foe some mysterious reason our handbooks of Sanskrit Liter- ature, after describing the Vedic and epic periods, come at last to a separate division called Lyric Poetry, to which is given as an initial date circa 500 A. d. This date is wrong by more than a thousand years. It ignores all the background of the classical lyric. Of this background or foundation or forerunner, as you will, I purpose now to speak. The lyric poetry of India is of four kinds and belongs in general to four epochs, although with one exception each precedent variety glides into the next following without sharp interval. To follow the onward course, the slow devel- opment, the persistent reversions, to note the final loss of the early strain and the inception and growth of a new sort of lyric, unknown to the earliest period, is a fascinating employ- ment, though in some regards a sad one. For as nothing reflects the singer's heart like lyric song, it is melancholy to discover that the good growth which died is the heroic, while the self-ingrafted weed that finally choked out the heroic strain is the sentimental, erotic, neurotic, religious-erotic lyric, poisonous as it is fair. But before we examine particu- larly the earlier forms, let me sketch briefly the course thus indicated that you may have at hand an outline of the whole. There is first to be noticed the lyric of circa 800 b, c, partly altogether religious, partly altogether worldly, while heroic themes in some examples are united with a religious element. This may be called for convenience the inspired Ijo'ic, to distinguish it from the religious lyric of a later day, for only the earliest poetry is regarded as divinely inspired. After this there is an intervening strain of devotional lyric, which appears here and there in the early philosophical essays of THE EARLY LYRIC POETRY OF INDIA. 37 circa 400 b. c, but it is so sporadic in its outgrowth and so scrappy in its nature that it may be grouped with the same sort of poetry found a little later in the epic, only that here there is added the new strain, the sentimental element, but the two together may be called the devotional and sentimen- tal or epic lyric. Third in time and kind is the simple love- lyric, which begins in the drama and appears as an independent genre in the later classical lyric. There is also, besides the descriptive lyric which runs through the inspired and epic periods, some descriptive lyric of fragmentary inscriptional character ; but this last may be passed over as a prelude to the higher artistic perfection of the poets of 400-800 A. D. Last of all there is the complex love lyric of the later poets. This is a fusion of erotic and religious elements, and in dis- tinction from the simple love lyric may be called the mystic lyric. In this last form it is sometimes difficult to say whether the poet is more influenced by amorous passion or devout piety, or whether both are as strangely blended in his spirit as they are in his words. The earliest form of lyrical expression is in the main re- ligious, and of this religious mass, — that is, the Vedic Hymns, — the general content may be described as joyful laudation mingled with a canny sense of the usefulness of gods when properly praised, as in these verses, which I cite from a previ- ous translation : ^ 'T is India all our songs extol, Him huge as ocean in extent ; Of "warriors chiefest warrior he, Lord, truest lord for booty's gain. In friendship, Indra, firm as thine We nothing fear, lord of strength ; To thee we our laudations sing, The conqueror unconquered. And so on, in laud of " Indra, the doer of every deed, the lightning-holder, far renowned," whose gracious acts are men- 1 The Eeligions of India, p. 20. 38 INDIA OLD AND NEW. tioned as being without number, though, the poet alludes especially to his greatest deed, slaying the demon of drought and helping his own worshippers in their raids for cattle; until the song, which in no wise reflects the sacerdotalism that pervades so many of the Vedic hymns, concludes with the stanza : Indra, who lords it by his strength, Our praises now have loud proclaimed ; His generous gifts a thousand are, Aye, even more than this are they. Indra is the war-god, and most of the hymns addressed to him portray him as leader in battle as well as slayer of the demon-dragon, who holds pent the longed-for rain. The spirit of these hymns is exultant, often jovial, and not seldom almost brutal ; while, on the other hand, grace and dignity are respectively the characteristics of the religious lyrics ad- dressed to Dawn and Heaven. Dawn, the path-finder, the gentle maiden-goddess of the early Veda, has but few hymns, but these are such as to make one wish for more : As comes a bride, hath Dawn approached us, gleaming; All things that live she rouses now to action. A fire is born that shines for human beings ; Light hath she made and driven away the darkness. near and dear, keep them afar who hate us, And make secure our cows' wide pasture-places. Keep harm away, but what is good, that bring us, And send the singer wealth, O generous maiden. Varuna, the Heaven, whose spying eyes are the orbs above, who sits upon his golden throne and sees even the thoughts of men, is the most majestic and loftiest conception of the Vedic poets : Bearing a garment all of gold. In jewels clothed, is Varuna, And round about him sit his spies ; THE EARLY LYRIC POETRY OF INDIA. 39 Him whom th' injurious injure not, Nor they who men deceive, deceive, , Nor foes attack, a real god. Tar go my thoughts to him, as go The roaming cows that meadows seek ; I search for him, the wide-eyed god, To whom, beloved by him of old, I bear this honey-sacrifice. Then let us talk again, we two ! / would that I might see my god. See his great chariot sweep the earth, And know that he accepts my song ! Hear thou my cry, Varuna, Be merciful to me to-day ; I need thy help. I turn to thee. For if thou art both wise and king Of everything in earth and heaven. Then must thou hear, and grant, my prayer. These verses are arranged in stanzas of three verses each. Their metre is but roughly approximated by the iambic Eng- lish version, which is true to the original only in the number of syllables given to each verse, though the general cadence of the model also is iambic. But the latter has the pyrrhic and trochee as well as the spondee and iambus, so that the combination may be a choriambus, — ^ v>'_w_, w — — \j Kj — \j —, — _ — \j \j — \j — , to give the cadence of one stanza of the above as an illustration : Come an' united once again | To thee bringing a honey-feast | Let us talk as of old, the two. In the same metre, and also arranged in groups of three verses each, a combination which by the way afterwards fell into desuetude, another poet sings to Pushan, a divinity who also fell into desuetude as time went on. Like Dawn, Pushan is the path-finder, who is invoked to conduct the Aryans as they push on in their journeys ; a function that was not so useful after they became settled along the Jumna and Ganges, 40 INDIA OLD AND NEW. but was indispensable while they wandered through the desert : ^ /Go, Pushanj on the road with us, Take every danger from the way, And lead us forward, shining god. And, Pushan, if a wicked wolf Or evil doer threatens us, Him truly smite from out our path. Whoever lurks upon our path. The robber, or the doer of ill, Drive him afar from out our way. Past all pursuers lead us well. Make easy all our pathways thou, Pushan, give us wisdom's strength. Such poems as these, set in verses the articulation of which, it must be confessed, bears in many cases a painful resem- blance to that of Midas' epitaph, though for the more part they are merely lauds of gods, play between the objective and subjective. Thus they often reflect the singer's animosities, his hate not only of wrong, but of special wrong-doers ; his desire for converse with the gods, his sorrow for sins com- mitted by himself. Other Vedic poems have a lyric-dramatic setting and give lamentations, or again, they portray erotic feeling in situations more or less alien to modern taste. One unique hymn addressed to Soma is lyrical in so far as it ex- presses the singer's longing for a happy life hereafter : /"'^ ,, Where light that never fades is seen, ' To the world, where heavenly radiance shines, Thither, Soma, bear me hence. Th' immortal world, that never ends, Where Yama is the king, within The innermost part of yonder sky, Where everlasting waters flow. Make me to be immortal there. Where as one wishes one may go, THE EARLY LYRIC POETRY OF INDIA. 41 In the third vault of the threefold sky, Amid the luminous worlds of light, Make me to be immortal there. Where every wish is gratified, The highest place the sun attains, Where longings all are satisfied, Make me to be immortal there. The place of joy and mad delight, And all intoxicating bliss, Where all desire's desires are stilled. Make me to be immortal there. Of quite worldly content, on the other hand, is the follow- ing poem, which may be reckoned as a personal lyric, since the poet, in uncovering the source of all human activity and finding it in greed alone, exhibits, or pretends to, his own inner feelings, as well as those of other men, even of the priest, who, he implies, performs his sacrifices merely to get the drink of liquor which goes with them ; just as the car- penter or wagon-maker seeks a smashed vehicle to mend, and the smith prepares to work, not for love of it, but for the money he will earn. All work, even that of the poet, is done for pay, and " we are all, as it were, pecuniarily in- clined," anu ga iva tasthima. It is a late production, belong- ing, like the last, to the close of the Vedic collection, but the bard must have had a powerful mind, for his explanation of the reason why the Vedic poets composed songs at all is precisely that of a certain school of Vedic criticism of our day. Perhaps, however, this late mocker, who represents the end of Vedic poetry, was incapable of understanding the spirit of the older poets. But at any rate his criticism, if not very deep, makes an interesting bit of satire: /Aye, various plans (of work) are ours. And different are the ways of men ; The carpenter desires a smash ; The doctor, wounds ; the priest, a drink. With brush-wood dry (to build a fire), And feather-fan (to make it hot), 42 INDIA OLD AND NEW. And glowing stones (as anvil used), The smith a man with money wants. I poet am, my dad 's a quack, The mater grinds the flour — and yet, Whate'er our work,^ we all seek wealth j For after money run we all. In any lyrical production, the rhythm is so essential an element that I will not apologize for pausing here again to explain the structure of the Indo-Iranian eight-syllable verse as it is found in this so-called anushtubh stanza, which at a later date became stereotyped as the §loka verse. The pankti form just employed has an additional verse, but otherwise it does not differ from the anushtubh, which is the prevailing stanza of the octosyllabic verse. Like the gaya- tri, or three-verse stanza, it admits light or heavy syllables in almost any part of the verse, and though there is a slight difference in the frequency of iambic cadence the two forms are not essentially different. I have spoken above of pyrrhic and trochee, but in fact the verse is not divided into feet of this sort, and the classical nomenclature is merely con- venient in describing it mechanically, syllable by syllable, whereas for the equivalent of our notion of " foot " the verse of eight syllables must be taken as a whole. This frame is very difficult to render into English, but I shall try to give one exact equivalent of the anushtubh, reproducing for that purpose without regard to anything else the precise quanti- ties found in this Vedic measure, which it is evident no one name will describe and no one English rhythm can do more than caricature. The vowels in this English version, as I have here ignored the stress, are to be measured by classical rules (except that y is i). The specimen will at least show how varied is the cadence of the different verses in a single stanza : 1 Literally, plans or thoughts. No matter how we plan to attain it, we all have the same objective, is the sense. Dad and mater imitate the poet's jocose use of tatd and nana (papa and mama) for the more dignified words for father and mother. THE EARLY LYRIC POETRY OF INDIA. 43 Praise his great might, Indra the king Of earthly kings, the fear of all, Bright Indra ruleth e'en the gods In glory, ever, as of old.^ Indra our army always leads, Lofty his home above the earth ; Great is Indra, the lord of wealth, In worlds on high, the mighty one. Extraordinary ruler, he ! Indra wisely, the chief of heaven, Keigns o'er all worlds, the lordly king, Whose priest gains wealth on earth, in heaven. It is Indra rules above there,^ Yon proud Indra, adored of all ; Eaise up a chorus all to him In a band joined to worship well. As indicated here, the iambic cadence is not always that of the end of the verse, and sometimes we find trochee and spondee fairly ousting the iambi from this their strongest position. The chief difference between this and the subse- quent gloka style is in the later adjustment of the half -stanza to make one period, in which the first part (or quarter of the whole stanza) shall end in an iambus and spondee (trochee), the second in iambics only or iambic-pyrrhic (<^ ^ versus w_w^). This arrangement was already growing popular in the Vedic age, and subsequently it became the rule. But this metre, perhaps on account of its confined form and rather choppy rhythm, was not that chosen to give full play to intense feeling. Hence we find that the most spir- ited effusions of the first lyric poets are couched in more dithyrambic verse. This verse was one of the two oldest forms which the Vedic poets shared with the Iranians ; for at the beginning of the first millennium B. c. the Indo-Iranians were probably living together near the Indus. But the former 1 Compare the verse dasmdsya vdsu rdtha a, not so common a combination as some of the others. 2 Compare a verse of this sort in the poem above, jdratibhir daadhtbhih 44 INDIA OLD AND NEW. had already modified the metre from the inchoate form it had at first, a mere counted string of eleven syllables, short or long. On the other hand, as compared with what this metre became afterwards, the Vedic trishtubh (as it was called) was still very free ; for later the length of every syllable became nearly ster- eotyped, and the caesura too tended to be cut after the fourth, so that there was little variety in the verse, and the regularity with which a choriambus occurred in its middle gave it the appearance of two or three similar groups, w _ w _, _ w w _, \j — \j {_). In this, the classical form, the middle dactyl has quite altered the old Vedic trishtubh, which admits a dactyl only as one of many variations, so that in the latter there is no constant choriambic effect, and consequently the equi- poised middle group disappears altogether. Therewith we get to the one characteristic Vedic feature, not a choriambic middle, but a ditrochee close, which is in fact about the only limitation upon the form, except that the poets do not, of course, use a whole group of precedent long or short syllables. So this lyric measure in the Vedic age, as opposed to the classical form, may be expressed by almost any combination of seven syllables followed by — w _ w. All sorts of varia- tions are admitted, not only in the middle, but at the begin- ning; while instead of eleven or twelve syllables (the classical form also admitted the latter) ten may stand for a verse, giving a double pentad. Nevertheless, despite the occasional exercise of great free- dom, which, especially at the beginning, makes the sharpest contrast with the diiambic opening of the classical poets and shows verses beginning with a trochee or even a chori- ambus, the Vedic poets were already tending toward the classical norm, and on the whole the measure they employ is iambic and anapaestic in movement. Very often we get a de- cidedly anapaestic form, \j -Lkj\j ^^ \jkj l.\^±.\j. The swing of the verse, as compared with the trot and amble of the classical poets, is that of a gallop, often falling into a sharp canter, so suddenly changing that it is impossible to suppose that the poets had in mind any " regular " form, according to THE EARLY LYRIC POETRY OF INDIA. 45 which they composed. The general run of the verses, ignor- ing these frequent breaks, is, indeed, not without a common ground-plan, which may be given by the two schemes, — J_ He went to war, as a man goes to marriage, He went to battle, as a man to marriage. The occasional lengthening of the ninth syllable, and the frequent shortening of the eighth, when it makes part of a word and implies a light caesura, deserve special remark, as shown by the variation, — He went to battle, as ever, a hero. A second caesura sometimes gives to the last part of the verse the forms w^o'_L, _Lw_Lv^; wv^J — , w_Lw; kjk^^ _Lv^_Lw; w w ± , \jJ-w. But these are all very general norms, as may be seen by comparing with them many other varieties of the verse, alternating in the same stanza, some of which, as shown in the list below, would correspond to the English, " Hail to the chief, who in triumph advances," if only we accented the second syllable of triumph, for example, if it were Hail to the chief who is ours, proudly going; while others would reflect the form. Hail to the chieftain, proudly goes the chieftain ; and still others, At last he comes, whom in old state advancing, or, O behold him, as upon earth a god he, or, He came as a chief, as a lord to rule us, and so on. For example, in the first heroic lyric, that of Vigvamitra, translated below, though it has only twelve stanzas, of four verses each, there are twenty- two different arrangements, those that occur most frequently being \j J-^ J. — , vyw_Lw_Lw, and vy_LwJL, \j \j JL J- \j J- \j . Some idea of the variety of forms, used side by side in the same stanza, may be got by comparing the following varieties, not half of those actually employed in this one short lyric : \^ kj ^ \j, \^ \j w — v^; \j Kj . \j \j \j \j 1 — \j , \j \j \j \j : \j — \j — , 46 INDIA OLD AND NEW. \y \J \J \J • X-/ — . KJ ^^ W \J yj — \J I \J ^. \J^ \j \J yj — w — \J i w , — \j \^ — \J I — www, w \j w; \j w J — \j — w — w. This varied metre is employed, however, not only in the heroic lyric, but also in the usual laudatory or descriptive verses, the primary object of which is to ascribe general praise to the gods. The pentad form, as shown in a complete poem, may be illustrated by this extract from a little lyric addressed to the storm-gods, who follow the lightning-god, Rudra. In general plan the cadence is here iambic, but not infrequently it is spondaic, and even the whole group, as in the turn " in brightness brightest," may consist of heavy syllables : Who knows, to name them, the host fraternal, The pride of Eudra, on gleaming horses ? Of them the birthplace no man can tell us, They only know it, their common birthplace. With wings expanded they sweep each other. Like falcons fighting ; wind-loud is the sound. . . . In speed the swiftest, in brightness brightest, With beauty join they the fiercest power. Here " wind-loud is the sound " apes lamely w w _, an- other substitution found in the original; where one group has even a dactylic form, md vo durmatirA The whole song, being set before another in trishtubhs, ends with a connecting verse of that measure. Another well-known hymn, which is enveloped in only so much sacerdotalism as is implied in the final verse, " Let us honor him with an oblation " (perhaps of milk, or it may be of grain or of Soma), I have translated in my Religions of India,2 literally, though not with very close attention to the Vedic verse-structure. But I will repeat it with little altera- tion here, to show how marked even in the earliest lyric is 1 But in dhunir miinir iva there is a grammatical correction of the older va, which undoubtedly stood there originally (the Pali form). 2 p. 88. THE EARLY LYRIC POETRY OF INDIA. 47 tills element of pure description. The hymn is otherwise interesting; since Vata {vdta^ from va, blow), to whom it is addressed, is Ventus, the wind-god, perhaps the same with "Woden, who here, " keeping the order " of time, brings the monsoon water-clouds in due season. The first sentence is an ejaculatory accusative without any verb: / Now Vata's chariot's greatness ! Smashing goes it, ^ And thundering is its noise. It touches heaven And makes the clouds ; skims earth, the dust uprearing — Then follow after all the forms of Vata, And haste to him as women meet a lover. ^ With them conjoined, together rushes onward The gleaming god, king of this whole creation. Ne'er resteth he, when on his many pathways He goes through air, the first born friend of waters, Who keeps the order. Where was he created? And whence arose he? Spirit of gods, this bright god, Source of creation, courseth where he listeth. His sound is heard but not his form. This Yata, Wind, with an offering let us (duly) honor. ^ Yet it is rather in recounting the great deeds of their own past than in describing the gods that the Vedic poets show their strongest lyrical power. In the first lyric following I have reproduced not only the caesura, but also the exact syllabic equivalence of the first three verses,^ though as this had to be united in English with stress (the Vedic accent is musical), in the following stanzas I have given simply a stress-equivalent of the quantity, not according to each verse, but not introducing any form for which the poets do not use a quantitative equivalent. The translation itself is as nearly literal as it was possible to make it. 1 Literally, Come to a rendezvous. 2 This phrase is stereotyped. 8 That is, as in the study above, assuming the classical rule for the length of vowels before two consonants. But to unite this successfully, with stress and sense also even for one stanza, was difficult, and the fourth verse con- forms only by pronouncing Beas and torrent as trochees. 48 INDIA OLD AND NEW. This first specimen of the heroic lyric is a poem that needs little explanation. I give it complete, except for a stanza in another metre which has been tagged on to it by a later hand. The priest Vigvamitra, the son of Ku§ika, is represented as having come to the two rivers Sutlej and Beas, which run together in the present Punjab. They block his way. He bids them obey the mystic might of the priestly word, which is holy, somya^ and powerful. The rivers in amoebic strain refuse to obey. They obey only god Indra, Vigvamitra sees his mistake. He then addresses them humbly, and in a stanza of laudation to the god acknowledges Indra as their master. Therewith he wins their approval, and as a favor they sink in their channels, and Vigvamitra leads over the booty-seeking host of Bharatas. HOW THE BHAEATS CEOSSED THE BEAS AND SUTLEJ. as sung by the priest vicvamitka. The Poet speaks: From out the hills' heart, as if horses, eager, Tumultuous, in a race, newly loosened, As cows a calf lick, lapping earth, the fair streams, The Beas, Sutlej, iu a torrent hasten. By Indra loosed, and his impulse beseeching, Ye, swift as war-cars, to the meeting hurry. Where streaming together, with thick'ning billows, Each enters the other, ye lovely rivers. ViCVAMITRA SPEAKS : I've sought the Sutlej, the stream maternal, To Beas, broad-flowing and kindly, come we,* These two that together, like cattle licking A calf, hasten on to the destined union. 1 These words " seek " and " come to " imply not only that the priest has come, but that he comes demanding something (that he has not only sought but, like Latin peto, besought), a common Vedic idiom. This the Kivers recognize in their reply. THE EARLY LYRIC POETRY OF INDIA. 49 The Rivers speak: With thickening waters, we floods together Flow on to the union the god prepared us ; Ne'er to be checked is the impulse that urges us ; What wishes the bard that invokes the rivers ? VicvAMiTKA speaks pkoudly : Ye streams, that flow, duly in season rising. Stand still, obedient to my utterance holy. My will on the flood hath a might compelling. Your aid invokes Kuqika's own descendant. The Rivers speak repro"%inglt : Indra, who beareth in his arm the lightning — He dug our broad channels ; he slew the dragon That held us confined ; it is Indra rules us ; Fair-handed he leads us ; his might we follow. VicvAMiTRA lauds Indra : Be praised forever that deed heroic. The act of Indra, who destroyed the dragon. With bolt of lightning all your jailers slew he ; Out rushed the streams in a wide course rejoicing. The Rivers speak approvingly: Thy song, bard, never shall be forgotten, That future ages may acclaim thee always. In songs exalt us and never, 'mid mortals, Seek to defame us. We bow before thee. ViCVAMITRA speaks HUMBLY: Hark to the bard, if ye will, sister rivers ; He comes from afar with wagon and chariot. If so ye will,^ give me an easy passage ; To th' axle alone, ye rivers, flowing. 1 Here the repeated word su is used for the first time, meaning " if you please," "kindly " (^M/a). 4 50 INDIA OLD AND NEW. The Eivers speak : Now to thy words give we good heed, singer. Thou com'st from afar with wagon and chariot. I will bow down, e'en as a loving woman ; As maid to a man will I bend before thee. VigVAMITBA SPEAKS : When all of the Bharats have crossed beyond thee, This host of raiders that is led by Indra, Then forth let flow in a wide flood the waters. I beg for the grace of the holy rivers. ENVOI. The Bharats have crossed now, the cattle-lifters, The singer is blessed with the rivers' favor. Now streaming unceasingly fill the hollows ; Eun full to the brim, and be kindly ever. One such "hymn" as this — the original word, by the way, does not mean hymn at all, but simply something " well said," a good thing in poetry, eulogia in a broad sense — is suffi- cient, I think, to prove that lyric poetry in India did not begin with the bon-mots of the fifth century after Christ, but is at least as old as the oldest Greek lyric. As a matter of fact, the truest Hindu lyric is just this old Vedic heroic song, in which (as will be shown still better in the next example) the poet pours out his feelings in hearty praise and curses, rather than the gem- wrought bits of daintiness of the "lyric period," in which the poet seldom appears to be in earnest, but plays with his loves and hates as he plays with his delicate fancies, making exquisite poetry, but poetry which, like all exquisite things produced by man, is thoroughly arti- ficial. Elaborated passion, pretty conceits often done up in complicated verse, that is the decadent lyric of the so-called classical period. The lyric of the Vedic period is rough in comparison. The poet has mastered neither his passions nor his verse-form ; he is mostly rude in expression, as he is THE EARLY LYRIC POETRY OF INDIA. 51 usually rude in feeling. His poetry is seldom the elegant amusement of a blas^ gentleman and never the morbid blend of erotic and religious sensuousness, which we find later, but the straight and rather rough talk of uncurbed emotion. In the last specimen of Vedic song the poet Vigvamitra sings his lay of triumph. But a still greater song was sung by his rival, Vasishtha. It appears that the latter at some time ousted the former from his place as Purohita, or priest of the Tritsu king, Sudds, and that Vigvamitra in anger went over to a band of allied kings who planned a destruc- tive campaign against Sudas. It is a famous battle, and is known in Vedic poetry as the Battle of the Ten Kings. Instigated by Vi§vamitra, these kings and their armies came against Sudds, who opposed them with only the help of Vasishtha, the river itself, and god Indra. Suddenly, as they had entered the Ravi, then shallow and fordable, which lay between them and Sudas, the hosts of the ten kings were overpowered by a flood sent by Indra, — one of the sudden risings common to all the great northern snow-fed rivers, — and so found death where they had hoped for booty. This overthrow is sung with biting sarcasm by Vasishtha. The lyric abounds in jeering puns, of which I reproduce only a few. The one most used is a play on the name Vigvamitra, which is literally " friend of all." What sort of a friend he was to those whom he led to death is described in taunting phrase by his rival. The play on the name of Lion (of the Punjab!) is more obvious than the one connected with it and contained in the etymology of Tritsu, which is literally the " piercer." As (the horn of) a goat pierces, so, says the poet, with Indra's help, but otherwise undefended, the Piercer smote the Lion. I omit the formal introduction, which sim- ply asks that Indra's good- will may continue in the future as in the past; as also a receipt for the reward gained by Vasishtha for composing this triumphal ode, which, after the manner of the times, was appended to the ode itself and sung on other occasions, to please the family of the royal donor. It is evident that the reward was not given till the 52 INDIA OLD AND NEW. song had had its effect, so that it has nothing to do with the real lyric. The place of this sort of verses is such as might have been that of an additional stanza composed by Pindar as a thank-offering for the reward of his services to the Syra- cusan and subsequently sung as part of the whole. In the translation of the ode 1 have generally followed the inter- pretation made by me some years ago, but with two or three changes suggested by more mature consideration.^ 1 also omit one stanza containing the names of some of the foes. The river Kavi (Parushni, so named at the beginning) is called at the end of the poem yamund^ the received expla- nation being that after Sudas had conquered at the Ravi he withdrew to the Yamuna (Jumna) and there fought a second battle with Bheda. But this seems very improbable, as there is no indication of any such change of position. I interpret yamund, therefore, as a name of the Ravi (after- wards transferred to the eastern river). The word means " twin "-stream and ma}'- as well be applied to the double chan- nel of the upper Ravi as to the Jumna. Nothing is more common in India than the transfer of a river's name to another stream. On the other hand, though " Bheda's " de- feat is mentioned elsewhere, the Rig Veda knows nothing of his defeat at the Jumna. THE VICTORY OF SUDiS, KING OF THE TRITSUS, OVER HIS ALLIED FOES. AS SUNG BT HIS PKIEST VASISHTHA IN HONOR OF GOD INDRA. Sudas to aid, Indra hath turned to torrents The shoals (regarded as an) easy fording, And ^ii^yuj the Lion, the god-defyer, Our god hath made as the flotsam of rivers. 1 Journal of the Oriental Society, vol. xv. p. 261 fE. In the opening stanza the sense is not, as in common with others, I formerly thought, that Indra made the river easy to cross for Sudas, but that, for Sudas' sake, he turned the shallow river into the torrent (which drowned his enemies). THE EARLY LYRIC POETRY OF INDIA. 53 Of them the leader was Turvas, the Yakshu, Whom followed for pillage the Matsya people, The Bhrigus, the Druhyus ; while o'er the river The, Friend his friends guided on — to destruction ! Friend of the Aryan ! " Friendly proved his leading — Like cattle tliey came to contend with heroes ! Sinners they, seeking to make her miscarry, Who witless parted the Ravi, the boundless.^ But he, so sage, who of wide earth was master,^ Embraced earth well — as a scared victim lay he. On bootless quest Eavi they sought for booty, — Not even the swiftest e'er home returned. To brave Sudas, as in wild haste they scattered, All weak and friendless now, god Indra gave them. Like kine on a meadow without a herdsman. In crowds they scattered, the Friend surrounding, But brilliant the herd and a brilliant downfall. As horse and foot they the leader followed. Indra, our hero, he who loveth glory. Cut down Vikarna's best chiefs, one and twenty, And strewed them around as a handy reaper Mows down in a moment the grass for th' altar. Thou Indra, who bearest in arm the lightning, Didst drown their renowned ones, Druhyu, Ailush; But we, who elected as Friend the true Friend, Revering thee, shouted thy name in triumph. The Anus, who came on a raid for booty, The Druhyava heroes, their sixty hundred — Or six by the thousand, 't is six and sixty They have fallen asleep and the glory 's Indra's ! Like a pent flood loosened we Tritsu people. By Indra guided, descending whelmed them, * Or the divine, aditi. The rirer is a goddess. This stanza has been in- terpreted to mean that the allies tried to divert the course of the Eavi by digging canals. But snv, miscarry, may be used figuratively as fail ; while vigrabh, sever, separate, part, may possibly have its simple epic meaning, attack. 2 That is, lord and master, husband 1 Or : Strongly he encompassed earth, a lord : scared lay he, a sacrificial victim. 54 INDIA OLD AND NEW. — For evil their Friend — till to pieces shattered To Sudas they abandoned the joy of pillage. The ranks of the mighty, the boastful, sinful, Who knew of no Indra, them Indra vanquished ; He, stilling the storm of the wrathful stormer, Their lord in truth, tore them apart, dispersed them. With few to assist him, this deed did Indra, — With a goat(-horn) smote he a certain lion ; The foeman's spears, clove he with only needles ; To King Sudas gave he the joy of pillage. All thy foes, Indra, have bowed before thee ; Smite thou him, whoever will boast of rending; * Aye, strike unto earth with thy sharpened lightning Whoever hereafter thy praiser injures ! Aid to Indra gave the twinned stream and Tritsus ; Then despoiled he throughly the (helpless) render. The Ajas and ^ighrus and Yakshu peoples, They gave as a tribute their slaughtered horses ! But, Indra, not in an age of long days Can a man, counting, tell thy wealth of kindness ; Each foe that has fancied himself a godling Thou smit'st from on high, as thou Cambar ^ rendest. But they that have always rejoicing loved thee, And worshipped thee truly, as has Vasishtha, Will never forget thee, the Friend and helper, — So bright be the days of my lord ® forever. You see that even to the end the fierce anger of the old bard plays on his defeated rival's unhappy name, as he again echoes the statement that Indra is the true friend. Despite the roughness of the form, made still rougher by Englishing, I think you will admit that this lyric well deserves to be handed down through the ages. Its vigor and bitterness as well as its stirring description give it a high 1 The true "render " is Indra himself, as in the second stanza below ("rent from on high "). " Render " may be the name of one of the foes, the idea being " make the render surrender." 2 The demon of drought. * My lord, the king Sudas. THE EARLY LYRIC POETRY OF INDIA. 55 place, not only in the antique collections of India, but among all lyrics of its time. But now I must leave the Vedic lyric and pass on to the next stage. The early phases of religious philosophy after the Vedic period are deeply colored with emotion. Not in Buddhistic works alone, but in the Upanishads also the wonder at the new-found religion is profound and often bursts forth in lyrical verse, as may be seen in the following: (As God of all, All-God, maker of all things ; As He that in the heart of man abideth, By the heart alone conceived, by mind and fancy, Who thus know God, they have become immortal. Within His light, nor night nor day existeth ; Being, not-being, — all is He, the Blessed. He is the treasure sought by Vedic poets. From Him was born all knowledge and all wisdom. Above, below, across or in the middle, None hath grasped God ; nor is there any image Of Him whose only name is this, Great Glory. His form invisible is and always must be. For He in mind and heart abides. Who know Him As their own soul, they have become immortal. Though there is here, perhaps, more fear than joy, "In fear I come before Thee," says the poet in the verses following, yet there are other passages which reflect the joy imparted by this new-found religion, as, for example : (jThe Soul in all things is the one Controller, Who makes His one form manifold in many. The wise that Him as their own soul acknowledge, They have eternal joy ; but not so, others. Among the transient He is the everlasting ; The only wise one He, among the foolish ; The one of many. Him perceive the sages In their own souls and feel a peace eternal. 56 INDIA OLD AND NEW. The sun shines not, nor moon, nor stars, nor lightning, Nor earthly fire, within the All-soul's heaven ; For He alone is the Light that all shines after, And by His light is all the world illumined. But such passages rarely attain so finished a form, and they may be omitted here as of too fragmentary nature to require more than a passing notice. Nor is epic poetry the place to expect fully developed lyrical expression, though in the frequent hymns to the gods this is often attained inci- dentally, and even the descriptions of the godhead are at times lyrical, not only in their intense striving to express the poet's adoration of Him who is the All, but also in the employment of more elaborate metres, as in this : ^ Beginning, and middle, and end of all beings, Both doer and deed He, creator and creature ; The worlds, when the age ends, absorbing, He slumbers, Till a new age beginning He wakes as creator. Kare too, because of the epic form, is any expression of feeling as regards nature. Descriptions of storms and other natural phenomena come down from the Vedic period, as I have shown, and are found also in the epic ; but there is little in these that reflects the poet's own feelings even in so small a degree as is perceptible in the hymns to the gods, where at least human desires play about the divine person thus besung. Perhaps, however, one of the few descriptions of nature found in the great epic (they are more common in the Ramayana), may prove interesting, and as it presents the emo- tions incident on the coming of the rains, it is not without a touch of the delight which we know that the poet himself must have experienced when the monsoon at last broke : ^ sa adih sa madhyah sa ca 'ntah prajanam, sa dhata sa dheyah sa karta sa karyam ; yugante prasuptah susamkshipya lokan yugadau prabuddho jagad dhy utsasarja. THE EARLY LYRIC POETRY OF INDIA. 57 Then came the time that ends the heat And bringeth happiness to all. Black clouds loud thundering covered space, And ceaseless rained by day and night. By hundreds and by thousands piled They hid the glorious sun, themselves With stainless lightning glorious made. Up sprang the crops and all the earth, Bewatered, full of peace and joy, Was filled with happy creeping things. Then 't was impossible to say. So deep the flood, if level ground Or heights or rivers lay beneath. Like hissing snakes, impetuous, swept E'en through the forests, waters wide, And made new beauty in the wood ; Where boars and birds, all forest things, Drenched with the rain, exulted loud. The peacocks, kokils, catakas, Circled about and danced for joy, And mad with pleasure croaked the frogs. As we shall see, the same motif is copied again in the later lyric of the classical period. And this gives to the epic lyric its historical value. We cannot separate it sharply either from the pre-epic or from the classical lyric, although the latter has a new growth superadded. Even the form in its simplest shape, that of the gloka, is still the medium of much of the classical lyric, not to speak of the fancy metres in the epic, which, as inscriptions show, may have preceded any classical specimens. But, of course, as the very expression epic lyric seems like a misnomer, so the lyric in the epic may be more or less intrusion, especially as it often makes scenes apart from the main action, or is found only in epigrammatic collections which were inserted whole into the epic. To ignore these altogether, however, is to lose links from the chain that really runs from the Upanishads of perhaps 400 B. c. to the classic age of 400 A. d. and later. 58 INDIA OLD AND NEW. As an example of a lyric scene set apart in the epic, I will take one specimen describing the feelings of Arjun, the hero of the great epic, when as he was carried to heaven he looked back on earth, where he had been dwelling on Mount Mandara, the Blessed Mountain of antiquity. The poem is remarkable not only on account of its description of nature's beauties, and the happiness of dwelling in the open life of forest and mountain vale, but also because of its unique anticipation of the discovery that the stars, though they look small, are really large bodies placed farther away than the sun, huge worlds which shine by their own light, a light less than the light of God only. This discovery is vitiated from a scientific point of view by the addition that these remote "self-luminous" worlds which " on account of their distance men on earth think to be small as lamps " (I cite the very words of the text) are at the same time the souls of departed saints and heroes ; but that is an idea which even in our own age is accepted by many good people. I will give an almost com- plete version of this whole passage, except that I have exchanged the last verse for another which, though implied in the original, is not expressed there ; but it is expressed soon after and makes a better conclusion, for the original text continues with a further description which is too long to include. The metre is that of the last selection, but I have here allowed myself a rhymed form. The translation, how- ever, is literal. The date is about 200 B. C.-200' A. D. When Arjun, loved of Indra, came to leave the Blessed Mount of earth, On the god's chariot wreathed in flame he rose to heaven, but still the worth And beauty of that sacred hill retained his heart, and as above The Mount he soared, his spirit still returned, while thus his reverent love He voiced: ''0 home and sacred shrine, where holy pleasures never cease, Farewell! I leave, no longer mine, this fair abode of perfect peace. THE EARLY LYRIC POETRY OF INDIA. 59 Thy rocks and caverns, springs and streams, how often gladdened they my sight; With fragrant flowers thy forest teems, and purest water cools thy height, Like nectar and ambrosia sweet. As a child upon its father's breast. How oft I found in still retreat upon thy bosom balmy rest. Which followed joyful toil. Each day I heard the chaunts of pious men. And songs of happy nymphs at play, loud echoing from thy rocks again. Yea, blissful ever did I dwell among thy vales and ridges." So To the Mount the hero bade farewell, Arjun, and rising, straight did go Upwards upon that gleaming car, high as we mortals see, and higher. Where self-made glory shines afar, o'er sun and moon a loftier fire. For on that super-solar height, though still below the plane of God, Beamed many a self-illumined light, which mortals, standing upon earth's sod, Look up and see but fancy small as lamps, because the distance vast Belittles those great worlds ; but all are bodies huge and brilliant, cast Through space supernal. These he saw, marvelling, and knew them not ; but they Are souls that by the heavenly law, passing from earth, so sages say, Shine evermore as stars on high, beneath the height of God, whose light, Kadiant as are in the upper sky those orbs, is yet beyond them bright. The Hindu drama, to which I now turn for a moment, introduces us to the third form of lyric, little stanzas of description and love, all centred round and sung by the act- ors, who are their own chorus. A detailed examination of 60 INDIA OLD AND NEW. these roundelays belongs rather to the history of the drama. In this sketch of lyric development it will be necessary only to point out that here in the drama is one of the lyrical stepping-stones from the old heroic, religious, sentimental, and descriptive poetry to that which, passing out of the dra- matic environment, becomes in the treatment of later poets an independent phase of literature. Independent, yes, for Bhartrihari of the seventh century needs no dramatic setting for his exquisite lyric gems, whereas such little stanzas do not appear alone in the works of the dramatic poets ; but not inde- pendent in the sense of a new creation, for all these phases hold together. Most clearly is this seen in the philosophical and — save the mark — didactic lyric of Bhartrihari. For that monkish philosopher composes with equal grace his Herrick- like songs of love, morality, and religion. But when he drops from more artistic versification into the gloka, his sententious and didactic muse is exactly the same old lady who success- fully conducted the epic poets through thousands of similar verses ; nor is there really any more lyric therein than in Hesiod. For example, the Hitopade^a, a late Book of Pro- priety, cites a §loka from Bhartrihari, " He cannot be said to be really born through whose birth his family is not ele- vated ; " just as it cites in the same metre the epic, " fruitful is a gift given to a poor man," and we may call lyric the one as well as the other, or more fittingly neither. But, on the other hand, truly lyric strains are found in the same metre in the epic as well as in Bhartrihari. So this poet links his present to the past, as did the epic poets themselves. But apart from the didactic stanzas, the model of Bhartri- hari's truer lyric may be found, as I have already said, in those bursts of song which are ever escaping the lips of the dramatis personce from the time of the fourth and fifth cen- tury after Christ. Thus when the king, in Kalidasa's drama of ^akuntala, sees the hermit's daughter, whom he straight- way loves, and finds her shy, he says reflectively : " These children of the forest are always inclined to be rather timid, but — THE EARLY LYRIC POETRY OF INDIA. 61 Her eyes she drooped as she stood before me, She laughed and pretended another reason. Nature itself, her love concealing, Even in hiding it played her treason." Take out the environment, leave the stanza, and you have the kind of verse in which Bhartrihari delighted. But before Bhartrihari played lapidary to the Muse, and Amaru, his rival, made the fine mosaic work for which he is famous, Kalidasa had brought to perfection another side of lyric poetry. I have just read you from the epic a selection, complete in itself, describing Arjun's journey from earth to heaven, wherein we saw that the poet succeeded pretty well in weaving in a bit of description of earth and uniting it with a religious turn in describing the upper spheres. I think the Cloud-Messenger of Kalidasa may properly be regarded as a more modern working out of the same theme, though the motif is quite different. Here the poet makes a captive husband address a cloud and send by it a message to his wife. This gives opportunity to describe what the cloud will see on its journey, and with this description, es- pecially in the first part of the poem, must be compared as historical prototypes not only the scene just referred to from the great epic, but the frequent scenes of nature-descrip- tion found in the Ramayana. Even the second half of the poem, which describes the beloved wife's distress, must be looked upon as merely an historical evolution from just such scenes in the latter epic. So one by one, for example in descriptions of autumn and the other seasons, on which Kali- dasa has left us a beautiful poem, we may trace back the factors of the later lyric as they show themselves to be re- finements of the older poetry. But as compared with the older epic they have more of the erotic element and more extravagance of description in portraying the charms of nature and of woman. In this as in other regards the Ra- mayana stands between the great epic and classical poetry. But I have already over-passed the limit set by the title 62 INDIA OLD AND NEW. of this address, which should confine me to the early lyric. Perhaps, however, as I have alluded so often to Bhartrihari, you will allow me a few moments to show you, before I close, what I meant in speaking of his gem-like poems and dainty conceits. But I do not cite from him merely for this, but rather to show you how far hitherward stretches the older lyric as it appears in its various forms. There is, however, no reason to exceed Bhartrihari's time, for the still later mys- tic erotic type is not a projection of Vedic thought, as are many of the other phases found in the classical lyric. Bhar- trihari is not an isolated figure, but among the host of later lyric poets he stands conspicuous both for the versatility and the perfection of his genius. All that we have of him is contained in an artificial grouping of Three Centuries, or collections of miniature poems according as they are amorous, moral, or religious. As I have said, the latter divisions are not always very lyrical. On the other hand, some of the selections called moral might as well have been grouped under the head of amorous, or immoral, as Bhartrihari in his repentant moods regarded the other division. For he was an interesting character, who flitted from a monastic religious life out into the world and back again, not once, but as often as he was moved to do so. When a monk he wrote verses to show that love was folly, and when in love he wrote verses to show that a monastic life was folly. He was a man of emotions, and lived according to their leading, a child of the moment. You will liken him to Anacreon, when you read ; The god of love a fisher is ; Woman, his line ; his bait, desire ; And man 's the fish that soon is caught And cooked in passion's fire. You must pardon the off-hand roughness of the translation after all I have said about exquisite polish ; but I have spent no time on Englishing these specimens, knowing that I could not give you any idea of the form. They are chosen from here and there — and translated perhaps all too hastily — THE EARLY LYRIC POETRY OF INDIA. 63 merely to give you an idea of the content and to show you the difference between the lyric of the seventh century a. d. and the lyric of perhaps the same century B. c. or earlier, such as I illustrated from the Rig Veda. Bhartrihari's Love-Century must of course ring the changes on one subject; but it is pretty to see how many are his quaint conceits: C^ Women have honey on their lips, But only poison in their hearts, no doubt ; Hence one the mouth of women sips, But squeezes them to get the poison out. If you think this too shocking, please remember that it was written by a clergyman. But perhaps I had better draw my next selection from the Conduct-Century, or moral apo- thegms, a bit that may be familiar to you if you read German : She whom I love loves one who loves her not, She whom I love not, she must needs love me, Then whom I love and who loves her, and she Who loves myself, with Love himself, and me. May cursed be. But why this stanza should be called especially moral it is difficult to see. The next is of course put into another division : (There is a sickness falls on man : The heart grows faint, the eyes roll round ; 'T is madness that no drug may calm. To heal it is no doctor found. Such sickness every man hath had ; The god of love hath made him mad. The god of love, armed with five arrows, is native to India, but he is not a little cupid. In fact, it is hard to define him except as an archer, for he is invisible, immaterial, " limbless Love," as the Hindus call him. 64 INDIA OLD AND NEW. I said that Bhartrihari glides easily from adoration of woman to most monastic horror of her, though oddly enough the following selection is found in the Love-Century. It is the only one of its kind I shall read, and I trust, though you will of course see what is coming, that you will regard it as only another form of poetic nonsense and let it pass without incriminating the translator. But even this slur must not be taken seriously, for it is meant to be only amusing, as may be seen in its rapid and comic changes of metaphor : / Who made this monstrous combination. This whirlpool full of doubt's gyration, This home of wrong and town of terrors, This garden of tricks and store of errors, This bar that shuts the gate supernal, This entrance to the door infernal. This basket full of all delusion, This poison-honey's deadly fusion. This snare which catches every human, This strange machine — who, pray, made woman? But Bhartrihari was no coarse and constant railer at women. He believed in love and the wedding of hearts: Separation still is union if the hearts united be. But if hearts are separated then divorce should set them free. What again could be more perfect than this version of a sentiment which we are not wont, I think, to regard as more than a thousand years old : The fruit of love on earth is this, one single thought of two souls wed, If those made one have twofold thought, 'tis but the union of the dead. This, by the way, is a gloka, identical with the epic verse, in which rather unlyrical setting appear, as I have said, many of Bhartrihari's lovely stanzas, for example : THE EARLY LYRIC POETRY OF INDIA. 65 Though lamps may glow and the hearth be bright, and stars and moon I see; Yet fail the light of my love's eyes, this world is dark to me. To paint a situation with a stroke is the ideal of the poets of this age, and though Amaru is cleverer in this, Bhartrihari is a close second in his skill : She talks to one and to another sends Provoking glances ; while a third her mind Finds in her heart ; whom loves she of her friends ? (She loves one hidden, yet to all is kind), is the natural answer. The moral specimens are, as I have said, not always such as we should group under this head, but here is a stanza which illustrates the poet's similarity to the teacher in the didactic parts of the epic : One moral law all codes proclaim — Kill not, steal not, do not defame ; Speak truth, be generous, modest, pure. Compassionate to all. Endure This law and all its rules obey, So hast thou found salvation's way. More characteristic is this little stanza : God made for ignorance a guise. With which to hide its nakedness And give its wearer fame ; Worn in the presence of the wise 'T is e'en an ornamental dress. And Silence is its name. Here, too, is another moral stanza, beautified by poetic imagery : ; The fruitful tree inclines its branches low. The cloud that bears rain's blessing sinks to earth; Virtue cares not proudly on high to go. And they are humblest who have greatest worth. 66 INDIA OLD AND NEW. Science too is drawn into Bliartrihan's net. It is true that the physical explanation which serves his turn in making a pearl the solid deposit of water in an oyster-shell may be criti- cised as a wild guess and not a scientific fact, but that is of no consequence, while on the other hand his assertion in the face of the old philosophy, which taught that " all we are is the result of what we have thought," that we are all merely the result of our sansarga or environment, adds historical as well as poetical interest to this stanza : /^ I The drop of water on hot iron steams, Evanishes and leaves no trace behind, But falling on a lotus, pearl-like gleams, And if its way into a shell it find Becomes, that water-drop, a pearl in sooth. Its altered self by what it meets is lent ; So all man's qualities in very truth V Arise in him from his environment. I almost hesitate to introduce among these light fancies or even among the moral and speculative thoughts the graver wisdom of our poet. But here too we see that he is running back along the grooves of change, and we must recognize in Bhartrihari's religious poems the same lyric, though in more personal form, as that which glowed forth centuries before in the rapturous words of the Upanishads and echoes again through the great epic. One stanza only of this, and I have done : Thou descendest to hell, thou ascendest to heaven, Hither and thither thou rushest, heart, Unstable, uncertain, in courses uneven. What willst thou ? That bliss which thou seekest apart Is God's ; God is thine. From all else, then, cease, For only in God the heart findeth peace. SANSKRIT EPIC POETRY. In few departments of literary activity is there a greater chasm between Greece and India than in epic poetry. The Iliad, as we look back to it, remains for us the one stately structure that closes the vista of Greek literature. In India, on the other hand, the epos is a relatively modern building, placed late and midway down the avenue that leads us to the first temple built by the Hindus, the Vedic edifice of hymns to the gods. Between these two, the Veda and the Mahabharata (the elder of the epics) stand other buildings, representing centuries of verse and prose, a whole civiliza- tion in various stages of slow development. The very metres with which epic poetry is adorned — I do not mean the metres of the mass, but occasional embellishments — are late forms of versification. There is much that is primitive in this poetry, but, taken as a whole, it reflects ages of culture, philosophy, and religion. If comparable with any western form of epic, that of India should then be set beside the Rhodian and Roman epic, or perhaps more fittingly beside the mediaeval romances of France and Germany. But in any such parallelism there is danger, and each of these illustrations is faulty. Apollonius and Vergil copy older models ; the Hindu epic is original. The romances of the middle ages are, again, more romantic than one of the Hindu epics and less ornate than either of them. But, in general, we may say with von Schroeder that the earlier of the two Hindu epics, the Mahabharata, answers for rough compari- son to the Nibelungen, the Ramayana to the Parcival. As was to be expected in poetry such as this, the wisdom of antiquity is engrafted upon it. But we find more than this, for in the Mahabharata — the Ramayana has something of 68 INDIA OLD AND NEW. the same sort, but it is too clearly a modern addition to discuss — there are interpolated tedious sermons, tractates on morality, philosophical essays, religious discussions, inter- minable laudations of the supreme gods, all set into the poem as distinct pieces, having nothing to do with the action, some of them clearly differentiated by metre from the poem itself. We must, then, if we would get at the original epic, dis- card this alien mass, and in many cases it is easy to see how the first poem has been distorted by it. In fact, the greater epic, as it stands to-day, is so heterogeneous that only the most unhistorical tj^Q of mind could view all this heap of goods and rubbish as the product of one uniform source. Such a theory has indeed actually been suggested, but it was too fantastic to find support, and has awakened only a passing interest. If we compare the two epics, we shall find quite a difference between them. The huge Mahabharata is seven times as long as the Iliad and Odyssey put together ; the Ramayana is but a quarter as long as the Mahabharata. The Ramayana is more symmetrical, more homogeneous, and lastly it is more refined, both in its visibly polished metre and in its social atmosphere. A further distinction is to be noticed. The Bharata poem belongs to the west, the region about Delhi ; the Ramayana, to the east, to Oudh, the region north of Benares. Nevertheless, the style of the two epics is in so far related as to be formed to a great extent on identical phraseology. Both epics have the same proverbs and know the same stories. All of this shows that the ancient tale of the northwest has been transplanted into the new seat of culture about Benares, and that the Mahabharata was com- pleted where the Ramayana began. In the course of this brief survey I cannot go into the further reasons for this assumption, but I may add that all the literary indications point to this explanation, such, for example, as that the tales woven into the later epic are almost always set about the lower Ganges. SANSKRIT EPIC POETRY. 69 To turn from the finished product to the origin of these two poems, which arose far apart but ended in the same literary environment, of the source of the Ramayana there is little to say, for it is attributed as definitely and regularly to Valmiki as is the JEneid to Vergil, whom the Hindu author preceded by several centuries. Now, tradition ascribes the great epic also — that is, the Mahabharata (which means the great Bharata story and so may be called simply the Bharata) — to a certain Vyasa ; but this Vyasa is a very shadowy person, to whom is ascribed also the arrangement of the Vedas and other works, his name meaning merely arranger or disposer. In fact, his name probably covers a guild of revisors and retellers of the tale. Moreover, there is internal evidence that the poem has been rewritten. There is, in a word, no one author of the great epic. It was handed down piece-meal at first in ancient lays. These became recitations and, united with heterogeneous material of all sorts, were at last bound to- gether as one loosely connected whole. The manner of presenting the primitive lays out of which arose the first epic stories was as follows : At a certain point in the performance of a sacrifice the ritual demanded that two or three singers should step forward with lutes or lyres in their hands, and, to quote verbatim from the antique directions given for the ceremony : " They shall then sing the king or some other brave hero," and the subject shall be "This king fought in such a battle," "This hero won such a victory." Here we have recorded in a formal rule of the ancient ritual the very same conditions, barring the sacrifice, as those which gave rise to the Greek epic, the KXea avSpSv^ the rhapsode singing them ; and so, later on, we find that in India, also, the song changes to recitation. But in India, epic recitation never became a mere reading, except to the learned. It was dramatic, the reciter of the epic scene flung himself into the description with immense fervor, and it was not long before the various parts were acted, for the chief heroes of the epic were deified, and so had the scenes of their earthly life represented as a religious service. The very 70 INDIA OLD AND NEW. earliest mention of such epic-dramatic plays is in connection with the chief hero of the Mahabharata, and his godl}' exploits. I should be glad to give you a description of one of these mediseval mystery plays — mediaeval means in India about 200 B.C. — as it is preserved to us in the account of a native scholar, who by the merest chance, as he is explaining an involved point of grammar, illustrates what he means by quotations from the life of the day, and in so doing gives us a pretty clear idea of the play which serves him as illus- tration. The painted actors, the masks, the dramatic killing of the foe of the divine hero, are all plainly put before us by this happy accident. But the details would take too much time and they belong rather to the history of the drama. They show, however, that the extant Hindu epic may have come in part from the drama. We must, in fact, enlarge our definitions of epos and drama in dealing with India. The lay once recited became therewith dramatic. There was thus drama before the drama, and these drama- recitations, instead of simply repeating old material, added to it and so created new epic scenes. For probably there were always such plays of demigod-heroes, just as we find them in village life to-day, as they were depicted 200 B.C., and as they are referred to in Buddhistic works. To sum up what we know in regard to the origin and growth of the two epics. Various considerations show that while the Mahabharata as a completed whole is later than the Ramayana, in origin it is older. The former, for ex- ample, is the epic first mentioned in the literature. It is impossible to assign exact dates to either epic, but while the lays on which the Mahabharata was based probably revert to a much older period, in its present shape even the narrative part cannot be older than the second or third century b. c, and its didactic masses are still later. Apart from the didac- tic fungus that has grown upon it, the great epic is derived both from lays and dramatic legends (recitations), worked together by various revisers. It has no one author. The SANSKRIT EPIC POETRY, Tl Ramayaua, on the other hand, is the work of a poet familiar with the older epic style, which he improves upon, for Val- miki was the first writer of what used to be called elegant poetry. The Hindus call it Artistic Poetry, Kavya, in dis- tinction from the rougher epic, which is simply Akhyana or Tale. Valmiki himself was very likely a contemporary of ApoUonius, though the material he used was undoubtedly older. Finally, one word about the metres. Both poems, as I have already said, have embellishments or fancy metres sometimes added to, rarely inserted in, the different sections of the poem. But the staple metres are a development of the Vedic octosyllabic measure, called qloka, for example : katham samabhavad dytitaiu bhratrnam tan mahatyayam yatra tad vyasanam praptam Pandavair me pitamahaih, and besides this the trishtubh, a verse of eleven syllables, having in most cases the rhythm of Horace's verse, trahunt que siccus maehince carinas, but much more plastic. In the use of these metres the Ramayana varies but slightly from the later classic usage of Kalidasa, whereas the Mahabharata is very much freer and in part admits the older license found in Vedic verse. But I think by this time you will incline to hear some- thing of the epic story itself, rather than of its setting. The plot of the great epic, the Bharata, is simply this. The old royal house of Kurus, living at Hastina on the northern Ganges, become jealous of the rising fame of the house of Pandus, who are the cousins of the Kurus, living at Indraplain (Delhi), and the Kurus plot to overthrow the Pandus by unfair means. For this purpose the king of Has- tina, called the Invincible, avails himself of the magic power of ^akuni (i. e. the Hawk), who knows how to play dice better than any man living. Nowadays we should say simply that the Hawk played with loaded dice, but in those times he was said to cheat by being a magician and by keeping 72 INDIA OLD AND NEW. the demon of the dice under his control. He challenges the Pandu emperor (Battlestrong) to gamble, and as an Aryan knight the latter cannot honorably refuse to accept a challenge either to fight or to play. This Pandu Battlestrong has just been crowned emperor, "All-conqueror," and his rank is higher than his cousin's, the king's, but he comes willingly to Hastina on his cousin's invitation, and very bravely loses everything he has, and is banished with his wife and four brothers. Then the Pandus plot and plan and at last get allies and have a great war and kill all the wicked Kurus, and so live happy ever after. Into this poem has been woven, as I have already said, a mass of tales, such as that of Nala, and pious discourses, such as the famous Bhagavad Gita ; but I must pass by these accretions and, to show the character of the real poem, I will translate one specimen. There is nothing in this extract, I think, that needs explana- tion. It gives the gambling scene at the beginning of the epic. You know that an Oriental despot may sell or gamble his family into slavery. I have already said that the dice are governed by a demon (called Kali) whom the wicked Hawk, ^akuni, has under control. The dice are called Kali's eyes or heart and are made of cowrie shells. The scene opens as the sly king of Hastina sits down to play with his cousin, the noble-hearted Battlestrong, his emperor. Of the brothers, who are gambled away, none is so conspicu- ous as Arjun, the Silver Knight, who is the ideal and per- fect warrior of the epic. Krishna the heroine (in so far as this epic may be said to have a heroine) is the polyandrous wife of the brothers ; but this feature is repressed as much as possible and in fact Krishna appears as the best loved wife of the emperor. The only verses here paraphrased freely are those explaining her position, as it is explained in the original not only here but in other passages. The extract as here given shortens the original somewhat, but otherwise follows it closel}^, though it is not always quite literal ; but it repro- duces the scene as exactly perhaps as the Occident can at times imitate the Orient. SANSKRIT EPIC POETRY. 73 Now when the dawn awoke the earth and glory filled the sky, As out of Night's dark prisonhold the great sun rose on high, Then came the lords of Hastina and sought the gaming-hall. Where two by two the elders sat — long rows about the wall. The Hawk stood in the midst of them, beside him lay the dice, Within the hand of Battlestrong rested a pearl of price. "Now, Qakun, name thy stake," said he, " for here in hand I hold A pearl, whose mother was the sea, set in a ring of gold. It hath inestimable worth. Name thou the counter-stake." Then quickly spoke the Invincible : " This compact first we make : Cakun shall play, but mine the stake ; his loss or gain for me ; My crown of gold against thy pearl, whose mother was the sea." " Strange compact this," said Battlestrong, and lingered ere he played ; But in his hand he took the shells. "What odds to me," he said, " Who throws the dice in an honest game ? Much skill have I of heaven. Stake but enough and play me fair ; I seal the compact given." He flung the shells, down leaped the dice, their master's heart they knew ; With trembling haste they hid their best, their worst remained in view. ''Now mine the throw," false 9^'^^^ said, and took the dice in hand. The heart of Kali shook with fear to feel his soft command. The dice, obedient to his will, rolled on the table tossed ; The Hawk looked up at Battlestrong : " Lo ! emperor, thou hast lost." " My chariot next," said Battlestrong ; " eight steeds thereto, well loved, And gold piled in, against this pearl that traitor to me proved." The dice upon the table rang, by magic turned and crossed, They rattled false from ^akun's hand. "Again, great king, and lost." " I have at home," said Battlestrong, " a treasure-house of jars, Unnumbered jewels in them each, with each a hundred bars Of heavy gold. Now thousands stake and wager like a king." Quoth 9akuni, " Our Hastina against the stake ye bring." 74 INDIA OLD AND NEW. Twice rolled the dice. "Thou losest yet," said ^akun, '^trjf once more." " A thousand maids," cried Battlestrong, " the fruit of joyful war, With jewels on their bosoms hung, in costly raiment clad, Adorned with anklets, fair to see, — these for the jars I had." Again he threw the trembling shells, again cried Qakun, " Lost." " Now, by the gods," said Battlestrong, " and if it kingdoms cost, I yet will win. As many men I pledge, each man a slave Fit for the retinue of a king, — these for the girls I gave." Twice rolled the dice. " Lost, emperor, lost." But now an angry frown Settled upon the emperor's face. ^' What fortune weighs me down To check my skill? My cattle all, three hundred thousand kine." Twice rolled the dice. The Hawk looked up, " Lost, emperor, all are mine." " A thousand elephants of war, four thousand warlike steeds, — This for my kine." The Hawk looked up, — " Lost, emperor ! Now, who needs The chariots that those chargers drew? Stake those." "Aye, be it so," Said Battlestrong, " a thousand cars of war, and swift to go." The dice won all the cars of war. " What, still ? " cried Battle- strong. " But sixty thousand Aryan knights to Indraplain belong. I stake the knights." "And lose them, sire," cried Cakun, " Now the rest, For every knight retainers hath, and human stakes are best." Or fear'st thou further play ? " he sneered. " Fear ? " said the emperor, "all I stake, till nothing more remains, my riches great and small, To win whatever I have lost. Can emperors be afraid ? Nay, never have I shrunk from man, whatever casts he played." The Hawk's eye smote upon the shells like sun on quaking frost. Again they trembled, rolled, and turned, — "Lo! all is played and lost." (Except his own family, Battlestrong played everything he had on the last throw.) SANSKRIT EPIC POETRY. 75 Then spoke aside to the Kuru king his counsellor Vidur, — " Forbid the play ; stop while ye may, for sorrow, be ye sure, Will follow on the track of gain. This Hawk is false at heart. What mean ye, then, to leave your kin ? What think ye ? Will they part Thus calmly from the greatest throne god Indra looks upon ? Now hearken to a wise man's words, for all your wits are gone. Ye stand above a precipice, and see not to your feet ; Your gain is loss 3 your winnings, death ; for Justice's steps are fleet. What though our Aryan law prevents yon knights from speaking now, And if until the emperor stop they still must smile and bow Before the madness of their king ? Think ye, when once 't is done, That they will hand ye Indraplain ? 'T is no man's skill hath won. What if these honest fools at last see straight ? Stop while ye may, Or long shall Hastina lament the playing played to-day." Up flared the wrath of Hastina : ' ' Whate'er we Kurus do Is nobly done. Go, leave the hall ; my crown is small for two. Who made thee king of Hastina ? I rule myself alone. My will shall be my counsellor. Leave thou the Kurus' throne." (I shorten somewhat the dispute here. The emperor's brothers stand gathered about the gaming-table.) " All hail the great All-conqueror," the Hawk said, " much is won, And all is lost ; so now, methinks, the emperor's game is done." ''Lost, all is lost?" said Battlestrong, "Who mocks an emperor's game? And who will check me when I play for victory and for fame ? I play — my crown ? Nay, that I lost. But much is left to me. Eldest am I, their emperor, too ; my brothers still are free." He spoke, but stumbled in his speech. Then cried the Hawk again, " Now, bravo, true All-conqueror, behold, we play like men. 76 INDIA OLD AND NEW. Here's Nakul, wortli a host of slaves, for him the dice be tossed." The dancing cowries touched the board, the prince was played and lost. " The next of age," said Battlestrong, "and he is good and brave j Aye, virtuous and obedient, he, my pledge is Sahadev." The dice won all the virtues of Sahadev the good. Loud laughed the Hawk and stroked the dice : ' ' Long gaming have we stood. Thy youngest brothers now are lost. It is a heroes' fight. And so, once more, the next of age, play thou the Silver Knight." A horror seized on Battlestrong ; he felt his brain grow weak ; But drunk with gaming was his soul, he forced himself to speak : " I play the Knight and all he hath," he muttered to the Hawk, But on the table held his gaze lest aught his fortune balk. He trembled like the writhing dice ; he dared meet no man's eye. The Silver Knight in speechless pride stood motionless thereby, Too loyal to his brother's throne to question or to doubt ; His life and freedom were the king's till the king's game was out. Into the air they flung the dice for the high-hearted knight. For his great bow Gandiva and for his horn of might. The eyes of Kali won the Knight and all that he held dear. The great horn Devadatta, whose sounding sendeth fear. The bow Gandiva wrought in heaven, the steeds th' immortals gave, And Arjuna the Pandus' pride became the Kurus' slave. (So then the next brother is played and lost.) " Is there yet more," cried Qakuni, " a brother or such thing. Or has he now in truth no more, who lately was our king ? " " King am I still," cried Battlestrong ; " I have myself to lose. I Battlestrong play Battlestrong, no challenge I refuse." Once more upon the table's groove danced Kali's eyes aflame ; Once more the Hawk looked laughing up : " Th' All-conqueror hath his name. All else is lost. Oh, foolish stake, there being aught beside. To play thyself, forgetting her who still remains, thy bride. Then stake thy Krishna, win with her all that is lost and mine. 'T is but a little pledge to lay, this youthful queen of thine. SANSKRIT EPIC POETRY. 77 We hear she hath the lucky signs, a favorite of the gods ; It were not wonderful if she, so wondrous, changed the odds." Now as he spoke, the wily foe, and waited for the word, The cheeks of the four brothers blanched ; they trembled as they heard. For what themselves as slaves might meet was what brave knights may bear, But Krishna was the sacred love of all, not only fair Beyond all fairness known on earth, but hers this heavenly dower — To bind unwilling every heart with more than beauty's power. For lovely she, and well beloved, yet not for beauty loved So much as for her winsome grace, which all men strangely moved, And for the gentle kindliness that crowned her more than queen, And made her perfect in all eyes as none had ever been. Still paused the king. The crafty words were buzzing in his brain. "'Tis but a throw of dice," he thought, "and all is mine again." " A little pledge ? " he muttered low, " nay, Krishna's form is tall. How stately she, how beautiful to hold- man's heart in thrall ! Her eyes like autumn-lotus shine, her form surpasses praise, Welcome as autumn welcome is after long summer days ; Gentlest and fairest, dearest — Nay ! If all save her is gone — Lo ! I am Battlestrong and king and cannot yield. Play on." The dice for Krishna's fate were flung, — again the emperor lost. *'Joy!" cried the king of Hastina, ''now let their arms be crossed ; Strip off their silks, these new-made slaves." The voices of the old Quavered across the gaming-hall and some were overbold And cried out " Shame ! " but sternly spoke th' Invincible to all : ''This is no people's conference" (he said), "and kingly hall Is built for kings ; let no man speak." Then shrank they back dismayed, While the dull light of evil thought o'er their lord's features played. " Bring forth," he cried, "this whilom queen." To her of noble birth Prince Hardheart ran. The Pandus five bowed them in shame to earth. 78 INDIA OLD AND NEW. But to the woman's inner court sped fast that soul of sin, And burst into queen Krishna's room, who sat half-robed within. " Thy lord will see thee in the hall, now come without thy veil." She looked at him with wondering eyes ; her heart began to quail. She drew her veil across her face ; she turned to him again : "Prince, go and ask of Battlestrong if I be seen of men." Before her virtue cowered the prince, but answered : " Say'st thou so ? Thy lord is king of Hastina, he speaks and thou must go ; For Battlestrong staked first himself upon the cowries' cast, And when that maddest throw had failed he staked and lost thee last." Then answered she, '' Not lost am I whom Aryan law will save, If Battlestrong before he threw had made himself a slave. For slaves possess nor gold nor child nor wife ; then how could he Who first enslaved himself at dice, possession claim in me ? Back, Hardheart, to the elders go, and say thou com'st again. To know if I be slave of slave or queen of Indraplain." (The point raised here, in strict accordance with the law that a slave could not own a wife, plays a great part in the later development of the epic.) He bore her question to the hall and not an elder spoke, They were as mute as docile cows beneath the wagon's yoke. But taunting cried th' Invincible: "Who ruleth here, good prince ? Thy king hath spoken, thine to act; or does brave Hardheart wince Before the tongue of servile shrew ? " Then angry back he fled. He seized fair Krishna by the arms and raised them o'er her head, He stripped the covering from her face, he tore her linen down, He bared her body to the waist and left her half a gown. (I omit part of the description here.) But at the door fear mastered pride; her lips with terror shook, "Not this," she cried, "oh, prince, not this; how may I living brook SANSKRIT EPIC POETRY. 79 The eyes of men beneath a robe that is but nakedness ? " " What odds," he cried, " what slaves may brook or what a slave's distress? Thou art the common wife of slaves." Then said she nothing more; But Hardheart grasped her by the locks and dragged her through the door. " Now let us see this beauty rare," exclaimed the Kuru king. " Is this the Pandus' famous spouse, of whom the poets sing ? Ill suits her such a wretched garb; tear off that ragged dress, And let us see this half -hid form if it have loveliness." Ease Hardheart clutched her by the waist and would the knot set free That men her unprotected form from head to foot might see. But she that was so pure of heart, who ne'er had offered wrong To modest thought or wifely due, stood up before the throng Helpless, while on her stricken lords fell her despairing eye. She saw them helpless as herself ; then rose her piercing cry To God in heaven, " Save, Vishnu, save, help Thou the Pandus' queen. If ever I have loved Thy law and ever constant been In thought and speech and action true — hide Thou my form and face. God, save Thy loyal worshipper, and -spare me this disgrace." Then lo, a wonder sent from heaven — for ere her garment fell A cloud-like veil in countless folds enwrapped her close and well. But fear came on them as they gazed, beholding how she stood, By man forsaken, saved of God, in stainless womanhood. This is not the end of this scene, but it is too long to com- plete, and what I have given will suffice to show that the great epic of India is not without a certain dramatic interest. Before passing on to the Ramayana I would add that this scene, which is the beginning of the real epic, is prefaced by an invocation to the Divine Bard, who tells the whole tale, an invocation (the text is given in part in the gloka above on p. 71) which reminds us of the opening of the Iliad, in 80 INDIA OLD AND NEW. that the game of dice is brought at once into the foreground as the cause of woe. The poem is related to the descendant in the third generation : What caused the game, that fatal game, The Pandus' grief and overthrow, Wherein my father's sire took part And won for winnings only woe ? What kings, thou divinest bard, Assembled there to judge the game, And who beholding it rejoiced, And who to hinder sorrow came ? This story would I hear thee tell In full, thou of heavenly birth. For this was that destruction's root Which grew to overwhelm the earth. What time the emperor Battlestrong Kested in Indraplain at ease, When he the All-conqueror's name had won After long wars and victories. The Ramayana, like the Mahabharata, has a later prefixed book of les enfances^ after which the real drama begins. The plot of this poem also, like that of all good epics, is simple. Dagaratha, King of Oudh, having grown old, gives up, after the custom of the country, his royal power to his heir, who is naturally Rama his eldest son and also the son of the eldest wife. But Kaikeyi, a younger wife, has a son Bharata, who is next of age. Now Manthara, a dwarf serving-maid, persuades Kaikeyi to plot against Rama and put Kaikeyi's own son on the throne. The opening part of the epic explains how this plot is effectually carried out. Manthara, the maid, hears the rumor that Rama is to be consecrated that very day and rushes in to her mistress, queen Kaikeyi, with this startling information. I begin at this point, condensing the first part somewhat, but otherwise following the original. SANSKRIT EPIC POETRY. 81 " Hast heard the news," she cried, " the dangerous news ? " " What news ? " Kaikeyi asked, but Manthara swift And angrily answered, " News ? why, news of kings. Awake, my queen, awake, for 't is proclaimed That DaQarath thy lord (who loved thee once), Resigns his throne this very day to Eama, That son he truly loves." To whom the queen Unmoved replied, " Truly 't is unexpected That this should come so soon, but long expected That this should happen ; either now or then — What matters when ? Why wake me for such tale ? Could this not wait ? Nay, I rejoice to hear The happy news, for Rama Bharat loves. And Bharata loves him, nor see I aught Of danger here." Then wrothful cried the dwarf: " foolish queen, a rival's son to love More than thine own, who sure is nobler far. And were himself made king, being next born After this Rama, did nor Rama live And bar his way to royalty, — but now Bharat must live inglorious." — "What, thou fool," The queen replied, " and is it then disgrace To be a younger son ? " " Nay, queen, in faith, 'T is not a shame," she answered, " yet if Bharat Could set his fate aside and reach the throne, 'T were so much more a glory. O my queen, Act, ere the time be past." Now speaking thus She stirred the queen, within whose eyes a fire New-lighted burned, and thus Kaikeyi spoke : " Thy wit is keen. If any way I knew To compass this, be sure I should not falter — But how leave Rama out ? Aye, if the gods. Remembering all that I have done for them, Had but in turn proved kind, some lucky hap Might well have changed the scale ; 1 know not what, Rama's rash bravery or his father's whim. One of the thousand oft-appearing turns That mar young princes' fortunes — but to-day I see no hope." " Yet I," cried Manthara, " I, 6 82 INDIA OLD AND NEW. Who love thee well, had I but known before, Had soon devised a plan, and even now — Listen, my lady, did'st thou not one day Tell me, aye, surely thou did'st tell me, thus : The king was in thy chamber, as I think. And dallying with thee. Was there not a boon He granted thee, not named, but to be claimed Thereafter, as thou would'st ? 'T was years ago, And yet methinks I still remember it. Recall the boon. 'T was not a simple promise Such as men make to women and forget. But sworn to by the gods and by the soul Of him that promised. Claim that boon to-day. Tell DaQaratha he is bound by oaths To grant the boon, and say : ' This boon I ask : Let Rama banished be for fourteen years, To roam the woods that south of Ganges lie, And Bharat in his stead be king of Oudh, Till Rama doth return,' — if he return. Distrust it not, the plan will work the cure. For DaQaratha is a weak old man, Else had he never thus surrendered power; And well he knows he stands upon the road That leads direct to the gods, the gods he swore by. A younger man, stronger and far from death. Might disregard those deities. Short of murder, Which were a crime to overpass his strength. He will not break his oath. Remember, lady. That ancient proverb, which all men repeat — ' Man reaches perfect joy but once in life.' Seize now thy joy. And here 's another saw : * The water's gone and now he builds the dike.' Ah, queen, or e'er the water of success Be utterly gone, bestir thyself." Then spoke With rapturous haste Kaikeyi : " dear dwarf, Let others call thee hideous, but to me Most beauteous thou for this thy beauteous thought. I do believe thou read'st the king aright, SANSKRIT EPIC POETRY. 83 For he was ever most intent on gods, Pious past all belief, and now so old, Weak as thou say'st — aye, truly, 't is a chance. I shall risk much ; but if the trick succeed, Then ask me boons. Go, Manthara, call the king. Tell him I 'm sick and in the chamber of wrath Have hid myself and lie upon the floor In uncontrollable weeping. Strip my arms And bosom of jewels, fetch my saddest robe ; Go call the king ; tell him thou knowest not Wherefore I weep, but thrill his heart with fear Of some vague trouble, bid him hasten. Go ! " She spoke, the maid obeyed, and, as they planned, Kaikeyi, stripped of all her jewels, lay Fair as a goddess on the chamber floor. With heart aflame but wrapped in seeming grief. I omit here a Sai'ga, wherein is described how the hunch- back executes her mission. She calls the king, and the latter comes to the chamber of wrath, — a boudoir or sulk-room, — finds the queen, Kaikeyi, prostrate on the ground, and at sight of her beauty and wretchedness feels himself smitten afresh with the arrows of love. He asks her very gently why she is angry. The poem continues : — Then spoke the queen Kaikeyi to Daqarath, The aged king whom Love still pierced with darts : " Thou hast not vexed me. 'Tis not anger holds Thy queen to sorrow, but my heart 's a wish Not yet accomplished, therefore lie I here, Grieving. So now, if thou indeed dost love, Fill this desire. But never ask, dear lord, For what I long ; which I will then reveal When this my wish is granted. For so much I have it at heart, that only this one thing I make that boon, which, as thou wilt remember. Long given I ne'er have claimed." 84 INDIA OLD AND NEW. Thereat the king Looked tenderly upon her as she lay- In the beauty of tears and fingered her long hair Loosened in supplication, while he spoke : " doubting heart, and wilt thou never learn How DaQaratha loves thee ? On this earth There is none dearer unto me than thou Excepting Rama. By his head I swear — " You will notice here that we have a case of real " dramatic irony." The epic has in fact the very form and action of a drama in these vivid scenes. " Excepting Eama. By his head I swear To grant whatever thou askest, aye, by him My dearest son, the pride of my proud race, In whom I live, whom not to see were death, By him I swear. Erom out my bosom pluck The heart if 't is thy pleasure ; take what else ; ■ But doubt me never ; e'en as I trust thee, So shouldst thou trust thy lover. Have thy wish. The boon is granted and I renew the bond." When thus the king lay fairly in her net Up sprang the queen and spake : '* Shouldst thou refuse Now thou hast sworn, lo, I myself will die, And this shall be foul murder on thy head. So hear my wish. Thou consecratest Rama. Bid that this consecration cease, and turn The holy rites to Bharata, my son. But as for Rama, for nine years and five Let him be banished unto the forest dark Of Dandaka, that south of Ganges lies. In deer-skin clothed, a hermit let him live. But king of Oudh before the sun goes home Let Bharat be proclaimed. Behold, the boon, Granted already, thus I name ; which thou, As thou lov'st truth and honor, consummate, Or be forever that accursed thing, A king that breaks his oath." SANSKRIT EPIC POETRY. 85 So Kaikeyi ; But while she spoke, as were he in a dream, The king upon her gazed. So looks a deer One moment shocked to stillness as he sees A tigress crouch. Then like an angry snake, Which, fury-blind and raging, but encharmed, Still helpless writhes, within its circle bound. Whence no escape, he hissed : " Thou traitress vile What ill hath Rama done thee ? What have I ? Like his own mother hath he treated thee, Thou poison-hiding viper that unknown I deemed a thing divine. What, Rama, Rama ? My best loved son, my soul, my very self, My life, my all ? Nay, surely 't is a' trick To test my love for Bharat. What, no trick ? oath that I have sworn, beast that hold'st My heart within thy fangs, what prayer can move Thy savage spirit ? Is any bitter means Of self-abasement open ? As for me, 1 shrink at naught that promises me shame. If but that shame protect the son I love. See me, Kaikeyi, as before the gods Suppliant I lie, who never begged before. Be pitiful, queen, unsay the spoken word. The king of Oudh I kneel, a poor old man, Entreating only mercy. Take thou all I have ; my realm from east to western ocean Extends its wealth to thee. Take all save this. Look where I lie beseeching, I, the king — My tears are on thy feet." So, whelmed in grief, Babbling his woe, lay the great king of Oudh. But him the queen Kaikeyi, full of scorn And wrath, addressed : " Ask mercy of the gods If thou dare break thine oath. Hark, Daqarath. Thou hast lived long, and ever 't was thy boast To honor truth and virtue. Was all this But idle words ? And shortly, when thou seest 86 INVIA OLD AND NEW. The gods in heaven, what wilt thou answer them, If they shall question — ' She to whom I swore Sits cheated of her oath ' ? shameless king ! Nay, having promised, thou art bound. Why whine Like a base beggar, crouching here for alms He ne'er will get ? Shall I surrender now ? I yield no single particle of this oath. Hear, all ye gods, who witnessed what he swore, Ye gods to whom this impious wretch would lie. Witness for me if Da^arath keep his word Or prove a perjurer in the face of heaven. . Behold ! They hear me, all the heavenly host, Who know thy oath. Thou dar'st not break the oath. 'T is mine, 't is mine, I claim the boon intact. Bharat shall reign." But as she spoke, the king Sank at her feet and fainted where he lay. You must not imagine, however, that the whole epic is carried out in this intense fashion. The scenes immediately following are, it is true, also dramatic. The king revives. There is a fine scene where he tells Rama what has happened, and Rama, despite the entreaties of his mother and the urgent request of his brother and friends that he should resist, de- clares that he will carry out to the full the letter of the oath, even when Da^aratha dies of grief, as happens soon after. The virtuous Bharata, when he learns of the circumstances, will not consent to reign. Finally as Rama insists on fulfilling the king's promise and leaves the city with his young wife Sita, Bharata consents only to act as his viceroy during his absence, and as a sign of submission to Rama, he wears the latter's sandals on his head, a protest against his own eleva- tion. But after these city scenes, which are more or less dramatic, the poet or poets who rewrote the epic give a long interlude which is less dramatic than idyllic, Rama's wife and his faithful brother Lakshman go with him, the latter as a fidus Achates, and they pass several years in hermit life. The situation is rather difficult, for as the poet has to indicate a long lapse of time ere begins the war which SANSKRIT EPIC POETRY. 87 ends the story, there is little for him to say except to describe an occasional feat of Rama's, and so he spends a good deal of time in reporting the conversations between Rama, his wife, and his brother. It is especially these scenes which make the Ramayana a romantic epic in contrast with the heroic style of the older epos. Sita is a charming crea- tion, an unaffected innocent and devoted young wife, eigh- teen years old, who worships Rama ; but she often appears as a mere lay figure, listening while Rama makes love to her or explains the beauty of the scenery. There is a great deal of sentimentality, but most of it is contained in descriptions of nature. At Citrakuta, for example, one complete Sarga (with only a few repetitive verses omitted) is as follows : There dwelt he long and for the mountain felt A true aiiection. And oft his wife to please And his own mind distract, as might the king Of all the heavenly gods show to his spouse The joys of heaven, so Rama showed to Sita The mountain Citrakuta, saying : " Lo, Not loss of rank nor absence from my friends Distress my heart, who view this lovely hill. See how this mountain rises toward the sky With glittering peaks and bright with various birds. Here silver white the rocks, red, yellow, there, Some crystal and some topaz, some like flowers ; Some gleam like mercury or a distant star, Gemming this glorious mountain, through whose shade Wander the wild beasts, tigers, bears, hyenas, And deer they harm not. Many too the birds ; And see again the trees, whose flower and fruit And wealth of leaves are here displayed — the mango, Pippal and tamarind, with the great bamboo, Love-apples, fig-trees, citrons — all are here, While bright cascades leap broken down the hill. What man but joyed to smell this cave-born breeze Laden with scent of blossoms? Many autumns 88 INDIA OLD AND NEW. With thee, perfect one, and Lakshman here, Devoid of sorrow could I live. I love This beauteous mountain filled with flowers and birds. And dost thou, Sita, too rejoice with me To dwell in Citrakuta, seeing all These various things that make for our delight, The rocks of many colors, red, green, black. The plants and shrubs that gleam a thousand fold On every side, the glittering peak above? All here is loveliness — here let the years Glide past us, quickly numbered, as we bide, I, thou, and Lakshman in this dear retreat. For living here with him and thee Joy will be ours and greater fame, The oath my father swore be kept, And honored be our name." The last stanza T have rhymed and set in a different metre to show that the poet here, as he very often does elsewhere, changes the rhythm in the final stanza of the canto. The rhyme itself does not actually occur in this place; but in many other passages we find not only the weak rhyme of assonance, but a pure rhyme, sometimes extending over several of the rhythmic periods. But to continue : After a time, while Rama is away, Sita is carried off by a giant. Her recapture forms the plot of the latter part of the epic. Here we have a very interesting analogy with the plot of the Iliad. Just as Helen is carried to Troy, so Sita is carried to Lanka, and her outraged husband with his faithful brother forms an alliance with the ruler of a South Indian kingdom (where the men, to the higher Aryan type of the North, appear like apes and are actually spoken of as such), besieges Lanka and wins Sita back. A whole book is devoted to the battles that take place on the plain which surrounds the city. As in the Iliad, the king of Lanka comes out on the city walls and inquires the names of the different heroes, though the conventions of Hindu social life do not permit Sita to appear, as does Helen in the Iliad. She SANSKRIT EPIC POETRY. 89 is kept in the women's part of the city, and it is a spy who has gone and returned that tells the king. And as Achilles could be wounded only in the heel, so Ravana (but he is here the ravisher) cannot be killed except by a mortal's hand. This has led some scholars to suppose that the Hindu epic was influenced by the Greek model. But such similarities are not striking enough to prove right this audacious attempt to deprive India of her native epic. For my part I should be glad to believe it, for just as soon as this turn of affairs takes place we are plunged into a series of endless battles and fighting- scenes which, to say it with the fear of the Greeks before my eyes, are just as tedious as are the fighting-scenes in the Iliad. I shall give you no specimens of this kind of epic writ- ing, which is common to both Indian epics. You know it already, how one hero fights till he dies and then another fights in just the same way, the warriors being described in the same old phrases, and doing the same impossible things. The Hindu genius is, however, more extravagant than that of the Greek. For here we have not only giants who think nothing of pick- ing up a mountain and hurling it on a foeman, but even foe- men who, though to be sure really shocked by the mountain falling on them, yet bravely survive. But as in Homer, not only do they not die when they ought to, these interminable heroes, but even after we have conducted them through several cantos of myriad darts and crushing mountains, and have at last with a great sigh of relief reached the place where the poet lets them expire, we find presently, to our dis- may, that without any warning or explanation of where they come from, they pop up again on the battlefield, as fresh and lively as ever, and have to be killed all over again. This is monotonous and tiresome. It is, however, according to the taste of an earlier age, and we should be as foolish to criticise adversely such battle-scenes as to condemn fairy-stories. There is only one thing to do, let them pass unread. We of this later age and western world are more for thought than for action. The ancients regarded character sketches as ancillary to a spirited tale, and if they rejoiced in giants, 90 INDIA OLD AND NEW. genii, apes, and devils, and we do not, it is our fault if we fail to appreciate their pleasure.^ The end of this long contest brings us face to face with another example of the difference between Occidental and Oriental notions, this time unhappily where it affects the chivalry of Rama. You must remember that Rama was robbed of Sita when he was away from his hermitage. He has only Sita's word for it that she was carried away unwill- ingly. She has been a long time in the ruffian's palace. When she is rescued, Rama, who has been described through- out as most devotedly attached to her and has really never doubted her innocence, thinks it incumbent upon his good name to prove that Caesar's wife should be above suspicion. With apparent sternness he therefore bids her begone, well knowing that she will appeal to the fire-ordeal, and that her innocence will be proved to all the world by the god of fire himself. " For otherwise," he says, " the world would speak ill of mj^ pure wife," Sita herself proposes the fire-ordeal, and after invoking the proper gods who witness truth, especially the fire-god, walks into the flame. Needless to say, she soon walks out again unharmed, to the great joy of all the by- standers, and falls into Rama's arms ; nor has she any reproach to make for his putting her to this test, so I do not know that we are called upon to blame him, though the scene certainly detracts from the effect of the finale. The poem ends here. The fourteen years are over. A kindly deity wafts the party back from South India to Oudh. Bharata is found still acting as viceroy, only too glad to re- linquish the throne to Rama ; and all ends well. But now I must cut short this glimpse into an antique life, distant in space as in time, a life of desire and hope, intrigue, brutality, if you will ; an unfamiliar life, where it is a point of knightly honor to accept a challenge to play as well as to 1 Since this address was given (Jan. 1901) a very interesting study of the demonology of this epic has been published by Angelo de Gubernatis, who, in his Su le orme di Dante, has shown the possibility of indirect borrowing on the part of the Italian poet from Hindu sources. SANSKRIT EPIC POETRY. 91 fight, the life of a far-off people loving strange gods ; but at the same time thoroughly human, and noble withal, where women are loved faithfully, where even a king may not break his oath ; full of passion, but filled also with a very modern appreciation of the beauty of nature — a glimpse, I trust, not without value for us all.^ 1 It is of interest to notice that some of the quaint touches in the ancient epic are not unparalleled in the life of modern Hindus. Thus the episode of Bharata carrying Kama's sandals on his head may be compared with the action of Ranuji Sindia, who, about 1700, " carried the Peishwa's slippers, to contrast his original with his subsequent condition," as is narrated by Grant Duff, in his History of the Mahrattas, vol. i. p. 480. The dramatic epic has never lost its charm for the Hindu, and instances are known in modern times where military operations have been suspended that the chieftain might at- tend the performance of one of the Kathas, or dramatic epic recitations. Per- haps the last formal epic written in India is the long "religious metrical drama " of Padre Francisco Vaz de Guimaraes, in thirty-six cantos and con- taining sixteen thousand verses, representing the mysteries of the incarnation, passion, and death of Christ. It is called a Puran, or History, and was writ- ten in the corrupt Marathi dialect of Bombay, in 1659. A specimen of this Christian imitation of the favorite Hindu Katha is given in Da Cunha's Origin of Bombay (1900). A STUDY OF GODS. What is the origin of gods ? Herbert Spencer says that they are originally ghosts, even the sky-gods and storm-gods of India. The comparative mythologist replies that all gods, even ghost-gods, are derived from a more primitive group of gods, which at bottom are personified natural phenomena. On the other hand, the interpreter of modern folk-lore asserts that the earliest gods are fairies and "spirits," and regards the ghosts of Spencer and the divine natural phenomena of Max Miiller as merely magnified forms of gnomes and giants. In this matter India is beautifully fitted to be the object of scientific research, for while Greece and Rome are, as it T/ere, museums of the remains of dead gods, India is a divine menagerie where, still alive, are to be found all the gods or kinds of gods we read about in classical antiquity. Nor do we have to grope through literary remains for slight indica- tions of the processes which gave rise to divinities ; each process is clearly revealed in present conditions. Since, how- ever, there is, besides this, another advantage in the fact that the still fertile folk-lore of to-day can be traced directly back through a literature more than three thousand years old, we may hope to find some light on the problem of divine origins in studying the present beliefs of the Hindu, and comparing them with his theological annals. It will, for instance, be a distinct gain if we can separate the confused mass of Hindu gods into categories distinguished by certain marked features. It will be a still greater advance if we can determine whether these categories have existed since the earliest times, and dis- cover which gods are likely to survive a change of home. A STUDY OF GODS. 93 Gods of Phenomena. If I begin with the gods of per- sonified natural phenomena, it is not from a wish to lay undue weight upon this category, but because these divinities occupy the most prominent position in the oldest records. From the hymns of the Rig Veda we learn that the first gods of this class were Dyaus, that is Zeus ; Ushas, that is Eos, aurora ; Agni, that is ignis; and Soma, the moon-plant, Persian haoma. They who deny the primitive character of sky-gods are com- pelled to assume that Father Sky was an imitation or transfer from another class. But this is opposed to the earliest account of Aryan civilization, wherein Father Sky, or the Sky-Father, appears as a god so antique that his name is preserved in Greece, Rome, and India.^ Other similar cases of primitive deified phenomena might be added, such as Sun and Mother Earth, but it is sufficient to establish the class. By imper- ceptible degrees we may pass from these gods to others, which, while they are no less personified natural phenomena, are usually grouped in different classes, even by those who postu- late one origin for them all. Such are not only sun and clouds, but mountains, rivers, trees, and stones. Without any hard-and-fast line of demarcation, these, again, stand grouped with such divine beings as battle-axes and war-drums. Some of these are personified natural phenomena; and some we may prefer to call personified unnatural phenomena. But they are all alike in this, and differ in this from the gods of other categories, that they are objective phenomena, which, though devoid of recognizable individual volition, yet seem to possess the power to harm or benefit at will. To prefix the word " personified " to this general group is really unneces- sary. To the early Aryan, as to primitive peoples generally, the notion that things are not persons, not the idea of per- sonified things, would have appeared new and startling. But there is nothing peculiarly antique about this point of view. The modern Hindu villager regards everything as alive and animate. Rain and hail are not only sent by a cloud deity ; they are themselves conscious and have volition. If a hail- 1 Zeus-pater, Ju-piter, Dyaus-pitax. 94 INDIA OLD AND NEW. stone wishes, lie (to speak with the native) will injure a flower-bed ; but if the hailstone sees a knife set up over the flower-bed he will turn one side to avoid it. As late as our era, it was still the belief of the educated in India that mountains and rivers were alive, and could propa- gate their species. Both these divinities are exalted in the Vedas and are regarded as true gods. To-day they are still revered in the same way. The peasant prays to them, and believes they are instrumental in his welfare. Moreover, it made no difference to the Vedic believer whether the object he worshipped was natural or artificial. Thus he worshipped the sword, the furrow, the mill-stone, just as to-day every ar- tisan worships his tool, every gardener his spade, every farmer his plough. This is, therefore, not totem- worship. It is in some cases fetish-worship ; but it is impossible to draw a hard-and-fast line between fetishism and the worship of nat- ural phenomena. The deity of a hill is the hill itself in the first instance ; but in India, especially in the North, — where, to the eye, the hills pass into mountains, the mountains pass into cloud, and the cloud into sky, — the plastic nature of this belief is especially well preserved. Exactly as the peas- ant worships the sky-god, cloud-god, and mountain-god, so he worships the god of an uncouth rock, and the god of a strangely shaped pebble, which he may carry with him. Each is a spirit in phenomenon or phenomenon personified, for the native villager or tribesman makes absolutely no dis- tinction in this regard. All this by no means forbids the assumption that a deity of this class may become a deity of another class. It is curious to see that, in the most striking case of this sort in modern times, in contravention of Spencer's theory, the Vedic sun- god, who shows not a trace of having been the spirit of a mortal, but was first worshipped simply as the hot red ball in the sky, is to-day worshipped in many districts as the soul of a dead Raja, though elsewhere he still maintains essentially his Vedic position. The chief gods in India originating in personified phenom- A STUDY OF GODS. 95 ena are those of which I have already spoken, — sky, earth, sun, moon, clouds, storm (lightning), mountains, rivers, trees, and also stars. The worship of the last is as old as the Rig Veda, but it is not so pronounced as in later times, when astrology came to aid stellar divinity. At a later period, stars were revered not only as celestial deities, but as the homes of the souls of the dead, and finally as the self-luminous souls themselves. Only in modern times and in a restricted area appears the belief that stars are the sheep of the shepherd moon. Storm-gods are early creations, and modern gods of the same sort show that they may be made independently of ghosts, although it is perfectly true that the ghosts of certain well-known people are also revered as storm-devils to-day in some localities. But apart from these there is the modern " East-wind " god, openly revered and placated as a mere physical phenomenon, and the whirlwind-god Bagalya, who is as purely physical as the Vedic " one-footed " god of the cyclone or water-spout, whichever he may be. So in the epic, Kmidadhara is at the same time a " water-bearing " cloud and an intelligent godling, who bows down to the great gods and talks with them.^ Tree-worship has been the object of much extravagant speculation, but the true explanation has been given by the author of " The Golden Bough," who says that trees are no exception to the rule that the savage in general regards the whole world as animate. Certain trees, because they are fa- vorites of certain gods, are particularly holy, and others are holy because they are totems and ancestors ; but trees are in general divine (apart from their dryad spirits)^ and especially any useful or beautiful tree. The same is true of plants, many holy plants being medicinally valuable and therefore sacred. 1 Mahabharata, xii. 272. 2 This was a point debated by Brahmans and Buddhists. The Buddhist denied that the tree itself was animate, and admitted only a " spirit in the tree." The Brahman recognized a tree-spirit, but also a spiritual, animate tree as well. 96 INDIA OLD AND NEW. There are in Hindu literature other divinities of this class which may be called poetical gods. Such are Day, Night, Twilight, the Year, the Fortnight, and other phases of time and the moon. They are chiefly poetical or ritualistic, but some of them in a more or less veiled form are actually wor- shipped to-day. Thus the Year and his sister Holi, the Spring, are worshipped, and so is Nissi, Night. In Vedic times worship was paid to the remains of sacrifice, because it had been in contact with the gods. " Even a stone," it is said in the Hitopade§a, "becomes a god when set up by priests." So, to-day, the ignorant priest worships not only the stone idol, but even the iron chain which hangs in his temple. The chain itself is a real and separate god because it has been in contact with the divine. Anything peculiar in itself becomes a god ; anything, again, that has been con- nected with a god, though not in itself peculiar, becomes a divinity. Thus from the earliest Vedic period we have the worship of amulets and talismans, partly as being useful in themselves, partly as having been associated with useful divinities, whose power they have, so to speak, imbibed and retained. Gods of the Imagination. The gods of the next cate- gory are invisible spirits, malevolent or benevolent, which aid or injure man. Such are the giants, fairies, and sprites, which, from the Vedic period onwards, have affected man's welfare without being referred by him to other origin than that of pure fancy. Here it is necessary to distinguish carefully be- tween ghost-spirits and such sprites as have been defined. The Rig Veda recognizes the difference. It has a special cult of ghosts, but at the same time it has a cult of fairies. " One hears strange noises and sees strange sights in the woods after dark, — that is the Maiden of the Forest." This belief in gnomes and fairies is synchronous with the worship of sky- gods. Just as to-day the peasant worships the great invisible gods, but reveres no less these invisible spirits, so he has al- ways done, as far back as literary evidence extends. As these numina are all more or less alike, it is only necessary A STUDY OF GODS. 97 to point out that, apart from pure creations of fancy, there are demons which are ghosts. These ghost-giants, again, are sometimes confounded with phenomenal deities. A very good example of what may result from such confusion is given by the figure of Bhimsena. He is first a national hero. Then he is revered as a ghost-god. Then he is revered again as a storm-god. Some malevolent spirits of modern times are clearly and historically ghosts of well-known men, like the village gods known as Birs, Latin vir, that is, Heroes. But, on the other hand, there remain many spirits which are not the remains of a mortal. Again, some fairies are phenomena. Such are the Apsarasas, which, as their name shows, are " water-nymphs," scarcely to be differen- tiated from divine water revered as a divinity. But their consorts, the angelic Gandharvas, appear to be dissociated from all material substance, though at a late period they are identified with the stars. Both these sorts of divinities are Vedic. Soon after, and perhaps really synchronous with them, appear the Yakshasas, beautiful genii, chiefly of the woods, creations of the imagina- tion ; the Rakshasas, gigantic fiends ; and the little Bhuts, "beings," or demons whose type is Vetala, a Bhut that is to-day in process of becoming identified with the greatest god in the pantheon. The ancient Vedic spirits of this class, Daityas and Danavas, are still religiously worshipped as Daits and Danes. On the other hand, the bright Devas of the Veda, gods of natural phenomena, have now been gen- erally reduced to the condition of Bhuts, and under the modern name of Deo are worshipped as insignificant spirits. Dyaus himself became in the epic period a sort of Hermes, famous chiefly for his skill in thieving. It is, therefore, im- possible to say in each and every case that a spirit or fairy has always been what it is to-day. But, on the other hand, since in the earliest times the spirits of the dead are distin- guished from the Bhuts, and the latter are looked upon through the whole course of literature as unembodied spirits or sprites and nothing more, exactly as they are regarded to-day, it is 7 98 INDIA OLD AND NEW. clearly not correct to identify Bhuts, on the strength of an a priori argument, with ghosts or with natural phenomena. So the Vedas know the " Elves," etymologically identical with Ribhus, the Vedic name of these clever artisan spirits, and there is not the slightest reason to identify them with natural phenomena, as has often been done. They and their class are transcendental, as are the fairies of our nurseries. Another sort of imaginative deities includes the " wonder- cow," " wonder-bird," and " wonder-tree " of post- Vedic my- thology. These, too, are still believed in, though they are not invoked and worshipped as they once were. No particular cow is thus glorified. The fancy plays around the concrete " giver of good things," as the cow is called, till it evolves an arche- typical divine cow, which gives everything. The Vedic gods of Love and Anger, with all the later host of these divinities, are abstractions of emotions, just as the wonder-cow is the abstraction of a concrete cow. These gods, which are real and worshipped, are surely not referable to ghosts or personified natural phenomena. Again, from these to the intellectual or logical gods there is but a step. The Vedic period knows the divine, primordial giant, whose members are the universe, a crude pantheism found in several other parts of the world. Worked upon by the priestly imagination, this god becomes in the Atharva Veda the primordial Support, Skambha, who is dissected in a philosophically grotesque analysis of the uni- verse. To the close of this Vedic age were familiar Vac (Latin vox), a philosophical deity ; Brihaspati, the later Brah- man, " lord of prayer," a religious deity, whom the " goddess Gayatri" (that is to say, the personification of a particular prayer) and a large number of similar deities follow. The god of death, again, must have his secretary, Citragupta, who is invented at a later date. There must be a special god of battle, suited to the post- Vedic age, and Skanda is imagined (whom, to be sure, some have wished to identify with " Alek- sander "). We cannot go back to any literary period where we do not find alongside of the worship of sky-gods, ghosts, and demons, the worship of some abstract powers. Even Infinity, A STUDY OF GODS. 99 Mercy, Wisdom (as an active, instructing goddess), and other such deities appear during the Vedic age, though probably- most of these are not of the earliest period. This evidence of the past is particularly valuable as showing that primitive superstition of the grossest kind may be contemporary with the creation of abstract divinities. Conversely, as we see in the modern life of the people, the most philosophical creeds may exist alongside of the most primitive superstition. Only in the latter case the mixed national faiths have amalgamated Dravidian and Mohammedan elements with Aryan, while in the Rig Veda there is, as yet, no evidence of external influence. It is perhaps owing to outside influence that Brahmanism in contradistinction to Vedism has so much demonolatry in its composition, but even here the effect of other beliefs on Aryan creeds seems to have been exaggerated. For the Vedic religion contains in itself the prototype of all the later demonolatry. An important division of devils, for instance, is that of the disease-demons of modern times, many of whom can be traced back to Brahmanism. But, if we fit the beliefs of to-day into the practices of antiquity, we shall see that this kind of demon was really included in the host of divine beings of the Rig Veda itself. A very interesting example of this lies in the case of a young woman who is said in the Rig Veda to have been drawn through a round hole and cured of dis- ease. As the hymn stands, it is merely a song in honor of the storm-god Indra, to whom credit is given for the cure. But the method of cure explains what is otherwise unintelli- gible. In all ages in India, just as to-day, crawling through a circle is one device to escape the demon of disease,^ for every circle is a mystic and hence holy power. This gives the cue to the Vedic rite. The young woman was running away from the " devil of disease," and was cured by being dragged through a round hole. We have, too, at this period a host of personified " Diseases," which can be nothing but the modern disease-devils. In very rare cases is a disease 1 Compare Crooke, The Popular Eeligion, i. 142 ; ii. 41. L.ofC. 100 INDIA OLD AND NEW. attributed to the action of a great god, and only when, so to speak, the influence of the great god's power is unavoidable. Thus Varuna, a god of sky and water, possibly identical with Ouranos, is also worshipped as the god of dropsy, because the disease is clearly a water-disease. But in general all diseases are simply the outward manifestation of an evil spirit. Just as a bruise is the result of a blow, so disease is the sign that one has been smitten by a devil. When the disease itself is regarded as the body of the disease-spirit, this class of demons belongs to that of phenomena. But this is rarely the case. The devil causes the disease, but the eruption or other sign is not generally the incorporate being itself. Some exceptions seem to occur in the case of prayers addressed directly to such and such a phenomenon of dis- ease, as in deprecation of the yellows as personified jaundice. But this class of what has been called symbolic gods is merely the result of the usual interchange of cause and effect. " Depart, O yellowness," is really to the speaker the equivalent of " Depart, O yellow-making evil," and evil is synonymous with devil. This group of disease-devils is by no means homogeneous. Not only do the great gods, like Varuna in the Rig Veda and ^iva to-day, occasionally inflict disease, but there are also demons who are responsible for disease and yet are ghosts. Thus there is a cholera-devil who is the ghost of a gentleman who died in the seventeenth century. On the other hand, Putana in the epic and ^itala to-day are not ghosts ; the latter, the goddess or she-devil of small-pox, is a pure abstraction. In ancient Brahmanism there may be found an army of these "disease-mothers," whose highest type is dark Kali, the spouse of ^iva. Some of these again are plainly reduced in circumstances, like the Great Mother of Gujarat, who is now a disease-devil and once, like Momba Devi of Bombay, was a tutelary local divinity, perhaps Mother Earth. But despite the manifoldness of their origin, though some are ghosts and some are decayed phenomenal deities, there are many which, like the devils bearing the name d STUDY OF GODS. 101 of the disease, can be referred only to fancy and tlie simple logic of disease explained above. Among these there are interesting types showing the original condition of some of the great gods who have been elevated from just such a beginning to a higher sphere. One of these present logical prototypes of 9i'V'a is the horrible little demon worshipped to-day (as he has been worshipped for three thousand years) under the name of Bhairava, or in modern form Bhairoba, a caricature of ^iva, with whom he has long been identified. The first grouping of this general category of gods occurs in the Vedic expression " other people," a general term for all the powers of darkness, who later are supposed to be under the dominion of Kubera, reckoned a Pluto and guar- dian of under-ground riches. Long after the first appearance of this god as a god, his name is assumed by mortal kings, so that in this category also the historical process, as recorded in literature, has been the reverse of euhemeristic. Although they are not gods, yet the creatures imagined by the epic poets deserve a word here as superhuman (or inhuman) beings, whose origin has usually been held to be due to simple fancy. Such are the one-legged men and men with ears long enough to wrap about them. But I think that most of these are due to distortion of travellers' tales. In South India I chanced one day to be in company with a young Frenchman who knew nothing of Hindu literature. On seeing the earring-extended ears of a peasant woman he exclaimed, " What ears ! Why, she could use them for a shawl ! " As to the one-legged men, Colonel Holdich, in his Indian Borderland, tells us that in Kafirstan the favorite amusement is racing up and down steeps on one leg, " some- times with a drop of fifteen feet." Such a tribe would easily be described as " one-legged." ^ Ghost-Gods. Reference has already been made to a class of deities quite different in origin from those discussed ^ The circumstance that in the epic some of the foreign allies are the " stone-throwers " may be illustrated by the fact, also recorded by Colonel Holdich, op. cit., that this is the Baluch weapon par excellence. 102 INDIA OLD AND NEW. above. These are the ghost-demons and ghost-gods. They may be divided into two classes, — deities that are the ghosts of certain well-known people, and the vague host of Fathers or Manes without special name. In modern times both classes are worshipped. In the Vedic period there is some doubt whether the first class was recognized at all. But there is a possibility of this in the fact that the Bhumiya, or local "lord of the field," in modern times is often the ghost of a local hero, and that, in the earliest literature, wor- ship is given to a " lord of the field." But just as there was at a later time a " goddess of the house " differentiated from all ancestral spirits, so here the " lord of the field " may be only the equivalent of the later " lord of the corn," an abstraction and not a ghost. But in the earliest hymns the " Fathers " are recognized as a distinct group of deities. Their position and powers are rather undefined, but the important fact stands out clearly that they are never confounded or merged with the gods of phenomena. The spirits of the dead either go to heaven and sit with Yama, the " first of mortals who died," in the vault of the sky, where they enjoy their new life in his company under a ''beautiful tree," or, according to the varied beliefs reflected through the Vedic period, they stay on earth in vari- ous housings, such as plants and the bodies of birds. At a later date they become stars, or go to the moon and sun. They are generally a nameless, inconspicuous host, and the only one revered by name at first is Yama, the mythical first mortal. Then some of the great saints get identified with constellations; but, generally speaking, the soul of a dead man first becomes a Preta, or unhoused ghost, which on being properly fed with oblations is "elevated" to the host of happy Fathers in the sky. After three generations it loses its identity and is named no more at the sacrifice, becoming simply "one of the Fathers." Yama, whom the ingenious comparative mythologists have identified with both the sun and the moon, is regarded as the " twin," or male of the primitive pair from whom men come. A STUDY OF GODS. 103 He had a sister Yami, with whom he paired, originally identified with Night, though now in popular tradition she is the Jumna River, the waters of which on account of her incest are still unholy. But Yama is a ghost-god only in the view of the tradition that makes him, being mortal, a man. He may be merely a poetic image, but if a natural phenome- non this same " first to die " would make it most natural to regard him as the moon. Other ghosts revered as terrible are the Kabandhas of the epic, headless trunks of slain heroes, corresponding to the modern Dunds. So, too, the Pigacas are a class of devils which were originally malevolent ghosts. India to-day is full of shrines raised to ghosts of this sort. But it is not at all necessary that malevolence or unnatural power should be exhibited to ensure divinity. Not a few English- men have been worshipped in life, and should have had shrines after their death in the estimation of the natives. Among the Hindus nothing is more common than the deification of a man, dead or alive. To speak here only of the former case, a few years ago a poor man in one of the districts of northern India fell asleep on the shrine of the local deity. He woke to find himself adorned with flowers and worshipped. The villagers persisted in accepting him as their local god in bodily form. Finding the position an easy one, he remained an avatar till he died, when he became a true god whose divinity increased so rapidly that he was regarded at last as the original god of the shrine. In this case a few successful cures established his cult and ousted his predecessor. Again, Hardaur Lala was a worthy man who lived in the seventeenth century. He is now the god of cholera, of whom mention has been made above. Any disease-healer or Ojha, that is. Teacher, if successful in life, becomes deified after death. Less often is found apotheosis of literary worthies ; but Vyasa, the epic author, and his rival Valmiki, are now gods in some parts of India, as are the heroes of their poems, who have many shrines and thousands of worshippers. Finally, the ghosts of "good" women, Satis, are regarded as " newdivini- 104 INDIA OLD AND NEW. ties," to cite the expression of the Abb(5 Dubois, who at the end of the eighteenth century saw some of these unhappy gods in the making.^ MajST-Gods. Although men as divinities should logically precede ghosts, yet it is significant of the healthy Aryan tone reflected in the Rig Veda that, while ghost-gods are acknowl- edged, no worship is paid to a living man, though it is true that one of the poet-priests asserts his own divinity, but only in a hymn that is particularly marked by late features. Never- theless, the germ of this disease was already at work, and shortly after the first Vedic period man-gods were as much feared as sky-gods. The first to win the power was the one who still keeps it, the Ojha or wizard. He was the Purohita, or domestic chaplain, of a king, and his incantations have been handed down in the Atharva or Fire-cult (magic) Veda. In the earliest period, indeed, any one might be a wizard ; but long before the Vedic period ended the prerogative was safe in the hands of the priestly caste. In the Rig Veda itself the real " arbiter of battle '" is said to be not the warrior king, nor even the great gods, but the priest who controls the armies through his magic rites. In the great Indian epic the real office of the domestic chaplain is to " slay evil magic " and invent evil magic of his own. But long before the epic age, the whole caste of priests had gradually acquired through the superstitious fears of the kings the same power originally got by the Purohita (equivalent to cohen). And in fact the ordinary ceremonial of the sacrifice was not very different from the witchcraft of the despicable Ojha. Through this power over the sacrifice and over the gods, the priestly caste arrogated divinity to themselves, and before the Vedic age closed proclaimed themselves "gods upon earth," a claim legally sanctioned in the native law-books. This pretense they have always upheld, and to-day all the dis- gusting service of Gosains and Gurus, the pontiffs of modern 1 Satis (sutrees) are women who allow themselves to be burned to death on their husband's pyre, and are hence called satis, " good." Dubois relates that their divinity began when the procession to the pyre was formed. A STUDY OF GODS. 105 sectarian bodies, is based on the same notion that the priests are actual gods.^ Another division of man-gods is that of heroes, spiritual or military. Occasionally such men are deified in life, but gen- erally it is their ghosts that are worshipped, Buddha, Rama, and Krishna are good examples. Rama was so clearly a man that even in his own epic he is represented as not knowing that he was a god till he was told of it. Both he and Krishna were originally local chieftains of Northern India, though to- day they are both avatars, that is, "descents" (to earth) of Vishnu, the Supreme Deity, A quite modern instance of a military leader becoming a god is that of the Mahratta chief- tain, (^ivaiji^ whose disciples are to-day, for political purposes, urging his cult in the Bombay presidency. The common people cannot quite decide whether he was a god or not, as they still remember what a demon he was in life. But his devilry will, in the ordinary course of things, soon be merged in his divinity. A shrine and offerings are enough to estab- lish a god? Even professed monotheism, as in the case of the Sikhs and modern reformers of this century, is not enough to prevent the deification of the high priest of the order, withalj before he dies. Chunder Sen too was deified by his followers, and long before her death the Queen-empress to many Hindus was a great divinity.^ 1 The jus primce noctis is assumed by some of these pontiffs on the basis of this claim. The bride is " purified " by preliminary intercourse with the priest. 2 This may seem to be putting the cart before the horse, but it is not said unadvisedly. The Hindu worships what he does not understand, and may even take a Mohammedan tomb as a temple ai-.d add his flowers (given to a deity) to those placed there in remembrance only. I saw a Hindu peasant do this in Lahore, and had him asked why he did it. " They are all great and powerful, those in the tombs," was his simple reply. Again, to start a new god on a successful career, it is necessary only to build a shrine, and say, " Here is a god." The worshippers collect at once. All they need is a sign, and the new shrine signifies a god. 3 It must be remembered that the ascription of godhead to a man is in India not quite what it would be among people not believing in metempsy- chosis on the one hand, and pantheism on the other. As any very good man may become a god at death, the transition in life is only a prolepsis. And the 106 INDIA OLD AND NEW. The Abb^ Dubois, who spent his life in India and knew the people thoroughly, reports that a respectable Hindu once said to him : " My god is the headman among my field-laborers ; for as they work under his orders, he can, by using his influ- ence, do me much good or evil." ^ Here, applied to man, is the same cause of deification, which, as we have seen, under- lies the worship of phenomena that are lifeless. On this point also the learned Abb^ in the same passage says in regard to idols that " idolatry in India has for the object of its worship the material substance itself. It is to everything which they understand to be useful or hurtful that the Hindus pay direct worship." He adds that there is a more refined idolatry, where the divinity in the idol, not the idol itself, is worshipped, " but that which has for its object the actual substance itself is more common." ^ In the early literature, both the father and the mother are declared to be divinities to their children, but this is little more than a phrase, expressing the absolute control which the parents had the right of exercising. The marital god, how- ever, is a real divinity, though he has only one worshipper, for the wife must renounce all other gods if they oppose the hus- band-god. A favorite tale in Southern India tells how the wife flouted the Guru, or priest-god, and disobeyed all the other gods in the pantheon, because the priests told her that the great gods had commanded her to do what her husband had forbidden. She died in the odor of great sanctity, for "a wife's god is her husband," as he has been, both in proverb and in Hindu law, for the past twenty-five hun- dred years. Absolutely to obey and " worship her husband as her only god " is the wife's one religious duty, though she may invoke other deities if nob forbidden by her husband- god. fine old saint of Benares (since dead) answered, when I asked him in 1897, in the course of a friendly conversation, how he could adore his own image, " As I worship you too, both being portions of God." But, though deified, I was not a god. 1 Dubois, Manners and Customs, ii. p. 556. 2 Loc. cit. A STUDY OF GODS. 107 Animal-Gods. Whether animals, which make a new cate- gory of gods, were worshipped as such by the Vedic Aryans is extremely doubtful.^ With the exception of the lion, which is not referred to as divine, the animals now most dreaded were not then known. The tiger and perhaps the elephant are not mentioned; the crocodile is not alluded to till the second period of Vedic literature. The wolf and the wild hog were not then deified. The divine cow of the later age is at this time, and even for centuries thereafter, regarded as better to eat than to revere.''^ The only animals, indeed, that appear in this period to be hedged about with any sort of divinity are snakes and monkeys. But it is centuries after this when we find any trace of the mediaeval and modern worship of snakes as protective deities and totems. The difference is very well marked in Brahmanic worship, where sacrifices and witchcraft against snakes come before the recognition of deified snakes. Of the latter, the Nagas are not snakes, but idealized serpents and dragons. One of them upholds the world. They have human faces, and are no more real serpents than Centaurs are real horses. It is highly probable that Naga worship was in- troduced into Aryan theogony from the aboriginal tribes, as the latter revere serpents both as gods and totems. At the present day the native peasant worships snakes both as dire fiends and as ancestral ghosts. The latter are the house- snakes, which are propitiated and looked upon in somewhat the double light with which - — and I will add, what is to be done there, — abuse is no adequate critique of the situation. I have said that what the Englishman owes to India is what he owes to himself. But the rectification of wrongs involves as much study as it does generosity. There are wrongs, and a great sacrifice is needed to correct them. The remedy is more than heroic, for it is the application of Christian prin- ciples to statescraft, withal at a time when it is especially THE CAUSE AND CURE OF FAMINE. 261 hard to make it. I do not speak here of righting the wrongs of the past, but of systematically remitting the tax when there is a drought, leaving the peasant enough to live on, and seeing that his livelihood is not taken from him even by law. This means, however, not only a great reduction in revenue, but a slow bettering of the economic conditions. As to the former, it implies perhaps the sacrifice of some impe- rial power, and certainly of some imperial rights, for the sake of moral right. I may be too sanguine, but I think not; I believe England will yet make the sacrifice. As to the better- ment of conditions, I only wish that I could tell you half of what has been done already. England's officials in India have been striving for years for the redemption of a land long weighted with crime, poverty, and disease; a land divided against itself by caste and sect and nationality; a land of insolent aristocrats and degraded peasants, with no strong middle class between them. You have no idea what England has accomplished there. Her noble officers, English, Scotch, Irish, as well as the best Hindus, the toilers rather than the talkers, with untiring energy perform to the full and overflow the wearisome task committed to them. Not only have these servants of England established a mar- vellous machine for provincial government, which has not had its equal for efficiency since Rome collapsed, nor its equal for honesty in any system of holding subject prov- inces, but, high and low, they labor with the devotion of missionaries; and if sometimes they curse their fate, for it is not an easy one, they are indeed, profane or not, the missionaries of Christian civilization. No one who has seen the good works they have accomplished can question their zeal or their ability eventually to lead depressed India up to a higher plane of life. Reflect for a moment on only a few facts. Sixteen million people, formerly wild-men, now brought under the influence of civilization. What Raj save the British ever cared for them ? Slaves made into free men. When you read of the kind kings of old, remember that the slave population was not included in their kindness. Estab- 262 INDIA OLD AND NEW. lished peace and its burden of hunger. In ancient times, perpetual wars, perpetual robbery. To-day, over all India, an efficient rural police, unknown before. Shall all this count as nothing? England has made India as a whole more prosperous, more stable, more a nation, than the country ever was before ; given even her meanest subjects equal jus- tice in a law-court, — a privilege the native agitators may ask the Brahmans to look for in the records of their past and they will look in vain — educated the lowly and made the high wise in their own conceit; taught the Babu his wrongs and given him permission to proclaim them; lowered the taxes and raised the depressed and the oppressed. Never before has a poor man received sympathy from the ruling class; never before in India has a man grown rich with impunity. Let the barren optimist say that England has no mistakes to correct and no wrong to right, and 1 shall insist again that a scientific forecast of what a farmer's field should produce, with an imperial government urging the expert to raise his estimate and an unchained usurer around the corner, is a mistake and a wrong. But when the pessimist, that unholy person, says that the British have oppressed India as has no other Raj, and that all is mistake and all is wrong in India, then I answer that he neither understands the condi- tions, historical or present, nor estimates fairly the ratio of wrong and right. I make no charges of intentional or malicious wrongdoing; but I say that there are two sorts of people (and they will talk to you most on this subject) who, given the right topic, simply cannot speak the whole truth. One is a Hindu talk- ing about India, and the other is an Anglophobe talking about England. From the latter you will hear all Eng- land's sins detailed, but never a word of what England has done as standard-bearer of the highest civilization. As to such a man's views on India, the test is easy. Ask him whom you hear descanting on British wrong-doing in India how England stands in other regards. After all, he is a guileless, shortsighted person ; and when you have heard him THE CAUSE AND CURE OF FAMINE. 263 explain that England has invariably done wrong, in all places and at all times and to all men, then you will know what weight to lay upon his one-sided opinion in regard to India. As to the Hindu, so extraordinary is his patriotic lack of veracity that he not only falsifies history, of which, to be sure, he is usually ignorant, but he even misrepresents the most evident facts of the present, not alone in regard to Anglo-Indian relations, but in regard to any point in which he wishes to exalt his native land. A pardonable weakness, but to what absurdity does it not lead? One of these vir- tuous impostors, for example, has recently informed us that the position of Hindu women is better than that of American women, though the press is scarcely done ringing the shame- ful but verified charges against the foul abuses practised by the husbands of Hindu children, the murderers of Hindu girls, the degraders of Hindu widows. And remember, these are not the sporadic villanies of such wretches as. Heaven knows, no country is free of, but they are deliberated usage, sanctioned and upheld by the very Hindus who to-day declaim against England. But all these points touch our present topic. For what power first put down the practice of burning widows ? Not the Hindu Raj, who invented it ; not the Moghul, who vainly tried to stop it; not the Babu and the Mahratta, who defended it; but England. And what power alone has exerted itself to stop girl-murder under native Rajas ? England, again. And what power is even now slowly but surely mitigating the awful lot of the child-wife, whom even the Moghul sought to save, and that of the child- widow, whose blood and tears have been the one unfailing rain of India for more than two thousand years? God and England. And these, my friends, are but items of a long account. Even if you cast the account in money alone, you will find that the Englishman has sinned less through cruelty than through ignorance of the people's ways and of their inability to fit themselves into even the most equitable scheme fashioned according to Western ideas. For it is false that the British tax throughout India is in itself iniqui- 264 INDIA OLD AND NEW. tous. Apart from a restricted area and exceptional circum- stances, it not only is a lower tax than the Hindu was wont to pay, but it represents a fair percentage of the farmer's income. But if you cast the account in other terms — and are we to look only on the rupees ? — what then ? I tell you, there is no Raj in the annals of Hindu history that has done so much for India as has England ; not her old rulers, for they ruled for the Aryan alone, nor did they ever have placed before them the complex problems of to-day ; not the Moghul, for, with rare exceptions, he never " considered the good of India as his duty;" not the Mahratta, for his hand was armed against every man save a Mahratta. So I say to the optimist: You are mistaken. The usurer is a wrong. To tax paupers is a wrong. No law is right, no rule is without fault, under which the burden of any thrifty peasant is greater than he can bear. But to the pessimist I say: Have at England if you will ; only good will come of it if the truth be told, and truly she is not impeccable. But have at England as you will, without knowledge and without regard to truth, and you make your pleading a veiled lie and your cause ridiculous. And now in closing I feel as if I should offer excuses for an address which I am afraid will have neither satisfied those who hoped to hear England defended nor pleased those who like to hear her abused. But it has been impossible for me to "take sides " on this question. It has too many sides. So I have spoken according to the facts as I see them, good and bad. THE PLAGUE. "Prevoyant que si je survivals a cette aventure j'en ferais I'histoire." This plague is the last of a number of such visitations since Christ's birth, the earliest of them, barring those of 166 and 250 A.D. and the one that occurred in Egypt and Persia and along the Mediterranean literal in the sixth century (for no one knows whether these passed through India or not), being the plague of the thirteenth century, and the general pest fol- lowing it a century later (1344-48). But even in this case, though the two may have come from the same source, yet only of the latter is it known with certainty that it passed through India, having first started in China. The plague which ravaged London and other parts of England in 1665, resulting not only in countless deaths, but in important social and political modifications, may have been the plague "which few escaped" in Bombay, in 1618. It was in India till 1630. The same plague reappeared in 1684 and 1690 in Surat, and in Bulsar in 1691. In Bombay itself the plague lasted from 1689 to 1702 ; while in 1720 Marseilles was at- tacked by a plague said to have been imported from Syria in silk-goods, though the opinion that the plague is not con- veyed by merchandise at all is strengthened by the observa- tion that in Marseilles not a single porter of the silk bales died of the disease. As plague is probably endemic in Egypt, it is doubtful whether its successive circlings there are not links in the same chain. Such a round occurred when Napoleon was in Egypt, and again in 1835 in Alexandria. But these cases may have something to do with the fact that outbreaks occurred in India almost immediately after each in Egypt; in 1815 266 INDIA OLD AND NEW. there was plague in Kutch and Kathiawar, and in 1836 in Marwar. Since then plague has broken out in Garhwal (Gurawal) in 1852 and 1876 ; in Baghdad and other cities of Mesopotamia in 1876-77 ; and in Hong Kong in 1893-96. In Mesopotamia, Garhwal, and Yunam the disease is endemic. In Garhwal it is a local disease engendered by dirt, and is the true maha-mari or Great Death, which is said not to be identical with the bubonic plague. Be that as it may, the plague has been called the Great Death by the natives here since its first appearance. Only the up-country hotel-keepers, whose bunga- lows this year of fear are nigh empty of guests, have euphemis- tically changed the name, and when one goes from Bombay into the Mofussil (country-districts), one is greeted with the absurd question, " How is now the little-death? " (echota-mari). Since 1720 plague had not desolated a Continental city. For sixty years it had not invaded India, but it is endemic to the east in China and to the west in Mesopotamia, it has always hung about the edges of the country and is supposed to lurk in some of the hill hovels on the northern border. What was more important, there was constant shipping be- tween Bombay and the home of the plague, and it was well known that the plague was a filth disease. Bombay is not the dirtiest city in India, but its uncleanli- ness is probably exceeded in quality by that of Calcutta alone. Yet Bombay possesses more dirt and it is more com- pact, as the city is the largest in the country, containing, according to the last census, 821,764 souls, while of these about 770,000, the native inhabitants, are for the most part crowded into an area of but four square miles ; and in some parts of the city there are 760 people to the acre, the densest population, it is said, in the world. In 1661 the city had a population of 10,000, and in 1673 of 60,000, if travellers' estimates may be trusted. Filth has been gathering in the town for centuries. To the Portuguese, the town was still a ilha da boa vida, "the island of good life; " THE PLAGUE. 267 but by 1706 Waite called it an " unhealthf ul island," and in 1707 he alluded to it as "this unveryhealthful (sic) island." But the systematic accumulation of filth is a later growth, which arose in this way. The upper part of the city, which even now is swampy, two centuries ago was almost all bog. The town is on an island (originally seven islands), which like New York is pointed at the south and gradually broadens toward the north, the Battery being represented by the ward or district of Kolaba, and the Harlem Flats by the northern swampy district, which is known in Bombay also as the Flats. The lower end too of Bombay is rocky, as in New York. But a large part of the interior of the city is below the mean sea- level. Other parts formerly below have been filled in and raised, but not with sweet soil. For the present city is largely built up on hollows filled with refuse, partly undrained. The Fort, the southern part of the town extending nearly to the Victoria Station, then the native town, in the middle of the city, and eventually the districts originally outlying but now in the town were thus reclaimed. One of these reclaimed tracts, for example, is the present Kamatipur Ward, where the plague, when it came, raged most violently. The city grew rapidly and, as it increased, the city sweep- ings and other fouler matter were utilized to make new building-lots. Thus on a foundation of mud and manure were created hundreds of salable acres in Byculla, in Maza- gon, in the Oart (the cocoa-nut plantations), and still later in the fashionable northwest quarter of the town, Malabar Hill and Breach Candy (i. e. khinda, Pass) . This practice was discontinued in the middle of the present century, but in the sixties the city authorities resumed it, converting acres of swamp into valuable property by filling them up with decomposing filth. Such drainage as there used to be in the city was effected by means of a main drain about a mile long, which was in reality an elongated cesspool, since there was not fall enough to carry off the stagnant matter constantly accumulating in it. The sewage was at first conveyed into the Flats, then 268 INDIA OLD AND NEW. into the harbor. At present there are some open and some closed drains in the city, but there are whole districts which have none. Mandvie Ward, where the plague first appeared, has no proper sewerage, but only water-drains, con- structed in 1871, which are intended to carry off the surplus water that falls in floods during the monsoon season, June- September. The whole district is water-logged, owing to the constant silting up of the drains, some of which have not been cleaned for twelve years. Complaints about them have been frequent for fifteen years. The fashionable drive of the city is an intra-mural Appian Way bordered with graves. On the one side is the Bay, on the other the burning-ghats of the Hindus and a burying- ground of the Mohammedans. The heart of the city when the plague entered it — how shall one describe it ? The streets heaped thick with foulest stuff, the houses not free of it ; the native town, a labyrinth of malodorous lanes, wliich connect streets or run into other lanes, or form blind alleys ; and be- sides these lanes, very close tunnels, known locally as gullies, which perforate the filth, and are intended as alley-ways be- tween the tenements. These buildings are indeed not like our sky-scrapers, but, rising as they do to a considerable height on either side of a two-and-a-half foot gully, they cut off all sunlight from the narrow sty below. Bombay, like New York, because of its horn-like shape, has no room for expansion to east and west, and as there is no rapid transit the poorer people are necessarily herded to- gether, and they naturally prefer this to the toil and expense of a northern journey on the slow tram. In Calcutta, which is all built on a mud flat (or, as the inhabitants call it, an alluvial plain), there is room for the poor, and they still con- tinue to live, more or less separate, in small groups of low hovels, bustis. But in Bombay's congested middle the tene- ments, or chawls, as they are called, are as large if not so high as our own tenement houses, though within there is the difference between the Orient and civilization. There are, indeed, besides these structures, which contain several hun- THE PLAGUE. 269 dred inmates, smaller chawls, holding twenty to fifty people, and in some districts there are single houses of the poor. But to describe the most characteristic of them will suffice. They all have two things in common, — darkness and dirt. In small houses, such as are found chiefly in the northern districts, the family practically live in one dark room, out of which, however, may open a darker closet for water-pipes, where washing is done in perpetual dampness and gloom. The floor of these shanties is usually of mud, and the mud is usually wet with all kinds of water and filth. The smaller chawls are built all over the native city. They are often situated two or three feet below the level of the street or lane. Not seldom is there a cluster of them, bor- dering a network of intricate little lanes, in some of which there is not space enough for two persons to walk abreast. Lanes and houses are alike evil to see, and more evil to smell. But of the big chawls, where land is more valuable (one hundred dollars or more a square yard, for it is sold by this measure), some accommodate, or at least contain, a thousand grimy tenants. These caravanseries are the especial feature of that part of the city where the plague first started, M and vie Ward. From without they are fair enough to see, and at first one is astonished that these should have been the lair of the plague, for if the street is unclean and the gullies on either side of the chawl are indescribable, the buildings themselves are substantial, and seem to be roomy. But the manner of their iniquity is this : The chawls are six or eight stories high, with a six-foot hallway from bottom to top through the middle of the house, where a stair takes half the space of the hall; and a series of black cubicles, eight or ten on either side, fronts on the hallway in every story. The hall on the ground-floor is lighted by the entrance doorway ; the hall- ways above, only by the dim light from below, or in some cases by narrow slits in the back wall of the hall. The air which comes through these slits rises from the common opening intended as a closet in the rear of the main building. The little 270 INDIA OLD AND NEW. cubicles along each hallway are eight by ten feet. They have no ventilation and no light. Each is usually occupied as a sleeping and eating room by a family of five or six, though sleeping-space is generally sublet to as many more as will fill the floor. The floors of these " better-class " chawls are of cement, not mud. The walls used to be of bamboo, but are now of wood and plaster. When the cubicles get too dirty, they are subjected, generally in view of a visit from an in- spector, to the gohar process. This consists in smearing both floor and wall with cow-dung, which is then allowed to dry. It purifies the air to some extent, and has a pungent odor agreeable to the natives. On this carpet of cow-dung new filth then collects daily as before.. There is in such a cubicle no furniture save bedding and a cooking-pot. The smoke finds its way out as best it can. In the corner of the room is a small receptacle called a nahani, pronounced nanee, which is connected with a down-take pipe without, and is intended only as a sink, but it is habitually used for other purposes. Everything to be got rid of is thrust down the nahani pipe, so that it is frequently clogged full. Since the only light in the cubicle comes from a dim, unventilated hall, this also is dark, close, and foul, a noisome den. The tenant will not seldom refuse to clean the hall, even with gohar, for he regards that as the business of the landlord, who, however, is generally content if his rent is paid, and cleans nothing. Nor will the tenants cease to dirty the gullies. But, in a word, to make a short cut through nastiness, the personal habits of the natives of the tenement class are not much better than those of ani- mals, which indeed share houses and even cubicles with them, and help to render these unfit for human habitation. Sixteen to twenty of these cubicles on a floor, six or eight stories of them, constitute a typical Mandvie chawl. Not the poor only, but also rich native merchants are found in such habitations. A few tenements erected on sanitary principles are to be found in the city, but almost the only houses of this sort are those erected by the Tramway Company, which is under the superintendence of an American, whose decent chawls have THE PLAGUE. 271 been notably free from plague during the whole of the pesti- lence. The " gullies " alongside of a chawl are dirtied not only by irresponsible people, but even officially by the halalJchores, or hhungis. These are the regularly appointed employees of the municipality, night- workers, whose business it is to remove the night-soil accumulated through the day and carry it away in carts. Instead of doing this, they are apt to pitch it into the nearest water-drain or into the house-gully. At the very begin- ning of the plague it was stated that hundreds of complaints had been made in regard to this practice. But the Jialal- khores continued it long after the plague had broken out, as may be seen from many reports and complaints made at inter- vals all winter. These reports show, too, the general condi- tion of the streets, where cutchra (street-sweepings) had been allowed to collect for years. A month after the plague was known to be in the city, a native physician, at a meeting on October 19, thus describes the appearance of the streets : " The dust-bins are not only full of cutchra, but filth and gar- bage are lying in heaps on the roads, emitting a stench which is highly sickening." Another says: " Coomarwada Second and Third lanes are in a most disgraceful and filthy condition. The side gullies are full of all abominations, and the whole length of the drain is choked up with suUage and night-soil." Still another physician describes Lobar street, "where sullage water collected itself on the public road, and ran in streams on to Kalbadevi Road," and adds, " The attention of the Health Department had been repeatedly drawn to the nuisance " be- fore it was cleansed. Man having prepared a place for plague, Nature, as it were, induced the monster to enter it. But Nature had helped man long before. During the summer of 1896 the rains, usually distributed over four months, were concentrated in the first three with a total excess of twenty-seven inches (above the normal fifty-eight inches for the three months). This was followed by a partial drought in September and excessively hot weather in October. As a result the subsoil, though the 272 INDIA OLD AND NEW. surface was flooded, was less evenly and thoroughly soaked than usual. Consequently the noxious filth which had been accumulating about the neglected drains in the subsoil was not held thoroughly in solution, although the total rainfall for the year (up to October), 87.65 inches, exceeded the evapora- tion, and was in fact fifteen inches in excess of the average. But to ensure the health of the city there should be ten inches of excess of precipitation annually, as against the evaporation, whereas since 1887 there had been altogether only seventeen inches, including that of 1896. There was then, given an accumulation of filth in the subsoil, in the very excess of evaporation for a decade past the meteorological prelude to the drama of death. It is a curious fact, shown in the Bombay Observatory, ^ that there is an excess of vapor pressure about once in ten years, corresponding with the phase of " maximum sun-spot area." In 1896 there was a minimum period, hence evapora- tion was at a maximum, for it varies inversely as the vapor pressure. With a soil fairly clean, the effect of the decennial fluctuation is slight ; but when excessive evaporation leaves a soil surcharged with filth, there is a parallel excess of escaping foul gases and a perfect environment for disease. Ten years before the plague arrived, the death-rate of the city was but 24 per thousand annually. Some months before, it was 40 per thousand. The mortality had increased steadily for six years. In the previous year, October, 1895, to Oc- tober, 1896, it was nearly two thousand more than in the year October, 1894, to October, 1895, being in the year ending October, 1896, about 27,000. The press had raised in regard to neglect of sanitation a warning voice six months before the plague came. The municipality, however, had taken no steps to meet the coming emergency, although they had twenty lakhs of rupees at their disposal.^ 1 These observations are taken from Mr. Baldwin Latham's Keport on the Sanitation of Bombay, and those in the preceding paragraph, with the notes on drainage and sweepings, from the Times of India. 2 A rupee, divided into sixteen annas, was, in 1896, equal to nearly one-third THE PLAGUE. 273 Under the government there is a municipal corporation of seventy-two members, the chief executive of the city being the municipal commissioner. Europeans are apt to neglect the meetings of the corporation, partly because their vote does not count for much when opposed to that of the natives, who have a two-thirds majority, and partly because they "have no time to spend on politics." Subordinate to the commissioner are the various heads of departments, for ex- ample, the ofiicers of the harbor, police, engineering, and health departments, with whom the commissioner usually con- sults, but to whom in the end he issues peremptory instruc- tions. To an American, the most astounding fact in the constitution of the city government is that the health officer, instead of being dictator, as he should be and is with us when public health is in question, is without power, being subordi- nate to the municipal commissioner, from whom he virtually has to receive orders. The plague entered the city, as nearly as can be reckoned, in the last week of August, 1896. In the first week of Sep- tember the health officer was informed of the fact, but, accord- ing to his own statement, he had already known of it for some time. By September 3, certain physicians who were members of the corporation were already treating the malady as true plague. The first cases appeared in Mandvie Ward, a district of 37,000 inhabitants, in the middle of the city. It spread rather slowly at first, but before September was half over the native population had become frightened, and prominent native citi- zens were shortly organizing such measures of relief as the divines of the Orient deem sufficient to prevent the progress of plague. An exodus from this ward and even from other parts of the city had already begun. But the health officer still officially ignored the whole matter. Not yet had the commissioner taken any steps to prevent the spread of the of a dollar, though its nominal value is about half a dollar (two shillings), and it has been as low as a quarter. The anna may be reckoned as equivalent to two cents. A lakh is 100,000. One hundred lakhs make a karor or crore. 18 274 INDIA OLD AND NEW. disease ; nor had the press spoken. Though the presence of the plague was known to many, silence was the rule. But when three whole weeks of September had passed and, as nearly as can be estimated, between two and three hundred people had died of the plague, the matter was casually men- tioned at an ordinary meeting of the standing committee of the corporation, held on September 23, when a private physi- cian first called attention to it, and on the spot named the disease by its true name. Referring to " the existence and prevalence of a dire malady on the Port Trust Estate and its vicinity," he said : " The malady is the bubonic plague. . . . I think it is caused by the putrid emanation from the putrefy- ing and decomposing matter in the sewers on the Port Trust Estate, which are choked, and can only be called cesspools. ... I have more than once called the attention of the cor- poration to the great danger." Another gentleman stated that he had heard of the prevalence of the plague " about twenty days ago," and continued : " I at once communicated with the health ofQcer . . . and furnished him with the numbers and descriptions of houses where the epidemic had broken out. ... I am informed that between two and three hundred men have died from the plague during the last fort- night, and panic-stricken residents of the locality have been migrating to Kutch and Kathiawar and other distant places." The health officer, when he had been requested to make a few remarks, cautiously said : " In regard to the occurrence of cases of a peculiar type of fever referred to, it may be men- tioned that the type is of a suspicious character," adding that he had known of the matter for some time before any one had spoken to him about it, and that he had been taking " special precautions." It would be interesting to know in what the precautions consisted ; certainly not in any of the preventive measures usually taken to avoid infection. In regard to the filth spoken of, it may be remarked once for all that when the plague appeared in a new district it appeared in filth. Thus when it moved north and attacked the people at Grant Road, the first case reported from there THE PLAGUE. 275 was "in a hovel in one of the rows of particularly filthy- hovels ; " and the first cases that were noticed in the city, in Clive Road, Argyle Road, and Broach Street, were in general in an unusually unclean environment. The only apparent exceptions were the cases in "large commodious corner- houses exposed to the sea breeze." By them, and they were many, who were pecuniarily interested in proving that insani- tary surroundings were not conducive to insanitation (for nearly half of the municipal corporation are owners of chawls^ and in fact some of the most disreputable tenements in the city are owned by members of this body), these cases were cited as proof of their contention. What the commodious houses of this district are, I have shown above ; the fact that a cold breeze made the half-naked inmates liable to catch cold, and that the plague began with pulmonary trouble, may have offset the hygienic advantage of salt in the air. But the accident of position was not really a very important item in a town where the vilest alleys border on the best streets. The Parsee temple near the Post Office is on a fine avenue, but beside it is a horrible little lane, and the temple itself till late in the winter contained a very filthy well, so that it was not surprising that plague broke out in the little lane early in the season, though the lane runs up to the west, which in Bombay is the windward side of the city, and the house of plague was within a few rods of a broad drive, apparently clean but invisibly diseased, like the temple, the worshippers at which were sorely smitten. Testimony as to the wealth or poverty of the first victims, as also in regard to the religious community to which they belonged and their nationality, was very contradictory, be- cause each reported according to the few facts he knew, or perhaps according to his prejudices. Only one general statement remained undisputed, and this was that the vic- tims were at first chiefly young people from five to thirty years of age. In respect of the disputed points, judging from the most reliable testimony given on several occasions and from what I heard, the earliest victims would seem to have 276 INDIA OLD AND NEW. been neither wealthy Hindu merchants nor Jains, as was vari- ously asserted, but first of all poor Hindus and then Jains and Mohammedans. But the item of wealth makes little difference, since, with some exceptions, personal cleanliness amongst the natives is not up to the standard demanded by hygienic laws, even in the case of the well-to-do, for often even the wealthy live in opulent squalor. Before the municipality had oificially heard of the plague's existence, the common citizens had invented, or more strictly imported, a cure for it, and made preparations to ward off the wrath of Heaven, whom they make responsible for everything. In respect of the cure, the natives had observed that the slight pain in the groin on the first day and the enlargement of the glands on the second were usually followed by high fever and delirium, and that on the third day the patient died.^ They therefore endeavored to check the appearance of the bubo by applying a hot iron to the groin and removing the cuticle. Acting on the suggestion of some Bhatias, who had described how cautery was practised in Kutch, the Indian 1 The symptoms of the plague described above in outline were retailed at length from personal observation by Dr. Atmaran Pandurang in October. With the addition of other (bracketed) tokens, specified in a later report by Dr. Jas. Cantlie, they are as follows : " A peculiar discoloration of the skin, prostration, countenance stupid, expression of apathy, fever frequent and feeble pulse [delirium, vomiting, cardiac distress, terrible thirst], enlarged lymphatic glands in the groin, the arm-pit, and the neck, those in the groin usually forming a large swelling painful to the touch, the bubo ; no diarrhoea but bowels costive, liver and spleen enlarged, but no change in the urine in quantity or appearance, hurried breathing, not answering readily questions put, drowsiness running rapidly into coma and death ; but in quick cases, feeble pulse, hurried breathing, drowsiness, coma, death, without fever or enlargement of glands. Other cases take two to seven days ; quick cases, six to twenty-four hours." The " quick " cases, though infrequent at first in Bombay, became common in the course of the winter. At Karachi, on the other hand, the plague appeared at the very first in the quick form, and the first victims there lived only a few hours. Patients that recovered were sometimes left in a paralytic state. The plague which devastated middle India at the close of the seventeenth century was " so violent that in a few hours it depopulates whole cities," as is reported, in 1695, by Dr. Careri. It was called goli (ball, bubo) by the natives and carazzo (implying the bubo), by the Portuguese- Dr. Da Cunha, Origin of Bombay, p. 191. THB PLAGUE. 277 doctors tlius put their patients to useless torture and cured none. But there were many quack cures which the natives adopted in lieu of better instruction, for the municipality appointed no special physicians to see to them for some time after the meeting of the 23d, and the poor, so far as the authorities were concerned, were allowed to die unattended. But from the time the plague broke out, the vaidyas (doctors, literally wiseacres) of the Hindus and the hakim of the Mo- hammedans might be seen sitting on the curb-stones, selling powdered lizard and other antidotes, not always so harm- less. For both in Bombay' and in the Mofussil, where also the plague soon appeared, it presently became a crying evil that these unlicensed quacks were murdering men with many decoctions. But the half-educated as well as the ignorant believed in them. On the very day on which was held the municipal meet- ing referred to above, where was uttered the first warning of coming trouble, there was another meeting in Bombay. The native merchants, more alive to the danger than were their official protectors, assembled at the office of a Bhatia and invited subscriptions "for the poor who were afflicted with the scourge," and for the performance of religious rites to propitiate Kali, the dreaded spouse of ^iva, for to her anger the Hindus attributed the plague. The press and the municipal authorities said, " Hush ! lest the world hear of it and business be injured," but the Hindus, and the Mohammedans also, were already crying aloud for aid. A series of religious processions followed. First, the Brahmans attempted to appease the wrath of Kali, and three days after the municipal meeting they paraded the streets where plague was well known to be at work, marching in solemn procession, clad in gay robes, and re- citing Sanskrit verses. It was supposed by some of the lower classes that Kali had been angered through the rejec- tion of the old metal anklets, such as the women used to wear, in favor of dark -green hmigris, or patlis (bangles) of glass, which had recently been introduced into the city. 278 INDIA OLD AND NEW. It was said that cows' blood was used in the manufacture of the new bangles, but very likely the whole tale origi- nated with the rival manufacturers of the metal anklets. However that may be, there was now on the part of the women, chiefly mill-hands, a general return to the holy ancient way, and a great breaking of glass. So, after the Hindu women had broken all their bangles, and the Brah- mans had recited their Sanskrit verses, the priests proclaimed that Kali was angry no longer. Then for a few days the Hindus believed that they were saved. But the Mohammedans, who do not believe in Kali, had their own rites, and three days later, that is, on September 29, they too held a religious service, similar to that of the Brahmans. For after a band of fakirs had assembled on the seashore near the Churney Road Gardens (by the Queen's Road) and offered prayer there, they began to march, and in an array similar to that of a Greek chorus, namely, in tiles of three (their number too was fifty), paraded together to the Field of Death, for so Mandvie Ward was already called by the poor (though the municipality had not yet recognized that there was any plague in the city). Through this ward, with heads uncovered and bare feet and to the music of a bagpipe, they marched first, and then in the same way visited in order all the other places where the disease was known to be, for it had spread even outside the limits of Mandvie. They thought that the holiness of their presence after the performance of the rites would tend to allay the malady, and, like the Brahmans, they really did do some good, for they helped to still the pop- ular fear. But to the stranger they were less imposing on account of an innocent error which they were led to commit. For though they bore themselves not unworthily of their sacred mission, yet the leader, who made the music, having been at some time, as it would seem, a musician in a British regiment, played on his bagpipe only Scotch jigs. He played with great solemnity as well as ability, but the effect was risible, and the number of the band also suggested comedy rather than tragedy. THE PLAGUE. 279 The next day, for the native town was now in great terror, and those who had not participated in the first celebration were glad to take part in the second, the Hindus again en- treated their gods. But the chief suppliants were not the poorer classes, for only wealthy merchants and their friends and families were engaged in the ceremony itself, which differed from the former Hindu rite, and in preserving many ancient superstitions, such as those of holy numbers and the circumambulation of fire, was of peculiar interest. It was carried out in the following manner. First of all, at the en- trance to the lane called Dariasthan in Mandvie, there was erected a golden entablature of welcome to the invited guests, who were more than a thousand in number, and were to pass through this lane to the temple of the same name situated there. The whole rite was at the cost of a pious Hindu, who had bidden his friends to this ceremony, which might almost be called a feast, since, though the function was essentially an intercessory service, it partook of the nature of a festival, as will be seen. For when the guests had passed the sign of welcome and were come through the lane, which was further decorated with ban- ners and variegated bunting, they entered the temple to the sound of music, which was made by a band of native musi- cians. Most of the women remained in the entrance-hall or went to the galleries above, but some went into the inner temple with the men. There rites of prayer were first per- formed, but not such as call for further notice, save that they were invocations directed to the assuag-ement of Kali's ano-er. Then, however, the priests turned to a huge kettle, which stood in the middle of the square of the inner temple, and having placed in this the feast agreeable to the goddess, cocoa- nuts, melted butter, and rice, together with costly incense and many fragrant drugs, they covered these things with vermil- ion powder, such as the Hindus use to mark the sacred namon on their foreheads, and then burned all the contents of the kettle as an acceptable sacrifice. It was burned by seven priests, which is a sacred number. Then these seven circum- ambulated seven times the place of sacrifice, keeping their 280 INDIA OLD AND NEW. right side toward tlie fire. Girls also, decked in garlands, fol- lowed the priests, for Kali has female servitors. Then prayers were said, and there was a great noise from the cymbals, in making which, or other music, each musician strove to pro- duce as much racket as possible with his brass instrument, since in this way the lesser spirits of disease, as they believe, are frightened away. Thus this worship of Kali combined elements the most diverse. For with the self-same music they believed that they were both pleasing the goddess and dis- maying her attendants. There was nothing more done in the temple ; but subsequently, towards the cool of the afternoon, these people and a good many more, all wearing holiday clothes and ornaments, proceeded through the stricken district, priests first, then the men, and finally women. They thus passed by the way of Kazi Syed Street, and the Musjid Bunder Bridge, through Argyle Road and Broach Street, where the plague was worst, to the waterside at Carnac Bunder, and there, after singing and praying as they had done upon the route, they cast oblations into the sea, and having prayed again, went home. But after this there were no more superstitious rites for a long time, partly because to the Hindus so much of the following month was a time of regular continued sacrifice, and partly because all hoped that what they had done already would prove efficacious. Only the Roman Catholic and Pro- testant churches had services for the same purpose of averting the wrath of the Deity, first in the cathedral at Magazon, on October 5-7, and again on the 11th at the same place in con- nection with a High Mass in honor of St. Sebastian. And be- tween these, intercessory prayers were offered, in behalf of the sufferers from the plague, at the Protestant Missionary Confer- ence. But these familiar services need no description. At the meeting of the standing committee on September 23 a private physician had demanded " isolation " of plague- patients. No attention was paid to him. Before the end of the month the Times of India, admitting that plague was in the city, called for proper segregation. This, by the way, was THE PLAGUE. 281 the only paper in Bombay that then or afterwards envisaged fairly the facts of the situation. Two days after the meeting of the committee a prominent physician said that he " knew personally " of fifteen to twenty deaths a day from plague. No medical man of any repute denied that the " peculiar fever," so lightly treated by the health officer, was bubonic plague. Yet no arrangements had been made for a plague- hospital. The Health Department continued to pooh-pooh, and insisted that the trouble was confined to one communit}^, though physicians bore direct testimony to the contrary. The municipal commissioner exercised none of the powers which had been conferred upon him by the Municipal Act to prevent the spread of disease, though he was advised to apply for more power by the government committee appointed to inquire into the plague. The word "plague" was officially tabued. The little-death, as the hotel-keepers called it, was known to the Health Department also as bubonic " fever " only ; nor for a month after the meeting of the standing committee on Sep- tember 23 was plague under any name allowed to stand in the official records. The first entry was for the week ending October 20 (as " bubonic fever ") . Even after this, most of the plague-deaths were distributed under the captions of pulmo- nary diseases, phthisis, old age, and the like. The reason for this concealment was tersely stated in the municipal corporation : Bombay was a trading city ; knowl- edge of the plague would hurt trade. For this, amongst other more personal reasons, the commissioner and his subordinates concealed the truth. For this reason also the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, a month after the pest appeared, de- clared that there was no such thing as plague in town ; naively adding that, as Colombo had already quarantined against Bombay, any one might see how inimical to the welfare of the city were revelations so untimely. The health officer's only move to meet the plague in battle was to remove filth. Other members of the municipality, on the other hand, were rather inclined to the opinion that filth was innocuous. The police commissioner, who had a great 282 INDIA OLD AND NEW. deal more to say about sanitation tlian had the health officer, made some remarks on the subject at the next meeting of the standing committee. He was convinced, he said, that the plague was due to sugar and silk. Date fruit came from Baghdad, and silk came from Hong Kong. These places had had the plague, and were responsible for its presence in Bombay. Filth had nothing to do with it. Perhaps rats were responsible ; on the whole, he thought rats were re- sponsible ; perhaps rats and sugar and silk were all alike responsible. He was not sure, but he inclined to sugar and silk; anyway, drains and filth had nothing to do with the matter ; but perhaps it was rats. On the same day, September 30, the municipal commis- sioner informed the government that in his opinion " there was no cause for very serious alarm." The question of rats versus drains was agitated for a long time in the city, for it was supposed that the plague sprang up in the town spon- taneously, and it was not known till long afterwards that early in August a band of pilgrims had come to Bombay from a Himalayan village where the plague is endemic. Therefore they may have brought the disease with them; but as to the other causes, as has been said already, mer- chandise cannot carry the germs, and the plague always sprang up in the filthiest environment. But rats have the disease, and when dead rats were found on a place plague followed, yet only if the place was quite filthy ; for dead rats were found even in the hotels without plague following.^ On October 5 and 6, respectively, the government pro- posed that the sanitary staff of the municipality should be 1 Among the odd statistics published during the year it was shown that while respectable women died as easily as the men, the prostitutes were almost immune, not because the wages of sin was life, but because these women kept themselves cleaner, and were better fed ; for which reason, perhaps, the Europeans also were spared. How absurd were some explanations given in regard to susceptibility to the disease, was revealed by another statistical report which stated (in April) that, whereas native Protestant Christians died at the rate of 16 per thousand, Roman Catholic Christians died at the rate of 40 per thousand ; whether because of cleanliness, robustness, or creed, was, however, not stated. THE PLAGUE. 283 increased ; and a Notification was drawn up by the munici- pal executive, the terms of which were interpreted to mean that the segregation of plague-patients would be made compulsory. This Notification of October 6 immediately became a bone of contention. It was six months to a day before the most recalcitrant natives were brought to see that English author- ity could enforce segregation. But this was under the pressure of a stronger hand than that of the municipal commissioner. The municipal commissioner received an extra grant of 100,000 rupees for sanitary purposes (for which he had applied on September 30), but about a third of it was spent in making manholes. The remainder was sunk in work neglected for years, such as the excavation from the drains of a thousand tons of silt, which, though disinfected, still "emitted sick- ening smells," the flushing of drains, and cleansing of alleys. Most of the appropriation was gone in three weeks (Octo- ber 19). There was soon more muck dug up in the city than could be carted away. It stood for days heaped in offensive mounds, while the upturned soil reeked with foul gases. As to the segregation of plague-patients, the health officer had not only taken no interest in it, but had expressed it as his deliber- ate opinion that it was " impracticable, out of the question." In this opinion he was supported by influential members of the municipality. For instance, the chairman of the standing committee, a native Hindu physician, declared at a meeting of medical men that segregation was cruel and useless ; and the meeting applauded him. The most done to prevent the spread of the plague was to try and catch plague-patients as they ran about the city, and disinfect them. They were con- tinually flitting from one part of the town to another. But the arrest of such persons was always regarded as a happy accident; no system was employed, and thus from infected localities the fleeing natives shortly spread the plague over districts not before contaminated. The health officer's published statements that segregation was an absurdity played directly into the hands of the natives, 284 INDIA OLD AND NEW. who immediately protested against any form of general segre- gation, not only because in their opinion it was merely an English fad, but particularly on the ground that the holy privacy of the Hindu or Mohammedan home was thereby in- vaded. The judgment of a committee of physicians (who had been especially appointed to report and advise), to the effect that segregation was a necessity, here went for naught. Few natives have yet learned that there is nothing holy which is opposed to the public weal. Another religious phase of the opposition to segregation was the kismet theory of the Mohammedans, which has its parallel among the Hindus. According to this theory, it is impious to try and escape from the fate prepared by God. Moreover, it is useless, and hence precautions are vain. Amongst both divisions of Indians the practical result of this theory is to make them not only scorn segregation, but also disregard all laws of health. No importance is attached to the sanitary condition of houses or towns. Disease and death are gifts of God. They hold in this regard that Christians are cowards ; that it is a craven fear which induces them to clean houses and streets ; and care of health is an impiety which would obstruct God's will. No sooner had the Notification of October 6 been signed, and a few patients had been removed to the Arthur Road Hospital for Infectious Diseases, than the health of the town unfortunately began to improve. The municipal commissioner at once concluded that the plague was not going to amount to much after all. For a few days, however, segregation was enforced, though it was afterwards asserted that no formal order requiring such enforcement had ever been issued. But the natives, Hindus and Mohammedans, were clamorous for the repeal of the obnoxious measure. The health officer had, besides, enough to do in accomplishing the undone work of a decade, and could spare no men or moneys for other things. With the news that plague was to be opposed with segre- gation, and the ensuing diminution in plague-cases, hope had sprung up in the breasts of the European residents. More- THE PLAGUE. 285 over, tliey expected much from a change in the weather, not knowing that cold aided the plague. On the other hand, the Hindus, who to a man believe in astrology, had their own reasons for feeling encouraged. There were five Tuesdays in the month, the new moon came on a Tuesday, the Sankranti Feast came on a Tuesday. When these ill-omened Tuesdays were past and the (Hindu) month came to an end, then, they said, the plague would go. But instead, more trouble both abroad and at home. Aden, belonging to the Bombay Presi- dency, Colombo in Ceylon, Naples and other European ports quarantined against Bombay. The merchants began to feel the pinch ; but their dependents and smaller local tradesmen felt it more. And, despite official reports, the plague kept spreading. On September 20 a man had died of plague in Mandvie. Four days later a boy was taken from this man's house to Kamatipur Ward. He was removed while suffering from the plague. In less than a fortnight Kamatipur, thus infected, had as many cases as Mandvie itself. The streets of this new district were indescribably dirty ; the gullies were not flushed ; the filth was so great that even the common people fretted at it. Complaints had been made to the Health Department, but up to October 5 the only thing done was to remove one patient. In this case, as in all others, the health officer, instead of preventing, walked behind the plague. Before the middle of October, plague was firmly fastened on Mandvie, the Fort,. Kolaba, and Kamatipur. On October 6, the very day of the Notification, a man came down to Bombay from Poona. He had the plague, which he had first carried from Bombay to Poona, and then brought back to Bombay. From this time on Poona was infected, two fatal cases being reported there by October 14. In the North, emigrants from Bombay had already infected Ahmedabad (October 5). Karachi quarantined against Bombay on October 13. But it was of no avail. No real quarantine on the railways was introduced till months afterwards. A careless inspection of outgoing passengers was begun at Bombay itself. But this 286 INDIA OLD AND NEW. did not hinder the exodus of plague-cases ; and till January the Mofussil districts continued to receive uninspected plague- stricken patients from the Presidential town. For no sooner was the Notification put in force than many of the unwilling natives, who would not submit to it, pre- pared to flee. Thousands had fled from fear of the plague alone, but thousands more fled in dread of the hospital. By the middle of October the population was already sensibly diminished. Starvation prices began to obtain in Bombay, and curiously enough, famine abroad, instead of deterring refu- gees, in the end helped to increase the number of emigrants. For just as soon as relief-works were opened for sufferers from famine, the day-laborer of Bombay could leave a town where he paid double for grain and lived in fear of death, and enroll himself amongst the " famine-stricken " in the country, exchanging starvation and fear for hope and food. So the lower classes streamed out of town, travelling by rail, by steamer, and by bullock-cart. The last was the favorite conveyance when there was a case of sickness to conceal. Stowing the plague -patient, the small kit of the family, and wife and children in the cart, the astute native crept out of town by night, easily escaping the vigilance, such as it was, of the police. All winter long these carts went south, crawling slowly up the Ghats through Poona to Satara, Belgaum, Kolhapur, and other towns of the Deccan. Others sailed away in private craft. To many it was merely a return home. For a large majority of the laborers of Bom- bay do not regard the city as their home. They come from the Deccan, from Gujarat, from Sind, to find a livelihood in Bombay, but " home " to them is where their fathers lived and they themselves were born. At the end of the second week of October the formal announcement was made that the plague had been brought under control. Perhaps it was so. But on October 14 the officers of the municipality, who, according to their own decla- ration, already had their hand upon the throat of the foe, relaxed their hold, and in an extraordinary memorandum THE PLAGUE. 287 to the health officer, subsequently confirmed by the Act of October 30, decided, because of protestations on the part of tenants in Mandvie Ward who objected to compulsory isolation, that the terms of the Notification ostensibly compelling segre- gation " should not be stringently put into force," as its pro- visions wounded the religious feelings of the community, and many petitions on the subject had been sent to the commis- sioner. In fact, inflammatory placards had appeared in the city, tending to excite the hostility of the people against the government, while articles of the same sort were constantly appearing in the public native press, some of them ascribed to members of the corporation. Letters on the subject appeared daily in the papers. The Act of October 30 de- clared that " no case where proper segregation and treatment can be carried out on the premises will be removed to the Arthur Road Hospital," and that the health officer had been " instructed accordingly." Then in the first week of Novem- ber formal instructions were issued to all the executive officers of the municipality not to execute " stringently " the Notifi- cation of October 6. With the order not to interpret this Notification stringently, that is, to interpret it loosely, there was an immediate cessa- tion of all attempts to segregate in the hospital or isolate at home. There was no case where (in the judgment of the family) " proper segregation " could not be effected at home. In fact, any other segregation was regarded as improper. Only waifs went to the hospital. So ended all segregation, and instantly the death-rate increased. The last week of October had shown the result of segrega- tion quietly discountenanced, but the mortality of November and December showed the effect of its formal discontinuance. There was an ostentatious report of " marked improvement " recorded on October 24, before the order for segregation had been really rescinded. Thereafter there was a steady increase in the deaths from plague. It was most unfortunate, in view of the imperative necessity for segregation, that just this measure was most repugnant to 288 INDIA OLD AND NEW. the natives. They loathe the hospital. To eat food prepared by foreigners is sinful. Those cared for by outsiders become out-castes. The natives felt themselves outraged at every point. Their houses, when they were cleansed, were entered by Mahars, whose touch and presence are contamination. They themselves were carried to a strange place to be at- tended to by polluting strangers. The ignorant masses knew nothing of sanitation, but they knew their own ancient cus- toms and laws. To them all the decent etiquette of life and the religion of their social intercourse were at stake. It is not too much to say that the members of the chief native communities would rather have seen their dearest relations die than have suffered them to be examined by inspectors or taken to a hospital. And what they felt for others they felt for themselves. To be removed from those who alone in their estimation could with propriety attend to them was the passage not only to humiliation, but even to an indignity worse than death. And they proved this by their acts. The patients at the hospital, though they knew that they would starve without it, spit up the food forced upon them. Several attempted to kill themselves. But it was in the case of purdahs, the " curtained " women, that the national feeling was most outraged. That a stranger should touch such a woman, handle her, whose face even no man save her husband had been allowed to see, was to them as terrible as would be to us the extreme affront of woman's modesty, even the violation of her honor. This is, in fact, the only analogy that represents correctly the sentiment of the Indian in respect of medical examination. When inspection was insisted on without due regard to his feelings, there was not lacking the stern act that seemed the only means of escape. Thus at a later date one native, whose wife was publicly inspected on the northern fron- tier (not in Bombay, as was erroneously stated in the papers), deeming no relief possible, drew his knife and stabbed her to the heart, then smote the inspector, and tried to kill himself. We may say, " What fanaticism ! What bigotry ! " but it is simply the persuasion of convention long fixed as a moral law, THE PLAGUE. 289 and it cannot lightly be set aside. Between sanitation and the ;purda\ however, there is no reason to find only a dilemma to be abandoned. For woman physicians would answer both the requirements of modern life and the demands of the natives. There is, moreover, but one way to meet a plague in India, and that is to have the different communities segregated in their own hospitals, the women under the care of women alone. Yet in Bombay there was no inspection of women by women at this time ; there was but one general hospital for epidemic diseases. The suggestion had indeed been made early in October that a special hospital should be built in accordance with the social requirements of the country ; but the municipal commissioner refused to consider it, on the ground that the plague was already under control. The first private hospitals were started, that is, subscribed for, about the first of November ; but the city authorities had nothing to do with these. But there occurred on October 16 an incident which, strange in itself, redoubled in its effect the fear of the native in regard to segregation. Before this he expected death as the alternative to being fed by strangers ; but now he feared lest these strangers should kill him. He believed, in fact, that he was carried to the hospital for one reason only, in order that he might be tortured and cruelly slain. At the south end of the Esplanade, where the road leading to the Apollo Bunder ^ meets the road to the Secretariat, there stands a noble statue of the Queen, gift of the Gaekwar of Baroda. It is a familiar sight to Europeans, — a thing to be seen by the stranger. But to many amongst the natives it was a sort of idol, for to them the Queen Empress of India herself was the image of divinity, a view held not by the uneducated alone, but by the more religious of the half- educated Hindus ; for according to their law-books the ruling power is the visible person of the Divine, whether the ruler 1 Anglicized, with popular etymology, from Palva (Pala) Bandar, " boat- harbor." 19 290 INDIA OLD AND NEW. be native or foreign. But in other cases also, as in that of great men to whom statues are erected, the uneducated, whether Mohammedans or Hindus, look upon the statue as the effigy of a sacred person, and sometimes put offerings of fruit and flowers before it, as the latter do on the shrines of gods, and the former on the tombs of saints. It was, therefore, not only with a feeling of indignation on the part of the Europeans, but with a thrill of horror as at a sacrilege on the part of the mass of the population, that the inhabitants of the city learned that on the night of October 16 some miscreant had injured and disgraced this statue of the Queen. In the night it had been daubed with tar and around the neck had been hung a string of native slippers, adding deepest insult to irreparable injury. It was supposed at that time that the tarring of the statue was the outcome of disaffection created by the sanitary measures just adopted. The perpetrator of the deed was not discovered, but the act made a deeper impression on Bombay than the muti- lation of the Hermes once did on Athens. For from that time on strange rumors were ever afloat in regard to the object of segregation. Before long, in utter oblivion of the fact that the plague had been established in the city before this rascally deed was done, it was repeated about, and firmly believed by the many, that the plague had been sent by the Queen Empress in revenge for the insult offered to her statue, and that they who were taken to the hospital were taken there to suffer her divine revenge. In accordance with ordi- nary Oriental notions in regard to the punishment of traitors en masse, the native population conceived out of their own imaginings the fearful idea that the Queen had demanded to see the livers of thirty thousand inhabitants of Bombay as the sign of the death of that number of male victims. They said that patients were bled to death in the hospital, being hung head downwards on hooks ; that their livers were cut out even before they died, and that their bodies were hacked to pieces afterwards. Other stories, too, were widely spread about. One physi- THE PLAGUE. 291 cian reported that his poor patients believed that the doctors in the hospital deliberately poisoned the sick to prevent the growth of the plague. That this tale contradicted the theory of revenge made, of course, no difference in the eagerness with which it was received and disseminated. Then it be- came known amongst the people that blackmail was practised by some badmashes, or knaves, who in the guise of officials would threaten to have their victim taken to the hospital unless he paid them cherry-merry (that is, a bribe) to be silent. The common people immediately came to the conclu- sion that every inspector who tried to get a patient to the hospital was a blackmailer posing as an officer. Moreover, they regarded municipal physicians, especially the European, as in league with the hospital to avenge the Queen, and would not call in any one to attend the sick. One of the most interesting superstitions connected with tlie hospital was the revival in Bombay of the ancient and widespread belief in momiai, or the efficiency of blood in welding together the foundations of new buildings. The Hindus were wont of old to kill and bury under new founda- tions of bridges, houses, or towns a certain number of victims, and to this day when a bridge is building in parts of northern India, as was reported on this occasion by various correspond- ents in the newspapers, the natives keep their children out of sisfht lest their bodies be used as momiai. The victims are supposed to be stewed, the top of the brew being placed on the foundation. This is mom-i-ai. The word is Persian, and designated originally a kind of mineral pitch (" wax "). In Bombay it was said by the vulgar that the hospital-patients were used to make momiai for bridges washed away in the last monsoon. Besides such idle tales, the belief was prevalent, even amongst the half-educated and universally amongst the igno- rant, that unless the relatives kept constant watch of their sick, the removal of the latter to the hospital precluded in all cases not only every further meeting, but also all further informa- tion in regard to the patient. And in some cases it was true 292 INDIA OLD AND NEW. that the patients were burned or buried without information being given to the family. Toward the end of October, riots began to be as frequent as were prayers in September. The Arthur Road Hospital, at that time the only hospital for plague-patients in the city, is situated not far from a large mill, somewhat back from the road, in a large compound ^ (yard) near the race-course, about half-way between Jacob's Circle and De Lisle Road. The yard is protected by a wooden gate at the entrance to the compound, and by glass-tipped masonry walls. On the afternoon of October 28, a riotous mob tried to force an entrance, but they were repulsed, extra police having been called in, and on this occasion no damage was done, though it was said that the mob consisted of at least five hundred mill-hands. These mill-hands, owing to the blackmail practised particularly upon them, and to their organized hate of the hospital, were the most dangerous ele- ment opposed to the execution of sanitary laws. The next morning passed quietly enough, but at noon an- other crowd assembled, this time numbering about a thousand, and demanded the reason for the presence of the yellow hos- pital-van in front of the building. It was subsequently said that the hour and absurdity of the pretext for violence showed that there had been no premeditation on the part of the rioters, who were mill-hands coming from work for their nooning. The sight of the hated van probably acted as a spur to their sluggishly ugly temper, and the appearance of the vehicle, which was not only rough and uncomfortable, but also of a forlorn aspect, was indeed not likely to allay the wrath of any one prone to criticise the Health Department. For it was the saddest-looking cart that ever carried dying men to their death, and the complaint tliat in the case of weak patients its jolting hastened dissolution was not altogether unfounded. The municipality did not even soften its roughness with rubber tires, which the general government, when at a later date it took control of everything, immediately did, as it per- ^ Anglicized from kompong, enclosure. THE PLAGUE. 293 formed also many other gentle acts calculated to soothe in- stead of irritate. But the cart of death at the door of the human shambles, for so the people named the van and hospital respectively, was pretext enough ; and had the crowd discovered what was actually the fact, that at that very moment the van contained the body of one of their own number, a mill- hand stricken with plague, there would doubtless have been much more trouble. But what occurred was that their attention was first distracted by the coming of another crowd from another mill. The few Sepoys (police) on the scene, scenting danger, attempted to keep the two gangs from joining in front of the hospital. But in vain, and the two bands next became one mob. But they did not injure the Sepoys very much, being not yet fully aroused, and having no particular quarrel with them, their own countrymen. So they let the police off easily with a few blows, and were crafty enough even to allow them to arrest one or two in- dividuals. For with these prisoners the Sepoys' hands were full, and they could do no more. But the two mobs, ami- cably united, now rushed at the gate-keeper, and by stoning him (they were otherwise unarmed) effected an entrance into the compound. Now, in the hospital besides the patients there were only the few native assistants allotted by the municipality to help the one doctor who was employed to do all the medical work ; for the hospital was not only in a very insanitary condition, but it was miserably equipped, and one doctor was all the staff. ^ The one doctor was not present. His Hindu assistants came forward bravely enough, but being greeted with the ferocious cry, " We will kill you as you would kill us," they naturally retreated, some to the dispensary and some to the back yard. But they acted for the best as they saw it, and 1 The mortality of plague-patients at the hospital when most crowded, in December and January, was 74.12 per cent., as against 65.50 per cent., the average when not crowded. The hospital was a disgrace to civilization ; but till February it was not even subjected to criticism. 294 INDIA OLD AND NEW. characteristically telephoned, not to the police, as any but a native would have done, but to their chief, the health officer, and inquired vrhat was to be done in circumstances so un- usual, for they had never been instructed as to the proper procedure when people threatened to kill them. But the health officer rang up the police. Meantime the mob made an assault on the hospital ; though, being cowardly, they only stoned it. Nevertheless, as there was a ridge ventilator and holes in the roof besides, and stones fell thick, several patients were wounded, and in the end one man, who was not very ill and would not have died otherwise, having been struck severely, perished of the wounds. So the mob hurt only their own friends, but they stole whatever they could find, till armed policemen, and amongst them forty cavalry- men, arrived before they could do further damage. A direct raid on the police took place the same day on Tardeo Road, where late in the afternoon some five hundred mill-hands attacked two native policemen. The latter were supposed to be municipal officers engaged in ferreting out plague-cases and were at first merely accosted angrily. But when they explained that they were Sepoys off duty and going home, the mob thought they were trying to escape, and set upon them. An inspector interfered, but idly, and when one of the mill-owners came to the rescue and hid the men in a wooden cJiowky on the mill premises, the crowd grew furi- ous and attempted to kill them. By a wise prevision on the part of the government no native may bear arms of any sort, so that even a crowd can do little against armed men, and usually it suffices to summon only a few Sepoys to rout a mob of a thousand. The Sepoys were at once sum- moned. But this day the mill-hands refused to disperse when the foot-police came, and the latter attacked the rioters with- out avail. Then the mounted police arrived. Yet the mob resisted even the horse, who to be sure went at them rather gingerly at first. But at last the troopers, becoming angry in their turn (for they had been beaten back and the whole mob was stoning them and two of their number were badly THE PLAGUE. 295 hurt by the workmen), rallying again, rode the malcontents down, and quickly pacified them after the English fashion. This was a lesson which it is a pity was not generalized. But apparently the English were shy of arousing hostile action and dreaded fanaticism. They had seen a little of it three years previously, when their cannon had to sweep the streets of Bombay and kill some natives in a race-riot ; and besides, there are some who still talk of '57 and think all that may come back again ; while there are others who believe that sympathy is better than force. And on occasion this is so, but never when sympathy may be mistaken for fear. With a mob and with fanatics force is best and kindest in the end. But at first the English bungled the whole business, not so much as to mobs as in regard to all their recalcitrant subjects. For, to begin with, they forced the natives into the hospital without sympathy for their prejudices, and then sympathized so with their prejudices that they used no force to get them into the hospital, and this, too, after the natives had threat- ened. So the latter naturally concluded that bluster would preA''ail, as it did for some time. But the lower classes of Hindus, both real Hindus and Mohammedans, can be con- trolled easily enough if they are convinced that their rulers will stand no nonsense, as was shown in the spring. As long as they think otherwise they will resist, for they are like children. The situation in Bombay, however, was extremely difficult, and while it is easy to criticise, it was harder to manage. For though the officials were English and affairs might have gone better had they insisted on modern methods, yet the govern- ment itself was in the hands of the natives, who, though they were educated men, did nothing in an enlightened spirit, but sided with the ignorance of their own people, openly protest- ing and secretly instigating resistance against every civilized means of meeting such a crisis. And so it was all over the country ; for the native editors also tried to influence opinion against reform and against the English, the two being grouped together. But probably there was more than bigotry in all 296 INDIA OLD AND NEW. this, for in Poona things finally reached such a pass that the plague was openly utilized for a little bubble of sedition. This collapsed, however, at the first prick of power, though not before an English officer had been murdered. Before the events of the next months are reviewed it will be necessary to consider a few statistics. By the end of October about eighty thousand people had fled the city and thus slightly diminished the total population, on which is reckoned the average death-rate of preceding years. The year of plague was remarkably free from other infectious diseases. Few cholera cases or small-pox cases and no epidemic of any kind except the plague occurred during the whole winter in the city, though small-pox was common in the country and country cholera cases also were often enough reported. It will, there- fore, be an entirely reasonable assumption that the increase in mortality apart from that due to the plague was not greater than that in the years before, especially as the latter was reckoned on a full population and the former is taken from a population rapidly diminishing. In the autumn of 1896 the total mortality for a week will then represent the average mortality plus the plague mortality, if allowance be made for an increase of about two thousand deaths for the whole year due to other causes than the plague. But this corrected esti- mate is hkely to be far under the truth when the population becomes appreciably diminished and may in fact be disregarded entirely from the end of September. Some such calculation as this, rough though it be, is made necessary not only because of the fact that the health officer neglected to make any entries of deaths from plague prior to October 20, but also because of the incorrectness of the official records. Errors, if space permitted, could easily be proved by setting the official returns against the undoubted statements of physicians. In some cases it would be seen that one or two physicians reported in their own practice alone more deaths from plague in a week than the Health Office under the con- trol of the commissioner recognized as occurring in the same week through the whole city. The only figures that can be THE PLAGUE. 297 relied upon from September to April in the official records are those giving the total mortality of each week. In the following table the plague mortality is obtained by subtracting the " average weekly " mortality from that of the current week of 1896. The system here adopted was recog- nized in Bombay itself, and worked out by the Times of India, as the only one likely to give a basis for the investigation of the real mortality due to plague. To understand the table it must be remembered that the column headed Plague Mortality records the number of deaths above the average of the previ- ous five years, for the corresponding week. This plus is about the plague mortality for the week in 1896. About 160 deaths may be subtracted in September as due to regular in- crease in mortahty. The remarks in the right-hand column explain the figures, which, as below, are those of the Times. Week ending Sept. 8 « 15 Total Mortality. 593 618 Plague Mor 621 126 tality. Bemarks. " 22 « 29 647 720 141 193 ' No segregation. Oct. 6 791 300 J " 13 « 20 634 606 136] 129 j 1 >• • Segregation enforced. " 27 698 2281 , Segregation > almost abandoned. It is unnecessary to dilate further upon the incorrectness of the official reports. A careful exposure of them was made by the editor of the Times of India from week to week as they appeared, and that journal may be consulted for details. In partial excuse for the Health Department it may be said that the municipal physicians would not recognize that true plague could exist without the bubo, so that the Department unwit- tingly called by other names a large number of cases of plague. But other cases were de industria given incorrectly by the offi- cials, by the native physicians, and by the families of the de- ceased. An official acknowledgment that the municipal reports were not trustworthy was made by the municipal commissioner 298 INDIA OLD AND NEW. and the police officer, before the standing committee of the municipal council, on December 30. It seems otiose to take other testimony. In regard to the numbers leaving the city, tables carefully compiled by the Chamber of Commerce eventually showed that in November, December, and January alone, 358,852 people in excess of the usual numbers left Bom- bay by rail and steamer alone. Previous to the publication of these tables there was only the haphazard statement of the municipal commissioner to go upon, who confidently stated that " only a few thousands " had left the city. If to these three hundred and fifty thousands be added the unknown thousands fleeing in September and October, the more than a thousand a day that were still fleeing in February, and the uncounted numbers that slipped away in carts and private boats all through the winter, the commissioner's estimate will appear at its true value. There is unfortunately no confidence to be placed in any statement made by the municipal officers of Bombay in regard to the plague. The official records consist in careless errors and deliberate falsifications. Oddly enough, this appears to have been the opinion of the very officer who was responsible for these misleading reports. For when the plague first broke out, the health officer, knowing that every one was asking why the city was in a condition so insanitary, and being eager to screen himself, formulated a bill of indictments against the municipal commissioner, in which he charged the latter with neglecting the useful advice given him heretofore, and alleged that he himself, the health officer, had in years past vainly urged several points ; to wit, the com- pletion of the drainage, the flushing of gullies, and the non- acceptance of the evidence of municipal ojjlcers. There were other minor points, but none so important as the last. The beginning of November was looked forward to very anxiously. The weather was normal, but the plague, which had already fastened on seventeen different districts, from Kolaba in the south to BycuUa in the north, was still advanc- ing. Its trend had been west, south, and north, and every one THE PLAGUE. 299 wondered now in which ward it would appear next, for by this time all knew that the Health Department were helpless before it, either to control it where it was or to prevent its going whither it would. The fact also, at last universally recognized, that the official reports gave no real knowledge, in respect either of the death-rate or of the direction taken by the plague, caused general apprehension. For it was seen clearly that each fresh case of plague, when entered as old age or phthisis or remittent fever, if brought from a newly infected house or ward, increased the danger to the people in the local- ity thus infected, in proportion as they were left ignorant of the truth. The municipal corporation were known to be averse to sanitation; the municipal commissioner had noti- fied the town that his former Notification was not meant to be taken seriously ; and the natives unanimously opposed any reconsideration of the subject. But these were not the only grounds for fear. For it was pretended by certain of the natives that some terrible catas- trophe would come upon the city during the feast of Divali, dipdH, the " lamp-row-festival " in honor of Vishnu's spouse. The first and second days of this festival, at the beginning of November, were named as the days of danger. The prophecy was said by some of the Hindu and Parses papers to have been declared by Pundit Guttoolalji; while the so- called Maharaja or Guru, that is, the pontiff, of the Vallabh- acarya sect of Vishnuites, Devakinanda, was also reported to have frightened the populace by foreseeing the coming disaster. Both these statements were denied by the persons implicated, but the hint of harm given by the papers was enough. The common people believed that some untoward event, even greater than the plague, was about to happen, and that, in the quaint imagery of the Orient, " the Sirkar (imperial goverinnent) had withdrawn its umbrella from over their heads." As a foretaste of new trouble, three great conflagrations occurred in the city. They were regarded as ominous. As Divali drew near, the crowds of terrified natives fleeing from 300 INDIA OLD AND NEW. town exceeded every precedent. They that were well went, taking with them, if they could, their sick ; and many plague- patients easily succeeded in escaping the notice of the officials, for the rush to be saved was greater than the police could oppose. Every train was full, and every steamer; private craft and bullock-carts took away thousands. Ordinarily, Divali is celebrated with brilhant illuminations. Lamps are burning everywhere, fireworks are set off, the whole town is a blaze of Hght. This year it was to be a dark failure. Fear reigned. One fiction fought another. Now the story was rife that there was to be a general slaughter of the native inhabitants, ordered by the Sirkar to avenge the Queen for the insult to her statue. Again the Bazaar (native town) was horrified by specific prophecies of earthquakes and universal ruin to take place during the festival. Scarcely an hour passed that some fresh rumor did not terrify the Indian's credulous heart as he heard of new woes coming. Before the fatal days arrived (November 2 and 3 ), in fact, before the month began, half the population had left town, while half of them that remained trembled because they had not done likewise. When Divali dawned the natives hardly dared to breathco But the days of harm passed harmlessly. No earthquake shook the island ; there was no massacre of natives ; and the children of the Orient breathed again. Half of them that had fled without preparation in the final panic returned within a week and packed their things together, encouraged, but ready to flee again at a moment's warning. The death-rate increased steadily. About a quarter of the population was gone from town. Silent witnesses to this fact were the empty houses, empty streets, wellnigh empty wards. Shops began to be closed everywhere ; the busiest lanes were still. An irregular exodus began again. Long proces- sions passed through the streets. They consisted of refugees escaping in a slow unbroken stream. Most of them were un- able to read English; they did not know that the official reports were most encouraging. They knew only that their THE PLAGUE. 301 friends and neighbors were dying as they had never died before, and that plague ruled the town. So passed Novem- ber's dreary days. But Mandvie Ward was now free of disease. No death had occurred since November 21. The health officer said that he had got control of that district. As a matter of fact the plague had killed those whom it had caught and the rest of the inhabitants had run away. The whole ward was practically deserted. There was nothing more there for the plague and it went elsewhere. The heaviest mortality in the city was among the Mahars first (the cleansers of filth), and then the Jains, who now died at a greater rate than did the Mohammedans. Till the end of January the mortality among the Mohammedans remained higher than among the Hindus. The city corporation, who were pleased to shift upon the health officer the blame for apathy in the past and ignorance in the present, signalized their appreciation of the gravity of the situation by creating toward the end of November eight new health officers. But they did no good, for they were sub- ordinates. The hospital at this time was strengthened by the appointment of some new assistants. Six assistant surgeons were also appointed. A sub-committee already had in hand the re-organization of the Health Department, but the cor- poration did not wait for its report, for in this week the mortality was 760, or 314 above the average. By this time most of the native medical men had run away. The native members of the corporation also ran away to the hills for safety, returning to town only to attend the meetings. The loq^uacious leaders of the people, the orators against segre- gation, took to flight, too. Holding the fort was left to the Enghsh. November's record is as follows : Week ending Total Mortality. Plague Mortality. No\r. 3 668 225 " 10 623 174 « 17 704 242 " 24 760 314 302 INDIA OLD AND NEW. To explain the higher death-rate, the Health Department, amongst other curiosities of statistics, gave 127 deaths in the week ending November 24 to phthisis alone, double the usual amount, though reputable doctors knew of no increase in that disease. According to the same official authority, 161, more than double the average, died of remittent fever in the week ending November 17, and just 161 in the next week. This monotonous disease had already carried off 107 people in the week ending November 3, and just 107 again in the week ending November 10. But, as I have said, epidemic diseases other than the plague were rarer than usual. The plague seemed to absorb every other ilhiess. The fewer deaths in the week after Divali are due to the tumult of exodus at the last minute and the slow return in the next few days of half those who had gone. The figures represent a sudden drop in the population. Though segregation was officially abolished, inspection was not. Concealment of cases was still regularly practised. No punishment rewarded the concealer when the act was discovered. By the beginning of the next month there were about forty- five deaths a day from plague. One physician alone treated one hundred cases in the first week of winter. December was a month of terror. In the first week the mortality was the greatest ever known in the city, exceeding even that of any week of the great famine of 1877. From 772 deaths (plague mortality, 315, the record for the week ending December 1), the mortality rose to 1051, an increase of 279 in one week, and 591 above the average taken on a full population. Even official returns recorded 55 deaths in one day from bubonic fever. The daily average due to plague was really about 84. An appeal was made that segregation might be tried again, but the municipal commis- sion, despite signs of yielding on the part of some of the natives, made no effort to re-introduce the measure. Kamati- pur, which with its 30,000 inhabitants had now taken the place of Mandvie as the headquarters of the Great Death, THE PLAGUE. 303 more than quadrupled its mortality in eight days, and soon there were few houses in the whole district that had not the red ring of death upon their front. The commissioner in this month had ordered the red ring to be painted upon every house where a death from plague occurred. Some of the houses had half a dozen such rings. Later on some had many more than this. One had more than thirty. Deaths from other causes were marked with a cross. For every cross appeared a dozen rings. By the middle of the month, the different sects of Jains, Parsees, Hindus, and Mohammedans, had committees in hand to see to the erection of special sectarian hospitals, which the more enhghtened leaders of the different communities had per- suaded them to agree to as a substitute for the hated Arthur Koad Hospital. The Jain hospital was ready first, early in the month. The Parsee hospital was formally opened on December 18. Some of these hospitals, however, were long in building and all were long in filling, for the natives did not like them. That of the Khojas was not ready till March ; that of the Bhatias was not even begun till then. These hospitals, though that of the Parsees was better built and well appointed, were usually cheap buildings of mats and bamboo. Voluntary segregation was now recommended even by the natives, though at a meeting held December 11 they still pro- tested against enforced segregation. Voluntary segregation was, in point of fact, all that was necessary, but the trouble was that it could not be enforced! Very few went into the " voluntary " hospitals. The Governor placed at the dis- posal of the municipality the park connected with the Govern- ment House at Parol for use as a place to build temporary hospitals; and subsequently an annex to the Arthur Road Hospital was erected there. But neither the commissioner nor the health officer liked these voluntary hospitals. They sniffed at Parol park and said it was " insanitary." The cor- poration did nothing to encourage even voluntary segregation. In all this time of bitter distress the native members did not raise one finger to aid or instruct their fellow-citizens. Some 304 INDIA OLD AND NEW. were apathetic; some were intolerant of sanitary reform. They met to jest and denounce sanitation. Not a single radical measure was inaugurated by them during the whole course of the winter. The commissioners on December 16 asked for and, of course, obtained one hundred and fifty thousand rupees in addition to the original one hundred thousand granted on October 5. The Health Department still continued to oppose segregation, flush drains, and shovel up the filth of the last ten years. The corporation were at length induced to pass a resolution, December 17, to remove the town sweepings to Chimbore, instead of emptying them into the harbor. But the corpora- tion did no more. They could not, at any rate, decide how to effect this reform, and, in fact, never did anything more about it till months afterwards, when the Governor told them that they must. The plague struck further north. Localities hitherto un- affected now fell into its power. Outside of the city, sundry new towns of the Presidency reported that plague had ap- peared. To the south, Poona, the rest of the Deccan, and even the Mysore territory beyond it; to the north, Thana, Broach, Ahmedabad, Karachi, — were now infected. In Goa the authorities decreed as a sanitary measure that the bodies of all who had died of plague should be burned, not buried, whether Hindus, Mohammedans, Jews, or Christians.^ The Patriarch Archbishop thundered against the law as unchris- tian, and the Mohammedan howled. But the law stood for a time and plague obtained no great hold there, till the Arch- bishop's thunder at last frightened the authorities. They yielded the point. Then the plague increased in Goa. This question touched Bombay also. Intramural graves, often not covered with earth enough to prevent the jackal's robbery, sometimes but a few inches deep, seldom more than 1 Only the Hindus, and not all of them, burn their dead. The Parsees expose them on the Towers. Some poor Hindus bury the dead, as do the Mohammedans. Cremation is often waived in the case of venerated Hindus, Swamis and the like, and their tombs become shrines. THE PLAGUE. 305 two and a half feet, thousands of such graves, corpses buried one on top of another, in graveyards crowded, and to a great extent over-crowded, with the corpses of plague-stricken Mohammedans, in short, a trench of shallow graves to the windward of the city from its middle to its northern limit, — - such was the state of affairs in Bombay. For not only were there two such burying-grounds, one at Grant Road and one on the Queen's Road, but the low-caste Hindus that bury their dead had a third intramural ground at Haines Road. The Christianized Hindus, chiefly ignorant fishermen, had still a fourth, though undetermined ground ; for they dug shallow pits near their houses and buried their dead there. For thirty years the closing of the Mohammedan grounds had been de- manded in the interest of public health. The health officer himself said he thought that they "had been filled perhaps twenty times." At a later date, January 7, reference was made at a meeting of the corporation to graves where corpses were dug up and new interments made in rapid succession. The question of closing these grounds was one very vital to the interest of the city. There actually was a new ground which had been reserved for the Mohammedans for three years at Tank Bunder, but it was not made ready till late in January. Then the Mohammedans were politely asked to use it, but they angrily refused to do so. It was not till April that the ground at Grant Road was closed, but this was not done by the muni- cipahty. Even the crematory grounds were in bad condition. It was said that bodies lay unburned for days at Sonapur (December 10). The same statement was made afterwards in regard to the Worli ground, but the health officer denied it. It was also said that the vultures of the Dakhmas or Towers of Silence, owing to the surplus of Parsee food given them in December, sometimes refused to do their office. These Towers rise like huge oil-tanks above Malabar Hill, hideous themselves but set in luxuriant beauty of scenery. The first, Kapiskhan's, can accommodate 237 bodies, and is used mainly by the Shenshai Parsees. The second, Banaji's, can accom- modate as many more, and is used mainly by the Iranees and 20 306 INDIA OLD AND NEW. Kadimi Parsees, though it is open to the Shenshai also. The two Towers of Anjuman and Manekji Sheth will hold 262 and 141 bodies, respectively ; while the Modi's Tower is for the family of the founder only.i Most of the bodies are devoured on Kapiskhan's Towers. According to the report pubhshed at the time in a local paper, there are between three and four hundred vultures, but many of them were busy among the shallow graves in the neighborhood and per- haps for this reason none was so voracious as usual. Whether any dead bodies actually remained uneaten on the Towers cannot be known. The report was denied by the Parsee priests, and only Parsees are admitted to the Towers. There was at this time and afterwards no Httle distress on account of the increasing lack both of those whose business it is to bear the corpses to the crematory or cemetery, and of those who there receive them. And in this distress the Parsees shared, for though they had enough nasasalars, who carry the corpses into the Towers, yet there were not enough khandias, who bring them up to the Towers. Much unhappiness was caused by this, as well as by the absence of other requisites in the final care for the deceased, and even by the cost of fuel wherewith to burn the dead. For everything was dearer than usual, owing to the famine and the lack of laborers, and so great an amount of wood was required for the consumption of so many bodies that the price rose, and the poor had often to pay their last coppers to get sufficient fuel for their need. As an indication of the scarcity that resulted from extra demand, but also as a proof of the great number that died, one religious community alone used seven and a half times as much fuel per week for burning their dead as they do ordinarily ; nor was it, as compared with others, a community very heavily smit- ten by the plague. Moreover, this was when less fuel than usual was burned for any one funeral, since even the rich economized and the poor used only as much as decency ^ This was the first Tower built in the city, in 1670. Two more are men- tioned by Dr. Da Cunha, Origin of Bombay, p. 299, wliere Kapiskhan appears as Kapuskao, and Anjuman's Tower bears a different name. THE PLAGUE. 307 required, and wlien the city was emptied of many of its inhabitants. For between the middle of December and its awful close some third of the natives had again left town. In many ways this was the most painful as well as the most exciting period in the progress of the plague. For the mortality leaped up higher and higher as the colder weather strengthened the malady, and all classes were fleeing, the wealthy with the poor. The latter packed their little bundles, and with their goods on their head and their children in their arms went out for the last time, some, already infected, to die of the plague, some to subsist on charity, some to starve, and some to live on hoarded or borrowed money, till spring and the dechne of the disease moved them to return. But some, and amongst them even former pohcemen of the town, became robbers and added to the terrors of the year of plague and famine by swelling the bands of dacoits, brigands, who, during this winter especially, ravaged the country from Dellii to Hyderabad. But the wealthy natives who hitherto had lingered (because they feared to leave their houses and' goods in a city so ham- pered and undone), now fearing death more as it stood more imminent, sent their valuables to the bank and hired houses in the suburbs, Andheri and Thana, and in other more distant places up and down the coast or in the liill-country, whither they removed their famiUes, servants, furniture, and horses, setthng down for what length of time the plague should re- main. And the vaults of the banks became so crowded with safes and boxes that no more goods could be received. By Christmas time every suburb about Bombay was over- filled, and there was not a house in the Konkan to be had for quintuple its ordinary rent. Then no houses remained to be rented for any money, unless one fugitive bought another off who had rented an asylum before him, and he gave forty-fold the rent given by the former tenant. Many of the poor could find no refuge at all. Even sleeping-room on a veranda in a suburb that was deemed healthy cost more for a night than a poor man earned in a week. 308 INDIA OLD AND NEW. The last week of tlie old year (but chiefly the first month of the new) was marked by the spread of panic among the mill-hands, who, though contumehous and aggressive in respect of compulsory segregation, had in some instances con- sented to make use of safety camps of tents or eadjan (huts of bamboo and matting). The mills, being well ventilated, large, and kept in sanitary order, were particularly free from plague, and no special panic had hitherto arisen, as there had been no unusual number of deaths amongst the hands. Yet they re- mained not so much because they were not afraid as because they could not get their money. For it is the practice at all times to hold back the pay of the mill-hands for a whole month, in order to ensure their remaining till substitutes can be got. But in this year, in view of the fact that operatives who did not wish to die of the plague might be tempted to sacrifice their month's pay and leave without warning, the overseers kept back the pay for two whole months. And the same trick was played on the hotel servants also by their masters. But the mill-hand thus treated was in a very bad way. For ordi- narily he hves without any store of money, but the Marwaris,^ or money-lenders, and certain u"surious grain-dealers called shroffs, knowing him and the circumstances, usually lend him grain to eat and even advance him small sums as he needs from day to day. And at the end of the month their agent is present at the gate when the man is paid and takes from him what is owing, and the interest, before he can spend it. But now the shroffs and Marwaris had closed their shops and fled from the city, and the poor mill-hand whose pay was not paid could find no one to lend him grain or money, for even regular usurers would not lend to one whose wage was held back for so long, since he could give no security and might die of plague the next day. The mill-hands, therefore, agitated for daily pay, or at least for pay at the end of the month. One mill actually paid at the end of a month, but the next day it came near to closing, 1 Literally, " people of Marwar," but used as a common noun to designate small money-lenders. THE PLAGUE. 309 for most of the hands, to escape plague and debts, had de- camped in the night. But the other mills refused. Moreover, the native managers themselves fled from the plague, and this added discouragement and new fear to the anger of the work- men, so that some fled, giving up aU their pay, and some, thinking it as well to die of plague as of starvation, remained to agitate for their claim of daily paid wage. By the end of the first week of January, forty thousand spindles had stopped, and it seemed probable that in a few days more a quarter of a million skilled workmen would join those who had fled, and like the latter be begging for their hfe, or working for two annas a day as charity-laborers on relief-works in the country. The mill-owners, however, eventually managed to keep a large number of them, for though the former mutually agreed (Jan- uary 26) not to yield to the men's demands, yet as each owner was more willing to cut the others' throats and save himself than abide by his pledge, sundry of them secretly yielded and gave daily pay. But this resulted only in the rapid exchange of good workmen for bad, since in the increasing panic the old hand would often flee at the day's end and some raw workman would* be put in his place to bungle and break. But enough remained to avert a general closing of the mills, though the agitation of the men caused a great deal of trouble. The whole matter, however, belongs rather to January, though the agitation began in December. The rights of it seemed to lie with the men, though, indeed, to grant the demands made by them would doubtless have resulted badly for the mills. But if the owners, considering the great scarcity, had them- selves lent food or money to the workmen and raised their pay a little, the latter would probably have remained. But the owners and stockholders appeared to think differently. The end of December, when plague and famine ruled the town, was to many the breaking point of an endurance long strained but firm till then. In the case of countless artisans and domestic servants, the usurer now ruled them as the viceroy of famine. For in India, servants find themselves, and the work- men, all living from hand to mouth, suffer most on a rise of 310 INDIA OLD AND NEW. prices and are driven to the usurer. But they have to pay him 180 per cent, interest and in reality more, for after a little time they are unable to reckon this (compound) interest and must take his word for what is due to him. But when once the usurer has the man he never lets him go, and even in ordinary years most of the servants and workmen, both in town and country, are in this bondage (I inquired particularly and found this to be the case everywhere). Whence it happens that all the poor man gets he gives to the usurer, save what little is requisite for him to live on till another pay-day. But in this year, with the shroffs gone, who are concealed usurers, it was still worse, since the poor were so completely in the hands of the money-lender that they could not live without him ; and there was great distress amongst all the wage-earners. Then, too, because their shroffs had fled, even the halalkhores early in January threatened to go on a strike, but the intervention of their muccadums — that is, the bosses of the gangs of work- men — prevented this calamity, which would have been serious, for had the halalkhores left town there would have been none to cleanse it. Before the year ended, Bombay was in all respects a most woful city. Little discomforts iilled up the crevices between big sorrows to make one solid block of misery. The wheels of every business were clogged. All labor was at a high premium, and to get any work done was difficult. Domestic servants left without warning ; in the hotels the " boys " ^ begged for wages long due which they could not get, and then gave up the struggle in despair. The coolies and carters were few ; the barbers and the dhohis or washermen were hard to find, and the latter were not to be depended on even when found, for they would die on the clothes they had taken to wash, and both linen and dhohi would be burned. The regular purveyors of the city, — milkmen, butchers, bakers, and the hke, — had run away in large numbers ; industries were stopped ; trade was almost at a standstill. The cloth-shops and grocery-shops of the vanias were bare storehouses; the piece- 1 Anglicized from bhdi, " brother " (fellow, and so servant). THE PLAGUE. 311 goods merchants had practically shut up. The shops of the yarn-merchants, of the metal-merchants, of the merchants of brocade, of silk, of goldware and silverware, stood empty all day. The booksellers of the Kalbadevi Road put up their shutters. None bought what was not absolutely requisite. The laughing bazaars were now like cemeteries. Distress came with especial hardness upon the clever workmen, whose wares attract both the fashion of Bombay and the taste of tourists. The gay world bought no gewgaws ; a few tourists had indeed come, but almost none remained. Most of them had fled from the country; nearly all were gone to safer towns at least. Momba Devi^ protected her children no more, and the workers in brass and copper had naught to do. The carvers of sandal-wood, of blackwood, and of ivory, the fine craftsmen in gold and silver, all these could but starve or flee. Now too began the on-fall of " quick " cases of plague, such as obtained in Karachi when the disease first broke out there. The hale laborer suddenly died at his work ; the runner dropped upon the street ; the servant in good health an hour before expired at liis master's side. The policeman fell dead on the corner ; the bearer of the corpse became a corpse. The number of funerals was dreadful to witness. They never ceased. To burial or to fire, the dead were borne every hour, and these swift journeys (for the frightened bearers ran with their load) continued day after day for weeks together. In the second week of January an observer saw enter one graveyard no less than a funeral a minute, and the crowded pyres of the dead were always burning. 1 The Mother Goddess of Bombay (Momba), whose title of Great still re- mains in the name of the district Mahim. Momba Devi district in the present town includes the copper bazaar. Da Cunha says the name of the town was spelled both as Mombaym and Bombaym. Momba was a Koli (Dravidian) autochthonous divinity. Her old temple on the Esplanade has been razed . The modern one has shrines to Qiva and other (Aryan) deities, as well as to Momba- devi. Mahim, however, was afterwards settled by the Prabhus of Gujarat, and their Aryan temple was sacred to Prabhadevi. But her present abode is in turn shared by older deities, Qitaladevi and Khokaladevi, the goddesses of small- pox and of cough, respectively. 312 INDIA OLD AND NEW. It was not strange that in the excitement weird thoughts and fancies obsessed even the soberer citizens. Where segrega- tion-camps were the only hope of safety, faddists among the English prevented unanimity by raising one objection after another and proposing all sorts of absurd panaceas. Some queried, and it was gravely debated, whether the whole prin- ciple of segregation, as hitherto understood, should not be inverted. " Segregate the healthy," they cried ; " let the sick stay where they are. Isolate all the hale members of the community, put them under guard, confine them to certain districts." One sage laid the whole trouble to the Flats and wished to have these five hundred acres of filth piled with wood, to be burned for a healthy covering. Others seriously desired in December to consume Bombay itself with fire, apart from certain localities. This suggestion was renewed in January. At that tune, Malabar Hill, Camballa Hill, the Docks, the Marine Lines, Tardeo, the Market, Upper Kolaba, the Mill Districts, the Esplanade, and a few groups of build- ings, like the Grant Buildings, were fairly free of plague. It was proposed to burn down the whole city with the exception of these, chiefly outlying, parts, all the citizens to act as fire- men to guard the rest of the town. Another proposal was to " establish a general funk " by means of inflammatory placards and proclamation by bakari, that is, by drum and crier, among the illiterate, as if there were not sufficient fright already. But the proposer of this scheme argued that too few natives had fled, that the sole means of safety was in laying the plague as it had been laid in Mandvie Ward by giving the foe no food. If aU the inhabitants were to flee, the plague would be starved out. So all talked, but nothing was done. The deaths still increased daily in number. By the end of the third week of December, the total weekly mortality was 1416, with 946 as the mortality due to plague. The next week, ending December 29, the plague mortality alone was about the same as the total mortality of the week before. The health officer had at last concluded that a house-to- house inspection was imperative (as indeed it was), but THE PLAGUE. 313 when lie found that his department could not attend to this and disinfect the slums, and that native officers were not obeyed by the people, he called on the British, namely, the Bom- bay Artillery Volunteers, for the delicate and dangerous work. "Without hesitation they accepted the risk and went unques- tioningly from house to house, from cTiawl to chawl, arguing, persuading, and insisting on the necessity not only of sanita- tion, but in some instances of proper isolation. For the peril of the hour forced one fear to yield to another, and cases were now quietly segregated even against expostulation, — a task rendered easier by the fact that most of the native agitators had run away, leaving their poor compatriots to settle the question of segregation or death as best they might. The work of the Volunteers began on the first day of the new year, and as the Health Department had left them to their own devices, they were able to enforce of their own Sahib authority the principle so long neglected. Much honor is due to them, as their act was a wilhng offering of health and life. For at this time, though Europeans had not been much attacked, yet no one supposed that they were immune, since there was no dearth of fatal cases which, through kindly con- sideration for the bereaved, had been reported as deaths of Europeans, though most of them were in reality amongst Eurasian or half-breed families ; nor was it possible to suppose that any one could enter the haunt of plague, and labor scathless there for many days. But that is what these young Englishmen did; for they went personally into the dismal chambers that the Health Department had not touched, and face to face with the plague, in the presence of its dead and dying, despite resistance on the part of those whom they would save, let air and light into the foul darkness. In many cases they found it necessary to remove roof-tiles and break holes for the admission of these unknown luxuries. Then they cleaned what had never been cleaned, inspected the inmates, removed the sick and the concealed dead, and did otherwise all that ought to have been done before. The Volunteers made some distressing discoveries, cases of 314 INDIA OLD AND NEW. plague uncared for and bodies of plague patients dead for days but still concealed, while the relatives, fearing segregation for themselves and the destruction of their effects, waited a favor- able opportunity to take the corpse in secret from the house. Ghastly efforts were made by the natives to hide their dead. The corpse would be covered up in a corner, or even held up to be counted as a live inmate of the dark hole where the family lived. But with the renewed suggestion of segregation there came new fright into the simple heart of the natives, whom plague, famine, blackmail, usury, and the fear of gods already tormented, and when they found that they themselves were ill, or one of their family, they would on the instant leave everything to escape from the city, so that even their dead, of whom they are usually very careful, were abandoned in blind terror ; and if, as they fled with him from town, the sick one died, they left the body in the street. But in the case of those who did not try to escape, it was pitiful to see them and hear their agony, whenever one of the family fell ill in the house and was carried away to the hospital. For even when the victims were women or children, although in their case no great fear of the Queen's anger was entertained, yet the excitement was intense, as the relatives clustered about the door, wailing with all the extravagance of Oriental woe. But when it was the husband and the father, and they thought that his death was certain, if not from the plague then by the knife of the Queen's servants in the hospital, the despair of the mourners soon got beyond all control. Such little tragedies occurred daily, and one which I saw myself I will speak of, though it is impossible to depaint the distress of the unhappy creatures and the sadness of the scene. For not only did all the relatives come out and accompany the sick man as he was borne into the street, but friends and near neighbors, who were either ignorant of danger or heedless of contagion, joined them there, and sharing in the sorrow swelled the dismal little procession, marching behind the litter THE PLAGUE. 315 and crowding beside it with weeping and all the noisy lamen- tation of the East. There were children in the family and three women, two old hags and one younger and not uncomely, and they all came out and were joined by about a score of friends who escorted them. For a little way they went for- ward uttering piercing shrieks and invoking vainly the sick man to return and the bearers to give him back to his dear ones, that they might be beside him when he died. But the bearers and the police, who were also there, advanced unheed- ing, and the children, falhng behind, began to play in the street. Then, however, the women of the famil}'- with stream- ing eyes and clasped hands began to entreat the police for mercy, calling upon all the gods, their own and the gods of those they addressed, to hear them. But after they had vainly conjured the police to go no further and seen clearly that there was no hope of their prayer prevaihng, they made frantic efforts to induce them to promise kind treatment, some- times screaming to all the officials together and sometimes fastening upon one alone, as if otherwise the authorities would be relentless in cruelty. For they besought the police to save the dying man from the knife, and let him die in peace, since he had committed no crime against the Queen ; but if they would not restore him, to remember to tend him well, and do this and that for him ; with many incoherent cries besides. But the one that was about to die, and this was of all the strangest part of the scene, remained perfectly still, or at the most moved only his lips, as if (as they are wont to do when dying) he were muttering the name of his god, while he lay staring side- ways at the crowd without any concern in the tumult of their despair, either because he was too weak to speak or too stricken with fear to know fully who they were that pressed around him. But when they were come some forty yards, the pohce at- tempted to turn the throng back, not roughly, as they were often accused of doing, but with a great deal of pity and gentleness, for they themselves were not unmoved by the sight about them. Nevertheless, failing in this they finally 316 INDIA OLD AND NEW. resorted to pushing, and at last they were compelled to pro- hibit the passing of a certain spot, beyond which every advance on the part of the mourners was forcibly prevented. So at this point the mourners dropped behind, but though they had cried vehemently before, yet now when they were no longer permitted to see the dying man and knew that love could go no further, the passion of their anguish became so painful that even a stranger could not endure it. I was afterwards told by a Volunteer that one of his men had even fainted at just such a scene, and no wonder, for it was horrible. But even apart from pity, the whole spectacle was strange and had something as if inhuman in it, for it seemed like the funeral of a man not yet dead. Nor could one in reality be sure that the sick man would have any other funeral when shortly, either before arriving there or as an inmate of the hospital, he actually died. For sometimes no notification of a man's death was made to the family, but unattended and uncared for his body was hurried to the grave or burned as quickly as possible. Not the least striking part of the whole scene, however, was this, that except for the relatives and immediate friends no one seemed to notice or to care ; and as the family came back to their home even they that had gone out with them left them ; and their return was through groups of their nearest neighbors who yet, like the little ones that had remained be- hind, were already chattering and laughing on their verandas, just as if nothing had happened. For all had grown callous, and not knowing when they themselves might die paid little attention to others. To a growing carelessness of this sort, I can testify from my own experience. For never having happened before to see such a sight, the first time I saw a man who was ap- parently healthy fall dead in the street I was much startled. But when I had roamed about the city for some time (for I was there off and on every month but one till the plague abated and especially during the great terror of December), I would scarcely notice such an accident. And, too, I found THE PLAGUE. 317 that the expectation of death, which at first terrifies, wears off just like one's horror of the sudden corpse; and though at first one imagines death imminent and is afraid, yet after- wards even in the midst of fancied danger one thinks nothing of it. Men died swiftly in the dying of last year. But they did not die without another effort to be saved, and indeed, despite callousness, it was not wonderful that mortals should turn again to Heaven for relief. Already on December 8 there was an universal appeal to God made by sects the most diverse, — Hindus, Hebrews, and Mohammedans, who joined in one com- mon procession by night, reciting prayers as they marched through the city by torchlight. The Enghsh, too, had a special intercessory service on December 22, to pray for the decrease of the plague, but the week after the mortahty rose to the highest point yet attained. Then, because no visible effect had been produced by the prayers of the Enghsh, the Mohammedans in turn resolved to pray. Two great meetings took place, but the first was merely to formulate the behef of the community in " prayer and not segregation " as the best means of extinguishing the plague. " The mosque is our hospital," was the cry. Plague was said to be the result of accumulated sin, and holy water sprinkled on a scapegoat was therefore reconunended as a cure. It was resolved to hold a mass prayer-meeting in accord- ance with these principles, but the sacrifice of the goat was omitted and only prayers were held. On January 2 a vast crowd of Mohammedans foregathered for the event. As no building in Bombay could hold them, they met in the open. That scene, too, was one not to be forgotten. It was the end of the win- ter's day. Beyond the yellow margin of the Esplanade, where the blue grackles quarrelled in the grimy trees, stretched the bay- water dancing brightly, while far in the distance the Highlands to the west rose fairly purple under the low sun. Except for the birds it was very still. The noise of the city had almost ceased. The multitude had come together silently as if awed. They had been collecting all day. They gathered, dark-faced 318 INDIA OLD AND NEW. and sombre, in families and wliite-robed bands, slowly arrang- ing themselves. But soon they were too numerous for dis- tinction ; only they kept, as they knelt compactly side by side, a sort of serried order. The service was begun by the princi- pal Kazi, who first singly invoked God to avert the arrows of His pestilence. Afterwards the whole assembly united in prayer, at the beginning with sounds low and monotonous, but then louder and so in more varied tones, till when the mania of fervor had roused them fully, the excitement shrilled their voices and the prayer became a cry and then a yell hke an imprecation. One would scream and stop and then another would scream, or a dozen would shriek together ; and all the time they prayed, they prostrated themselves. So their bodies rose and fell in long rows like waves ; while in regular move- ment each forehead would be bowed to the dust and then up- lifted, the head thrown back, the arms extended to Heaven, the black features writhing with the intensity of their suppli- cations. Raised a little above them on boxes and stools draped for this purpose, stood here and there the gaudy priests lead- ing the appeal of the great host, as it bowed and rose, swaying rhythmically to the music of the chanted prayers. For an hour they thus invoked Allah together, but as the sun struck level across the bay, each priest in turn addressed them, praising their piety and promising them in God's name speedy succor. So they prayed and were comforted ; and after they had eaten all the cakes and dates that had been provided, and offered each for himself one last supplication, they departed. Some of the Hindus also, who had already done so much for the gods, were now moved to sacrifice again. On New Year's day the wretched fishermen of Worli and Mahim, whose huts on the northern shore the plague had recently made more mis- erable, having resolved to do what they could to propitiate the deity of death, provided themselves out of their scanty stores (for they were starving as well as stricken by plague) with the offerings which their goddess accepts. After the sun had set they entered their boats and stood off, and when they were well away and the sudden darkness came on, they drew THE PLAGUE. 319 their craft together. Then hghting torches, which they held high aloft, they arose with one accord and prayed to Kali, at the same time casting into the sea their sacrifice, which was of milk and palm-juice and sweets. When this was done they prayed again, with what form of words I do not know surely, but it was reported the next day that they had charged the goddess to relent for the sake of her own offerings, which, if she should prove heedless of their prayers, they would never give her again. As a sign of this threat they extinguished their torches in the sea and so rowed home. Shortly afterwards those Parsees who still lingered in town invoked also their own pecuhar gods. First they had pubhc jasan or intercessory prayers to the Sun, and a few days later a congregation of three hundred met together at Karelwady to beseech the mercy and protection of the various Zoroastrian divinities. Of all the rites this was in so far most interesting as it had to do with the oldest gods in India. For though the Parsees themselves have been in India only 1265 years, yet their gods are older than the Vedas ; but the great gods of the modern Hindus are later, or at least they were received later into the pantheon of the ancient Hindus. The fire-temple at which the ceremony was performed stands near the western sea. There the Parsees first offered prayers to the Sun and to Fire, and also to Mithra, who was once a sun-god, but is now an attendant divinity. Then they de- scended from the temple to the sea, the priests having on their richest robes and leading the procession, and there prayed to the Spirit of the Waters, who, they beheve, is a goddess of puri- fication. For both the Spirit of Fire and the Spirit of the Waters are in their estimation purifiers and healers. But they offer no sacrifice. So when they had prayed and the venerable priest of Zoroaster had said a few words (whereby he reminded them that the Prince of Wales had once been cured of a grievous illness by means of similar prayers on their part) the service was brought to an end. And such services were held also elsewhere, wherever the Parsees were who had fled from the city, at Surat, at Mhow, and in other places. 320 INDIA OLD AND NEW. As I have already said, many of the natives, both the un- educated and the half-educated, beheved that the original cause of the plague was the insult offered to the Queen's statue, and they considered that there had not been any suffi- cient apology for this act, which in their mode of thought was sacrilegious and aimed against Heaven itself. Toward the middle of January, therefore, the following petition, composed in the customary English of the better-class natives, was sent to the Governor. To understand it fully, it must be remem- bered that the prayers here suggested are intended as a dep- recation of wrath addressed to the Queen in her capacity as earthly representative of the Divine. The petition, it will be noticed, is not sectarian, but catholic to a degree undreamed of in the ordinary philosophy of the rehgious world. All sects and castes are to unite in prayer to a deity named Almighty God. This is not meant as a concession to Christianity. The title is intended for a general designation of the Supreme, as the Hindus call their own Supreme God by the same name, and the formula is employed by them and by Mohammedans to paraphrase the names of Vishnu-^iva and of Allah. The petition distinctly makes the first cause of the plague to be the mutilation of the Queen's statue. AN HUMBLE APPEAL TO HIS EXCELLENCY THE EIGHT HONOURABLE GOVERNOR OF BOMBAY. To HIS Excellency the Right Honourable Governor and President in Council, Governor of Bombay. May it please your Excellency, — The humble petition to alle- viate human sufferings for the benefit of the public goodness and welfare of the people of Bombay and its vicinities. Most humbly declare that at present a disastrous and destruc- tive disease, known by the name of Bubonic Plague, is spread- ing and prevailing on in Bombay, and hundreds of people are dying through its effect every month. It is supposed that the cause of the above disease and plague is the rueful and abomi- nable act of some one miscreant by doing mischief to the auspi- THE PLAGUE. 321 cious statue of her most Gracious Imperial Brittanic Majesty tlie Queen-Empress the Kaiser-i-Hind by blackening and be- smearing it out of and in spite and malice and purposely to hurt and wound the natural feelings of the loyal British sub- jects, to insult and tarnish the glory of her Majesty's auspicious name and reign, and has also made a sacrilegious act, and blas- phemed the Almighty God with irreverence, and by doing this act of high offence and infamy the said abominable mean wretch has drawn on himself the general imprecations of the loyal sub- jects of the just and benign British Rule. It is therefore most earnestly beseeched to his Excellency that his Excellency will be pleased and kind enough to order expressly, all and every nations and subjects of all and every caste and creed, including Europeans, Parsees, Hindoos, Mahomedans, Jews, and Hebrews, and all other nations residing under the British sway, and all the other subjects of every nations, to suspend and recede from all their worldly affairs and business, and to desist from it for a day or a few days, as long as his Excellency will think fit, and order them all to fervently pray into their public places of worship and prayer, such as in churches, agiarees, mandirs, mosques, and synagogues, and every other holy places, and keep these few days as Sabbaths, and invoke and supplicate the merciful Almighty God to get it stopped and extirpate the disastrous plague from its root, through the supernatural influ- ence, and to preserve and spare the British subjects from un- timely dying and draw out from the jaws of death, and by the Divine Will and supplication the general health, peace, and prospects of the people will be restored, and by it the lives of the people will be saved and rescued by its Divine influence. By doing this act of public charity it will be deemed a divine benediction bestowed on the poor British subjects, and all the loyal subject will heartily wish the prosperity of the British reign and will always as in duty bound ever pray for the long life of their merciful ruler the Gracious Her Majesty. Ambn. This petition was not acted upon. But a few days later, on January 19, the Hindus performed a saving rite by themselves, which consisted chiefly in encircling the town with a stream of milk. But I cannot describe it more fully, and must omit 21 822 INDIA OLD AND NEW. also a few other curious rites both performed and merely pro- posed about this time, for there were many such ceremonies suggested as cures of plague by learned Pundits in various parts of the country. Only one incident, since it seems to me of special interest, I will mention particularly, and that is that in the propitiatory service there was not infrequently a wonderful reversion of rehgious behef . For as far as Indra and other Vedic gods are concerned, they are lost in the modern All-god. But in this year of extremity, the people went back to the old god of rain, for famine was harrying the folk as well as plague, and this same ceremony which I have just men- tioned of encircling a town with milk was performed against the famine-demon by the Sheth of Ahmedabad. It was given out that he was praying to the great gods as he circumambulated the city pouring milk ; but in reahty he prayed to Indra, as I was credibly informed by one in authority who knew. And simi- larly, I was told by an official who knows Behar well that to this day the peasant there prays to " Indra whose wife is Kali." So changed but deathless are the old gods. But it would be too long a story to tell all that occurred between the people and their gods, and what happened as regards the famine and the earthquake — for the year was marked also by one of the most terrible earthquakes — I must leave out ; only one curious fact about the small-pox goddess may perhaps be added. For there was small-pox in the Mofussil, and there is a goddess Small-pox to whom the people pray. In behalf of adults they pray, " O kind goddess of small-pox " (or more truly, "O kind Small-pox"), "keep away from us." But for babies the mothers pray, " O kind Small-pox, come soon to this baby and treat it gently." They believe that every one will probably be visited by Small-pox, but that the goddess wiU not be hard upon infants, so they hope she will come when the children are little. They call her ^itala, " the cool," because she brings burning fever, and " kind " because she is cruel, as in the case of ^iva. But to come back to the plague, the prophecies of the astrolo- gers, though often proved false, continued to find credence. THE PLAGUE. 323 The most popular was that the plague would cease with the Makar Sankranti hohday, which occurs when the sun enters Capricorn, the middle of January. After the middle of Jan- uary the most popular prophecy was that the plague would cease with the Hoh festival, the middle of March. After the middle of March, " next year " was the time set. The means proposed by the native astrologer to avert the plague was the invocation of certain planets (Mars and Saturn), and the wor- shipping of the " wheel of the nine planets." The total mortality in the last week of December had been 1853 ; that in the first week of January was 1711 (plague mortahty, 1217). This seems to be a reduction, but a careful estimate in the Times of India for the week ending January 5 shows that the chief plague-hiding diseases are credited in this report with 676 deaths above the normal, withal when the population was a third to one half less than the normal. But there was for a few weeks, owing either to reduction of popu- lation or to one of the lulls which occasionally appeared in the plague, hke a trough between breakers, a diminution both in the plague mortality and in the total mortality, though at the ' end of this lull the latter rose to a height hitherto unknown, for in the week ending February 9 the plague mortahty alone was 1371 (total mortahty for the week, 1911). During January the aspect of the city was mournful beyond description. The throngs of people hurrying to the stations ; the death-falls in the street, when no passer-by dared to touch the dying man; the pitiful little funerals, where sometimes the only mourners were the bearers, and they, feebly chanting the shrill dirge, would run rapidly with the uncovered corpse lest they died on the way ; occasionally a funeral without a bier, but the body was slung on a pole and, it was said, even oozed blood ; the starving, emaciated figures huddled together on the doorsteps of the wretched tenements ; the frightened, suspicious glances with which every one looked on every one else in the street ; the general air of crouching before an in- visible mahgn power, — these were the marks of the New Year. And the physical appearance of the city did not lessen the 324 INDIA OLD AND NEW. melancholy effect. The streets, despite all the efforts of the Health Department, were a reproach to humanity ; the long drought had covered the trees with dust ; they stood gaunt and gray-leaved above the sickly grass. All day the sun shone hotly, all night it was bitterly cold ; not with the tonic cold of the West ; but with the horrible chill of a tomb, of India. At this time voluntaryism, a phrase of the occasion, was the order of the day. In submitting to voluntary segregation there was a great difference between the communities. The Khoja sect of the Mohammedans, owing to the influence of their leader Aga Khan, showed themselves much more en- lightened than the Sunni Mohammedans. The Jains would scarcely enter their own hospital. The Hindus had not yet resolved to have a hospital, but the municipal sheds were at their disposal. These, however, the Hindus, like the Moham- medans, did not want to use. The native community that acted most sensibly was that of the Parsees. They had an excellent hospital, they went to the hospital more readily, they opposed segregation less than any other sect or nationality. But whether the gods had heard or only the Raj across the sea, better days were already at hand. The city government had proved itself incapable of wrestHng with the storm of plague. So now a real gubernator took the city's helm. The speech from the throne on January 19 (the day after Italy proposed the Venice Plague Conference) did much to keep up English courage. It said little in respect of the plague, but that little was enough : " Take the most stringent measures." The Governor at once (January 20) appointed first a special plague officer to inspect the city and " advise " the municipal commissioner ; then an assistant health of&cer, twenty medical officers, and others deemed necessary. In addition to the useful measure of appointing scientific experts, both doctors and officers for the purpose of facilitating house-to-house visitation, — there were thirty thousand houses to be inspected, and the four employed by the health officer THE PLAGUE. 325 had been entirely inadequate, — the Governor early in Feb- ruary (the 10th) pubhshed a Notification made possible by a special Epidemic Disease Act which had just been passed. This Notification authorized, and in fact directed, the municipal commissioner, of his own authority and without reference to the magistrates, to prohibit the occupation of any building de- clared to be unfit for human habitation ; to require abatement of over-crowding, the vacation of buildings and premises for disinfecting ; to enter deserted buildings forcibly (when they were locked up), and to cleanse and disinfect them ; to remove the earth of floors, and to cut off water-connections when neces- sary; to demolish any building unfit for habitation, and to destroy infected articles. Some few of these powers had al- ready been assumed. All of them might have been acquired long before, had the commissioner taken the initiative, or even followed the advice given to him by the government commit- tee (appointed to report, when the plague first broke out) to apply for greater powers. February was spent in organizing and carrying out a campaign against the plague. On February 26, the Governor, Lord Sandhurst, dehvered a timely speech, in which he said in effect : " Citizens of Bombay, do not fear the cost of sanitation, nor the anger of the greedy wretches whose insanitary houses have been held together for rent. Destroy what is unfit for human habitation. Kill the plague by destroying its habitat in these rookeries. This is what I have been trying to do. Help me to continue this work, till we pull down all the foul death- traps of the town. Erect sanitary buildings. Broaden the streets. Rebuild Bombay, and let her be again in reality, as she once was, as she was meant to be by nature, Bombay the Beautiful." This speech was received with enthusiasm. It brought back courage. People felt that at last a man had taken charge. On March 5, the Gatacre Committee was appointed by the Governor. General Gatacre, the chairman, had been put in control of the hutting arrangements at Parel Park, where an auxihary hospital was equipped (to which were afterwards 326 INDIA OLD AND NEW. sent the convalescents of the over-crowded Arthur Road Hos- pital). He was the Executive's right hand in the vigorous sanitary reform instituted by the Governor and had already done most efficient work. The city health officer was not made a member of this committee ; the city commissioner was put on the committee, but not as the chairman. By the appointment of this committee the sanitation of Bombay was completely taken out of the hands of its municipahty. The committee was expressly stated to be " subordinate only to Government," that is, to the Presidential government. The letter of the Governor to the municipal corporation explaining this drastic measure concluded with the bland remark : " To do this is no slur on local bodies ; it is no blow to local self-government. It is simply an Imperial necessity." The necessity was stated to be due to the fact that, as the plague was now spread over the whole Presidency, it was es- sential that the campaign should be conducted with military subordination on the part of local bodies. In the formal appointment of the committee, the municipal corporation were curtly directed " to carry into effect without delay any measures which may be ordered by the committee." In other words, the city corporation were reduced to a political cipher. Under this order municipal apathy vanished. The corpora- tion hurriedly raised legal objections to their own virtual sup- pression, as implied by the somewhat extraordinary wording just cited, but in the end they submitted as gracefully as they could. Thereafter, as regards the plague, the municipality dropped out of sight. Times were changed now in Bombay. Four hospitals — the Arthur Road, the Parel auxiliary, the European General, and the Kamatipur shed-hospital — were open to plague patients, and the natives were told that the sick would have to be iso- lated, whether they would or no. Segregation was actually enforced. Then the plague began to decline. Other huts were erected, at Tank Bunder, Chaopatty, Kamatipur, etc. To these were sent the destitute and those who had been in contact with plague cases. But many more huts were built. THE PLAGUE. 327 By April there were forty-one hospitals in the city (besides the sectarian hospitals) and six hundred segregation huts. The hospital staff was strengthened. Nurses from England were cabled for. Woman inspectors and physicians were appointed ior purdah women. For the first time medical certificates were insisted on. Hacks, if used to convey plague-patients, were no longer permitted to return undisinfected to their stand, an abuse which, despite all protests, was current during the winter. Restrictions were put upon returning inhabitants liable to bring disease back with them ; first on those coming back by ship, then, in April, on those by rail. An army of men were sent out to inspect and cleanse the ten districts into which, to facihtate sanitary work, the city had been divided; a re- sponsible officer was put in charge of each district. An extra staff of nearly a thousand men was created in the health de- partment ; of four thousand in the engineering department. The idle military were put to work. Concealed cases of plague were artfully detected by means of official surprise-parties, after the locality had already been inspected. The corporation were told that if they did not at once settle the question of the dis- posal of cutchra, over which they had been dawdling for six months, the question would be settled for them. That also which the corporation had never had sense or sympathy to do, the higher government now did. It ordered compensation to be paid, not as a right, but as a grace, to " the very poor," whose infected goods were destroyed for the public weal. Fin- ally, in the middle of April, one crowning abuse was stopped. The Mohammedan Grant Road burial-ground was closed by order of the Governor. It must not be supposed that everything was accomplished at once. The number of cases of plague still concealed, de- spite the most careful surveillance, gives a hint of the numbers not detected under a less vigilant system of inspection. Even blackmail was still practiced, but the only case reported was that of municipal employees, who in April took six rupees as a bribe and let a godown (storehouse) go free of inspection. The mettle of their new rein-holder was soon tested by the 828 INDIA OLD AND NEW. balkiest of the natives, the Sunni Mohammedans. But an in- timation of strength had been given before this. The great rehgious Valkeshvar Fair of March 1, and the popular dehrium of the Hoh Festival, which inaugurates the return of spring and takes place on the full moon of the same month, were both looked forward to with anxiety, as had been indicated in a letter addressed to the Governor on February 15 by the Chamber of Commerce. The former celebration, however, was now restricted by the express orders of the government ("in consultation with the municipal commissioner," for this officer figured in proclamations) ; while the Holi procession was absolutely prohibited. As for the Mohammedans, the im- perial government itself prohibited the still more dangerous Haj pilgrimage (to Mecca), to the great grief and indignation of the Mohammedan community, who saw in this act only " an invidious distinction ; " though in this the Sunnis opposed their own chief, Abdur Rahman, Amir of Afghanistan, who supported the action of the English authorities regarding the Haj. But it was left for the Sunnis of Bombay in particular to emphasize their own unfitness for civilized society. No sooner had the new law gone into effect than there began (March 15) a series of angry mass-meetings, to protest and petition against the measures of segregation and inspection. In vain the Governor, in refusing to grant the petition, ex- plained the situation at length, and assured the Sunnis that their feelings, especially in regard to purdah women, would be respected. The Sunnis sent in another petition more imperti- nent than the first (for both petitions virtually said, " we will not "), and then had the impudence to declare roundly that nothing would induce them to 5deld the point. After the loss of much time spent in kind and courteous explanations the Governor, on April 5, told the Sunnis peremptorily that they would have to obey. They obeyed at once. Some of their wealthy leaders had been converted to common-sense long before and supported the government, both in trying to persuade their ignorant fellows and in generously building hospitals for them. But these gentlemen, who were really THE PLAGUE. 329 enlightened, had little influence as compared with the clerical leaders, most of whom were incorrigible. On the receipt of the definitive refusal to exempt Mohammedans from the com- mon law of safety, " a would-be Ghazi " sent General Gatacre a letter, informing him that he would be decapitated within a fortnight owing to his zeal in enforcing sanitary regulations. But the barking dog did not bite. The Calcutta Moham- medans imitated the Bombayans on April 9, when five thou- sand of the former made a formal protest against the same sanitary regulations, then about to be put in force all over India. March had opened with a drop in the weekly account with death. For the first time since December the plague mortality stood in three figures. Three weeks later the deaths had fallen from this point of nine hundred and thirty-eight to six hundred ; by April 20 they were three hundred and ten ; by the first of May there were only one hundred deaths in the week. By the end of March the returning inhabitants nearly balanced in number the outgoing, and after that the former were in excess. By the end of April the plague was almost extinct. Not the warmer weather alone was the cause, but the new commander and the means he used. In the latter half of March appeared a new red sign in Bombay, the letters U H H painted on the front of houses, Unfit for Human Habitation, but fit homes for plague. Hundreds of these houses were condemned, and the wretched inhabitants were hutted in the country. But the monsoon expected in June put a stop to the work, lest more people should be found to be hutted at the beginning of the rains than could be roofed again. After the Governor took control there was less excite- ment, and nothing of religious moment occurred, for finding that danger was departing men no longer took the same interest in the gods. Only early in the spring some of the thakorjis or Vishnu idols, whom the priests had fed and prayed to all winter, till at last they could wait for succor no longer, were removed from the town, their priests fleeing just as the tide was about to turn. Yet so great was their faith that they 330 INDIA OLD AND NEW. carried with them the gods they thought had been deaf to their prayers. In other respects also this season was devoid of memorable events, save that riots had occasionally to be suppressed. But when sanitation and segregation were resisted the rioters were put down easily, for the Governor was not afraid, and the "people yielded as soon as they became convinced of this. By June the plague was stamped out of the city. Then became apparent the danger which had lurked in the sign of recovery. So long as lasted the careful inspection of those who poured back into the town, there was no risk. Bombay at the end of spring was actually free of plague. For a whole week in June no death due to it occurred in the city. But the end was not yet. Those thousands of refugees who had carried the plague with them and planted it over the whole Presidency, up and down the coast, north and south and in- land, east as far as Nasik and the Khandeis district — but the main plague outside the Presidential town was at Karachi, Bulsar, and Poona — and still further, beyond the Presidency, at Bangalore in the south, where it had entered as early as November, at Gwahor, Agra, and even Lahore in the north — those thousands returned. And in returning from other districts, which were still plague-smitten, month after month, when no longer controlled by any adequate inspection, for the state government had accomplished its task and resigned its hold, — in returning to a populace as determined as ever to resist segregation or sanitation and to a municipahty too weak to enforce either means of safety, they brought back the Great Death to Bombay. Written during the winter of 1896-97 and completed the end of June, 1897, soon after I came back from India. I have since added a few notes and the last two paragraphs. Of the history of the plague subsequent to its recrudescence in the city I have no knowledge, and though I saw it elsewhere than in Bombay it would extend this sketch unduly to tell of its THE PLAGUE. 331 course through the country at large. Nor do I believe that after the first few months, barring the tragedy at Poona, where for a tune all the ways of the East and West ran counter, there were either elsewhere or in Bombay the same terror and excitement or any events that revealed the strange heart of India more clearly than those I have here tried to describe. For outside of Bombay, the authorities, already warned, paid less attention to the remonstrance of ignorance and so mastered the plague more quickly; and later, when the Great Death crept back into Bombay, the doctrine of fatahsm became, as it seems, the accepted faith even of those to whom it was not native, and the whole city relapsed into apathy, letting the plague do as it would and waiting till it should choose to go. But of the first few months I have ventured to write in the belief that the account may perhaps interest those who are either pleased with supersti- tions or curious in regard to what is doing in India. For in the latter regard, though the stage was small, there is no reason to suppose that on a larger one the political actors would play different parts, and in the former there is much to fascinate the student of antiquity, as he sees how the dead past of Europe is still a living reality in the East. 332 INDIA OLD AND NEW. NOTE ON THE PLAGUE. It was stated in September, 1896, by practitioners of Bombay that ninety-six per cent., some said ninety-nine per cent., of those at first attacked by plague in the city had died. This was before any systematic practice had been adopted, and when indeed most of the cases were not treated at all. The ratio is surprisingly high, but it does not seem to be much exaggerated. The best means of discovering how many died when left to themselves is to reckon not on the basis of uncertain figures in a great city, but on that furnished by a small group, the numbers of which can be controlled and which no doctors have tampered with. At The- ronda, near Eewadanda in the Kolaba District of the Presidency, there were 173 deaths out of 177 cases of plague , until the intro- duction of medical men (native doctors can be ignored) and sani- tary regulations lowered the proportion. In Lower Damaun, a pest-hole in the Portuguese territory, even with the best medi- cal attendance there were, in April, 140 deaths a week amongst a population of 9000. It is interesting to compare Thucydides' estimate. Out of 4000, in less than forty days 1050 died at Poti- daea. Other points of comparison with the Attic plague will occur to the classical student, — its growing strength as winter came on, the synchronous famine and earthquake (in the North), the tendency of other diseases to run into the plague, the endur- ance of the body till its sudden collapse, the paralysis that occasionally resulted instead of death , etc. It was unfortunate that Dr. Haffkine's serum was not ready before the middle of January. When first tried on the prisoners in the jail (Jan- uary 30) it seemed to be really a preventative. At least, there were 170 patients who were not inoculated, and 150 who were, and amongst the former there were afterwards twelve cases of plague and six deaths, while amongst the latter there were two cases and no deaths. Dr. Yersin did not come upon the scene with his antidote till March 5, when the plague was already in hand. NEW INDIA. Fkom the later Vedic age, when the king who was " eaten by the priests " was in turn the " eater of his people," a striking metaphor has been preserved. Taken from the chief architecture of the day, it describes the " altar " of the king's state. In this altar, the priests and the nobles are " the bricks ; " the common people, the agricultural class, are only " the filling between the bricks." Unmentioned remain here those elsewhere known as " the black mass," the slaves, who have no place at any Bralmianic altar, human or divine. Beneficent as was Buddhism, in its doctrine of " non-in- jury " and in its over-riding of caste-distinctions, it was routed by Brahmanized civilization, though the latter was deeply affected by it. Under the later Brahmanic kings the people were nominally protected. The king took one sixth of the farmer's grain. But the king ruled through vicegerents, military commanders who were also revenue-collectors. In Max Miiller's opinion they were simply revenue-collectors, but even if this extreme view be wrong, as I think it is, there remains the fact that these vicegerents, called Supervisors, governed for the king over ten, an hundred, a thousand towns, and their support was drawn from the towns. The rapacity of royal officials was a favorite literary theme, and the whole system was one that clearly made for secret extortion. Manu says that the king's officials " are usually rascals, who, though appointed to protect, steal the property of others." In feudal states, the native kings sometimes took half the nobles' reve- nue, drawn from the doubly impoverished peasants. The Mussulmans came next, whose rule was " anarchy and 334 INDIA OLD AND NEW. oppression." Two Moghuls are credited with virtues, the *' apostate " Akbar and his grandson, Shah Jahan. Under them flourished the Zamindars. Akbar's great revenue rose steadily, both under his son, a dissolute hypocrite, and under his magnificent grandson, wliose costly military expeditions, court luxury, religious endowments, and own fabulous fortune were paid for by a tax that never ceased to increase tiU. Aur- angzeb, the " Louis XIV. of India," completed the misery of the people. There were too Afghan kings who are wished back by the believer in antique felicity. Such was Firoz Shah, of whom a modern critic of present conditions, a Hindu sigh- ing for the past, ingenuously writes : " The historian of this monarch expatiates on the happy state of the raiyats who hved in that day, the great content of the people, and the general happiness of the realm. This historian is said to be a writer not much to he trusted " (italics mine). Of course, no court historian can be trusted. So we are told by travellers, dazzled by the luxury of Ori- ental courts seen for the first time, that those days of rapine and oppression were blissful days, and we are given the im- pression that the peasant who paid for the luxury was as happy as the king and honored traveller who enjoyed it. Yet there are awkward passages even in the records of such trav- ellers. Thus, one of them is cited to show how great was the welfare of the Hindu under the Mahratta ; but midway in his tale of brave deeds and fine temples we stumble over this : " The praise of good administration is rarely merited by Mah- ratta chieftains." But not all Hindus extol the past at the expense of the present. All extol the past, to be sure, and see in it virtues which a more critical view must qualify ; but some, while not wanting in the pensive piety of propappolatry, so to speak, nevertheless see clearly that the best foreign Raj India has ever had is that of to-day. One of these is Mr. Dadabhai, whose words carry especial weight because he has been for more than forty years an avowed opponent of the accepted British polity. He sees, too, in the failure to appoint Hindus NEW INDIA. 335 to high offices a violation of an imperial pledge,^ so that he has much to blame in England's course. Yet he says, in words which I italicize because, coming from a Hindu, they more than counterbalance the many diatribes emanating from Occidental reformers : " There has not been a nation, who, as conquerors, have, like the English, considered the good of the conquered as a duty, or felt it as their great desire.'''' And again he says, speaking of his own wisest countrymen: '■'■They know that a real regeneration, civilization, and advancement of India materially, morally, and politically, depends upon a long continuance of the British rule." This is the behef of the best thinkers to-day in India. There are Hindus, simple malcontents, who breathe out only hatred of the foreign Raj. Half-educated, they do nothing to en- lighten their countrymen. Reckless agitators, scurrilous editors, disappointed place-hunters, they are intellectual mon- grels, a bastard brood born of a too facile intercourse between East and West. But there are others, educated Hindu patriots, sons of their age, who weigh well past and present conditions, neither sparing adverse criticism nor withholding praise. These are they whose words should be heard, not only by the public, but in the councils that direct the fate of their country. Their number, happily, is increasing. India's discord was England's strength. The Hindu religion opposed the Mohammedan rehgion, the Hindus numerically strong but not belligerent, the Mohammedans belhgerent but numerically weak. But to-day there are issues in India more 1 The royal pledge (of 1858) is as follows : " It is our further will that, so far as may be, our subjects, of whatever race or creed, be freely and im- partially admitted to offices in our service, the duties of which they may be qualified, by their education, ability, and integrity, duly to discharge." The saving clause is so far as may he, which is apparently interpreted to mean, " so far as is wise to bestow offices on those who might oppose the policy of the government." Little has been done to redeem this qualified promise, partly because the British fear native opposition in council. Caution in this regard cannot be blamed, but it would mark the desirable beginning of a broader imperial policy to secure some representation for so much taxation. Mr. (Naoroji) Dadabhai's words, cited above, will be found on pp. 201, 202, of his Poverty and Un-British Rule in India. 336 INDIA OLD AND NEW. important than the formulse of ancient creeds. Divide et im- pera is ceasing to be a useful rule of thumb. The worshipper of Allah and the worshipper of Vishnu-(^iva have found that they have a common ground to stand upon. That ground is national unity. And the more closely the separate parts of India knit themselves together, the more imperative is the necessity for England to let India know definitively whether the good she has done in India in the past is but the earnest of what she will do for her hereafter. May the heart of that nation which has done so much for India's welfare and yet wrought her, not always unwittingly, so many injuries, be moved to unite with her for the perma- nent good of both. For, thanks to England, there is a New India, no longer enslaved but free, no longer blinded but enlightened, not perfect but striving for perfection, weak but great, potentially strong, awaking to-day to the full con- sciousness of a glorious past and the possibihty of a still more glorious future. Old India endured and dreamed of God. Her bastards revile and dream of themselves. But New India thinks, her dream is of the future. And what is this noble dream? She dreams not of independence, but of political equality based on moral likeness. She seeks to prove that in fiscal and judicial administration all native officials can, with- out European supervision, be as incorruptible as are British officials, claiming that to proved ability and integrity is due a recognition of the Indian's right to share in the government of the Indian's country. So may her dream be accomphshed, and may England, even at some seeming cost, be ready to meet her halfway, proving in her turn, and before it is too late, that she cares less for revenue than for righteousness. INDEX. 22 INDEX. Long vowels in Sanskrit words are here covered with a makron, in other words with a circumflex. Short a is pronounced like u in punch ; the cor- responding long vowel, like aw, Panjab and Mahabharata, for example, being pronounced punjawb, and muhawb-hawrata, respectively. Short a is frequently transcribed by e or o as well as by a and u. Thus Bengal and bungalow, bostan and bwstan (garden). Menu and Manu, bwnia, and vania. Europeans usually mispronounce long a, for example in Raja, which should be pro- nounced rawja, the w sound (compare dance, 'daunce') being antique as well as modern, as shown by the interchange of dvd, dvdu (duo), dada, dadau (dedi) in Vedic forms. Sanskrit e and o are always long. AgoKA, 122. Agvaghosa, 135. Aga Khan, 324. Agni, 93. agrahara, 224. agriculture, 211 ff. ahinsa, v. non-injury. Akbar, 244, 334. Akhyana, tale, 71. Alexander, 98. Alexandria, 123. Amaru, 61. Anacreon, 62. animal-gods, 107. anustubh (verse), 42. Apo'lio Bunder, 289. ApoUonius of Rhodes, 67, 71 ; ro- mancer, 124. Apsarasas, 97. Arjuna, the White Knight, or Silver Knight, the ideal hero of the great epic, 58, 72, 76. Artillery Volunteers, 313. Asita, 128. Atharva Veda (the fourth Veda), 23, 24. Auf recht, 26. Aurangzeb, 245, 334. avatar, defined, 105. Baden-Powell, 206 ff. Bagalya, 95. Bagh Deo, 112. Bardesanes, 124. Barth, 164. Battlestrong, yudhisthira, name of the Pandava (Pandu) emperor, 72 ff. Beas river, 48. Bhagavad Gita, gitd, 72, 148 ff. Bhaiach^ra village, 227. Bhairava, Bhairoba, 101. bhakti, 148. Bharata, brother of Rama, 80 ff., 91. Bharata, for Maha-Bharata (the great epic), q. V. Bhartrhari, 60 ff. Bhatias, 185. Bhimasena, god, 97. Bhiits, 97. Birs, 97. Bombay, described, 266 ff. boy, bhai, 310. Brhaspati, 222. Buddha, 105, 120 ff. Buddhacarita, 128, 135. Buddhism and Christianity, 122 ff. Biihler, 223. bunia or bania, same as vania, q. v. Burnell, 243. busti (basti, dwelling), 268. gAKTl, 111. ^akuni, " the Hawk," name of a Kan- dahar epic character, 71 ff. Qakuntala, 60. cchotamari, 266. chaudhari, 200. chawls, 268 ff. 840 INDEX. Cholas, 242. Christ in India, 120 ff. Christ-child, 162. Christmas, date of, 166. Christophoros legend, 166. Chunder Sen, 105. Qiladitya, 167. gitala(devi), 100, 115, 311, 322. Citrakuta, name of a mountain, 87. givaji, 105, 243. 9loka, epic verse, 64, 71. Cloud-Messenger, meghadiita, title of a poem by Kalidasa, 61. cremation, 304. Crooke, 99, 108. crore, 273. cubbonize (from Cubl)on), 255. cutchra, 271. Da^aratha ("having ten war-cars"), King of Oudh, 80 ff. Da Cunha, 91, 276, 306, 311. Dadabhai, Naoroji, 334 ff. Dakhmas, 305. Daityas, 97. Dandaka, name of the great forest south of the Ganges, 84. Dante, 90. Davids, Rhys, 131, 136. Dawn, 32, 38, 93 ff. dhobis, 310. dialects, 24. disease-demons (v. ^itala), 99, 311. Divali (dipali), 299 ff. drama (v. epic), 60, 70. drought, 235 ff. Dubois, 106. Duff, 91, 237, 243 ff. Dutt, 237 ff. Dyaus, 93. Dunds, 103. East-wind (god), 95. elves, rbhus, 98. epic, 25, 56, 67 ff ., 69 ff. ; modern epic, 91. Essenes, 139. Eusebius, 124. Famine, 230 ff. famine-relief fund, 254. fetish, 108. Eiroz (Feroz) Shah, 334. Gandharvas, 97. Ganges, 39, 68. Gatacre, General, 325. gathas, 29. Garuda, 110. gayatri (verse), 42. Geldner, 169. ghost-gods, 102. Gita, V. Bhagavad Gita. Gnosticism, 147; Gnostic monument in Syracuse, 124. gobar, 270. gods, study of, 92 ff. goldsmiths, 171. Gondaphares, 141. Grace of God, 147. Gubernatis, Count, 90. guilds, 169 ff. Guimaraes, epic of, 91. gumasta, 187. Haffkine, Doctor, serum of, 332. halalkhores, 271, 310. Hardaur Lala, 103, 112. Hardheart, duhgdsana, " hard to rule," a Kuru prince, 78. Hastina (also Hastina-pura), the Kurus' capital, a town fifty-three miles N. E. of Delhi, formerly on the Ganges, which has now left it seven miles away. It is now a mere ruin. The name is said to mean Hastin's town or perhaps elephant- town, 71 ff. Hesiod, 60. Himalaya, 32, 128. Hitopade?a, 60, 96. Holdich, Colonel, 101. Holi, 06, 328. Hunter, 243 ff. Hyndman, 237, 254. Iliad, 67, 88 ff. impartible property, 217. Indra, 32, 37. 48, 52, 322. Indraplain, Indrapat, the Pandavas' capital, the original site of Delhi (now five miles away) on the Jumna. The name means Indra's plateau or place, 71 ff. Invincible, duryodhana, name of a Kuru prince, 72 ff. irrigation, 238 ff. INDEX. 341 Jackson, 130. Jahan, 243, 334. Jains, 171 ff. JanmastamI, 162. japa (prayer, japa, rose), 142. Jatakas, 133 ff. Jishnu Krishna (jisnu), 162. joint-family, 215. Jolly, 207. Jumna (yamuna), 39, 52, 103. Kabaxas, 198. kabandhas, 103. Kaegi, 151. Kaikeyi, wife of Da^aratha, 80 fE. Kali, in this form a dice-demon, 72; in the form Kali, the wife of Qiva, 277 ff. ; Kali, wife of Indra, 322. Kalidasa, 60 ff. Kansa, 163. Karma doctrine, 127. Katha, " tale," equivalent to Akhyana, epic narrative, 91. Kavya, artificial, artistic poetry, 71. khandias, 306. Khojas, 324. Khokaladevi, 311. Krishna (krsna, " dark" ), as a mascu- line, ending in a, the name of an avatar of Vishnu ; as a feminine, ending in a, the wife of the Pandus, 72, 76 fE., 105, 120 ff. Krishnaism and Christianity, 146 ff. kundadhara, cloud-god, 96. Kurus, anglicized plural for kauravas, sons of Kuru, epic heroes, 71 ff. Lakh, 273. Lakshman, laksmana,hTotheT of Hama, 86 ff. The name means " having lucky signs," Felix. Lalbhai Dalpatbhai, Sheth, 176, 205. . land-grants, 224. land-tenure, 206. Lanka, Ceylon, 88. Lalita Vistara, 128, 131, 134 ff., 136. Latham, 272. Lely, 179 ff. Llamaistic Church, 141 ff. Logos, 147. Lorinser, 151. Lotus (of True Law), 131 ff., 134 ff. Love, god of, 63. Lyall, 243, 247. lyric poetry, 36 ff., 69. Madonna-woeship, 162 ff. Mahabharata, 67 ff. mahajanas, 173, 178. mahamari, 266. Mahrattas, 242, 334. Maine, H., 206 ff. Mandara (Battenberg), 58. Manthara, slave of Kaikeyi, 80 ff. Manu, 170, 207, 210 ff., 215, 218 ff.,333, Marwaris, 308. Megasthenes, 246 ff. Meshris, 177. Metres, 39, 71. Moghuls, 244 ff. Mohammedans (v. Sunni, etc.), 168. Momba Devi, 100, 311. Mombaym, original form of Bombay, 311. momiai, 291. money-lender (same as usurer), 252 ff., 259 ff., 308, 310. monotheism, 168. muccadum, boss-workman, 201, 310. Miiller, Max, 92, 128,133, 143, 151, 333. NIgas, 107. naigamas, 170. Nakula, brother of Battlestrong, 76* Nala, 72. nasasalars, 306. Nibelungen, 67. Nissi, Night-goddess, 96. non-injury doctrine, 149, 212, 333. nyat (jati), 201, 205. Ojha, teacher (from upadhyaya), wiz- ard, 103 ff. Oppert, 175. Oudh (from ayodhya), 68, 80, 172 ff. Pali forms, 46; tradition, 136. Panch (punch), Panchayat, 178 ff. Pandus, anglicized plural form of Pandu, properly Pandavas, " sons of Pandu" (the Pale), epic heroes, 71 ff. parikti (verse), 42. Pantaenus, 124, 141. 342 INDEX. Parcival, 67. Parsees (v. Dakhma), 319, 324. Parusni, 52. Patel" 178, 227. Pattidari village, 227. Pi§acas, 103. Pinjra Pol (" cage- yard "), 191 ff. plague, cases of, 265 ; symptoms, 276 ; mortality, 293, 297 ff., 332. prasada, 147 ff. priests as gods, 105. Proctor-Sims, 180 ff. Punjab (Panjab, " Five Eivers "), 30 fE., 172. Purana, Puran, "ancient" (tale), 91, 162'. purdah (parda) women, 288 ff. purohita, 104. Piisan, 39. EAiTAT-village, 220, 227 fE. rajakali, 241. Rama, hero of the Ramayana, 80 ff., 105. Ramayana ("journeys of Rama"), 67 ff., 80 ff. Ranuji Sindia, 91. rats and plague, 282. Ravi, 52. Rig (rg) Veda, 23 ff. rosary, origin of, 142. Rudra, 46. rupee, 272. Sahadeva, brother of Battlestrong, 76. Salisbury, Lord, 2.33, 257. Saman, Sama Veda, 23. Sandhurst, Lord, 325. sattas, 198. Schroeder, L. von, 67. Severalty village, 227 ff. Seydel, 125 ff., 132, 143. Sheth (grestha), 172 ff., 177, 179. Shravaks (gravakas), 177 ff. shroffs, 308, 310. Sita, Rama's wife, 87 ff. The name means "furrow," as Rama is'" sun," in the allegorical base of the Rama- story. sixth-taker, title of king, 242. Skambha and Skandha, 98. Small-pox goddess (v. ^itala), 322. Soma, 33, 40, 93. Spencer, H., 92. strikes, 202. Sudas, 52 (the accent here indicates metrical quantity). Sunnis, 324, 328. Sutlej river, 48. Suttee (sati), 104. Taxation, 238 ff., 333 ff. Thucydides, 332. tiger, use of, 2.30 ff. Times of India, 272 ff., 280, 29T. totem, 108. Towers, v. Dakhmas. trees, animate, 95. tristubh (metre), 44, 71, Unitaeianism, 160 ff. Upanisads, 24, 25, 28, 55, 57, 146. usurer, v. money-lender. Vac, 98, 147. vadi, guild-hall, 187. Vai^ya (v. Wesh), 212. Vanias (bunyas), 185, 200. Varuna, 32, 38, 100. Vasistha, 51 ff., 219. Vata, 47. Valmiki, 69. Vergil, 67. Vi^vamitra, 48 ff. Vidura, 75. villages, kinds of, 227 ff. Vishnu (visnu, " flyer "), sun-god and the Supreme, 79, etc. Vyasa (nom. form vyasas), 69, 159. Weber, 162 ff. Wesh (vai9ya), 200. Yajnavalkta, 219. Yajus, Yajur Veda, 23. Yama, 40, 102. Yamuna, v. Jumna. Yersin, Doctor, 382. Zamindae, zamindari, 245 ff., 258, 334. Zoroaster, 29, 128, 129. "■=:::2^^.,. / /^ ^^ /3^- ^^ •^, .;'^' ^^ V ^ -"-' \- " -1-7* '->, •/ A \' \" .o°-< -0- .^ _. *,