THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOSANGEI^S 

 
 OTHER SHEEP
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 BROKEN EARTHENWARE 
 
 A Footnote in Narrative to Professor William 
 James's Study in Human Nature, ' The Varieties 
 of Religious Experience.' 
 
 Crown 87/<?. Cloth, 6s. Pofular Edition, Net, is. 
 
 150TH Thousand 
 
 ' I might as well call my book a footnote to his. I am 
 proud of the dedication and of the references, and I wish 
 the book a great success.' — Professor William James. 
 
 ' Read a book called " Broken Earthenware." . , . Your 
 sceptical friend has got to answer this.' — The Bishop of 
 London. 
 
 ' In " Broken Earthenware " Mr. Harold Begbie has 
 written a wonderful and convincing book. ... It is only 
 religion that is not in despair about this mass of profitless 
 evil dragging at the heels of progress — the religion which 
 still believes in miracle that can be of any avail.' — Daily 
 Chronicle. 
 
 ' . . . The examples of conversion Mr. Begbie selects from 
 this distiict are staggering; they upset all the ordinary 
 ideas as to the processes by which men and women are 
 brought from depravity to light. . . . The whole army of 
 armchaii theorists are indeed upset ; influences not dreamt 
 of — or at least not explained — in their philosophy are here 
 shown to be at work. There is no feature of modern life 
 more pronounced than the decay of belief in the super- 
 natural, but here miracles are disclosed that it seems impos- 
 sible to account for by any of the hypotheses that ordinarily 
 do duty. It is religion that is in operation, but of what 
 sort ? . . . What is needed in reference to such a book as 
 this is that readers should disniss all prepossessions, study 
 the astounding facts put before them, and then try impar- 
 tially to get at the inner meaning of these facts. The great 
 thing to keep in mind is that the facts are indisputable. . . . 
 The main interest of the book lies in its story of redemption. 
 Of that no summary can be given ; the story must be left to 
 speak for itself.' — The Aberdeen Free Press. 
 
 LONDON : HODDER AND STOUGHTON
 
 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 A STUDY OF THE PEOPLES OF INDIA, WITH 
 
 PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO THE COLLISION 
 
 BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND HINDUISM 
 
 HAROLD BEGBIE 
 
 AUTHOR OF ' BROKEN EARTHENWARE ' 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
 
 LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
 
 ' There is a lion in the way ; a lion is in the streets.' 
 
 Proverbs. 
 
 The lion is not so fierce as they paint him.' 
 
 Herbert.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 ' Ask of Me, and I shall give thee the heathen for 
 thine inheritance.' 
 
 Beyond the narrow boundaries of Europe extends 
 a vast territory thiclc-sown with a various population 
 of heathen humanity. The pulse of civilization, 
 throbbing so furiously in the West, seems over this 
 enormous area scarcely to beat at all. It is as if 
 evolution had circumscribed its energies to the 
 coasts of Christendom, as if humanity had chosen 
 Europe for its line of march and made Asia its 
 perpetual camp of rest, as if the West represented 
 the creative week-days of mankind and the East its 
 everlasting sabbath. 
 
 In Europe, amid the roar of wheels and in the 
 glare of the furnace, science seeks for truth, the 
 politician labours for millennium, religion preaches 
 struggle, and humanity wrestles for a destiny. In 
 Asia, where sleep and silence brood upon the 
 pensive earth, science sits with folded hands, the 
 politician has yet hardly opened his eyes, an 
 immemorial religion whispers to the soul to- 
 surrender, and humanity dreams of nothing but 
 annihilation for its final good. The stream of 
 existence floods through Europe turbulent and 
 
 31120S0
 
 VI 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 foaming to the invisible ocean of eternity; in Asia 
 the waters of life are like a stagnant fen. 
 
 Whether Europe has any responsibility towards 
 Asia, or whether Christianity owes any duty to 
 heathendom, East and West have met and the 
 hemispheres of geography and the zones of the 
 whole earth have become the one world of man. 
 This, for good or for evil, is accomplished; and 
 though the stream of European civilization has only 
 begun to stir the marge of Asian stagnation, 
 nevertheless the two waters have actually touched, 
 are now inevitably destined to commingle, and 
 either Europe must be swamped and overwhelmed 
 by Asia or Asia swept forward concurrently with 
 Europe by the same impulse of progress, the same 
 impulse of faith in ultimate perfection. 
 
 Awakening Asia is the new planet in the political 
 skies. And the supreme question for civilization is 
 whether she wake to the moral restraints and 
 sanctifying respects of the Christian religion, or to 
 the logical nihilism of an honest materialism. 
 
 There is a foolish notion abroad that Christianity 
 — Eastern in its origin — is the religion best fitted 
 for the West, and Hinduism — an idolatrous super- 
 stition surviving from the dark night of paganism 
 — the religion best fitted for an awakening India. 
 Those who cherish this notion not only ignore the 
 consideration that if Christianity be true it is true 
 for all mankind, but would have us think that an 
 Orient waking to the knowledge and culture of the 
 Occident will still satisfy its soul with the myth of 
 its own departed darkness. Far from this folly, is the
 
 PREFACE 
 
 vni 
 
 truth of things; and nothing could be more fatal 
 to civilization than to let a loose prejudice against 
 missionaries blind the eyes of Europe to this certain 
 truth, that Awakening Asia will either rise up in 
 the faith of Christianity or in the no-faith of a 
 truculent materialism. 
 
 Materialism in England is saturated through and 
 through with the ethical ideas of Jesus; our intel- 
 lectual agnosticism is moral with the inexpungable 
 leaven of Christianity. But in such a country as 
 India, men who grow out of the superstitions of 
 their ancestors, stand empty-souled in the midst of 
 the universe and have nothing in their minds but 
 the impulse of struggle for existence. Unless this 
 growth out of superstition be accompanied by a 
 growth in Christianity, calamity beyond the wit of 
 man to imagine must eventually overtake the human 
 race. Let these dense millions once believe that 
 morality is a social contrivance, that spiritual 
 responsibility is a mere invention of the priest, that 
 life has no immortal significance for the individual, 
 that existence here is nothing more serious or 
 complex than a struggle to gratify the sensual 
 appetites ; let this perfectly logical inference from 
 the dogmas of materialism once be drawn by the 
 cunning and inquisitive mind of the East, and at 
 once earth would witness that frightful spectacle of 
 which the virtuous man stands most in dread — the 
 human race organizing itself for evil. 
 
 In contrast to this threatening night of anarchy, 
 is the bright dawn that awaits the whole earth in an 
 East risen to the call of Christ. And no one who
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 has discussed religion with the peoples of India can 
 hesitate a single moment to believe that Christ is 
 as able to call the East as He is able to save and 
 maintain the West. I do not defend all missionaries 
 of the Christian religion, and as this book will show, 
 I disapprove profoundly of many methods hitherto 
 employed to convert the peoples of India; but my 
 reason is convinced that the true religion revealed 
 by Jesus in the East is a religion not only ' suitable ' 
 to India, and not only the one religion which can 
 elevate the millions of India, but that those millions 
 are both ready and eager to embrace the faith of 
 Christ when it is presented to them in the spirit of 
 its founder. In India, as still in Europe, 
 
 The hungry sheep look up and are not fed ; 
 
 but everywhere there are signs that the Little 
 Flock is enlarging its fold, that the Other Sheep 
 are being called, and that Christ will yet draw- 
 All Men unto Him. The pages which follow 
 demonstrate the truth of this assertion. 
 
 It is as well perhaps that I should begin by offering 
 a propitiatory sacrifice to those stern and minatory 
 guardians of the Public Intellect who, not without 
 good reason, clap damnation on any book of 
 foreign travel which seems to them shot from the 
 press with the imprint of a return-ticket visible and 
 offensive on its title page. And I cannot better 
 placate these critics, nor more effectually get the 
 interest and curiosity of my readers, than by fur- 
 nishing an account of the strange and romantic 
 person in whose company I made most of my
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 journeys and whose matchless knowledge of the 
 peoples of India was laid frankly and unsparingly 
 open to me by the generous hand of affectionate 
 friendship. 
 
 It is not the length of time he spends in a country, 
 but rather the people he meets and the sympathy 
 he brings to an understanding of the new environ- 
 ment, which most help the inquiring traveller to 
 form a right judgment and best enable him to 
 present a faithful account of his exploration. 
 
 My credentials are the gentleman whom I now 
 present to my readers under his Indian name of 
 Fakir Singh. No one, I believe, is better acquainted 
 with the mind and soul of India; no one has ever 
 penetrated further into the holy of holies of her 
 immemorial solitude and seclusion; no one can 
 pretend to a knowledge anything like so intimate 
 and sympathetic of her inner life, her human heart, 
 and her troubled soul. When he is describing the 
 peoples of India, one exclaims — ' ce n'est plus la 
 representation de la vie, c'est la vie meme, la vie 
 humaine palpitante et fr^missante, et non pas 
 seulement la vie ext^rieure, mais la vie interieure, 
 la vie myst^rieuse de I'ame.' For he is neither a 
 blundering theosophist shut up in a tower with a 
 few Indian philosophers as ignorant of Sanskrit as 
 of physical science, nor yet a British Official pes- 
 tered out of his life by incessant correspondence 
 and fenced about by the necessary pomp and cir- 
 cumstance of his position ; far from all this, he is 
 an amiable scholar, a curious inquirer, and a gentle, 
 earnest Christian, wandering into the villages and
 
 X PREFACE 
 
 homes of the peoples, sitting under their trees with 
 them, sharing their simple food, speaking their 
 languages like one of themselves, observing their 
 customs as naturally as if he had been born into 
 them, and drawing from them their fullest con- 
 fidence and their entire faith by means of a 
 sympathy only perfect because it is spiritually and 
 intellectually sincere. 
 
 This unique person, then, is at once the inspira- 
 tion and warrant of my book. To make his 
 acquaintance was one of the chief enthusiasms with 
 which I journeyed Eastwards to discover the place 
 of Christianity in India; and, although I do not 
 agree with all he has to say, and although I gained 
 from other men, such as Sir George Clarke, Sir 
 John Hewett, and Sir Louis Dane, much striking 
 and useful information, and although many of the 
 opinions I express in this book may give even pain 
 to the amiable Fakir, still, gratefully do 1 acknow- 
 ledge that it is this extraordinary man who brought 
 me nearest to the heart of India and who seems to 
 me now the fittest propitiation that I can offer at 
 the altar of judgment.
 
 CONTENTS 
 I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Fakir Singh i 
 
 II 
 The Children of India 15 
 
 III 
 The Temple of Terror 40 
 
 IV 
 Two Pandals 58 
 
 V 
 
 The Devil-Dancer ........ 76 
 
 VI 
 The Witch 86 
 
 VII 
 Devil-Priests 97 
 
 VIII 
 Respectable Hinduism 124 
 
 IX 
 The Laundry of Souls . , 131 
 
 X 
 The Collision 150
 
 xii CONTENTS 
 
 ^^ PAGE 
 
 What It Costs i8o • 
 
 XII %-■ 
 
 De Profundis ig6 
 
 XIII 
 Buddha-Land 211 
 
 XIV 
 Restoration 238 
 
 XV 
 The Bhils 249 
 
 XVI 
 The Doms 269 
 
 XVII 
 The Bhatus and a Brigadier 297 
 
 XVIII 
 The Haburas and a Chokidah 312 
 
 XIX 
 The Lion in the Way 320 
 
 XX 
 The New Birth 333 
 
 Notes 340
 
 FAKIR SINGH 
 
 There is no man living, perhaps, whose career bears 
 so strong a resemblance to the history of Don 
 Quixote as the turbaned and dhotied Englishman 
 in India known as Fakir Singh. And it is no mere 
 caprice of fancy which sees in his long, lean, and 
 cadaverous countenance, with its strained expression 
 of the dreamer and its dignified note of spiritual 
 austerity, a likeness, a remarkable and compelling 
 likeness, to the great gentleman of La Mancha. 
 
 Fakir Singh, till middle life, was a Mr. Tucker, 
 of the Indian Civil Service. Born of pious parents, 
 he grew up in the atmosphere of Victorian Evan- 
 gelicalism, and like so many members of the Civil 
 Service in those days, gave up the time of his leisure 
 to promoting a knowledge of Christianity among the 
 natives of his district. He was a great Sahib 
 administering justice, faithfully performing the 
 duties of his office, and teaching the heathen from 
 his place of overlord the story of Christ and the 
 discipline of the Church. 
 
 Just as the reading of many books on chivalry 
 turned the brain of Don Quixote and made him a 
 knight-errant as nearly Christlike as any figure in 
 the field of art, so the reading of many treatises and 
 tracts on religion worked upon the heart and soul 
 of our Indian Civil Servant till he abandoned the
 
 2 FAKIR SINGH 
 
 common ways of life and became at last as romantic 
 a knight-errant of Christianity as ever begged his 
 bread and slept under the stars. A single sermon 
 in a journal published by the Salvation Army in 
 London was this good gentleman's culminating 
 Feliciano de Silva. 'Here is the true light!' 
 he exclaimed, and with new joy in his heart set 
 himself to read the little newspaper from beginning 
 to end. 
 
 Instead of discussions on dogma, instead of painful 
 exegesis and mournful lamentations on the faithless- 
 ness of that generation, in this humble journal he 
 found story after story of triumph and conquest — 
 narrations of souls rescued from the edge of ruin 
 and spirits dragged from perdition by the hands 
 of rejoicing faith. It was like a trumpet to his 
 soul. Straightway he applied for leave, set sail for 
 England, and attended the first possible meeting of 
 the Salvation Army, at which General Booth was 
 speaking. 
 
 The eloquence of the old General, and the mag- 
 netism of that remarkable personality, fired him to 
 the pitch of enthusiasm. The call for self-sacrifice 
 was like a music in his heart. The thought of battle 
 against sin, sorrow, and ignorance worked like a 
 madness in his brain. He presented himself before 
 General Booth after the meeting and stated his 
 desire to become a Salvationist. He was asked to 
 call at the Headquarters of the Salvation Army on 
 the following day. He found himself cautiously 
 received. The General hesitated to accept the sacri- 
 fice. In a few years' time the volunteer, a rather 
 fine-looking gentleman, would be entitled to his 
 pension. Surely it was better to wait — better that 
 he should help the Salvation Army as a friend and 
 see when the day came for retirement whether he
 
 FAKIR SINGH 3 
 
 was still willing to bear the hard life and unyielding 
 discipline of a soldier. This consideration had to 
 be weighed. But not for long. The volunteer 
 called again. ' I have retired from the Civil Service,' 
 he announced; ' I am now penniless; you must take 
 me; there is no one else to whom I can go.' 
 
 To win India for Christianity was the master- 
 thought of this Fakir who had sacrificed place and 
 pension for his religion. And with this master- 
 thought there beat upon his brain the saying of 
 Keshab Chandar Sen, founder of the Brahmo Samaj, 
 that never would India surrender to Christ so long 
 as the Saviour of the white races appeared before 
 her peoples in European dress. 
 
 The wise and statesmanlike views of General Booth 
 harmonized with the convictions of the Fakir. India, 
 if she wanted the Salvation Army, must pay for 
 the Salvation Army. No mission could be con- 
 sidered safe which depended upon foreign countries 
 for its support. Anything in the nature of buying 
 converts was to be avoided. India must be taught 
 to feel that Christianity was a blessing passionately 
 to be sought and gratefully to be received, something 
 for which they must be ready to make sacrifices and 
 endure persecution. The necessity for self-support 
 was the first and chief consideration ; and this con- 
 sideration led to the decision, that whatever system 
 was introduced it must be sufficiently inexpensive to 
 succeed among the poor and humble classes of India. 
 
 Accordingly, the Fakir decided, with the blessing 
 of his General, to adopt the native dress, to follow 
 native customs, and in everything to bring the 
 mission of the Salvation Army into as close a 
 correspondence with the traditions, habits, and 
 manners of India as the nature of Christianity 
 would allow.
 
 4 FAKIR SINGH 
 
 At first ofificial India was filled with consternation 
 at the news of an invasion by the Salvationists. 
 The Fakir had scarce landed in Bombay before he 
 was arrested and cast into prison. It was held that 
 the methods of the Salvation Army would imperil 
 the prestige of the ruling race, that its bands and 
 street-corner preaching would lead to riots among 
 the conflicting peoples of the Empire. Men in high 
 office, who are now the friends and warm admirers 
 of the Fakir, looked with genuine horror and alarm 
 at this new disturbance of India's difficult peace. 
 
 But when the first storm had abated, our Don 
 Quixote set out alone on a journey of exploration, 
 to judge how best the mission of the Salvation 
 Army might be set in motion for the good and 
 blessing of India. ' I had in my soul,' he told me, 
 * a desperate determination to break down at any 
 and every cost all barriers that divided us from the 
 peoples of India.' 
 
 His equipment was meagre. Clothed in turban 
 and dhoti, with a sack for his bedding and a small 
 tin box for his papers, he set out barefoot and 
 unaccompanied on a journey as romantic and critical 
 as anything adventured by the Knight of the Rueful 
 Countenance. He is well acquainted with Indian 
 customs, he speaks most of the languages and 
 dialects, and he has to perfection that exquisite 
 sense of courtesy and thoughtfulness which alone 
 can ensure the European from giving offence to the 
 always suspicious and self-conscious native mind. 
 But how great the plunge and how hazardous the 
 venture ! He was a Sahib and the son of a Sahib. 
 Such a Sahib wandering about the country barefoot 
 and in native dress, begging his curry and rice at 
 the door of the peasants, sleeping under the shade 
 of village trees, and speaking of Christ and the new
 
 FAKIR SINGH 5 
 
 life of conversion to tiie water-drawers at the well 
 and the reapers in the rice-field, might indeed 
 provoke curiosity and attract the multitude; but 
 what privation and discomfort he must endure, what 
 risks of disease and death he must encounter, and 
 what opposition, ridicule, and contempt he must 
 expect from the people of his own race and traditions. 
 Nevertheless, he had in his soul that desperate deter- 
 mination to break down at any and every cost all 
 barriers that divide us from the peoples of India; 
 and he was fired and exhilarated by the thought 
 that at last Christ should appear before Easterns 
 as an Eastern, and the religion of Christ reach 
 to their souls not as an alien patronage of the 
 ruling race, but as a liberation and a blessing 
 from God. 
 
 One of the first places he visited was Naini Tal, 
 and scarcely had he got to the Indian Dharamsala, 
 or rest-house, before a policeman appeared with a 
 warrant for his arrest. He was taken before the 
 young magistrate who had issued the order, probably 
 as a jest, and after answering a few questions was 
 set at liberty. The superior officer of the young 
 magistrate, who was a sincere Christian, hearing of 
 this arrest became very indignant, severely repri- 
 manded his subordinate, and sent the Fakir a dona- 
 tion of three hundred rupees. Thus harried and 
 thus encouraged, the barefoot missionary passed to 
 Almorah, where his fame had preceded him, and 
 where he found himself honourably welcomed by 
 the Sadr Amin, one of the leading Hindus of the 
 place, who begged him to be his guest. The Fakir 
 acknowledged the graciousness of the invitation, but 
 reminded the Hindu that he was of such a high caste 
 that the low caste people of the place would not be 
 able to approach the Fakir did he accept the great
 
 6 FAKIR SINGH 
 
 man's hospitality. But to this the Sadr Amin 
 replied : — 
 
 Zat pat puchhe nako 
 
 Jo Har Ko bhaje, so Har Ka ho ; 
 
 which being interpreted means, * Let no one ask 
 his caste; he who worships God belongs to God.' 
 So the invitation was accepted. People thronged 
 to the house, questions were asked and answered, 
 the religion of Christ was presented in its supremest 
 aspect as liberation from sin, and perhaps for the 
 first time in that place the animosities and antipathies 
 both of religion and race w'ere entirely forgotten in 
 the unifying apprehension of a universal God. For 
 the return journey to Naini Tal, the Sadr Amin 
 insisted upon lending the Fakir a pony, and not 
 only rode the whole way at his side, but acted as 
 his host when the town was reached. Moreover, 
 hearing that at an English meeting a hundred and 
 one rupees had been subscribed for the Salvation 
 Army, he said : ' We, too, must have a meeting in 
 my house, and we also will have a collection.' His 
 joy was excessive when he found that the gifts of 
 the thronging crowd in his house surpassed the 
 subscription of the English meeting by two rupees. 
 Years afterwards General Booth was in Calcutta, 
 and a leading English official mentioned to him a 
 conversation he had had with the Sadr Amin soon 
 after this visit of the Fakir. ' Sadr Amin Sahib,' 
 he said, ' you have always been regarded as a 
 staunch Hindu, and as one having no sympathy 
 with Christianity; how is it, then, that you received 
 this Salvationist into your house and even presided 
 for him at his meeting?' 'Sahib,' was the reply, 
 ' had I seen Christianity such as this before, I 
 should myself have been a Christian.'
 
 FAKIR SINGH 7 
 
 At Batala, one of his next stopping-places, our 
 Fakir was accosted by a Hindu in the streets who 
 asked him to what rehgion he belonged. * To the 
 Jiwan-Mukti Pant — the Get-Saved- While-You- Are 
 Alive religion,' was the good-natured reply. ' Where 
 are you going to get food?' asked the Hindu. 
 'God will provide,' answered the Fakir. 'Come to 
 my house; honour me by coming,' said the Hindu 
 eagerly. The Fakir raised the same objection as in 
 Almorah. ' But my house shall be open to all, 
 none shall be turned away,' replied the high-caste 
 Hindu, and the invitation being accepted he proved 
 as good as his word. The house was soon packed 
 to the doors and beyond. The people watched the 
 Sahib eating his meal with his fingers from the 
 plantain leaf on which it was served ; and when 
 the necessary mouth-washing and finger-washing 
 were concluded, they asked for some ' Gyan,' or 
 religious instruction. 
 
 The people listened with intense interest. There, 
 like one of themselves, sat the white Fakir who had 
 eaten after their custom, who wore their dress, and 
 who spoke their language eloquently and without 
 check. He brought no charge against their 
 own religion, he made no mock of their gods and 
 goddesses, he expressed no anger against their 
 priests. But with his pale face full of a solemn 
 earnestness, his strained eyes shining with enthu- 
 siasm for his Christ, he told of a religion so exactly 
 fitted to their needs, so entirely and wonderfully 
 Eastern in its spirit, that they marvelled to think 
 it was Christianity — the religion of the demons who 
 take life and eat the flesh of pigs.* 
 
 The heart of all Indian religions is the desire 
 for Liberation. Persuaded by an immemorial 
 * Europeans are widely known among Indians as ' demons '
 
 8 FAKIR SINGH 
 
 pessimism that existence is always accompanied by 
 pain, they Hsten eagerly to the Brahman or the 
 Buddhist who teaches them how to escape from the 
 curse of life. It is this inherited and unalterable 
 conviction of the Eastern mind which the Fakir 
 first seized upon and has ever afterwards used for 
 bringing home to the heart and brain of India the 
 religion of Christ. The word Salvation becomes 
 with him the Indian word for Liberation. The 
 religion of Christ is presented as a Liberation, and 
 not as a Liberation from an existence incurably 
 bad, but from the sins and ignorances which make 
 that existence seem incurably bad. It is not a 
 Liberation from life, but a Liberation from despair, 
 death, and something worse : it is not a Liberation 
 into annihilation, but a Liberation into everlasting 
 joy and felicity; and, moreover, it is not a Libera- 
 tion painfully to be earned beyond the grave, but a 
 Liberation gratefully and joyfully to be experienced 
 in the present world. It is as Life, and as Life 
 More Abundantly, that the white Fakir insists 
 upon the Liberation of Christianity. 
 
 In this manner he was speaking to the great 
 crowd in the Hindu's house at Batala, when voices 
 were suddenly heard at the door and the place 
 became invaded by a body of native Christians 
 from a neighbouring Mission. They had heard of 
 the Fakir's arrival, and had come with a request 
 that he would visi.t them. As chance would have 
 it, an aunt of the Fakir was working in this Mission, 
 the Miss Tucker known to readers of that genera- 
 tion as ' A.L.O.E.' It was difficult, therefore, for 
 the solitary to refuse the invitation. But before 
 setting out for the Mission, he retired to the shade 
 of a tree and there held converse with some hundreds 
 of Hindus and Muhamadans, while his former
 
 FAKIR SINGH 9 
 
 friends hurried to the bazaar and returned with 
 sweetmeats and milk for his refreshment. When 
 he did set out in the evening for the Mission, it was 
 in the company of over two hundred Indians who 
 went with him all the way, a mile beyond the city 
 walls, and remained for a meeting which astonished 
 and delighted the heart of the orthodox Miss 
 Tucker. 
 
 Thus cheered and encouraged, our traveller jour- 
 neyed to Amritsar, the holy city of the Sikhs. ' It 
 was dark when I left the train,' he told me. ' I 
 walked through the Hall Darwaza, or gateway of 
 the city, which was named after Colonel Hall, 
 my official superior when I was first appointed to 
 Amritsar as a young civilian. I had not proceeded 
 far when a Sikh soldier, who had been a fellow- 
 passenger in the train, came running after me and 
 inquired where I intended to pass the night. " Under 
 some tree," I told him; " I am even now searching 
 for such a place." " There is no need for that," 
 said the soldier; "I have a friend at the Golden 
 Temple, one of the priests; gladly he will receive 
 you." I was delighted at the idea of sleeping in 
 the shadow of the Golden Temple, and cheerfully 
 accepted the soldier's invitation. The priest received 
 us very cordially, and insisted upon my having a 
 charpoy, or string-bed, for the night, though I 
 assured him that the floor would do quite well. A 
 Muhamadan merchant, who had known me ten 
 years before, when I was an Assistant-Commissioner 
 in the station, had joined us on the way, and now 
 went off to the bazaar and brought some milk plenti- 
 fully sweetened with sugar. As he carried it with 
 his own hands through the streets, his tears dropped 
 into it; and he afterwards told me with what deep 
 emotion he watched me raise to my lips the drink
 
 10 FAKIR SINGH 
 
 watered by the tears of his soul. On the following 
 morning a space was cleared for me in one of the 
 large rooms where the Granth Sahib, or sacred book 
 of the Sikhs, was usually read. This was not in 
 the main temple, but in one of the side buildings 
 attached to it, near the priest's quarters where I 
 had been accommodated for the night. It was a 
 Sunday morning. You may imagine my feelings 
 as I addressed an audience of Sikhs in the name of 
 Christ at the very heart and centre of the Sikh 
 religion. Towards noon a carriage drew up, and 
 Babu Rallia Ram, a Christian lawyer whom I had 
 known well in the past, appeared to claim me as 
 his guest. My Sikh hosts, however, were unwilling 
 to surrender me, and they only agreed that I should 
 go for two hours on a visit to my friend and his 
 family, on condition that I returned and held a 
 meeting in the Guru ka bagh, the garden attached 
 to the temple. I went away with my friend, who 
 was astonished to find me in the Golden Temple, 
 and returned to the Sikhs according to my word. 
 There were several hundreds waiting for me, and a 
 move was made to displace one of the priests from 
 his low pulpit where he was reading the Granth 
 Sahib. I saw that it would hurt his feelings to be 
 supplanted, and asked whether another place could 
 not be found, I was conducted to an empty talao 
 or tank, the steps of which made an excellent 
 auditorium, and there we held a most interesting 
 meeting. Never before, and never since, I believe, 
 has a Christian been allowed this privilege. The 
 romance of it must strike the dullest. The signi- 
 ficance of it should surely influence the wise. This 
 one incident furnishes, I am sure, justification, if 
 justification is necessary, for our adoption of Indian 
 costume and methods. Here was the Salvation
 
 FAKIR SINGH ii 
 
 Army installed in the very heart and headquarters 
 of Sikhism, not only as an honoured guest, but as 
 a teacher of religion. When that evening I knelt in 
 prayer at the priest's quarters there were others who 
 knelt with me and accepted the Way, the Truth, and 
 the Life. What became of them, or whether they 
 remained faithful, I do not know; but round 
 Amritsar and Batala at the present day we have 
 some of our most successful and encouraging work. 
 Our followers there are certainly numbered by 
 thousands.' 
 
 It was never intended, he tells me, that the fakir 
 system should be generally adopted, but it was 
 necessary to cross the dividing line and discover the 
 best way of reaching the heart of India. Not all 
 the officers of the Salvation Army, but many of 
 them in those pioneer days begged their food, slept 
 in the open air, and trusted to the hospitality of 
 the people for their daily bread. I have talked with 
 several of these people, men and women, and they 
 one and all speak with delight of those hard and 
 difficult days of pioneering. Some of these people, 
 particularly the women, made a profound impression 
 upon me, and one was touched by their almost 
 passionate love for the Indian peoples, against whom 
 they never speak a word of harm. The work done 
 by some of them, perhaps, exceeds the accomplish- 
 ment of Fakir Singh, and it would be one of the most 
 romantic books in the world that told their story 
 in the full.* But they are content to toil, nameless 
 and very often solitary, and the one earthly reward 
 they seek is the love and confidence of the childlike 
 peoples of India. In this way a close intimacy has 
 been established by all of them with the various 
 races; and in the case of Fakir Singh a knowledge 
 * See Note, page 340
 
 12 FAKIR SINGH 
 
 of the people, always remarkable and profound, 
 has become probably as absolute and unique as is 
 possible to any European mind. 
 
 These brief details from the romantic life of 
 Fakir Singh at the beginning of his great adventure, 
 will, I hope, persuade the reader that I have enjoyed 
 unusual opportunities for penetrating behind the 
 veil of Indian mystery. For I have travelled from 
 one end of India to the other in his company. I 
 have dipped my hand into his wayside bowl of curry 
 and rice; I have walked with him through palm 
 forests in Southern India, shared the hospitality of 
 his roof in the midst of Himalayan snows; listened 
 to his stories, questioned him, stood at his elbows 
 on the platforms of railway stations and in the 
 streets of cities, attended his public meetings in 
 villages and towns, and on a hundred occasions 
 enjoyed the frank and pleasant intimacy of his 
 conversation. Other men I have met in India, 
 greater intellects and more powerful personalities, 
 whose acquaintance with Indian thought is at 
 once catholic and sympathetic; but, as I said 
 before, none could give me so close and intimate 
 a knowledge of the real and human India as this 
 wandering Don Quixote of religion. Therefore, 
 though I am conscious of many disagreements with 
 him, it is only of him I think when seeking to 
 placate my critics and winning for myself the con- 
 fidence of my readers. 
 
 Would that I had but a little of the genius of 
 Cervantes that I might make the reader feel the 
 charm and graciousness of this noble gentleman, 
 whose perfect balance of laughter and tears, whose 
 exact symmetry of pathos and comedy, whose nice 
 equivalence of sanity and madness make him true 
 brother of Don Quixote. In the manner of his
 
 FAKIR SINGH 13 
 
 life a fanatic, there is nothing in his soul of the 
 fanatic's inhumanity. The severity of his visage 
 is lightened by a frequent smile, and occasional 
 bursts of good laughter witness to a spirit of 
 tolerance, good-nature, and cheerful benevolence 
 such as you will never find in a thoroughbred bigot. 
 Full of enthusiasm, for ever dreaming dreams and 
 projecting Utopias, he is at the same time a calm 
 and wise administrator, trusted, respected, and 
 consulted by some of the very first men in India 
 on matters needing a cool head and a judicious 
 temperament. He has the facts and figures of India 
 at his fingers-ends; he could write a blue-book on 
 the weaving-industry, silkworms, and irrigation; 
 and very easily and pleasantly, believe me, he 
 could keep you up to the small hours of the morning 
 talking about the various mulberries suitable for 
 India, the need for a crusade against plague- 
 spreading rats, the wisdom of planting the right 
 kind of eucalyptus in districts infected by malaria, 
 and the utility of cassava as a drought-resisting 
 plant which provides a wholesome food (tapioca) 
 both for men and animals. But all through the 
 march of these industrial and political ideas, one 
 is conscious in him above everything else of the 
 idealist who has made the great sacrifice, of the 
 dreamer who has seen a vision, and of the saint 
 hungering and thirsting for the salvation of 
 mankind. He is a man busied about many things, 
 but centred in the reality of existence. He rides 
 forth in turban and dhoti on the Rozinante of 
 Salvationism to perform prodigies of valour and 
 to win against all the giants of this world no 
 less a kingdom than India; but, in spite of his 
 strange dress and the passion of his challenge, 
 there is in his heart nothing more than a great
 
 14 FAKIR SINGH 
 
 love for humanity and the simple faith of a little 
 child. 
 
 He is such a man who founds no empires and 
 bequeathes no throne, but who inspires the affection 
 of friends and the respect of enemies, and leaves 
 behind him a memory of the noblest virtue and the 
 purest heroism.
 
 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 
 
 It is an experience of unforgettable enchantment to 
 pass for the first time from the hurly of England's 
 wintry skies to the calm azure and pellucid beauty 
 of the East. A blinding snowstorm and bitter cold 
 at Brindisi, a melancholy passage through leaden 
 seas and drenching rain to Port Said, and then, 
 suddenly, as if half the world had dropped away 
 behind one— air that is like melted pearls, a sky 
 blue as forget-me-nots, a sun red-gold as the core 
 of a furnace, and stillness 
 
 .... quiet as a Nun 
 Breathless with adoration. 
 
 It is as though a magician had translated one in 
 sleep to some delicious palace of ensorcellment in 
 the upper air. Through the long corridor of the 
 Suez Canal, with its tapestries of tawny desert and 
 sombre palms and caravans of camels, this magician 
 leads the wondering traveller into the wide gallery 
 of the Red Sea, haunted by ghosts of Israelites and 
 murmurous with the wheels of Pharaoh's chariots. 
 Along this gallery whispering of the past, the 
 traveller is led to the sunset curtain of Aden, which 
 the magician draws to one side, disclosing the 
 glimmering atrium of the Arabian Sea. And now 
 across this vast and lovely vestibule, whose roof at 
 night burns with the brightest stars, and where the
 
 i6 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 
 
 Southern Cross hangs like a window into heaven 
 above the verge of the moonlit mosaic of the sea, 
 drawing always more joy into his heart and feeling 
 himself more and more the victim of hallucination, 
 the traveller moves into bluer waters and under 
 more burning skies, till he comes at last to the 
 Gateway of the Kingdom of Dreams, and finds 
 himself standing on the shore of a New World. 
 
 Everything is different. The air is heavy with a 
 new fragrance. The traveller is conscious, in a 
 drowsy somnambulism, of a breathing and a scent, 
 of a glamour and a heat, which are new to him and 
 make a strange atmosphere for his soul. 
 
 He is aware of change absolute and complete, both 
 in the heavens and in the various humanity passing 
 before his eyes like figures in a dream. The sun, 
 little more intolerable than the hottest of our summer 
 days, the same sun that was pleasant and innocuous 
 in Egypt, has here a devil and is full of peril for 
 the human brain. It dazzles the white walls of the 
 houses, it burns upon the overhead wires of electric 
 trams, it glows on the cobbles of the streets, it blazes 
 on the dark leaves and hanging dusty roots of the 
 banyan tree — and its light is not the jovial gladness 
 of rejoicing summer, but the anger of hostility and 
 the menace of madness. You do not rejoice in this 
 beautiful sun, you fear it and you may even come 
 to hate it. 
 
 But this fear of the sun is forgotten in the new 
 and insistent witchery of India's humanity. The 
 traveller finds himself staring and open-mouthed, 
 like a child at a puppet show. He sees a beautiful 
 city of noble architecture and spacious streets 
 occupied and possessed by such strange and incon- 
 gruous people that their seriousness and solemnity 
 strike him at first as a wonderful jest. It is not at
 
 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 17 
 
 all with offence to the Indians, but rather as a 
 stricture on the parochialism of the traveller, that 
 I compare this first sensation of amused astonish- 
 ment to the feeling of the ridiculous which over- 
 takes a visitor to zoological gardens. One laughs 
 at solemn giraffes, serious pelicans, and disdainful 
 ostriches chiefly because they are not laughing 
 self-consciously at themselves. ' What are you 
 laughing at?' deinanded an ugly bus driver of a 
 giggling cabman. ' What ! don't you ever laugh 
 when you look in the glass?' was the rejoinder, 
 ending in the chastening reproof — ' why, a joke's 
 thrown away on you.' * Un paysage,' says Amiel, 
 'est un etat d'ame.' Coleridge teaches that the 
 passion and the life of outward forms have their 
 fountains in the human soul. If the traveller in 
 India on his first shock of astonishment wonder 
 why the remarkable people crowding the streets and 
 thronging the open shops are not smiling at their 
 own absurdity, it is manifestly because he is centred 
 in his insularity and blinded by his habituated 
 Westernism. 
 
 But he may surely be excused for this first 
 gaucherie. To begin with there is the question of 
 hats. In Europe eccentricity in head-dress is the 
 exclusive province of women ; in India it belongs 
 solely to men. The little, thin-armed, straight- 
 legged women of India go by without hats of any 
 kind, either exposing their coco-nut-oiled black hair 
 entirely to the blaze of the sun, or else drawing 
 half-way over their heads a portion of the cloth 
 which only partially conceals their bodies. On the 
 other hand, the good gentlemen of India sport every 
 kind of hat imaginable. The old and bespectacled 
 Parsi goes by in a tall, brimless, and patent-leather 
 erection which strikes a compromise between the
 
 i8 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 
 
 mitre of a bishop and a domestic coal-scuttle stood 
 upon its end ; the younger and frock-coated Parsi 
 saunters along under a little dove-coloured dome like 
 a pudding-basin with just a narrow pediment of fur 
 for the rim. Here comes a bearded Muhamadan 
 with a turban so huge that one thinks at first he is 
 a dhobi carrying home somebody's washing on his 
 head; and here comes a jolly little fat Hindu wearing 
 a scarlet turban no bigger than the pad affected by 
 our peripatetic adventurers in muffins and crumpets. 
 Between these two sizes and shapes in turbans, you 
 see on the heads of the unconscious people a hundred 
 fantastic contrivances in swaddling-cloth of every 
 colour under the sun. If all the tulips in Kew 
 Gardens started to walk about at a level of five feet 
 and a few inches from the ground, really they would 
 not make so notable a chiaroscuro as the turbans of 
 an Indian city. 
 
 In addition to the turbans you have the fez of 
 the cab-driver, the chocolate-coloured skull cap of 
 the Kashmiri, the flat fur roll and flowing drapery 
 of the Dervish, the comical wide-brimmed straw hat 
 of the Chinaman, the sort of busby or bearskin of 
 the hillman, the embroidered smoking-cap of the 
 Muhamadan, the polo-cap of the Babu, and the 
 mountainous rust-coloured natural hair of the men- 
 dicant and the pilgrim. Moreover, these masculine 
 adornments of the head are only a detail in the 
 general raiment of the peoples, which is so diverse 
 and many-coloured that it is like a pageant to 
 stand at any street corner or to sit at any window 
 of the city. 
 
 Most of the people go barefoot, and the clothing 
 of a vast multitude of them suggests nothing more 
 complicated than a bathing costume topped by a 
 towel round the head. The garments of the women
 
 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 19 
 
 reach a little below the knees, leave the arms naked, 
 and disclose a part of the sides ; the colours of 
 these saris are always beautiful and becoming, and 
 never give the most exacting taste the smallest 
 sense of vulgarity or absurdity. Many of the men 
 wear Western clothes, but some of them as a con- 
 cession to Oriental feeling leave the front flap of 
 their linen shirts hanging outside, like a sporan, 
 from under their waistcoats. Parsis affect broad- 
 cloth, or alpaca frock coat and linen trousers, but 
 consider a cravat either a superfluity or a w-anton 
 obscuration of a gilded collar-stud. The true 
 native, however, sticks to his handsome robes or 
 his becoming dhoti, and the dazzling streets of the 
 cities are made joyful and beautiful by these splendid 
 colours and these gorgeous folds. Nothing can 
 exceed in dignity the figure of a tall Mussulman, 
 with flowing beard and eagle eyes, clad from head 
 to foot in shimmering white, standing on the steps 
 of a mosque and fresh from his meditations with 
 Allah surveying the toy-like and doll's-house effect 
 of a native bazaar. And nothing that I have ever 
 seen excels in beauty the figure of a Hindu woman 
 dressed in a gold-edged robe of royal blue crossing 
 a green rice-field with one chocolate-coloured arm 
 raised to support a brazen vessel on her head, the 
 other swinging, sun-glinted, at her side, with as 
 much strength as dignity. Of a truth there is 
 beauty and nobility among these peoples as w^ell 
 as drollery and childishness; but it is not at first 
 that one perceives the glory of their vestments. It 
 is easier for the curious European to laugh at the 
 scarlet-dyed beard of an old copper-coloured gentle- 
 man incessantly munching nuts while he squats 
 listening on the open-air counter of his shop to the 
 reading of a religious book by a spectacled friend
 
 20 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 
 
 with a tag of hair projecting like a rat's tail from 
 the back of his shaven head, than to admire the 
 beauty of the total pageant. 
 
 Perhaps it is the blending of dignity and absurdity 
 which leaves the final impression on a traveller's 
 mind and finds him with mixed feelings when he 
 comes to sort his ideas. For instance, there is a 
 handsome tree-shaded road in Bombay, running 
 between gardens and the sea, where the rich and 
 fashionable take the air from five to eight o'clock 
 of an evening, and where you may see more 
 splendour in five minutes than any capital of 
 Europe could show you in a week; here you may 
 behold in the midst of motor cars and lordly 
 chariots a fine brougham drawn by a pair of tall 
 horses, with two flunkeys on the box and two 
 flunkeys at the back, carrying in its drab-lined 
 interior a Parsi lady dressed in the most delicate 
 pale silks imaginable, who, leaning back on her 
 cushions, rests a naked biscuit-coloured foot on the 
 ledge of the door, every toe twinkling in the sun. 
 And I think that if one looks long enough there is 
 always a humorous nakedness protruding some- 
 where or another from the pomp and glory of the 
 gorgeous East. 
 
 Above and beyond, infinitely beyond the interest 
 of the clothes, is the interest of Eastern physiog- 
 nomy. The traveller soon learns the truth of a 
 statement made by Sir Bamfylde Fuller in his 
 ' Studies of Indian Life and Sentiment,' that it 
 requires actual experience to realize the astounding 
 truth that ' the population of a district or a 
 town is a collection of different nationalities — almost 
 different species — of mankind.' This same author 
 declares that it is hardly too much to say that ' the 
 inhabitants of India are differentiated into over
 
 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 21 
 
 two thousand species of mankind, which in the 
 physical relations of life have as little in common 
 as the inmates of a zoological garden.' You 
 cannot imagine, unless you have visited India 
 and really studied the peoples, how this wonderful 
 and amazing diversity contributes to the delight 
 and interest of the country. The traveller, new to 
 this crowding pageant of humanity, is not a calm 
 and critical observer among one people solid in a 
 single nationalism, but is a drifting and bewildered 
 unit shouldered and jostled by over two thousand 
 species of humanity, each separated from the other 
 by unbridgeable gulfs of thought and feeling. His 
 politeness to one is almost an affront to a hundred 
 others; his familiarity with the language of one is 
 but double-dutch to the rest. The Muhamadans 
 are divided into sects that are at sword's point with 
 one another; the Hindus are multiplied into many 
 nations and hundreds of castes; there is schism 
 among the Buddhists; and the hills of the north 
 are inhabited by half-savage and entirely savage 
 peoples each as separate and distinct from the other 
 as all are separate and distinct from the peoples of 
 the plains. With an area only a little more than 
 half that of Australasia, India and Ceylon carry 
 under the stars a fifth of the entire human race, and 
 this fifth, packed into so small a compass, is divided 
 into over two thousand species of mankind, utters its 
 thoughts in twenty main languages and over five 
 hundred differing dialects, and is infinitely more 
 split up and fragmentary than all the peoples of 
 Europe, both in traditions and the common habits 
 of daily life. 
 
 This astonishing variety appears in the faces of 
 the peoples. To the European, one Japanese is as 
 like another Japanese as one sheep is like another
 
 22 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 
 
 sheep; but to the European, even in the first 
 hours of his arrival on Indian soil, the inhabitants 
 stand out from each other with a difference as 
 complete as that which separates horses from dogs, 
 or thrushes from chaffinches. The earliest impression 
 is made by the strange paint marks on the foreheads 
 of these peoples. He sees men with three white 
 bars across the brow, like a hurdle; others with two 
 upright strokes of white running up to the hair; 
 others with two similar upright strokes of white, 
 but divided by a significant line of vermilion ; 
 others with foreheads plastered all over with grey 
 ash; and still others with a spot of scarlet between 
 the eyebrows, like a holly-berry or a particularly 
 jovial wart. In naked savages these marks would 
 appear natural or seemly ; but on the foreheads of 
 serious gentlemen in European clothes or venerable, 
 benign and bearded Father Abrahams in noble 
 turbans and robes of apostolic grandeur, they have 
 a most bizarre and disturbing effect. Soon, however, 
 the eyes get accustomed to these caste marks, these 
 religious or social symbols which shout to the 
 beholder, ' I am a fine fellow,' or ' I believe in such 
 a god.' After the first shock of amused surprise, 
 undistracted and undisgusted, the gaze settles itself 
 to observe in the people their mould of features and 
 the play of their expressions. 
 
 As various as the shades of their colouring, which 
 move from a sad yellow through every hue of brown 
 up to an ebonized black, are the features and 
 expressions of the Indian peoples. One man is 
 noble and kingly, like a Roman Emperor or an 
 English judge; another is as Mongolian as a 
 Chinaman; a third as hook-nosed, crafty, and dis- 
 likable as Shylock ; a fourth as beautiful as Moses 
 or Elijah ; a fifth as bulbous-featured as a carica-
 
 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 23 
 
 ture; a sixth absolutely as negroid and animal as 
 a South African savage; a seventh like Flaxman's 
 drawing of the grizzled Ulysses leaning on his 
 staff; an eighth majestical and superb, like one's 
 imagined Akbar; a ninth like the low-foreheaded 
 mummies of the Pharaohs; a tenth, heavy, plethoric, 
 sad-eyed, tall-browed and thick-bearded like the late 
 Lord Salisbury; an eleventh like a Red Indian; a 
 twelfth like one of Mr. Reed's prehistoric men; 
 and a thirteenth close-lipped, self-consequential, 
 and stern like a County Councillor or an esteemed 
 member of a London Vestry. 
 
 There is not this remarkable and complete differ- 
 ence among the women. The suppressed and trivial 
 life forced upon them by tradition probably accounts 
 for an uninteresting sameness affecting both Hindus 
 and Muhamadans. The men, on the other hand, 
 with three hundred million gods to choose from, 
 furiously interested in the incessant strife of their 
 contending religions and the incessant feud of their 
 innumerable politics, and with the business of 
 money-getting and money-hoarding always occupy- 
 ing their unsleeping brains, live more in the world, 
 and are marked by all the passions of the market- 
 place and all the jealousies and superstitions of the 
 temple. It is, indeed, impossible to exaggerate the 
 impression made upon a quiet and observing mind 
 by this wonderful facial diversity of the Indian 
 peoples, a diversity which is not merely spread 
 over the vast extent of India's geography, but which 
 may be seen in a single street in Bombay in the 
 course of half-an-hour's walk. 
 
 In the dusty and heavy-smelling bazaars, which 
 are narrow streets composed of dolls'-house-looking 
 buildings of painted boards, with shutters to the 
 upper windows, and open shops on the ground floor
 
 24 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 
 
 rather bigger than rabbit-hutches and raised two or 
 three feet from the gutter on stumps of wood — in 
 the bazaars, these thronging figures talking in the 
 road, entering mosque or temple, sitting cross-legged 
 in the shops, or sharing a hookah on a balcony, 
 appear natural and congruous in spite of their con- 
 flicting variety. But you cannot imagine unless you 
 have seen it, what a strange effect is produced by 
 this immense diversity of race and raiment in those 
 modern parts of an Indian city where the stone 
 buildings are magnificent, where motor-cars glide 
 in and out of gong-sounding electric trams, and 
 shopkeepers exhibit in fine windows all the comforts 
 and inventions of European luxury. Long-robed 
 figures like Levitical priests pass slowly in front of 
 these commercial windows, an electric tram crowded 
 with turbans and dhoties goes swinging round the 
 corner of a huge hotel; a string of little carts filled 
 with cotton and drawn by tiny white bullocks, the 
 tail-twisting and stick-flourishing drivers sitting on 
 the pole, goes bumping over the cobbles, past the 
 showrooms of a French milliner; under a banyan 
 tree outside the great office of an electrical engineer, 
 the barber, sitting on his haunches, is shaving the 
 bowed head of a crouching Hindu ; sitting on the 
 kerb, resting her back against the standard of an 
 electric light, a woman — oblivious to all the world 
 — is searching the head of her daughter for undesir- 
 able lodgers; in the shadow of a garage filled with 
 snorting cars and perspiring chauffeurs, the ear 
 doctor is consumedly engaged with iron instruments 
 down the burrow of a boy's ear; and the dirty, round- 
 shouldered, cigarette-smoking gharry-wallah, sitting 
 cross-legged on the box of his little rubber-tyred 
 Victoria, is one man; the half-naked Hindu, beating 
 his oxen, on a water-cart, is another man ; the benign
 
 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 25 
 
 and whiskered Parsi money-lender, under his white 
 silk umbrella is another man ; the Goanese servant 
 in spotless white linen carrying a bouquet of flowers 
 to his mistress is another man ; the policeman in flat, 
 yellow cap, blue tunic, and blue breeches ending in 
 bare calves is another man ; and so on, all the way 
 through these splendid streets and beautiful avenues 
 — every other man diff"erent and interesting, every 
 face telling a different story of religion and custom, 
 and every shadow on the dazzling stones falling from 
 a different road and a different journey. 
 
 It is almost uncanny to walk alone through the 
 streets of an Indian city at night. The bare feet of 
 the people make it seem as though the grave had 
 given up its sheeted dead; they pass one without 
 sound, they flit by one as noiselessly as moths, they 
 start up out of dark places or come round street 
 corners with a silence that almost takes away the 
 breath. And later in the night, if the traveller 
 penetrates to the quiet native streets, he finds the 
 pavements, the doorways, the staircases, and the 
 corridors strewn with white-robed figures sleeping 
 with the stillness and the quiet of the dead, while 
 from some window above sounds the monotonous 
 drone of the tom-tom and the nasal wail of a nautch 
 girl. An Indian can sit for an hour on his haunches, 
 only the feet touching the ground; and he can sleep 
 as comfortably on the bare stones of the pavement 
 outside his house as any European can sleep on a 
 spring-mattress. 
 
 One has to remind oneself again and again that 
 these interesting and delightful people not only 
 differ violently from each other in the matter of 
 religion and in the habits of social life, but that 
 they are all absolutely and perfectly different from 
 us in the whole range of intellectual outlook. It is
 
 26 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 
 
 natural to suppose when passing a British-looking 
 gentleman in a more or less European suit of clothes 
 or in buying a box of cigarettes from a charming 
 old man who puts one in mind of some Biblical 
 hero, that however greatly his complexion may 
 differ from one's own, however unusual his costume 
 would appear in Paris or London, however crimson 
 his teeth may be w^ith the chewing of betel, that 
 the premises of his philosophy, the postulates of his 
 science of life, are very much the same as one's 
 own. But, insularity is a sad blunderer. This 
 polite and even jest-making Hindu believes that the 
 world is flat; his god is a mixture of Bacchus, Don 
 Juan, and Dick Turpin ; he would no more be seen 
 walking side by side with his wife than killing a 
 cow; he would no more sit down to meals with his 
 wife and daughters than he would say his prayers 
 in a mosque; he regards science as an absurd 
 delusion ; he considers that women have no souls 
 to speak of; and as for your honoured, superior, 
 and complacent self he holds in his heart that you 
 are filthy in your habits, mad in your ideas, and 
 loathsome to the gods. 
 
 I found myself saying very often as I walked in 
 the wide and magnificent streets of Indian cities, 
 ' All these people believe that the world is flat.' The 
 phrase repeated itself involuntarily, until my mind 
 seized the full significance of its monotony. They 
 inhabit a different world from ours. We buy and 
 sell with them, we laugh and talk together, we are 
 as good friends as they will let us be, and we are 
 never likely seriously to fall out and come to a 
 bloody rupture — but, the thoughts of their hearts 
 are not our thoughts, the aspiration of their souls 
 is not our aspiration, and in everything which 
 makes man a rational creature different from all the
 
 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 27 
 
 animal creation they are as separate and distinct 
 from us as the earth from the moon. 
 
 Here, I think, is one aspect of India's romance. 
 The peoples, separated among themselves into over 
 two thousand species of mankind, are so separated 
 from us that they are like inhabitants of another 
 world. They have a different morality and a 
 different geography. They are so constituted that 
 they can conceive of a god, and even worship him, 
 who violates every canon of their own moral code 
 and would seem a frightful monster to the London 
 hooligan. They think of disease and drought and 
 dreams in a manner laughable to the youngest 
 schoolboy. They have no knowledge of the globe, 
 no interest in the discoveries of science, and no 
 respect for the inventions of civilization. They 
 shrink from taking life, and yet they will let a dog 
 die of starvation before their eyes, or contemplate 
 unmoved the agony of a wounded ox. They go to 
 our surgeons and doctors, make use of our telegraph 
 and telephone, but the Jains among them will pay 
 a man to sleep in the bed they are leaving for a few 
 nights, so that the fleas and bugs may not perish 
 of starvation. And these three hundred millions of 
 people, inhabiting so different a universe from ours, 
 are controlled in their political destiny by a mere 
 handful of Englishmen ; their rivers are being har- 
 nessed by English engineers, their woods conserved 
 and developed by English foresters, their deserts 
 improved into thriving fields by English agricul- 
 turists, their mines ransacked for gold and coal by 
 the same quiet and relentless power, and even the 
 serenity of their blue sky is now being clouded by 
 the factory smoke of these same islanders from the 
 West. Firm and immovable as they appear to 
 stand in their immemorial beliefs, these three
 
 28 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 
 
 hundred millions of human beings are silently and 
 imperceptibly altering the texture of their minds 
 and comprehending a new significance in life. 
 The man who ascends with you in the lift of an 
 hotel and tells you that the world is flat, has a son 
 who is reading Herbert Spencer; and even though 
 the son may still believe in Krishna and smother 
 himself in simulated blood on the obscene and dis- 
 gusting festival of Holi, he studies John Stuart Mill 
 and ranks himself a synthetical philosopher. 
 
 Consider the romance of this British governance. 
 In the direct civil government of the two hundred 
 and thirty millions of British India and in the 
 partial supervision and advisory assistance of the 
 seventy millions in Native States, only twelve 
 hundred Englishmen are employed, including 
 military officers attached to the civil arm. From a 
 little inconspicuous island in the northern seas, 
 twelve hundred men bred in a different religion, 
 speaking a different language, and holding an 
 entirely different theory of the universe, master 
 and dominate the destiny of three hundred alien 
 millions — master and dominate that destiny for the 
 good of the three hundred millions and for the 
 peace and security of the whole world. 
 
 There are two secrets for this romantic state of 
 affairs. First, the quality of the Sahib — a man who 
 must never lie, never take bribes, and never ' let 
 down' a friend; and second, the invisible Fleet of 
 England, which preserves India from the greed and 
 rapacity of the marauder. It is in the inviolate 
 security assured by the British Navy that the handful 
 of Englishmen domiciled in India do their work and 
 keep the peace; and those sensational and tiresome 
 people who are for ever telling us that we shall 
 assuredly lose India, forget that so long as the
 
 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 29 
 
 British Navy holds the sea it is just as impossible 
 for England to lose India as for the same little 
 country to lose the county of Rutland. 
 
 To an extent greater than the average Englishman 
 knows, India is a self-governing country. Next in 
 importance to the 864 Civil charges, which are 
 mostly held by members of the Indian Civil Service, 
 including Indians, the next 3,700 superior judicial 
 and executive appointments are all held by Indians, 
 with about 100 exceptions. Nearly every subordinate 
 position is held by Indians. 
 
 In the case of the Cities, there are 742 munici- 
 palities controlled by 9,800 representatives, of whom 
 half are elected by the people and the other half 
 selected by Government from amongst the wisest and 
 most intelligent of India's philanthropic and public- 
 spirited men of affairs. The Rural Population is 
 similarly controlled by 1,073 Districts and Local 
 Boards, on which 15,800 of India's leaders serve, 
 half by election and half by selection. 
 
 These few figures, wonderfully eloquent of British 
 methods and the confidence guaranteed by the British 
 Navy, effectually sweep away the foolish contention 
 of harebrained sentimentalists that India is a country 
 living under the tyranny of an alien Government. 
 The twelve hundred Englishmen in India are work- 
 ing in association with the sanest Indian intellects 
 for the glory and power, the happiness and pros- 
 perity, the peace and order of India herself; and if 
 in single particulars they appear to run counter to 
 Indian demands it is only because the granting of 
 those demands, in their honest and considered judg- 
 ment, would weaken the connection with England 
 and so imperil the absolute peace guaranteed by the 
 British Navy, which is essential to the evolution of 
 India's destiny.
 
 30 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 
 
 Picture to yourself what would happen if we with- 
 drew from India. First, the Parsis would flee for 
 their lives, carrying I know not how much wealth 
 and intelligence out of the country. Then the 
 Muhamadans would attempt to settle by musket 
 and knife those furious sectarian differences which 
 resulted in bloodshed during the last Mohurrum. 
 Hindus would seize the opportunity to fall upon the 
 hated Mussulman ; Rajah would march against 
 Rajah ; like a flooding sea the long-knifed heathen 
 of the hills would descend upon the plains; and the 
 navies of European and Asiatic powers, eager for 
 the rich fruit of Indian prosperity, would appear at 
 different parts of the coast and proceed to annex all 
 that they could hold of India's soil. The miracle 
 of a single India, only brought into existence by 
 the genius of England, and only possible so long 
 as the British Navy holds the sea, would disappear, 
 and once again, as it was in the beginning, the 
 continent of India would be split up into a hundred 
 warring and discordant countries. 
 
 These people, whose destiny has come into our 
 hands by the providence of God, are children, and 
 like the Children of Israel they are on a great march 
 from servitude to freedom, from darkness to light, 
 from ignorance to knowledge. To set such a wicked 
 and crazy person as the ' patriot ' Tilak at their 
 head, who has not only inspired the murder of noble 
 men, but has actually justified murder as a holy 
 thing, is an outrage.* To inflame them with the 
 speeches recently made by a certain English Socialist 
 travelling through the country, is a crime. Even to 
 
 * 'The Divine Krishna teaching in the Gita tells us we may kill 
 even our teachers and our kinsmen. . . . Rise above the Penal Code 
 into the rarefied atmosphere of the sacred Bhaghavad Gita and 
 consider the action of great men.' Tilak viras here speaking with 
 enthusiasm of the Mahratta leader Shivaji, who persuaded the
 
 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 31 
 
 permit a European woman to make Benares the 
 headquarters for a theosophical propaganda, which 
 may possibly have as disastrous results for the 
 British Raj as for the evolution of Christianity in 
 India, is a hazardous experiment in laisscz-jaire. 
 These are not only the views of the best English- 
 men in India; they are the opinions of the best 
 Indians themselves. 
 
 It would be much better, able and responsible 
 men assure me, if England made her whole mind 
 on this subject quite clear to the Children of India. 
 She should acknowledge by the mouth of the King- 
 Emperor that the ideal of Indian Self-Government 
 is a just and honourable aspiration, and she should 
 declare her willingness to further this worthy move- 
 ment in every way consonant with law and order; 
 but in most emphatic language, and in every part 
 of the country, and on every possible occasion, she 
 should point out that such a consummation is only 
 possible while India's internal peace is secured by 
 the British Navy (to which India makes no contri- 
 bution whatever), and announce her unwavering 
 determination to destroy any influence at work which 
 is in the least degree likely to corrupt the authority 
 of the central Government or weaken the connection 
 between the two countries. And what she threatens 
 to do, she should do. A wise statesman would as 
 mercifully remove such creatures as Tilak, who dare 
 to justify murder, as a man of science would remove 
 a malignant growth from the human body. And 
 India would respect such action. ' There are three 
 
 Muhamadan General, Afzul Khan, ' to meet him in peaceful con- 
 ference half-way between the contending armies, and, as he bent 
 down to greet his guest, plunged into his bowels the famous " tiger's 
 claw," a hooked gauntlet of steel, while a Mahratta force sprang out 
 of ambush and cut the Muhamadan army in pieces.' — Quoted in 
 Indian Unrest, by Valentine Chirol.
 
 32 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 
 
 talkers in India,' an able member of the Civil 
 Service told me ; * the man with a just grievance — 
 whose grievance should be removed : the man who 
 talks for the sake of talking — and who may be left 
 talking : and the man openly bent on overthrowing 
 the British tutelage — who should be hanged.' 
 
 Let it be always borne in mind that the intelligent 
 Indians are less than a handful in comparison with 
 the millions who can neither read nor write, and 
 that there are literally millions, surrounding the 
 virtuous peoples of India, who practise as a quite 
 ordinary matter immoralities which would bring 
 them into the criminal courts of Europe. The 
 ignorance of some of the millions of India, as this 
 book will show, is something so incredible that it 
 is difficult to think of them as human beings. And 
 the immoralities of many of them are so horrible and 
 revolting that it is almost possible to think of them 
 as the creation of infernal power. 
 
 But the true designation for these people, the 
 very worst of whom are docile and charming, is 
 that of this chapter's heading. They are children. 
 One must not think of them as grown men nor judge 
 them by a single European standard. They are 
 different from us in almost every particular that 
 makes man an intellectual being. Like children 
 they consult the stars, listen to the wind, regard 
 the lightning, and watch disease spreading death 
 through their midst. Like children, they believe the 
 most fantastic stories of gods and demons. Like 
 children they accept without question or demur 
 anything told to them with the least semblance of 
 authority. And like children they are afraid of the 
 dark, and in all that they attempt to achieve fear the 
 frustrating enmity of malicious devils. 
 
 Does it not help one to realize the true state and
 
 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 33 
 
 condition of these children, to know that seventy 
 miUions of them — think what these figures mean — 
 seventy millions of them accept without the smallest 
 spirit of rebellion the unwritten law which makes 
 them for the whole of their lives outcasts and helots? 
 These seventy millions know themselves to be an 
 abomination and a horror to the castes above them. 
 Without suspicion they allow themselves to be 
 exploited by the very people who say they are 
 ' untouchable,' and whose food would be polluted 
 and uneatable if even their shadow fell upon it. In 
 every village there is an outcasts' quarter, separated 
 from the other castes. No Brahman priest will come 
 near them, sick or dying. No caste postman will 
 give their letters into their hands. No caste doctor 
 will attend them in illness. They have to fashion 
 their own gods and create their own priesthood — a 
 ' black ' priesthood which is regarded with unutter- 
 able loathing by the holy priest in the sacred temple. 
 And they do not question or rebel. Because they 
 are the sons of their fathers, they are what they are, 
 and thus they must remain, * untouchable,' to the 
 day of their death. 
 
 Remember always that the cities of India are mere 
 potting-sheds and greenhouses in the midst of an 
 enormous garden. Something like ninety per cent of 
 the population live on or by the land, and these 270 
 rural millions out of a rough total of 300 millions, 
 are as illiterate and superstitious, however charming 
 in manner, as any savages in the remotest darkness 
 of Africa. I do not mean for a moment that they 
 are repellent and hideous; more polite and engaging 
 people I have never met, more gracious and hos- 
 pitable people do not exist among the finest peasantry 
 of Europe — but their ignorance and their superstition 
 and many of their habits are as barbarous as
 
 34 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 
 
 anything to be found among the most savage 
 heathen. 
 
 What is the root of this barbarism, extant in the 
 twentieth century and living cheek by jowl with the 
 civilization of England? 
 
 ' Where women are honoured,' says an ancient 
 seer, ' the Divinities are complacent; where they are 
 despised it is useless to pray to God.' 
 
 There are two interpretations of the monition — 
 Cherchez la femme. 
 
 In spite of the publicity given by English news- 
 papers to the revolutionary ideas of the * new 
 woman,' and in spite of plays and novels which 
 might make one think domestic happiness nowhere 
 existed, everybody knows who has gone about the 
 country at all that the centre of English life is the 
 home and that the centre of the home is the Mother. 
 It is against the Englishwoman's lofty and calm 
 conception of Motherhood, and not against man's 
 amused indifference, or his irritable disgust, that 
 such a violent wave as the Suffragette movement, 
 which must be distinguished from the Woman 
 Question, breaks itself into the spume of failure and 
 the froth of defeat. To be the mother of strong sons 
 and beautiful daughters is still the supreme ambition 
 of the Englishwoman. And the home, with all 
 its innocent pleasures and delightful ambitions, is 
 still the fixed and steadfast centre of our national 
 righteousness. 
 
 Nothing of this sort is known in India. Nothing 
 in the least degree approximating to the ideal of 
 English motherhood is known among the peoples 
 of India. A woman may indeed be a veritable ter- 
 magant and make the life of her husband a scarce 
 endurable martyrdom, but she is never his com- 
 panion and friend, and never the rqoral providence
 
 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 35 
 
 and spiritual counsellor of his children. She cooks 
 her husband's meal, but may not eat till he has 
 finished; she goes out to work in the fields with her 
 husband, but may not walk at his side. You will 
 see women in India loading an engine with coal, 
 making bricks in the brick-fields, laying stones on 
 the road, bearing hods of mortar up the scaffolding 
 of a new building, and sweeping up the manure of 
 the street, or carrying the European pail to the 
 cess-pit; but you will never see a woman going 
 arm-in-arm with her husband to a concert or fes- 
 tivity, or playing games with her sons. You will 
 never see a happy and rejoicing mother, the pride 
 of her husband, the joy of her children, and the 
 supreme influence for character and prosperity in 
 the home. 
 
 And yet, by the irony of fate, infinitely the most 
 beautiful building in India, perhaps in the whole 
 world, is that ivory-coloured tomb of loveliness 
 dreaming in a green garden on the banks of the 
 Jumna, whose slender minarets and lofty dome, 
 whose pierced and carven marbles and inlaid walls 
 of precious stones are raised as the memorial of a 
 man's love for a woman. And not, as some people 
 are disposed to think, as the passionate sacrament 
 of a lover for his mistress, of some Antony for his 
 Cleopatra, but as the enduring and solemn rever- 
 ence of a husband for as virtuous and homely a 
 matron as ever brought fourteen children into life 
 and died in childbed. Such is the Taj Mahal — a 
 witness to a man's love for his matronal wife, and it 
 stands in a country where men and women neither 
 walk together nor eat together, and where the 
 woman is degraded to the most menial and bestial 
 of toils. 
 
 Surely the great march on which the Children of
 
 S6 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 
 
 India have set out must be swift or slow, victorious 
 or disastrous, according to the place in it assigned 
 to women. As my book will show, the religion of 
 the West has a most helpful and emancipating 
 effect on Indian women, and it seems to me almost 
 the clearest thing in the difficult destiny of India 
 that the ultimate salvation of the country lies with 
 a higher and nobler domesticity created by women 
 conscious of a righteous God and a pure heaven. 
 To look into the bright eyes and smiling face of an 
 Indian woman converted to Christianity is to feel 
 full of a glad confidence in India's future, and to 
 realize the supremacy of Christianity as a force in 
 human evolution. How different are one's feelings 
 on beholding the most tragic figure in the whole 
 world — an Indian old woman, shrivelled and 
 wrinkled to the bone, dragging weary feet through 
 the dust, frowning at the sun out of watery eyes, 
 and muttering to herself an inarticulate Miserere as 
 she draws nearer to the hovel where no one is 
 watching for her return, no one will give her 
 welcome, and where in the darkness of a corner 
 she will eat her morsel of rice and fall asleep 
 ignored by all the rest of the household. 
 
 For a woman to survive her husband in India, 
 it is purgatory; but to grow old in her widowhood 
 — it is hell. The Indian widow is not permitted 
 to re-marry. How must it be then, with such a 
 country, possessing 27,000,000 widows, 6,000,000 
 of them under fourteen years of age, and 14,000 of 
 them under four? In zenanas, according to a 
 Government Census, there are 40,000,000 women.* 
 
 Fundamental to this chief question of the Woman, 
 is the question of Religion. Everything in India 
 is what it is because of Religion. The problem of 
 
 • See page 340
 
 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 37 
 
 what is called ' Indian Unrest,' as Mr. Valentine 
 Chirol shows in his conclusive book on the subject, 
 is at the bottom a religious question. The position 
 of women is the ordinance of religion. And truly 
 it is the same with everything else in India from one 
 end of the country to the other. Until the religions 
 of India are thrown by the peasant as well as the 
 Babu, to the waste-heap of humanity's childish- 
 ness, until their gods and goddesses, their devils 
 and their demons, become the stock-in-trade of the 
 satirist and the clown, no real movement can be 
 made from darkness to light, and no pulse of joy 
 and enthusiasm beat from the heart of her various 
 humanity. And it is because this conviction is to 
 me so obvious and certain, that one is almost 
 tempted to regard as more serious than the pro- 
 paganda of unquiet politicians, that corner-creeping 
 and unconscious treason of theosophy which is 
 exalting Indian philosophy above our pure religion 
 breathing household laws, and is, consciously or 
 unconsciously, encouraging the easily-conceited 
 intellect of India to regard the peoples of Europe 
 as benighted savages and brutal fools. Let us 
 make no mistake in this matter. India without 
 a religion is an impossible conception. India with 
 her present religion is ceasing to exist. What is 
 the religion we have to give her? and how far 
 can the Government, without departing from its 
 traditional attitude of impartial overlord, safe- 
 guard her from false religions undermining all 
 authority and corrupting every fibre of the moral 
 being ? 
 
 What is the true drama of Modern India? — it is 
 the collision of Christianity and Brahmanism, the 
 conflict of two differing souls, the struggle between 
 a spiritual materialism and a material spiritualism.
 
 38 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 
 
 India, with her immemorial antipathy to the fierce 
 clangour and unsleeping energy of materialism, is 
 feeling in every vein of her body the beat and 
 pulse of a materialism as eager and confident and 
 elated as the spirit of adventure; and this alien 
 materialism, whatever the particular forms of its 
 religious creed, is shot and saturated in all the 
 warp and woof of its being with the morality of 
 Christianity and the spiritual hauntings of Christ. 
 However ugly and however selfish and brutal it 
 may seem, the materialism of Europe is spiritual 
 in its attitude towards the universe, if only by 
 the long and ineradicable heredity of Christian 
 influence. It cannot out-think its centuries of 
 Christianity. On the other hand, the spiritualism 
 of India, which has long ago departed from the 
 beautiful dreamings and baseless metaphysics of 
 the Vedas, is the most material and childishly 
 superstitious animalism that ever masqueraded as 
 idealism. 
 
 In the shock and impact of these two souls, the 
 soul of Christianity and the soul of Hinduism, the 
 soul of Europe and the soul of Asia, one beholds 
 the modern drama of India. 
 
 To understand the least thing about India you 
 must understand the religion of Hinduism. And 
 truly to perceive the immense problem of the 
 future, a future concerning all the world, for 
 India is the heart of the East, you must study the 
 subtle and leavening effect of Christianity upon 
 Hinduism, of Christian materialism upon pagan 
 spiritualism. 
 
 Two forces are wrestling in India for a mastery 
 which must ultimately affect all mankind. Out- 
 wardly, the sense of conflict is not apparent, and 
 to a superficial observer it would seem that India
 
 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 39 
 
 is pursuing her own and ancient road utterly 
 oblivious to the soul of Europe; but inwardly there 
 is being waged as stern and fierce a contest as ever 
 heaved the world to this side and to that, and it is 
 not the bodies of nations that are at grips, but the 
 soul and inward mystery of humanity — the spirit of 
 the East at enmity with the spirit of the West, and 
 the soul of Darkness with the soul of Light.
 
 THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 
 
 One of the greatest delusions of modern Europe 
 is the hazy notion, born of Sir Edwin Arnold's 
 poetry, Madame Blavatsky's conjuring tricks, and 
 Mrs. Besant's whimsical theosophy, that the East 
 is spiritually superior to the West. There are good 
 and well-intentioned people both in Europe and 
 America who genuinely believe that the religion of 
 Christianity is actually crude, inferior, and trivial 
 in comparison with some mythical and entirely 
 non-existent religious occultism guarded by the 
 mysterious holy men of India. There is a still more 
 numerous host among the white races which holds 
 with a most sloven and treasonable ignorance which 
 it regards as a pleasing form of cosmopolitan toler- 
 ance, that Christianity is only one of many religions 
 all very much alike and all more or less similar in 
 their service to humanity. 
 
 The truth is that an honest man who travels 
 through India even with the most casual observation 
 and the least effort to discover the fact of things, 
 finds himself, must find himself, again and again, 
 bowing himself in spirit with a new adoration 
 in his soul and a fresh understanding in his 
 mind, before the majestic beauty and incomparable 
 sublimity of the Divine Christ. If, after my long 
 journeys through India, one feeling is stronger in
 
 THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 41 
 
 my mind than any other, if one illumination burns 
 in my soul more luminously and more steadily than 
 another, if one conviction is paramount and sovran 
 above all others, it is that Christ stands in the history 
 of mankind absolutely alone and unchallengeably 
 supreme as the Light of the World. And this con- 
 viction rests not only upon the sinless life and 
 exquisite words of the Master, nor upon the civilizing 
 work accomplished by Christianity in Europe, but 
 upon the realization brought home to my soul by 
 the condition of modern India as to the great 
 miracle of Christ's personal victory over the Brah- 
 manism and racial superstitions of His own day. 
 
 Exactly what the Brahmans are to modern India, 
 the Scribes and Pharisees were to Palestine. And 
 W'hile Christ by the influence of His Character and 
 the magic of His Personality easily overthrew those 
 Scribes and Pharisees and sent His gracious teaching 
 to the ends of the earth, all the Missions in India, 
 protected by the dominant power and supported by 
 the well-nigh inexhaustible wealth of civilized 
 nations, fling themselves in vain against this rock 
 of traditional Brahmanism. 
 
 It is well that the truth should be known. Among 
 the educated and upper classes of India, Christianity 
 can claim but few triumphs. There are no direct 
 conversions worth speaking about except among the 
 lowest and the most depressed classes, where Chris- 
 tianity is moving to amazing victory. The indirect 
 effects of Christianity, presently to be considered, 
 are pervading the whole fabric of Indian national 
 life — an immense, a wonderful achievement — but 
 there are no direct effects worth mention, no winning 
 of disciples and no real catalogue of conversions 
 among the Brahmans and the castes immediately 
 sharing in the power and plunder of Brahmanism.
 
 42 THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 
 
 Against the good and reforming Buddha, Brah- 
 manism stood firm ; the little body of Jains, with 
 their quite farcical humanitarianism, only witness 
 to the failure of yet another effort at reformation. 
 Muhamadanism,* which is a pure and lofty reli- 
 gion in comparison with Hinduism, has had no 
 cleansing and no uplifting effect upon Brahmanism ; 
 the Parsi worship of nature has not touched the 
 outermost fringe of Brahmanism ; and, after centuries 
 of missionary labour, Brahmanism remains adamant 
 and unconquered before the hosts of Christendom. 
 Brahmanism is now apprehensive, is even angrily 
 alarmed and violently afraid of Christianity ; but not 
 at all because it foresees the conversion of India — 
 only because it dreads the indirect effects of Chris- 
 tianity upon caste and upon its own tyrannical power 
 over the people. 
 
 All the unrest in India which is treacherous, 
 unscrupulous, and bloody-handed comes from the 
 Brahmans, and its inspiration is the alarm felt by 
 Brahmanism at the increasing conversions to Chris- 
 tianity aviojig the outcasts, and the extraordinary 
 progress of Christian ideas among the Indian peoples 
 in general. But Brahmanism itself is utterly un- 
 touched by the spirit of Christ. If it is moving at 
 all in the direction of Christianity, it is moving 
 under the cover of darkness and is armed with the 
 weapon of the assassin. Christianity, and not 
 England, is the supreme enemy of Brahmanism, as 
 Christ, and not Rome, was the supreme enemy of 
 the Scribes and Pharisees. 
 
 It is well that the reader should acquaint himself 
 with the true nature of Hinduism, and see exactly 
 
 * The two foundational pillars of Muhamadanism — the worship 
 of One God, and the abomination of idolatry— offer an invitation to 
 Christianity which will surely one day lead to great events. But this 
 is a subject to be considered elsewhere.
 
 THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 43 
 
 what it is that Brahmanism sets itself to guard. Let 
 him banish from his mind any idea that there is 
 something mysterious and wonderful in the Eastern 
 religion. Let him rest assured that the Indian 
 theosophy which makes converts of queer people in 
 Europe and America, is something of which 99,999 
 persons out of every 100,000 in India would not 
 understand a single word. And let him know for 
 a certainty that all the magic and marvels of Madame 
 Blavatsky were revealed by the Society for Psychical 
 Research, which sent a trained inquirer to India, 
 as tricks and cheatings of a very trivial character. 
 
 What, in sober truth, is the chief religion 
 of India, known under the including name of 
 Hinduism? Sir Monier Williams has put it in a 
 single phrase — it is a mental disease. ' The great 
 majority of the inhabitants of India,' he says, 'are 
 from the cradle to the burning ground, victims of 
 a form of mental disease which is best expressed by 
 the term demonophobia. They are haunted and 
 oppressed by a perpetual dread of demons. They 
 are firmly convinced that evil spirits of all kinds, 
 from malignant fiends to merely mischievous imps 
 and elves, are ever on the watch to harm, harass, 
 and torment them, to cause plague, sickness, 
 famine and disaster, to impede, injure, and mar 
 every good work.' 
 
 Terror is the spirit of Hinduism. Fear is the 
 tyrant of the Hindu. His humanitarianism, with 
 which Europe is often reproached by vegetarian 
 theosophists, has nothing whatever to do with 
 kindness towards animals, but is entirely inspired 
 by fear of offending some god or demon, or of 
 destroying the reincarnating soul of a hero or a 
 friend. Always he is afraid. I have talked to 
 devil-dancers, to low-caste and to high-caste Hindus
 
 44 THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 
 
 throughout India, and in all cases I have found that 
 fundamental in their mind to every concept of the 
 universe and ever}^ apprehension of the spirit world, 
 is a vital and ineradicable terror. Convert a devil- 
 dancer, make him quite sure that God is Love and 
 that Christ has saved him from perdition, and still 
 you will find him haunted by the fear that Satan 
 is never absent from his side waiting to seize and 
 destroy him on the smallest opportunity. That is 
 ever his master-thought. Always to the Hindu 
 there is a giant menace overspreading the firmament 
 and darkening the earth with the shadow^ of an 
 implacable hostility. It is far easier for him to 
 conceive of three hundred million wicked gods, 
 than to believe in one God absolutely pure, abso- 
 lutely kind, and absolutely good. His experience 
 of life justifies the one theory and denies the other. 
 Existence for him is not the gift of a loving Father, 
 but a cruel and hazardous martyrdom created by 
 malignant devils. Pain and disease strike at him 
 from the air and from the ground; famine descends 
 upon his laboured fields with a blast of destroying 
 hate; he cries to the gods for rain — and the only 
 answer to his cry is an earth of iron and a sky of 
 brass; in the midst of rains that beat his crops to 
 earth, he beseeches demon or god for mercy, and 
 the answer comes in a flood that sweeps away his 
 hut and drowns his cattle; never for him is life a 
 gift of love shining with the testimony of divine 
 beneficence. 
 
 ' Why do you pray to a devil ? ' I asked a vener- 
 able Hindu in Southern India. ' Sahib,' he replied, 
 ' why should I pray to a God who is good ? ' 
 
 It is with them the clearest logic in the world 
 that prayer to a benign and loving Heaven-Father 
 must either be superfluous or of the nature of insult;
 
 THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 45 
 
 whereas, surely it is most just and reasonable that 
 poor and defenceless humanity should kneel and 
 humble itself before those black and awful powers 
 which afflict it with a chastisement utterly unthink- 
 able from a God of Love. 
 
 Here lies the mightiest blunder of Christian mis- 
 sionaries. To a people in whom this conviction is 
 fixed and steadfast, they have presented the idea 
 of a good God who is tlie author of all their 
 mischief, and whose mercy can only be procured by 
 abasement and supplication. They have not taught 
 — of course, I speak generally — that suffering is 
 largely the merciful process of education following 
 the infringement of natural laws set in motion for 
 the good and profit of mankind; nor that prayer is 
 an aspiration of the immortal soul seeking com- 
 munion with its Maker, not a request for benefits 
 and advantages. They have attempted to teach the 
 Indian what it is impossible for a rational man to 
 believe or for an honest man to prove — that a 
 Creator who is perfect goodness and perfect love 
 requires to be moved by prayer before He will act 
 with ordinary kindness towards His creatures : and 
 that prayer to such a God, faithfully prayed, will 
 do away with all the distresses of humanity. And 
 the Indian, listening to such a missionary, sees 
 stronger and hardier men of the white race building 
 canals against famine, draining the land against 
 flood, and using the science of medicine against 
 plague and fever — not praying to their good God 
 for the prevention of these calamities. What does 
 he conclude? If prayer will suffice, why all this 
 labour and activity? And if labour and activity 
 are necessary, why pray ? To him it seems infinitely 
 simpler and obviously more logical to follow^ the 
 long tradition of his fathers — to placate by every
 
 46 THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 
 
 means in his power the evil forces in the universe, 
 and certainly to risk no fear of displeasing the good 
 gods by presuming to tell them what they should 
 do with the world. 
 
 A reasonable and explicating Theism, the true 
 Theism of a true Christianity, is not only opposed 
 by a superstitious and traditional Minduism, but also 
 by the misrepresentations of Christianity deep-rooted 
 in the Indian mind by the unconscious blasphemies 
 of Deism. The Indian still thinks that our religion 
 implies a God who made the world and blundered 
 it : who, having made it, repented of His work and 
 left the Devil to do with it what he would : and who 
 afterwards incarnated Himself for a few years and 
 failed to overcome the power of His adversary. It 
 is most difficult to make the average Indian mind 
 conceive of a God now and always associated with 
 humanity, a Creator who is still creating, a Light 
 that is still shining, and an Energy that is still 
 redeeming and uplifting. 
 
 A young Hindu educated at Oxford said to me 
 on this subject — ' If the missionaries had talked to 
 us more of salvation and less of damnation, Chris- 
 tianity would have made real progress among our 
 educated people long before now.' 
 
 Think what it must be for these people, schooled 
 to believe that suffering proceeds from a wicked and 
 hostile force, to be told that a good God is the author 
 of their damnation. 
 
 This is really what the teaching of the missionaries 
 —a teaching, of course, absolutely at variance with 
 the goodness of Christianity — has implanted in the 
 Indian mind. They have not said, ' If you believe 
 you will be saved,' but, ' If you do not believe 
 you will be damned.' Their God is the Hindu's 
 Devil.
 
 THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 47 
 
 Different, vastly diiTerent, is tlie method of Fakir 
 Singh ; and to the hopeful and persuasive tone of its 
 teaching as much as to the earnestness, humility, 
 and native simplicity of its teachers, I attribute the 
 extraordinary success of the Salvation Army in 
 India. Here, as showing the true method of Chris- 
 tian propaganda, I will describe a colloquy of Fakir 
 Singh with one of the many Nicodemuses among 
 the modern Indians. 
 
 Picture to yourself the scene. Under a tree, close 
 to a well where women are drawing water and 
 labourers are driving their oxen to the trough, sits 
 the Salvationist in native dress talking to a little 
 company of turbaned figures about the Good Shep- 
 herd and the way of liberation. The sun sets behind 
 a grove of palm trees, the strange scent of an Eastern 
 night begins to breathe from the warm dust, the 
 soft sky grows gradually pervaded with pale and 
 trembling stars, out of the distant jungle, lifting its 
 tall trees and spreading bushes to the violet hills, 
 come the vespers of birds, the ravening cry of beasts 
 of prey, and the sigh of night. The last woman 
 leaves the well with a brazen vessel balanced on her 
 head and another steadied against her hip. The 
 labourers are driving their cattle back to the shelter 
 of the village. A shadow falls between heaven and 
 the earth. A crescent moon appears above a cluster 
 of bamboos. The little company of turbaned figures 
 rises from the ground, and with homely courtesy 
 and a genuine kindness of heart, each man salaams 
 to the Fakir. One remains behind. 
 
 ' Guru,' he says, when the others have passed out 
 of hearing, ' I am a man who does harm to no one, 
 and good to those who are in sorrow or distress; do 
 I need your Christ to save me from damnation ?' 
 
 ' How is that possible?' answers the Fakir.
 
 ™ 
 
 48 THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 
 
 ' Christ did not come to call the righteous, but 
 sinners to repentance.' 
 
 'Ah ! that is what one can understand.' 
 
 ' He came to heal those who have no physician.' 
 
 ' That is what I wanted to hear.' 
 
 ' He is a seeker of lost sheep. Those who have 
 a shepherd do not require Him.' 
 
 ' Then, as I am a good man, and as I need no 
 physician, and as I have a shepherd in my own 
 religion, why should you tell me about Christ?' 
 
 ' In case you are not quite certain that you are 
 good, and that you need no physician.' 
 
 ' Well, no man is perfectly good.' 
 
 ' That is true, O brother.' 
 
 ' A man is a man ; he is prone to evil.' 
 
 ' You have wisdom.' 
 
 ' But, tell me, what do you mean by sin ?' 
 
 ' I mean the knowledge of the heart that it is 
 unhappy and disquieted; the feeling of the soul that 
 it is not at peace with God; the thought, O my 
 brother, the thought of the conscience that death 
 may have a fear and a hazard for the spirit.' 
 
 ' Well, but if a man follows his religion ?' 
 
 ' That is not enough. Nay ! that is surely not 
 enough.' 
 
 ' Guru, he does the best he can.' 
 
 ' But it does not give him peace.' 
 
 ' Yes, but how should he know that another reli- 
 gion will give him peace? That is the heart of this 
 business! How should he know?' 
 
 ' Brother, he must try for himself. If you are ill, 
 and you send for a doctor who makes you no better, 
 do you not send for another, and yet another, until 
 you discover one whose medicine gives you strength 
 and whose care restores you to the joy of health ? 
 Brother, the soul is sick as well as the body; there
 
 THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 49 
 
 are soul doctors as well as body doctors. My religion 
 says that it can take away the unrest of the heart 
 and give peace to the soul — the peace of God which 
 passes all understanding. Does your religion make 
 such a promise? If it does, and if after long trial 
 you have found that your heart is still disquieted 
 and your soul is yet full of unrest, is it not wise, for 
 the peace of your own heart and for the health of 
 3'our own soul, that you should make trial of another 
 religion ? I do not ask you to try my religion if 
 your heart is at peace with God and you can con- 
 template the hour of your death without dismay. 
 But if your heart is unhappy with a sense of guilt, 
 if your conscience will not let you rest, and if your 
 soul is afraid of death, then I invite you to make 
 trial of my religion. And I ask you, because I, too, 
 was unhappy and full of unrest until I bowed myself 
 before the Light of the World and followed the 
 Way, the Truth, and the Life.' 
 
 In every religion of the East there is a door always 
 standing open through which the true disciple of 
 the Way can enter and win companions for his soul. 
 It is the door of the human heart. Troubled and 
 unhappy is the heart of India. The banks of the 
 sacred rivers are thick with pilgrims seeking peace 
 of mind and rest of soul. The shrines are congre- 
 gated with human weariness and spiritual disquiet. 
 The relics of saints are reverenced and besought for 
 a peace of heart wistfully desired. For a surety of 
 soul dimly imagined, the temples are filled with 
 kneelers and the worn rosaries turned in ceaseless 
 prayer. The religions of the East endure because 
 they have failed. 
 
 To go as a theologian to these hungering and 
 thirsting millions and to dogmatize about the origin 
 of evil and the nature of Christ, is but to anger and 
 
 E
 
 50 THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 
 
 confuse them. They are seekers of peace. It is not 
 a definition that they desire, but rest of heart and 
 quiet of soul. They need, not a pedagogue, but a 
 physician : a good shepherd, not a casuist. 
 
 The supreme weakness of Hinduism is its utter 
 incapacity to satisfy the human heart. And this 
 impotence arises from the absence of a moral code. 
 Christianity insists upon a cleansed heart. Hinduism 
 asks only for a surrender of the reason. Hinduism 
 attributes all the ills of humanity to the circumfer- 
 ence of the universe. Christianity points to the 
 human centre, the heart of man. The Hindu gods 
 are wicked and abominable, prostitution is a means 
 of financing many of the temples, a man may con- 
 sider himself a good and pious disciple of his faith 
 who lies, steals, and violates the law of sex — there 
 is no insistence whatever on the supreme need for 
 a cleansed heart. ' He who pronounces Durga,' 
 says one authority, ' though he constantly practises 
 adultery, plunders others of their property, or 
 commits the most heinous crimes, is freed from all 
 sins.' Indeed, sin, in the true sense, scarcely exists 
 in the conception of Hinduism. Ask a man how it 
 is that he worships as a god one who is immoral 
 and iniquitous and he will reply, with a smile for 
 your ignorance, that surely a god may do what he 
 likes. Samarthi ko dosh nahin — the Mighty may 
 do what they please. ' The duties of life,' says 
 Bishop Caldwell, ' are never inculcated in any 
 Hindu temple. The discharge of those duties is 
 never represented as enjoined by the gods, nor are 
 any prayers ever offered in any temple for help to 
 enable the worshippers to discharge those duties 
 aright. . . . We meet with a moral Hindu who has 
 broken altogether away from religion ; and what is 
 still more common, yet still more extraordinary, we
 
 THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 51 
 
 meet with a devout Hindu who lives a flagrantly 
 immoral life. In the latter case, no person sees any 
 inconsistency between the immorality and the devout- 
 ness.' It is absolute truth that spirituality in their 
 imagination is a state of being in which a man may 
 do whatever he pleases without the fear of any evil 
 consequences. For a man who can say ' Aham 
 Brahma — I am God,' there exists neither good nor 
 evil. Sin, which Christianity declares to be the 
 source of all disquiet and unrest, for Hinduism is 
 only a serious matter where it exists as part of a 
 general attachment to earth life in the heart of a 
 man not yet covetous of annihilation. The peace 
 sought by India is the peace of non-existence. 
 
 In a few sentences it is possible to express quite 
 truthfully and without any danger of omission or 
 misrepresentation the religion of the vast majority 
 of the Hindu peoples. They believe that life must 
 always be accompanied by misery : that deliverance 
 from individual existence can only be attained by 
 the cessation of all desires — good or bad : that man 
 is surrounded by malignant forces hostile to his 
 happiness : and that the gods and goddesses, who 
 are altogether indifferent to Conduct, are to be 
 cajoled and even threatened into affording protection 
 or bestowing material prosperity. 
 
 The first object of a Hindu's life is to beget 
 sons, in order that his journey through hell, after 
 the miseries of this earthly life, may be shortened 
 by the sacrifices of male heirs. Until he is the 
 father of sons, the Hindu considers that he walks 
 the earth in the very greatest peril of soul. So 
 soon as he can boast of sons (daughters are of no 
 avail in the business), he can take his religion more 
 easily, and propitiatory sacrifices to the gods are 
 varied among the low castes by thrashings and
 
 52 THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 
 
 spittings and curses when these idols fail to avert 
 disaster or prosper an undertaking. Nevertheless, 
 the Hindu is always in a state of some uncertainty 
 about his soul, not on account of his sins, but 
 because he fears reincarnations of pain and horror, 
 and stands in awe of gods as capricious and vague 
 in their requirements of humanity as they are 
 cruel, revengeful and iniquitous. Hinduism is a 
 weltering chaos of terror, darkness, and uncertainty. 
 It is a religion without the apprehension of a 
 moral evolution, without definite commandments, 
 and without a God. 
 
 I have asked many of the humblest Indians in 
 various parts of the country what they understand 
 by evil, and the answer was always the same. 
 Evil consists in conduct punished by the Govern- 
 ment. They acknowledge the difference between 
 right and wrong, but it is impossible to make 
 them realize anything approaching to the nature 
 of a religious sanction in the sphere of morals. For 
 them religion is mainly a life-long effort to placate 
 the demons w^ho afflict them, and — among the 
 more spiritual — an agony of soul to reach that 
 dehumanized condition of mind in which the 
 desire for annihilation is supreme. ' They eat 
 religiously, drink religiously, bathe religiously, dress 
 religiously, and sin religiously.' 
 
 There is hardly one representation of the Hindu 
 gods (who, by the way, are scarcely ever black, but 
 white like Europeans) that is not ugly and repulsive 
 to a degree almost incredible. You see pictures 
 and idols of these gods which suggest the grotesque 
 figures in a pantomime. One god has the head of 
 an elephant; another the head of a monkey — and 
 so on. 'The shape and operations of divine and 
 semi-divine beings,' says Sir Monier Williams,
 
 THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 53 
 
 ' are generally suggestive of the monstrous, the 
 frightful, the hideous, and the incredible, the deeds 
 of its heroes, who are themselves half-gods, trans- 
 port the imagination into the region of the wildest 
 chimera; and a whole pantheon presents itself, 
 teeming with grotesque and unwieldy symbols, 
 with horrible creations, half-animals, half-gods, 
 with man-eating ogres, many-headed giants and 
 disgusting demons.'* 
 
 The stories concerning these gods and goddesses 
 are not only contemptible and ridiculous, they are 
 so frightfully obscene and so abominably iilthy that 
 they cannot even be obscurely hinted or vaguely 
 adumbrated in English print. ' The stories related 
 of Krishna's life,' says one authority, ' do more 
 than anything else to destroy the morals and 
 corrupt the imagination of Hindu youth.' 
 
 The generous people who take that easy view of 
 idolatry made popular by Carlyle's bludgeoning 
 rhetoric, would find themselves forced to other 
 opinions if they lived in the house of a Hindu and 
 witnessed the continual and painful service rendered 
 to these absurd efifigies of brass or clay. An Indian 
 himself has shown the folly of the thesis that an idol 
 is an instrument for elevating the mind to a realiza- 
 tion of an invisible god. ' For whatever Hindu 
 purchases an idol in the market, or constructs one 
 with his own hands, or has one made under his 
 own superintendence, it is his invariable practice 
 to perform certain ceremonies, called Pran Pra- 
 tishtha, or the endowment of animation, by which 
 he believes that its nature is changed from that of 
 the mere materials of which it is formed, and that 
 it acquires not only life but supernatural powers. 
 Shortly afterwards, if the idol be of the masculine 
 
 * See page 342
 
 54 THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 
 
 gender, he marries it to a feminine one : with no 
 less pomp and magnificence than he celebrates the 
 nuptials of his own children. The mysterious 
 process is now complete; and the god and goddess 
 are esteemed the arbiters of his destiny, and con- 
 tinually receive his most ardent adoration.'* 
 
 It is a truth, as another writer points out, that 
 this idolatry is much the same as a child's play 
 with its dolls. ' Little children talk to their dolls 
 as if they had life. They dress them, pretend to 
 give them food, put them to sleep, and so forth. 
 Grown-up people do the same. They treat their 
 idols as living beings. They ofifer them food, 
 though they cannot eat; they have different kinds 
 of music before idols that cannot hear; they wave 
 Ughts before what cannot see. In the cold season 
 they furnish them with warm clothes; in the hot 
 season they fan them; and lest mosquitoes should 
 bite them, they place them within curtains at 
 night.' 
 
 This is the religion of by far the greatest 
 number of India's inhabitants. If the reader has 
 any doubt in his mind as to the faithfulness of 
 my summary, let him obtain a copy of Popular 
 Hinduism, published by the Christian Literature 
 Society for India, which contains authoritative 
 quotations not only from such European scholars 
 as Max Miiller, Monier Williams, and Alfred Lyall, 
 but from the writings of converted Hindus and the 
 sacred books of Hinduism itself. A perusal of this 
 little volume, saving the labour and distress of a 
 profounder study which is really not worth a 
 serious man's while, will bring an overwhelming 
 conviction to the mind of any just person that 
 
 * In this rite one seems to perceive the dim origin of a later 
 doctrine called Transubstantiation.
 
 THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 55 
 
 Hinduism, root and branch, is the absurdest super- 
 stition imaginable, that it has its rise in a savage 
 animalism, and contains absolutely nothing which 
 can be of the very smallest service to the evolution 
 of humanity. 
 
 What I have written will lead the reader, 1 
 hope, to perceive that the true attitude for Europe 
 towards India is that of the adult towards the child. 
 It would be unjust to view the immoralities of the 
 Hindus with the same measure of indignation meet 
 and necessary in the case of a European. One 
 must feel pity for a people so kindly, so docile 
 and so simple who are so blind to universal truth 
 and so marvellously obedient to authority. They are 
 as children frightened by darkness and haunted by 
 the ghost stories of their parents. It is not with them 
 as with certain schools of religion in Europe, that 
 their superstition is an affectation and their ritualism 
 a pose in cTStheticism. They are terribly in earnest. 
 It is necessary always to remind oneself that these 
 toiling and obedient millions are as childlike in 
 reason and intuition, and as real and earnest in 
 their childishness, as the Children of Israel. 
 
 This, then, is the religion which Brahmanism sets 
 itself to guard. And the object of Brahmanism's 
 solicitude is not the religion itself, but the para- 
 lysing and emasculating effect of that religion on 
 the peoples whose submissiveness is essential to its 
 own power.* Brahmanism, which can still order an 
 educated man who has broken caste to take into 
 his mouth the five products of the cow, which can 
 still make a Rajah go barefoot in penance to the 
 sea while itself rides triumphantly in a palanquin, 
 W'hich can still keep seventy million people in a 
 condition of absolute helotry, is such a power in 
 
 * See page 342
 
 56 THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 
 
 priestcraft as nothing in the history of ancient 
 times or the mediaeval chronicles of the Latin 
 Church can even faintly parallel. And against this 
 mighty and utterly unscrupulous force, standing 
 guard over the Hindu temple of terror and holding 
 in its hand the scourge of earthly chastisement and 
 the flaming keys of hell, the soul of European 
 democracy is now going up in many forms which 
 strike terror to its heart, but in none so menacing 
 to its power and so threatening to its peace, as in 
 the form of the meek and lowly Christ with His 
 gospel of the cleansed heart and His promise of 
 liberation from the sense of sin. 
 
 Christianity, I beg you to believe, is the supreme 
 enemy of Brahmanism. The victory of Christ in 
 India is the victory of enlightenment as well as of 
 elevation, of freedom as well as of virtue, of joy, 
 courage, and hope, as well as the victory of moral 
 grandeur. 
 
 If you would know the full difference between 
 Brahmanism and Christianity consider that Brah- 
 manism in many parts of India takes into its temples 
 little girls of ten and twelve years of age, that with 
 pomp and ceremony it marries these poor children 
 to a god, that the children are kept in the temple to 
 sing and dance before satyr-inspired worshippers, 
 that the money paid for their moral corruption by 
 these worshippers goes to the priests, and that as 
 soon as they reach an age which is considered 
 unprofitable, they are turned out into a strange and 
 friendless world to become the slave-women of any 
 pimp or pandar of the bazaar.* 
 
 In the following chapters I hope to give the 
 reader from the diary of my travels and the chronicles 
 
 * This well-known state of affairs is fully described in a book 
 entitled, Things as they are in Southern India.
 
 THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 57 
 
 of my conversations with Indians, as well as a 
 graphic picture of Indian life, a clearer and more 
 human idea of the difference between Christianity 
 and Hinduism. But this present chapter will surely 
 suffice to rid the mind of Europeans corrupted by 
 theosophical moonings and mystical sentimentalism 
 of the monstrous delusion that there is anything in 
 Hinduism which can be of the smallest service to 
 humanity, or that it has achieved anything in the 
 long course of its history except the debasement, 
 the degradation, and the defilement of human nature. 
 Aryan philosophers have uttered beautiful ideas, 
 Dravidian poets have composed mellifluous verses, 
 thoughts gracious and pleasing are woven here and 
 there like golden threads into the immense and 
 sombre fabric of Indian literature; but Hinduism, 
 the religion of the ruck, in the long course of its 
 development has contributed neither glory to history 
 nor honour to humanity, man's knowledge of the 
 universe owes it not a farthing of debt, freedom is 
 contemptuous of it, and conduct can accuse it justly 
 of a thousand crimes.* 
 
 * See page 343
 
 TWO PANDALS 
 
 Accompanied by a friend and fellow-traveller, I set 
 out soon after landing in Bombay for the South of 
 India, where I was to meet Fakir Singh, see parts 
 of the country seldom visited by the tourist, and 
 make acquaintance with a subject which has always 
 had a curious interest for my mind — humanity's 
 worship of evil as represented by devil-dancing and 
 other perversions of the religious conscience. 
 
 To reach Trivandrum, chief city of Travancore, 
 an independent state in Southern India, we jour- 
 neyed by train to Quilon, climbing into the tall 
 mountains where elephants, tigers, sambur, and 
 other creatures of the jungle range through a forest 
 of dense and far-spreading beauty. We descended 
 in many sweeping circles, through the rich splen- 
 dours of sunset, to sea-level on the other side, and 
 thus on to the end of the railway journey. It was 
 eight o'clock in the evening when our train stopped 
 at Quilon. The platform of the station was thronged 
 by a multitude of half-naked, chocolate-coloured 
 natives. Through this loud-chattering mass of 
 people we made our way to the refreshment room, 
 ate our dinner, and a few minutes before nine set 
 out to walk through the town of Quilon to the boats 
 which were to carry us through the night on the 
 backwaters of Travancore to the capital city of 
 Trivandrum.
 
 TWO PANDALS 59 
 
 The moon was shining above the palm-trees, and 
 except for the circle dazzled by her radiance, the 
 sky was studded with stars which burned, twinkled, 
 and glittered w'ith an indescribable magnificence. 
 The dark, mysterious, and tree-shaded streets of 
 Ouilon were crowded with barefoot natives who 
 passed us by as silently as ghosts or approached us 
 out of the shadows with the suddenness of appari- 
 tions. The houses in the streets showed no lights 
 till we reached the market, w'here a row of stalls 
 glowed with a soft yellow brightness and a little 
 pandal, an open erection of bamboo and leaves, set 
 up for the celebration of a Muhamadan festival 
 called Mohurrum, occupied a garish corner and 
 shone with all the momentary and tinsel vivacity 
 of an English fair. For a few moments we were 
 surrounded by a gaping mob who eyed us with 
 consuming interest, and whispered among them- 
 selves as to this sudden appearance of two English- 
 men in their midst. A couple of rickshaws followed 
 us into the gloom of the trees, the men in the 
 shafts sounding their spring bells and inviting us 
 to ride. 
 
 We came presently to the backwaters. Steps dug 
 in the banks led us down to the Indian country 
 passage-boats, called vullums. These strange vessels 
 resemble the gondola of Venice, but without the 
 tourist note. They are long and narrow, with a 
 slightly raised prow, carved into some unintelligible 
 design. The timbers are not nailed together, but 
 sewn with cohair and made water-tight with fish- 
 oil. The middle is roofed with palm leaves laced 
 and woven into a rounded framework of bamboo. 
 Part of this roof is movable, and can be pushed 
 back to leave an open space in the centre. The 
 floor is covered with matting, on which a bed can
 
 6o TWO PANDALS 
 
 be made at either end. The crew, for a long journey, 
 consists of four natives, two in the bows, and two in 
 the stern. They shove the boats along with bamboo 
 poles in shallow water, and row it with long oars 
 ending in a small spoon-shaped blade when they 
 enter the lakes. At intervals they are relieved by 
 fresh men from the scattered villages along the banks. 
 These men are good-looking, chocolate-coloured, 
 black-haired people, having abrupt features, a pro- 
 truding lower lip, fine eyes, and bodies as thin and 
 wiry as a vigorous English boy. 
 
 I am still haunted by the memory of that night 
 journey through the backwaters of Travancore. 
 Although the sea was almost within a stone's- 
 throw, and although the backwaters are tidal and 
 salt, there was no sense of the ocean in the air, no 
 sound of its unrest through the trees, and no touch 
 of its vastness in the long, narrow line of water 
 stretching before us through the trees. The silence 
 was that of primeval forest. The scents were inland 
 and tropical. The peace was immemorial and eternal. 
 The air which came to one with the movement of 
 the boat was warm and soft and caressing, like the 
 breath of a sleeping child. 
 
 On either bank, tall and graceful palm-trees 
 crowded in a density through which neither star- 
 shine nor moonlight could make a glimmer. The 
 trunks of those nearest to us leaned with a tired 
 languor towards the water, and their heavy branches 
 of burnished green drooped downwards, tired and 
 depressed, as though weighted by the moonlight, 
 burning on their outer plumes. High overhead, in 
 central heaven, the full moon, double-ringed with 
 orange fire, veiled the blinding brightness of her 
 beauty and poured upon the aisle of water, not 
 shafts of lidless light, but slumbrous dust of silver
 
 TWO PANDALS 6i 
 
 — a falling mist of clouded radiance which was like 
 an opiate to the senses. 
 
 Every now and then we saw on the banks mud 
 huts roofed with palm-leaves, and heard a woman 
 crooning to her child. The rhythmic sound of the 
 poles, first striking the water and, after the shove, 
 rising with a dripping noise to the moonlight, came 
 to our ears with the calls of birds disturbed in the 
 forest. We heard, too, the monotonous sound of 
 bare feet in the prow and in the stern, as the punters 
 moved backwards and forwards at their work. 
 
 I watched the stars and gave myself up to the 
 breathing charm of the forest, till my senses were 
 drowned in sleep. Under a canopy of palm-leaves, 
 my head resting on a pillow, my body covered by 
 a sheet, I fell into as calm and blissful a sleep as the 
 serenity of stars ever gave to mortal man. But only 
 for a brief space did I lose myself in this deep 
 slumber. I woke to the discordance of hell. Shouts, 
 yells, screams filled my ears. I raised my head and 
 looked out. The forest had disappeared. There 
 was neither moon nor stars. All was darkness — a 
 pitchy blackness which hid everything from the 
 eyes and closed about one like a muffling cloak. I 
 felt the boat moving forward at a furious speed, but 
 could see no water. I knew that the natives were 
 pressing on their poles, but could hear no sound 
 of their pattering feet. Clamour and darkness were 
 all I could comprehend. Then a light flashed at 
 me — close to the edge of the boat. 
 
 We were passing through a long tunnel in the 
 mountains, and the shouting noise came from the 
 natives at either end of our long craft. They were 
 making pandemonium to drive away, or at any rate 
 to keep at arm's length, the devils supposed to haunt 
 the interior darkness of the earth. A drizzle of
 
 62 TWO PANDALS 
 
 water dripped from the curved roof of the tunnel. 
 Lamps were burning dimly in the walls at far 
 distances. 
 
 Soon I relapsed into the deliciousness of my 
 former oblivion, and when I next opened my eyes 
 it was a few minutes before the dawn. At the end 
 of the green arcade of water and trees, the sky was 
 ribbed with bars of grey cloud edged with scarlet 
 flame; beneath this grating was a flare of liquid 
 yellow : above it the sunless sky was the softest of 
 pale blues. As we looked, the grey bars of clouds 
 thinned into flecks of fire which rose and presently 
 floated away like a flock of birds. The green lines 
 of palm-trees began to dazzle the eyes; the liquid 
 yellow of the distant horizon became so radiant that 
 it hurt the gaze; and then out of the water flooding 
 with fire rose the red rim of the sun and throbbed 
 and blinked and pulsated till distance glowed like 
 molten gold and the whole earth became conscious 
 of heat. 
 
 The crew were laughing at their work. Their 
 thin arms as they lifted the poles shone with sweat, 
 their legs as they walked forward and pushed off 
 with one foot from the curved prow ran with 
 moisture, their chocolate-coloured backs bending 
 and straining, every muscle visible and hard, glit- 
 tered with a dew of toil. Their faces were as wet 
 as if they had been plunged into water. In a 
 language of guttural velocity they called to each 
 other, and laughed across their faces, showing 
 teeth as white as the flesh of coco-nuts. The 
 palms of their hands and the soles of their feet 
 were as pale as a European's. 
 
 In issuing from the canals and passing across 
 the lakes we had glimpses of natives working in 
 the rice-fields — little armies of black men and
 
 TWO PANDALS 63 
 
 v\omen almost as naked as on the day they were 
 born. The air was now filled with the song of 
 birds. Dragon-flies of brilliant colour flashed past 
 us with a buzz. On either side were gorgef)US 
 flowers and the rich leafage of croton plants. The 
 colours of the rainbow glowed at us from the 
 wings of birds and butterflies. . . . 
 
 Bef ^re noon we reached Trivandrum and dis- 
 embarked at a landing-stage crowded with natives. 
 We left our servant to bring on the luggage, and 
 set out in a gharry for the Travellers' Bungalow. 
 
 Trivandrum is a city which is never seen. No 
 one has set eyes upon it. From the Maharajah in 
 his palace and the able representative of Great 
 Britain at the Residency, down to the oldest coolie 
 and the most ancient harridan among the outcast 
 sweepers, no one has beheld Trivandrum. For this 
 mighty city, with thousands of inhabitants, has 
 been built into a forest so vast as to hide it, and 
 so undulating as to separate it into hundreds of 
 scattered fragments. Red roads, soft and dusty, 
 wind through the forest; and as one drives along, 
 a church or a bungalow appears for a moment and 
 then as suddenly disappears; a line of mud huts 
 wedged between the trees scarcely discloses itself 
 as a native street, so dense is the gloom, so 
 subdued the colour of the huts; a clearing made in 
 the trees for a palace or a mansion seems like a 
 trivial vista in the midst of an everlasting jungle 
 of immemorial trees. 
 
 The Travellers' Bungalow is said to be one of 
 the very best of these Governmental rest-houses in 
 India. The secret is that sometimes it is used for 
 an overflow of guests from the British Residency. 
 The rooms are large and lofty ; the furniture is 
 good and cool; the service is excellent; and the
 
 64 TWO PANDALS 
 
 food eatable. It is a beautiful low building, with 
 a red-tiled roof, a portico hung with cool ferns in 
 the centre of the veranda, and a pleasant, if dusty 
 garden, where the sun beats upon hundreds of 
 flowers and the crows ceaselessly caw from the 
 surrounding trees which shut it in and altogether 
 isolate it from the rest of Trivandrum. 
 
 That evening we made the acquaintance of an 
 Englishman on the veranda, and after smoking a 
 cigar with him, strolled, at his suggestion, through 
 the garden and out into the moonlighted road, to 
 visit a neighbouring pandal across the road, in 
 which was being celebrated the festival of Mohur- 
 rum. Our presence in the group of Mussulmans 
 occasioned some surprise, but the crowd parted for 
 us, a lounging figure in white, with a fez on his 
 black head, rose hurriedly to greet us with a smiling 
 courtesy, and we were conducted to the chief seats 
 in front of the garish pandal and offered cigarettes 
 and cigars. This pandal, which had a kind of 
 altar or shrine at the back, before which food was 
 placed for the Prophet, was decorated with tinsel 
 stars, Japanese lanterns, paper flags of various 
 colours, and branches of palm. 
 
 It was a scene most picturesque and Asian. The 
 ground in front of us was occupied by squatting 
 figures in various coloured dresses and turbans and 
 loin cloths; a large Punch and Judy box faced us 
 in the distance, occupied by two men with a little 
 girl in the centre, motionless, and whitened. Men 
 dressed as women and animals danced and joked 
 and clowned in the little space immediately before 
 our chairs. At every ten minutes or so, the tom- 
 tom was banged monotonously and the whole 
 company broke into a nasal drone which deafened 
 ihe ears and made discord of peace and mind.
 
 TWO PANDALS 65 
 
 From first to last this religious festival was 
 prurient and suggestive, everything turning upon 
 sexualism. Certain things that I saw cannot be 
 written, but on the whole the immorality was 
 rather that of corrupted children than the abhorrent 
 bestiality of depraved minds. It was rather jaded 
 iniquity than determined depravity. Again and 
 again I found myself regarding the people as 
 children, and in their simple smiling faces and the 
 almost listless character of their attention, I saw 
 that one should feel pity for them, and not judge 
 them as men before whom a choice has been pre- 
 sented and who have elected for iniquity. They 
 were beating the tom-tom, singing their songs, and 
 dancing their wriggling dances till three o'clock in 
 the morning. 
 
 I have mentioned this trivial incident as a contrast 
 to what follows, as a contrast which should bring 
 home to the least imaginative of readers the immense 
 difference between the mind of Christ and the mind 
 of Asia. 
 
 On the day following our arrival in Trivandrum 
 we were invited by Fakir Singh to attend an after- 
 noon meeting in the compound of the Salvation 
 Army's Girls' School, where another and far bigger 
 pandal had been set up, but for a very different 
 purpose. Of all the sights I saw in India, this 
 was one that made the most instant impression. 
 When we arrived, we found the trees surrounding 
 the sun-flooded compound filled in all their branches 
 with men and boys; the great space of the compound 
 in front of the pandal entirely occupied by a dense 
 multitude of men and women ; the pandal itself 
 filled from end to end with boys and girls; and 
 the veranda of the school packed with high-caste 
 natives, officers of the army, and European residents
 
 66 TWO PANDALS 
 
 interested in the amazing work of the Salvation 
 Army. It was one of the most striking congrega- 
 tions I have ever seen. And all those squatting 
 thousands on the ground surrounding the pandal, 
 all those bird-like figures loading the trees, all that 
 mass of black-faced and solemn-eyed humanity 
 packed so tightly and sitting so patiently, had 
 come into Trivandrum from the neighbouring 
 villages, some of them twenty-five and thirty miles 
 away, to hear the story of that Divine Man whose 
 Personality has revolutionized the other side of 
 the world. They had brought their food with 
 them; they had slept under the trees or in their 
 bullock-carts on the way, and to-night, after the 
 long entertainment had come to an end they would 
 stretch their rolls of matting on the ground where 
 they were now sitting, and sleep till the dawn. 
 
 These villagers were in some cases the laity of 
 the Salvation Army, in some cases inquirers, and 
 in some cases waverers not yet wholly persuaded 
 to abandon their gods of terror and give themselves 
 to a God perfectly pure, perfectly holy, and per- 
 fectly kind. They had been sought in their distant 
 villages by officers of the Army, and for a year 
 at least many of them had gathered together to 
 hear the Bible read and listen to the preachers of 
 Christ. 
 
 The first part of the afternoon's programme was 
 given to the children. We heard the boys' band 
 playing such music as tom-tom and bamboo-reed 
 can never make — glad music, and strong music, 
 music to which men can march with their heads 
 upright, a music made for triumph and unconquer- 
 able hope. To teach these boys any music at all 
 is something of a victory, but to teach them such 
 music as we heard, and to teach them to play it so
 
 TWO PANDALS 67 
 
 accurately and with such a swing in its joy — this is 
 achievement of a notable kind. And the music 
 had passed into the souls of the boys. Instead of 
 slouching bodies, they stood upright and strong; 
 instead of matted or twisted hair, their heads were 
 as neat and brushed as a British soldier's; instead 
 of scowling looks and heavy sensualism, their faces 
 were bright with intelligence and glad with health. 
 It seemed an illusion that these handsome and 
 smart boys could be the sons of the crouching 
 villagers massed together in the dust of the 
 compound. 
 
 We saw a company of girls in pretty frocks 
 perform a drill with their coloured scarves. We 
 heard them sing. We heard them recite. We saw 
 them act. From beginning to end, only a little 
 nervousness marred the performance of these 
 childish minds awaking to intelligence. They 
 looked so pretty and charming, they were so 
 kempt and self-respecting, there was such under- 
 standing in their eyes and in the smiling curves of 
 their lips, that one had constantly to remind oneself 
 that these were the children of heathen villagers, 
 so profoundly ignorant and so disastrously super- 
 stitious that they can almost be described as 
 savages.* 
 
 But the first note of definite religious interest 
 came when Fakir Singh, Commissioner for the 
 Salvation Army in India, rose to address the multi- 
 tude. He began by saying that everybody there 
 had at least heard about Jesus, that they all knew 
 
 * For five shillings a month the Salvation Army can feed, 
 clothe, and teach a child in its excellent schools. It is only lack 
 of money which keeps a host of children outside those crowded 
 doors. I looked at the savage children and I looked at the children 
 of the Army, and felt how hard it was that the one should be 
 blessed and the other cursed.
 
 68 TWO PANDALS 
 
 what Jesus asked humanity to become, and that the 
 One True God Who is the Father of humanity only 
 asks His children to conquer their sins in order that 
 they may be everlastingly happy as pure angels in 
 a beautiful heaven. I watched the faces of the 
 multitude. Heads were bent forward to hear, in 
 all those thousands of eyes there was intensity of 
 interest, in not one single face did I see self- 
 consciousness, stupidity, or an inclination to smile. 
 Men and women, young men and young girls — the 
 whole vast multitude, listened with a rapt attention. 
 They were like enthralled children listening to a story. 
 
 Then came a dramatic incident. Suddenly in the 
 midst of his simple talk the Fakir asked how many 
 of the people who had heard about Jesus wanted to 
 conquer their sins and to become gentle and kind, 
 pure and virtuous, good and holy. In a second the 
 air was filled with lifted arms. I do not think there 
 was a single person in all that large gathering who 
 did not lift an arm to heaven. 
 
 ' Those hands of yours,' said the Fakir, his eyes 
 shining and his voice very quiet and earnest, ' are 
 prayers. Your Father sees them and understands. 
 He beholds you with a tender and compassionate 
 love. He knows your hearts— your hearts which 
 are hidden from all the world. According to your 
 sincerity He will answer your prayer. And now 
 let us bow our heads, and fold our hands, and pray 
 to Him in silence.' 
 
 It was an unforgettable sight. The faces which 
 a moment before had been raised to the speaker — 
 faces of men, many of them expressing every 
 degree of savagery and woe, bestiality and suffer- 
 ing : faces of women strangely beautiful and yet 
 marred by a frowning discontent or a heavy 
 animalism — became suddenly bowed and hidden.
 
 TWO PANiDALS 69 
 
 The compound was filled with silence. Not a 
 finger was moved. Not a robe stirred. The 
 multitude was motionless. And the sun beat down 
 through the trees on this field of humanity lifting 
 its soul to God. 
 
 One realized at that moment how frightful is the 
 penalty of sin, and how immediate the appeal of 
 Christ to the human soul once definitely conscious 
 of its misery. Many of these villagers who have 
 hitherto followed their natural inclinations all the 
 days of their lives, who have ever felt the world 
 to be simple animalism, and the universe filled 
 with gods as lustful and bestial as themselves, 
 who can live so easily and with so little dread, 
 who are surrounded by nature's most lovely 
 manifestations, and enjoy a climate which is 
 summer almost from year's end to year's end 
 — are wretched and unhappy, are conscious of 
 something wrong in life, are aware of something 
 inexpressible and undefined which disquiets and 
 hurts their hearts. And immediately they hear the 
 simple story of the Christ, they feel the sun shine 
 into the darkness of their souls and an answering 
 response stirring in the depths of their hearts. They 
 do not say. Is it true ? They do not dispute and 
 contend. They set no casuistry of the mind between 
 their souls and the great joy coming to them out of 
 the new heavens. They only know that it is restful 
 and sweet to lay the burden of their long misery at 
 the feet of One Who is sinless and compassionate, 
 human and Divine : that to set themselves for the 
 sake of this adorable Person to be better, presents 
 a goal which more really and worthily fills and 
 widens the horizon of their lives than the labour of 
 the fields : and that to contemplate God as a Father 
 Who cares for them, and. Because He cares for them,
 
 70 TWO PANDALS 
 
 is seeking to fit them for iiigher joys and purer 
 heights of being than anything they can imagine 
 or dream, makes of existence at one stroke a rational 
 and a glorious opportunity. 
 
 These villagers had streamed into the town of 
 Trivandrum, not so much to see their children per- 
 forming in the afternoon, as to hear in the evening 
 once more, and this time in a new way, the story of 
 Christ. Officers of the Salvation Army had visited 
 them in their houses, had held meetings in their 
 villages, and had read them from the New Testament 
 the story of Christ ; but now they were actually to 
 see with their eyes what hitherto they had heard 
 with their ears. 
 
 In the evening the compound was more densely 
 crowded than in the afternoon. At least five thou- 
 sand people — probably many more — ^were sitting on 
 the ground under the stars, fathers and sons, mothers 
 and daughters, brothers and sisters — a dense swarm 
 of black-faced and almost naked humanity, whose 
 eyes reflected the moonlight and whose white turbans 
 and loin cloths shone like the cerements of a grave- 
 yard wakened to immortality. Only a few lamps 
 were burning. The interior of the pandal was occu- 
 pied at the back by a white sheet. In the centre of 
 the multitude was an officer of the Army with a 
 magic lantern. When the lights were put out, and 
 the people had sung a hymn, one could still see the 
 glitter of eyes and the shine of dark skins in the 
 moonlight. 
 
 It was very striking to observe the effect made 
 upon these awaking savages by the picture of 
 General Booth when it appeared upon the sheet. 
 There was a cry of admiration and love, hands were 
 clapped with an abandonment to enthusiasm, and 
 then a shout of acclaim rose from all the host. One
 
 TWO PANDALS 71 
 
 thought of the humble work begun in East London 
 only a few years ago by a Nottingham preacher, 
 and reminded oneself of the fame of this old man, 
 not only in the distant forests of Southern India, 
 but all over the wide world and among all the 
 various races of humanity. 
 
 There were other pictures : and then came the 
 Life of Christ, told by paintings and moving- 
 pictures. As one followed the simple story, through 
 all the beauty of its earlier incidents to the culmi- 
 nating tragedy which has changed the heart of the 
 human race and given a new heaven to the soul of 
 man, one perceived how infinitely higher and more 
 compelling, how infinitely more human and Divine, 
 how infinitely simpler and appealing is the religion 
 of Christ than all the perversions of religion which 
 have nailed the soul of Asia to the rock of suffering 
 and sin. They cannot be compared. Hinduism is 
 not another path to God; it is a pit of abomination 
 as far set from God as the mind of man can go. It 
 is not the Bread of Life, but the Dead Sea fruit of 
 bitterness and death. It is not hope, but despair. 
 It is not effort, but surrender. It is not attainment, 
 but defeat. 
 
 When the story had been told, a lamp was 
 brought into the pandal, and the Fakir stood up 
 and appealed to those whose hearts had been 
 touched and searched by the pictures, that very 
 night to come out and make petition to heaven 
 for its mercy and its love. He spoke in simple 
 language, making use of parables which a child 
 might understand, and set himself to awaken in 
 the multitude a desire for goodness and a longing 
 for peace of heart. Nothing could have been 
 more simple, more quiet, more true. It was the 
 Christianity of the Mount of Olives.
 
 72 TWO PANDALS 
 
 For a moment or two after his appeal there was 
 silence, breathless and nervous. He made a second 
 appeal, saying, ' Who will be the first to come out 
 and ask God to forgive his sins?' A young man 
 rose from the midst of the sitting multitude, and 
 made his difficult way to the pandal. He was 
 clothed in a white turban and a white loin cloth, 
 with a shoulder cloth of white hanging at one side 
 of his body. He was tall, good-looking and of 
 great strength. There was a sulky nobility in his 
 eyes and an obstinate resolution in his strong lips. 
 He looked neither to the right nor to the left. His 
 head was a little bowed. His arms moved grace- 
 fully at his sides. The light of the lamp shone in 
 his eyes and the light of the moon on his black 
 shoulders and neck. He was like a shepherd. 
 
 Others followed his example. One saw officers 
 of the Salvation Army, Indians and Europeans, 
 moving among the seated thousands, and bending 
 down to speak to them. In the meantime the wide 
 and spacious pandal was crowded with kneeling 
 figures. Women and girls congregated together, 
 and women of the Salvation Army kneeled at 
 their sides, mothering them, and encouraging their 
 prayers. Men formed by far the greater number 
 of kneeling figures, most of them young men 
 between twenty and thirty years of age. They 
 kneeled in the dust, their hands at their sides, their 
 eyes opened, their heads slightly raised — figures so 
 still that they might have been carved in ebony. 
 
 There was now a ceaseless stream of men and 
 women into the pandal. The seriousness of the 
 procession, and the solemnity of the kneeling mul- 
 titude, made a profound impression. Presently, 
 encouraged by the Fakir, who moved amongst 
 them praying and blessing them, the whole kneeling
 
 rWO i'ANDALS 73 
 
 company began to pray aloud. The noise of those 
 deep voices filled the night. Each man prayed his 
 own prayer, uttered his own longings, expressed 
 his own needs. In a low monotone, rising to an 
 almost ringing earnestness, thousands of Tamils 
 and Malayalis lifted their voices to the Father of 
 humanity, while the hundreds in the pandal 
 besought Him to forgive their sins, to heal their 
 wretchedness, and to accept them as His children. 
 Imagine the scene. As far as eye could see, 
 stretching out into the glimmering moonlight of 
 an Eastern garden, there were thousands of half- 
 naked people sitting and standing on the ground, 
 hunched up on the boughs of trees, packed shoulder 
 to shoulder on the walls. Under a great open tent 
 of palm-leaves, where a lamp was burning and 
 unlighted paper lanterns were hanging from the 
 blanches, hundreds of men and women were 
 kneeling and praying to God, with white and 
 black officers of the Salvation Army moving in 
 and out among them. Those officers represented 
 many nations : among them were a Brahman, a 
 Singhalese, a Malayali, a Tamil, a German, a Nor- 
 wegian, a Swede, an Australian, an Englishman, 
 and a Scot. All were praying. The voices of 
 these various nationalities rose in the air with a 
 cry inspired by love for a sinless Ideal, with a 
 passion and a longing uttered from the need of 
 their common humanity ; and all these separate 
 \oices and different words rose in a perfect unison, 
 like the prayer of a single family under their 
 father's roof. One felt that the unity of nations is 
 not a dream, but one of the very first and most 
 certain results of a catholic Christianity. The 
 kneeling host, the rolling thunder of their supplica- 
 tion, the moonlight, the solemn stillness of the
 
 74 TWO PANDALS 
 
 trees, the reverence and quiet of the watching 
 multitude, and those servants of God drawn to 
 India out of all the nations of the earth moving to 
 and fro in the midst of them — one felt at that 
 moment the passion of religion and the Fatherhood 
 of God. 
 
 I can still see those kneeling Children of India. 
 I can still see the disciples of Christ moving amongst 
 them. I can still feel the soft and scented air of 
 that Eastern night, and see the moonlight shining 
 on the white garments of the watching multitude. 
 And I can still hear, as though it were an organ in 
 the next room, the mighty sound of those many 
 voices rolling up to their new heaven and making 
 appeal to their new God and their first Father in 
 heaven. As I recall that scene, I see the sensual 
 grins and jaded eyes of the poor Mussulmans round 
 their street-corner pandal in honour of Mohurrum. 
 
 An hour after this wonderful experience, I was 
 talking to a man who had been devil-possessed for 
 many years, and whose remarkable story appears 
 in the next chapter. When I parted with him and 
 issued from the interior of the school premises, I 
 found the veranda occupied by women sleeping on 
 mats and the whole wide garden strewn with sleep- 
 ing figures. In the moonlight, surrounded by the 
 tall trunks of palmyra and coco-nut palms, and by 
 the interwoven branches of flowering shrubs and 
 scented trees, the spectacle was one of singular 
 beauty and a most gracious appeal. Those tired 
 sleepers, sleeping in the dust of the garden, had 
 come many miles through the hills and the forest 
 to hear the story of Christ; the bullocks and carts 
 of some of them were visible in the shadows; the 
 sound of their breathing was like the noise of a 
 summer sea; before the dawn they would be moving
 
 TWO PANDALS 75 
 
 with their wives and families back through the 
 jungle, and bacli over the hills, to the mud huts of 
 their distant villages. Some of them that very night 
 had ' found Christ.' Some of them were sleeping 
 with a new peace in their hearts and a new joy in 
 their souls. All of them, perhaps, had drawn at 
 least a little closer to the Light of the World. 
 
 It was like a scene from the Bible. The heavi- 
 ness of the languorous leafage, the softness of the 
 air, the extreme brightness of the moon, and the 
 grinding splendour of the stars — these, and the 
 breathing multitude hooded and wrapped in white 
 garments, lying at full length on the ground, so 
 silent and so still, filling the whole garden with 
 the sense of human weariness and heavenly care — 
 touched the mind with thoughts of those who had 
 crossed the hills of Galilee two thousand years ago 
 on a like errand. 
 
 One walked softly through that garden, not for 
 fear of awaking the sleepers, but out of reverence 
 for the hush which brooded there like the blessing 
 of God.
 
 THE DEVIL-DANCER 
 
 He crouched against a wall, one leg under him, an 
 elbow resting on the upraised knee of the other leg, 
 with the hand pressed against his face. He was 
 naked except for a sack-coloured shoulder cloth and 
 a grey covering about his loins. His skin was a 
 dusk-deadened copper. His black hair stood out 
 from the sides of his head and rose in tangled con- 
 fusion from his brow. The dark eyebrows pressed 
 upon the lids of long and watchful eyes which were 
 full of serious brightness. The upper lip was shaded 
 by a line of smooth hair. The mouth was sullen 
 and threatening; when he spoke the lips opened 
 quickly and wide, showing teeth which had been 
 filed to tigerish sharp points. Across the prominent 
 cheek bones the face was broad and vigorous ; at 
 the chin it was pointed and peevish. I have seen 
 few animals so naked of dignity and repose, and no 
 human being outside of a madhouse so unalterably 
 marked with mental anguish. 
 
 1 sat on a chair in front of him, and at his side 
 knelt an Indian officer of the Salvation Army, able 
 to speak the man's difficult dialect, who acted as 
 interpreter. While I was speaking the crouching 
 Malayali regarded me with a look of watchful fear; 
 when my question was interpreted he turned his head 
 to the Salvationist and spoke rapidly, in a voice of
 
 THE DEVIL-DANCER 77 
 
 eager anxiety, using few gestures with his arms, but 
 those fine and commanding, often rolling his head 
 from side to side in distress at not making himself 
 understood, or raising his eyes to the roof of the 
 veranda under which he was crouching with a look 
 of most eloquent faith and joy in God — a small, 
 animal-like human being, with dawning intelligence 
 and exhausted misery in his eyes, and the beginnings 
 of a new philosophy in his just awakened soul. 
 
 He lived in a distant village in Southern India 
 where for many centuries the people have offered 
 propitiatory worship to a particularly odious devil. 
 His father was a devil-possessed man who lived by 
 using his power to exorcise from others devils less 
 powerful than those which tormented him. The 
 faith of the village did not trouble itself with gods, 
 good or immoral. The people believed in a power 
 of evil definitely and eternally arrayed against them. 
 To offer sacrifices and perform ceremonies which 
 would placate this afflicting devil seemed to them 
 obviously more rational than to supplicate any god 
 whose beneficent qualities surely guaranteed them 
 against the possibility of attack from that quarter. 
 
 The dancer's father may be described as a priest 
 of this devil-worship. He was not only the most 
 powerful exorciser of devils, he was not only a seeker 
 of favours from his devil, but he had definitely made 
 a compact with this devil to serve him on earth and 
 in the worlds beyond. In some dreadful and unre- 
 corded moment of his tortured life this man of the 
 jungle and the mountains had sold his soul to that 
 power of evil in the universe which seemed to him 
 the master of his fate. Henceforth, a freeman of 
 hell, he offered sacrifices in a devil grove, and went 
 about the villages earning money for the arrack he 
 drank day and night by casting out devils and
 
 78 THE DEVIL-DANCER 
 
 praving for favours and mercy to the chief of the 
 devils in the name of those troubled with sickness, 
 calamity, and fear. 
 
 The boy was twelve years of age when his father 
 was stricken with illness. He was a normal boy of 
 the village, quick and vivacious, but as heathen and 
 ignorant as all the rest of his community. Up till 
 that time he had little troubled his head about 
 devils, beyond taking care never to go out after 
 dark and always to avoid such places as burying 
 grounds, where a great number of devils were 
 known to have their dwelling. But now he had a 
 new-birth and experienced a perverted conversion, 
 terrible in the consequences. The father was raving 
 and gnashing his teeth on his death-bed. The 
 family stood round the wTithing figure, regarding 
 it with consternation. Suddenly the father started 
 up, and seizing his son by the long hair of his 
 head, dragged the boy down to him, and rubbing 
 ashes upon his head cried in a loud voice, ' Promise 
 me to serve the devil — promise me, promise me ! ' 
 Then, loosing the child, he spread his arms to the 
 group of his wife and children, and implored them 
 with his last breath to yield their souls to the 
 devil. His last words were, * Serve the devil.' 
 
 For three or four days nothing occurred. The 
 life of the family went on as usual. The death of 
 the devil-possessed father seemed to make no differ- 
 ence in its fortunes. There was the same poverty, 
 the same frugality, the same misery, and the same 
 monotony of labour. But one night as the eldest 
 son lay on his ragged mat waiting for sleep, he 
 felt himself suddenly stricken with a deadly cold 
 which convulsed all his limbs and shook him with 
 so great a trembling that the teeth rattled and 
 gridded in his mouth. He says that he saw nothing,
 
 THE DEVIL-DANCER 79 
 
 but that he felt the approach of a devil. He was 
 powerless to scream, powerless to ward ofT the 
 attack. He lay in a breathless and palsy-stricken 
 terror. Then, as if a cloud had swallowed him up, 
 he felt his body occupied by something not himself, 
 became aware of an overshadowing and masterful 
 spirit sitting in the tenement of his body and taking 
 absolute possession of his will. 
 
 He became unconscious. Early in the morning 
 he awoke, and leaving his house plunged into the 
 Jungle and ascended the mountains. He does not 
 know why he sought this solitude, he cannot tell 
 why he was not afraid of beasts and evil spirits; 
 driven into the wilderness by the demon possessing 
 him, he simply went on and on, a leaf blown by 
 the wind, a spar swept by the waves, a soul bereft 
 of volition and the power of determination. 
 
 He threw himself down from heights. He felt 
 himself lifted off his feet into the air. He beat 
 himself with stones, tore out his hair, and scratched 
 his flesh with his nails till it was wet with blood. 
 The night came and he was not afraid. Without 
 sleep and without fatigue, he wandered hither 
 and thither, wailing and groaning, shouting and 
 singing, laughing and crving. He was conscious 
 neither of hunger nor thirst. The hot sun blazed 
 down upon his unprotected head, and he sought no 
 shade. His body became burned with the heat, and 
 he sought no water. With a consciousness which 
 seemed to be drowning, suffocating, and expiring, 
 he felt himself swept forward by the devil possessing 
 him, and had neither the will nor the wish to fight 
 for his safety. 
 
 How long he remained in the jungle on that 
 occasion he does not remember. He returned 
 eventually to his home and found that his fame
 
 8o THE DEVIL-DANCER 
 
 was established as a devil-possessed boy. He 
 explains that his devil was hereditary; that as far 
 as memory could reach members of his family had 
 been possessed by spirits; that at the death of the 
 father the eldest son always inherited the family's 
 devil. Every one in the village, and in some of 
 the neighbouring villages, recognized his devil as 
 the one which had possessed the father. He was 
 called on to exorcise devils, and was given gifts of 
 rice for his services. 
 
 Up tin the moment of his possession he had 
 been a good boy. He had been, that is to say, 
 perfectly moral and obedient. He is quite certain 
 on this point. And he is also quite certain that 
 from the moment of his possession he became 
 one of the greatest scoundrels in that neighbour- 
 hood. He became sexually vile and dreadful. He 
 craved for the disgusting spirit called arrack. He 
 loved to eat and rub himself with filthy things. It 
 gave him, not pain, but positive pleasure, to stab 
 and slash himself with a knife. His arms are yet 
 rutted with gashes and his neck pitted with the 
 marks of his stabbings. He could handle fire, and 
 would rub it on his head and body without being 
 either blistered or hurt. He could put himself into 
 a terrible frenzy and perform in this state acts of 
 strength and daring which sent his fame into all 
 the countryside. He told us what were the signs of 
 his devil's activity and frenzies. He would begin to 
 spit blood, then he would be shaken with a palsy, 
 then his senses w-ould become jumbled, muddled, 
 and covered with a muffling obscurity, and for one 
 night every bone in his body would ache as though 
 he had been beaten by many clubs. After that he 
 was possessed and swept forward for days and weeks 
 by the devil possessing him.
 
 THE DEVIL-DANCER 81 
 
 He never saw his devil, or any other devil; but 
 he described with a wonderful quickness of gesture 
 and a sudden flashing of the eyes what he has seen 
 in the darkness of the night and the solitude of the 
 jungle. Light has flashed at him from two sides, 
 flashed with incredible swiftness, as if two fingers 
 of flame sprang upon each other and vanished in 
 the ferocity of their collision; then straight in front 
 of him, a little above the level of his eyes, he has 
 seen a creature like a cat spinning round and round 
 in a rush so electric that it has made a circle of light 
 about it in the darkness; and he has felt monkeys 
 brushing past him and then has seen them disappear 
 into nothingness. 
 
 Like his father he dedicated himself to the devil 
 — definitely elected to serve Evil. He became as 
 really possessed by evil spirits as saints have been 
 possessed by the Spirit of God. All his experiences 
 are a perversion of those recorded by holy men and 
 pure women in the literature of Christianity. 
 
 On one occasion he spent seven days and nights 
 without nourishment of any kind, committing ex- 
 cesses of indescribable horror in graveyards and 
 wandering through the darkest and most dangerous 
 parts of the jungle. 
 
 He became the most celebrated devil-possessed 
 man for many miles around his village. He was 
 regarded with reverence and dread. A man gave 
 him his daughter in marriage, and this woman 
 worshipped the devil. People of high caste sent for 
 him to cure them of sickness or to ofi"er sacrifices to 
 the devil in times of plague or famine. On one 
 occasion a Sudra family — that is to say, a high-caste 
 family — sent for him to cast out a demon afflicting 
 one of its young women. This demon, known as 
 Rectasorie, or blood devil, tore the girl till she was
 
 82 THE DEVIL-DANCER 
 
 dabbled all over with blood. The devil-dancer 
 remained with her for seven days, wrestling cease- 
 lessly with that devil, and finally cast it out. The 
 girl was completely restored. The act was com- 
 memorated by a silver medal which the Sudra 
 himself hung round the dancer's neck, placing at 
 the same time seven rupees in his hand — a large 
 sum of money for any villager in India to earn at 
 a single stroke. 
 
 So great was his fame that it checked the work 
 of Christianity in a neighbouring village where the 
 Salvation Army had lately planted a local Corps. 
 People challenged the Christians to perform such 
 miracles as this man could do every day of the week. 
 The Adjutant was a Malayali, a man converted 
 from the depths of heathenism to the heights of a 
 most beautiful purity. This man, feeling himself 
 unworthy to attempt miracles, set himself to pray 
 for the soul of the devil-dancer. He gave up an 
 entire week to this purpose, and ceaselessly petitioned 
 God all those seven days to give him the soul of the 
 devil-priest. 
 
 The answer to his prayer seemed to be a growing 
 conviction that he should go to the man and speak 
 to him of Christ. He set out on this errand full of 
 that utter and childlike faith which is the most 
 striking and attractive feature in the character of an 
 Indian truly and earnestly converted. He went as 
 the first Apostles went on their missions with the 
 good news of a risen Christ. It did not trouble him 
 to think of what he should say ; it did not occur to 
 him that his errand was wild and impossible. Full 
 of quiet joy, conscious of a holy spirit leading him 
 forward, he passed barefoot over the dusty road with 
 the sun shining in his eyes through the leaves and 
 branches of the forest.
 
 THE DEVIL-DANCER 83 
 
 Half-way to the village he encountered the devil- 
 worshipper on the road. His heart beat with hope 
 at this coincidence so like an answer to his prayer. 
 He stopped him and invited him to rest under the 
 shade of the trees. The devil-dancer's arms were 
 full of live fowls which he was carrying to a devil's 
 temple. He was meditating on the pleasure of 
 killing these birds and smearing himself with the 
 hot blood. When the Adjutant learned this business 
 he said, ' Brother, do not do this act, but come with 
 me to my village and let me tell you in my house 
 the wonderful story of Jesus, Who has power to save 
 all men and to cast out all devils.' 
 
 Greatly wondering, the dancer consented, and the 
 two men set out for the Adjutant's village. On the 
 way the story of Jesus was told to the devil- 
 worshipper. He listened with interest, asked a 
 few questions, and became strangely quiet and 
 tranquil as the journey drew to its end. Once in 
 the house, the Adjutant invited his friend to pray 
 with him. For the first time in his life, the devil- 
 worshipper directed his thoughts to a God of purity 
 and goodness. They prayed together that the devil 
 might be cast out of the dancer, that he might be 
 set free for evermore from the powers of evil, and 
 that his heart might become pure. Once and again 
 the man cried out in terror that he could feel the 
 devil coming to take possession of him ; the Adju- 
 tant answered these cries by bidding him take 
 courage and pray with stronger faith to the great 
 God over Whom neither man nor devil could triumph. 
 'Oh, I fear that the devil is coming!' cried the 
 man. 'No: keep praying to God; the devil will 
 not come,' replied the Adjutant. So they prayed, 
 these two Children of India, in a little mud hut on 
 the southern slopes of the Western Ghats whose
 
 84 THE DEVIL-DANCER 
 
 palms are stirred by breezes from the sea, prayed 
 to the Father of humanity, to the Jesus of Nazareth, 
 and to the Christ of Calvary, until the sun was 
 hidden and the darkness of evening fell upon the 
 forest. Throughout the day they had prayed, and 
 now at eventide it was well with the man. Suddenly, 
 lifting his head, he cried out in a glad voice — ' God 
 has delivered me from the power of the devil I God 
 has come to me ! I can feel Him in my heart.' 
 
 This event took place more than a year ago. For 
 the first two months he was occasionally thrown into 
 a great fear by feeling that the devil was approach- 
 ing him. Instant and passionate prayer in every 
 case brought immediate relief. He was never once 
 tempted to drink arrack, to commit any hideous 
 acts, or to indulge in sexual excesses. And now 
 for ten months he has been unmolested by his devil 
 and wholly happy in his heart and soul. If those 
 who have any knowledge of the biting and fastening 
 effect of hereditary superstition on the mind of the 
 savage and ignorant, will reflect upon this instan- 
 taneous change of soul, they will confess, whatever 
 their opinion may be as to his possession by a devil, 
 that sincere prayer to a good God produces in the 
 heart of a man changes akin to miracle. 
 
 He was twenty-four years of age when the 
 Salvationist first spoke to him. He was a man 
 famous in a vast district, able to live without 
 work, enjoying a notoriety which was flattering to 
 his pride, and as ignorant of God as he was aban- 
 doned to loathsome and filthy practices. He is now 
 a man between five-and-six-and-twenty. He lives a 
 life of extreme penury by the toil of field labour, 
 earning a penny or sometimes three half-pence a 
 day. In his spare time he goes among those who 
 formerly feared and respected him, telling them
 
 THE DEVIL-DANCER 85 
 
 the story of a Christ Who has delivered him from 
 the power of all the devils in hell. He has become 
 singularly sweet and gentle. He is clean in all 
 his habits, and pure even in the thoughts of his 
 heart. By his testimony many people hitherto 
 abandoned to devil-worship and immorality have 
 become converted to Christ. He is something of a 
 saint and is loved by an increasing company of 
 Christians in the hills of Southern India. 
 
 One thing has made a great impression on him. 
 When he was a child he suffered constantly from 
 sickness and disease. When his children were born 
 they, too, suffered in an almost identical fashion. 
 But now, for a whole year, ever since the day of 
 his first prayer to God, those children have been 
 free of sickness and pain, and he himself conscious 
 of a new delight in perfect health. His eyes smile 
 with joy as he tells of this change. ' It is good to 
 believe in God,' he says, with a childlike earnest- 
 ness and simplicity. He told me it never once 
 occurred to him that there was any sin in serving 
 the devil, and that never once did the thought of 
 spiritual punishment in the next world strike his mind 
 with dread. He felt himself to be so entirely at the 
 mercy of an immense power whom it was impossible 
 to resist, that he resigned himself will-less and un- 
 thinking into the arms of a force too mighty for his 
 opposition and too overshadowing for any thought 
 of a good God to enter his mind. 
 
 Never till the Salvationist met him in the way 
 had he thought of God, felt himself guilty and 
 debased, or experienced the smallest dread of death. 
 
 And now, as I have said, he is something of a 
 saint, is a man of prayer, and a lay missionary, 
 converting the devil-worshippers of his district to 
 the pure and beautiful religion of Jesus Christ.
 
 THE WITCH 
 
 There is a woman in Southern India whose weird 
 experience in demonology helps one in the twentieth 
 century to understand certain mysterious records in 
 the Old and New Testaments which seem to a super- 
 ficial judgment quite unreal and wholly unworthy 
 of a serious man's attention. It is certainly a 
 narrative which Mr. Frederic Myers and Professor 
 James would have deemed worthy of a most careful 
 examination. 
 
 The woman of whom I tell lives in a poor and once 
 degraded village inhabited by Mala people, and 
 belongs to one of the very lowest castes. As a child 
 she imagined that a Presence was always close at 
 her side, and grew up in the companionship of this 
 mysterious entity, who not only accompanied her 
 into the rice-fields or the jungle, but who sat with 
 her at meals and shared the mat on which she slept 
 in the mud hut of her parents. She talked, without 
 fear and without any sense of the unusual, to this 
 friendly ghost, consulted it, received answers from 
 it, and always guided her conduct by its advice. 
 Sometimes she would see it. 
 
 There was nothing dangerous or threatening in 
 this intimacy, and students of psychical science will 
 know that quite healthy European children have 
 imagined for themselves an ' invisible playmate ' —
 
 THE WITCH 87 
 
 an unseen companion to whom they have talked 
 aloud, and whom they have professed even to see 
 in the shadows of a shrubbery or the darkness of a 
 corridor. There was in the present case nothing to 
 mark out the child either as a privileged intimate 
 of demons or as an unbalanced degenerate. She 
 was strong and healthy. She did her work well, 
 and grew up with the ordinary ideas of a village 
 woman. Her parents found no difficulty in getting 
 her a husband. She bore children who were physi- 
 cally efficient and managed her household with 
 practical common sense. All this time the familiar 
 spirit was at her side, harmless, helpful, and never 
 in the way. She often asked his advice about the 
 buffaloes, the crops, and the children. 
 
 At the age of thirty-five she fell suddenly ill. She 
 was seized with a constant and severe vomiting. 
 Her eyesight became dim. People seemed to her 
 blurred and indistinct. She could look without 
 blinking into the face of the midday sun. In this 
 condition, alike puzzling to herself and to her family, 
 she one day became aware of a greater nearness and 
 a more vital reality in the familiar spirit. Its 
 presence became overwhelmingly close; there was 
 a marked insistence in its haunting. For the first 
 time in her life she became afraid, but felt herself 
 powerless to resist this overshadowing menace. For 
 the first time she was conscious in the friendly ghost 
 of enmity and cruelty. 
 
 One afternoon, as she lay trembling and appre- 
 hensive on her mat, the obsessing demon suddenly 
 sprang upon her, entered her body, and took com- 
 plete possession of her will. This is her own 
 language, as near as I can express it in English; 
 and I would beg the reader to remember that what- 
 ever the explanation of the occurrence may be, to
 
 88 THE WITCH 
 
 the woman herself it was undoubtedly a case of 
 demon-possession. The critical reader will also bear 
 in mind that up to this point the woman was per- 
 fectly healthy, that she had borne children, and that 
 she was only five-and-thirty years of age. 
 
 Possessed by her demon, she became either 
 restored to health or quite indififerent to sickness. 
 She was so strange in manner, and so eloquent in 
 her account of the event, that neither her husband 
 nor her neighbours doubted for a moment that she 
 was the privileged and honoured darling of the 
 demons. Her fame spread through the village. 
 People came at first to see her, and then to consult 
 her. She was sent tor by those who had illness in 
 their house or who wanted to avert some disaster 
 from their cattle or crops. She enjoyed the power 
 and notoriety of this new position, but from the 
 very first — on this she is entirely clear and convinc- 
 ingly emphatic— she felt unhappy and distressed by 
 the divided occupation of her brain. 
 
 But consider the extraordinary change in her 
 fortunes. From being an ordinary low-caste woman 
 of the village, who worked for the family, cleaned 
 the brass vessels of the household, moulded cow- 
 dung into fire-cakes, worked in the paddy fields, 
 fetched water from the well, and ground rice in the 
 little hand-mill under the veranda of her house, she 
 became so illustrious and terrible to the whole 
 country round about that Brahmans, who consider 
 themselves as gods, actually worshipped before her, 
 while people of the highest caste would remain for 
 hours prostrate before her house. She was prac- 
 tically deified. And she could gain all the rice and 
 dahl necessary for her family's subsistence merely 
 by surrendering herself to trances and letting the 
 demon say what he could through her lips. She
 
 THE WITCH 89 
 
 became what the Bible calls a Witch and what 
 psychical science calls a Medium. 
 
 For six years she enjoyed an unequalled glory 
 in those parts of India as an oracle and a healer. 
 She cured the sick, she raised the ail-but dead, she 
 prevented disaster, and she uttered counsel which 
 brought good-fortune. But all these six years 
 were marked for her by an increasing wretchedness 
 of mind and by a disquiet of soul which became at 
 last utterly intolerable. She, the oracle and chief 
 power of her village, she, a witch famous in all 
 that part of India, would wander away from her 
 home and seek advice from the most humble and 
 degraded devil-dancers as to getting rid of her 
 infernal Control. She performed every magic for 
 this purpose, faithfully obeyed a hundred supersti- 
 tious rites, and by fasting and supplication sought 
 to oust the mastering devil from her body. But 
 in vain. She drove stakes into the ground and 
 made rings about her house, in order that the 
 devil should not be able to reach her; but, so she 
 declares, he would spring upon her from the roof, 
 and getting possession of her, would fling her to 
 the ground and tear her with a ferocious revenge. 
 She was obliged to go where this devil urged her, 
 to do what he commanded, and to say what he said. 
 
 Not very far from her own dwelling was a little 
 village where the Salvation Army had set up its 
 banner of Liberation. She had heard of Christ as 
 ' One to Whom people prayed in trouble.' She 
 had no further knowledge of Christianity, and was 
 entirely unacquainted with the story of Christ's 
 life. He was to her only ' one of the gods.' 
 
 It occurred to her, in a mood of utter dejection, 
 that she should make trial of this new God. She 
 said nothing to her family, but set out one day for
 
 90 THE WITCH 
 
 the village occupied by the Salvationists. When 
 she arrived she found a meeting in progress. She 
 entered the hall, and advanced to the platform. 
 One who was present tells me that the poor 
 miserable woman appeared to be dazed and uncon- 
 scious, like a sleep-walker, that when she reached 
 the platform she suddenly uttered a scream which 
 was perfectly ' soul-thrilling,' fell down upon her 
 knees, and seizing the feet of one of the Salvationists, 
 held them in a vice of iron and remained in that 
 posture, shaken by a violent convulsion, for fifteen 
 minutes. 
 
 She was praying, but she does not remember what 
 entreaty left her soul or what happened to her. No 
 one had spoken. Nothing had been preached to 
 touch her heart. No hymn had been sung to open 
 a door for her into the way of peace. But she felt 
 conscious of restoration, of something that gave her 
 freedom, above all things of a new and delicious 
 independence of her demon. The mere prostration 
 before this God who was kind to people in trouble 
 brought her a sense of relief. 
 
 ' I was never afraid after that,' she declares. ' The 
 demon used to come to me, but he did not speak.' 
 
 Christianity, be it remembered, was at this time 
 as foreign to her understanding as the literature of 
 Greece or the text-books of physical science. 
 
 Some few weeks after this occurrence, she was 
 one day gathering wood in the jungle, when she felt 
 herself moved as by some unseen power to kneel 
 down then and there, and beseech Christ to rid her 
 once and for ever of that devil's presence. ' I did 
 not know that Christ had ever cast out devils,' she 
 says, ' all I knew at that time was His Name, and 
 that people in trouble prayed to Him ; nothing more.' 
 
 Surrendering herself to this inexplicable and
 
 THE WITCH 91 
 
 sudden inclination, the poor gatherer of sticks 
 kneeled down in the solitudes of the jungle, and 
 prayed calmly and articulately to Christ for succour 
 and complete liberation from the menace of evil. 
 
 On the instant, she says, the haunting spirit 
 left her. 
 
 Amazement was followed by joy, and joy thrilled 
 and swelled in her breast, till it became a glorious 
 gratitude and a passionate adoration. She had not 
 lost a devil. She had found a god. Somewhere in 
 the blue heavens lived One named Christ Who was 
 able to perform extraordinary magic, Who listened 
 when the heart cried to Him, and Who felt compas- 
 sion for the wretched and the sorrowful. This was 
 all. She knew nothing of a virgin birth, certainly 
 nothing of an immaculate conception, nothing of 
 the Lake of Galilee, the Mount of Olives, Calvary, 
 the garden sepulchre, the road to Emmaus, and the 
 road to Damascus. Nothing of theology, nothing 
 even of Christianity. She was neither baptized nor 
 confirmed. Of such a book as the Bible she had 
 never heard. Christ, for her, was one of the gods, 
 but one to Whom people in trouble prayed; and out 
 of her great wretchedness and with a very willing 
 surrender of her whole being, she had prayed, and 
 the prayer had been answered. 
 
 It was with wonder unspeakable that she learned 
 the earth-story of Christ from the Salvationists to 
 whom she carried in a joyous gratitude the news of 
 her deliverance. She was spell-bound by the simple 
 beauty and the poignant tragedy of that story. 
 Converted already, for nothing will shake her from 
 the certainty that she gave her soul to Christ alone 
 in the jungle, she became a Christian, and went 
 back to her village with the supreme intention of 
 telling others the good news of Liberation,
 
 92 THE WITCH 
 
 You can imagine how different now the village 
 seemed in her eyes. She had embraced the idea of 
 a God who is Good ; she had perceived religion 
 as something definitely concerned with the moral 
 advancement of humanity. In her village, devils 
 were worshipped out of fear, gods were ceremonially 
 served for material prosperity, and no one paid the 
 very smallest attention to morality. It was a little 
 habitation of men and women, sunken in iniquity 
 and practising unspeakable abominations without 
 shame and without the least idea of any need for 
 reformation. 
 
 The Witch, seeing all these accustomed things 
 with new eyes, set herself to teach tlie people our 
 pure religion breathing household laws. But she, 
 before whom Brahmans had prostrated themselves, 
 and to whom evil had been a power and an autocracy, 
 found herself now as a virtuous and God-loving 
 woman, the scorn and derision of all the people. 
 Those who had kneeled to her, treated her now as 
 ' untouchable ' ; those who had feared and trembled 
 before her, mocked her with the vilest and most 
 contemptuous taunts. 
 
 This little Sodom, this miniature Gomorrah of 
 Southern India, remained indifferent to the religion 
 of Christianity, and continued in its hideous iniquity 
 and its odious superstition, blind to the miracle 
 accomplished in the Witch, deaf to her entreaties, 
 and careless of her warnings. 
 
 A Salvationist who worked in the place at that 
 time said to me, ' It was an immoral, bad village; 
 our few converts were no credit to us; the people 
 seemed incapable of spiritual birth ; the whole thing 
 was thoroughly unsatisfactory.' And yet, surely a 
 light from heaven had shone into its darkness. 
 
 Some three years ago cholera appeared in this
 
 THE WITCH 93 
 
 village. Like an avenger from the outraged heavens, 
 it swept away the ringleaders of evil, and filled the 
 rest of the people with an agony of terror. In this 
 condition of panic — a state which cannot be imagined 
 by Europeans — they did not seek devil-dancers and 
 they did not kneel to their idols, but once more they 
 prostrated themselves before the Witch and implored 
 her to supplicate her good and holy God on their 
 behalf. It is a very remarkable and significant fact 
 that these people, who were perfectly sincere in their 
 superstitions, and genuinely contemptuous of Chris- 
 tianity, turned to the Christian God in the hour of 
 their extremity. 
 
 The Witch bade them repent of their many and 
 grievous sins, taught them to pray, and in the open 
 village street, the rest kneeling beside her, besought 
 God on their behalf. Her prayers, I am told, were 
 of extraordinary beauty. She always began — her 
 eyes raised to heaven and her arms uplifted — with 
 the words, whispered in an imploring tenderness 
 — 'O God, You are my Father! — my Father!' 
 
 The scourge continued to afiflict the village. Sixty 
 deaths had occurred when she said to her husband, 
 ' Let us leave this house and go into the fields, and 
 build a gudisha.' So they went out, and built the 
 little shelter, and by seven o'clock in the evening it 
 was finished. She had prepared the evening meal, 
 her husband and her son had eaten, when of a sudden 
 she pressed her hand to her side and said, ' It has 
 come to me! I believe I have got it!' No sooner 
 were the words uttered than she was seized with 
 convulsions, her limbs contracted, and she was 
 gripped by an agony indescribably dreadful. In a 
 few minutes she was lying stiff and full length upon 
 the ground. The husband stooped down and touched 
 her feet. ' They are cold,' he murmured, trembling
 
 94 THE WITCH 
 
 with fear; then he touched her limp hands: 'She 
 is dead,' he whispered, getting on his feet; 'come, 
 we cannot stop here.' Father and son, stricken with 
 a great fear, moved away, and spent the night under 
 a tree some quarter of a mile from the woman and 
 the cholera. 
 
 Early in the morning, on his way to the village 
 for a burying spade, the son, passing by his mother, 
 looked at her, and saw that her eyes were open. He 
 drew nearer, and said, ' I thought you were dead.' 
 She motioned to him to come nearer still, and said 
 with great eagerness : ' Go to our house, and in a 
 pot tied to the roof you will find five rupees; bring 
 them to me here.' The son went on this errand 
 and returned with the money. ' Tie it up in my 
 cloth,' said the woman, and when this was done she 
 appeared to be at peace, and sank into a quiet sleep. 
 
 After several days she became quite well, and was 
 able to work in the fields, to do her household duties, 
 and help her neighbours. For six weeks she went 
 about these duties, the money always tied up in the 
 corner of her cloth. 
 
 Then came the Harvest Festival, when the Salva- 
 tionists give what they can of their pice and annas, 
 their rice and their dahl, for the conversion of India. 
 The Witch was the first to rise with her offering, 
 and her offering was the amazing sum of five rupees, 
 which she took from a corner of her sari. She was 
 asked how she came to give so liberally, and she 
 told the following narrative. 
 
 When she had been deserted by husband and son 
 — dimly conscious that she was deserted — a feeling 
 of intense and most wretched loneliness overcame 
 her senses, and she thought how bitter it was to die 
 alone. The sun had set; the day stood at the gate 
 of twilight waiting for the stars; over the sad earth.
 
 THE WITCH 95 
 
 gradually losing outline and colour, fell the grey 
 shadow of impending darkness; on the air came to 
 her a coldness, an indifference, an isolation. To die 
 alone — how bitter and how hard ! In the extremity 
 of her weakness, from the depths of the swoon that 
 held her soul, she sought despairingly for life and 
 another sunrise. To live, to feel the morning light, 
 and to see fellow-creatures, to be one of many in the 
 sunshine of familiar earth — this became a hunger 
 and thirst to the woman dying of cholera in the 
 falling night, forsaken and alone. 
 
 ' Then,' she tells, ' I thought to myself — I will 
 pray to Jesus; and with the thought came the idea 
 that I should promise Him an offering. I thought, 
 " What can I give Him?" And I remembered that 
 in a pot hung from the roof of my house were five 
 rupees which I had saved towards buying a milk 
 buffalo. I said to myself, " I will offer God these 
 five rupees and ask Him not to let me die alone in 
 the cold night." So I began to pray; but as I was 
 praying I saw a vision, and forgot my prayer and 
 my offering in the wonder of the vision. For I 
 saw as clearly as if they had been real people, two 
 Salvationists approaching me out of the shadows, 
 and one of them came quite close to me and opened 
 a Bible and began to read to me, and then he closed 
 the Bible and knelt down at my side and prayed for 
 me ; afterwards he rose, whispered to the other, and 
 looking back at me for a moment, disappeared into 
 the darkness. As they passed out of sight I fell 
 asleen, for the reading and prayer had given me 
 peace, and I lay like that till morning. As soon as 
 I woke I remembered the vision, and when my son 
 came to me I sent him for the five rupees, and ever 
 since then I kept them, waiting for the Harvest.' 
 
 The village is at this day almost entirely
 
 96 THE WITCH 
 
 Christian, and the former Witch is a transforming 
 and redeeming power throughout that whole district. 
 Whatever be the explanation of her possession, the 
 story set down in this place is the deposition of a 
 woman as holy and as powerful for righteousness as 
 any female saint in the Roman Calendar.
 
 DEVIL-PRIESTS 
 
 The whole subject of demonology is full of difficulty 
 for the student who is at once catholic in his 
 research and unbiassed in his judgment by the easy 
 verdicts of nineteenth century science. He naturally 
 shrinks from the idea that invisible and disembodied 
 entities haunt the earth seeking human tenements 
 as means for expressing their passion and their lust. 
 He knows that while the oldest of records bear 
 witness to the existence of witches and that while 
 the savage races of the earth still bow themselves in 
 terror before a devil-possessed person, the evidence 
 for such a mystery among civilized nations dwindles 
 down to a few cases of more or less genuine 
 mediums who professed to be ' controlled ' in trance 
 by spirits from another plane of existence. The 
 great thesis of Frederic Myers does not solve the 
 problem. The madhouses of Europe do not offer 
 any intelligible explanation. He acknowledges that 
 by far the greatest number of human beings still 
 have affiance in devil-possession, but shelters himself 
 against belief in any such irrational and distressing 
 theory behind the solid testimony of enlightened 
 and progressive nations that devil-possession does 
 not occur. 
 
 And yet, in such a country as India, where the 
 belief in devils is universal and where he may see
 
 98 DEVIL-PRIESTS 
 
 for himself many strange and shaking things among 
 the devil-worshippers, the student must sometimes 
 be tempted to believe that there is at least some 
 Power in the universe definitely evil whose work in 
 the world, however effected, is accomplished through 
 human instruments. And he may be led by his 
 inclination towards this belief, to wonder whether 
 those numerous instances among civilized nations of 
 rational men and women driven against their wills 
 to alcoholism, to kleptomania, and to unaccountable 
 violence, as well as those more multitudinous 
 instances of men and women otherwise sane con- 
 sciously yielding their wills to disfiguring vices, to 
 brutalities towards children, and to the spiritual 
 debasements of unintelligent vulgarity, are not in 
 some way or another expressions of the activity of 
 that same malevolent Power whose manifestations 
 among savage people it is easier to define but not 
 more easy to explain. 
 
 After many close and careful conversations with 
 devil-worshippers in India, I find myself less 
 inclined to dogmatize upon this subject than was 
 the case with me a year ago. But I do feel at 
 least certain of this, that it is as easy to find 
 among civilized nations baffling instances of wills 
 over-ridden by exterior Evil, as cases in India of 
 demon-possession which to the victims themselves, 
 even after the purifying and uplifting experience 
 of Christianity, appear to be incapable of other 
 explanation. 
 
 In the following narrations the reader will find 
 ample evidence for believing that at least it is 
 supremely hazardous for any human will to 
 surrender itself to the idea of Evil — whether such 
 a force has entity or not, and whether the surrender 
 be definitely made or merely rest in a treacherous
 
 DEVIL-PRIESTS 99 
 
 inclination. With certainty we may say, in spite 
 of brazen lungs raised in Europe against the 
 decalogue and the moral code, that the path of 
 evolving humanity is beset by no greater danger 
 than the temptations towards anything which is 
 not absolutely and strenuously good. 
 
 This man was not a devil-dancer, but a devil- 
 priest. He is handsome in appearance, not unlike 
 Tennyson. The long thick iron-grey hair is 
 combed back from the head and curls outward from 
 the nape of the neck : the moustache and beard are 
 likewise iron-grey. In spite of a particularly black 
 skin, the fine-cut features and the large eyes bring 
 him closer to the European than is the case with 
 many Indians of lighter complexions. He has a 
 pleasant expression and the whole character of his 
 face is one of a lofty spirituality. It was odd to see 
 this noble-looking man sitting cross-legged on the 
 floor of my rest-house at Nagercoil. He refused a 
 chair, sat himself on the ground, and with hands 
 folded in his lap, raised his eyes to mine and awaited 
 questions. While we talked, lizards ran about the 
 whitewashed walls, and from the dusty garden out- 
 side came the monotonous cry of the hoopoe. 
 
 He told me that his father had been a devil-dancer, 
 but that he himself had begun life as an assistant in 
 the temple raised to this devil's honour. The devil 
 was a female named Ammon. Her worship is not 
 so repulsive as that of the male devil Cholamarden, 
 whose dancers in their loathsome frenzy eat the raw 
 heart and steaming entrails of a pig in addition to 
 drinking its blood; but the effect of her worship is 
 disastrous to morality. Children of eight and nine 
 years of age, he told me, are absolutely corrupt. 
 Disease of a terrible nature ravages the whole 
 country. 'I remember a boy,' he told me, 'who
 
 100 DEVIL-PRIESTS 
 
 once saw a caste girl going to market and dragged 
 her off to the jungle; she was obliged to go to 
 hospital, and she was only nine years of age; the 
 boy was twenty. Do you wonder why Indians cling 
 to their custom of early marriage? These child 
 marriages relieve the parents' anxiety. Immorality 
 is universal.' 
 
 In the temple of Ammon, he told me, there is an 
 outer court to which people come with offerings of 
 camphor, coco-nuts, plantains, rice, fried fish, and 
 other things. The assistant takes these gifts and 
 carries them into the inner court, where the priest 
 offers them to the goddess. During this service in 
 the ' holy of holies,' the people in the outer court 
 give themselves up to the very vilest and most dis- 
 gusting immoralities, using all the time the foulest 
 language imaginable, and utterly abandoning them- 
 selves to an orgy of iniquity. It is implicitly 
 believed that this orgy, so delightful and exciting 
 to themselves, is pleasing to Ammon. 
 
 At harvest time the temple becomes a hell. For 
 eight days the priest must remain in the darkness 
 of the inner court and never go outside for any 
 purpose whatever. Every family must contribute 
 two rupees to the festival. The gifts of fruit, vege- 
 tables, and fish are afterwards divided among the 
 people, who fill the outer court with the shrieks and 
 yells of their maddened lust. The devil-dancers, 
 excited by arrack and encouraged by tom-toms, 
 hand-clappings, and shouts of applause, whirl them- 
 selves into a condition of anaesthesia in which 
 burning oil does not blister the palms of their hands. 
 Men, women, and children are driven mad by an 
 ecstasy of faith in the physical power of their devil- 
 goddess. To her they scream their hymns of praise, 
 for her they fling themselves upon the ground, and
 
 DEVIL-PRIESTS loi 
 
 to give her — their protectress and providence — 
 pleasure and amusement they commit a hundred 
 lurid and filthy obscenities prompted by the whirling 
 inspiration of the orgy. 
 
 As devil-priest, the man of whom I am writing 
 received a double portion of all the gifts brought to 
 the temple, and without labour of any kind he lived 
 the proud and indolent life of a spiritual autocrat. 
 It pleased him, he told me, to encounter Indian 
 Christians and to taunt them with the power of his 
 devil-goddess. He did not understand Christianity, 
 but he knew that Christians worshipped some god 
 or other whose mildness and feebleness caused him 
 an infinite amusement. Could any of the Christians 
 dance for hours, drink the blood of a dying pig, 
 jump into a fire, or take burning oil of camphor into 
 their hands? 'Your God,' he used to say con- 
 temptuously, 'is not so powerful as my goddess.' 
 
 He was not a drunkard, as so many worshippers 
 of evil are, but he was given up to immoralities as 
 much for their own satisfaction as out of deference 
 to his goddess. It never once occurred to him all 
 his life that there was anything in these practices 
 either hateful or bad. 
 
 He was a grown man, married, and the father 
 of a son, when an incident happened which altered 
 the whole course of his life. He was alone in the 
 temple one day, offering incense to his demon, when 
 the noise of rolling drums outside diverted his 
 attention from the altar. To see what the noise 
 meant, he left his offerings on the mud table, passed 
 into the outer court, and made his way to the door. 
 As he came into the bright sunshine he saw a 
 company of Indians dressed in a similar native 
 dress, congregated at a corner of the street, with a 
 flag in their centre, and a number of boys playing
 
 I02 DEVIL-PRIESTS 
 
 drums round the lifted banner. He recognized 
 tiiem as a new force on the side of Christianity of 
 whom people had lately been talking in those parts, 
 a body of people, white and black, who called 
 themselves Salvationists. 
 
 Out of curiosity the priest crossed the red dust 
 of the road and stood with the crowd of amused 
 neighbours who had now gathered round this fresh 
 excitement in their lives. The drums ceased. The 
 Salvationists sang a hymn which did not convey 
 any definite idea to the devil-priest; and then one 
 of their number, a native of high caste, began to 
 speak. He talked about a God Who demanded 
 from man, not sacrifices and not immoralities, 
 but a cleansed heart and a soul determined to 
 righteousness. He declared that this good and 
 holy God had an enemy, and that the work of this 
 enemy was evil. To please the good God, to secure 
 His help and to enter His heaven, it was first of all 
 necessary for a man to repent of his sins, to listen 
 to the voice of his conscience, and to decide that 
 henceforth he would commit no act and entertain 
 no thought which the voice of his conscience 
 declared to be either definitely wicked or unworthy 
 of a child of God. 
 
 The devil-priest w-alked away with two new 
 thoughts in his mind. He conceived the possibility 
 of a God Who was perfectly good. He saw definitely 
 that there was such a thing as sin. 
 
 ' For many days,' he told me, ' I could not free 
 myself from these new thoughts, which haunted me. 
 I felt they were true. I did not doubt my former 
 beliefs, but I felt that these two ideas of the 
 Salvationists were true. A good God — and Sin, 
 Sin which endangered the soul and made it impos- 
 sible for it to be happy and safe after death. I
 
 DEVIL-PRIESTS 103 
 
 became afraid. I thought to myself, God may be 
 more powerful than Ammon. God is a hater of sin. 
 Ammon is a lover of sin. Goodness and Evil — those 
 two; which is the stronger? I felt sure, though I 
 cannot tell you how, that Goodness was stronger 
 than Evil. For a w'hole month I fought a battle in 
 my soul. I would go to the Salvationists at their 
 meetings, hear what they said, and then return to 
 my temple, and in the darkness of the altar struggle 
 to think it out. Some of the officers would say to 
 me — *' Come and test our God; come and try Him; 
 see if He is able to do what we say He can do." 
 And although I had begun to long for a cleansed 
 heart, and although I felt a great longing to be free 
 of sin and different from what I was, I refused this 
 challenge and remained a priest of Ammon — because 
 I was afraid of her. At last, so strong was the 
 longing for liberation, I determined to ask Ammon 
 herself whether I should become a Christian or stay 
 as her priest. I feared to try the Salvationists' God; 
 I felt that it would be safer to get guidance from 
 the goddess of my fathers. So one day, I offered 
 incense to Ammon, prostrated myself before the 
 altar, and besought her to tell me in a vision what 
 I should do. I waited for hours. There was no 
 vision; there was no sign. For the first time, out 
 of a great necessity, I had sought help from my 
 goddess, and she remained indifferent. I rose from 
 my knees, and I said to myself, " There is no life 
 in this goddess; why, then, should I serve her?" 
 I went straight out of the temple, sought the Salva- 
 tionists, and gave myself to God. What happened 
 to me at that moment I cannot describe; I saw no 
 bright light, I heard no voice, and I was not con- 
 scious of any unseen Presence at my side — but I felt 
 that some wonderful Power had entered into me and
 
 104 DEVIL-PRIESTS 
 
 had completely changed me. I seemed all at once 
 to be different from what I had been up to that very 
 moment, and above everything else I felt happy in 
 the love of a good and merciful God.' 
 
 This was in the year 1892. Ever since that day 
 this once lazy and arrogant priest, subjected to 
 frightful persecution from the Sudras, has earned 
 his own living as a humble cultivator, has worked 
 without pay for the Salvation Army, has given 
 liberally to its funds, and has always devoted one 
 day in every week — a great sacrifice to the struggling 
 Indian — to worship of God and meditation on His 
 way of liberation. 
 
 I asked him if he had ever experienced dreams 
 of terror since his change of life, or seen visions 
 which gave him strength and consolation. 
 
 ' Devils have come many times,' he replied, 
 quietly, ' to torment me in my dreams. I have 
 never seen a vision from heaven. But I do not fear 
 the devils. I am so sure of God. He has answered 
 my prayers, and He has given me ' — his face became 
 lighted with a smile of happiness — ' complete peace 
 of heart.' 
 
 ' Will you give me an instance of your answered 
 praver ?' 
 
 ' Very willingly. The cholera came to us, and 
 my son was brought to the edge of death. No one 
 thought he would recover. The doctor had given 
 up hope. I prayed to God. I said, "He is my 
 only son. Spare him a little longer and I will be 
 thankful to Thee — so thankful, O my Father." God 
 heard that cry. He saved my child.' 
 
 They told me that the father came to the next 
 meeting of the Salvationists, and gave seven rupees 
 as a thank-offering for this answered prayer. 
 
 Perhaps of all the converts from devil-worship to
 
 DEVIL-PRIESTS 105 
 
 Christianity none impressed me so much as the old 
 and beautiful man known now over a wide district 
 of Southern India as the Saint of Manady. 
 
 To see him is to feel an instant reverence; to speak 
 with him, even through an interpreter, is to grow 
 strangely and humbly fond of him. For in this tall 
 old stooping man, thin as a lath and bowed with 
 something more than years, one is conscious of a 
 spirit awed into the wondering simplicity of child- 
 hood by communion with the Eternal. He is a 
 saint, and a saint who has seen God. He does not 
 seem to belong to the earth ; he appears to have risen 
 into a state of being which is higher than humanity. 
 And yet there is in the large eyes and the shrinking 
 body, something timorous and dog-like, as though 
 a faith greater than anything demanded by religion 
 has arrested and atrophied his reason. At one 
 moment the soul kneels to him ; at the next the 
 intellect feels compassion for him. 
 
 Tall, thin, even emaciated, with mild and beautiful 
 lips, eyes that are full of wonder, a brow ploughed 
 with the deep furrows of solitude and meditation, 
 this gracious and childlike patriarch of the Tamils 
 shrinks from the world, covers his face with humility 
 in approaching a European, and stoops to kiss the 
 hand of those from whose race he has received the 
 gift of God. Leaning on his long staff, naked save 
 for his loin cloth, he reminded me of Ulysses return- 
 ing beggared to the gates of Ithaca. The short, 
 grey hair comes forward to the brow ; the moustache 
 and beard only just cover lip and chin ; the mild 
 eyes, eloquent of suffering and aspiration and 
 visions, are habitually bent upon the dust ; the ears 
 stand away from the head; the neck is like a cord; 
 the long, lean body, with the hollow breast and 
 stooping knees, witnesses to suffering, patience, and
 
 io6 DEVIL-PRIESTS 
 
 privation. I hiave never seen any man's gestures 
 so beautiful and so entirely sincere as the awe-filled 
 gestures of humility with which this wandering man 
 of prayer greets and takes leave of a stranger. 
 
 He told me that he remembers quite well how his 
 parents used to say, ' We must worship God.' He 
 would go as a child to the river, bathe himself, and 
 then entering a Hindu temple would say, * God, 
 God, God,' — not knowing what the word meant. 
 Four vices marked his childhood — drinking, lying, 
 stealing, and lust. He indulged in these vices while 
 he obeyed all the ceremonial instructions of the 
 priest. Religion was nothing but a form. He had 
 not the smallest notion of a good God, was never 
 told that his bad habits were sinful. 
 
 His first faith was in a devil. At the age of 
 twenty-five or twenty-six he was appointed a priest 
 in a temple devoted to propitiating twenty of these 
 wicked gods. As priest his duty lay in guarding the 
 . vestments and vessels, the swords and bells, which 
 were kept for festivals in the inner court of the 
 temple; he it was who purified them with ceremonies 
 and ashes and gave them to the devil-dancers in the 
 outer court, which was always crowded on high days 
 with an excited and evil-minded congregation. In the 
 inner court were many idols and shrines; the people 
 would bring for offerings to their idols, coco-nuts, 
 plantains, flowers, oil, and incense; it was his 
 business to pour the oil in lamps round the idols, 
 to burn the incense, to place the flowers before the 
 images, and after purifying the coco-nuts and plan- 
 tains, to return them to the people with the statement 
 that they had been accepted by the devil. Every 
 Tuesday and Friday, people anxious to get children 
 or to avert sickness would bring offerings to the 
 temple.
 
 DEVIL-PRIESTS 107 
 
 He tells me that he believed in devils, but had no 
 faith at all in these offerings and ceremonies. He 
 was, if one may say so, a Blougram of Hinduism. 
 In his village, as I have said, they acknowledged 
 twenty devils, and the old saint of Manady lived at 
 that time upon the superstition of the people. He 
 was married and had four children ; he was one of 
 the leading men of the village and of the panchayat 
 — a kind of village council ; he possessed several 
 buffaloes, owned a coco-nut grove, and had many 
 fields under rice. It was a life as full of prosperity 
 and authority as any Tamil could desire. 
 
 How he cannot explain, but gradually there grew 
 in his mind the notion that his four vices— drinking, 
 lying, stealing, and lust — were wrong. Nothing in 
 his religion suggested this notion. The devils whom 
 he served were themselves all given over to these 
 four vices and to many others. He had never heard 
 of a good God, and was utterly unacquainted with 
 Christianity. Nevertheless, he came to feel in his 
 heart of hearts that drinking, lying, stealing, and 
 lust were wrong. He became aware of the difference 
 between right and wrong; there was no regenerative 
 process in his soul, only a distress and vague unrest 
 at the growing certainty of this difference between 
 acts which were right and acts which were wrong. 
 He did not know in the least what to make of it. 
 
 I tried to get from him a clear statement of this 
 change in his soul. I asked him whether he had 
 not been told as a boy that vice was wrong. He 
 was emphatic in his negative. I asked him if he 
 had never heard of philosophic Hinduism, of 
 Gautama's teaching of Christianity's demand for 
 a clean heart. He assured me that never once in 
 his life had he heard words of any kind which 
 made a distinction between good and evil. On the
 
 io8 DEVIL-PRIESTS 
 
 contrary, devil-worship had implanted in his mind 
 the idea that excess and sin were pleasing to the 
 invisible forces of nature. Up to the age of twenty, 
 he told me, his mind was an utter blank as to any- 
 thing good or evil ; after twenty, devil-worship 
 associated the idea of evil in his mind with the 
 mystery of existence ; and then, between the age of 
 forty and fifty, unaccountably, from nowhere that 
 his former life could indicate, came this idea of 
 goodness, this strange and frightening idea that 
 there was wrong in what he did because it opposed 
 something that was different, something that was 
 pure, something that was good. 
 
 He was in this disturbed state of mind, when his 
 far-away village, ten miles even from Nagercoil, was 
 visited by a party of Salvationists. When he first 
 saw the red coats he was filled with fear, associating 
 them with the Government ! One of the Salva- 
 tionists, a European, came to him and asked if they 
 might pass the night in his coco-nut garden. With- 
 out thinking what he did, like a man in a dream, 
 he gave the Salvationists the key of the place and 
 left them. 
 
 At night he came from his house, and stood in 
 the shadows of the trees, watching the Salvationists. 
 The grove was flooded with moonlight. They had 
 spread their blankets on the ground, had eaten their 
 meal, and were now singing a hymn. The words 
 were in Tamil, but he could not understand them. 
 At the end of the hymn they kneeled down, and one 
 of them began to pray. Drawn by curiosity, the 
 devil-priest came out of the shadows and approached 
 the group in the moonlight. He sat with them 
 and they talked to him. It was confusion for 
 his brain, this new religion of which they spoke so 
 confidently. A good God was something he could
 
 DEVIL-PRIESTS 109 
 
 dimly comprehend; but the rest, what did it mean? 
 How could it be squared with his experience of 
 life? He returned to his house troubled and 
 perplexed. 
 
 But he found pleasure in talking to these Salva- 
 tionists, and for the eight days they rested in his 
 garden he was constantly in their midst, and even 
 attended some of the services that they held in the 
 village. He used the phrase, ' I determined to be 
 bolder,' when he spoke of going to their services. 
 I asked him what it was that made him go. ' I found 
 pleasure in their talk,' he replied. 
 
 At the end of the eighth day he began to experi- 
 ence the glory and joy of faith in a good God. ' I 
 believed!' he exclaimed, raising his wondering eyes 
 and lifting up his hands. 'A living God!' he 
 whispered; *a living God!' This faith came to 
 him very quietly and without violence or shock of 
 any kind. He described his feelings at that won- 
 derful moment as a sensation of lightness. He said, 
 ' My whole heart w-as filled with rejoicing.' 
 
 But this was only the first movement in his mind. 
 He believed in God, in a living God, in a God Who 
 was good. 
 
 At a public meeting held by the Salvationists in 
 the village, he renounced idolatry and accepted the 
 religion of Christianity. 
 
 The people of the village came about him, angry 
 and expostulating, saying that he was subverting the 
 true religion and would bring disaster on them and 
 on himself. He replied that God was good, and he 
 would pray to Him if evil threatened. 
 
 He placed himself in the hands of an Indian 
 Christian, by name Devasigamony, now one of the 
 ablest Salvationists in Southern India, and began 
 to explore the inwardness of Christianity. From
 
 no DEVIL-PRIESTS 
 
 faith in a living God, he moved to faith in an incar- 
 nate Christ. From faith in an incarnate Christ he 
 moved to faith in His teaching. He beheved in 
 what Christ taught. BeHef with him meant absolute 
 certainty of conviction. 
 
 ' And then,' he says, * I saw the horror of my 
 past and the mercy of the Christ Who had redeemed 
 me by His love. I believed what He said, that to 
 enter the Kingdom of Heaven a man must be born 
 again. I knew that my sins w'ould cling to me, in 
 spite of my faith in a living God, unless I was con- 
 verted and became as a little child. I saw, too, that 
 it would be of little use for me to preach faith in a 
 living God to my people, when what they needed 
 was repentance of their sins and liberation through 
 the love of Christ. I felt how true, how true, w-as 
 this teaching of my Lord.' 
 
 So he went publicl}'^ to a second meeting of the 
 Salvationists and there bowed himself down and 
 prayed for the mystery of conversion. He rose up 
 another man. 
 
 In the strange history of Christianity many have 
 experienced in a moment of flooding light the 
 mystery of a new birth, freeing them altogether 
 from the thraldom of habitual sins and setting their 
 feet in a new way of exalting joy; but few, I think, 
 ever so profoundly experienced this great mystery 
 as the old and withered Saint of Manady who then 
 and there, from a man of many sins and a grasping 
 avarice, became as a little child. 
 
 It was instantaneous this conversion, this utter 
 transformation of character ; and the Christian gift 
 that he received from God at this font of new birth 
 was an absolute faith in prayer. This is what marks 
 him out from all other men I have ever met. His 
 life is a continual prayer. He loves prayer. It is
 
 DEVIL-PRIESTS in 
 
 not so much an activity of his soul as a world in 
 which he moves and has his being. 
 
 From morning to night, on the road as he 
 journeys, beneath the tree where he rests, in the 
 houses he visits, and under the stars as he waits for 
 sleep, always he is praying. Unable to read, he 
 can do nothing but pray. And prayer fills him with 
 unutterable happiness. As we spoke together, in 
 the pauses that came as I questioned the interpreter, 
 the old man would close his eyes, and the gentle lips 
 would move in communion with God. 
 
 From the moment of his conversion he was 
 subjected to persecution. His masters, the proud 
 Sudras, attempted to reave his lands from him. The 
 barber and the dhobi were forbidden to visit him — 
 a deprivation terrible to a Hindu. His wife and 
 his children opposed him. At this time, too, disaster 
 overtook him. One after another his buffaloes 
 died, and his crops failed. The people pointed at 
 him as an object of hatred to their gods. Cholera 
 appeared. Nine Salvationists died, and the devil- 
 dancers announced that the cause of the cholera was 
 the devil's anger against Christianity. 
 
 But still the old man held to his new faith. ' My 
 disasters,' he says, 'only drew me nearer to God. 
 They only made me feel my great need of Him.' 
 The people sent to a hill-devil said to be more 
 powerful than their own valley-devils, beseeching 
 the hill-priest as a favour to send his devil that the 
 Saint might be destroyed. A devil-dancer came 
 bearing an enchantment. This enchantment con- 
 sisted in a repetition of words, a curse upon the 
 Saint and all that belonged to him. Strange to tell, 
 the Saint's sister and her husband were stricken 
 down with fever; but he went to them, rubbed water 
 on their heads, prayed to God for them, and they
 
 112 DEVIL-PRIESTS 
 
 became well. The man who brought the enchant- 
 ments died on the same day. 
 
 This strange event gave pause to his enemies. 
 Some even felt an awe for him. He went to a woman 
 who was very ill, prayed for her, and she became 
 well. Another woman with no child came to him, 
 he prayed, and a child was given to her. A man 
 named Veeran, who is still living, returning from 
 his week's work in the fields, became suddenly like 
 a raving madman and then fell down in a dead faint; 
 it was probably a case of sunstroke, but the people 
 thought him dead, bound up his head in the usual 
 way of preparing for his funeral, and were carrying 
 him away when the Saint came to them, placed water 
 on the man's head, and began to pray; the man sat 
 up and asked for Kungi-water. There is another 
 man still alive, who was in a dying state from some 
 internal trouble, when the Saint came to him and 
 raised him up to new life by prayer. 
 
 These events established his fame. But he shrank 
 from living a life similar to that of a devil-dancer, 
 and so, making over his house and lands to his 
 eldest son, he turned holy man for Christ, and went 
 out with only his staff and a worn Tamil Bible which 
 he cannot read himself, to preach the liberation of 
 Christianity and to pray for the Children of India. 
 
 He has made himself an outcast and a beggar for 
 Christ. Throughout that part of the country, home- 
 less and penniless he wanders from village to village, 
 begging his food from the people, telling those who 
 will hear him about a good God, and praying 
 continually to his Christ. Sometimes he will be 
 persuaded to stay for a few days in the house of a 
 villager, sometimes a little crowd of people will 
 follow him into the jungle, sometimes he will rest 
 under a tree in some distant hamlet for as long as
 
 DEVIL-PRIESTS 113 
 
 a week, but chiefly he is seen, lonely and solitary, 
 upon the road, his grey head bare to the sun, his 
 emaciated body naked save for the white cloth about 
 his loins, his feet shuffling slowly through the dust, 
 the long worn staff of the pilgrim dragging in his 
 right hand, the left hand nursing a faded and blis- 
 tered Bible against his breast, his eyes bent upon 
 the dust, his lips moving in prayer. 
 
 Some people come to him, seek him out, and 
 question him. Others, following his Master's 
 example, he calls to quiet conversation. At one time 
 he called young men to follow him, but they replied, 
 ' We have our work to do.' He says that men listen 
 to him more readily than women. He thinks it is 
 best that he should be alone. 
 
 I asked him if he had ever seen spirits or angels 
 or visions since his conversion. He replied that he 
 has seen many evil spirits walking about in the 
 night. I asked again if he had ever seen angels. 
 After a pause, his large wonder-full eyes becoming 
 suddenly very solemn, he made answer : ' Sometimes 
 I see Christ ; close at my side : walking with me on 
 my pilgrimage.' 
 
 Alone, solitary, and always uncertain of his next 
 meal, this strange and beautiful old man has accom- 
 plished an extraordinary work for Christianity. He 
 has not only been the means of definitely converting 
 many men from heathenism, but he has shaken the 
 faith of a whole vast district in devil-worship. It is 
 true that people seldom send for him until sooth- 
 sayers, witches, and devil-dancers have failed, but 
 they do send for him at last, and the marvellous 
 results attributed to his prayers have turned the 
 hearts of many from the idea of Evil to the idea of 
 Good. Even the Sudras, the proudest and most 
 rigid caste in Southern India, send for him on
 
 114 DEVIL-PRIESTS 
 
 occasion. Not long ago, at a place called Pootha- 
 pandy, a devil was said to have got possession of 
 three men, who became suddenly frantic and dan- 
 gerous, behaved like the demon-possessed in the 
 New Testament, and were finally brought to a state 
 of uncontrollable madness. The Saint of Manady 
 went to them. On his arriv,'<i he found that one of 
 the men was dead. He prayed to God in the house 
 of the other two, and then commanded the devil to 
 go out. Both men perfectly recovered. Such stories 
 concerning him are innumerable. 
 
 Another story concerning a devil-priest will be 
 sufficient to acquaint the reader with the nature of 
 this demon-worship and the extreme difficulty 
 encountered by Christianity in the deep-rooted 
 traditionalism of the Indian peoples. 
 
 Masillamony of Vadasery is a tall and heavy old 
 man, with a face that tells of long and arduous 
 conflict of the soul. There is in the small and 
 puckered eyes a look of weariness and unlifting 
 sorrow; the tall forehead is bagged and overhanging 
 with wrinkles : the mouth, just visible between white 
 moustache and short beard, is depressed with some- 
 thing that is almost bitterness. He is laborious and 
 slow, but there is in his face a look of masculine 
 dignity; one feels in his presence the sense of power 
 and authority. 
 
 At the age of nineteen he abandoned heathenism 
 and surrendered to a Christian Mission which had 
 lately sent emissaries to his village. In this village 
 he was a man of considerable influence, and by his 
 persuasions the entire community of a hundred 
 families renounced idolatry and became Christians. 
 The idols were destroyed; the temple was laid level 
 with the dust. 
 
 Masillamony at the age of fourteen had married
 
 DEVIL-PRIESTS 115 
 
 a wife of nine. On the deatii of this wife he had 
 married again. And now, soon after his conversion, 
 the second wife dying, he proceeded to make arrange- 
 ments for a third marriage. Now, he was headman 
 of the village at this time, a man of unusual intelli- 
 gence, and one of those personalities which are like 
 a magic on the wills of other men. Such a person 
 was worth marrying, and perhaps the fortunes of 
 the village depended in no small measure on the 
 character of his next wife. In any case, the pastor 
 in charge of the Mission, a Native Christian, made 
 up his mind that Masillamony should marry one of 
 his relations. Masillamony, on the other hand, made 
 up his mind that he would marry in quite another 
 quarter. There was a dispute, a rupture, a feud, 
 and at last open war. The pastor refused to perform 
 the ceremony of this new marriage. Masillamony, 
 with the help of his friends, performed the ceremony 
 for himself, according to the Christian rites so far 
 as he understood them. 
 
 There followed a tremendous upheaval in that little 
 village. The Native pastor issued an edict fining 
 every person who had attended this marriage, which 
 he declared to be invalid. Masillamony in a tower- 
 ing passion hurled defiance at the pastor, and calling 
 the people about him proposed that they should 
 return to the worship of their fathers. Nearly the 
 whole village followed his leadership. 
 
 On his threshing floor, which had been cleansed 
 from idolatry, he set up the old swamis and rebuilt 
 a temple to the sandal-wood goddess. He, the head- 
 man of the village, became priest and devil-dancer 
 of this temple. He drank deeply of arrack to work 
 himself up into terrible frenzies. ' Of course, I had 
 to do it,' he says, ' or the people would have had 
 no faith in me.' He declares that he himself had
 
 ii6 DEVIL-PRIESTS 
 
 no belief either in the goddess or the ceremonies. 
 He was a priest for the sake of power and out of a 
 spirit of revenge. But he confesses that the wild 
 music and the frenzied dances bestowed upon him 
 some unaccountable immunity from pain. Great 
 pots of boiling water, into which turmeric and other 
 things had been placed, were thrown over him as 
 he danced, and he says that they seemed to him 
 only like cold water. 
 
 He had never been grossly immoral himself, but 
 the village was corrupt, and moral perversions of 
 an odious character were common. He says that 
 he never looked upon these things as sinful, but 
 regarded them as shameful, and sought, by his power 
 as headman, to put a stop to them. He tells me that 
 he felt even as a youth that immorality was some- 
 thing unworthy of human nature. 
 
 I pressed him on the point of his faith in the 
 goddess. ' I do not know,' he replied, ' whether 1 
 really believed in her or not. I felt that there was 
 something true in the idea, and I knew that as priest 
 I had opportunities for power over the people. It 
 was for power that I performed the ceremonies of 
 the temple. I wanted to be master.' ' But,' I asked 
 again, ' did you ever think to yourself, — There is no 
 such person as this sandal-wood goddess; there is no 
 such thing as a devil-goddess at all ?' 
 
 ' I knew that there were evil spirits,' he said. 
 
 ' How did you know?' 
 
 ' There are evil spirits,' he replied, ' everybody 
 knows that there are evil spirits.' 
 
 ' Have you ever seen any ?' 
 
 •No.' 
 
 * But you believe in them ?' 
 
 'They have no power to do anything; but there 
 are many evil spirits; I know it.'
 
 DEVIL-PRIESTS 117 
 
 ' Have you ever seen visions of any kind?' 
 
 * Yes. I have had a vision. Once. It was not 
 long ago. Three angels came to me. Two did not 
 open their mouths, but one said to me, " Thirty-one 
 people will die in this village." I asked, " Why 
 should God so suddenly destroy the lives of all these 
 people?" The same angel said, "The order has 
 passed." The other two did not speak. Then they 
 disappeared. In three days' time cholera came sud- 
 denly, and thirty-one people perished. No more 
 than thirty-one. Exactly thirty-one. That is the 
 only vision I have ever had.' 
 
 He told me that although he had never properly 
 realized Christianity, he was haunted by the idea 
 of Christ all through the long years of his devil- 
 priesthood. He was wretched and unhappy. But 
 pride kept him on his course. ' I was too proud to 
 yield,' he said. 'The Mission sent a new pastor; 
 they tried to get me back; but I laughed at them.' 
 
 One day a European Salvationist came to the 
 village. He had heard of Masillamony, and going 
 up to him, he took his hand, led him into the shade 
 of a tree, and said, ' You must become a Christian.' 
 They remained sitting and talking under the tree 
 for more than an hour. At the end of this confer- 
 ence Masillamony said, ' If ever I become a Christian 
 again, it will be as a Salvationist.' 
 
 He told me that he felt his heart softened by this 
 colloquy under the tree, and that ever afterwards 
 he was haunted by it, knowing himself to lack some- 
 thing, to be incomplete, to be untrue. Altogether 
 he remained a devil-priest for thirty-eight years after 
 the rupture with the Mission, and all those years 
 were dogged for him by wretchedness and the 
 haunting of a great lack in his life. 
 
 Towards the end of this long misery there came
 
 ii8 DEVIL-PRIESTS 
 
 to him a Native Salvationist, one Sena Putra, a 
 saintly man as simple as a child, wistful in his 
 methods, and tranquil in his faith. The two would 
 sit together in the gloom of Masillamony's mud 
 house with the fine porch of carved wood and the 
 granary above the living room. Masillamony used 
 to laugh at him. ' Why,' he w-ould say, banteringly, 
 ' I know the Bible better than you do!' And Sena 
 Putra, being too gentle and too humble to con- 
 tradict or even doubt the boast, would reply, ' Then 
 that is another reason why you should surrender 
 to God.' 
 
 On the one side of this controversy was a master- 
 ful old man, serving idols, given to devil-dancing, 
 and tenacious of his authority in the village; on the 
 other, as meek a disciple of Christ as ever found joy 
 in surrender to the will of God. The one man was 
 unhappy, uncertain, unrestful ; the other, happy, 
 certain, restful. The one man had intelligence and 
 power; the other, nothing but the sweetness of a 
 spirit dwelling continually in the blissful region of 
 faith. 
 
 It was the saint who conquered in this contest. 
 He said nothing to persuade the old priest, 
 triumphed over him never once in argument, and 
 was many times dumb before the Scriptural on- 
 slaught of his powerful antagonist. But he possessed 
 the secret. In his face there was neither storm nor 
 vexation, in his voice there was neither trouble nor 
 perplexity. He spoke of Sin as something that 
 separated the heart of man from God, and of Christ 
 as the Saviour Who sets free the heart of man from 
 all the fetters and barriers of Sin. He spoke of 
 Liberation — of the freedom of a heart cleansed from 
 evil and so set upon goodness that it becomes the 
 dwelling-place of God. He said that religion gave
 
 DEVIL-PRIESTS 119 
 
 peace to the brain and joy to the heart. He said — 
 ' To be born again is to be at rest.' 
 
 The other man, dwelling in the shadows of his 
 dark house, or going down to his rice-fields, or 
 entering the temple of his goddess, was haunted by 
 the knowledge that he lacked peace. He said to 
 himself — ' This goddess gives me nothing.' He 
 said to himself — ' I was a Christian once, but I 
 did not understand.' He would sit by himself 
 W'Ondering if he could yet be born again. ' If I 
 would be a Christian ' he thought, ' it is certainly 
 necessary to be born again.' 
 
 Then, so insistent at his heart was the longing 
 for liberation, he said — ' I will seek God'; and he 
 felt himself even with the resolution at the door of 
 a new life. No more idol-worship, no more service 
 of the devil, no more darkness, uncertainty, and 
 fear. He came out from his dark house, passed 
 down the curving street of mud-houses, and pre- 
 sented himself before Sena Putra. 'Take me,' he 
 said; ' I know now what I want to be — I know, too, 
 what these people must become.' 
 
 Such was the power of his personality that the 
 whole village came over with him to Christianity. 
 
 Some months after a little ceremony was made 
 of handing over to Fakir Singh as head of the 
 Salvationists in India the temple in which 
 Masillamony had served as priest. 
 
 I w-as present at the strange scene. From the 
 crowded town of Nagercoil, where the Hindus can 
 still prevent any European from walking down 
 their streets at a time of festival, came a procession 
 of Salvationists, winding with the dusty and uneven 
 road to the little village of East Vadasery. Their 
 band was playing and their banner caught the 
 flames of the setting sun. On the faces of the men
 
 120 DEVIL-PRIESTS 
 
 there was a look of triumph and amusement; the 
 young women — so wonderfully, so amazingly 
 different from the poor wretched women still living 
 in the degradation of Hinduism — marched with a 
 self-conscious joy. Every now and then this bright 
 and happy procession, with which were marching 
 several European Salvationists, would lift their 
 voices and sing to the band in melodious Tamil a 
 hymn to the Christian God. People who came to 
 their doors, or who stood at street corners to watch 
 them pass, gazed with something very like pride 
 at the smart and splendid young men of the band 
 and the handsome vigorous girls marching with 
 their tambourines and smiling as they went. It 
 was as if the India of to-day was watching the India 
 of to-morrow. 
 
 East Vadasery lies off the main road, some little 
 way beyond the large hospital of the Salvation 
 Army. You leave the broad, tree-sheltered road, 
 and crossing an old bridge, follow a narrow lane 
 which curves like a serpent between hedges of cactus 
 and fields of rice till it ends abruptly in a street 
 of mud-houses — low palm-roofed buildings red- 
 brown in colour and flush with the lane. At the 
 end of the street, where it widens and ends in a 
 wall with a stile descending to the rice-fields, and 
 under the beautiful shadows of a huge tree, stands 
 the little temple — a pitiful enough structure, but 
 with something pleasing and picturesque in its low- 
 reaching roof and its quasi-tower over the altar of 
 the goddess. 
 
 As the procession, filling the whole street, which 
 was decorated with paper flags of many colours, 
 advanced to the open space before the temple, I 
 saw old people peering out at it from the dark 
 interiors of the little houses, like animals afraid.
 
 DEVIL-PRIESTS 121 
 
 At the temple the Salvationists sang a hymn in 
 Tamil, which went to a tune of triumph and con- 
 tained the lines : ' We have been worshippers of 
 false gods; Let us now take up the Cross; Soldiers 
 of Jesus!' Old Masillamony stood in front of 
 Fakir Singh, careworn and anxious it seemed to 
 me, watching the face of this great Guru, and 
 holding in his hands the handsome iron key of the 
 temple. 
 
 Beyond this congregation stretched a wide land- 
 scape of green rice-fields, in the distance a wooden- 
 railed bridge over the canal, and farther away still 
 purple mountains misty and soft in the glory of the 
 setting sun. Men and women were at work in the 
 fields. Above them, in the quiet beauty of the skies, 
 wheeled a great kite — one of those birds in whom 
 the Hindus see an incarnation of Krishna. 
 
 Masillamony's son read an address, in which 
 Fakir Singh was invited to take possession of the 
 temple and make it a place of Christian worship. 
 Then the old man stretched out his hand, the Fakir 
 took the key, and people pressed forw-ard to enter 
 the abode of the goddess. 
 
 It was dark inside, so dark that people struck 
 matches. There was no furniture of any kind. 
 The walls were not decorated. In the outer court 
 was something that served as an idol. Beyond, 
 where the steps led to the altar, three or four clumsy 
 shapes of mud represented all the forces of devil- 
 worship — making their last stand against the reason 
 of man and the conscience of righteousness. 
 
 The little lights twinkled in the darkness and 
 gloom of the temple. Voices sounded everywhere. 
 Crowbars began to break up altar and idols with 
 a dull thudding noise. The foul air became 
 suffocating with their dust.
 
 122 DEVIL-PRIESTS 
 
 I made my escape from the scene, and went to 
 visit the house of Masillamony — the house from 
 which he has ruled the village through a long 
 lifetime, and the house in which he sat for so many 
 months in conflict with Sena Putra. I wanted to 
 see that interior more than the idols he had served 
 without faith. 
 
 Over the door was a handsome porch with carved 
 pillars, the wood blistered, cracked, and unpainted. 
 The door itself was heavy and strong, with a 
 handsome handle. Inside one found a large and 
 gloomy room, to which light entered from a door 
 at the back, on the step of which some shabby fowls 
 were waiting for food. A rough ladder-like flight of 
 stairs led from the floor of trodden clay to a loft 
 above. There was no chair in the room, no table, 
 and no bed. In one of the corners lay a reed mat 
 where the old man slept; near the stairs stood three 
 or four barrels containing grain; at the back of the 
 room several brass vessels, brightly polished, were 
 ranged upon the floor. 
 
 It was like a barn save for its extreme cleanness 
 and some subtle sense of humanity which haunted 
 the dark air. One could not think of it as a man's 
 house. There was in it nothing either of comfort or 
 disorder. As the byre or stable or sty of some 
 ascetic dwelling in unbroken solitude with the 
 thoughts of his own soul, one could understand the 
 strange and throttled humanity of this sombre 
 place. But one could not feel that a woman had 
 ever lived there, that love had been glad there, that 
 children had ever played on its earthen floor or 
 made the mud walls re-echo with their play. 
 
 I climbed the ladder-like stairs to the apartment 
 above. It was a swept and garnished loft crowded 
 with barrels of grain. It was there, in the dim
 
 DEVIL-PRIESTS 123 
 
 light and under the hot roof, that one realized the 
 wealth of the proprietor. These innumerable tubs 
 and barrels filled to the top with the fruits of the 
 earth, represented a European's bank, a miser's 
 gold and a collector's treasures. They were wealth 
 and security. Let the sun scorch the earth, let the 
 rains destroy the crops, let Governments fall, let the 
 bourses of the civilized nations send ruin to the ends 
 of the earth, let calamity succeed calamity — and 
 still, here there would be wealth and security. 
 
 When I came out from the dwelling all the idols 
 were demolished, and a look of relief had appeared 
 in the puckered eyes of Masillamony. He was 
 surrounded by talkative villagers, and with one 
 hand at the bunch of white hair on his chest, the 
 fingers of the other fidgeting with the considerable 
 waist of his loin cloth, the fat and bearded old man 
 was listening with troubled patience to these 
 chatterers, as I have seen the late Lord Salisbury 
 lending an unwilling ear to the inquisitive and too 
 pushful lesser members of his party. But the look 
 of anxiety was gone. There was satisfaction in the 
 small mouth and the light of laughter in the eyes.
 
 RESPECTABLE HINDUISM 
 
 Among the men I met in Southern India was a 
 little droU creature in gold-rimmed spectacles, whose 
 protruding and widespread teeth under a ragged 
 moustache shone with the same light of cheerful 
 good spirits as glittered in his happy eyes. The 
 whole face was a-shine with amusement. One could 
 not sit in his company without smiling. Everything 
 in the universe seemed to move his mirth. And he 
 was eager in his talk, quick in his movements, and 
 delighted with all he said — like a child at a party. 
 I never knew the real meaning of the word chuckle 
 till I got into conversation with this little parcel of 
 human cheerfulness. 
 
 He came of a high-caste family, and was well 
 acquainted with Hinduism. It occurred to me that 
 a born humorist might be able to furnish a more 
 intelligible account of this perplexing religion than 
 some of the philosophers whose tedious works on 
 the subject had often exasperated me by their 
 contradictions and confusions. So I asked him 
 if he would tell me all about Hinduism, respect- 
 able, orthodox, high-caste, and non-devil-dancing 
 Hinduism, just as he would tell an Indian all about 
 Christianity — easily, conversationally, and holding 
 only to the main points. 
 
 At this he burst out laughing, hugged his knees
 
 RESPECTABLE HINDUISM 125 
 
 as he sat on the floor, and pressing his protruding 
 teeth upon his brown under-lip regarded me with 
 a satisfied delight. 
 
 ' It will make you laugh !' he exclaimed. 
 
 'To begin with ?' 
 
 * Oh, the beginning is funny. It is ridiculous. 
 The beginning is Brahma. Brahma is the god of 
 gods, but — he is never worshipped ! There is not a 
 single temple erected to Brahma, and not a single 
 Hindu ever prays to him. Do you know why ? Well, 
 it 's a funny story. Hinduism begins with three gods 
 — Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu. Those are the three 
 from whom the other three hundred million gods 
 have all descended. One day Brahma and Vishnu 
 had an argument. They couldn't decide, these two 
 gods, which was the taller. Of course they got 
 warm on the subject. Brahma said he could give 
 young Vishnu a head; Vishnu retorted that he could 
 beat old Brahma by a couple of heads and fling in 
 three necks and four pairs of shoulders — so there I 
 Something like that. In any case the dispute got 
 so hot that they determined to make an end of it. 
 They agreed that one should go up into the mountain 
 of creation, and the other down, and he would be 
 the taller god who first came to the end of things. 
 Brahma elected to go up, and turned himself into 
 a bird. Vishnu said he would go down, and con- 
 verted himself into a pig. Very well. One — two 
 — three, OFF ! Away they went. Vishnu began 
 to pant and to blow. " Pouf !" he says; " I can't 
 stand this any longer; a little of this goes a long 
 way," he says, and back he comes. Brahma flew 
 up and up, but he got tired. He wished creation 
 wasn't quite so big or his wings weren't quite so 
 heavy. "My eye!" he says, "but the world's 
 bigger than I thought it was." For forty years the
 
 126 RESPECTABLE HINDUISM 
 
 brave old fellow kept it up, but he got sicker and 
 sicker, his eyes could scarcely keep open, and his 
 wings began to moult — fiying machines weren't 
 invented in those days. Just when he was nearly 
 done, he saw a flower falling towards him, and asked 
 it where it came from. " Don't talk to me," said 
 the flower; " I come from the top of Siva's head; 
 I've been falling for years; and I'm dreadfully 
 tired." That 's what the flower said. Brahma 
 glanced up, and thought to himself, " This isn't 
 good enough," and he said to the flower, " Look 
 here, will you tell Vishnu that I have seen the top 
 of the hills?" "Anything you like," said the 
 flower. And down they both went together. When 
 he saw them, Vishnu asked, " Have vou been to 
 the very top?" " Yes," said Brahma. "" Has he?" 
 asked Vishnu. " He has," said the flower. " Then 
 I've lost," said Vishnu; "but, at the same time — 
 hullo! what 's that?" They all sprang up in alarm. 
 Fire leaped out of the earth ; Siva descended in a 
 rage — and oh, how he cursed that flower, and oh, 
 how he rated Brahma, and oh, how Vishnu chuckled 
 with delight ! That 's the story of the Hindu 
 trinity. The Brahma of Brahmanism, because he 
 told a lie, is never worshipped and is not permitted 
 to have a single temple; the North of India worships 
 Vishnu, and the South of India worships Siva— 
 and as for the flower — the wild apple flower — it is 
 never used in temple worship. You will see it 
 in a girl's hair, but never on a Hindu altar. It 
 told a lie !' 
 
 ' Is there jealousy,' I asked, ' between the followers 
 of Vishnu and the followers of Siva?' 
 
 • The most religious of them,' he replied, with a 
 chuckle, ' quarrel like cat and dog.' 
 
 ' But the others '
 
 RESPECTABLE HINDUISM 127 
 
 ' No, they don't quarrel : at least, they aren't at 
 it morning and night. But each thinks the other is 
 wrong. They have different temples, and different 
 ceremonies. They do not mix together.' 
 
 ' Which is the better?' 
 
 'Neither! Both are bad.' 
 
 ' In what way?' 
 
 'Oh, bad.' 
 
 ' Are they both sensual in their form of worship?' 
 
 He nodded his head. 
 
 ' The priests?' 
 
 'Ninety-five out of every hundred,' he said, 'are 
 immoral. Five in every hundred are good men.' 
 
 ' Tell me about the ceremonies.' 
 
 * There 's no preaching to begin with,' he replied. 
 * I was a Sivite for twenty-eight years and I never 
 once heard a sermon and never once heard a priest 
 teach morality. Never once in twenty-eight years ! 
 The people pray their own prayers, and the priest 
 burns lights and camphor before the idols. Incense 
 is never used for high-caste gods — only for demons. 
 The temple girls— you know what they are, I sup- 
 pose ! — posture, and dance, and sing. The people 
 pray, and these girls in fine dresses and covered with 
 jewels, sing their songs, writhe with their bodies, 
 and wave their arms in the air.' 
 
 'Are the words of their songs indecent?' 
 
 'No; oh, no! They are called The Garlands of 
 God, and are songs of praise. They contain such 
 sentiments as — " I will worship thee : the only god ! 
 1 will praise thee, and give thanks to thee. Thou 
 hast created me, fed me, and wilt take care of me." 
 It's different from the singing of the devil-dancers: 
 but — well, the girls are there only for one purpose. 
 The priests don't keep them to praise god when 
 they're old ! There are some ugly scenes in these
 
 128 RESPECTABLE HINDUISM 
 
 temples. Every day, morning and evening, and 
 sometimes midday, the priest performs his cere- 
 mony at the altar. The girls remain in the outer 
 court. No one else is present. Then he comes down 
 from the altar and enters the outer court carrying 
 the gods' rice to the girls. They crowd round him, 
 laughing, and pushing, and jesting. Well, you 
 can imagine the rest. Horrible places ! They 
 never have any windows. They are practically air- 
 tight. Where the god dwells it is pitch dark and 
 suffocating. Oh, you wouldn't like one of those 
 temples !' 
 
 I asked him about the nature of the prayers prayed 
 by the genuine worshippers. 
 
 ' Hindu people of the better class,' he said, 'are 
 not immoral in their prayers, but they only kneel 
 for material blessings. They go to get something 
 out of their god. It is wonderful how many of them 
 believe in idolatry. They polish their gods, feed 
 them, cover them up, fan the flies away, and would 
 rather injure themselves than one of their idols. 
 They fear what Siva may do to them. They don't 
 want to be better people. Prayer means, " Don't 
 hurt me," or " Please give me something nice." 
 They're funny people!' 
 
 ' Now, in a few words, what do these people 
 believe ?' 
 
 ' Hinduism is just this — belief in reincarnation 
 and aspiration after non-existence. Everybody 
 believes that a person must be born seven times, as 
 grass, plants, trees, insects, birds, animals, men ; 
 afterwards, that a person will go on being born 
 until he is fit to inhabit the body of a Brahman. 
 Then — well, of course, there 's nothing else — 
 heaven ! And heaven is a ceasing of the individual 
 life in the universal consciousness of the god.'
 
 RESPECTABLE HINDUISM 129 
 
 •But there are bad Brahmans?' 
 
 ' A bad Brahman has to be born again. 
 According to the nature of his sin, so he must 
 descend and begin the climb once more till he is 
 fit to be a Brahman.' 
 
 ' That is the faith of Hinduism?' 
 
 ' If I was to tell you about the philosophy ' 
 
 ' No, we will leave that.' 
 
 ' What I have told you is what the people believe. 
 It is the religion of India.' 
 
 ' Now, tell me what are the commands of this 
 religion. What does it tell a man he must not do?' 
 
 ' It tells a man,' he replied, with another chuckle, 
 ' that it is shameful — 
 
 To walk with his wife in the street. 
 To eat with his wife in the house. 
 To shave himself. 
 
 To eat in the presence of a European. 
 To touch a person of lower caste. 
 To let a low-caste person enter his house. 
 To permit his wife to sit while he is standing. 
 These things are universally condemned.' 
 
 ' And what does it command a man to do?' 
 
 * In morality, nothing. No; it only tells a man 
 how he must wash, what he must say when he is 
 doing this and that, and — well, other ceremonial 
 things. There is no moral teaching at all. Not a 
 bit. Not a scrap. It is generally believed that the 
 holiest man is one who lives an existence of 
 privation and commits no sin ; in some of the sacred 
 books there are moral ideas ; five in every hundred 
 of the priests are virtuous men ; but Hinduism, the 
 religion of the Indian peoples, does not lift a little 
 finger either to save the sinner or to make men 
 better. That isn't its business. I assure you, 
 Hinduism is something which never yet helped a
 
 130 RESPECTABLE HINDUISM 
 
 man, a woman, or a child. It has plunged millions 
 into dreadful sins, and millions more it has driven 
 mad. But helped us — no! Oh, dear, no!' 
 
 He explained to me that the Sivites paint three 
 horizontal bars of white upon the forehead, and the 
 Vishnuites two upright bars of white with a red one 
 dividing them. The two white bars stand for 
 Vishnu's feet and the red represents his wife. The 
 Hindu placing these bars on his forehead says, ' I 
 bear thee and thy w^ife on my brows.' Concerning 
 the red spot worn between the eyes he told the 
 following legend with great gusto: — 
 
 * Siva and his wife Parvati were one day playing 
 a game of marbles. In the middle of the game she 
 asked, " Who are the sun and moon ?" He replied, 
 "They are my eyes." "What!" she cries; "do 
 you mean to tell me that if I close both your eyes 
 the whole universe will be dark?" " I do, indeed," 
 he answered. "May I try?" "Certainly." She 
 lifted her hands and placed them over her husband's 
 eyes. Instantly the whole universe became dark. 
 In this appalling darkness all the people of the earth 
 stood still and cried to Siva for help. The cry 
 touched his heart. Between the two hands of 
 Mrs. Siva there appeared a light, burning and 
 glowing in the centre of Siva's forehead. The 
 little red spot worn by Hindus all over India com- 
 memorates that merciful event.' 
 
 'But,' I asked, 'what became of the marbles?' 
 He laughed and hugged his knees. ' They dropped 
 out of the story,' he replied.
 
 THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 
 
 At a sweeping curve of the river Ganges, rising 
 from an earthen cliff high above the swerving 
 water, stands the sacred city of Benares — its palaces 
 and temples, its pinnacles and cupolas, its minarets 
 and spires crowding with flashing gilt, garish paint, 
 and fluttering flags into the perfect blue of a pure 
 heaven. 
 
 The bank, on which this wonderful city stands 
 with so superb a beauty, gives its complexion to the 
 river and its spirit to the place. It is in colour like 
 the bottom of a pond dried and cracked by the sun, 
 a pallid brown that it is almost grey. Without the 
 solid richness of mud or the innumerable vivacity 
 of sand, it has a worn, shabby, and melancholy 
 look — as torpid as putty, as lifeless as stucco. One 
 is not conscious in this crumbling cliff either of the 
 vigour of endurance or of the energy for catastrophe : 
 it will not stand stubborn and unshaken for a thou- 
 sand years, nor will it suddenly be blown away in 
 a cloud of glittering dust. It impresses one with 
 the sense of a subsidence which is perpetual but 
 laborious — a mouldering down, and a crumbling 
 away, so gradual that the cliff will never perish, 
 and yet so continual that it will be for ever falling. 
 
 Benares is of the very stuff of this earthen cliff 
 on which it stands aspiring to the blue of the sky
 
 132 THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 
 
 and subsiding to the mud of the river. In spite of 
 painted buildings, brazen domes, coloured towers, 
 and glittering balconies; in spite of the green foliage 
 of pipal, neem, and tamarind trees which lift them- 
 selves above square roofs or thrust their branches 
 between the walls of the crowding architecture — in 
 spite of all this colour and ornamentation, the pre- 
 vailing tone of the sacred city is a dull pallid and 
 lifeless brown. The traveller looks up from the 
 painted barge on which he is moving slowly with 
 the tide, and sees above him an immense and far- 
 spreading cluster of earth-coloured walls; and it 
 seems to him that these walls, piled one above the 
 other, have been moulded out of the inland cliff 
 itself, that they are as dry and arid as the baked 
 earth out of which they rise, and that like that 
 cracked and mouldering earth they are crumbling 
 everlastingly away into the dust of ruin. It is a 
 blistered and a withered city, a city of melancholy 
 and exhaustion, a dry, thirsty, and suffocating city 
 — a city which is like a mummy. 
 
 And yet this shabby and dilapidated city, because 
 of its humanity, presents to the eye a picture of 
 extraordinary brightness. The wide and splendid 
 stairs leading down to the river's edge are thronged 
 with thousands of pilgrims dressed in all the 
 gorgeous colours of the sun. The carved and glit- 
 tering balconies shine with a raiment so resplendent 
 that one imagines a king to be lodged in every house. 
 The landing-stages, with their poles reflecting sun- 
 light, are packed with a vast company who seem to 
 be the actors in some glorious pageant waiting to 
 march forth with flags and music. Even the muddy 
 river, for the entire length of the congregating 
 walls, is thick with worshippers up to the waists in 
 water, and the brown and yellow and black and
 
 THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 133 
 
 chocolate skins of these thousand devotees, sparkling 
 with wet, add colour and vivacity to the general 
 scene. Moreover the pure air twinkles and thrills 
 with the flight of swallows, the ledges and sills of 
 the houses are heavy with pigeons, on the stages 
 and on the stairs cows white as milk chew the cud 
 of many-coloured flowers, and up from the burning 
 ghats where their dead are given to the flame 
 ascends the blue and silver smoke of the Hindu's 
 fire of wood, beautiful and glad. All is colour, 
 movement, and life. The very water which wor- 
 shippers fling in adoration to the sun forgets the 
 mud of the river and becomes the glittering dust of 
 diamonds. The pallid brown of the city walls swims 
 into the lucent blue of the sky. And all the foulness 
 and melancholy, all the dilapidation and ruin, all 
 the squalor and shabbiness of the holy city is trans- 
 muted into the beauty and the wonder of some 
 dazzling dream by the glowing magic of the sun. 
 
 The scene suggests the festivity of a fair. Along 
 the edge of the river one sees huge umbrellas of 
 bamboo at every possible angle, and a glittering 
 confusion of little temporary buildings which are 
 something like a tent, something like a bathing- 
 machine, and something like a market-stall. Here 
 the excited and chattering pilgrims disrobe for the 
 river, kneel to innumerable idols, wring out their 
 clothes, rub themselves dry, and laugh with their 
 friends. All round these picturesque shanties and 
 leaning umbrellas are the drying garments of the 
 worshippers, hanging their lovely colours from rope 
 stretched between two slender poles. Among the 
 crowding people move the fruit-sellers with their 
 red oranges and yellow melons, the dusty snake- 
 charmers with their shabby boxes of innocuous 
 cobras, the indolent sellers of sweets with their
 
 134 THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 
 
 trays of coloured sugar hung from their necks, the 
 huge and herculean wrestlers, the emaciated and 
 filthy saint, the creeping touts of the dancing girls, 
 the bhisti with his dripping goatskin of water, and 
 jugglers, acrobats, and singers — all of them 
 variously dressed and variously noisy. The air is 
 filled with a clamour which drowns the roucou of the 
 pigeons. It is a cheerful noise — the noise of a fair 
 in which everybody is pleased with himself. The 
 faces of the multitude gleam with joy — white teeth 
 and brilliant eyes making a sunshine of their own. 
 You hear a constant obbligato of happy laughter 
 to the glee of human merriment made by a thousand 
 voices. It is a jolly scene. It is like a French 
 watering-place crowded with holiday-makers from 
 Paris. People are where they have longed to 
 be. The goal is reached; the sun is shining; 
 and life is good. The painted barges and little 
 boats crowding the river are filled with pleasure- 
 makers. 
 
 But in the midst of all this contagious jollity, 
 there are scenes which strike horror and pity at 
 the heart of the traveller. He sees the dying boy, 
 with ghastly rolling eyes and shrivelled limbs, being 
 carried down to the healing river by his brothers and 
 his friends. He sees the corpse, wound in a pretty, 
 flimsy robe and borne on a slight stretcher between 
 slender poles of bamboo, waiting for the wood to be 
 piled up for its burning. He sees on the top of a 
 great flight of stairs, under the shadow of a lofty 
 arch, the disconsolate widow wailing her loss and 
 rocking herself to and fro in the arms of her 
 comforters. He sees the sweating and gasping son 
 swing back his long pole to break the skull of his 
 dead father before the flames shall burst it. He 
 sees little groups of all but naked men shovelling
 
 THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 135 
 
 into the muddy river the blackened ashes of the 
 dead. And he sees loathsome humanity exhibiting 
 its deformities and its diseases to the afflicted and 
 distressed, whining for money at one moment, and 
 cursing the refusal of it at the next. 
 
 The juxtaposition of festivity and lamentation is 
 what chiefly strikes the observer. The shriek of 
 the dying mingles with the cajoleries of the con- 
 juror, the wail of the widow mingles with the loud 
 laughter of a group gathered round an acrobat, the 
 crackle of the death fire mingles with the music of 
 love songs. He looks from a miserable leper to see 
 a gymnast swinging his Indian clubs in the sun. 
 He looks from the smoke and ash of the burning 
 ghat to see children in gaudy clothes playing with 
 tinselled toys. And while the stairs and landing- 
 stages are crowded with all this sorrow and with all 
 this joy, in the water itself, telling their beads, 
 looking up to heaven with a strange ecstasy, or 
 standing like carven figures with bowed head, 
 folded hands, and moving lips, the pilgrims are 
 praying to their gods and seeking liberation from 
 their sins. 
 
 In the water, which is littered as if with confetti 
 by millions of flower petals offered to Mother 
 Ganges, you may see men standing at prayer who 
 startle you by their likeness to the pictures of 
 Christ — eyes large, luminous, and tranquil, the 
 features perfect, the long hair falling gracefully 
 about the neck, the moustache and beard leaving 
 the tenderness of the mouth unhidden — the whole 
 face exquisite with meekness and majestic with 
 spirit. And side by side with these ascetics, you 
 see the hard old man of handsome but sensual 
 appearance, whose copper-coloured skin, stretched 
 and shining over rolls of hanging fat, flames in the
 
 136 THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 
 
 sun with the challenge of wealth and power. Such 
 a man scoops up the muddy water in his hollowed 
 palm and rubs it on his shoulders, down his arms, 
 and over his enormous bosom, with the action of 
 one who is doing good business and would do it 
 briskly and heartily. Another man, thin, bitter, 
 and bird-like, the cords of his neck taut as steel, 
 his shaven head like a skull, strides into the river 
 with set and earnest face, flings the water up into 
 the air with an angry flourish of the arms, and 
 seems to regard the gods with stern displeasure or a 
 masterful contempt. Another man, whose bulbous 
 eyes and full lips suggest a sense of humour, comes 
 tardily and self-consciously into the crowded river, 
 and drawing a deep breath and pinching his nose 
 between thumb and index, suddenly bobs his head 
 under the tide and comes up gasping and dripping 
 and relieved. Some stand praying, some lift 
 handfuls of water to the sky, some are rubbing 
 themselves with vigour, some are sitting up to 
 the neck, some are jumping up and down like 
 bathers at the sea, some are kneeling off"ering fruit 
 and flowers to the river, some are shouting jokes to 
 their friends on shore, and some are lying comatose 
 and dreadful at the water's edge while their fathers 
 and mothers anoint them from the sacred tide. Old 
 white-haired men, middle-aged men, mere striplings, 
 and little boys — their skins witnessing to vastly 
 different climates and their features proclaiming 
 vastly different castes — an immense and never- 
 dwindling congregation of humanity — there they are 
 waist deep in Mother Ganges, seeking communion 
 with the powers of the universe and a lifting of the 
 burden of their conscious wrong. 
 
 Just above these pilgrims, close to the place where 
 the dead are burning and the place where wood is
 
 THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 137 
 
 being busily chopped for the death fires, there is a 
 temple guarded by a staring notice-board which 
 declares in English that women are not admitted 
 to its precincts. The exterior of this temple consists 
 of wood carvings, and every one of the pictures 
 carved in the black wood is a grinning obscenity. 
 It is not possible even to hint at the nature of some 
 of these sexual lubricities, but the reader must take 
 my word for it that they are filthy to a degree 
 unreached in the worst pornographic literature of 
 Europe, that motherhood is debased in some of them 
 so vilely that it might seem a devil had done the 
 work, and that in every one of these abominable 
 impurities there is a salacious leer and a lecherous 
 grin. And this place is a temple. As I moved away 
 I noticed, at right angles from the temple, a line of 
 buildings with iron railings in the place of windows 
 and doors, like the cages in a menagery. ' That,' 
 said my guide, * is the priests' quarter.' I looked 
 into one of the cages and saw a woman sitting in 
 the shadow of the background. ' She is the woman 
 of one of the priests,' said my guide. At the head of 
 the stairs leading down to the river we were con- 
 fronted by an old and frowning man whose for- 
 bidding face reminded me of certain criminals I have 
 seen in Wormwood Scrubs. He held out his hand, 
 angrily and commandingly. ' What does he want?' 
 I asked. ' Bakshish,' said my guide. ' But what has 
 he done?' ' He is the priest.' I gave him nothing, 
 and he cursed me in mumbled language and with 
 murderous looks. 
 
 As we descended I said to my guide, who was a 
 young Brahman and spoke excellent English — 
 ' How is it possible for such a temple to stand in 
 the holy city of Hinduism?' ' I am sorry to say,' 
 he replied sadly, ' that there are worse things than
 
 138 THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 
 
 that in Benares. I do not like to tell visitors the 
 truth, because it brings shame to my religion. But 
 in this little city there are two hundred dancing 
 girls, and the people are very wicked — they are not 
 good. It is wrong. It should not be. It is not 
 our religion.' 'But,' I persisted, 'that temple is 
 not a secret sin : it is a place of worship; it is open 
 to all the world; it is served by priests!' 'There 
 are too many priests in Benares ; some of them are 
 very wicked,' he answered. * But this temple — does 
 no one condemn it? is there no such thing in 
 Benares as a public opinion ? What I want to 
 understand, do you see, is the unchallenged exist- 
 ence of such a place, served by priests, in the 
 sacredest city of India — the city to which pilgrims 
 come thousands of miles from every quarter of the 
 country, to rid themselves of just those very sins 
 which this temple is erected to excite and justify. 
 I cannot understand how it is allowed to stand.' 
 ' There are many things like that.' * But the 
 pilgrims — the people we saw praying in the river 
 and bathing in the holy water : they are in earnest, 
 they are not hypocrites, they are struggling to be 
 good, they want to be better ?' ' Oh, yes, a few 
 may come because their parents desire it or because 
 the priests have ordered it ; but most of them are 
 seeking liberation.' ' And they say nothing about 
 this temple ?' He shrugged his shoulders — ' They 
 do not bother about it; and — they are afraid of the 
 priests.' * They know that many of the priests are 
 wicked?' * Everybody knows that !' * But it makes 
 no difference to their faith?' 'No; they believe 
 their religion.' Now, imagine such a temple as 
 this at Oxford or Winchester or Wells. But there 
 it stands — in the centre of Benares, unchallenged, 
 and guarded by priests.
 
 THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 139 
 
 The interior of the city is scarcely less crowded 
 than the riverside, but in all else wholly different. 
 Instead of the infinite blue of heaven, the happy 
 sense of moving water, and the wide, clean, whole- 
 some air of unbroken distance, one finds oneself in 
 dark and tortuous streets whose huddled houses, 
 from their littered gutters to their overhanging 
 balconies, reek of dilapidation and breathe decay. 
 The ground floors of these grimy dwellings are used 
 for merchandise, and there one sees, framed by the 
 blackened woodwork of the shop front, the grinding 
 of flour, the hammering of brass, the roasting of 
 gram, the carving of wood, the stitching of raiment, 
 the weighing of meat, and the forging of iron. One 
 interior is bright with the tinted sugar of the confec- 
 tioner or the gleaming trays and vases of the brass- 
 worker : another is dark and miserable with rusty 
 iron and broken shards. In one shop, smoking an 
 enormous hookah, and clothed in spotless white, the 
 rich and corpulent merchant lounges against his 
 carpets or his furniture; next door, with ragged 
 garments and sweating arms, the lean and haggard 
 master works painfully beside his crucible of fire. 
 From a shabby window overhead issues the monoton- 
 ous but haunting melancholy of the tom-tom, the 
 sad twang of the zither, and the rhythmic beating 
 of hands, with a woman's raucous voice breaking 
 every now and then inio this wailful music in a nasal 
 crescendo of discordant passion. The trodden earth 
 or the uneven stones of the roadway scarcely show 
 for the garbage ; the shops and cellars reek like rabbit 
 hutches ; from wall to wall the street is crowded with 
 an indolent and spitting multitude; and everywhere 
 — buzzing in the dark air above the people's heads, 
 almost obliterating the meat and sugar and grain 
 in the shops, and assaulting your face and neck and
 
 140 THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 
 
 hands as you force your way through the stench and 
 the crowd — there are flies. 
 
 It is impossible for any picture or any photograph 
 to convey a faithful idea of an Indian city. Two 
 essential and ubiquitous components they must 
 always lack, however skilful the painter, however 
 accurate the lens. One thing is the glittering black- 
 ness of a cloud of flies; the other — dust. The flies 
 make an atmosphere of their own, and it is in this 
 atmosphere that a street of native houses looms into 
 vision ; it is an atmosphere as depressing and suffo- 
 cating as fog and yet as vivacious and quivering as 
 the atmosphere of a summer sea. It is an atmosphere 
 that vibrates with vitality, that shines and glitters 
 with incessant movement, and yet chokes the soul 
 with a sense of loathing and disgust. The tired 
 and yawning dealer squatting on the counter of his 
 little grimy shop will every now and then lazily fan 
 the marauding flies from his evil-smelling fish or 
 his raw and bloody meat; and then they rise into the 
 air like a cloud of coal-dust, swarm there for a 
 moment with a sickening buzz, and then descend 
 once more upon their prey — some of them settling 
 on the owner's face till it loses recognition, covered 
 by a spotted veil. The string of mules descend- 
 ing the declivity of these steaming streets is 
 accompanied by a host of flies; the bullock-carts, 
 loaded with unspeakable things, are black with 
 them; the diseased, the wounded and the ulcerous 
 are pursued by them and speckled wath them — the 
 very houses seem to throb and pulsate with the mist 
 beaten by these hundred million wings. Until one 
 has seen with his own eyes the black dance of the 
 buzzing fly in the bazaar of an Indian city, it is 
 impossible for him to visualize that crowding scene 
 or imagine that offensive air.
 
 THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 141 
 
 With the flies there is the dust. So far as I know 
 dust is a thing no painter can counterfeit, and no 
 camera can reproduce. I mean the dust of architec- 
 ture — not the clean, sweet, transitory dust of the 
 open road or the windy field — but the old, sour, 
 black, and abiding dust of mouldering stone and 
 crumbling brick, the dust which settles upon ledge 
 and sill, which works its way into the flutings of 
 carved wood, which is the pigment and complexion 
 of ancient stone, which mantles blistering wood and 
 peeling paint, which is the black rime on the toothed 
 arches of dark entries, which is the leaden bloom 
 on rusty lamps and hooded porticoes, which is the 
 mildew in doorways and the must on rotten stairs — 
 the dust of time, the dust of decay, the dust of death. 
 
 How should a painter, baffled by the specks of 
 damp gold on a child's sandshoe, express this shab- 
 bying dust of bitten stone and nibbled brick which 
 clothes the habitations of men with the vesture of 
 mortality ? And yet, is it not this common and 
 unpaintable dust which breathes into the air of cities 
 the mysterious atmosphere of architecture ? — is it 
 not this grime of the ages, this crumbling away of 
 magnificence and strength, which gives to a temple, 
 a palace, or a street its character and significance ? 
 A painter may suggest age and may suggest decay, 
 but apparently he cannot clothe his picture with this 
 covering and tangible garment of ancient time. And 
 a photograph of a building old as Rameses, lacking 
 only this vesture of dust, becomes as contemporary 
 as a town hall or a free library. 
 
 I have been surprised, looking through the photo- 
 graphs which I brought back with me from India, 
 by the utter failure of the camera to give even the 
 very faintest sense of a city's atmosphere — that some- 
 thing on the walls of buildings and in the air of
 
 142 THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 
 
 streets which is what we receive into the mind long 
 before we have begun minutely to observe or criti- 
 cally to particularize. It is not only that a 
 photograph lacks colour; it is not only that a 
 photograph is unnatural with arrested movement — 
 the air is lacking, the character is wanting, and the 
 soul is dead. * 'Tis Greece, but living Greece no 
 more.' 
 
 In all the cities of India, but chiefly in Benares, 
 a sense of the crumbling dust of time, shabbying 
 everything and saddening everything, is essential to 
 a faithful apprehension of the scene. The vivid 
 colours of the people's clothes and the garish paint 
 on the woodwork of the houses, are seen through a 
 mist breathing from this everlasting dust. And it 
 is in the air — suffocating the nostrils, irritating the 
 throat, and inflaming the eyes of the unacclimatized 
 European. It is in the air, like motes in a shaft of 
 sunlight; it falls from the roof, it ascends from the 
 road, it comes from the rumbling wheels and 
 swaying pole of the bullock-waggon, from the pack 
 on the laden ass, from the dark interiors of smith 
 and turner, from the rustle of feet padding on the 
 stones, and from the windows, doorways, and 
 balconies of the nodding houses. It is the living 
 breath of the living city. 
 
 One thing more is essential to a faithful realiza- 
 tion of these Indian streets. In addition to the 
 breathing atmosphere of dust and the myriad dance 
 of disgustful flies, there is the heavy, pungent, and 
 narcotic smell of the East. If you can imagine what 
 the air would be like in a shop built of sandal-wood 
 and stocked with fish, where dirty carpets were being 
 beaten and chests of greasy brass loaded with pot- 
 pourri, you will be able to realize the floating scents 
 and drifting odours of a Native street.
 
 THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 143 
 
 Benares is perhaps more remarkable for its dust 
 and smells than any other city in India. For in 
 addition to its never ceasing tide of pilgrims, it is 
 a city of innumerable temples, and many of these 
 temples are nothing more than stables for cows, 
 cages for monkeys, hospitals for the sick, and 
 common lodging-houses for the destitute. You may 
 look through a gorgeous temple door of shining 
 brass into the dusk and reek of a stifling interior, 
 and see in the mephitic gloom a monstrous bull 
 snuffing at trays piled with rose-petals while his 
 worshippers crowd about him in the slime and 
 steam of his ordure. You may enter the precincts 
 of another temple, and find every foot of your 
 progress challenged by chattering monkeys who 
 grab at your hands or snatch at your clothes for the 
 food which is offered to the gods. And elsewhere, 
 in narrow slums, through burrowing alleys, and at 
 filthy corners, you will come across dark and sinister 
 temples whose tanks of horrible water are surrounded 
 by the scrofulous and the leprous, while the broken 
 and spittled stones of their pavements are strewn 
 with humanity eating its food, uttering its gossip, 
 and sleeping away the fatigue of its pilgrimage. 
 The smells, the dust, the dirt, the flies, of these 
 dark and twisting streets, make such an atmosphere 
 as fill the mind of a European with loathing and 
 disgust. 
 
 But of all cities I have visited, Benares stands in 
 solitary supremacy for interest and illumination. I 
 do not think there can be another place in the world 
 where a man may see the soul of humanity so 
 visibly. Other cities amuse or charm; Benares 
 teaches. Other cities show us the social organism ; 
 Benares, the individual soul. In a single hour, 
 making a loitering journey from the temples to the
 
 144 "THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 
 
 riverside, a man may learn something of the human 
 soul which all the books of the world have failed 
 to teach him. He may come to a knowledge of the 
 human mind which he has not realized even from 
 a profound study of The Golden Bough and Human 
 Personality. For here, visible to the eye of sense, 
 crowding every street, thronging every stair, and 
 muddying a great river, is the soul of man seeking 
 rest from the burden of its own particularity, and, 
 in that immemorial quest after peace, descending 
 to such outrageous folly and such degrading 
 absurdities as stagger the brain of a rational man 
 and fill his mind for a moment either with com- 
 passion or wild contempt for his own species. 
 
 Again and again I said to myself, looking at 
 these pilgrims abandoned to their orgiastic ritual, 
 ' Religion is a degradation.' Again and again I 
 felt that Faith is a peril and a stumbling-block to 
 the evolution of humanity. And long after I had 
 escaped from the dust and the flies, the smells and 
 the slime, of this sacred city, I was haunted by the 
 repetition of this single thought — the mind must act 
 as if there is no God. 
 
 For the supreme lesson taught by Benares is the 
 danger of unreasoning Faith. Among these 
 pilgrims there are those who sincerely believe in 
 God, they come to the Ganges with the passionate 
 desire to be cleansed from sin, they ardently hold 
 the faith that God will give them peace at the end 
 of this religious observance; and, if faith in God is 
 pleasing to God, if aspiration after cleanness is a 
 true prayer to a heaven which answers prayer, then, 
 they should be, these earnest and passionate 
 pilgrims, as dear to the heart of God and as secure 
 in peace of soul, as the faithful Catholics and 
 Protestants of Europe. But for myself, I found it
 
 THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 145 
 
 impossible to think that any infinite and perfect 
 Being could take pleasure in such servile abasement 
 and such childish superstition ; and I felt that if 
 heaven must make choice between these children 
 who have degraded reason, and men of science who 
 have exalted reason, it would be no heaven that 
 opened its gates to the children. 
 
 Benares gives to one the absolute certainty that 
 the evolution of humanity depends upon reason. 
 The exercise of this faculty is of course essential to 
 the human race, but if Faith attempts to usurp the 
 chief place in human progress, disaster must over- 
 take humanity. The most devout Christian does 
 surely act as if there were no God in moments of 
 peril and catastrophe. If his house is on fire, he 
 does not pray, but sends for the fire-engine. If his 
 child is bitten by a mad dog, he does not pray, but 
 runs for the doctor. If his eyes are failing, he does 
 not pray, but consults the oculist. If his children 
 are many and his income precarious, he does not 
 pray, but insures his life. Pressed to an honest 
 confession, the most earnest and trustful Christian 
 is forced to admit that his material life is ordered 
 far more by the exercise of his rational faculties than 
 by his faith. And if any man can read history with 
 honest eyes, must he not perceive that until super- 
 stitious faith in an over-ruling and constantly 
 interfering Providence was supplanted by the 
 masculine resolution to manage this tvorld with 
 human hands, to manage it and rule it by the 
 ingenuity and might of human reason, life w-as a 
 sad and wasteful and cruel business. 
 
 It is the divine gift of Reason which differentiates 
 mankind from the animal world ; and wherever Faith 
 is ascendant over Reason, humanity is degraded to 
 the brute level. Nor does even the true Faith serve
 
 146 THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 
 
 God and Man when it maligns Reason for lack of 
 its own quality, since no one acquainted with the 
 slow and laborious ascent of humanity, measured 
 by millions of years, from magic and sorcery, from 
 cannibalism, totemism, barbarism and idolatry, can 
 doubt that Reason has ever been the morning star 
 of the human race leading the soul upward and 
 onward from a false and partial to a true and com- 
 prehensive knowledge of the Universe. Reason is 
 never at a stop, and therefore it can never formulate 
 a creed. Always it is moving towards fuller 
 knowledge of the cosmic process; and with every 
 painful step of its advance it reveals a more majestic 
 universe and fills the soul with a deeper and sublimer 
 reverence. If Reason is accused of lack of Faith — 
 by those who participate in its thousand achieve- 
 ments — may it not justly answer that to work is to 
 pray, and that to believe in the perfecting of things 
 is to believe in God? 
 
 Certainly the faith which is in Hinduism is a 
 faith perilous to humanity. To see a man standing 
 in the muddy river of Benares, rubbing himself 
 with the filthy water, and to reflect that such a man 
 — who would surely be better employed in stoking 
 a railway-engine or ploughing a field — is convinced 
 in his brain that the depravity of his heart is thereby 
 washed away, and that he is giving pleasure to 
 Eternal God — this is to feel that a faith which 
 commands a surrender of reason is more deadly to 
 the human race than the blankest agnosticism or 
 the wildest atheism. An agnostic such as Huxley 
 is surely a nobler, nay a diviner, representative 
 of humanity than these pilgrims to the Ganges. 
 And the priests of the cow temple or the monkey 
 temple, though they offer sacrifices all day to the 
 invisible gods, surely they are more dangerous to
 
 THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 147 
 
 the human race than the frothiest atheist of a London 
 park. 
 
 One sees in this city not only the peril of faith, 
 but the inevitable calamity of mysticism carried to 
 its logical conclusion. The fakirs, who so trust 
 God that they take no thought for the morrow, and 
 are content with the day when they have begged 
 sufficient rice for stomach's need, are no whit 
 different from the loose-lipped and rolling-eyed 
 inmates of our mad-houses. Their faith is so 
 supreme that their reasons have atrophied. They 
 are stupid. They are mad. Let any ascetic-minded 
 youth, steeped in the literature of the saints, and 
 inclined to the belief that God may be reached 
 through privation of body and by meditation of soul, 
 come to the banks of the Ganges and cleanse himself 
 of folly. He will there see men who do what so 
 many mystics have enjoined, and who have become 
 in the process dehumanized skeletons and poor 
 jibbering idiots.* 
 
 But chiefly, Benares must be regarded as a 
 laundry of souls. From all parts of India, packed 
 like bundles of firewood in trains composed of 
 interminable luggage vans, riding down from the 
 hills, footing it over dusty roads, jolting along in 
 bullock-waggons and palanquins, the mother carrying 
 her baby, the friends supporting their sick, and the 
 mourners bearing their dying, millions of Hindus, 
 from the great Rajahs to the most destitute peasants, 
 stream in a never-ceasing tide through the streets 
 of the holy city, descend the steep and broken stairs 
 to the filthy river, and there, with exclamations of 
 joy and smiles of esctasy, wash the foul linen of 
 their dirty minds or their troubled souls. Look at 
 it how you will, unless you are rickety with senti- 
 
 * See Notes, page 343
 
 148 THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 
 
 mentalism or fanatical with hatred of reason, there 
 is little but contempt and disgust in this spectacle 
 of Hindu holiness. You see humanity degraded 
 and grovelling; you sec it laughing with the joy of 
 satisfaction in its own shameful degradation ; you 
 see it — this humanity formed for heroic deeds and 
 capable of divinest intuitions — grinning in an 
 abasement to which the lowest brute and the 
 meanest insect have not fallen. And in face of all 
 this public and laughing riot of faith, you cannot 
 ride away from the horror of it on the tolerance that 
 it is merely the outward and visible form of some 
 inward and spiritual emotion ; you cannot soothe 
 yourself with the flattery that you have a penetrating 
 and an understanding soul because you see in all 
 this hideous ceremonial only the mystery and 
 symbolism of a spiritual tragedy. It is too public: 
 it is too literal: it is too honest. No; there is 
 nothing of symbolism in this spectacle. Ganges 
 water is sacred and holy. It is to this water, this 
 very water flowing muddily before your eyes, that 
 your symbolists have brought their sinful souls, 
 their aching sick, and their corrupting dead. It is 
 Ganges water, not any power that it symbolizes, 
 which will wash away sin, cure lepers, and carry 
 the souls of the dead into Paradise. Look at them, 
 these holiday-making pilgrims, as they crowd and 
 fight into their homeward trains or take to the road 
 on their return journey; in almost every case you 
 will see that they carry bottles and jars and pots 
 filled with this holy water. The Ganges symbolizes 
 nothing; it is itself the laundry of souls, the hospital 
 for disease, and the channel to Paradise. They 
 take this sacred water back with them to their distant 
 villages, and when they commit a sin they touch 
 themselves with it, and when their children are sick
 
 THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 149 
 
 they anoint them with it, and when they would 
 placate a demon they offer him a drink of it. For 
 them there is no symboHsm but a most potent magic 
 in this water. They regard their pilgrimage not as 
 a sacrament, but as a cure. Benares is not their 
 Zion ; it is their Marienbad. 
 
 One only feeling is possible to the just man who 
 surveys this scene and can master his disgust and 
 bridle his contempt and can overcome his shame. 
 It is a feeling of pity. 
 
 Once more we realize that the Children of India 
 are still in the infancy of humanity; and, smiling 
 at those who would exalt Hinduism to the pure 
 region of Philosophy or would bring it into any 
 comparison with the sublime religion of Jesus, we 
 watch the Ganges carrying down to the sea the rose- 
 petals of the pilgrims and the ashes of the dead, 
 and feel for the millions of India, still living in the 
 darkness of superstition and the shadow of priest- 
 craft, a sorrowful compassion — the compassion of a 
 grown man for a child terrified by ghost stories and 
 afraid of the dark. 
 
 But while it is impossible to regard this bathing 
 of the multitude in Mother Ganges as an act of 
 symbolism, it is nevertheless important to perceive 
 that the people are driven to the magic of the river 
 by a real and immemorial spiritual compulsion; and 
 a consideration of the nature of this compulsion wmU 
 conduct us from the crumbling earthen cliff of 
 Benares to the arena of collision where the spirit of 
 the East is at grips with the spirit of the West.
 
 THE COLLISION 
 
 There are people in Europe who appear to think 
 that the theory of reincarnation has a Hindu 
 origin ; and there are others, less ignorant, who 
 attribute the first glimmerings of this idea to the 
 mind of Pythagoras or to the soul of Plato. The 
 truth is that far more than a mere notion of this 
 transmigration of souls, rather a fundamental and 
 unquestioning belief in the doctrine, existed among 
 savage and barbarous people at the very beginning 
 of time. Indeed, one may almost venture to assume 
 that the first and earliest belief regarding the spiri- 
 tual world held by those dim and shadowy races 
 who swim like ghosts in the mist and mirk 
 preceding the classical era, and whose vigorous 
 descendants are still to be found in various unhand- 
 selled places on the globe long after the documents 
 of the classical era have become yellowed with age, 
 was the assured conviction that the traveller returns 
 from the bourne of death and miserably haunts the 
 inhospitable earth until a new body be born for his 
 habitation. 
 
 It seems, for instance, that the ancient and wide- 
 spread practice of circumcision may have had its 
 origin in this belief, for among races at the present 
 day the severed skin is carefully hidden in some 
 secret place known only to the boy or his parents.
 
 THE COLLISION 151 
 
 so that his spirit after death may find in it the 
 nucleus as it were of another body. The shedding 
 of blood in human sacrifices may also have had its 
 spring in this same intuition, for there are barbarous 
 tribes in many quarters of the world who still pour 
 blood upon the bodies of their dead in the belief 
 that it will strengthen departed spirits to find 
 new bodies. In any case, on the authority of 
 Dr. J. G. Frazer, we know that among all the 
 Central Australian tribes ' the belief is firmly rooted 
 that the human soul undergoes an endless series 
 of reincarnations, the living men and women of 
 one generation being nothing but the spirits of 
 their ancestors come to life again, and destined 
 to be themselves reborn in the persons of their 
 descendants.' 
 
 So that, far from being the fine flower of Hindu 
 occultism, this notion of metempsychosis or trans- 
 migration of the soul, whether it be true or not — 
 is a survival from the black night of human history 
 — a dream or a nightmare born to those tragic 
 ancestors of every disease and every superstition. 
 Terror and Ignorance. Terror was the first bride- 
 groom, and Ignorance the first bride, and from this 
 Adam and Eve of humanity, with many another 
 credulous and affrighted offspring, came the infant 
 Reincarnation, no doubt muling and puking in his 
 nurse's arms. 
 
 Now, it is important to realize the remote antiquity 
 of this notion, because it is the base and foundation 
 of philosophic Hinduism. And it should also be 
 borne in mind that, although the evidence is conclu- 
 sive for the notion of reincarnation being prehistoric 
 and absolutely savage, there is no dogmatic mention 
 of it in Hindu literature till the post-Vedic period, 
 when with the Upanishads — ' commences that great
 
 152 THE COLLISION 
 
 wail of sorrow which, for countless ages, has in 
 India been rising up to heaven, and which, as time 
 goes on, will deepen into the darkness of despair.' 
 Apparently the doctrine was not developed, certainly 
 not taught, till one of the later Sastras, and it is 
 taught, as a writer has been careful to point out to 
 intelligent Indians, in a book which teaches a quite 
 mad geography, a most fantastical astronomy, and 
 makes an absolute Alice-in-Wonderland of the serene 
 and majestic unity of nature. Therefore, we find at 
 the base of Hinduism, which attempts to masquerade 
 before Europe as a profound philosophy and an 
 esoteric psychology, a belated enunciation of the 
 prehistoric belief in transmigration, and we discover 
 that this ' divine ' revelation was made by a very 
 ignorant and preposterous person. 
 
 Until we apprehend the Indian's attitude towards 
 this notion of reincarnation we cannot realize either 
 the spirit of Hinduism or the nature of the great 
 conflict now proceeding between the religion of 
 Christianity and the religion of Brahmanism. It 
 will therefore be worth while to consider exactly 
 what the doctrine of transmigration means to the 
 Hindu, and to clear our minds of any whimsicalities 
 on the subject gathered from the lucubrations of 
 European theosophists. The doctrine has been ex- 
 plained by one writer in the following illustration : — 
 
 We are bound to our existence by two chains, 
 the one a golden chain and the other an iron 
 chain. The golden chain is virtue, and the iron 
 chain is vice. We perform virtuous actions and 
 we must exist in order to receive their reward; 
 we perform vicious actions, and we must exist in 
 order to receive their punishment. The golden 
 chain is pleasanter than the iron one, but both are
 
 THE COLLISION 153 
 
 fetters, and from both should we seek to free our 
 spirit. 
 
 Another writer has expressed himself as follows : — 
 
 The being who is still subject to birth may 
 at one time sport in the beautiful garden of a 
 heavenly world, and at another be cut to a thou- 
 sand pieces in hell ; at one time he may be one 
 of the highest gods and at another a degraded 
 outcast; at one time he may feed on ambrosia and 
 at another he may have molten lead poured down 
 his throat. Alternately he may repose on a couch 
 with the gods and writhe on a bed of red-hot 
 iron ; become wild with pleasure and then mad 
 with pain ; sit on the throne of the gods and then 
 be impaled with hungry dogs around. 
 
 ' Transmigration,' as Monier Williams truly says, 
 ' is the great bugbear, the terrible nightmare and 
 daymare of Indian philosophers and metaphysicians. 
 All their efforts are directed to getting rid of this 
 oppressive scare. The question is not. What is 
 truth? Nor is it the soul's desire to be released 
 from the burden of sin. The one engrossing 
 problem is, How is a man to break this iron chain 
 of repeated existences ? How is he to shake off all 
 personality ?' 
 
 Ask a Hindu, says Dr. Robson, what is the chief 
 end of man's existence, and he will answer 
 Liberation. This is the answer which will be given 
 alike by the peasant and the philosopher of any of 
 the Schools. Ask him what he means by Liberation, 
 and he will say that it is * to cut short the eighty- 
 four ' — meaning the 84 lakhs of births through which 
 the soul may possibly pass on its journey to 
 absorption into unconscious spirit.
 
 154 THE COLLISION 
 
 There is absolutely no suggestion in the Hindu 
 doctrine of transmigration, no hint of any kind, 
 that the spirit may ascend on the stair of being by 
 virtuous actions and spiritual hungerings into the 
 presence of a loving and desirous Heaven-Father. 
 It is no stair for them, leading either upward or 
 downward, but a blank and awful cul-de-sac ending 
 in annihilation. They refrain from good actions for 
 fear of being born again to receive their rewards, 
 and they refrain from bad actions only for fear of 
 being born again to receive their punishments. 
 Good actions are only superior to bad actions 
 because they entail reward instead of punishment. 
 And bad actions are not so serious as good actions 
 because the priest has provided the means of 
 purification. 
 
 The pilgrims whom we saw bathing in Ganges 
 River were driven there, as was said at the con- 
 clusion of the last chapter, by a spiritual compulsion, 
 and although the goal in view is not the Paradise of 
 God but the unconsciousness of annihilation, the 
 root of the compulsion, I feel sure, is one and the 
 same with the clamour of the Christian soul, 
 instinctive in all the races of mankind, for conversion 
 and new birth. It is significant that the Christ's 
 idea of palingenesis, or new birth, should have its 
 origin in that universal unrest of the human spirit 
 which the Hindu philosopher seeks to medicine 
 with cessation from birth. And here we come 
 into that tumultuous arena where Christianity 
 and Brahmanism are wrestling for the soul of 
 India. 
 
 Among all the races of mankind there exists the 
 consciousness of something wrong in life. The 
 poet Horace and the poet Job are here of one mind 
 with the aborigines of Australia; the youngest
 
 THE COLLISION 155 
 
 disciple of the philosopher Nietzsche would here 
 find himself in agreement with the most ignorant 
 Kikuyu of East Africa. Whether a man looks upon 
 the universe as a roaring piece of anonymous 
 machinery or sees in it the beautiful and evolving 
 creation of a gracious Providence, he comes sooner 
 or later to the melancholy conclusion that man is 
 born to sorrow as the sparks fly upward. Not all 
 the burly confidence of Walt Whitman, not all the 
 studied gallantry of Louis Stevenson, can dry the 
 universal tears or drown the universal sighs of 
 our suffering humanity. ' For the world,' says 
 Sir Thomas Browne, ' I count it not an Inn, but an 
 Hospital; and a place not to live, but to die in.' 
 'The supreme and mysterious Power,' says 
 Winwood Reade, ' by whom the universe has 
 been created, and by whom it has been appointed 
 to run its course under fixed and invariable law ; 
 that awful One to whom it is profanity to pray, of 
 whom it is idle and irreverent to argue and debate, 
 of whom we should never presume to think save 
 with humility and awe; that Unknown God has 
 ordained that mankind should be elevated by mis- 
 fortune, and that happiness should grow out of 
 misery and pain. I give to universal history a 
 strange but true title — The Martyrdom of Man. In 
 each generation the human race has been tortured 
 that their children might profit by their woes. Our 
 own prosperity is founded on the agonies of the 
 past. Is it therefore unjust that we also should 
 suffer for the benefit of those who are to come?' 
 Always there is a hope of something better, 
 always there is a vision of some Promised Land 
 ahead, always we await the spark from heaven — 
 but the Present is full of disappointment and 
 distress.
 
 156 THE COLLISION 
 
 Yes, we await it ! — but it still delays. 
 And then we suffer ! and amongst us one, 
 Who most has suffered, takes dejectedly 
 His seat upon the intellectual throne ; 
 And all his sad experience he 
 Lays bare of wretched days ; 
 Tells us his misery's birth and growth and signs, 
 And how the dying spark of hope was fed, 
 And how the breast was soothed, and how the head, 
 And all his hourly varied anodynes. 
 
 * Misery,' cries the Hindu, ' always accompanies 
 existence. All modes of existence result from desire. 
 There is no escape from existence except by 
 destruction of desire.' 
 
 The conviction that life is sad, that whatever a 
 man may think, do, or believe, misery will 
 assuredly dog his footsteps from the cradle to the 
 death fire, weighs so oppressively on the mind of 
 the Indian convinced of reincarnation that he caD 
 see nothing but wisdom in the self-inflicted tortures 
 of the fakir and will himself go to extraordinary 
 lengths for the purpose of abbreviating the sentence 
 of his personality. A fakir will sit with clenched 
 hands till the nails grow through the palms and 
 protrude like a bird's claws from the backs; or he 
 will hold an arm above his head until it becomes a 
 withered and a rigid stump. And the ordinary 
 Hindu will perform monotonous ceremonies, offer 
 food to idols, make pilgrimage to sacred rivers and 
 sacred shrines, shave his head, cover his brow with 
 ashes, paint his chest and arms, and even eat the 
 excrement of the cow, rather than imperil his chance 
 of a short cut to everlasting oblivion. At the base 
 of all his thought concerning life and the universe, 
 is the conviction that existence is sorrowful. 
 
 Now, a man would think that to a people so 
 plunged in the abyss of misery, so sunken in the
 
 THE COLLISION 157 
 
 slough of despond, so overshadowed by the dark 
 mountain of despair, the good news of the Christ 
 would sound as a trumpet. Think of the words : — 
 
 7 am come ihat they m,ight have Life and that they 
 might have it more abundantly. 
 
 He that cometh unto Me shall never hunger, and 
 he that believeth in Me shall never thirst. 
 
 Come unto Me all ye that are weary and heavy- 
 laden. 
 
 I am the Light of the World. 
 
 These words have I spoken unto you that My Joy 
 might remain in you, and that your Joy might 
 be full. 
 
 Think of the revelation that God is a Father, that 
 this Father so cares for humanity that the very hairs 
 of our heads are numbered, that He desires no 
 ceaseless sacrifice and no monotonous ceremonial, 
 but only the love of our hearts; and that, loving 
 mankind as a father loves his children. He has 
 prepared for those who respond to this love with 
 the simple love of their human hearts, a Kingdom 
 of everlasting joy and felicity. 
 
 Does it not seem to us that such wonderful and 
 shining good-news would be hailed with a shout of 
 thanksgiving by these millions of self-torturing 
 souls afraid of death and afraid of birth ? 
 
 Why is it, then, that the Darkness of Asia with- 
 stands and repels the Light of the World ? 
 
 The answer to this question, if fully given, would 
 lead us far from India and carry us into the stifling 
 atmosphere of European theology, where Italian 
 priests, German scholars, French philosophers and 
 English moralists are still shattering the peace of 
 Galilee in their struggle for the Keys of Peter. But 
 the answer must be given if only in brief, and
 
 158 THE COLLISION 
 
 fortunately the truth of it is so reasonable and 
 apparent that it can almost be compressed into an 
 epigram. 
 
 Christianity is rejected by Brahmanism not as the 
 noblest thesis of Optimism, but as an inferior thesis 
 of Pessimism. Brahmanism considers, and justly, 
 that its own ancient philosophy of Pessimism is 
 superior to Clericalism's modern philosophy of 
 Pessimism. It has no knowledge of Christianity as 
 the gospel of Optimism. It rejects not the Heaven- 
 Father of Jesus, but the hostile God of the priest 
 Who must be propitiated and conciliated. It rejects 
 not the love of God Who asks only for the love of 
 His children, but the capricious arbitrariness of a 
 God Who has made the immense hazards of heaven 
 and hell to turn upon intellectual assent to a set of 
 theological dogmas. 
 
 The answer to our question, Why does the 
 Darkness of Asia withstand and repel the Light of 
 the World ? is another question — Does Christianity, 
 in Europe or in Asia, represent Jesus as the Light 
 of the World ? — is it a religion of joy or a religion 
 of sorrow ? 
 
 I think the reader will perceive what I mean if I 
 compare for a moment the attitude of Jesus towards 
 Prayer with the attitude of a priestly Clericalism. 
 Jesus taught that God knows our needs before we 
 express them, and that like a father He delights to 
 give us what we need for our bodies and our souls. 
 ' When ye pray,' said the Master, ' use not vain 
 repetitions, as the heathen do : for they think that 
 they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be 
 not ye therefore like unto them : for your Father 
 knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye 
 ask Him. . . . Consider the lilies of the field . . . 
 if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day
 
 THE COLLISION 159 
 
 is and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He 
 not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith ? 
 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we 
 eat ? . . . for your heavenly Father knoweth that 
 ye have need of all these things.' Now, compare 
 this wonderfully beautiful and reasonable idea of a 
 Father-Creator, mindful of His Earth Children, with 
 the priest's attitude towards a far-off and estranged 
 God constantly demanding sacrifice and entreaty. 
 We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord. 
 Son of God : we beseech Thee to hear us. 
 O Lamb of God : that takest away the sins of the 
 world 
 
 Grant us Thy peace. 
 O Lamb of God : that takest away the sins of the 
 world ; 
 
 Have mercy upon us. 
 O Christ, hear us; 
 Lord, have mercy upon us ; 
 Christ, have mercy upon us; 
 Lord, have mercy upon us. 
 This comparison, which must strike every free 
 and honest mind, is characteristic of the difference 
 between the purely spiritual religion of Jesus and 
 the entirely priestly religion of Clericalism. And 
 the priestly religion of Clericalism, ceasing to be 
 simple childlike faith in a Heaven-Father, has ceased 
 to be good-news, has ceased to be Optimism. It has 
 become not a shining path of peace leading to ever- 
 lasting happiness, but a hard and difficult bridge 
 over the imminent and yawning pit of everlasting 
 misery. It has become not a message of hope, con- 
 fidence, and good cheer, but a threat, a menace, an 
 intimidation. * This is the Catholic Faith : which 
 except a man believe faithfully, he cannot be saved.' 
 Hinduism, with no vision of * Joy in widest com-
 
 i6o THE COLLISION 
 
 monalty spread,' and with no feeling that * for life 
 to be fruitful, life must be felt as a blessing,' stands 
 at the altar of its ancient sacrifice and defends it 
 against the cavalry of a new priestcraft and the 
 infantry of a new altar, with all the proud courage 
 and defiance of the French Guards at Waterloo. 
 Pessimism confronts Pessimism. The old sacrifice 
 withstands the new sacrifice. Priestcraft defies 
 Priestcraft. Magic meets Magic. I believe that the 
 contempt of an educated Brahman for this sacri- 
 ficial Christianity is as honest and severe as the 
 contempt of a European man of science for the dis- 
 pensations and indulgences of the Latin Church. 
 He feels that an ultimate God whose right hand 
 guards the door of heaven as vigorously as the left 
 swings wide the gates of hell, is inferior to his 
 own notion of a universal substance indifferent to 
 our trivial world. He feels that a Creator who 
 continually needs to be implored for mercy and for- 
 giveness, while he is himself responsible for the 
 appetites and inclinations of his creatures, a Creator 
 who would infallibly have plunged the uncountable 
 millions of the human race into an everlasting 
 furnace of torture and remorse but for the sacrifice 
 of his Son, who being omnipotent and omniscient, 
 made the world, repented of making it, and in his 
 foreknowledge saw the eternal misery of legions of 
 immortal souls in spite of his plan for mending the 
 original scheme of things — such a Creator is felt 
 by the educated Brahman to be inferior, infinitely 
 inferior, to a Being wrapped in eternal slumber and 
 careless of mankind. 
 
 And yet the missionaries of the Roman Catholic 
 Church and our own painstaking Ritualists — many 
 of them very noble and devoted men — are making 
 converts in certain districts of India, and the sacri-
 
 THE COLLISION i6i 
 
 fice offered by the Brahman priest is exchanged for 
 the sacrifice offered by the Italian or the English 
 priest. This is not surprising when it is borne in 
 mind that the conversions occur among the lowest 
 peoples and the most depressed classes of India, 
 human beings so savage that the prehistoric notion 
 of a blood-sacrifice, even the practice of blood 
 drinking as a religious ceremony, presents no diffi- 
 culty to their primitive minds. Indeed, it is among 
 the most barbarous people, and only among the 
 most barbarous, that we should naturally look for 
 any adherents to the perishing ecclesiasticism of a 
 heathen Christianity; nay, we might expect these 
 depressed and ignorant millions to enroll themselves 
 as such Christians by millions and tens of millions, 
 since not only are many of its ceremonies analogous 
 with their own, but Brahmanism so despises them 
 that they are kept outside the pale of orthodox 
 Hinduism, and thus are priest-seekers without a 
 priest, and sheep without a shepherd, even in wolf's 
 clothing. 
 
 But among educated Brahmans this sacrificial 
 Christianity is making no progress at all, and there 
 are no signs whatever of any victory in the future. 
 However ingenious and temporizing the clerical 
 casuist, however many the new w^ords imported into 
 his theology to explain the inconsistences of his 
 ecclesiastical documents, however adroit his anno- 
 tations of Church history, the Brahman rejects his 
 clumsy Pessimism with a senatorial disdain, and 
 continues to sacrifice to the venerable gods of India, 
 fortified by this controversy in the ancient and time- 
 honoured desire of his ancestors for non-existence. 
 
 The methods of the various missionaries differ in 
 various ways, and some are happily so freed from 
 the detestable and savage notion of a magic and
 
 i62 THE COLLISION 
 
 sacrificing prieslhood as to be almost as Christian 
 as another Christian could wish. Such a man as 
 Fakir Singh, and many more humble Salvationists 
 gathered to India from all parts of Europe, while 
 they make no criticism whatever on the missionaries 
 and level no attack at all against Hinduism, force 
 upon the Native mind by the simplicity of their 
 lives and the beauty of their teaching, a notion of 
 Christianity which sets it high above the tragedy of 
 Hinduism. In pages yet to come the reader of this 
 book will see how a simple insistence upon the 
 good-news and the liberation of Christianity is 
 slowly permeating the minds of Indians even in the 
 higher castes; and I shall rely more upon these 
 narratives of conversion than on my own advocacy 
 to forward the belief of which I am most thoroughly 
 convinced that to Christianize India we must first 
 of all Christianize our Christianity. 
 
 But for the present moment it remains to point 
 out that the unrest in India is not truly political but 
 religious, and that its roots are buried in that 
 immemorial pessimism of Asia which we have seen 
 to be the base and foundation of Hinduism. 
 Spiritual unrest is the true arena of controversy, 
 and it is over the weary body of this unrest that 
 Brahmanism and Christianity are wrestling for the 
 soul of India. 
 
 Education has shaken the faith of millions of 
 people in the superstitions of Hinduism. There are 
 almost as many sceptics and agnostics in the schools 
 and colleges of India as in the universities of France 
 and Germany. But whereas the agnostic in Europe, 
 rises with relief from his moribund ecclesiasticism 
 to live what he would consider the full and exciting 
 life of an optimistic materialist, the young sceptic 
 of Bombay, Calcutta and Lahore rises only from
 
 THE COLLISION 163 
 
 his idols and Iiis ceremonies, and continues in the 
 enervating and will-paralysing climate of India a 
 pessimist convinced that misery accompanies exist- 
 ence. That is to say, he casts off the religion of 
 Hinduism but not its philosophy. Imagine the 
 unrest and dreary aimlessness of such a mind. Is 
 it not in this spirit that the decadents of modern 
 Europe — 
 
 Who hesitate and falter life away, 
 
 And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day, 
 
 go to their ruin? No faith in God, and a conviction 
 that life is a meaningless martyrdom ! — what can 
 be the worth of such a personality, and what its 
 end? Certainly for the Indian, so childlike and 
 leaning, such a condition is perilous beyond the 
 power of words to express. He loses the support of 
 authority, he strips himself of tradition, and naked 
 to the storms of adversity and the slings and arrows 
 of outrageous fortune, he stands repeating his 
 Miserere of Pessimism to the unheeding stars and 
 the silence of eternity. Better for him if he could 
 still believe that there is peace in Ganges water and 
 magic in the Brahman's charm, better if he could 
 still paint his forehead with the sign of Vishnu or 
 Siva and go to the temple with his offering of fruit 
 and flowers, better, far better, if he could still 
 believe that the universe is congregated with the 
 powers of good and evil contending for his spirit 
 — anything rather than this paralysis of will, this 
 emptiness of the heart, this death of the soul. 
 
 Unrest ! — do not I pray you think of Indian 
 unrest as a new school in politics or a new form of 
 treason, these things are but the untimely fruit of 
 the Asian Igdrasil, whose roots strike deep into the 
 past of Alan and whose branches stretch upwards
 
 i64 THE COLLISION 
 
 to the sky of his dim future. The unrest of India 
 is the shaken idol and the troubled priest, it is the 
 torn mantra and the broken thread. All through 
 the history of India, as indeed, all through the 
 history of every nation under the sun, there has 
 been this ground-swell of disquiet and unrest, this 
 hidden tide of travail and disenchantment. The 
 world has never been quiescent and humanity has 
 never stood still. Always the earth has been 
 sweeping through the fields of light, and alway? 
 humanity has been moving from the darkness of its 
 ignorance and out of the shadow of its inexperience, 
 into new knowledge and new uncertainty. The 
 long past behind us, where so many have marched 
 and so few have bivouac'd, is strewn with the dust 
 of witchcraft, the ashes of idols, and the bones of 
 slaughtered gods. It is a road still wet with the 
 blood of martyrs and the tears of disillusion. Hope 
 and a sublime confidence have carried the kings of 
 humanity ahead of the race and they have sung to 
 men of kingdoms in nature so wide and majestic 
 that it is an ecstasy to breathe that heavenly air; 
 but always there have been mourners at the broken 
 altar and always dim multitudes of the human race 
 have loitered round the shrine deserted by its god. 
 
 The present agnosticism in India has been 
 widened by education, but its origin belongs to 
 Christianity. The missionaries of the Christian 
 religion have done a work in India only comparable 
 with the achievement of the first apostles in Europe. 
 They have not converted Brahmanism into Chris- 
 tianity, but they have begun the Christianization of 
 Brahmanism. They have not changed the altar of 
 the gods into the altar of Jehovah, but they have 
 erected over that altar the decalogue of Christian 
 morals. In a word, they have lifted up in the empire
 
 THE COLLISION 165 
 
 of superstition and idolatry, the ethical ideal of 
 civilization which is the Character of Jesus. 
 
 This is not merely a conviction from my own 
 observation and studies, but the settled opinion of 
 the first minds now directing the Government of 
 India. I find that every man in a high and respon- 
 sible position, in a position which enables him to 
 survey the whole various field of Indian life as it 
 is manifesting itself over his own province, holds 
 the opinion that a revolution of a most significant 
 character is now taking place in Indian thought, 
 and that this revolution is the work of Christianity. 
 There are those who think that this revolution is 
 all for the good of India, others who regard it with 
 misgiving; but not a single man I consulted of all 
 those able to form a correct judgment, expressed 
 any doubt whatever as to the reality and enormous 
 importance of the revolution. 
 
 Christianity, had it come with the good news 
 of Optimism, had it been a united and happy 
 Christianity, not a discordant, quarrelling and 
 melancholy Christianity, might now be able to 
 declare an extraordinary triumph; for it came, 
 remember, to a people weary with pessimism, 
 restless with ignorance, and degraded by oppression. 
 It came, too, under the protection of a Government, 
 almost wearing the uniform of that Government, 
 which had opened the barred doors of Asian isolation 
 to the stirring music of European liberty and the 
 vigorous light of European knowledge. The 
 untouchable classes found themselves protected 
 from tyranny, the peasant found his surly fields 
 mysteriously w-atered and abundantly fertilized by 
 the science of the Sahib, the pilgrim found himself 
 borne swiftly and wonderfully to Benares by the 
 magic of the white man's steam-engine, the poorest
 
 i66 THE COLLISION 
 
 and the humblest slave of all those wonderinj:: 
 millions knew that if any robbed or injured him the 
 Sahib would execute justice; and, above all, the 
 young man found a new world opening to his eyes 
 in the book which the great White Mother taught 
 him how to read. 
 
 With its message of Liberation, to a people 
 seeking Liberation as the one object of existence; 
 with its gift of joy to a people all but dehumanized 
 by melancholy; with its assurance of life, and life 
 more abundantly, to a people wearing out existence 
 in a quest after death — what might not Christianity 
 have done for the soul of India wakening from its 
 sleep of the ages? But Christianity came as a 
 priest, and encountered a priest. It came as a 
 pessimism and encountered a pessimism. It stood 
 at an altar, and an altar withstood it. A single God 
 Who had to be propitiated and conciliated was 
 offered to a people whose priests not only propitiate 
 and conciliate three hundred million gods of the 
 Hindu pantheon, but are themselves those very 
 gods. The bad news of Damnation, not the good 
 news of Liberation : a threat and not a promise : a 
 doom and not a destiny — was thundered into an 
 atmosphere saturated with the ancient faith — ' The 
 whole universe is subject to the gods; the gods are 
 subject to the spells; the spells to the Brahmans; 
 therefore the Brahmans are our gods.' Baptism 
 was offered as an alternative to hell, and Jesus, the 
 crucified, presented, not as the serene and gracious 
 revealer of a Heaven-Father, but as a wounded 
 advocate before an angry judge. The choice lay 
 for India between the new hazard of eternal torment 
 and the old far-off but ultimate certainty of anni- 
 hilation. She rejected the new God, with his empty 
 heaven and his overflowing hell, but in the verv
 
 THE COLLISION 167 
 
 clash and severance of this rejection, she saw a new 
 light break upon her ancient Way, and rose up with 
 a fresh vigour to pursue it. 
 
 Christianity, helped by education and the presence 
 of a Government more democratic and more 
 socialistic than any Government in Europe,* has 
 succeeded in that very direction where Buddhism 
 failed, and where modern Hinduism appeared to be 
 least vulnerable. Christianity has given India the 
 sense of human brotherhood and the idea of social 
 ethics. The immemorial theory of Caste is definitely 
 challenged, the Brahman's contempt for the poor is 
 now regarded with new eyes, and genuine shame is 
 felt for Hinduism's neglect of ignorance and its 
 indifference to suffering. The collision of Chris- 
 tianity and Brahmanism has resulted thus far in a 
 new birth for Hinduism, but not a new birth unto 
 Christ. The grave of Hinduism has become a 
 cradle, but not the manger of Bethlehem. Hinduism 
 is now a child destroying the idols which were once 
 its toys but its forehead is not marked with the sign 
 of the Cross. Christianity has begun to moralize 
 Hinduism, a superb achievement, but it has not 
 spiritualized Hinduism with the joy and serenity of 
 Jesus. 
 
 In a private letter written to me by one of the 
 Governors in India, the prophecy is ventured that 
 the Indian Census Report for the present year will 
 witness to a more extensive work of conversion than 
 in the previous decade, and he speaks of high-caste 
 Indian Christians who are sincerely religious. ' But 
 as a rule,' he writes, ' it must be admitted that direct 
 success in the way of conversion is attained among 
 the lower orders of the population, and it is most 
 easily effected among jungle tribes and low castes.' 
 * See page 320
 
 i68 THE COLLISION 
 
 After referring to a particular Mission which ' bap- 
 tizes anybody who asks for it,' he gives me the 
 written opinion of an able man of affairs and a close 
 student of ethnological questions, on the subject of 
 Christianity's indirect effects on Hinduism : 
 
 Apart from direct conversion. Missionary 
 enterprise has had enormous indirect results. 
 There is one small sect, the Radha Swami, which 
 has actually developed a doctrine bearing the 
 closest resemblance to that of the Trinity. Some 
 elements were already existing in the Kabir Panthi 
 tenets which, according to Grierson, were taken 
 directly from Christianity some centuries ago, 
 but the modern development is much closer. 
 What strikes one most however is the tendency 
 among Hindus to study Christianity not as the 
 Eclectic Brahmos to absorb what is best in its 
 religious teaching, but to ascertain the secret of 
 its success and apply the results to strengthen 
 Hinduism. Such a tendency is most marked in 
 the case of the Arya Samaj. This sect has been 
 influenced for good in its social and ethical aspects 
 by contact with Christianity. Its rejection of 
 caste (theoretical at present) and all ritual is also 
 probably strengthened by the same contact, but in 
 purely religious matters its attitude towards 
 Christianity is direct hostility. It has borrowed 
 the Missionary system but confines its converts to 
 Hindus or persons whose ancestors were Hindus. 
 The few instances of Europeans who have joined 
 it need not be taken seriously. Thus it may be 
 said generally that one great effect of Missionary 
 work has been to excite religious zeal among the 
 mass of Indians, but to this must be added the 
 warning that the zeal so roused is directed towards
 
 THE COLLISION 169 
 
 the improvement of indigenous creeds, not towards 
 an acceptance of Christianity. 
 
 ' I may, in confirmation of what is said above,' 
 writes the Governor, ' mention that a very bitter 
 attack is made upon Christianity by Munshi Ram, 
 the head of the Kangri Gurukul, and his co-editor 
 of the Vindication of the Arya Samaj. The Arya 
 Samaj is hostile to all existing religions in the 
 East, to Muhamadanism, Orthodox Hinduism, 
 Buddhism, but it reserves its most violent attacks 
 for Christianity.' 
 
 Another Governor told me that Christianity in 
 his province had done little more than create a 
 spirit of agnosticism among the educated young 
 people in large towns, 'and this, of course,' he 
 added, * is all to the good.' It is good only so far 
 as it represents a break with superstition ; so far as 
 it tends to deepen and intensify the unrest of India's 
 heart, it is extremely perilous. 
 
 The position as it stands at present is this : From 
 the work of the Missions a knowledge of the 
 Character of Jesus has penetrated educated opinion ; 
 this knowledge, affecting national ideas on many 
 subjects, has driven the arrogant and self-satisfied 
 Brahman to become a violent missionary for 
 Brahmanism; it has created a new religion of 
 Hinduism among the more liberal and enlightened 
 minds of the community, and has given zeal and 
 enterprise to the religious conscience of the people. 
 Leave out of count for the present the wonderful 
 and moving conversions of Christianity among the 
 humble and meek, the poor and lowly, the unhappy 
 and the outcast — conversions which should inspire 
 the courage of Christendom and lead to a fresh 
 enthusiasm for the religion of Jesus ; leave these
 
 170 THE COLLISION 
 
 conversions out of count for the present, and the 
 position is what I have stated it to be — a revivified 
 Flinduism, a new activity in reHgious thought, and 
 a Brahmanism roused and oppugnant. 
 
 One of the Indians with whom I discussed this 
 matter, a scholar, the principal of an important 
 college, and one of the leaders of the Brahmo Samaj, 
 told me that Christianity was doing a great work 
 for Hinduism. ' Your science has helped us,' he 
 said, ' to understand the physical universe, your 
 literature has broadened our minds and deepened 
 our sympathies, but Christianity has perhaps done 
 more than these in recalling us to the great ethical 
 truths of our own religion. We now perceive that 
 the longing of man is for the Infinite; we go back 
 to our ancient books and we find that our forefathers 
 longed for the Infinite; and we know, as the best of 
 our people have always known, that communion 
 with the Infinite is possible to man and does not 
 demand the interference of the priest. We have a 
 great reverence for Jesus; we feel, with Emerson, 
 that He ' saw with open eye the mystery of the 
 soul ' ; we confess that He revealed the noblest 
 truths; and we acknowledge the great debt owed 
 to Him by all humanity. But we do not call Him 
 God. We could not do that. We shudder at the 
 claim Christianity makes for Him. W^e do not see 
 from the Bible that He made that claim for Himself. 
 As a Teacher, He teaches us; as a Light, He shines 
 before us; as a Voice from God, we listen to Him 
 with reverence and with gladness. But we do not 
 say He was God. We do not say He was the 
 Infinite. Certainly we reject all the ritual and 
 ceremonial of ecclesiastical Christianity, just as we 
 reject all the ritual and ceremonial of our own 
 priestly Brahmanism.'
 
 THE COLLISION 171 
 
 The following information given to me by a man 
 well acquainted with the facts, concerns a University 
 Hostel in the United Provinces : — 
 
 The Hostel is managed by a Warden, sub- 
 Warden and two Residents, all Englishmen, the 
 first two being clergymen. Students visit the staff 
 for individual Bible study two or three times a 
 week. The attendance for this purpose is purely 
 voluntary and no special privileges are allowed to 
 students who do so attend. For a time there was 
 a boycott of Bible study, but except during that 
 interval about half the students and generally 
 more than half have attended. INIost of the 
 students are Brahman, but the popularity of the 
 Hostel is shown by the fact that every year four 
 applications are rejected for each admission. 
 Now, during the ten years for which this Hostel 
 has existed 450 students have resided in it, and 
 there has been one baptism and one other case 
 of conversion though the convert finally shirked 
 an open profession. ... It is obvious that 
 parents, while they recognize the advantages of 
 their son's honest guidance, have no fears of the 
 latter losing their own religion. The caste Hindu 
 has a firm belief in the perfection of his religion 
 at some remote past and thinks that that past is 
 capable of return. 
 
 Mr. thinks, and I agree with him, that if 
 
 Christianity ever does prevail in India it will 
 come from below. If Hinduism remains as it is, 
 Christianity may spread rapidly when education 
 increases among the low castes. //, hoivever, 
 Hinduism is liberalized, as for example on the 
 
 lines of the Arya Samaj, Mr. thinks that it 
 
 is quite capable oj holdiing its own. I go a little
 
 172 THE COLLISION 
 
 further than he does, and so far as one can attempt 
 to look forward in such a matter, it seems to me 
 almost certain that in such conditions it will hold 
 its own. 
 
 This is the opinion of a man who has spent a 
 long life in India, who occupies a position of the 
 highest responsibility, and who knows the Native 
 mind. Therefore, we may conclude, that Chris- 
 tianity in purifying Hinduism is building a barrier 
 against its own victory over India; although some 
 of us may be disposed to see in a Hinduism so 
 purified that it becomes not a theology but a moral 
 principle, and not a philosophy but a religion, a 
 triumph for the Light of the World which shall 
 some day be as great as the victory of our own dis- 
 tracted Christendom. ' Not every one that saith unto 
 Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the Kingdom of 
 Heaven, but he that doeth the will of My Father.' 
 
 Now, in conclusion of this present chapter, I must 
 take leave to caution the reader against thinking 
 that this fermentation of religious ideas is general 
 to the various peoples composing the Indian Empire. 
 It is limited to an extremely Little Flock — to the 
 educated. But just as the ideas of the educated in 
 Europe percolate by some mysterious process to the 
 least intellectual circles of our complex society, so 
 that the mind of an uncultured and inarticulate 
 democracy is sometimes actually in advance of 
 orthodox opinion, and has broader vision and nobler 
 horizons than the conservatism and traditionalism 
 of classes far less ignorant, so in India one is con- 
 scious of a general disturbance of the mental 
 atmosphere and feels that the leaven of new ideas 
 is working towards a revolution which will one day 
 be total and complete. However, at the present
 
 THE COLLISION 173 
 
 time, the fermentation which is visible and tangible 
 and audible, the fermentation which is engulfing 
 gods and sapping the foundations of human faith 
 in a spiritual destiny, is restricted to the cities and 
 even there is only active among the young and the 
 middle-aged. 
 
 The human millions of India still inhabit a dark- 
 ness such as brooded over the whole earth in the 
 dim ages of mortality's first ascent into the field of 
 consciousness. They show the student of evolution 
 some of the very earliest stages in the advance of 
 humanity. They teach us to know ourselves as we 
 were before the dawn of Christianity and the rise of 
 science- They witness to the steadying and most 
 important fact, that evolution is not a process inde- 
 pendent of mankind, not a universal advance of 
 human nature, not a propulsion of spiritual forces 
 exerted on all the peoples of the earth simultaneously 
 and with equal force, but a process peculiar to 
 certain races, dependent absolutely on the exercise 
 of the rational faculty, and demanding a continual 
 effort and a perpetual rigour of the moral nature. 
 
 It is proved so far as anything which concerns 
 the earliest ages of evolution can be proved, that 
 Magic preceded Religion. There were witches before 
 there were priests, and magicians before there were 
 kings. This is the great and illuminating thesis 
 of The Golden Bough, a book which more than 
 any other work of man gives to the mind such a 
 sense of its own immemorial antiquity that it ever- 
 more thinks in aeons and anticipates no finality. 
 Dr. Frazer has demonstrated that far back in the 
 abyss of time man in his savage state first believed 
 himself capable of controlling natural objects, and 
 that it was only after a long experience of nature's 
 indifference to spell and talisman, that the more
 
 174 THE COLLISION 
 
 intelligent rose to a conception of creatures bigger 
 and stronger than himself who controlled the world 
 from an invisible altitude or an unfathomable depth. 
 Thus came Religion, superstitious Religion, and 
 Religion permeated with the spirit of Magic. And 
 to the present day, not only in India but throughout 
 the world and at the very heart of civilization, and 
 in the purest religion known to history, this earliest 
 faith of the human race persists and is ever at war 
 with the spirit of evolution. 
 
 When we survey the existing races of mankind from Green- 
 land to Tierra del Fuego, or from Scotland to Singapore, we 
 observe that they are distinguished one from the other by a 
 great variety of religions, and that these distinctions are not, 
 so to speak, merely coterminous with the broad distinctions of 
 race, but descend into the minuter sub-divisions of states and 
 commonwealths, nay, that they honeycomb the town, the 
 village and even the family, so that the surface of society all 
 over the world is cracked and seamed, sapped and mined with 
 rents and fissures and yawning crevasses opened up by the 
 disintegrating influence of religious dissension. Yet when we 
 have penetrated through these differences, which affect mainly 
 the intelligent and thoughtful part of the community, we shall 
 find underlying them all a solid stratum of intellectual agree- 
 ment among the dull, the weak, the ignorant, and the super- 
 stitious, who constitute, unfortunately, the vast majority of 
 mankind. One of the great achievements of the nineteenth 
 century was to run shafts down into this low mental stratum 
 in many parts of the world, and thus to discover its sub- 
 stantial identity everywhere. It is beneath our feet — and not 
 very far beneath them — here in Europe at the present day, and 
 it crops up on the surface in the heart of the Australian 
 wilderness and wherever the advent of higher civilization has 
 not crushed it under ground. This universal faith, this truly 
 Catholic creed, is a belief in the efficacy of magic. While 
 religious systems differ, not only in different countries, but in 
 the same country in different ages, the system of sympathetic 
 magic remains everywhere and at all times substantially alike 
 in its principles and practice. Among the ignorant and super- 
 stitious classes of modern Europe it is very much wliat it was
 
 THH COLLISION 175 
 
 thousands of jears ago in EgA'pt and India, and what it now 
 is amongst the lowest savages surviving in the remotest 
 corners of the world. {Tlie Golden Bough, 3rd Edition, 
 Chap. IV, pp. 235-236,) 
 
 The learned author in another part of his 
 book makes the following translation from 
 Dr. W. Caland's AUindisches Zahber-ritiial, 
 mentioning that some good authorities hold that the 
 very name of Brahman is derived from brahman, 
 ' A magical spell ' : — 
 
 He who has been wont to regard the ancient 
 Hindus as a highl}' civilized people, famed for 
 their philosophical systems, their dramatic poetry, 
 their epic lays, will be surprised when he makes 
 the acquaintance of their magical ritual, and will 
 perceive that hitherto he has known the old Hindu 
 people from one side only. He will find that he 
 here stumbles on the lowest strata of Vedic 
 culture, and will be astonished at the agreement 
 between the magic ritual of the old Vedas and 
 the shamanism of the so-called savage. If we 
 drop the peculiar Hindu expressions and technical 
 terms, and imagine a shaman instead of a 
 Brahman, we could almost fancy that we have 
 before us a magical book belonging to one of the 
 tribes of North American red-skins. 
 
 Dr. Frazer is careful to remind his reader that 
 the barbarous influence of faith in Magic is not 
 confined to India, to North America, to the centres 
 of Africa and Australia, but is present in the most 
 civilized countries and makes itself evident even in 
 the religions which have done most to overthrow- 
 its dominion. While we properly adjudge 
 Brahmanism to be a form of Magic, we should do 
 well, therefore, to examine our own relicjion and
 
 176 THE COLLISION 
 
 see how far this ancient superstition is recurring 
 and so dragging back a pure faith in a spiritual 
 religion to the ceremonialism and idolatry of a 
 savage past. Most important is it for us to make 
 this examination, before we send emissaries of our 
 rehgion to convert the races who are still plunged 
 in the night of superstition and whose priests know 
 more about Magic than our missionaries are able 
 to tell them, and whose ceremonies are more full- 
 blooded with thorough-going belief in ritual than 
 anything that the most ransacking media;valist can 
 discover or invent. 
 
 In the following quotation from Dr. Frazer's work 
 the reader will perceive how easily Magic may 
 become associated with Christianity and will realize 
 with what wisdom the great men and the great poets 
 of Israel, guarding the glory of their faith in a 
 Spiritual God, set themselves to crush and extirpate 
 its menace in the form of idolatry or in the shape 
 of priestcraft : — 
 
 Among the ignorant classes of modern Europe the same 
 confusion of ideas, the same mixture of religion and magic, 
 crops up in various forms. Thus we are told that in France 
 ' the majority of the peasants still beheve that the priest 
 possesses a secret and irresistible power over the elements. 
 By reciting certain prayers which he alone knows and has the 
 right to utter, yet for the utterance of which he must after- 
 wards demand absolution, he can, on an occasion of pressing 
 danger, arrest or reverse for a moment the action of the 
 eternal laws of the physical world. The winds, the storms, 
 the hail, and the rain are at his command and obey his will. 
 The fire also is subject to him, and the flames of a conflagration 
 are extinguished at his word.' For example, French peasants 
 used to be, perhaps are still, persuaded that the priest could 
 celebrate, with certain special rites, a ' Mass of the Holy 
 Spirit,' of which the efficacy was so miraculous that it never 
 met with any opposition from the divine will ; God was forced 
 to grant whatever was asked of Him in this form, however
 
 THE COLLISION 177 
 
 rash and importunate might be the petition. No idea of 
 impiety or irreverence attached to the rite in the minds of 
 those who, in some of the great extremities of life, sought by 
 this singular means to take the kingdom of heaven by storm. 
 The secular priests generally refused to say the ' Mass of the 
 Holy Spirit,' but the monks, especially the Capuchin friars, 
 had the reputation of yielding with less scruple to the en- 
 treaties of the anxious and distressed. In the constraint thus 
 supposed by the Catholic peasantry to be laid by the priest 
 upon the deity we seem to have an exact counterpart of the 
 power which, as we saw, the ancient Egyptians ascribed to 
 their magicians. Again, to take another example, in many 
 villages of Provence the priest is still reputed to possess the 
 faculty of averting storms. It is not every priest who enjoys 
 this reputation, and in some villages, when a change of pastors 
 takes place, the parishioners are eager to learn whether the 
 new incumbent has the power (ponder), as they call it. At the 
 first sign of a heavy storm they put him to the proof by in- 
 viting him to exorcise the threatening clouds; and if the result 
 answers to their hopes, the new shepherd is assured of the 
 sympathy and respect of his flock. In some parishes, where 
 the reputation of the curate in this respect stood higher than 
 that of his rector, the relations between the two have been so 
 strained in consequence that the bishop has had to translate the 
 rector to another benefice. Again, Gascon peasants believe 
 that to revenge themselves on their enemies bad men will 
 sometimes induce a priest to say a mass called the Mass of 
 Saint Secaire. Very few priests know this mass, and three- 
 fourths of those who do know it would not say it for love or 
 money. None but wicked priests dare to perform the grue- 
 some ceremony, and you may be quite sure that they will 
 have a very heavy account to render for it at the last day. No 
 curate or bishop, not even the Archbishop of Auch, can pardon 
 them ; that right belongs to the Pope of Rome alone. The 
 Mass of Saint Secaire may be said only in a ruined or deserted 
 Church, where owls mope and hoot, where bats flit in the 
 gloaming, where gypsies lodge of nights, and where toads 
 squat under the desecrated altar. Thither the bad priest comes 
 by night with his light o' love, and at the first stroke of eleven 
 he begins to mumble the mass backwards, and ends just as 
 the clocks are knelling the midnight hour. His leman acts as 
 clerk. The host he blesses is black and has three points ; he 
 consecrates no wine, but instead he drinks the water of a well
 
 178 THE COLLISION 
 
 into which the body of an unbaptized infant has been flung. 
 He makes the sign of the cross, but it is on the ground and 
 with his left foot. And manj' other things he does which no 
 good Christian could look upon without being struck blind and 
 deaf and dumb for the rest of his life. But the man for whom 
 the mass is said withers away little by little, and nobody can 
 say what is the matter with him ; even the doctors can make 
 nothing, of it. They do not know that he is slowly dying of 
 the Mass of Saint Secaire. (The Golden Bough, Third Edition, 
 Chap. IV, pp. 231-233.) 
 
 I must not further plunder Dr. Frazer's great 
 work, but must content myself by saying that in 
 that monumental thesaurus of superstition and mis- 
 belief, which is at the same time the most engaging 
 and charming story ever unfolded by a master hand, 
 the reader will find innumerable instances gathered 
 from the British Isles, and in our own day, of a 
 lingering faith in the absurdest Magic to be found 
 in heathendom, a faith if not so blasphemous as that 
 to be seen openly practised among the ignorant 
 peasants of a Roman Catholic country, yet a faith 
 entirely at variance with the religion of Jesus. 
 
 Most people have smiled over that letter of Horace 
 Walpole giving an account of his experiences in 
 Italy : ' Among other things of great sanctity there 
 is a set of gnashing of teeth, the grinders very 
 entire; a bit of the Morm that never dies, preserved 
 in spirits; a crow of St. Peter's cock, very useful 
 against Easter; the crisping and curling, frizzling 
 and frouncing of Mary Magdalen, which she cut off 
 on growing devout. The good man that showed us 
 all these commodities was got into such a train of 
 calling them the blessed this and the blessed that, 
 that at last he showed us a bit of the blessed fig-tree 
 that Christ cursed.' Such is the foolishness of a 
 Latin Christianity penetrated and suffused by the 
 ancient superstitions of Magic ; but are there not
 
 THE COLLISION 179 
 
 evidences in our own Christianity, in spite of all the 
 light and liberalism flooding England from one end 
 of the country to the other, of the same persisting 
 superstitions and the same inclination of the human 
 mind towards Magic? 
 
 I hope that no reader w'ill regard the latter pages 
 of this chapter as a digression. My object has been 
 to show that a Christianity which is priestly in 
 character and which savours in the least degree of 
 Magic, cannot look for the conversion of India, 
 where an immemorial priesthood and a thorough 
 and explicit Magic are masters of the situation.* I 
 can easier believe that Brahmanism will eventually 
 colour this priestly and sacrificial Christianity, 
 carrying our ritual and our ceremonial still further 
 from the majestic simplicity of Jesus, than that such 
 a Christianity will ever convert India from her unrest 
 and her pessimism to the faith of a little child and 
 the peace that passes all understanding. 
 
 Some of the opinions expressed in this chapter 
 will certainly have no severer critic than Fakir 
 Singh and many another able officer in the Salva- 
 tion Army ; but I believe that the majority of 
 observant men in the Indian Civil Service will find 
 in them little to object against, save only, perhaps, 
 a certain dogmatism in phraseology, for which I lay 
 the blame on my temperament and present my 
 apologies to the gentle reader. 
 
 * It is most important to bear in mind that England's greatest 
 obstacle to an understanding with Muhamadan people throughout 
 the entire East is the ceremonialism of Christianity, regarded by all 
 Mussulmans as blasphemous idolatry.
 
 WHAT IT COSTS 
 
 A YOUNG Hindu, handsomely dressed and of a noble 
 countenance, entered one day the headquarters of 
 the Salvation Army in Calcutta, and drawing a 
 Bible from his cloth inquired if he might ask a 
 question. The Salvationist to whom this inquiry 
 was put, studying his man, anticipated controversy. 
 To his surprise, however, the young Brahman turned 
 to the incident of the man who had great possessions, 
 and reading that story, slowly and thoughtfully, 
 emphasized the words Sell whatsoever thou hast, 
 repeated them, and at the end of his reading went 
 back to them again. 
 
 ' I want to know,' he said, ' what is the meaning 
 of those words — Sell whatsoever thou hast. Can 
 you tell me what they mean ?' 
 
 The Salvationist, a little puzzled and perplexed, 
 replied that the command referred to those great 
 possessions of the young man which were the chief 
 obstacle between his soul and God. ' In spite of a 
 wish to be good and kind,' said he, ' this young 
 man was so taken up with his fine goods that he 
 loved them more than God. Money was for him the 
 greatest thing in life. Until he could bring himself 
 to sell his property and give up his money to the 
 poor, he could not truthfully say that he loved God 
 with all his heart, and with all his mind, and with 
 all his soul.'
 
 WHAT IT COSTS i8i 
 
 The Brahman listened attentively, closed his Bible, 
 and said quietly : ' I fear you do not understand it. 
 I think I know what it means, but I am not certain.' 
 
 The Salvationist asked him if he desired to become 
 a Christian. 
 
 He replied : ' I am not willing to sell all that I 
 possess.' 
 
 ' You know the text,' asked the Salvationist, 
 * What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole 
 world and lose his own soul?' 
 
 The Brahman looked at him steadily, and replied 
 — ' Some day I will sell all ; but not yet.' 
 
 When he had departed the Salvationist turned to 
 Mark's gospel and read quietly to himself the story 
 of the man who refused discipleship : — 
 
 And when He was gone forth into the way, 
 there came one running, and kneeled to Him, and 
 asked Him, Good Master, what shall I do that I 
 may inherit eternal life? 
 
 And Jesus said unto him. Why callest thou Me 
 good? there is none good but One, that is, God. 
 Thou knowest the commandments. Do not commit 
 adultery. Do not kill. Do not steal, Do not bear 
 false witness. Defraud not, Honour thy father and 
 mother. 
 
 And he answered and said unto Him, Master, 
 all these have I observed from my youth. 
 
 Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said 
 unto him. One thing thou lackest : go thy way, 
 sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, 
 and thou shalt have treasure in heaven : and come, 
 take up the cross, and follow Me. 
 
 And he was sad at that saying, and went away 
 grieved : for he had great possessions. 
 
 It seemed to him that he had given a right answer.
 
 1 82 WHAT IT COSTS 
 
 he could not see what other answer was possible; 
 and yet this young Brahman had said, ' I fear you 
 do not understand it.' The story was simple enough. 
 A man morally good but possessed by his posses- 
 sions, had come to Jesus with the unrest of a soul 
 starving for the spiritual life; and he had been told 
 by Jesus that if he wanted to perfect his morality he 
 must sell his possessions, get rid of his money, and 
 give up his life to the service of his fellow-men. 
 That was the story. Jesus Himself had supplied 
 the commentary. ' It is easier for a camel to go 
 through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to 
 enter into the Kingdom of God.' 
 
 But he remained troubled and uneasy, haunted by 
 the reproachful thought that some other answer 
 might have given peace to the heart of the inquirer 
 and perhaps helped him to make the great sur- 
 render. 
 
 Some little time after this event, the young 
 Brahman appeared at one of the meetings of the 
 Salvationists in Calcutta. There was a great crowd 
 in the hall, but the young and distinguished-looking 
 Brahman was recognized by the Salvationist and 
 they exchanged greetings. At the conclusion of the 
 address, an appeal was made to those who truly 
 desired the liberation of Christ, to come out 
 in the sight of all men and kneel at the bench of 
 penitence. 
 
 To the relief and delight of the Salvationist, 
 among the very first to rise was the young Brahman ; 
 but scarcely had he moved a few steps from his place 
 in the crowded audience, when a storm seemed to 
 break out in the meeting. A group of men, raising 
 a shout and uttering threats and maledictions, 
 started up from the back, thrust their way through 
 the frightened people, laid violent hands upon the
 
 WHAT IT COSTS 183 
 
 young Brahman, and bore him out of the hall with 
 such wrath and indignation on their faces as struck 
 terror into the hearts of the low-caste people. 
 
 For a few weeks nothing more was heard of this 
 young man. Then one day he appeared at the head- 
 quarters of the Salvationists, and said, ' I want you 
 to take me in.' 
 
 He turned to the man whose advice he had first 
 sought, and said, ' I have begun to sell my all.' 
 
 They learned his story up to that moment. It 
 appeared that he had come across a Bible at his 
 college, and out of curiosity had begun to read it. 
 The Character of Jesus, the beauty of His teaching, 
 and the nobility of His bearing in the hour of 
 persecution and death, had made a profound impres- 
 sion upon him. Of such a Master he desired to be 
 a disciple. But the conditions of discipleship were 
 hard. He was haunted by the command, Sell what- 
 soever thou hast. He considered what it was he 
 should have to sell, and the sacrifice appeared greater 
 than he could bear. In his trouble and distress, 
 thinking perhaps that his knowledge of English or 
 his ignorance of Christianity had led him astray he 
 came to the Salvationists and asked the meaning 
 of those words. Sell whatsoever thou hast. The 
 answer had not satisfied him. He felt convinced 
 that his own instinctive interpretation was the true 
 one. He went home to consider it. His interest in 
 Christianity was now so great that he discussed it 
 with his tutor, his fellow-students, and even in his 
 home. He belonged to the highest caste of Brah- 
 mans, and his father, a rich and powerful man, 
 officiated in the temple. In such a household to 
 discuss Christianity was to discuss Socialism at a 
 King's table. Ridicule was poured upon the pre- 
 tensions of this religion. No one seemed to feel as
 
 i84 WHAT IT COSTS 
 
 he felt the wonder and magic of Jesus, no one 
 even seemed to realize the beauty of that perfect 
 Character. The discussions that he introduced met 
 with contemptuous ridicule, and were extinguished 
 in disdainful laughter. Even his tutor, for whom 
 he entertained a great affection, and who was a man 
 of learning, dismissed the religion of Christianity as 
 a matter unworthy of serious attention. 
 
 Nevertheless, so potent was the spell of Jesus on 
 his heart and mind, that he determined at last to 
 surrender his soul to Christianity. For this purpose 
 he had attended the meeting of the Salvationists. 
 But the suspicions of his people had been aroused. 
 Watched and spied upon, he had been followed to 
 the meeting, and at the moment of his surrender he 
 had been dragged aw-ay and carried to his home. 
 There the entreaties of his father and the tears of his 
 mother, though they shook his whole nature, had 
 failed to alter his resolution, and for more than a 
 week he had been chained hand and foot, and fed 
 upon rice and water. At the first opportunity of 
 escape, he had come to the Salvationists and now 
 he asked them to take him in. 
 
 ' Why do you come to us?' he was asked. 
 
 ' Because,' he answered, ' you appear to me truly 
 to be following Christ.' 
 
 For a fortnight he lived openly at the head- 
 quarters, refusing their offer to send him to a place 
 of safety. Then, suddenly and without warning of 
 any kind, he disappeared. Two months passed 
 without news of him. He had mysteriously vanished 
 out of life. Not a sign came to them that he was 
 alive. Whether he had been abducted, or of his 
 own will had gone back to Hinduism, no one could 
 say. He had appeared anxious and uncertain during 
 that fortnight's residence, constantly reading his
 
 WHAT jr COSTS 185 
 
 Bible, constantly seeking private communion with 
 God in prayer. They realized that the change was 
 a great one — from the luxury and comfort of his 
 father's house to the rough lodging and short 
 commons of their own primitive establishment; with 
 the large humanity which characterizes so many of 
 these good and simple men, they acknowledged that 
 the actual life of poverty and self-sacrifice is 
 different from the ideal and is not without its dis- 
 appointment and its disillusion. Perhaps the reality 
 had been too much for him. Perhaps he had 
 repented of his impulsive conversion. 
 
 But one day he came back to them. He told his 
 first friend among these Salvationists that he had 
 been carried away by his parents to Benares, that 
 their entreaties had become threats and menaces, 
 that his father had paid a large sum of money to 
 get him reinstated in caste, that he had been forced 
 to bathe in the Ganges, and that he had been 
 compelled to bow to idols. 
 
 ' I submitted,' he said, ' because it entailed no 
 violence on my part; but when I stood in the 
 Ganges, I prayed — Lord Jesus, wash me in Thy 
 precious blood and I shall be whiter than snow ; 
 and when I was kneeling in the temples, I prostrated 
 my soul before the Eternal Father, and said — Thou 
 art God alone.' 
 
 He told of how his mother had implored him on 
 her knees not to disgrace them by becoming a 
 Christian, of how the horror of becoming a caste- 
 less man had been forced upon him by his father, 
 and of how his loved tutor and his brothers had 
 joined with their father and mother to make him 
 feel the shame and scandal of deserting Brahmanism 
 for the despised life of a Christian outcast. 
 
 ' Well,' said the Salvationist, * you have now
 
 i86 WHAT IT COSTS 
 
 proved for yourself the meaning of those words, 
 Sell whatsoever thou hast.' 
 
 ' Not yet,' he answered; ' but, I have nearly sold all.' 
 
 Some days later he came to this Salvationist and 
 said to him — ' It is over now. I have sold all.' He 
 appeared to be heavy with desolation and bowed 
 with grief, but there was nevertheless in his eyes 
 the look of a man who has come through darkness 
 and is glad of a light that is yet too strong for him. 
 
 He was asked what final sacrifice had been made. 
 
 ' Everything is given up now,' he answered. * I 
 have not only ceased to be a Brahman; I have 
 ceased to be a human being. I am not only an 
 outcast, I am dead. I have neither father nor 
 mother, brothers nor sisters. They made an effigy 
 of me, they set up a pyre, and when the effigy was 
 burned, they buried the ashes. It was not the effigy 
 they buried; it was me. Not one of my family now 
 regards me as a living man. If I meet my mother 
 in the street, she will pass me without a word. If 
 my father were to see me dying of hunger, he would 
 not give me a morsel of food. It would not be me 
 my mother passed in the street, it would not be me 
 to whom my father refused food ; it would be a 
 stranger and an outcast. I, their child, am dead; 
 I, their son, am buried. It is the end.' 
 
 In this way he sold his sonship, his property, his 
 rank, his comfort, and became an outcast on the 
 face of the earth. Now, to certain Indians this 
 would be no hardship, and even to certain Brahmans 
 it would not be a burden so very grievous to be 
 borne; but to a Bengali Brahman, the softest and 
 least virile of all Hindus, and to a Bengali Brahman 
 brought up in an atmosphere of the greatest comfort 
 and luxury, such a sacrifice demanded a superb 
 heroism.
 
 WHAT IT COSTS 187 
 
 For, this rich youth, stripped of liis social 
 trappings and exposed to the poverty of the open 
 world, went out with a single European Salvationist 
 as an Apostle to as low and degraded a people as 
 one could find in almost any part of the world. He 
 went to the Santals, aborigines of Bengal, a people 
 who eat rats and snakes, and who are looked upon 
 even by low-caste Hindus as the untouchable off- 
 scourings of the human race. It was his own wish 
 that he should go to these particular people, and 
 he went with only staff, blanket and water-pot. He 
 slept in the open ; he accepted the rice which these 
 untouchables cooked for him ; and, seated under a 
 village tree, surrounded on all sides by these 
 degraded savages, with a concertina in his hands, 
 he would sing songs about a God of Love and a 
 happy heaven after death, or tell them in their own 
 language and with all the force of their own idiom 
 the story of Jesus. 
 
 Up till that time the Salvationists had experienced 
 the greatest difficulty in approaching the suspicious 
 and ignorant Santals. But now, perfectly sure that 
 these strange Europeans in native dress w'ere not 
 ' coolie-catching for Assam,' the villagers extended 
 to them the pleasantest of welcomes and gave them 
 a serious hearing. The result was a work of con- 
 siderable usefulness among these poor savages; 
 many became faithful and devout Christians, and a 
 new idea of morality was born into their barbarous 
 philosophy. 
 
 For some years the young Brahman gave himself 
 body and soul to this hard, difficult, and heart- 
 breaking life. He was transformed from a soft and 
 troubled youth into a vigorous and rejoicing man. 
 He loved his w^ork. He loved the people. Never 
 once did he complain of his rough life, never once
 
 188 WHAT IT COSTS 
 
 did he speak harshly of the Santals' stupidity and 
 their deadness to spiritual ideas. So long as men 
 would listen and he could tell the story of Jesus, he 
 was happy; and he loved above all things to hear 
 them pray to Our Father in their own language, with 
 their hands crossed and their faces raised like little 
 children to the sky. 
 
 It was his devotion to this work which brought 
 about his death. In an epidemic of small-pox he 
 was working with increased devotion and renewed 
 energy, when he contracted the disease. He died 
 without a shadow of doubt, without a shadow of 
 regret. Life had been as he could have wished 
 it to be. 
 
 * You are not sorry,' he was asked, ' that you sold 
 all that you had?' 
 
 'No,' he answered, 'no, I am not sorry: I am 
 glad. But, I have missed my mother and I should 
 have liked to have my tutor for my friend.' 
 
 From this narrative the reader will understand that 
 it is no easy thing for Christianity to effect conver- 
 sions among the high-caste Hindus. When the 
 taunt is levelled, or the confession fairly made, that 
 Christianity can only boast of conversions among 
 the humble and the outcast, it should always be 
 borne in mind that to effect conversions in other 
 castes is a matter of the very greatest difficulty ; nay, 
 a matter almost impossible among the highest castes 
 of all. For, to convert a Brahman is to take 
 Portsmouth and capture Berlin, so defended is he 
 by the armament of custom and the fortification 
 of prejudice. Indeed, when a European really 
 grasps the network of cunning device which the 
 piercing ingenuity and intolerant arrogance of 
 Brahmanism have combined to build for its defence 
 against Christianity, he will marvel that any single
 
 WHAT IT COSTS 189 
 
 man of the higher castes has ever escaped into 
 freedom. 
 
 At the beginning of all these devices there is the 
 question of marriage. The Brahman priest keeps 
 the tightest hand on Hymen's torch, and makes it 
 the truncheon of obedience. He knows that the first 
 business of every Hindu, after he has begot a son 
 to sacrifice at his tomb, is to find husbands for his 
 inconvenient and expensive daughters. Let a man 
 defy his priest ever so slightly, and he will find no 
 one of his own caste willing to provide a husband 
 for his daughter. It is forbidden by the priest that 
 men should cross the sea; hundreds of Hindus 
 violate this command every year; and perhaps for 
 some time afterwards they live in contemptuous 
 indifference to the priest's displeasure. But let a 
 daughter be born to them, or let them desire to find 
 a wife for one of their sons among high-caste 
 families, and then, down on their marrow-bones they 
 must go to Jack Priest. Nor is it enough that they 
 kneel. Asiatic ideas of humiliation are not so mild 
 as European. The humble and supplicating cringer 
 must consume in the presence of this master — what 
 think you? — the five products of the cow! Yes; 
 this is unvarnished, absolute truth. Of course, the 
 priest is accommodating. The very rich may get off 
 with a swinging fine and two or three pilgrimages : 
 a man of power and influence may only have to 
 touch with a finger, and then carry the finger to 
 his tongue, the five discordant products of the sacred 
 cow ; but a man out of whom the priest can get 
 nothing and from whom he looks for no protection 
 or assistance, and perhaps whom he desires vindic- 
 tively to humiliate and abase, must actually take into 
 his mouth and swallow the milk, the saliva, the tears, 
 the urine, and the excrement of the cow\
 
 I90 WHAT IT COSTS 
 
 To break caste in India is to break a priest's rule, 
 and the consequences of such a violation are but 
 faintly imaged to our mind in the consequences 
 which would befall a man in England who cheated 
 ai cards, forged cheques, purloined jewellery, and 
 blackmailed his friends. We can better imagine the 
 condition of things in India by likening it to a 
 supposititious state of affairs here, in which a man 
 who ate jelly with a spoon would next day find 
 himself the shivering victim of an archidiaconal 
 visitation, or a man who wore a white tie with a 
 dinner jacket find himself cast upon the Thames 
 Embankment by the Archbishop of Canterbury and 
 chivvied out of Rowton House and Salvation Army 
 Shelter by the ceaseless activity of the Bishop of 
 London. For the offences which the priest punishes 
 with outlawry or loathsome ceremonies of abomin- 
 able degradation, are not crimes against society and 
 not defiance of Almighty God, but are things right 
 and proper to every free-born man, and sinful only 
 in this, that they are forbidden by the etiquette of 
 Brahmanism. 
 
 But that etiquette is designed with a cunning and 
 far-reaching purpose. It is to keep Hinduism unin- 
 fluenced by any religion, philosophy, or science in 
 the world; it is to keep the Hindu faithful to Brah- 
 manism ; and it is to preserve the power of the 
 Brahman. 
 
 You may be the greatest aristocrat in Europe, or 
 the most holy saint in the world, but the faithful 
 Hindu, however disgusting his habits and unprin- 
 cipled his conduct, will go wash himself, spiritually 
 disinfect himself, after shaking your hand. For 
 there is flattery in the iron law of Brahmanical isola- 
 tion. The Hindu is encouraged to regard himself 
 as the first flower of the human race; he is taught
 
 WHAT IT COSTS 191 
 
 from his youth to look upon the white man with 
 contempt and aversion ; he is bred in the highest 
 conceit ever known in history; and he is made to feel 
 that the prison which shuts him in and makes him 
 a miserable slave is in truth a proud palace of 
 superiority which protects him from the contagion 
 of inferior people. 
 
 The fundamental and axiomatic doctrine of rein- 
 carnation, with all its subsidiary ceremonials of 
 death, is a most powerful guard against invasion, 
 a most powerful preventive against desertion. A 
 superstitious man taught to think that he may be 
 born again, endlessly, endlessly, and in every con- 
 dition of misery and degradation, and who has 
 inherited with the blood of his parents the fixed 
 belief that the Brahmans can control the powers of 
 the universe, will think twice, nay, will think a 
 thousand times, before he takes such a step as will 
 incur even the annoyance of those powerful twice- 
 born men, much more such a step as will flout them 
 and bring all the artillery of their magic against 
 his soul. 
 
 In no country in the world is custom — Dastiir — 
 so omnipotent as it is in India. My servant going 
 with me on my shopping excursions always got a 
 commission at every native shop we entered. He 
 had not taken me there, and he neither selected the 
 articles I purchased nor helped to make my wants 
 known to the shopkeeper ; he was there merely to 
 carry my parcels and to direct my cab-driver; but 
 he always got bakshish, or as such commissions are 
 significantly called, dasturi. ' It is the custom,' he 
 told me. Never mind how unreasonable or prepos- 
 terous a thing may be, so long as it is sanctioned 
 by Dastur, it is held to be the most natural thing 
 in the world.
 
 192 WHAT IT COSTS 
 
 Therefore, with a Brahmanical priesthood govern- 
 ing every department of social life, arbiter of 
 marriage and lord of death, and with a people abso- 
 lutely subservient to the time-honoured laws of 
 Custom, how can we wonder that the classes most 
 amenable to priestly discipline because they are the 
 principal sharers in the advantages of that tyranny 
 — a solid phalanx of superstition and conservatism 
 — how can we wonder that they should withstand 
 the warring and contending and competing mis- 
 sionaries of a dismembered Christendom ? Is it not 
 a matter for amazement that any conversions at all 
 should occur among these guarded, governed, and 
 disdainful millions? 
 
 That there is a real rivalry between the various 
 missionaries of Christianity the following brief, 
 almost amusing, almost gruesome, and withal 
 sorrowful story, told to me by a doctor in one of 
 the Salvation Army hospitals, pretty faithfully 
 attests. The doctor in question, a young man 
 bristling with energy, quick in action, resolute in 
 purpose, and most engaging with his mixture of 
 profound religiousness and joyful humour — was 
 called to the deathbed of a young Native converted 
 to Christianity by the Salvation Army. This poor 
 fellow's father had been converted by the Roman 
 Catholic Mission and there was a certain amount of 
 strife between them. 
 
 ' When I arrived,' said the doctor, ' I found one 
 of our Salvationists, an excellent good man, 
 soothing the boy's last minutes with kind words 
 and gentle assurances of comfort. He had been 
 sent for by the mother. Some time after my 
 arrival, into the house came a Roman Catholic 
 priest, post haste. We were amazed. He took no 
 notice of us, said no word to the bov, now almost
 
 WHAT IT COSTS 193 
 
 unconscious, but began with a deal of pulling and 
 panting to get into his sacred robes. While he did 
 this, the Salvationist knelt down and prayed. The 
 priest told him to stop. He went on. The priest 
 came to the bedside and began the service of 
 Extreme Unction. This riled me. Then he ceased 
 and said to the Salvationist, " Stop that row !" But 
 our fellow went on — fine ! fine ! Oh, he was a 
 master at praying. But think ! There was I, 
 holding the boy's pulse, of course he was quite 
 unconscious then, with a Salvationist praying hard 
 at my side of the bed, and a Roman Catholic priest 
 gabbling away as fast as he could go, on the other; 
 and over us all — Death ! Death ! — the great Mystery ! 
 I felt just like a referee, with my watch in my hand, 
 waiting for the end of a race ! I was mad as fire 
 with the priest, and I was half afraid the Salvationist 
 might stop praying and leave the Catholic last on 
 the field — to boast afterwards that the boy had died 
 a faithful Roman. So I kept on whispering to our 
 officer to go on, to keep it up, all the time feeling 
 the pulse and keeping an eye on the perspiring 
 priest. Prayer was of no avail, but I wanted our 
 man to be there, and I bade him go on. And all 
 the time, the priest was rattling away and the poor 
 pulse was flickering into everlasting quiet. Just 
 before the priest had come to the point of his cere- 
 mony, the pulse stopped, and I said, "It's over — 
 God bless him." I tell you, if the priest had started 
 on his business of touching the body and all the rest 
 of it, then and there I should have knocked him 
 down. IMy blood was up. The whole thing fairly 
 sickened me. Fancy, the interference, the insolence, 
 the scandalous humbug of it ! But can't you see 
 the scene ? — the robed priest on one side, the praying 
 Salvationist on the other, and I, holding the pulse 
 
 o
 
 194 WHAT IT COSTS 
 
 and the watch, and telling our man to keep on 
 praying. It wasn't a race for a man's soul. But 
 it was a race for decency and justice. I think if the 
 dying boy had been conscious enough to know what 
 was going on, I should have taken that priest by 
 
 the scruff of his neck, and . But it was a scene, 
 
 I tell you. Lord, Lord, what a world it is.' 
 
 Not once or twice, and not here and there, but 
 many times and all over India, I heard from men 
 outside the arena of religious activity, that the 
 conflict between various Missions is fatal to the 
 progress of a true and fundamental Christianity. 
 One Mission comes into a district, sets up its 
 buildings, and employs a certain number of 
 Indians : then comes another Mission, goes one 
 better in the way of buildings, and offers a more 
 liberal wage — actually taking away the servants of 
 its rivals. I know myself painful instances of such 
 a state of things. And there is one small town, 
 almost a village, where you may see no less than 
 three large Mission hospitals ! Is it a matter of 
 wonder that the Indians laugh among themselves, 
 compare wages, go where they get most, and offer 
 themselves to any form of religious ceremonial, 
 baptism or anything else, so long as they get good 
 wages and medicine for nothing? 
 
 One most deplorable aspect of this unseemly 
 rivalry is the fact that a united Christendom, even 
 with a gospel of pessimism, might have converted 
 long ago the whole of the depressed classes. A 
 Governor of a great province said to me, ' I am 
 absolutely certain that if the Missions had been 
 united, and all the money poured into India had 
 been from the first spent on a concentrated errand 
 to the outcast peoples, Christianity would now be 
 able to claim 70,000,000 Native Christians. These
 
 WHAT IT COSTS 195 
 
 people, you see, have everything to gain and 
 nothing to lose, by becoming Christians. They are 
 outcasts, and Christianity would make them 
 members of the Sahib's caste. They are the slaves 
 of the castes above them ; and Christianity would 
 set them free. I cannot imagine anything easier 
 for missionary enterprise than the conversion of 
 India's depressed classes. And, mark you, a 
 democracy of 70,000,000 Christians would have a 
 most astonishing effect upon the higher castes. But 
 — dissension, rivalr}^, quarrels ! Everywhere a 
 waste of money and a waste of effort ! It is pitiful. 
 However, they are doing good work here and there, 
 and I suppose a united Christianity in Europe, 
 America, or Asia, is as wild a dream as Plato's 
 Republic and More's Utopia.' 
 
 But in spite of the Brahman's jealous and angry 
 hatred of Christianity, in spite of his new-born zeal 
 for Hinduism, and in spite of the lamentable 
 divisions among the Christians, conversions of a 
 marvellous character do occur, and are occurring 
 every day, where Christianity is faithfully and 
 earnestly presented as a liberation from misery and 
 a way of peace. The story that follows, which 
 seems to me perhaps as remarkable a narrative as 
 one can find in all our modern literature of religious 
 experience, testifies to the unique power of Chris- 
 tianity, to the miraculous nature of conversion, and 
 to the supreme need of Christianity's cleansing 
 morality in a country more enfeebled by appalling 
 vices than by the tyranny of its priests.
 
 DE PROFUNDIS 
 
 Although the scene of this story is laid in Ceylon, 
 the reader may rest assured that in every way it is 
 symptomatic of existence in India, and also charac- 
 teristic of religious experience in India wherever the 
 appeal of Christianity for a cleansed heart is brought 
 faithfully home. 
 
 The man of whom I write is now forty-nine years 
 of age. He is remarkable in appearance for a perfect 
 tranquillity of expression and a sweet gravity of 
 demeanour such as one associates with the favourite 
 disciple. His dark hair is combed back from the 
 forehead and curls outward from the nape of the 
 neck ; his large grave dark-coloured eyes are 
 shadowed by the eave of calm and noble brows; the 
 nose is aquiline and finely chiselled at the nostrils; 
 the gentle lips are all but hidden by moustache and 
 beard of iron grey ; he is dark-skinned with the 
 cloudy opaqueness of a true Tamil. 
 
 One is struck by the depth of gravity in the 
 beautiful calm eyes, by the sad sweetness of the 
 gentle mouth, and by the tone of the quiet voice, 
 which is almost husky in its lowness and its modesty. 
 He has all the repose and serenity of the Buddha 
 with the meditation and spiritual humanity of 
 St. John. In his presence one is conscious of a 
 rebuke, a sweet and smiling rebuke, to all hurry,
 
 DE PROFUNDIS 197 
 
 noise, struggle, and glibness. The atmosphere of 
 the man is the solemn calm of a forest and the stead- 
 fast quiet of a lake. He seems to breathe the very 
 peace of God. 
 
 It was the notable and arresting appearance of 
 this man which first attracted me, and led me to seek 
 an introduction to him from Fakir Singh. I had 
 heard of his extraordinary success as a missionary, 
 his almost unique power among Indians; but it was 
 the man's face that interested my attention. I antici- 
 pated a life-story of spiritual grace and religious 
 refinement ; I never dreamed that such a man could 
 have lived in depravity, could have descended to 
 the depths of the abyss. I can now more easily 
 think of St. John as a Satyr or the Baptist as a 
 Sybarite, than visualize this gentle and composed 
 saint as the man he was four-and-twenty years 
 ago. 
 
 He was born in Colombo of well-to-do Tamil 
 parents who were converted to Christianity before 
 his birth by the Church Missionary Society. He 
 was taught as a child the new religion of his father 
 and mother, and grew into boyhood with much the 
 same knowledge of Christianity as one finds in the 
 ordinary English child of church-going or chapel- 
 going parents. 
 
 He was sent to a good school in Colombo, and 
 soon showed himself a boy of unusual ability. But 
 he had not been long at this school before he became 
 the victim of vice. He knew it to be wrong, he felt 
 himself shameful, he even convinced himself that 
 the punishment of such an abomination was the 
 unquenchable fire of an everlasting hell, but he could 
 not break free from it. He used to pray so hard for 
 deliverance from this sin when he was at church that 
 his father and mother thought him more than usually
 
 198 DE PROFUNDIS 
 
 devout, and praised him for his devotion. Stun^ 
 by the mockery of this praise, and conscious of 
 hypocrisy, he fought with all his strength to conquer 
 the evil propensity that was slaying his soul. For a 
 few weeks he could stand against the terrible power 
 tyrannizing his will, and then, like a man under 
 hypnotic influence or a slave hasting to do his 
 master's bidding, he fell again, and was plunged 
 into a darkness that eclipsed his soul. 
 
 From school he went to a college at Kandy. He 
 there lodged at a boarding-house, and his handsome 
 appearance and charming manners made him a 
 favourite with women staying in the same house. 
 It was his first experience of the world, his first 
 acquaintance with women's society. Unfortunately 
 for his peace of mind, these women were of a second- 
 rate and unhealthy character. The conversation of 
 the shabby boarding-house degraded him and made 
 him wretched. 
 
 He would pass whole nights upon his knees, 
 praying to God, agonizing with his soul, clamouring 
 for deliverance. ' I used to feel,' he told me, in his 
 low and muffled voice, * as if I were wrestling with 
 another being. It was as if something not myself 
 had my soul in its grip.' 
 
 When he returned to his home he became on 
 friendly terms with the English pastor of his 
 parents' church, and even acted as an assistant in 
 the church services. At last, so wretched was he, 
 and so attracted by the goodness of his new friend, 
 that he determined to speak to him. 
 
 ' I did not tell him,' he said, ' what I have told 
 you, but I confessed to him that I was troubled with 
 terrible thoughts. He was a man of extraordinary 
 holiness. He heard me patiently and sympathetic- 
 ally, even affectionately. "Pray," he said, "pray,
 
 DE PROFUNDIS 199 
 
 and read the Bible. You must pray; there is 
 nothing else." ' 
 
 But this poor youth had prayed as perhaps the 
 other had never prayed in his whole life. He had 
 shut himself in his room and through all the 
 dragging hours of the long night had cried to God 
 out of the agony and tragedy of his soul's need for 
 mercy and for help. He had prayed with all the 
 passion of his temperament and with all the force 
 of his moral being. He had cried to God, cried 
 with his soul, night after night, night after night. 
 He had lifted to heaven a face wet with tears and 
 streaked with the striving of his spirit. Pray ! 
 Had he not prayed again and again? Had he not 
 humbled and abased himself, gone down into the 
 dust and ashes of humiliation, and supplicated, 
 implored, entreated, and sobbed his soul out? 
 Many times. 
 
 There w-as no one to help him. He became 
 dejected, even morose. His parents, noticing the 
 change in him, suggested that he should go and 
 help his brother in a business up the country. He 
 welcomed the prospect of change, and left Colombo 
 as soon as arrangements were completed. 
 
 The business to which he went — this man with 
 the face of a saint — was a glorified grog-shop. It 
 is true that the brother described himself as a wine 
 merchant and could boast of a ' wholesale depart- 
 ment ' in his trade, but the place was a drinking- 
 saloon and the company that frequented it of a 
 wild and dissolute character. The house was 
 situated on a large tea-estate, and the landlord was 
 the owner of one plantation, and the manager of 
 many others — a roaring Irishman, always drunk 
 and abandoned to the mad excesses and helter- 
 skelter escapades which made Jack Mytton a hero
 
 200 DE PROFUNDIS 
 
 of his time. This man and many another planter 
 visited the grog-shop every day and few ever 
 quitted it till they were badly drunk. The first 
 horror of the youth from Colombo soon wore oflf 
 in the gaiety and hilarity of his new atmosphere; 
 he did not give himself to drink and he did not 
 take to the prevalent gambling; but he let himself 
 go with the tide of existence in this wild place, 
 continued his evil courses, and gave up the struggle 
 for freedom and purity. 
 
 At the death of his brother, he took possession of 
 the business and set himself to make money. He 
 was sober, industrious, and dishonest. He learned 
 to adulterate the liquor he sold, carefully removing 
 the capsules of bottles for this purpose, and so care- 
 fully replacing them that it was impossible to detect 
 the transaction. He wasted no money on dissolute 
 excesses or reasonable amusements, kept himself 
 clear of the women in the district, and never 
 imperilled his savings in speculation or gambling. 
 But he had one typical and foolish extravagance. 
 He loved jewels. It was with him something of a 
 passion to cover himself with chains, and gold, 
 and glittering stones. To this end he adulterated 
 drink, hoarded money, and kept himself aloof from 
 the dissolute racket of the place. All the time, he 
 felt that the liquor trade was a bad one, and some- 
 times he would make an effort to conquer his fatal 
 sin ; but, on the whole, he was a bad man who takes 
 life as he finds it and in a hobby which gratifies his 
 sensuous nature loses the sense of responsibility and 
 forgets his soul. So long as he could buy jewellery 
 he was content to go on with his life. 
 
 He was reckoned by the planters a good man but 
 something too effeminate and rather a humbug. If 
 he ventured to reprove them for drinking too much
 
 DE PROFUNDIS 201 
 
 they used to laugh contemptuously and say to him, 
 'Oh, you can't preach; you're in the business!' 
 They liked to turn his saloon into a bear-garden. 
 They would call Tamils and Singhalese into the 
 saloon and tell them to do some absurd or shameful 
 thing; a refusal meant a blow. The roaring Irish- 
 man would very often order the grog-shop keeper 
 to use foul and blasphemous language ; a refusal 
 meant a row. On one occasion landlord and tenant 
 had a fight, a long and horrible fight; but a week 
 after that event the landlord came with a company 
 of his friends, apologized to the publican and pre- 
 sented him with a gold pencil-case. The kicked and 
 beaten Tamils would always be rewarded after mal- 
 treatment by their bullies, who were only cowardly 
 and brutal in drink. They were generous men 
 enough on all occasions, and in their sober moments, 
 straightforward, honest, and hard-working — men who 
 would have scorned to ill-use a Native. But drink 
 turned them into madmen, and in drink they very 
 often ' made hay ' of the grog-shop. 
 
 The wild landlord would sometimes send for the 
 publican and receive him in his bedroom. * He 
 used to lie in his bed,' I was told, 'smoking and 
 drinking, while small pigs, for which he had sent, 
 were being chased, squeaking and squealing round 
 the room by his dogs; he would sit up against the 
 pillows, watching this hunt — shouting with laughter, 
 encouraging the dogs, and making the whole house 
 ring with his yells. And in the midst of all this he 
 would tell me how sorry he was for such-and-such 
 an escapade in my saloon, assure me that he meant 
 to stop all such nonsense in future, swear that drink 
 was a curse, and end up by imploring me to finish 
 a bottle of whisky with him.' 
 
 Many years afterwards, when the saloon-keeper
 
 202 DE PROFUNDIS 
 
 was a captain in the Salvation Army, these two men 
 encountered in the rest-house of a village where the 
 Army was conducting a mission. The Salvationist 
 endeavoured to turn the heart of the Irishman but 
 all in vain; then he asked him for a subscription. 
 ' Willingly,' said the planter, and dipping pen in 
 ink he wrote the following chit : ' Please give 
 
 Captain the sum of one rupee to send all the 
 
 people in this village to hell.' 
 
 But this was after the miracle had happened. 
 
 The man of my story married while he was yet 
 a publican. A child was born to him and he 
 began to experience the pleasures of domestic life. 
 He was prosperous ; he had many friends ; and he 
 was devoted to his wife. But presently he felt the 
 ancient stirrings and unrest of his master vice, and 
 soon again he found himself in conflict for his soul. 
 His horror and fear at this return of a demon he had 
 hoped was slain, this resurrection of a spectre he 
 had dreamed was gone for ever out of his life, filled 
 him with misery and despair. He went to church ; 
 he read his Bible; he prayed; he fought manfully 
 against disaster. ' It was as though I were being 
 pushed into sin,' he said to me. 
 
 One day when he was in Colombo he stopped 
 before a bookshop window, and seeing a volume 
 that he thought might help him in his conflict, 
 he went in to buy it. There were two people 
 in the shop — the man in charge, wearing a uniform, 
 and a poor broken-down drunkard. The man 
 in the uniform was talking to the drunkard and 
 endeavouring to make him realize the need of God 
 in his struggle against drink. The publican, struck 
 by this man's words, and now realizing that the 
 shop belonged to the Salvation Army, went to 
 some bookshelves and made pretence of looking for
 
 DE PROFUNDIS 203 
 
 a volume, while he listened to every word that was 
 being said. 
 
 ' There was something in the tone of that man's 
 voice,' he told me, ' which held me like a spell. It 
 was so full of assurance. It was as though he knew 
 by his own experience that what he said was true. 
 And he made goodness seem so happy. I began 
 to feel that there was hope for me. I remember that 
 I felt surprised by the drunkard's want of response. 
 It seemed so clear. It seemed so true. It sounded 
 so good.' 
 
 But two years after that incident he was still in 
 the midst of conflict, a man desperate with uncon- 
 trollable vice and sunken in despair. 
 
 He was walking one day with his mother in the 
 streets of Colombo when they came upon an open- 
 air meeting of the Salvationists. They both stopped 
 and listened. The mother was greatly struck by the 
 earnestness of the speakers, and as they walked 
 away she spoke about it. Her son, who was a 
 secret smoker — his mother and father having a great 
 aversion from tobacco — took his cigars from his 
 pocket and without letting his mother see, dropped 
 them on the road. He had the feeling that he must 
 give up smoking. He also had the feeling that he 
 would be able to give up his vice. 
 
 But the strife continued, and though he prayed 
 for strength, no strength came to him. He was 
 being driven straight to madness and suicide by 
 an impulse of his being of which his whole nature 
 disapproved and yet against which his will was 
 powerless to resist. 
 
 It chanced one year, when he went to renew 
 the licence of his premises, that he stayed with 
 his brother-in-law in a small town where the 
 Salvationists were that night holding a special
 
 204 DE PROFUNDIS 
 
 meeting. He suggested that they should attend 
 this meeting and see what the business of Salvation 
 and Conversion really meant. His brother-in-law 
 fell in with the suggestion and they went together. 
 
 Many men, public characters for sin and crime, 
 gave their testimonies at this meeting to the saving 
 power of conversion and the joy and peace and 
 happiness of the new birth. One of the speakers 
 was a converted Buddhist who had been convicted 
 of forgery. This man spoke very quietly, and 
 without any strain after effect, telling how he had 
 been led by sin step after step towards crime, and 
 how all his efforts to fight against temptation had 
 failed. The unhappy publican was profoundly 
 moved by this story. The Buddhist spoke of the 
 strength that came to him when, realizing at last 
 that Christ's love had saved him, he bowed at the 
 bench of penitence and yielded up all his efforts in 
 overflowing gratitude to his Saviour. 
 
 ' I felt that what he said was true. I felt that I 
 had been struggling in my own strength. And I 
 felt that it needed one great moment in my life, 
 one moment, to change me from a beaten and 
 despairing man into a soul at peace with God and 
 cleansed from sin. It was like a light in my soul. 
 It was a revelation. At last, it was a voice from 
 heaven. But how to reach that moment! Oh, I 
 shrank from it ! By nature I am timid and nervous; 
 and in those days I was weak with self-consciousness 
 and feeble with diffidence; I could not bear to be 
 the central figure in any scene; I always escaped 
 from any gathering in which I might be called upon 
 to make a speech, or in which I might in any way 
 have to take a prominent part. But I felt that my 
 conversion turned upon one great moment, one 
 decisive and terrible ordeal, and I longed for tlie
 
 DE PROFUNDIS 205 
 
 power to rise up then and there and throw myself 
 down at the penitent bench. I suppose something 
 ot this deep emotion must have shown in my face, 
 for one of the Salvationists, a woman, came to me 
 and asked me if I would not confess my need of 
 God's mercy. I half rose from my seat, but pre- 
 tending that I had only risen because a woman was 
 speaking to me, I sat down again, trembling and 
 afraid. But just as in former times I had felt that 
 ■pushing towards sin, so I felt now a pushing 
 towards the penitent-form. So strong was this 
 impulse that in spite of my failure I rose again. 
 This time my brother-in-law, thinking that I wanted 
 to go home, rose also, and I felt ashamed, and said 
 nothing of my feelings, but walked out of the hall. 
 However the hour was at hand. I kept saying to 
 myself, " If I die to-night ! and even if I live, only 
 this slavery!" The horror of dying as I was, the 
 fear of living as I was, mastered my feeble will and 
 cowardly purpose. Without a word to my com- 
 panion, I turned suddenly about, ran back to the 
 hall, and making my way to the front — I was like 
 a man in a dream — flung myself down at the 
 penitent-form and cried aloud for the mercy of 
 God.' 
 
 As he knelt there, shaken by a wild emotion and 
 almost beside himself with religious passion, a 
 woman-Salvationist came to him, knelt at his side, 
 and with a hand on his shoulder, said in a calm 
 and quieting voice — ' What are you praying for, 
 brother?' 
 
 He answered, ' For Salvation.' 
 
 ' Why do you pray to God?' she asked. 
 
 ' Because I feel God can save me.' 
 
 ' W^hy?' 
 
 • I feel it.'
 
 2o6 DE PROFUNDIS 
 
 ' Have you not heard that Jesus died for sinners?' 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 * For whom ?' 
 
 ' For the whole world.' 
 
 ' Are you not included in it?' 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 ' Do you believe that?' 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 * Do you believe it ?' 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 * When do you believe it?' 
 ' Now.' 
 
 ' When ?' 
 
 ' Now.' 
 
 As he said that word for the second time, he was 
 conscious of a light in his soul, and he felt as though 
 he w'ere ' drowning in sweetness ' ; and whether it 
 was the voice of the Salvationist or of an angel he 
 cannot tell, but a voice came to him in his great 
 moment of ecstasy, and said to him — ' For the sake 
 of Jesus, God pardons you.' 
 
 ' I cannot describe to you,' he said, ' the wonderful 
 beauty of that moment. It was an utter loss of self. 
 It was an escape from darkness, an entrance into 
 light. Ah, more than that ! I felt myself drowning 
 in sweetness. The whole universe was one great 
 ocean of sweetness and I was drowning in it. But 
 even that cannot tell you what I felt. Perhaps it 
 is wrong to say I felt anything, or thought anything, 
 or realized anything. It would be truer to say I 
 was just conscious of sinking into an ocean of sweet- 
 ness and that my whole being was overwhelmed by 
 unutterable joy.' 
 
 The Salvationist who was kneeling at his side, 
 said to him — ' Speak to the people.' Without a 
 thought or shadow of misgiving he rose to his feet.
 
 DE PROFUNDIS 207 
 
 faced the whole audience, and told them of the new 
 joy in his heart. He smiled as he said to me, ' I 
 was a wonder to myself. Words poured from me. 
 A flood of words!' Then, with grave countenance, 
 he added, ' Truly I may say that at that moment I 
 was filled with the Spirit of God.' 
 
 From that minute the devil was exorcised. He 
 was five-and-twenty years of age ; and now, for 
 twenty-four years of happiness and peace he has 
 never known one moment of temptation or heard 
 one whisper from the fiend that afflicted him. He 
 has been cleansed. He has been born again. It is 
 as if he had never committed his sin. 
 
 On the day following his conversion, he proceeded 
 by train to the town where he intended to renew the 
 licence for his saloon. Suddenly as if a voice had 
 spoken at his ear, he felt that it was wrong to con- 
 tinue in a trade that spread so much misery and 
 degraded so many souls. ' I felt that I was stopped 
 on my journey by an invisible hand. I got out at 
 the next station, and made my way home. But on 
 that return journey, I stopped again and again, like 
 a man without a will of his own, and though the 
 voice told me that to keep a saloon was inconsistent 
 with my new birth, I argued with myself, and said, 
 " But money is owing to me; it is my business, I 
 have a wife and child; I have no other means of 
 existence." Nevertheless, the voice conquered me. 
 It repeated the word Inconsistent again and again. I 
 returned, determined to give it up.' 
 
 But before he took this step he paid a visit to the 
 Salvationists, and asked them what he should do. 
 ' Roll your barrels and bottles into the ditch,' they 
 told him; ' God will provide.' 
 
 He w^ent back to his house and spent the entire 
 night in prayer. When the morning came his soul
 
 2o8 DE PROFUNDIS 
 
 was convinced and happy. He had reached that 
 point when the spirit decides absolutely for a right 
 course and is confident of God's approval. He took 
 off all his rings, his watch and his jewellery; and 
 put them aside for ever. Then he went to his wife 
 and told her what he had determined to do. She 
 rejoiced at his decision. 
 
 Ridicule was encountered from everybody else. 
 The planters came to the house and rated him for 
 a fool. His friends expostulated. His relations 
 objected. Only his wife stood by him, and encour- 
 aged his action. A.t a meeting which he held in 
 his house a little later, his wife professed conversion 
 with some of his relations. 
 
 He sold his business and set up an oilman's stores. 
 A solicitor in the neighbourhood undertook to collect 
 the considerable debts owing to him. In a few 
 months he discovered that this solicitor was defraud- 
 ing him. He went to law about the matter, and the 
 case was sent to the High Court at Colombo. Before 
 it came on for trial, he attended a meeting of the 
 Salvation Army, and after its conclusion was asked 
 to become an officer. He replied : ' I am afraid I 
 cannot; I am a family man; and I have just begun 
 to open a new business.' They said to him, ' You 
 have been helped, and you should give your life to 
 helping others; come, we will find something for a 
 family man.' He said, ' I must consult my wife.' 
 ' No,' they answered him, ' consult your own heart.' 
 
 He felt a powerful inclination to give up every- 
 thing and to embrace the life of poverty; but the 
 hesitation, and diffidence, and self-distrust, which 
 were characteristic of him in those days, and which 
 now, transformed by a profound religious experi- 
 ence, are the charm and modesty, and self-suppres- 
 sion of a perfectly pure soul, held him in uncertainty.
 
 DE PROFUNDIS 209 
 
 To his delight, when he laid the matter before his 
 wife, she agreed to the sacrifice, and offered to 
 become a Salvation Army officer with him. 
 
 In August, 1887, he sold his business and entered 
 with his wife and child the. Salvationists' Training 
 Home in Colombo. The law'-suit was still pending, 
 and now, with a heart set on other things, he 
 petitioned Government not to proceed with the 
 case. But it was a criminal action and it had 
 to go on. The lawyer was sentenced to five years' 
 imprisonment. 
 
 And now began for him, on the very threshold 
 of his new life, trouble and persecution. It began 
 with his wife's complaint of loneliness. Wisely or 
 unwisely, there was a division of sexes in the Train- 
 ing Home and his wife resented this separation and 
 complained to him of loneliness. Perhaps she found 
 the rough lodging and spare food of a disciple less 
 agreeable than the glowing vision of self-sacrifice. 
 She objected to wearing a uniform, and her child 
 supported the objection w'ith continual grumblings. 
 When he went out into the streets with a begging- 
 bowl for food, his wife's complaints and objections 
 became an angry rebellion. At last, finding him 
 determined to go on, she left him, left him without 
 word of any kind, and took the child to her mother's 
 house. 
 
 When he heard where she was gone, loving her 
 deeply and being tenderly attached to his child, he 
 wrote a long letter to her, begging her to return, 
 imploring her not to break her solemn vows to God. 
 She answered the letter, but refused to come back. 
 She said her mind was made up. Nothing on earth 
 would induce her to live the life of a Salvationist. 
 
 ' For five years,' he told me, * I only saw her once. 
 Nothing that I could say had power to change her
 
 2IO DE PROFUNDIS 
 
 resolution. The separation caused me great grief. 
 I felt the estrangement more than I can tell you. 
 It seemed to me terrible that religion should be the 
 cause of this break in a union which had been so 
 happy, and which had promised to be so full of 
 blessing.' 
 
 One day, after these five long years of separation 
 had passed, and when he was an officer doing great 
 work for Christianity among the Singhalese, he 
 received a letter from his wife saying that she had 
 thought matters over^ and had now made up her 
 mind to enter the Training Home and become an 
 officer. 
 
 She came and his heart was on fire with joy and 
 gratitude, for it needed but the love of his wife to 
 make his life perfect with happiness. But he found 
 that she had come back to him, as the man she 
 loved, and not to him as the Salvationist, whose 
 manner of life she still regarded with irritation and 
 aversion. 
 
 ' For eight years,' he said to me, in his quiet 
 voice, a sad smile in his grave eyes, ' she was 
 unsympathetic to our work. But at last the love 
 of God softened her heart. Ten or eleven years 
 ago she surrendered herself utterly to the call of 
 heaven. For ten or eleven years she has been to 
 me the most loving of companions and the most 
 encouraging of help-meets. She is an officer in 
 the Army, and so is one of our sons. The eight 
 years seem now like a night that has passed. I 
 feel that for the last ten or eleven years I have been 
 living in heaven. She is most earnest, sympathetic, 
 and helpful. I learn from her, and I lean upon 
 her. She is like an angel, leading me forward.'
 
 BUDDHA-LAND 
 
 The story told in the last chapter had Ceylon for 
 its setting, but my narration was purposely without 
 colour of scene or breath of atmosphere. Now I 
 should like to tell the reader about that beautiful 
 island, not only because it is so wonderfully 
 beautiful, but because I there came across one or 
 two stories of a profoundly interesting nature and 
 made acquaintance with Buddhism as it really is 
 and not as it is made to appear in books of 
 theosophy. 
 
 India is like a huge ear, and from the narrowing 
 lobe, suspended by the blue ribbon of the sea, 
 Ceylon hangs gleaming like a pearl. One is apt 
 to think about it as a Wight of our Indian Empire, 
 a tiny jewel almost insignificant in relation to the 
 vastness of its neighbouring continent. But in 
 truth there is a majesty and splendour in this 
 glittering island, a majesty of mountains and a 
 splendour of forest which breathe into the mind a 
 sense of grandeur and destroy the illusion of 
 littleness. Ceylon is nearly as big as Ireland, it 
 has a mountain zone of over four thousand miles, 
 its highest peak pierces the blue sky eight thousand 
 feet above the whisper of its waves, forests thick 
 as earth's earliest ages still riot over five thousand 
 square miles of this garden island, and in the deep
 
 212 BUDDHA-LAND 
 
 solitude of those forests as many as five thousand 
 wild elephants, with panthers and jackals, find their 
 living and keep their freedom. Then there are the 
 broad waters of Ceylon — tanks, rivers, lagoons, and 
 backwaters : — 
 
 In the plains there are comparatively few 
 rivulets or running streams; the rivers there flow 
 in almost solitary lines to the sea. . . . But in 
 their course through the hills and the broken 
 ground at their base they are supplied by numer- 
 ous feeders, which convey to them the frequent 
 showers that fall in these high altitudes. Hence 
 their tracks are through some of the noblest 
 scenery in the world; rushing through ravines 
 and glens, and falling over precipitous rocks in 
 the depths of wooded valleys, they exhibit a 
 succession of rapids, cataracts, and torrents unsur- 
 passed in magnificence and beauty. On reaching 
 the plains, the boldness of their march and the 
 graceful outline of their sweep are indicative of 
 the little obstruction opposed by the sandy and 
 porous soil through which they flow. Through- 
 out their entire course dense forests shade their 
 banks. 
 
 The traveller, however great his experience of the 
 globe, soon loses in Ceylon that irritating glance 
 of condescension with which he is occasionally apt 
 to survey small islands and little peoples. A few 
 miles out from the Sea Capital, with its unequalled 
 sunsets and its whispering palms, he finds himself 
 in the midst of sublime mountains, and in the centre 
 of unhandselled forest. Even the extreme loveliness 
 of slender trees, the bright green of the valleys and 
 hedgerows, the midsummer pageant of wild-flowers, 
 the gentle music of little brooks and rustling water-
 
 BUDDHA-LAND 213 
 
 falls, do not beguile from his mind by the affectionate 
 tenderness of their beauty, the sense of grandeur 
 which comes to him from the scarred crest of the 
 tall mountains and the sense of age-long majesty 
 which breathes into his soul from the crowding 
 splendour of the forest. 
 
 I can recall now^ as if it were yesterday the morning 
 on which I travelled by train from the Sea Capital 
 to the Hill Capital. After leaving Colombo and 
 crossing a valley brilliant with the green of rice- 
 fields, gorgeous with the crimson and gold of 
 wild flowers, and tropical with the heavy luxuri- 
 ance of coco-nut palms, plantains, and bamboos, 
 the train wound its way into the hills and began 
 its six-thousand-feet climb into the mountains. The 
 track lies on the edge of a mountain range, and, 
 across a green plain glittering with ribbons of 
 water and dense with foliage, one looks to another 
 range of mountains which completely rings in the 
 shining garden below one's gaze. On the day 
 that I made this journey, all round the wide and 
 distant circle of the hills, great burly clouds of 
 silver-white were bursting like waves against the 
 russet peaks of the mountains, sending up a smoky 
 spray, and pouring over the rugged crags a veritable 
 foam of vapour. Above them the arc of heaven was 
 a moist blue, trembling with beauty and quivering 
 with light ; but all round the tops of the mountains 
 it was as if a tempest raged, and as if an angry sea 
 hidden by their walls of stone, was buffetting those 
 mighty rocks and sending high into the air the 
 broken fury of its waves. It almost seemed as if 
 the torrent of those broken waves would stream like 
 a flood down the mountain-side, submerging the 
 valley and filling to the very brim the mighty basin 
 of the hills.
 
 214 BUDDHA-LAND 
 
 And beneath the crest of these hills, which shone 
 red-gold against the clouds, like a cloak thrown 
 carelessly over the shoulders the forest descended 
 in great folds of green to the tilled orderliness and 
 garden quiet of the plains. In the midst of this 
 jungle growth, one saw the slender silver trunks 
 and scarlet flowers of the cotton-tree, the tall Palmyra 
 palm loaded with its plumes of clouded yellow, the 
 soft and tender branches of the acacia, the wide and 
 drooping fronds of the coco-nut palm, and clumps 
 of orange-coloured bamboos, whose feathery green 
 leaves stood out from the darkness of enormous 
 rhododendrons. For the rest, great cumbrous trunks 
 and spreading boughs filled the whole scene of the 
 forest with strength and power. 
 
 Monkeys could be seen leaping from tree to tree, 
 their young clutching them from below ; the lakes 
 and pools were bordered by storks and herons and 
 flamingoes standing like statues in the still water; 
 the bushes glittered with the plumage of fly-catchers 
 and parakeets; the fields below' were being ploughed 
 by buffaloes, and overhead one saw the wide-winged 
 hawk ' sailing with supreme dominion through the 
 azure deep of air.' 
 
 Such a morning it was, loo, w'hen the heart of the 
 great earth can be seen beating under her vesture 
 of spring, when the air becomes visible like a blue 
 water, and the rays of the morning sun are like a 
 mist of fire. Everything seemed to swim in an 
 ether that throbbed with the joyous travail of exist- 
 ence; a faint dimness like the moisture of a girl's 
 eye softened all lines and subdued all colours; and 
 a gentle wind fresh as the ululating rustle of a 
 summer sea moved the glimmering air with a breath 
 that sparkled like the dew. 
 
 The dus<" of India, the depression of India, the
 
 BUDDHA-LAND 215 
 
 wistful sadness and shabby melancholy of India, 
 nowhere molest the beauty of this darling island 
 floating like the reflection of a skyey Paradise on 
 the bosom of the Indian Ocean. It is, indeed, a little 
 Eden, demi-Paradise, and its luring air, sweet with 
 every scent and odour of the angels' garden, is fresh 
 with the sense of morning and glad with the hope 
 of Spring. 
 
 As clearly, too, can I remember a night in this 
 lovely island, when my friend and I, who had rested 
 at Kandy, some tw'o thousand feet above sea-level, 
 left the railway at a small station, and journeyed by 
 bullock-cart into the wilderness of the interior. 
 Fakir Singh had told me that if I wished to see 
 something of village existence in Ceylon, I could 
 not do better than go to a little far-away hamlet 
 where he was carrying his magic-lantern to hold a 
 meeting in the forest. My friend and I drove to the 
 Gardens of Peradeniya in the afternoon, where the 
 air, laden with the scent of many spices, was black 
 with flying-foxes, startled by a gunshot ; and after 
 seeing the trees and flowers and shrubs of these 
 famous Gardens we drove to another station and 
 took train for the little town where a bullock-cart 
 was awaiting us. It was towards evening when we 
 arrived, and after being jolted in a springless cart 
 over as rough a track on the earth's surface as ever 
 presumed to call itself a road, we arrived at our 
 destination with the setting of the sun. 
 
 A visit from Fakir Singh, all over India and 
 Ceylon, is regarded as a great event by his co-reli- 
 gionists. We found a procession of Salvationists, 
 headed by banners and music, waiting to give him 
 welcome. After greetings, exchanged while the little 
 humped bullocks were being unyoked before a 
 humble inn, the procession re-formed and marched
 
 2i6 BUDDHA-LAND 
 
 forward, by way of a wooded lane impossible even 
 for the wheels of a bullock-cart. At the end of this 
 cool and scented lane was a stile in the hedc^e, and 
 the stile led precipitously down into rice-fields, 
 flooded with the rays of the setting sun. We 
 scrambled over the stile and slid and tumbled down 
 the steep bank into the fields. A narrow path, raised 
 a few inches above the muddy bed of the rice, crossed 
 the wide fields and wound its way to a forest on the 
 further side. A little brook intersected these fields, 
 and as we got upon the plank that bridged it, I 
 noticed an adder in the water. Quick as lightning 
 one of the Native Salvationists plunged his arm into 
 the stream and brought out the squirming snake, his 
 hand grasping it just below the head. ' He can 
 catch any snake,' I was told. ' He is a snake-man, 
 and knows how to catch them.' He let the snake 
 lick his nose, said something and threw it back into 
 the water. I asked what he had said, and inquired 
 why he had not killed the reptile. ' He said that it 
 was not a poisonous snake, ' came the answer ; ' as 
 for killing it, he never kills any snakes, not even 
 the dangerous ones; it is bad luck.' 'But he is a 
 Christian, and no longer looks on a snake as god 
 or devil?' ' Ah, but it is a superstition ! He would 
 not kill a snake.' 
 
 Following at the end of the loitering procession, 
 I was struck by the picturesque character of the 
 scene. Like a man3'-coloured serpent, winding with 
 the narrow footpath and dazzled by the sun, the long 
 line of happy and brightly-dressed humanity seemed, 
 even while it shone so vividly in the midst of the 
 green fields, to be trivial and insignificant, so vast 
 was the sense of distance and so overpowering the 
 sense of the sky's height. Far away across the fields 
 of rice rose the forest and above the forest rose the
 
 BUDDHA-LAND 217 
 
 mountains and above the mountains rose the sky. 
 And the long line of humanity softly laughing and 
 gently talking in the midst of sunken fields, some 
 of the tambourines tinkling against the saris of the 
 women, had its face towards the setting of the sun 
 — an immense arch of molten gold which was like a 
 gateway into everlasting glory. The air of the fields 
 was quiet with the feelings and thoughts of evening. 
 A solemn stillness held the woods. A majestic peace 
 brooded on the mountains. It was only in the distant 
 west, where the mighty conflagration of the sun 
 throbbed and vibrated with great beats of shuddering 
 fire, that one was conscious of machinery and toil. 
 
 We entered the forest by means of a bridge and 
 found ourselves all at once in a deep gloom. Our 
 forest path ascended from the low level of the rice- 
 fields and swerved away over a soft floor of dusky 
 brown into the heart of the woods ; the huge trunks 
 of darkening trees loomed up into the dim air like 
 massy pillars carrying the branching roof of a 
 temple. A cloistral silence hung like a thick curtain 
 from the over-arching boughs. The faint patches 
 of pulsing light which here and there glimmered on 
 the ground were like the fading reflections from a 
 painted window or the fragments of a broken mosaic. 
 And the floor of the forest rose and fell in a chaos 
 of quiet, as if the earth had once long ago writhed 
 under the monotony of the shadowing trees until 
 their roots had fastened upon her and held her 
 still. 
 
 The silence was presently broken by the loud 
 barking of dogs, and a sweep of our winding, 
 ascending, and descending path brought us in a few 
 moments before a mud-house with a veranda of 
 palm-leaves set in a clearing of the forest. In front 
 of this house rose a small stack of some rough grass,
 
 2i8 BUDDHA-LAND 
 
 faggots of wood, and a barn for rice. To the right 
 was a line of outhouses, at the corner of which two 
 or three dogs were chained to tub-kennels. Two 
 Native women were lighting lamps of coco-nut-oil, 
 which they hung in the veranda. Mats were spread 
 on the floor under these lamps, and here we were 
 invited to seat ourselves and eat the curry and rice 
 prepared for us by the host of Fakir Singh. During 
 this meal we talked in low voices, and as the dark- 
 ness deepened all around us there came from the 
 forest the noise of frogs and crickets, growing louder 
 and louder till the whole earth seemed to ring with 
 it. And then as if fairies were dancing through the 
 trees to dress their Arcady for the delight of the 
 Fakir, the air suddenly began to twinkle with innu- 
 merable lights and these little glowing points of fire 
 rose to the very tops of the trees, fluttered down the 
 dim trunks, and drifted hither and thither in a slow 
 eternal motion — fire-flies brighter than glow^-worms 
 and as numerous as the stars. A little later and the 
 forest became lit up here and there with a smoky 
 haze of ruddy fire, where companies of people from 
 distant villages were making their way by torchlight 
 to the scene of the meeting. And when it came for 
 us to depart, we also found our way through the 
 forest with these flaming torches — torches nearly six 
 feet in length, composed of coco-nut leaves banded 
 tightly together, which burn with a leaping roar 
 and a scarlet flame for ten or fifteen minutes. It 
 was a journey of enchantment, to walk with the 
 rising and falling floor of the forest, sw"inging one 
 of these long torches, seeing the stately trunks of 
 the trees lit redly up in a smoke of fire and to watch 
 the crowding shadows on the ground in front of us. 
 All the air was ringing with the rattle of frogs and 
 the chirping of crickets, and outside the little radius
 
 BUDDHA-LAND 219 
 
 of one's guttering torch the whole forest twinkled 
 with fire-flies. 
 
 The meeting was held in a space between two 
 houses, roofed in for the occasion by palm-leaves 
 supported on poles of bamboo. There w'as a rough 
 platform at one end, part of which was under the 
 veranda of a dwelling-house ; and beside this plat- 
 form was a stretched sheet where the magic lantern 
 was making a disc of white light, in which one saw 
 magnified insects on the other side of the sheet 
 fluttering backwards and forwards beating their 
 wings against the obstruction. For the rest, from 
 one end of the space to the other, there was a great 
 multitude of people sitting on the ground, their dark, 
 intelligent faces lifted to the screen, their hands 
 folded in their laps. The women sat by themselves, 
 many of them with babies in their arms ; and one 
 saw in the light of the lamps how beautiful they were 
 and how superior to Indian women in dignity and 
 vivacity. The men were also of handsome appear- 
 ance, but something effeminate, their long hair 
 knotted over the neck and fastened on the top by a 
 large comb ; they had dignity of expression and a 
 certain nobility of features, but they wanted the 
 gaiety and alacrity which made the women so won- 
 derfully pleasant to eyes fresh from India. Shoulder 
 to shoulder, a dense mass of humanity, crowding 
 the whole space of the pandal from end to end, these 
 forest people sang hymns to God, prayed in the 
 Name of Jesus, and listened with an unquestioning 
 eagerness to the words of the Fakir. 
 
 My friend and I were obliged to leave this meeting 
 before its conclusion, and with three Singhalese 
 Salvationists to guide our feet and carry our torches 
 we made our way through the forest, crossed the 
 rice-fields, and arrived at last before the inn where
 
 220 BUDDHA-LAND 
 
 our bullocks had been unyoked. The driver had 
 seen the flare of our torches and had wandered off 
 in search of his oxen. We went inside the humble 
 inn, which was a black and smoky interior like an 
 inferior fowl-house, and drank tonic water and ate 
 biscuits from Reading. Outside the Salvationists 
 were filling the starry heavens with loud and pro- 
 longed calls to the invisible driver of the bullock-cart 
 — Coo-e ! Coo-o-o-o-ee ! ! Coo-o-o-o-o-o-o-e-e-e-E ! ! ! 
 After some ten or fifteen minutes, he appeared with 
 his little oxen, and helped by the Salvationists got 
 them yoked to the cart and his lamps lighted. Then 
 we started off. 
 
 The driver turned out to be a nervous fellow, 
 frightened of the dark. Our road led through thick 
 forest, and not even the host of fire-flies which 
 swarmed in every tree bordering our way could 
 chase the darkness out of our path. The driver sat 
 bunched up on the pole, jerking the reins, rocking 
 his body backwards and forwards like the cox of a 
 beaten boat, twisting the tails of his cattle, and 
 talking to himself in a frightened undertone. As we 
 had a train to catch, and the last train of the night, 
 we bade him hurry, but he shook his head, pointed 
 to the dark air above our heads and to the black 
 road under our wheels. Every now and then a more 
 than usually dislocating bump quenched the glimmer 
 of a lamp, and immediately he jerked the bullocks 
 back on their haunches, sprang to the ground, and 
 with trembling hands proceeded to strike imperfect 
 matches. My travelling companion, more used to 
 motor-cars than bullock-carts, decided to walk, and 
 as the night was hot, took off his coat and carrying 
 it over an arm stalked on ahead with the little torch 
 of a long cigar to light his way. As he went he 
 dropped out of the pocket of his coat, without
 
 BUDDHA-LAND 221 
 
 observing the loss, an envelope containing a letter 
 of credit for some hundreds of pounds and a letter 
 of indication. Two or three weeks afterwards the 
 envelope with its contents was restored to him by 
 the Colombo police. 
 
 The warm night, scented with the odours of spice 
 gardens and the deep perfume of the forest, made 
 the journey even in a bullock-cart one of exceeding 
 charm. At long intervals on the road, a little com- 
 pany of white-clad barefoot men, accompanied by 
 dogs, would suddenly appear in the light of our 
 lamps, stare in at us with frowning eyes, and then 
 disappear into the darkness, their voices drowned 
 by the gridding of our wheels. But for the most 
 part it was a journey through darkness and silence, 
 with the glitter of fire-flies on either side of us, the 
 broken light of sprinkled stars overhead and the 
 sense of dim colum.ns rising up in the gloom and 
 crowding close about us like an invading army. In 
 this central and enclosing darkness, our little cart 
 with its foggy lamps and its steaming and grunting 
 bullocks crept along, bumping and jolting, like a 
 moth with a broken w^ing. 
 
 At the station we found the bridge spanning the 
 line, and all the approaches and doorways strewn 
 with sheeted figures. We were told that some were 
 pilgrims waiting for a morning train, and some w^ere 
 coolies employed at the station whose work would 
 begin early in the dawn. The stir and movement 
 of the station, and the clangour of a shunting train, 
 seemed to make no difference to the repose of the 
 sleepers, who lay as still as the dead. 
 
 In the refreshment car of our midnight train we 
 found a company of over-dressed and loud-talking 
 Eurasians (Burghers as they are called in Ceylon) 
 whose tumblers of whisky had spilled jerkings of
 
 222 BUDDHA-LAND 
 
 liquor on to the cigar-ash scattered over their littered 
 talDle. The noise of their voices— they were speaking 
 in English — the offensive braggadocio of their 
 vulgar talk, the smell of the car, and the quality of 
 their cigars — made too great a contrast after the 
 solemnity and silence and breathing sweetness of 
 the forest. We turned out, and continued a hungry 
 and thirsty journey in an ordinary carriage. 
 
 We had returned to Kandy, because of an invita- 
 tion from a young and devout Buddhist to visit the 
 holy shrine which guards the tooth of the Buddha. 
 Early after breakfast on the next day we walked to 
 the beautiful little temple where this relic is kept, 
 and passed from the dazzling sunlight and fresh air 
 of the mountain town, into the shadows and close- 
 ness of the temple's precincts. We passed under 
 cloisters, crossed a courtyard, and stopped before a 
 counter stocked with trays of flower petals, behind 
 which a priest in a soiled and shabby yellow robe 
 was standing like a sentinel. Our companion took 
 off his boots, received a little basket of jasmine 
 flowers from the priest, and going forward in his 
 stockinged feet led us up a flight of oak stairs 
 crowded with pilgrims into the outer court of the 
 temple. 
 
 ' These people,' he explained, ' do not come here 
 to pray. You will see them kneeling before the 
 shrine, but you must not think that they are address- 
 ing supplications to Buddha. We recognize that 
 Buddha cannot help us. Pilgrims to this shrine 
 come to gain merit. It is with us a meritorious act 
 to visit the shrines consecrated by the holy life of 
 Buddha. One kneels down, not to pray, but to think 
 of Buddha, to think of his life and to meditate on 
 his chief doctrines.' 
 
 Before us hung a dark-coloured curtain. Our
 
 BUDDHA-LAND 223 
 
 friend drew this on one side, and we found ourselves 
 before the shrine. 
 
 Quite close to us, on passing through the door- 
 way, rose the sacred altar, for this shrine is no 
 bigger than a box-room. The little apartment, win- 
 dowless and heavily ornamented with fading gold 
 and decaying tapestry, was illumined by candles. A 
 casket of gold and silver, encrusted with precious 
 stones, stood on the altar; below it on an immense 
 tray was a heap of flower petals. Beside the altar 
 w^as the priest in his yellow robe, the head and face 
 clean shaven, one arm obtruding bare from his 
 yellow robe. A youth stood at his side. 
 
 Our friend presented his basket-tray of jasmine 
 flowers, which the priest accepted and placed on the 
 altar. They spoke together for a minute, and then 
 our friend moved to one side of the shrine and 
 washed his hands — whether by command of the 
 priest after contact with Europeans or as part of the 
 ceremony I could not understand. Tapers were then 
 lighted and we were allowed to approach close to 
 the altar and examine the design of the casket and 
 the beauty of its jewellery. We were told that 
 such-an-one had given this precious stone and such- 
 an-other had given that, and how much the diamonds 
 were worth, and how much the pearls, and how much 
 the rubies ; and how all this here was real gold, and 
 how all that over there was real silver — till one felt 
 as if one were standing before the shrine of Carlo 
 Borromeo under the altar of that marble wedding- 
 cake at Milan. 
 
 The twinkling candles in this dark little shrine 
 of metal and tapestry, the heavy scent of flowers, 
 the subdued gleam of gold and silver, the soft glow 
 and sparkle of precious stones starting out of the 
 shadows, and the figure of the shaven priest in his
 
 224 BUDDHA-LAND 
 
 yellow robe, so kindly in appearance and so indul- 
 gent in his courtesy— made an impression on the 
 mind which the vulgarity of sight-seeing could not 
 minimize or obliterate. But the chief feeling that 
 one had was of the extraordinarily close similarity 
 of Latin Christianity and pre-Christian Buddhism, 
 the feeling and the sensation of a same immemorial 
 superstition persisting through the forms and ritual 
 of two religions so diametrically opposed as the reli- 
 gion of Annihilation and the religion of Life. 
 
 This feeling was intensified when we turned our 
 backs upon the tooth in its casket — a tooth which I 
 am told is as large as an elephant's — and visited 
 some of the other shrines surrounding the temple. 
 After throwing from the balcony of the library areca- 
 nut flowers to the huge tortoises in the temple tank, 
 we made a round of the shrines, studying crude 
 pictures of hell as childish and disgusting as those 
 of the Campo Santo at Pisa, and observing the 
 faithful at their devotions. We learned that women 
 come to these shrines to ask favours, not to seek 
 holiness or to acquire strength for victory over sin, 
 and that they have their favourite shrines for this 
 purpose. So in Italy you may see poor peasants 
 kneeling with apparently the most rapt devotion 
 before a tinsel figure of the Mother of Jesus stuck 
 all over with sham jewellery, crowned with a coronet, 
 and illumined by coloured candles; and you will 
 learn that they are praying for luck in the next lottery 
 and that they say to each other, ' Such and such a 
 Madonna is no good ; I prayed to her for six months 
 and the jade did nothing for me; you should try 
 Our Lady of S. Agostino.'* 
 
 * It is not long since the report was spread, that one day when a 
 poor woman called upon this image of the Madonna for help, it began 
 to speak, and replied, ' If I had only something, then I could help 
 thee, but I myself am so poor ! ' This story was circulated, and very
 
 BUDDHA-LAND 225 
 
 The likeness which exists between the priests of 
 all religions is very remarkable. Just as there is a 
 likeness between soldiers of every country, so in the 
 priests of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Catholicism 
 there is a very strong and notable family resem- 
 blance. The bare-headed, yellow-robed and san- 
 dalled priests striding under their umbrellas in the 
 streets of Kandy, each followed by a loose-lipped 
 and sensual-looking boy, have just the expression 
 of intellectual power, bigotry, and contempt for every 
 knowledge except their own craft, which one is 
 accustomed to see in the faces of European priests. 
 They are fine-looking and striking-looking men, but 
 they are tyrants. The loftiness and self-confidence 
 of their appearance are the fruit of a conceit, a 
 vanity, and an arrogance from which the man of 
 science, the historian, and the inspired poet would 
 shrink horrified and ashamed. They bear upon their 
 brows the seal of a petty tyranny and the mark of 
 a pettifogging pride; whether they be Brahmans, 
 Buddhists, or Romans, it is the same ; you may see 
 written in all their faces by the unerring hand of 
 their own souls the ' Thank God I am not as other 
 men,' which has ever marked the Pharisee from 
 those who weigh and examine tradition, and who 
 give to Truth what these others abdicate to authority 
 — their reason and their life. The complete sur- 
 render of the reason to a set of ideas which cannot 
 be proved and which are as repugnant to common 
 sense as they are contrary to experience, seems to 
 
 soon throngs of credulous people hastened hither to kiss the foot of 
 the Madonna, and to present her with all kinds of gifts. The image 
 . . . now sits shining with ornaments of gold and precious stones. 
 Candles and lamps burn around, and people pour in, rich and poor, 
 great and small, to kiss — some of them two or three times — the 
 Madonna's foot. . . . Below the altar it is inscribed in golden letters 
 that Pius VII promised two hundred days' absolution to all such as 
 should kiss the Madonna's foot and pray with the whole heart Ave 
 Maria. Frederika Bremer, quoted in Hare's Walks in Rome, p. 443.
 
 226 BUDDHA-LAND 
 
 affect the countenance of man in the same way all 
 over the world however contrary and antagonistic 
 the sets of ideas may be. 
 
 At the famous mountain temples hewn out of the 
 rocks of Dambulla and Matale, we found tawdry 
 decorations, shabby pretentiousness and infantile 
 frescoes. The pilgrim who climbs from the road 
 into the mountains by graceful but most tiring steps, 
 who mounts the high rocks plastered with bats at 
 their shadowed summits, and wanders with a wind- 
 ing path through beautiful grassy places happy with 
 birds and butterflies and flowers, must surely be 
 vexed and disappointed when, breathless, exhausted, 
 and with aching legs, he comes before these trum- 
 peted shrines. A roof of zinc covers the veranda, 
 a bell-pull of barbed wire hangs beside a blistered 
 door of deal, fading pictures of hell peel on the 
 walls, and inside the temples — which smell foully 
 of damp and darkness and stone, and which he 
 enters surrounded by priestly and lay hangers-on 
 eager for a rupee — he finds nothing but Megalo- 
 mania. One recumbent figure of Buddha measured 
 forty-seven feet ! The scheme of colour throughout 
 is red and yellow. The whole effect is gross and 
 grotesque. A cavern of gloom whose walls are 
 shaped into sleeping Polyphemi ! Every figure of 
 Buddha is shown to one with a yard measure. 
 
 One of the samts led me to a hollowed space in 
 the floor of a temple where water quivered in the 
 dim light. ' It is by the Will of God,' he said 
 amiably; ' you cannot see the water fall and no man 
 knows where it goes; it is by the Will of God.' 
 The ground on which we stood was a slop of mud; 
 I looked up to the roof, and saw that the rocks were 
 wet, green, and slimy; a drop of water fell as I 
 looked and splashed into the pool; as for where the
 
 BUDDHA-LAND 227 
 
 water goes the saint himself had told me that a large 
 basin was filled twice daily from this pool for use 
 in the temple. But one saw in the man's face the 
 look of a child that loves to deceive itself and be 
 deceived ; it would have been cruel to destroy his 
 'Will of God' with a fact in natural law; he was 
 of the great host and company who regard credulity 
 as a virtue and the abnegation of divine reason as 
 an act pleasing to God. 
 
 But, the poor fellow's face when he examined my 
 bakshish ! He expostulated, and argued, and spread 
 his arms, and surveyed me — man of God that he 
 was — with a most unholy and murderous contempt. 
 The spirit of Buddha vanished from his mild eyes 
 and amiable lips; he became angry, derisive, rude. 
 And as our servant distributed a few annas among 
 the hangers-on of this priest, they too fell a-quar- 
 relling, so that the whole scene was like a scramble 
 on a race-course. We left them and crossed the 
 natural platform of rock, followed by our grinning 
 Hindu who had thoroughly enjoyed this altercation 
 and had told the hangers-on of the priests many 
 hitherto unpublished particulars concerning their 
 ancestors; and from the edge of the bastion we 
 looked over a panorama of beauty so enchanting 
 after the grotesque, childish, and vulgar Megalo- 
 mania of the temple, that one could almost have 
 prayed to it. The distant mountains melted into the 
 pearl-coloured clouds, the rolling jungle filled the 
 intervening space with a foliage brown, green, and 
 golden, and pouring like a cascade dow^n the sloping 
 rock below our eyes was a shimmering flood of 
 flowers which hummed with the scent of bees and 
 sparkled with the morning dew. The whole wide 
 scene was bathed in sunshine and the still air was 
 sweet with the song of birds.
 
 228 BUDDHA-LAND 
 
 That the pure and beautiful if melancholy religion 
 of Buddha should descend upon such evil times and 
 become so sordid, shabby, and mean a thing — even 
 the very antithesis of its modest founder — is only a 
 confirmation of the now generally accepted truth that 
 the religious experience of a single man, once for- 
 malized and stereotyped for the multitude, tends 
 towards violence, insincerity, and superstition. 
 
 Life in Ceylon under the Buddhist priesthood is 
 not an elevating subject for the student of human 
 nature. The priests themselves, divided into two 
 warring sects, are very often, very often indeed, men 
 of a perverted immorality. ' We think nothing of 
 that,' I was told even by Buddhists. ' Priests are 
 all the same.' ' It is one thing or the other with 
 these fellows.' And when I pressed to know whether 
 the immorality ot this priesthood did not lead men 
 to question the truth of the religion, I was told that 
 it made no difference at all. ' It is the life and 
 teachings of Buddha that we follow : the priests are 
 of no account; we do not take any notice of them. 
 If you see a man bow down to a priest in the road 
 or the street, you must always remember that he is 
 paying homage to the yellow robe — the symbol of 
 Buddha's holy life.' 
 
 I learned that not one man in a thousand really 
 gives his thought to the Buddhist's ultimate Nirvana. 
 * Absorption into Universal Being,' I was told, * is 
 an event so remote and so immensely beyond the 
 merits of ordinary men, that nobody is concerned 
 about it in the very least. The dominant idea with 
 us is so to live that we may secure a decent rein- 
 carnation. That is the religion of Buddha. A 
 meritorious life leads to happiness at the next birth; 
 an evil life leads to unhappiness.' 
 
 Who can say that here is a likeness to Chris-
 
 BUDDHA-LAND 229 
 
 tianity? For the heaven of Jesus is to be won by 
 the soul that does good because it loves goodness, 
 and whose love of good springs from its adoration 
 of God. He gives men a Spiritual Father in heaven ; 
 He gives them in Himself a Moral Ideal on earth; 
 and He declares that love of God expressed by 
 service to men bestows upon the human heart a joy 
 that cannot be taken away and a peace that passes 
 understanding. ' I am come,' He said, ' that they 
 might have Life, and that they might have it more 
 abundantly.' Surrender your selfish isolation, your 
 lonely particularity, your disturbing ideas of what 
 is due to you, and your individual assertion of your 
 rights; surrender all this, and born again by the 
 revelation of God's Love, long for holiness with all 
 the strength and power of your soul, learn that 
 holiness is service, and you will come to find that in 
 works of mercy and in deeds of love there is a life 
 grander, more joyful, more satisfying, and more 
 abundant than any dark and narrow life of a soul 
 prisoned in the cell of its own existence. 
 
 Buddhism is a synonym for Egoism, and not the 
 mere crude and only half-conscious egoism of the 
 materialist, but the concentrated, intense, and wholly 
 conscious egoism of the soul. Buddhism is I Myself 
 thinking of I Myself; Christianity is Christ my 
 Master thinking of Man my Brother. The one 
 promises Annihilation; the other Life. 
 
 In the forest village which I have just attempted 
 to describe, and afterwards in Colombo, I met 
 among the Salvationists a remarkable man converted 
 to Christianity from Buddhism whose story will 
 better help the reader to realize the difference between 
 the two religions than many pages of disquisition. 
 
 This person, Samaraveera by name, is a tall, thin, 
 romantic-looking man of some forty years of age.
 
 230 BUDDHA-LAND 
 
 He is lighter-coloured than most Singhalese, has 
 large and handsome eyes, and small features; he 
 wears a moustache and on one side of his forehead 
 his thick black hair hangs over as far as the eyebrow. 
 The high cheek-bones stand out like curves drawn 
 with a pencil, the cheeks are sunken, the long bare 
 neck, with its prominent Adam's apple, is so thin 
 that all the cords are visible. The expression of his 
 face is one of gentle sweetness. His voice is low 
 and modulated. He has the air of a scholar given 
 up to spiritual devotion. He speaks English without 
 the least trace of a foreign accent and has a perfect 
 command of idiom and vocabulary. 
 
 ' Buddhism,' he said to me, ' must never be 
 regarded as an original and separate religion. It 
 is Hinduism reformed, and is quite as centred in 
 Hinduism as Protestantism, which is reformed 
 Catholicism, is centred in Christianity. The vital 
 principle of each religion is the theory of reincarna- 
 tion ; and both postulate Nirvana, or absorption into 
 the unconscious essence of Being, as the final end 
 of a soul's existence. Buddha denounced Hindu 
 gods, but he spoke of one great Being, and his 
 idea of this Being is much the same if not quite the 
 same as the philosophic Hindu's idea of Brahma. 
 Buddhist Kings have had as many as forty wives; 
 the priests of Buddhism practise immoralities which 
 are common among the priests of Hinduism. The 
 purest form of Buddhism is found in Ceylon, but 
 although the priests do not marry here, as they do 
 in Japan, still it is generally known that they are 
 not virtuous. There are two sects of Buddhism in 
 Ceylon, the Siamese sect, and the Amarapura sect. 
 The priests of the first sect leave one shoulder 
 bare, and represent the worldly and material side of 
 Buddhism ; they deal only with high-caste people and
 
 BUDDHA-LAND 231 
 
 consider themselves an aristocracy. The Amarapura 
 sect cover both shoulders under the yellow robe, are 
 more pious, live purer lives, and go among the low- 
 caste peoples — but with patronage. Both priesthoods 
 exercise a tyrannous power over the people and claim 
 a spiritual sovereignty. In all schools of Buddhist 
 thought, sin is condemned only as an offence against 
 one's neighbour ; never as a barrier erected by the 
 soul itself against the love of God. 
 
 ' The legends about Buddha are just as grotesque 
 as those about Hindu gods. At his birth he is said 
 to have asserted his supremacy over all gods; fresh 
 from his mother's womb he walked seven steps 
 towards north, south, east, and west, and proclaimed 
 himself supreme. But in truth Buddha was a man 
 like other men; he never claimed divine origin, and 
 never said that he was an incarnation of Siva, 
 Vishnu, Brahma, or any other god. He was a good 
 man who saw the sin and suffering of life with pain 
 and sympathy, and he sought to save men from sin 
 and suffering by teaching them to crush in their 
 souls all desire for existence, good or bad, happy 
 or miserable. 
 
 ' All the books and all the ceremonies of Buddhism 
 are in Pali, which is high Singhalese, a language 
 known only to the priests. Buddhism in this respect 
 is like Roman Catholicism. But the chief condemna- 
 tion of Buddhism is its powerlessness to recreate a 
 fallen nature or restore a broken life. It is beautiful 
 and sweet as an idea, as a sad and poetic philosophy 
 of paganism; but it is not a religion. If it is a reli- 
 gion, it is inadequate to the world's needs, pitifully 
 inadequate. It is an inefficient religion — therefore it 
 cannot be true. What is not true is not a religion.' 
 
 He told me his own story in the following 
 words : —
 
 232 BUDDHA-LAND 
 
 ' My parents were prominent Buddhists, my father 
 being one of the trustees of the temples — that is to 
 say, a manager and controller of finances, for the 
 priests touch no money themselves. Every full-moon 
 day I used to go with my parents to the temple, and 
 I loved to go because my mind was filled with the 
 charm of Buddha's teaching. I thought there could 
 be nothing sweeter in all the ideas of men than 
 Buddha's noble teaching about Kindness. " There 
 is great virtue in Kindness." " The greatest power 
 is Kindness." " Kindness to man and animal." I 
 worshipped in common with all Buddhists, but very 
 devotedly because my heart was so deeply touched 
 by this doctrine of Kindness, the Trinity of my 
 religion — Buddha, his Teaching, and his Disciples. 
 I thoroughly, almost passionately, believed the 
 beautiful doctrines, and like other Buddhists would 
 worship even an immoral priest because he wore the 
 robe that Buddha wore. 
 
 * At an early age I was seized by an attack of 
 dysentery which brought me to death's door. My 
 parents in despair sent for the priests. My father 
 said that if I recovered he would dedicate me to the 
 priesthood. The priests came, erected a beautiful 
 altar in my bedroom, filled it with flowers, and for 
 seven days and nights chanted their invocations. 
 They took the sacred string, dipped it in holy water, 
 rubbed saffron on, and tied it round me. 
 
 ' I recovered, and my father repented of his vow. 
 He thought me clever and refused to let me bury 
 myself in the priesthood. This was a most poignant 
 distress to me. I longed to be a priest. All my 
 thoughts and feelings and hopes and aspirations 
 were set upon the priesthood. But my father with- 
 stood all my entreaties, remained firm against the 
 disappointment of the priests, and sent me to the
 
 BUDDHA-LAND 233 
 
 only school in our neighbourhood, which happened 
 to be a Christian school. 
 
 ' I must tell you that even as a boy I had a very 
 keen sense of the horror of sin. I felt it to be 
 atrocious and abominable. As I look back now, I 
 can truly say that I was conscious even as a child 
 of the existence of God within me. And I firmly 
 believe that my horror of sin, something far deeper 
 than the Buddhist notion of an offence against one's 
 neighbour, was created in my heart by the Holy 
 Spirit. 
 
 * Some of the teachers at the school to which I was 
 now put endeavoured to make a Christian of me. 
 I did not examine the Christian doctrines or even 
 study the life of Jesus ; it was enough for me that 
 Christians killed animals. I used to exclaim, " But 
 Christians kill animals !" I felt that to be atrocious. 
 Christians killed birds. How cruel, how dreadful ! 
 I hated Christians; or at any rate I despised them. 
 I had always been taught to regard Christians as 
 bad people. Converts to Christianity, I was told, 
 were mere office-seekers, people who wanted to 
 become officials. I had a bad view of the whole 
 thing. One of my uncles had a Bible which he kept 
 and studied diligently for the purpose of controvert- 
 ing Christians — a work on which he prided himself 
 and which gave him a supreme pleasure. Soon after 
 I went to school he gave me a Bible as a present, 
 and said to me, " Don't you ever become a Chris- 
 tian." I said, "No, I never will!" — for I thought 
 Christians the most cruel and degraded people on 
 the earth. When I came to read the Bible I felt 
 that it was an absolute fairy-story. The whole thing 
 seemed to be impossible and absurd. And the death 
 of Christ — a felon's death I I could not get over 
 that. Buddha — the son of a King I Oh, how great
 
 234 BUDDHA-LAND 
 
 the difference ! That the Son of God should perish 
 on the cross, hanged like a criminal between two 
 thieves, struck me as a thing too dreadful to think 
 about, and too unthinkable to be true. Besides, 
 there was in the Bible from beginning to end the 
 idea that God had created the world, a good God, a 
 perfect God, a God all-wise, all-knowing, and all- 
 powerful. But I knew that creation was imperfect. 
 I knew about sorrow and death. It seemed to me 
 as unthinkable to make a good God the creator of a 
 world so full of cruelty, misery, sorrow, and sin as 
 to believe that the Son of God died on a felon's cross 
 between two dreadful thieves. 
 
 ' But although my teachers at school failed utterly 
 to make a Christian of me, they widened my know- 
 ledge, broadened my sympathies, and gave me a 
 different notion of Christian character. As I grew 
 up I felt more and more the conviction of sin in my 
 heart, and was conscious of an unrest which worship 
 of Buddha and devotion to his Teaching could not 
 allay. I was aware in myself of some inarticulate 
 longing for greater holiness and deeper peace, for 
 a more harmonious relation in my soul to the 
 universe surrounding me. I began to realize the 
 beauty of Christ's character and to feel in His 
 Teaching some mystical sweetness that ministered 
 to the sadness and disquiet of my heart. I used to 
 read the four gospels, and think about a God of Love 
 — one all-embracing and merciful Father in heaven 
 Whose creation had been marred by man himself. 
 Then I began to feel guilty, terribly guilty, and the 
 fear of dying in isolation from God took hold of me 
 and made me afraid. 
 
 ' The only Christians who attracted me were the 
 Salvationists. I was attracted by observing the self- 
 sacrificing lives of these people and their intense
 
 BUDDHA-LAND 235 
 
 earnestness and simplicity. I was already dimly 
 aware that no ritual or ceremonial, no pomp of 
 worship and no mere acceptance of an idea or a 
 doctrine could give me the peace of which I was in 
 quest. Quite dimly, but still consciously, I felt the 
 need for a change of heart, a new-birth, a complete 
 revolution of being, I do not know if I can make 
 clear to you what I then felt. My thoughts were 
 troubled, my heart was full of unrest, I was conscious 
 of a great loneliness. I wanted Truth. With all 
 my mind and soul I wanted Truth. To be sure of 
 something as absolutely True — this was the hunger 
 and thirst of my whole being. And in this drifting 
 condition, half-believing in a God of Love, and 
 touched by the beautiful Teaching of Jesus, I saw 
 these Salvationists in my neighbourhood, living lives 
 of extreme self-sacrifice, avoiding everything in the 
 nature of ceremonial or formalism, and preaching 
 the religion of Jesus with a devotion which was 
 perhaps my first knowledge of earnestness. 
 
 ' I felt I should like to know more about these 
 people, and began to attend their meetings. Several 
 Buddhists went out of mere curiosity, and my 
 presence attracted no attention. My people thought 
 I was far too intellectual to become a Christian, and 
 they hoped that I should one day distinguish myself 
 either in Government service or as a professional 
 man. The meetings had various effects upon me. 
 Sometimes I was deeply impressed, sometimes I felt 
 chilled and repelled, sometimes I felt how hopeless 
 it all was — to understand the Will of God and 
 discover the truth of things. But the wonderful 
 lives of these people, and the marvellous manner in 
 which they converted wicked and degraded men into 
 good and holy men, had such an attraction for me 
 that I could not resist attending their meetings.
 
 236 BUDDHA-LAND 
 
 * It was at a special gathering that my illumination 
 came. The European officer made this meeting the 
 occasion for a great searching of the heart, for a 
 pitiless cross-examination of the conscience. As the 
 meeting proceeded I felt myself the victim of a 
 terrible despair. I was a sinner condemned and 
 lost. Of myself I could do nothing. For ever I 
 might struggle and strive, but it would always be 
 the same — unhappiness of heart, doubt of mind, and 
 wretchedness of soul. There was no light in myself 
 to pierce the darkness crowding upon me from every 
 point of the universe. There was no conceivable 
 action possible to me which could make me at peace 
 with the mystery of things. I was in darkness, and 
 I was in ignorance. To die as I was — a stranger to 
 God, a soul seeking of itself to establish peace with 
 God — this would be terrible. 
 
 * I was a sinner, and to sinners Jesus had said, 
 Come unto Me. I felt that Jesus had power. I could 
 see no other way of escape and deliverance but by 
 Jesus. 
 
 ' What was I at the moment ? A soul arrested 
 by the great central idea of Right and Wrong. To 
 be cleansed from sin, to be purged of misery, to feel 
 myself standing on a rock secure in strength greater 
 than my own and fixed in a holiness infinitely higher 
 than my own — this was my longing. And to whom 
 could I go ? — of all the Teachers and Philosophers 
 in history, to whom could I go? To none, save 
 Jesus. He alone teaches how the heart may be 
 cleansed, how the soul may be born again, how the 
 spirit can rest like a little child in the Love of God. 
 
 But The ordeal ! I cannot tell you how I 
 
 shrank from it. My struggle for new-birth, my 
 longing for conversion, all the turmoil of my soul 
 for some new and wonderful thing to happen to
 
 BUDDHA-LAND 237 
 
 me, was spiritual. And a physical act was required I 
 In that moment of shrinking and recoil, as if he 
 were an angel sent by God direct from the sky, a 
 Salvationist came to me and helped me to decide. 
 I rose from my seat and went forward before the 
 people. I surrendered myself in that moment to 
 God. I knelt trembling, a raw heathen full of dark- 
 ness, and opened my heart and uttered a prayer 
 for the first time in my life. I rose a new man. 
 I rose to a new world, for a new purpose ; and 
 twenty-one years have gone by since that night, so 
 memorable and so wonderful to me, twenty-one years 
 of hard work, unbroken consolation and deepening 
 joy. At the moment of my conversion I felt at rest, 
 suddenly at rest; I was conscious of a delirious sense 
 of victory after the severe struggle, and happy — 
 happy with a strange irradiation of light pervading 
 all my soul, and the feeling of a hope that supported 
 me and lifted me up.' 
 
 This man for twenty-one years has been a most 
 devoted Salvationist, working for the Kingdom of 
 God in Ceylon, a man whose influence as a spiri- 
 tual force is acknowledged both by Europeans and 
 Natives. And that such a man and such a body as 
 the Salvation Army is necessary to Ceylon, let the 
 brief stories related in the next chapter witness.
 
 RESTORATION 
 
 There are many streets in tHe midst of Colombo 
 which suggest the comfort and domesticity of an 
 English suburb. Although they are within a few 
 minutes' walk of a sea-front, brilliant shop-windows, 
 factory chimneys, military barracks, Government 
 offices and a Native quarter as Eastern as the Delhi 
 bazaars, they are so shut in by towering trees and 
 so illuminated by their bird-haunted gardens, that 
 one might imagine them as far from the busy city 
 as Sydenham or Finchley from the central roar of 
 London. 
 
 In one of these quiet streets there is a red-bricked 
 house standing back from the road which looks as 
 simple and ordinary as any of its neighbours. 
 Nothing marks it as a separate dwelling. There 
 is no plate or board on either of its drive gates or 
 over its porch. It wears the same appearance of 
 languorous calm and uneventful domesticity which 
 characterizes every other house in the long and 
 somnolent street. And yet it is a habitation of 
 tragedy and sorrow beyond the power of human 
 language to express. It is a Rescue Home. 
 
 At the back of this house, under a broad veranda 
 where the sun's light enters cooled and greened 
 through a hanging curtain of whispering leaves, I 
 found a party of Singhalese girls, busy with needle-
 
 RESTORATION 239 
 
 work while an elderly Native woman read to them 
 from a book. Among these girls was a little child, 
 dressed in a sleeveless white jacket and a red and 
 yellow skirt, whose extreme youth and face of settled 
 suffering and unalterable grief at once moved my 
 pity and awoke my curiosity. She was under twelve 
 years of age. The tiny face, shadowed by clustering 
 dark curls, was dull and sorrowful ; there was no 
 brightness in the sullen eyes, no childhood in the 
 tragic little mouth. Her neck was so thin that a 
 child could easily have spanned it with two hands; 
 her arms were little more than skin and bone; under 
 the linen of her jacket the baby breasts only just 
 showed, as a cigarette case shows in a waistcoat 
 pocket. She was a child, and nothing but a child; 
 a child as unformed and immature as an English 
 girl of her own age. And she had come to the 
 Rescue Home from a hospital. 
 
 This is her story. 
 
 She does not remember a father. In rather sordid 
 poverty but not in actual misery she grew up under 
 the care of her mother, helping in the home and 
 playing in the streets like so many other children 
 in that crowded quarter of the city. At the age of 
 eleven her mother said to her one day : ' I cannot 
 afford to keep you any longer; I have arranged for 
 you to go to work, you will earn money and the 
 people will give you food and clothes.' 
 
 That evening the mother took her to a native 
 hotel, and handed her over to the man who had 
 bought her as part of his stock-in-trade. This hotel 
 still stands in Sea Street, near the Fish Market — a 
 vile place in a filthy alley of ugliness and iniquity. 
 The child was too frightened to cry out to her mother 
 not to desert her. Although she had no idea in the 
 world of her true purpose in that evil place she was
 
 240 RESTORATION 
 
 stricken with a paralysing terror and wanted to flee 
 from the noisy house and the brutal-faced man who 
 looked her over with scowling eyes. But she felt 
 herself to be powerless, as indeed she was, and 
 followed her master up a flight of crazy stairs to the 
 upper floor. He opened the door of a room, bade 
 her pass in, and told her she might go to sleep. 
 She woke in hell. 
 
 For six or seven months she remained a prisoner 
 in this house. There were three other girls to share 
 her misery and her degradation. They were fed on 
 the poorest rice, were given no money, were made 
 to work in the house, and were constantly beaten 
 by their master. Not once in all that time was she 
 allowed to go out of doors. Through the morning 
 she did the laborious housework; from the afternoon 
 to the small hours of the night she was the victim 
 of her master's trade. And the men who visited 
 this house were the lowest pariahs of the place — 
 loathsome and abominable coolies, drunken and 
 diseased sailors, the filth and offscourings of a Native 
 quarter in a seaport town. 
 
 Towards the end of her imprisonment, this child 
 just over eleven years of age, was smitten by one of 
 the most terrible diseases with which nature punishes 
 an intemperate animalism. It became so bad at last 
 that her master himself took her to the hospital, 
 claimed to be her owner, and said he would come 
 back to fetch her when she was cured. 
 
 One of the women doctors in this hospital, taking 
 an interest in the child, gradually got her story from 
 her, and at once sent to the Salvationist in charge 
 of the Rescue Home. The two women, both of them 
 practical saints of ihe twentieth century, determined 
 to save the child body and soul. For five weeks she 
 received all the love and care and science of the
 
 RESTORATION 241 
 
 hospital, and from the hospital she passed to the 
 love and care and science of the Rescue Home. The 
 man who had bought her came twice to the hospital 
 and demanded to have the child restored to him; he 
 had paid for her and she belonged to him ; he actually 
 attempted to threaten the hospital with proceedings 
 at law. 
 
 But the child was safe from this monster, and she 
 is likely to remain safe for the rest of her life. In 
 the Rescue Home she has become the pet and fond- 
 ling of the other girls, she is adored by the officers 
 in charge, and slowly — very slowly, of course — she 
 is building up the shattered strength of her body 
 and the ruined fabric of her mind. Often the poor 
 little creature will be found weeping silently and 
 secretly ; often she will accuse herself of being slow 
 and stupid at her work; and sometimes even to the 
 loving people watching over her restoration with 
 such tender solicitude, it seems as though she will 
 never be able to rid her mind of its terrible night- 
 mare of the past. But one of the Native Salva- 
 tionists, who is in charge of the needlework class 
 and who reads to the girls while they are busy with 
 their needles, said to me as she caressed this little 
 child with all the affection of a mother — ' She is 
 praying and improving.' 
 
 Among the girls seated in the green light of the 
 veranda busy with needlework, was one somewhat 
 older than the others; a handsome and capable young 
 woman, whose story I learned partly from herself 
 and partly from the Native Salvationist in charge of 
 the establishment. 
 
 She was a village girl, the daughter of humble 
 peasants, and, until disaster overtook her, had spent 
 all her life in the simple surroundings of the little 
 mud house which they called their home. At this
 
 242 RESTORATION 
 
 time she was a tall and gracefully-formed girl, past 
 the shapelessness of childhood and not yet a fully- 
 matured woman. 
 
 One day there came to the door of their village 
 house a venerable old man peddling various articles 
 of the household. As he talked to the mother, he 
 studied the girl, and presently he asked if the mother 
 could spare the child, ' for,' said he, ' I know of a 
 lady in Colombo who wants an ayah — a fine house 
 and the wages are fifteen rupees a month.' 
 
 To the villagers of Ceylon, I discovered, the name 
 of ' Colombo ' has the same magic which Paris has 
 for so many French provincials. It is to them a 
 fairy-land of blinding splendour and inexhaustible 
 delight. They see it as a city of enchantment, 
 sparkling with myriads of lamps, ringing with 
 music, and crowded from morning to night with 
 men and women dressed like Kings and Queens. 
 Little village children tell each other stories about 
 this magic cit}^ of Colombo; young girls dream 
 about it ; and young men do not rest until they have 
 been there. 
 
 ' When I heard him say Colombo,' the girl told 
 me, ' I felt so excited that I could not speak. Oh, 
 it seemed to me too wonderful to be true ! It was 
 more wonderful than the fifteen rupees a month, 
 which seemed to me like a fortune. I had always 
 longed to see Colombo, so that I had often dreamed 
 about it, but I never thought that my dreams would 
 come true.' 
 
 The mother, dazzled by the fortune so suddenly 
 presented to her daughter, parted with the child, 
 and that very day, without inquiry of any kind, the 
 venerable pedlar and the young girl started for 
 Colombo. They reached the city at night, and 
 leaving the railway station, made their way into the
 
 RESTORATION 243 
 
 narrow and bewildering streets of Slave Island. The 
 old man explained to the wondering girl that it was 
 too late to go that night to the lady's house, and 
 said that he would take her to a nice quiet hotel 
 where she could rest till the morning. He stopped 
 before the door of an evil-looking house, and bidding 
 the girl wait for him, went inside by himself. After 
 a few minutes he returned and conducted the girl 
 into the interior, where he presented her to the pro- 
 prietor. ' It may be a day or two before I can come 
 back and take you to the lady's house,' he said, in 
 farewell, ' but you must wait here till I come and fetch 
 you.' Then he departed, never of course to return. 
 
 After some three or four days the landlord came 
 to her and asked if she had money to pay her bill. 
 She had nothing. He became angry; but, when she 
 cried, he lold her that he would not hand her over 
 to the police. ' You must work to pay me back for 
 your food and lodging,' he told her, and she was 
 set to cook food and to scrub floors. 
 
 There were several women in this house and their 
 manner of living soon came to the knowledge of 
 the country girl. They received from their visitors 
 presents of cigarettes and cigars, clothes and a little 
 cheap jewellery, but no money. From each of their 
 visitors the landlord got what he could — any sum 
 from five rupees to fifteen — six shillings and eight- 
 pence to a sovereign. For this, he fed them, gave 
 them lodging, and treated them with a constant 
 brutality. His house was their prison, and he was 
 their jailer. 
 
 The country girl found herself as completely a 
 prisoner as the others. She was not allowed to leave 
 the house, and was carefully watched by her master 
 or his hirelings when her work took her near the 
 door or the windows overlooking the street. For
 
 244 RESTORATION 
 
 three days she was driven and harried at this house- 
 work till her body was fatigued to the point of 
 exhaustion and her heart almost broken by despair. 
 On the night of the third day she became like the 
 other girls in the house. 
 
 She remained a prisoner for a whole year, her one 
 attempt to escape being easily frustrated and most 
 cruelly punished. At the end of this time she was 
 obliged to go into the Lock Hospital, suffering from 
 the same disease as the child in the last story. 
 
 She responded at once to the kindness of doctors 
 and nurses, and showed a most intelligent interest 
 in the ministrations of the Salvationists. She said 
 to them, ' I do not understand all you tell me, but 
 I want to be good; if you will let me, I should like 
 to go into your home.' Every Thursday a Salva- 
 tionist paid her a visit, and gradually the poor 
 unhappy creature came into the soothing and re-creat- 
 ing atmosphere of religion. Towards the end of her 
 period in hospital, a woman from the brothel came 
 to see her. She sprang out of bed at sight of this 
 visitor, rushed to the bathroom, and locked herself 
 in. When they were able to assure her of protec- 
 tion and she was induced to open the door, she told 
 them that she would a thousand times rather die in 
 the hospital than go back to the brothel. They 
 promised to save her from the clutches of her tyrants, 
 and in a few weeks' time she was taken to the Home. 
 Nearly four years have passed since that day. She 
 is now one of the most enthusiastic workers for her 
 suffering sisters, and every other Sunday pays a visit 
 either to the Lock Hospital or the Jail with the 
 message of Christianity. In the Rescue Home she 
 is like an angel to the other girls, and is entrusted 
 with work, and helps them to forget the haunting 
 contagion of their past lives.
 
 RESTORATION 245 
 
 She told me that the majority of bad women in 
 Ceylon are without shame, and manifest no longing 
 to be good. The Eurasian women are the worst. 
 Many of the brothels are kept by German women, 
 who employ agents all over the island to get them 
 children of twelve years of age. The police of 
 Ceylon constantly come to the Salvation Army with 
 girls who have been ruined by these procuresses. 
 
 Another story shows another aspect of this rescue 
 work. A Singhalese Christian girl, twenty-nine 
 years of age, charming in manner, and pleasant to 
 look upon, is the sad heroine of this different tale. 
 During an absence of her parents from home, she 
 became as weak as water in the hands of a philan- 
 dering cousin, and finally yielded to him. For 
 nearly four months she hid her secret, and then it 
 was discovered by her mother. In a few minutes 
 the house was in an uproar. The mother stormed 
 at her, the father beat her without mercy, and finally 
 she was thrown out of the house and told never 
 again to darken its door. 
 
 The miserable girl wandered away to the houses 
 of relations, but in every case met with scorn and 
 derision. No one would take her in. Everybody 
 upbraided her. At last, in despair, she made her 
 way from the villages into the jungle, and there for 
 a whole week wandered aimlessly to and fro, broken- 
 hearted, terrified, starving, and despairing. It 
 seemed to her that all the world was against her, 
 that nowhere under heaven was there pity for her 
 condition. But she was young, she was strong, and 
 the passion to live was vigorous in her blood. 
 Hunger drove her out from the jungle, and she set 
 her face towards a village. She was now thin, 
 ragged, and wild-looking. Children eyed her 
 askance, women watched her with suspicion, some
 
 246 RESTORATION 
 
 of the men mocked her. However here and there 
 she found a person to give her a little handful of 
 rice, and at night she would lie down and sleep in 
 the shadow of a friendly doorway. It was better 
 than the jungle. 
 
 Her condition was soon obvious to all the world. 
 Instead of creating pity in the heart of humanity it 
 only intensified mocking and scorn. She was no 
 longer a woman, she was a pariah dog. They hunted 
 her away from their doors with bitter words and 
 wounding taunts. Now and then food was given to 
 her, but never a kind word. It was ' Take and 
 begone ' from village to village, till she felt herself 
 hated and loathed by all mankind. 
 
 At last she encountered something in the nature 
 of kindness. A woman at whose door she had 
 begged a little rice, said to her : ' You should go 
 to Colombo. There are some Christians down there 
 who call themselves Salvationists and who look 
 after people like you. They will take you into one 
 of their houses. You had better go to them at once. 
 It will soon be too late.' 
 
 With this crumb of comfort for her despairing 
 soul, the miserable girl tramped all the way with 
 her grievous burden to Colombo, and asked for the 
 Salvation Army. In a few minutes the whole aspect 
 of her life was changed. From being a pariah she 
 found herself treated with the most endearing kind- 
 ness and stimulated by words of strong and bracing 
 encouragement. They carried her to the hospital, 
 and when her baby was born, it was adopted by one 
 of the Salvationists. She entered the Rescue Home 
 for a week, and when her strength was recovered, 
 she set out to return to her home. 
 
 Now that she was no longer a scandal, now that 
 the child was born and taken from her, she hoped
 
 RESTORATION 247 
 
 that her parents would receive her with love and let 
 her be as one of the other children. But no sooner 
 had she entered her home than they flew at her with 
 reproaches. They brought back the past, they 
 struck her across the face with their hands, and they 
 called her wasa-ganya — the word, that stings a pure 
 woman. It was impossible for her to stay. Very 
 sorrowfully, with tears in her eyes and a most bitter 
 agony in her heart, the unhappy creature turned 
 away from her home, and homeless, parentless, 
 friendless, once more an outcast on the face of the 
 earth, went out into the world which is so cruel to 
 all and so perilous for lonely women. But this time 
 she knew that there was one place where doors would 
 be open to her, where a kind welcome would greet 
 her, and where she might live as a human being. 
 
 It is now over six years since she returned to the 
 Rescue Home in Ceylon, and all those years have 
 been marked by a wonderful deepening of her spiri- 
 tual life. She was described to me as ' admirable ' 
 — a girl who was always happy, always kind to 
 others, always energetic at her work, and always 
 grateful to those who befriended her. But for the 
 Salvationists, but for that always open door of the 
 Salvation Army, she must have ended her life in the 
 horror and ruin of depravity. ' Her father and 
 mother,' I was told, ' are grateful now, are sorry for 
 what they did in the past, and always give her a 
 kind welcome when she goes to see them.' 
 
 Other stories I heard in the Rescue Home, equally 
 tragic, equally hopeful, and equally illuminating; but 
 these three are perhaps sufficient to give the reader 
 an idea of the need for a real and saving religion in 
 the island of Ceylon. Buddhism does absolutely 
 nothing for the fallen, and has little strength for 
 the falling. The climate of the island, the presence
 
 248 RESTORATION 
 
 of a large number of young unmarried European 
 men, the lightness and the flippancy with which 
 purity is everywhere apt to be regarded in an age 
 of perishing superstition and triumphing mate- 
 rialism, make it essential for the health of the 
 Singhalese people, and in particular for the happi- 
 ness of Singhalese girls, that religion in its high 
 aspect of a noble morality should be constantly in 
 evidence throughout the length and breadth of 
 Ceylon. 
 
 If I may venture to express an opinion on the 
 difficult question of government — I would say that 
 more power should be given to the police to visit 
 the innumerable brothels of the big towns, that the 
 work of the native procurer and the German pro- 
 curess should be brought to a stop, and that the 
 severest punishment allowed by the law should be 
 meted out to any man or any woman who is keeping 
 children against their will in houses of immorality. 
 It is not easy to make war on vice, but to make no 
 war at all is to be guilty of a crime.
 
 THE BHILS 
 
 The more clearly we come to see that civilized man 
 is not a fallen angel but an ascending creature of 
 barbaric ancestry, the more interested we are likely 
 to become in those races of the earth who still pre- 
 serve for us in their manners, customs, and super- 
 stitions the earliest chapters in the history of our 
 strange and eventful progress. 
 
 It is intelligible enough that a gentleman in 
 England should wish to know about his great-great- 
 grandfather, or that a lady in Rome should spend 
 a considerable part of her life in convincing the little 
 group of her acquaintance that one of her ancestors 
 was a nobleman. But such archaeology is but the 
 toying of the nursery in comparison with that larger 
 interest in our antiquity which carries the mind back 
 to the very beginning of human emergences. For 
 there is not a single custom or manner or supersti- 
 tion of primitive peoples which does not hold a taper 
 to the darkness and mystery of our own complex 
 society and our own individual region of perplexing 
 consciousness. The most modern European may 
 find in the habits of a single aboriginal tribe still 
 inhabiting the world and still living the entirely 
 ignorant and absolutely superstitious life which pre- 
 ceded the rise of the Pharaohs and the birth of Greek 
 philosophy, an explanation of strange stirrings and
 
 250 THE BHILS 
 
 dim motions which haunt the chambers of his brain 
 and trouble his soul with an inexplicable persistence. 
 
 The vast continent of India is a monument to the 
 everlastingness of superstition. From the most 
 refined and philosophic Brahman down to the most 
 degraded Untouchable, this immense congeries of 
 humanity, this fifth of the entire human race, is 
 governed from birth to death by a wand of super- 
 stition to which the rod of Nero or the scourge of 
 the Inquisition was but as a snapping twitch. And 
 among these various peoples of India, but separated 
 from them as utterly as the sand of the Plains from 
 the waves of the Indian Ocean, there are tribes and 
 races of mankind still more ignorant, still more 
 superstitious, and still more primitive, who have 
 never been absorbed by the comparatively advanced 
 civilization of Hinduism and who preserve for us 
 in all the freshness and vivid power of actual life 
 the most barbarous manners and the most savage 
 superstitions of remotest antiquity. 
 
 In certain districts of India these strange and 
 separate peoples are termed ' Criminal Tribes ' ; in 
 others they are merely docketed as aborigines. For 
 the most part they live the nom.adic life of gypsies, 
 and get their living by bow and arrow, by fish-hook, 
 by spear, by intimidation, and by stealing. They have 
 been from the earliest times of the British occupa- 
 tion a thorn in the side of Government, and a costly 
 thorn in particular to the estimates of those provinces 
 in which they live and maintain a stubborn resist- 
 ance to honest work and the morality of the Ten 
 Commandments. ' It is men of this class,' says 
 Sir Bamfylde Fuller, ' who are said to be able to 
 steal a man's bedclothes off him. The tribes are 
 kept under close supervision, and efforts are made 
 to reclaim them, but without much success. The
 
 THE BHILS 251 
 
 best use that can be made of men of this class is to 
 enlist them as village watchmen. They are, as a 
 rule, faithful to their salt, and they are exceedingly 
 skilful detectives. They will trace a stolen bullock 
 by its footprints for miles across country.' He tells 
 a story which will help the reader to realize the mar- 
 vellous genius of these simple and ignorant people 
 in the province of crime : — 
 
 An acquaintance of mine, who had lived for 
 some time in the cantonments of Cawnpore, shifted 
 his residence to the civil station, a mile or two 
 distant, and amongst his other servants took his 
 watchman with him. A few days later, he received 
 an anonymous letter pointing out that the watch- 
 men of the cantonment were not of the same 
 community as those of the civil station, and 
 advising him to engage a new man. He thought 
 little of it, so it was decided to use a more forceful 
 argument. It was the hot weather, and, as usual, 
 he slept out of doors. Waking one morning, he 
 was amazed to see all his drawing-room pictures 
 swinging from the branches of the tree above him : 
 within the bungalow a party of ' ragging ' under- 
 graduates might have been enjoying themselves : 
 the furniture was turned upside down. His bureau 
 stood wide open. Money had not been touched, 
 but his stock of postage-stamps had been taken, 
 and was neatly disposed around the edge of the 
 lawn, on each stamp a pebble, so that it might 
 not be blown away. He made no more ado about 
 changing his watchman. (Studies of Indian Life 
 and Sentiment, p. 284.) 
 
 Sir Edmund Cox has lately told in his book, 
 Police and Crime in India, a story which shows 
 how the extraordinary ingenuity of the Indian
 
 252 THE BHILS 
 
 criminal is combined with a most reckless contempt 
 of human life. 
 
 A party of thieves one night broke into the 
 house of a banker named Girwar Prasad. They 
 effected their entrance by digging a hole through 
 one of the outer walls with a short, sharp-pointed 
 iron bar. The thieves had collected their plunder 
 and were departing, when Girwar Prasad awoke, 
 heard a noise, and ran down. He entered the room 
 just in time to see the last of the thieves crawling 
 out through the hole ; his legs were still inside. 
 With great presence of mind the banker ran for- 
 ward and forced himself between them. The thief 
 was now caught. With his legs separated he could 
 not get out, and with his arms and shoulders 
 beyond the wall, neither could he force himself 
 back. 
 
 Girwar Prasad summoned his servants and sent 
 for the police. Meanwhile he remained exultant; 
 through this thief the rest would be apprehended, 
 and his property recovered. But in this he was 
 disappointed. So soon as the other thieves found 
 that their comrade was fixed in the hole they took 
 measures to pre^^ent his betraying them. They 
 drew their swords, cut off his head, and carried 
 it off together with their plunder. The police, on 
 their arrival, found only a bleeding neck protrud- 
 ing from the hole, and a body that no one could 
 identify 
 
 How barbarous some of these people are may be 
 gathered from such information as Sir Bamfylde 
 Fuller gives of the head-hunting Nagas. ' No man,' 
 he says, ' can expect a nice girl to marry him unless 
 he can show her a ghastly trophy; and, so brutalized 
 are human feelings, that heads of women and even
 
 THE BHILS 253 
 
 of little children count for as much as the head of 
 a warrior; indeed, they count for more, as to kill a 
 woman or child a man has to venture himself well 
 inside the land of the hostile village.' Then there 
 are the Aghoris who are actually said to eat human 
 bodies : — 
 
 I came across one of them who lived on a sand- 
 bank in the Ganges, and arrested the corpses which 
 floated down-stream. Carrying a human skull, 
 they blackmail shopkeepers by threatening to 
 throw it upon their stalls, and to pollute irretriev- 
 ably their stock-in-trade. . . . There are actually 
 ten thousand persons who at Census time classed 
 themselves as Aghoris. All of them do not prac- 
 tise cannibalism, and some of them attempt to rise 
 in the world. One of them secured service as cook 
 with a British officer of my acquaintance. My 
 friend was in camp in the jungle with his wife and 
 children, when his other servants came to him in 
 a body and refused to remain in service unless the 
 cook was dismissed, since they had discovered, 
 they declared, that during the night time he visited 
 cemeteries and dug up the bodies of freshly buried 
 children. (Studies of Indian Life and Sentiment, 
 pp. 44, 45.) 
 
 Now, among all these various peoples of India 
 who are reckoned as something worse than untouch- 
 able by the orthodox Hindu, there are tribes here 
 and there whose superstitions are gross but not 
 abominable, and whose criminal instincts do not 
 greatly exceed the rather poetic pillaging of the 
 English poacher. These tribes, while they rank 
 above the cannibals and head-hunters of other 
 districts, retain all the most primitive customs and 
 superstitions of antiquity, and at the same time
 
 254 THE BHILS 
 
 manifest a certain inclination towards the English 
 influence. Such a people, for instance, are the 
 Doms, the Haburas and the Bhils, among whom, 
 thanks very largely to the courage and sagacity of 
 the greatest British statesman now in India, the 
 Salvation Army is beginning a work of remarkable 
 promise for civilization. Centuries of unspeakable 
 tyranny, and many years of an iron supervision by 
 the police, have made these people sullen and sus- 
 picious; but one cannot go amongst them in their 
 settlements and villages, or visit them in the prisons 
 where so many of them are incarcerated, without 
 feeling that the Salvationists have set their hands 
 to a work of the most romantic character and that 
 here, perhaps, more than in any other quarter of the 
 world a student of human nature may actually stand 
 and watch the rise of the soul from the very depths 
 of animalism to the faint beginnings of spiritual 
 existence. 
 
 The Bhils are said by the Encyclopcedia Britannica 
 to be * the remnants of a Mongolian race which first 
 displaced a yet earlier Negroid population, and was 
 then itself shouldered out by a Caucasian irruption.' 
 These people living shoulder by shoulder with the 
 most advanced civilization of modern times, bear in 
 their patient faces all the marks of this immemorial 
 antiquity. They have the worn and weary look of 
 travellers who have come a long journey, and on 
 that journey have seen such sights and experienced 
 such adventures as have destroyed in their souls for 
 evermore the faculty of wonder. They are a tired, a 
 quiet, and a conservative people. Although under 
 the influence of the British power they have ceased 
 to be marauders, they still cling to their bow and 
 arrows; and although they have adopted from the 
 Hindus the practice of burning dead bodies, they
 
 THE BHILS 255 
 
 still keep a link with their past by burying the dead 
 bodies of women.* Peaceful cultivators of the soil 
 and good soldiers, they remain as primitive and as 
 separate and as superstitious as those far-off ancestors 
 who poured into India before the dawn of history 
 and drove the horde of savage negroes into the 
 distant south. 
 
 A story of their courage and endurance was told 
 to me by a Salvationist doctor. The rivers are 
 infested with turtles, and sometimes a crocodile 
 makes his appearance ; when a half-cooked corpse is 
 taken from the fire and flung into the river, the 
 turtles swarm round it and begin to eat, until with 
 a smashing sound like a crack of thunder a croco- 
 dile's tail scatters the turtles and the crocodile takes 
 possession of the corpse. An unfortunate Bhil on 
 one occasion was grabbed by a crocodile, the sharp 
 teeth locking in the man's leg. Before he could be 
 dragged away, four of his friends seized him, and 
 then began a tug-of-war which resulted in a victory 
 for humanity. The man, with his leg torn and 
 lacerated beyond description, was brought fifteen 
 miles in a burning sun to the Salvation Hospital, 
 and underwent amputation without a murmur. The 
 doctor was then implored to return with his rifle and 
 shoot the crocodile. The wailing of women, coun- 
 terfeiting a funeral, attracted the crocodile. He 
 raised his head from the water and the doctor shot 
 him. A tremendous festival of joy celebrated this 
 event; and the man recovered. 
 
 * This fact I learn rom the Encyclopadia Britannica ; but I was 
 told by a European who has lived with the Bhils for something like a 
 quarter of a century that burying is only resorted to when there is not 
 sufficient wood for burning. I was not then aware of the infor- 
 mation contained in the Encyclopisdia Britannica, and did not ask 
 whether any difference is made between the dead bodies of men and 
 women. Mr. Edgar Thurston tells me that women, being of small 
 account, are generally buried instead of burned, to avoid trouble and 
 expense.
 
 256 THE BHILS 
 
 I learned from contact with these people that they 
 believe in no god, but that the crops induce them to 
 bestow upon the earth the title of a goddess— Mata, 
 or Mother Earth. Although they may fairly be 
 described as atheists they are yet firmly convinced 
 of the soul's persistence after death, and hold in 
 common with nearly all savage and primitive peoples 
 the doctrine of reincarnation. They believe that the 
 soul goes somewhere after death, and has the power 
 to return and afflict the living. Particularly do they 
 fear the returning spirits of a father-in-law or a 
 mother-in-law. Devil-dancers, who enjoy great 
 respect among these people, are more often called 
 upon to exorcise the incarnating spirits of these two 
 relations, who so frequently figure in the comic 
 drolleries of more civilized people, than any other 
 spirits, except an extremely malignant female devil, 
 named Dakan. Should a person fall sick, and the 
 devil-dancer fail to get rid of D^kan, who has caused 
 the illness, a Bhil family will move their hut — 
 perhaps a whole village will move — in order to 
 escape the haunting spirit. Death itself is attributed 
 to this devil. A person would never die but for the 
 enmity of Dakan. Some spirit of good is supposed 
 to preside over human life, probably Mata, the Earth 
 Mother, and when a person dies the Bhil says that 
 the devil has triumphed over this good spirit. 
 
 They are far from being vegetarians. They not 
 only eat flesh food, even the flesh of lizards, but 
 they cheerfully consume the dead body of any animal 
 found in the jungle. They have no scruples on this 
 head and hold that a man is free to take, kill, and 
 eat anything that he finds pleasant to the taste and 
 nourishing to his physical vigour. 
 
 Custom allows each man as many wives as he is 
 fool enough to saddle himself with, but in practice
 
 THE BHILS 257 
 
 one man finds one wife comfort enough. Girls 
 marry when they are about eighteen years of age, 
 and young men at twenty or twenty-four. The 
 marriage ceremony is one of high importance. The 
 bridegroom in his home and the bride in hers colour 
 themselves saffron, not only on the legs and feet, 
 and face and hands, but all over their garments. 
 For seven or ten nights each household keeps music 
 going from sunset to midnight — the bride sitting 
 sideways on the shoulder of a young man, one leg 
 over his chest and one over his back, and the bride- 
 groom actually performing the same gymnastic on 
 the shoulder of one of the girls who is a guest in 
 his house. As a conclusion to this junketing, the 
 relations and invited guests bring presents of money 
 — the union of a man and woman always being con- 
 sidered an occasion for co-operation among relatives 
 and their more intimate friends On the following 
 day the bridegroom is brought with music to the 
 bride's house, carrying money in his hand for the 
 bride's father. A sham quarrel immediately takes 
 place. The father of the bride says that the money 
 is not sufficient; the bridegroom swears that it is a 
 deal too much; voices rise to the pitch of clamour, 
 language becomes orientally florid, and just when 
 it seems that skulls must be cracked and faces 
 scratched, the friends of the bridegroom carry him 
 off some two or three fields away. Here they remain, 
 discussing how well or how ill the scene has been 
 acted, until the male relations of the bride arrive in 
 force to carry him back, after a pretence of conflict. 
 Arrived in the bride's house, the headman of the 
 village, or the oldest relation places a little raw 
 sugar in the mouths of the bridegroom and bride, 
 joins their hands together, and in the same breath 
 that he declares them man and wife demands his fee
 
 258 THE BHILS 
 
 of one rupee. The young men now seize the newly- 
 married wife and carry her off to the bridegroom's 
 house, where they feast together ; then they carry 
 her back to the house of her parents, and depart 
 with joy. At any moment after this transaction, the 
 bridegroom is free to go and fetch his wife — but he 
 is expected to bring presents for her family. 
 
 In the case of a poor man, they have to resort to 
 the Biblical expedient of working seven years for 
 the bride as a servant of her father : but during these 
 seven years the bridegroom cohabits with his wife, 
 and a man often has five cheerful children when he 
 goes out from the house of his father-in-law, a free 
 man and at last a married man. There is also another 
 arrangement, a third marriage system : a man will 
 pay down five or ten rupees for his wife, on the 
 undertaking of her parents that this sum of money 
 (6s. 8d. or 13s. 4d.) shall be faithfully returned if 
 the lady should prove unsuitable; or it may be that 
 the sum of money is paid every year, like the rent 
 of a house or the hire of a piano. 
 
 There are said to be some three millions of these 
 people, and in the sandy country of the Panch 
 Mahals you see them going through the jungle with 
 their bows and arrows, nearly naked, like little 
 creatures in the charming fantasies of Arthur 
 Rackham. The bowstring is a slice of cane, but 
 they are so practised in stealing stealthily upon their 
 prey that they do not need a far-carrying engine of 
 destruction. And the bow and arrow is very often 
 carried merely as the London clerk carries a cane in 
 the underground railway — as a decoration, or a com- 
 panion for the hand. The Bhils for the most part 
 are cultivators. 
 
 A Bhil generally sleeps in the fields or on the 
 veranda of his house. The house, built of teak poles
 
 THE BHILS 259 
 
 and bamboo branches plastered with mud, is occu- 
 pied by the women, the children, and the animals 
 — buffaloes for ploughing, goats for milk, and fowls 
 for eggs. The centre of the floor is usually the fire- 
 place, a small altar ot stones on which dried cow- 
 dung serves as fuel. The man rises when ' the yellow 
 starts in the sky ' — their own phrase for the dawn — 
 and smoking his huge and unwieldy hookah filled 
 with rude country-grown tobacco sprouts, starts out 
 for the fields. Before ' the yellow starts in the sky ' 
 the cock crows, and ai that clarion the wife gets up 
 from the floor of the house and begins to grind the 
 Indian corn for the day's needs. She then milks 
 the cows; and the children, sometimes only four 
 years of age, go forth with the cattle to forest or to 
 field. At eleven o'clock the man returns from his 
 weeding or ploughing, and he and the woman sit 
 down to eat. The meal consists as a rule of Indian 
 corn in the form of bread or boiled in butter-milk; 
 if there are no vegetables, salt is added, but salt is 
 never used when vegetables appear in the bill-of- 
 lading — that would be far too great a luxury. After 
 this repast, the woman goes out to work in the fields 
 and does not return till five in the evening. They 
 are only busy during seed-time and harvest, but two 
 crops in the year mean that their times of slackness 
 are never prolonged. 
 
 A farm of eight acres is an average size, and the 
 rent is about twelve annas an acre, all taxes included. 
 But this rent of a shilling an acre is increased by the 
 unjustifiable exactions of Native policemen and the 
 petty tax-collectors called talatis, which the British 
 Government labour so courageously to stop. Each 
 Bhil, for instance, takes it in turn to give a fowl to 
 the policem.an, and those who have no fowls must 
 needs buy one. It is never well to fall out with the
 
 26o THE BHILS 
 
 least of policemen or the smallest of petty tax- 
 collectors. * Their right hand is full of bribes.' The 
 Bhil is further harried by forced labour. His 
 bullocks and his carts are pressed into the service 
 of his Hindu masters, and he is made to carry wood, 
 to clean up police stables, or to do his share of night- 
 watching without recompense of any kind. For 
 instance, when all the people fled from Dohad in 
 the time of plague the Bhils were forced to go into 
 the town and act as watchmen. I asked an old Bhil 
 what his people thought about these things. He 
 smiled, spread his hands, and humped his shoulders. 
 'It is the Government, the Government; and we 
 must do it.' There was no more to be said. ' If we 
 do not do these things,' he said, ' we are beaten by 
 the police; it is better to do them.' Needless, of 
 course, to say, that the British Government, far from 
 countenancing this time-honoured oppression, does 
 all in its power to end it. 
 
 Theoretically the Bhil is a small farmer, but in 
 fact he is only the labourer of the sankar, the money- 
 lender, to whom every year his crops are mortgaged. 
 The Bhil is ignorant of accounts, and the kind 
 sankar does all this difficult work for him — even 
 arranging the matter of taxes. The Bhil usually 
 agrees to pay fifty per cent, but it is probable that 
 he pays a hundred per cent. The sankar allows 
 him to take what he needs from the crops, and 
 generally leaves a little standing in the ground. The 
 sankar is rich ; the Bhil is poor. 
 
 I inquired what the Bhils thought of this exist- 
 ence ruled by a money-lender. ' We are happy,' 
 I was told, and then, after a pause, ' but, there is a 
 feeling.' Apparently, so long as they have food, 
 they are content. No people in the world, I was 
 tdd, think less of to-morrow. And of all the people
 
 THE BHILS 261 
 
 in India I was told they are the most moral as regards 
 sexual matters. If a girl goes wrong, according to 
 them, she is got rid of; if for some reason she is 
 allowed to stay, the man is made to marry her. This 
 law is inexorable. They have a curious custom that 
 a girl who has ne^^er given birth to children must 
 wear white cloth over her breasts ; the gorgeous 
 colours beloved of all Indian women for their 
 breast-cloths are only allowed by the Bhils to those 
 women who have borne children. The women wear 
 great coarse bangles of brass on their legs, reaching 
 from the ankle almost to the knee ; they are fond of 
 jewellery, which they wear in their noses and lips, 
 as well as in their ears and around their heads. For 
 a bridegroom to kiss his bride in her gala attire 
 must be very like, one would think, thrusting the 
 lips through an ironmonger's shop — a clattering 
 and a metallic kiss, not pretty, but no doubt exhila- 
 rating after the feasting, dancing, and artificial 
 brawls of the marriage ceremony. 
 
 In the town of Dohad, at the house of a Swedish 
 Salvationist, I had a long conversation with a vener- 
 able Bhil who for nineteen years has lived the life 
 of a Christian and been a considerable force on the 
 side of civilization and progress among these primi- 
 tive people. This old ebony-coloured fellow, under 
 his shabby pink-coloured turban with its faded red 
 ribbon bearing the title Mukti-Fauj, which means 
 Salvation Army, sloping down towards the right 
 eye, presented a curious appearance. The long 
 Semitic nose hung far over the upper lip; the mouth, 
 depressed at the right corner, curled high up at its 
 left extremity, leaving two long horse teeth, half 
 yellow and half red with betel juice, exposed to 
 view; these protruding teeth pressed upon the lower 
 lip, which stretched right across the face and lost
 
 262 THE BHILS 
 
 itself in iron-grey whiskers of a straggling mutton- 
 chop order; the face, narrow at the chin, was 
 exceedingly broad over the prominent cheek-bones; 
 the eyes were large and handsome, the whites like 
 porcelain, the brown iris clouded by a bluish haze, 
 the lashes dark and thick ; and the entire counten- 
 ance was covered with fine wrinkles and marked by 
 deep lines, hollow cheeks, and heavy bags under 
 the eyes. 
 
 While he squatted on the ground, watching me 
 with an unmistakable scrutiny, the immense mouth 
 performed amazing evolutions in the business of 
 chewing betel-nut, while the v/ithered and claw-like 
 hands plucked spasmodically at the folds of the 
 dhoti in his lap. A little group of young men, one 
 of them his son, watched the interview on the 
 veranda from the dusty yard filled with bullock- 
 carts ; and the old fellow constantly flashed a glance 
 in their direction, a nonchalant and rather swagger- 
 ing glance, as much as to say, * You see what a 
 great person I am ; a Sahib from England has come 
 to hear about our people and it is from me that he 
 seeks his information.' 
 
 Kushal-Kangi, to give him his honourable name, 
 was at one time a devil-dancer, and was famous for 
 the passion of his frenzy and his power over evil 
 spirits throughout the Panch Mahals. He would be 
 fetched with pomp and circumstance to villages 
 afflicted by misfortune or to houses in which a 
 person had suddenly been seized by a demon or 
 stricken down with illness. He would dance, to the 
 increasing fury of the local musicians, until the sweat 
 poured from him, his eyes started from his head, 
 and he was so elevated that he could command the 
 devil to go out or the fever to be still. 
 
 I asked him whether he truly believed in those
 
 THE BHILS 263 
 
 days that devils did take possession of people and 
 that he himself had a genuine power over them in 
 his ecstasy as a devil-dancer. 
 
 He smiled and shook his head. * I never believed 
 in anything of that kind,' he answered. * I was a 
 devil-dancer for food and for respect. It was an 
 easy life. It amused me. It gave me the sense of 
 power which I found agreeable. I did not believe 
 in devils.' 
 
 One day, nineteen years ago now, the Swedish 
 Salvationist in whose house I was resting at Dohad, 
 came into the village of Ablod and there met Kushal- 
 Kangi. He was impressed by the Bhil's intelli- 
 gence, questioned him, and found that he did not 
 believe in devils or credit himself with supernatural 
 power. As they sat at meat together, for Kushal- 
 Kangi had offered the invading stranger the hos- 
 pitality of his house, the Salvationist said to him 
 point blank, ' If you do these things, in which you 
 do not believe, you are a hypocrite.' 
 
 He then spoke to him about Christianity, and 
 placing his hands on the Bhil's head prayed that 
 God would enlighten his soul, cleanse his heart, and 
 make him a messenger to his people. 
 
 * That was the start of it,' said Kushal-Kangi, 
 addressing my host. ' You put your hands on my 
 head, and you prayed to God. I felt that if it was 
 true I must worship. It was as if something outside 
 me was saying to me, "It is true: it is perfectly 
 true; there is a God, and He is good." I felt that 
 if God was good, I must certainly worship Him, 
 and obey Him. But was it true? Well, I thought 
 it was true ; it seemed true ; and there was a 
 strong feeling from outside me that it really was 
 true.' 
 
 I asked him what had most struck him in the
 
 264 THE BHILS 
 
 message of the Salvationist. He answered, ' That 
 God was good.' It was no illumination to him that 
 there was a God, he really did not very much care 
 whether there was a God or not ; but that there was 
 a good God, a God Who was perfect love and perfect 
 virtue and perfect holiness, this seemed to him such 
 a wonderful and beautiful idea that he wanted to 
 worship such a God immediately. 
 
 It is curious how the instinct to worship mani- 
 fested itself instantly in this man who had never 
 visualized a Supreme Being and who had never 
 prayed. We have for so long a period come to 
 regard prayer as a supplication for mercy and an 
 agonized entreaty for help and succour, that we have 
 almost altogether lost the higher, calmer, and far 
 more beautiful form of communion with the Father 
 of Creation which is expressed in worship. The 
 spirit which overflows in a glittering minstrelsy from 
 the skylark's throat, and which comes to us in the 
 splendid music of an organ, or in the highest poetry 
 of Wordsworth, is the spirit of outpouring and 
 ecstatic worship — adoration of the Ultimate, the 
 Everlasting, and the Beautiful. Prayer with the 
 majority of Christians, on the other hand, is some- 
 thing sad, mournful, and sombre — a spirit nowhere 
 to be found in Nature and, so far as I am aware, 
 unknown among primitive peoples. 
 
 Kushal-Kangi was confident in his assertion that 
 the first conviction which came to his soul was the 
 joyful and liberating desire to worship this good 
 God. He told me that he went away to the forest, 
 escaped from the village, freed himself from contact 
 with humanity, and there, on his knees, offered the 
 adoration of his heart to this new idea of a God Who 
 was good. It seemed to him, instantly and imme- 
 diately, not only the right thing to do, but the happy
 
 THE BHILS 265 
 
 thing to do. He was, as it were, transported by a 
 lovely and a perfectly beautiful idea. 
 
 But he was conscious of no effect from his prayer. 
 He had offered worship to God in the hope that 
 such a God might exist, not in the sure knowledge 
 of that sublime Existence. He rose from his knees 
 troubled and perplexed, but not discomfited. On 
 his return he knelt down again, and prayed in the 
 jungle that if a good God existed the truth of that 
 Existence might be made known to him. Some of 
 the villagers saw him on his knees and ran back to 
 the village with the news that Kushal-Kangi had 
 turned Muhamadan. He rose again from his knees, 
 and still unconscious of certainty, returned to the 
 villagCc As soon as he entered his house, his chil- 
 dren regarding him with wonder, he knelt down for 
 the third time and prayed for the manifestation of a 
 good God. 
 
 ' At that moment,' he said, * I felt God enter my 
 soul. I was possessed by God. There was no doubt 
 about it. And so I believed. I believed in Him 
 after I felt He had done me good.' 
 
 By the feeling of ' good ' he means a feeling of 
 happiness. It was to him, this conversion, a liberat- 
 ing and a joyful experience, a translation from 
 darkness to light, an uprising from sickness to 
 health. But as the days passed, he felt that he had 
 not got all the good and blessing out of this new 
 light in his soul. He wanted to be happier still; he 
 wanted to lose himself utterly in deeper ecstasies 
 of joy. 
 
 One day he was working in the fields when he felt 
 himself called to serve God just as if a voice had 
 spoken at his ear. Straightway he drove his buffaloes 
 back to the homestead, and started off on the eight- 
 mile walk to the house of the Swedish Salvationist.
 
 266 THE BHILS 
 
 * I want to join you,' he safS ; * I want to become a 
 Christian.' 'Why have you come to us?' he was 
 asked. 'Jesus has led me,' he replied; ' I feel that 
 He is leading me to bring my own people to God.' 
 He was accepted as a Salvationist, and returned to 
 his village to begin his extraordinary work of con- 
 version among the Bhils. 
 
 But at the beginning he was subjected to persecu- 
 tion. The headman of the village called a meeting 
 and excommunicated Kushal-Kangi for becoming a 
 Christian. To be outcasted among the Bhils meant 
 in those days that the guilty person could neither 
 smoke with others nor eat with others. This sentence 
 of isolation could always be turned aside by the 
 gift of a goat to the headman, but Kushal-Kangi as 
 a Christian would not stoop to a bribe, and as a 
 Christian he determined to make war upon the laws 
 of caste. 
 
 Now, among the Bhils, parents are greatly 
 respected, it is almost their only religion. The 
 eldest son of a family is called dada by his brothers 
 and sisters, which means ' father,' and is treated 
 with considerable reverence. When a man marries, 
 the eldest brother of his bride becomes his father- 
 in-law as well as the actual father of the bride. An 
 eldest son, in fact, is treated from the day of his 
 birth in a manner which educates him for the high 
 office of parent, so that the tradition of reverence 
 for age and respect for parents may never fall into 
 contempt. 
 
 Well, Kushal-Kangi was the head of a very large 
 family, and soon after he had been thrown out of 
 caste by the headman, he sent far and wide and 
 summoned all the members of this huge family to 
 a conclave. At this conclave Kushal-Kangi asked 
 his family to show their resentment of the insult put
 
 THE BHILS 267 
 
 upon their chief by the headman, and demanded that 
 they should outcaste the headman, condemn him to 
 pay the fine, and refuse to admit him into caste 
 until he had provided food for the whole village. 
 The dutiful assembly agreed to these proposals with- 
 out a dissentient voice, and the judge of Kushal- 
 Kangi found himself flung out of caste by a hand- 
 some majority. 
 
 It was this historic action of Kushal-Kangi which 
 settled the caste question among the Bhils — a truly 
 interesting and striking occurrence. 
 
 By the manner of his changed life, by the 
 eloquence of his preaching, and his untiring kind- 
 ness to those in sorrow and distress, Kushal-Kangi 
 has done an extraordinary work for Christianity 
 among a people whom it is really as difficult to tear 
 away from their immemorial superstitions as to 
 wrench a screw from a steel plate. For these Bhils 
 are of so great an antiquity that they are almost 
 without any sense of curiosity, without any desire 
 for betterment, and without any instinct of worship. 
 As they bear the oppression of their Hindu tyrants, 
 patiently and without a murmur of complaint, so 
 they accept life as they find it and lift not a finger 
 to make it happier or better. But Kushal-Kangi 
 can point to the last Census returns and show that 
 209 people in his village registered themselves as 
 Christians, while many others among them are Chris- 
 tians, but, fearing the Hindus, have failed to confess 
 the fact to a Government servant. For nearly sixteen 
 years he has been an officer in the Salvation Army, 
 and his village, over which he rules with the 
 authority of a King, is known far and wide as the 
 most virtuous, law-abiding, and happy community 
 throughout the Panch Mahals. 
 
 Although in sexual matters moral enough, and as
 
 268 THE BHILS 
 
 a rule a kind and easy-going people, the Bhils have 
 absolutely no control over their tempers and in drink 
 or in anger are careless of any consequences. Murder 
 is often committed in the Panch Mahals, murder of 
 which the Government seldom hears, and violent 
 explosions of rage lead frequently to feuds of the 
 fiercest and most blood-thirsty character. But even 
 quarrels and domestic brawls are unknown in the 
 village of Kushal-Kangi, and his influence is 
 slowly widening with that of the British Govern- 
 ment throughout the Bhil country, making for 
 gradual progress, enlightenment, and virtue through- 
 out the Panch Mahals. 
 
 I went with Fakir Singh on one occasion to a 
 jungle village, fourteen miles from the little town 
 of Dohad, miles and miles away from soldiers and 
 police, and miles away from the presence of a 
 Government official. As we stood on a bare hill, 
 looking down into the gloom of desolate valleys, 
 and far away to the violet mists of the horizon, where 
 the sun had gone down in scarlet suddenness, the 
 Fakir said to me : ' What a wonderful thing is this 
 Pax Britannica ! Here we are in a jungle country, 
 among a heathen people ignorant of God and acknow- 
 ledging no code of Christian morals, and we are 
 perfectly safe — a few Salvationist missionaries sur- 
 rounded on all sides by thousands of savages ! There 
 has been nothing quite like it in the world before.'
 
 THE DOMS 
 
 It is a unanimous opinion in India that Sir John 
 Hewett, the Lieutenant-Governor of the United 
 Provinces, stands first among the little group of 
 able men directing the government of India. 
 
 In a vast province so perfectly governed that 
 treason is almost unknown and even famine is 
 handled with so sure a hand that the mortality is 
 negligible, the presence of savage and lawless people 
 roving about the country to the terror of the peaceful 
 and the ceaseless anxiety of the police, was felt by 
 Sir John Hewett to be an anachronism too ridiculous 
 for the twentieth century and a slur on the British 
 raj too serious for him to suffer. 
 
 Apparently everything had been tried by Govern- 
 ment to bring these Criminal Tribes abreast of 
 modern times. They had been provided with land 
 and cattle, they had been so harried by the police 
 that they should have been as weary of a wandering 
 existence as Poor Jo, and their crimes had been 
 punished with an unmistakable severity. In spite 
 of all this, as their ancestors had defied the influence 
 of Hindu and Muhamadan, so these, their degene- 
 rate and scarcely human descendants, defied the 
 British influence. They would not work, they would 
 not keep the peace, and they would not refrain from 
 picking and stealing. Over the length and breadth 
 of the United Provinces they roved in beggarly
 
 270 THE DOMS 
 
 hordes, and wherever they went an army of police 
 had to follow them. Not only was it unthinkable 
 that these savages should be allowed to flout the 
 raj, but it was a very serious matter of expense for 
 the Government to keep an eye upon them. 
 
 It chanced on one occasion, when Sir John Hewett 
 was in England on furlough, that he heard of the 
 Salvation Army's work of reclamation and regenera- 
 tion among the broken earthenware of Europe. It 
 struck him at once that similar methods might 
 possibly be successful v/ith the Criminal Tribes of 
 India. Straightway, then, he paid a visit to General 
 Booth, and these two men, so dissimilar in a hundred 
 ways, met on the common ground of redemption 
 and discussed the soul of man. General Booth, as 
 most men know, is an old patriarch, thin and bowed, 
 with a face of ivory, dim eyes, hair and beard the 
 colour of snow^ — a face that age, goodness, and 
 unselfish labour have combined to soften and make 
 beautiful. Sir John Hewett, a very tall and burly 
 figure, is in the full strength and power of middle- 
 age, a man who carries himself like a soldier, has 
 in his eyes the soldier's hard and penetrating 
 scrutiny, and in his mouth the soldier's set and 
 resolute determination ; neither his life nor his tem- 
 perament have softened the hard and vigorous lines 
 of his countenance; he is a man, one would say, 
 committed to business, conscious of power, used to 
 obedience, and the sworn foe of sentimentalism. 
 
 But the old patriarch, with his dim eyes and 
 rasping voice, brought home to the mind of the 
 statesman one of the great fundamental truths of 
 human experience, which too often legislators 
 neglect, and the enemies of religion conveniently 
 ignore. That truth may be expressed in a favourite 
 epigram with Mr. Bramwell Booth, ' You cannot
 
 THE DOMS 271 
 
 make a man clean by washing his shirt.' If you have 
 a bad man to deal with, you must seek to alter the 
 set and current of his soul ; if you have tribes and 
 nations of evil-doers to govern, you must give them 
 religion. To alter the circumstances of a man's 
 life, to set him in conditions where his liability to 
 vice is small and where the commission of sin wnll 
 be most surely punished ; to deal, in short, only with 
 the body of a man when it is his soul that is the 
 cause of trouble — this is to fall upon most certain 
 failure. Only one power is known in all the long 
 experience of human history by which a bad man 
 may become a good man — really and truly a good 
 man; and this power is religion. 
 
 Sir John Hewett came to terms with General 
 Booth. The Government agreed to provide terri- 
 tory, and the Salvation Army undertook to provide 
 men; the Criminal Tribes were to be brought into 
 this territory, and the Salvationists were to be 
 responsible for their regeneration. 
 
 Now, in former times the Government had pro- 
 vided land for some of these Criminal Tribes, and 
 the experiment had proved a dismal failure. What 
 was the new factor in the present arrangement ? A 
 simple and a most human thing, and yet the most 
 miracle-working power on earth — Christian Kind- 
 ness. The great statesman, the resolute man of 
 affairs, yielded to the argument of General Booth — 
 love and kindness can do more for wicked men than 
 an army of policemen. 
 
 Before I tell the reader what I saw of this quite 
 amazing work among the Criminal Tribes of the 
 United Provinces, I should like him to realize the 
 courageousness as well as the statesmanship of Sir 
 John Hewett's action. No sooner was it known 
 what he was about, than a perfect outcry was raised
 
 272 THE DOMS 
 
 among the Brahmans against Governmental prosely- 
 tizing of the Natives. They had never lifted a finger 
 to help one of these unfortunate wretches; on the 
 contrary, they had held them off at arm's length as 
 Untouchables and had themselves by an unparalleled 
 ostracism and a most deliberate cruelty been respon- 
 sible for nine-tenths of their crimes and miseries; 
 but now, directly that it seemed Christianity was to 
 save these people, the Hindus became their loving 
 and devoted champions, and would save them from 
 the wicked missionaries of the British Government. 
 In all history can you think of a more unspeakable 
 hypocrisy? These precious Brahmans, whom we 
 are sometimes asked to regard as the keepers of a 
 pure religion or as noble patriots brutally trodden 
 into the dust of their own native land by the alien 
 heel of British tyranny, were not ashamed, are not 
 at the present day ashamed, to raise their voices 
 and to excite public indignation, on the score of 
 religion, against this little loving act of kindness 
 towards the men and women whom they themselves 
 had made pariahs and outcasts. 
 
 But their clamour could not shake the resolution 
 of Sir John Hewett. He stood firm against all the 
 fury that professional agitators sought to flog out 
 of the indifference of Hindu Democracy. He had 
 made it no stipulation with General Booth that the 
 Salvationists should not proselytize ; it was enough 
 for him that General Booth had accepted the task 
 of reclaiming and regenerating the Criminal Tribes, 
 and he was well aware that this act of Christian 
 Charity was not undertaken for the purpose of inflat- 
 ing the figures of Salvationist conversions. His 
 arrangement had been made, and by that arrange- 
 ment Sir John Hewett announced his unalterable 
 determination to abide.
 
 THE DOMS 273 
 
 Quite recently the political societies in India have 
 taken an interest in the Depressed Classes, one of 
 the great fruits of Christianity in India; and as I 
 showed in a former chapter, they are seeking to save 
 these Depressed Classes from the Christian mis- 
 sionaries in order to establish Brahmanism on a 
 surer and a broader foundation. Therefore the 
 Government of the United Provinces has been 
 severely criticized for its grants of land and money 
 to the Salvation Army, and only the other day a 
 debate took place in the Lieutenant-Governor's 
 council in which a grant of 2,400 rupees for the 
 Sansia Colony was opposed by the Hindus. On 
 this occasion the answer of Mr. Burn, the very 
 able Minister of Finance, was not only a perfect 
 justification of Sir John Hewett's policy, but was 
 so admirable a statement of the whole question of 
 these Criminal Tribes that I shall take leave to quote 
 it in full. He said : — 
 
 ' The history of the attempts made by Government 
 to reform and reclaim criminal tribes in these pro- 
 vinces is not an encouraging one. They began 
 many years ago and many different methods have 
 been tried. The tribes have been subjected to every 
 variety of discipline from the slightest to the most 
 severe. Attempts have been made to settle them on 
 the land. When fields were allotted to them, they 
 complained that they had no cattle. When cattle 
 were given to them, they sold them. They asked 
 for seed, and when seed was given to them, they ate 
 it instead of sowing it. Some years ago when a 
 settlement of Doms was in my charge the only 
 method which could be evolved of seeing that the 
 land was sown was to pay outsiders to sow the land 
 for them and have the operation performed under 
 the direct supervision of an official. There is one 
 
 T
 
 274 THE DOMS 
 
 difficulty in connection with any official attempt to 
 deal with these people on which special stress must 
 be laid. Recently there has been much discussion 
 in the public press as to what are called the depressed 
 classes. The criminal tribes which we are discussing 
 belong to these classes. Personally, I am strongly 
 of opinion that all of them would describe themselves 
 as Hindus and that all Hindus would so regard 
 them, but I would ask members to pursue this a little 
 farther and realize what their holding to the Hindu 
 religion means. Socially they are beyond the pale. 
 They may not enter a Hindu temple. No member 
 of a respectable caste will go near them if he can 
 help it. If one of them touches a member of a high 
 caste the latter is defiled. I make these remarks in 
 no carping spirit, but simply with a desire to put 
 the plain facts before the Council. Some of these 
 people practise habits which are repellant to every- 
 body. If their demands are rejected, or if they are 
 crossed in any way, they have recourse to actions of 
 unspeakable filthmess. It is obvious, having regard 
 to the strict ideas of the orthodox and high-class 
 Indian community, that any dealings with such 
 people are attended with difficulty, and when the 
 relation between the criminal tribes and Indian 
 officials is one of subordination on the one side and 
 strict discipline on the other, the difficulties are 
 immensely enhanced. I can say without hesitation 
 that Government is not satisfied with the success of 
 the work of reclamation through official means in 
 the past. This being so, the Council is invited to 
 consider what better promise is held out by taking 
 advantage of the offer of the Salvation Army to 
 assist. It is obviously desirable, and indeed neces- 
 sary, not only that every one engaged in the reform 
 of such persons should be competent and honest,
 
 THE DOMS 275 
 
 but also that they should put their hearts into their 
 work and should possess an unlimited fund of enthu- 
 siasm. I have given reasons why such enthusiasm 
 is not to be expected from Indian officials, and I 
 repeat that in doing so I have no desire to criticize 
 the tenets of Hinduism which make it impossible 
 that this should be the case. The Salvation Army, 
 on the other hand, works through officers who are 
 not only capable of enforcing such discipline as is 
 required, but are fully equipped with the necessary 
 enthusiasm. They live among the people and enter 
 into their lives in a manner in which no official can 
 be expected to do. Their influence is personal and 
 humanizing. They study and learn to know every 
 inmate of the settlement and enter into the lives of 
 their charges with a tact and zeal that are already 
 producing admirable results. Their officers are 
 usually married and both husband and wife work 
 together. These are briefly the a priori reasons why 
 the help of the Salvation Army has been gladly 
 enlisted by Government. Three settlements have 
 been placed in charge of the Army, (a) A Dom 
 settlement at Gorakhpur, (h) an Habura settlement 
 at Moradabad, and (c) a Bhatu settlement at the same 
 place. Most of the inmates of these settlements are 
 employed in non-agricultural industries in the hope 
 that they may be brought to practise a suitable live- 
 lihood and may give up their hereditary calling as 
 thieves. These industries include weaving, car- 
 pentry, bag-making, rug-making, rope-making, the 
 keeping of poultry and goats, and the rearing of 
 silkworms. Women are taught sewing, thread-work 
 and lace-work. For children an industrial school has 
 been opened to which parents or guardians volun- 
 tarily send their children from all districts. Night 
 schools for adults have also been established with
 
 276 THE DOMS 
 
 fair success. Melas, meetings, feasts and magic 
 lantern services are held at the settlement. The 
 inmates are thus made to feel that the settlement is 
 not a penal institution or a system of compulsory- 
 detention, though discipline is by no means over- 
 looked, and, when necessary, is enforced. In the 
 last resort a man who proves intractable in spite of 
 all efforts is sent away. From an economical point 
 of view the experiment is likely to cost much less 
 than any of its predecessors. A married European 
 officer receives with his wife fifty rupees a month. 
 No Indian of anything like the same capability would 
 be content with such a stipend. The explanation 
 why persons of some ability are ready to work as 
 they do for so little is found in the fact that their 
 wants are few and their zeal is great. The system 
 of central management is thorough. Government 
 is not asked to contribute even the full expense of 
 the upkeep of the settlements. After a term of years 
 the Salvation Army hopes that many of them will 
 be self-supporting. Some time must elapse before 
 the success of this institution can be really judged, 
 but prospects are excellent. 
 
 ' I have attempted to show that the experiment is 
 hopeful in every way. The Honourable Member 
 who proposed this resolution has asked, that in 
 making grants to the Salvation Army, Government 
 will insist that no attempts are made to convert these 
 people. If such a condition were imposed the Salva- 
 tion Army would almost certainly withdraw from 
 the work. Up to the present there have been few 
 conversions. It is possible that in future more of 
 the inmates will be drawn to join the religion of 
 those who have shown themselves to be their bene- 
 factors. This result can hardly be regarded as afford- 
 ing any genuine cause for complaint on the part of
 
 THE DOMS 277 
 
 the Hindu community. I have twice stated that the 
 enlightened classes of Hindus appear unable owing 
 to their religion to come into close personal contact 
 with these people. But if other religious organiza- 
 tions, whether Hindu, Muhamadan, or Christian, 
 choose to come forward to make similar efforts, if 
 they can show as good credentials as the Salvation 
 Army has shown, and that they are ready to 
 co-operate as the Salvation Army has co-operated, 
 I do not think there would be any reluctance on the 
 part of the Government to afford them such assist- 
 ance as has been given to the Salvation Army. 
 Last of all, the members of the tribes themselves are 
 entitled to some voice in the matter. I have recently 
 seen a letter describing the latest development and 
 will conclude my remarks by reading an extract 
 from it. The letter says : "A party of Bhatus are 
 marching towards Moradabad from Farrukhabad to 
 apply for admission into our settlement. There are 
 a lot of men in the party who are hiding in the 
 jungles to keep away from the police." The simple 
 brevity of this account is sufficient. I ask the 
 Council to oppose the resolution on the ground that 
 it would destroy at its inception the most promising 
 experiment which has yet been tried, an experiment 
 which has as its aim the elevation of an unfortunate 
 class which will otherwise remain sunk in degrada- 
 tion and a nuisance to its neighbours.' 
 
 From this official utterance the reader will perceive 
 that the Government's difficulty in dealing with the 
 Criminal Tribes is a great one, that it is complicated 
 in recent times by the jealousy of Hindu politicians 
 working for the reform of Brahmanism, and that 
 religion is recognized by the greatest statesmen in 
 India as a supreme force in the regeneration of 
 humanity. The reference of Mr. Burn to the
 
 278 THE DOMS 
 
 * necessary enthusiasm ' of Salvationists seems to 
 me an utterance significant enough to attract the 
 attention of politicians in Europe and to arouse the 
 zeal of Christendom. 
 
 Certainly what I saw of Salvation Army work 
 among the primitive peoples of India vastly increased 
 my respect for that extraordinary organization, which, 
 all over the world, is doing spade work for civiliza- 
 tion with results that are among the first evidences 
 of Christian truth. I shall now give the reader some 
 idea of this work in the United Provinces, beginning 
 with a numerous and interesting tribe known as the 
 Doms — a name which is pronounced like our word 
 domes. 
 
 I made acquaintance with these people at Gorakh- 
 pur, one of the cleanest and pleasantest towns in 
 all India. The settlement is just beyond the native 
 quarter, and in charge of it, alone with all these 
 dangerous criminals, is a Scotsman and his wife. 
 The first sight that struck me on passing through 
 the gateway and entering the dusty square sur- 
 rounded by mud houses, was a pretty and fair-haired 
 British child standing in the midst of half-naked 
 and wild-looking natives — the child of the Salva- 
 tionists. The full romance of this spectacle did not 
 come home to my mind until I had studied the 
 Doms and penetrated into the savage darkness of 
 their minds. 
 
 The men are a tall and muscular race but without 
 the smallest suggestion of enthusiasm, virility, or 
 intelligent consciousness in their heavy and animal 
 faces. The women, on the other hand, struck me 
 as handsome if fierce and tigerish creatures — tall and 
 vigorous women who held their heads splendidly, 
 walked like goddesses, and flashed great eyes of 
 confident self-approval at any stranger who presumed
 
 THE DOMS 279 
 
 to gaze at them. To look from the men to the women 
 
 was like looking from one race to another, from one 
 epoch to another epoch, almost from barbarism to 
 civilization. In no race of men I have ever encoun- 
 tered was the feeling stronger with me of a soulless- 
 ness and absence of mentality which seem sometimes 
 to separate uncivilized people from the human 
 species. One felt that these people were mankind 
 in the making, the dough of humanity, not the bread, 
 something out of which the race of man might ulti- 
 mately be produced ; one did not feel that they were 
 ignorant, weak, fallen, or degenerate; the central 
 conviction was that they represented some transi- 
 tional species between the absolute animal and the 
 incipient man. 
 
 There are many hordes of this gypsy-like tribe in 
 the United Provinces. They are thieves by tradition 
 and by nature, and the vigilance of police and the 
 rigour of prison have combined to make them feel 
 that life is a misery. Until Government entrusted 
 them to the Salvation Army, I do not suppose a 
 more wretched and unhappy people were to be found 
 on the earth's surface. For while stealing seemed 
 to them the only occupation of life and the only 
 means of living, law and order stood in their path, 
 dogged their footsteps, and laid them by the heels 
 on every occasion that they followed their natural 
 instincts. They tell stories to each other of their 
 ancestors. According to their tradition there was 
 at one time a Dom rajah. In those days they 
 were rich. They built fine houses and laid out 
 magnificent gardens. They fought for their wives 
 — Homeric wars. When a man stole another man's 
 wife, the relations of the defrauded man would rise 
 up and go in pursuit of that wicked man. Life 
 was good then — a ceaseless battle.
 
 28o THE DOMS 
 
 But these stories only come on the rarest occasions. 
 The general talk is of thieving and crime. The 
 Doms have become a tribe of petty thieves, stealers 
 of dirty towels and goats and fowls, and their con- 
 versation has descended to the pettiness of their 
 thefts. Talk of this nature is occasionally diverted 
 by ghost stories. 
 
 They have a conception of some life after death, 
 but cannot say what that life is like and show very 
 little curiosity concerning it. They believe that there 
 will be a place for the Doms in the next world. 
 When a man dies they place drink and curry in 
 the mouth, lay a pipe in the grave, and say to the 
 corpse, ' When you wake up in the next world be 
 sure and go to the Dom Khana, where you will get 
 plenty of gambling.' They do not trouble about 
 this next world ; they do not care what becomes of 
 them or where they go ; and they think that exactly 
 the same fate — whatever it may be — awaits both good 
 and bad. 
 
 They have an absolute faith in the devil, but do 
 not place him outside of the w'orld. They believe 
 that the earth belongs to him, or at any rate that he 
 is the chief power on the earth, and to him they 
 attribute every ill and every misfortune, and even 
 death itself. They are afraid of the devil in this life, 
 terribly afraid, but they laugh at the idea that there 
 is any devil in the next world. They tell one with 
 emphasis, ' The devil lives in this world.' Like the 
 Hindus they number amongst them men who profess 
 to cast out devils. 
 
 Once upon a time the Government gave these 
 people land, ploughs, and cattle. The Doms killed 
 the cows, ate them, and sold the hides. The land 
 was taken away from them for this dishonourable 
 conduct. And now they feel that a great act of
 
 THE DOMS 281 
 
 injustice has been perpetrated against them. They 
 claim that the land is still theirs. Certain Doms, 
 in fact, live on this land. Of all the subjects in the 
 world the one they are most eloquent about is this 
 ' robbery ' of their land — they will talk to you about 
 it with flowing words, faces of indignation, and 
 gestures of a most righteous anger. ' The land was 
 given to us,' they say; ' how can it belong to other 
 people?' 
 
 I noticed that while the young men and lads were 
 as dough-like and loutish as the grown men, the 
 younger children showed evidences of brightness 
 and intelligence. The handsome and tigerish women 
 get their fine looks from the sway they exercise over 
 the men ; women do not steal, but they tell men to 
 steal; no man, they say, is worth marrying who has 
 not stolen so much jewellery ; they are the spokesmen 
 for the men and can face a Government inspector 
 or an official of the police with an almost insolent 
 self-assurance. But the brightness and intelligence 
 of the children come from another source. They are 
 the first-fruits of education, kindness, and the in- 
 fluence of Christianity. The response they make to 
 the treatment of the lonely Scotsman and his wife 
 is remarkable. They seize at once the notion of 
 morality, the difference between right and wrong, 
 the idea that goodness is something better and wiser 
 and fitter than sin and crime. Not only this, they 
 exhibit undoubted intelligence, and become skilled 
 weavers and makers of carpets. One touch of 
 kindness — how romantic to think it came from 
 Scotland ! — has transformed these young barbarians, 
 marked for misery and evil, into quick-witted, moral 
 and happy human beings. 
 
 But it is heartbreaking work for the lonely 
 Scotsman and his wife to make the adult Dom
 
 282 THE DOMS 
 
 conscious of a good God and a revealing Christ. 
 Here and there they see the light break into the 
 darkness of a soul, iDUt for the most part to attempt 
 to teach religion to these people is like trying to 
 teach a dog to sing or a parrot to paint. 
 
 Among their converts is a very interesting man, 
 so superior in appearance to the other Doms that I 
 could not at first think he belonged to them ; a man 
 between thirty and forty, with regular and handsome 
 features, intelligent eyes, a firm mouth, and hair so 
 carefully parted and brushed and moustache so 
 dandified that but for his black skin he might have 
 passed for a European man of fashion. 
 
 His name is Chitra, and he was born in a Dom 
 village. He roamed with his parents in the jungle 
 till the Government drove them into a Khana. He 
 remembers little of the jungle life, but his parents 
 told him about it, and talk in the Khana was chiefiy 
 about the crimes committed during that wandering 
 life. Religion of any kind was never mentioned. 
 He had absolutely no idea of a God. His ideas of 
 right and wrong were made for him by Government. 
 To steal was wrong because it meant the jail. 
 Apparently there is no code of morality among the 
 Doms. A husband may share his wife, if the wife 
 agree ; trouble never arises unless the husband 
 objects, and then there is always a fight. One thing 
 alone among them is counted indubitably wrong, 
 and that is the violation of a child. After thirteen 
 or fourteen a girl is free to the world, but before that 
 age she is sancrosanct. To lie, far from being 
 wrong, is a high attainment. Nothing is counted 
 greater among them than the ability to deceive. 
 Drunkenness is highly enjoyed, and is not con- 
 sidered wrong; they rejoice that for a couple of pice 
 a man can buy enough arrack to make him supremely
 
 THE DOMS 283 
 
 and deliciously drunk. It is the finest thing in the 
 world to them, this escape from the burden of con- 
 sciousness and the ennui of their wretched existence. 
 They are extremely taciturn among themselves, and 
 will seldom declare how they came by money, 
 jewellery, or any other property cunningly acquired 
 from the common enemy. A man will suddenly give 
 evidences of prosperity. His greatest friend will say 
 admiringly, ' You are very rich.' The other will 
 bow his acknowledgments. After a pause the friend 
 will ask, ' How did it come?' — and the answer will 
 be ' Who knows ?' Again a pause, and then the 
 questioner will inquire confidentially, ' Was it 
 stolen ?' And with a blank countenance the lucky 
 man will reply, ' Who knows?' 
 
 Chitra told me the story of his conversion. * When 
 I came into the Salvation Army Settlement I learned 
 to work and I listened to what was said to me. I 
 got to know that God had made me. It must have 
 been the Spirit of God that revealed this knowledge 
 to me. It came suddenly. It did not seem strange. 
 At once it seemed true. My spirit answered as if 
 it knew. I remember that when I was asked, " Where 
 is God? " — I replied, " In every place." And when 
 I was asked, " Where is God as far as you are con- 
 cerned?" — that I answered, "In my heart." And 
 I used to pray, " Open my heart's door." I became 
 conscious in my heart of God telling me what was 
 right and what was wrong ; I am still conscious of 
 God in my heart; He is always telling me what is 
 right and what is wrong.' 
 
 I asked him, ' Can you remember what were your 
 first feelings when you heard that there was a good 
 God?' ' My first feeling,' he replied, ' was fear. I 
 was afraid because of the wrong in me.' ' Had 
 you been afraid because of the wrong in you, before
 
 284 THE DOMS 
 
 you heard of a God ?' ' No, it did not trouble me. 
 When I felt that there truly was a God, then I was 
 afraid. But I was not afraid for long. After my 
 fear, then came gladness. I began to feel happy. 
 Little by little, for a year and a half, I was learning 
 about God. Then the truth came to me, and I was 
 no longer afraid at all.' 
 
 Soon after he had settled down to a useful life, 
 the desire to have a child became very great with 
 him. He had been married for some time, but no 
 children had come to cheer his home. With a 
 Dom, as with every Hindu, the desire for a child 
 is so great as to be a passion. Chitra, fresh from 
 savagery, could not control this instinct. He looked 
 about in the Settlement, saw a woman whose husband 
 was in jail, and took her into his home. The Salva- 
 tionist, discovering this state of things, turned Chitra 
 and the second wife out of the Settlement. In two 
 months he returned and begged to be taken back. 
 His repentance was sincere. The husband of the 
 second wife was out of jail and ready to take his 
 wife and to forgive her for this union with Chitra. 
 As for Chitra's wife, she wanted nothing better in 
 the world than to have her husband restored to her. 
 So the matter ended, and both couples are now thor- 
 oughly happy and the best of friends. But Chitra's 
 wife came at Christmas-time to the wife of the Salva- 
 tionist, and asked if she might have a doll for her 
 present. Whether this request was made out of the 
 hunger and pathos of her motherless heart, or 
 whether it is a relic of that ancient homoeopathic 
 magic common among almost every primitive people, 
 I do not know; but it was rather a tragic sight to 
 see the pretty wife of Chitra with the doll in her lap, 
 and Chitra looking on, and trying to make it seem 
 a matter of no consequence.
 
 THE DOMS 285 
 
 Chitra has been three times in prison. His first 
 sentence was a year for burglary, and at the time 
 the burglary was committed he was asleep in his 
 own house. His second sentence was a year for 
 stealing, and again he was innocent. The third 
 sentence was one of two years, and this time he was 
 really guilty — he had run away from the village to 
 escape the persecution of the police. He told me 
 that he never worked ; that he used to get his food 
 by begging. The Doms, he said, are very clever 
 at whining money and food out of other people ; but 
 they boldly intimidate and threaten the farmers who 
 are now in possession of their land — the land once 
 given to them by Government. 
 
 I asked him what was the general feeling among 
 the Doms concerning themselves and their position 
 among other peoples. ' The Doms are proud of 
 themselves, because they know that other people fear 
 them. They like to think that they can frighten a 
 man by looking in at his door or following him into 
 the fields. But they are now tired of a life which is 
 never safe from the police, and they are coming to the 
 Salvation Army in considerable numbers, begging 
 to be taken into the Settlement and taught a trade, 
 or at any rate protected from police interference.' 
 
 I inquired if they readily understood the religion 
 of Christianitv as he explained it to them. ' It is 
 most difficult,' he answered, 'to make them under- 
 stand anything about religion. They understand 
 the morality of Christianity, but not the religion. 
 When you say to them. It is wrong to do this or it 
 is sinful to do that; they will nod their heads, and 
 they will tell you, "That is good teaching." But 
 when you speak about a good God in heaven, about 
 love for this God, about longing to see Him, and 
 about the promise of Jesus — no ! they do not under-
 
 286 THE DOMS 
 
 stand; it puzzles them; they shake their heads and 
 say, " We do not know." To show you how difficult 
 it is; they could not understand prayer when they 
 first came into the Settlement ! New people who 
 come in now, laugh when they see us praying. They 
 do not know what prayer is, and when we try to 
 explain, they laugh; they think it foolish. But the 
 word has become a part of their new language. 
 When we hold a meeting, no matter what it is 
 about, they say to each other, "Come to Prayer." 
 Some of them are more intelligent than others. Some 
 are completely changed by religion. But most of 
 them are too ignorant, or too tired, or too miserable 
 to care anything about it. They are not even 
 curious. It is very seldom that they talk about 
 religion amongst themselves. Hardly ever do they 
 ask me a question. And my difficulty is, that while 
 I can explain to them the feelings of my own heart, 
 I can never say whether they understand. They 
 never tell you, "We do not understand," and they 
 never ask, "Will you explain this or that?" — they 
 only say, "We do not know." But it is certain 
 that they are happy here. Doms come from all 
 parts, begging us to find room for them; and they 
 understand the morality of Christianity directly we 
 begin to teach them. The next generation will be 
 civilized, and Christians.' 
 
 It is worth noticing that in the case of these Doms 
 the appeal has first to be made to the reason, not 
 to the heart. Their reason responds to moral 
 teaching; but their hearts remain obstinately closed 
 to emotion and love. Among civilized people, 
 religion appeals first to the heart, and, as Coleridge 
 so well pointed out, the intelligence is developed and 
 enlarged afterwards, by the healthful action of this 
 cleansed heart.
 
 THE DOMS 287 
 
 Another Dom spoke to me about prison life. 
 What he narrated is probably true, but the Govern- 
 ment, of course, have no hand in the shameful part 
 of it. It is the Indian who is hard on the Indian. 
 Let the English chief turn his back, and Native 
 afflicts Native, and the Jack-in-offlce becomes a 
 tyrant. I could give many instances of this unfor- 
 tunate state of things. ' In jail,' said this Dom, 
 ' they give us little food and much water. They do 
 nothing to teach us or touch our hearts. The 
 warders are very brutal. They carry a stick like a 
 roller, and they hit us with it. They say to us, 
 " If you don't make your relations give us money, 
 we will beat you." Doms come to us and beg for 
 money to give to these warders, so that their sons or 
 their fathers or their brothers may not be beaten. 
 One warder would put men in water up to the neck 
 for an hour. First he would beat them, then put 
 them in the water; then take them out, beat them, 
 and put them back in the water; and a third time. 
 Beat — water; beat — water; beat — water; three times. 
 Other warders hit men with their fists. When a 
 Dom comes out of prison he is often dazed and 
 numb ; many die soon after. One warder watches 
 at night to prevent talking, fighting, smoking, and 
 gambling. No talking is allowed night or day. I 
 was in prison for two years, all except two months; 
 it was terrible. I came to the services in the Settle- 
 ment because I wanted to give up thieving and lying, 
 to do work, to earn my living, and to remain in the 
 peace and happiness of the Settlement. I can now 
 earn nine and a half rupees a month. I say to the 
 others, "Better for you to be like me. I do not 
 steal. I am not sent to jail. I pray to God. I earn 
 money. I am happy." They see that I am happy. 
 I always say to them, "See how happy I am. Is
 
 288 THE DOMS 
 
 it not a fine thing to be happy?" And they say, 
 "It is true; we want to be good." Oh, a great 
 change is taking place among the Doms. The old 
 race will die out, and a new one will be born. All 
 the children will soon be Christians. There will be 
 no more crime, and no more jail.' 
 
 The splendid little Scotsman in charge of this 
 Settlement agrees that a great change is taking 
 place, although he makes the frank acknowledgment 
 that no one could say the Doms are Christians. 
 'When we first started,' he said, 'I used to be 
 wakened from sleep in the middle of the night by a 
 noise like pandemonium, and I had to go down and 
 separate the men, who were fighting like wild beasts. 
 It really was hardly safe in those days. But we stuck 
 to it, and prayer and kindness have succeeded so far 
 as to put a stop to all fierceness and fighting. They 
 realize now that the Mukti-Fauj is here to help them ; 
 that we are not agents of the police, but Christians 
 trying to be kind and helpful. I do not think we 
 should be criticized for our slowness to convert. One 
 must recognize that our task is first to make the 
 Doms human, and then Christians. They are 
 demoralized at present by their own habits and by 
 the brutality of the police. There are only some 
 four European officers to all the police looking after 
 these three million Doms; it is impossible to prevent 
 tyranny and injustice. But there has been a vast 
 improvement among the police in recent years. 
 Sir John Hewett has handled this matter finely. He 
 has not relaxed the severity which is really necessary 
 in dealing with large bodies of nomadic and 
 marauding tribes, but he has taken steps to prevent 
 that severity from becoming the weapon of the 
 blackmailer. The Government, indeed, has been 
 splendid in this matter. One of them came to see
 
 THE DOMS 289 
 
 our Industrial Exhibition, and he said pubHcly that 
 by goings for the inside of the Doms instead of the 
 outside, the Salvation Army had done more in two 
 years than the Government, with all the forces of 
 law and order at its disposal, had been able to do in 
 twenty-five years.' 
 
 He told me that in the worst of these Doms there 
 is always something to which appeal may be made. 
 One of these police-hunted wretches, he said, went 
 away to Jamaica and there made money, learned 
 English, secured a good position, and was free of 
 all fear; but he came back to the Dom country and 
 was almost immediately seized by the police and 
 thrown into jail. ' Why did you come back?' asked 
 the Scot. ' Dis heart,' he answered, placing his 
 hand on his breast and bursting into tears, ' long 
 to see poor old mother.' 
 
 I paid a visit to the jail on a certain Sunday 
 morning, as I wanted to see the religious service 
 which the Salvation Army is now permitted to hold 
 in the prison for the benefit of Dom prisoners. We 
 drove out from Gorakhpur in a carriage, and passed 
 through charming country rendered more delightful 
 by the brightness of the sun, the freshness of the 
 air, and the scents of Spring which came to us on 
 the cooling wand. The jail is approached by a long 
 avenue of alternate tamarind and teak trees, the pale 
 red walls, tiled roofs, and gate of entry with its 
 armed sentinel, blocking out the tender blue of 
 distance with a sinister abruptness. But even the 
 prison walls, the guarded gate, and the threatening 
 bayonet of the sentry, could not rob the goodness 
 from the air or cloud the joy of that perfect morning 
 in Spring. I had no melancholy thoughts or feel- 
 ings of depression as the gate opened and I passed 
 into the shadow of this human cage.
 
 290 THE DOMS 
 
 Through the heavy gateway one passed into a 
 paved court, from whose coolness and shadows one 
 saw that the avenue of trees left outside the barred 
 door, but this time formed only of tamarinds, was 
 continued across a green and sunny space to the 
 inner buildings of the prison. Under the two first 
 tamarind trees on the left hand side of the central 
 path crossing this space, and occupying in horseshoe 
 formation a wide circle of broken pink brick between 
 the path and the grass, was gathered the congrega- 
 tion of Dom prisoners. They were dressed for the 
 most part in awkward thick hairy coats of dark grey 
 edged with white, and wore from a steel ring circling 
 their necks a block of wood stamped with the dates 
 of their sentences and the Act under which they had 
 been convicted. Two or three had steel gyves upon 
 their ankles, but the majority wore only a single 
 ring on one leg, to which the full fetters would be 
 attached when there was any danger of escape. They 
 were squatting on their haunches, the arms laid 
 across the knees, the heads inclining wearily in 
 every case towards one of the humped shoulders. 
 Upon their shaven heads was a small round cap — 
 foul, greasy, and worn at as many different angles 
 as there were prisoners. 
 
 Before this horseshoe of wretched humanity, was 
 a row of chairs on which we were invited by the 
 Salvationists, two of them converted Doms, to take 
 our seats. The sun shining through the soft leaves 
 of the tamarinds chequered the pink ground with 
 light and shade and sprinkled a dust of gold upon 
 the unhappy captives; two or three warders in khaki 
 and tall turbans of gloomy blue, their club-like 
 truncheons under their arms, stood looking at the 
 gathering in the full sunlight of the central path ; 
 gangs of prisoners passed every now and then on the
 
 THE DOMS 291 
 
 narrow paths slanting across the grass of the court; 
 ten or eleven prisoners at a distance of some fifty 
 yards sat upon their haunches and listened to the 
 service ; the Native doctor was busy weighing a 
 section of his five hundred captives on the opposite 
 side of the avenue ; the clink-clank of prisoners toil- 
 ing in the blacksmith's shop came to us from the 
 distance ; in the trees, on the roofs, and in the dust 
 of the paths birds were quarrelling and chirping with 
 all the energy of urgent controversy. 
 
 The service was extremely simple. The Salva- 
 tionist of the Settlement, making his rich Scotch 
 accent sound through his Hindustani, repeated 
 sentence by sentence the words of a hymn and then 
 beating time with his right hand led the singing. 
 This singing was the work of the Salvationists. The 
 crouching prisoners sang not a w'ord and in their 
 eyes was the dull listlessness of a dense stupor. A 
 prayer followed, a prayer that God, Who is Father 
 of all men, would make Himself manifest that day 
 and bless with His presence and His mercy the 
 service held in the prison. None of the prisoners 
 bowed his head, closed his eyes, or covered his face. 
 Afterwards the same Salvationist spoke of Christ 
 and the revelation made by Him of God's way to 
 the Kingdom of Heaven. The Doms did not shift 
 their positions nor manifest the least interest. There 
 was more singing, and then one of the converted 
 Doms, dressed in the red jacket of the Salvation 
 Army, bareheaded and holding in his hand a New 
 Testament, stood before the prisoners. He told them 
 to open their hearts to the Spirit of God. ' It is 
 wrong,' he said, ' to steal; it is wrong to get drunk; 
 it is wrong to gamble and fight. When you do these 
 things, the police catch you, and you are locked up 
 in prison. See how you suffer ! Sin is always
 
 292 THE DOMS 
 
 punished. You cannot be happy while you do 
 wrong. It is only by doing good that a man can 
 be happy. Sin is punished on earth, and it is 
 punished in hell. Heaven is only for those who are 
 good and love God. If you want to go to heaven 
 you must be good. If you want to have a happy 
 home, with a wife and children, you must be good. 
 1 was like you till I gave my heart to God. I used 
 to steal and drink. I was taken away from my home. 
 I was locked up in prison. My heart was full of sin. 
 But the Spirit of God taught me the way to happi- 
 ness. I gave up sin. I learnt to work for my bread. 
 And now I am happy. You must open your hearts 
 to God. You must give up sin. You must come 
 into the Salvation Army Settlement and learn to 
 work for your living. Then you will be happy 
 like me.' 
 
 Throughout this earnest and straightforward 
 address I carefully studied the faces of the prisoners. 
 Not in one of them could I discover the smallest 
 beginning of response, the least trace of under- 
 standing. Like men half-stupefied by a drug, or 
 worn to the point of sleep by some laborious exercise, 
 they regarded the preacher out of closing eyes, and 
 let their heads sink more and more towards the 
 support of their shoulders. But for the languor in 
 their faces they might have been carved out of ebony. 
 
 In almost every case the skull was small and 
 narrow, the cheek-bones projected far beyond the 
 temples, and the jowl was full-rounded. The mouths 
 were firm but without energy, compressed in a bitter 
 resignation and a settled lethargy. In the eyes, some 
 of them handsome enough, I could see neither intel- 
 ligence nor cunning; here and there one noticed the 
 beginnings, but only the beginnings, of craft. It 
 seemed to me that these big, black-faced, small-
 
 THE DOMS 293 
 
 skulled, and weary-eyed prisoners, belonged rather 
 to some species of torpid animals than to the most 
 wicked or the most stupid races of humanity. 
 
 A Native girl, rescued by the Salvation Army 
 from a famine district, and trained throughout 
 childhood in the methods of The Army, stood under 
 the shade of the tamarinds and spoke in a most 
 gracious and winning way to the crouching prisoners 
 of God's love for men and His yearning to bestow 
 peace and happiness upon all those who will seek 
 His blessing. Her voice was exceedingly musical, 
 she had the gentlest of kind eyes, her gestures were 
 all tender and compelling — but there was no response 
 from the prisoners — absolutely no response of any 
 kind. 
 
 After another hymn, a vigorous address by the 
 Salvationist, in which he told of the worst men in 
 England changed in a second by conversion from 
 misery to joy, and a closing prayer, I was invited 
 to walk round the horseshoe of captives and ask 
 them any questions I might like. For the first time 
 I detected something of intelligence in these poor 
 miserable men. They seemed to regard me as a 
 Sahib of the Government with power to unlock their 
 prison doors. Every one to whom I spoke seemed 
 to rouse some drowning intelligence in his brain and 
 professed his wish to enter the Settlement and live a 
 law^-abiding life — not with any enthusiasm, not with 
 any repentance for the past, but with a tired effort to 
 convince me that they w-ere sick to death of their 
 condition. 
 
 It came to me that perhaps in the silence of their 
 hearts these children of savagery against whom the 
 centuries have sinned so long and grievously, put 
 the God of Christianity to a test, and pray for 
 deliverance. Suppose that they do this? They are
 
 294 THE DOMS 
 
 told that He has only to be asked for mercy and that 
 mercy will come to them. They are told that He is 
 all-powerful and that there is nothing that He cannot 
 do. Suppose they pray to Him. Suppose, with the 
 dull cunning of animals, they put this new God to a 
 test. ' Take me out of prison, place me in the 
 Salvation Army, do not let me spend any more 
 years in this cruel prison.' And then, when the 
 Salvationists come to them on Sunday, and they 
 say — ' We w-ant to be good ; let us come into the 
 Settlement and we will worship your God ' — they 
 must be told, ' there is six months more of your 
 sentence still to run.' What a God ! — a God Who 
 cannot even deliver a man from an unjust sentence 
 of imprisonment ! — a God Who is said to be a 
 worker of wonders, an almighty and great God 
 Who must wait upon the police before He can 
 act ! 
 
 One often thinks when a clergyman reads in 
 Church with dramatic energy the wonderful chapter 
 in which Elijah challenged the priests of Baal to a 
 conflict in magic, how hard it would fare with him 
 if some atheist rose and challenged him to a conflict 
 of the same kind. 
 
 The Doms are so simple and primitive as to be 
 scarcely human. To make them realize the existence 
 of a God is extraordinarily difficult; to make them 
 grasp the idea of a God Who is at one and the 
 same time perfect Love and unalterable Law, is, I 
 should say, impossible. As I looked at them during 
 this service I wondered w-hat Pascal would say of 
 them, or Bossuet, or Bishop Butler, or the latest 
 popular preacher in New York. Are they, indeed, 
 children of God and heirs of eternal life? Do they 
 represent the race against which Satan directs the 
 artillery of hell and for which the innocent Christ
 
 THE DOMS 295 
 
 offered up His life on the cross ? Or are they 
 vestiges of humanity's brute origin ? Men who have 
 never fallen, and men who have never risen ; 
 creatures who must be lifted by education and 
 science into the kingdom of civilization before they 
 can understand the alphabet of religion and take a 
 first step into the Kingdom of God ? 
 
 One thing to me is wholly certain. The prison 
 system can help in no single way to make these 
 miserable savages intelligent human beings. It is 
 a monstrous system. Lock men up by all means, 
 keep them in your power, and feed them with the 
 same care that a wdse man gives to his horse and 
 his dog, but in the name of common sense do not 
 shut them out from the influences of useful W'Ork, 
 animal companions, healthy games, literature, art, 
 science, and human kindness. I cannot think how 
 men can be so stupid as to allow the present prison 
 system to continue for another day, unless it is the 
 effect of that fear and distrust of our fellow creatures 
 which is the foundation of all conservatism and the 
 solidest obstruction to all progress. No one, I am 
 sure, could doubt for a moment after a visit to the 
 Dom Settlement, where a single Scotsman and his 
 wife perfectly control an army of barbarians, that 
 if all the prisons of England and India, nay, of 
 all the world, were given into the keeping of the 
 Salvation Army the regeneration of the Criminal 
 Classes would be accomplished in a few decades. 
 It is not enough to supplant the military governor 
 by the trained Doctor and the schoolmaster; some- 
 thing is needed which science does not possess and 
 education cannot create to order — that wonderful 
 enthusiasm for humanity, that unquestioning belief 
 in human perfectability, that absolute faith in the 
 love and mercy of God, which are only to be found
 
 296 THE DOMS 
 
 among those to whom religion is a personal experi- 
 ence. Crude to us the method of the Salvation Army 
 may appear ; it may grate upon our senses and 
 strike jangling discords across the stately music 
 of our spiritual life; but this Army has the secret 
 of saving men. It has 'an unlimited fund of 
 enthusiasm,' and its ' influence is personal and 
 humanizing.' No finer testimonial was ever given 
 to the Salvation Army than the statement of 
 Mr. Burn in India : * They live among the people 
 and enter into their lives.' 
 
 I have seen this work and I bear witness to it.
 
 THE BHATUS AND A BRIGADIER 
 
 ' Kind words,' says Faber, in a charming phrase, 
 ' are the music of the world; they have a power which 
 seems to be beyond natural causes.' It is the 
 mystery of kind words that they do not need, like 
 the delicate seeds of a rare plant, to have the ground 
 prepared for them ; they break into flower even as 
 they fall, and whatever may be the nature of the 
 soil. A nocturne by Chopin, a landscape by Claude, 
 a sonnet by Shakespeare — these things demand even 
 among the civilized and refined something beautiful 
 in the soul before their appeal can become irre- 
 sistible ; but a kind word may arrest a brutal nature 
 in the very commission of a crime or literally create 
 a new spirit in the mind of a savage. It is astonish- 
 ing that this power of kindness has not been put to 
 greater use among the law-makers of humanity in 
 their hard task of elevating those great masses of 
 men dragging everywhere like a dead weight on 
 the skirts of progress. Philanthropy is not a hobby 
 of the sentimental, it is a power of unparalleled force 
 in the mechanism of evolution. One has only to 
 consider the extraordinary results of a few years' 
 experience among the Criminal Tribes of India by 
 a religious organization which relies on kindness 
 and kindness alone for its redemptive work, to realize 
 how victorious is this energy of the soul, and of
 
 298 THE BHATUS AND A BRIGADIER 
 
 what vast service it might be to the general progress 
 of mankind. 
 
 For these Criminal Tribes are not only willing to 
 enter the settlements of the Salvation Army, they 
 are everywhere clamouring to be admitted. I cannot 
 easily forget the pathetic appeal made to me by a 
 Bhatu of Moradabad — an appeal made by the eyes 
 and the hands — as he knelt before me, beseeching 
 that I should get him admitted to the crowded and 
 over-crowded Settlement of his tribe. And soon after 
 I had left Moradabad, I heard from the admirable 
 Brigadier in charge of the work, an Indian, that an 
 army of several hundreds of these people were then 
 on the march to the Settlement, the wives carrying 
 babies, the husbands carrying young children, and 
 the older children carrying the family possessions — 
 marching by night, and hiding in the jungle by 
 day, for fear that the police might intercept them 
 and drive them back. It is a pitiful thing, a terribly 
 pitiful thing, that these harried and much enduring 
 people, who go down on their knees imploring the 
 Salvation Army to take them, should have to be 
 repulsed simply for want of a little money. The 
 Government has done all it can do, in giving land 
 and buildings and making grants; but much more 
 money will be needed — and one hopes that the rich 
 men of India as well as the rich people in England 
 and America may realize it — before all these millions 
 of useless, profitless, and suffering humanity can be 
 brought within the pale of civilization and made a 
 blessing to humanity. 
 
 While the man of whom I have spoken knelt 
 before me, a much pleasanter-looking Bhatu, indeed 
 a rather noble specimen of mankind, sat on one of 
 the stairs descending from the veranda of the Settle- 
 ment's headquarters — once a palace — and told me
 
 THE BHATUS AND A BRIGADIER 299 
 
 about his people and himself. It was an afternoon 
 of insufferable heat; an old fellow stood behind my 
 chair beating the flies away from me with a cloth, 
 and in my hands I held a tumbler of constantly 
 replenished lemon water. Before me were the two 
 Bhatus ; three steps lower down sat an old and 
 withered woman, an elbow resting on her knee, her 
 face lying in the cup of her hand, her eyes watching 
 me, her lips mumbling a monotonous soliloquy. 
 Beyond us, at the bottom of the high veranda on 
 which we sat, stretched the dusty compound, shim- 
 mering in the blinding sunlight and patched by the 
 pale shadows of listless trees. And from every point 
 in that compound came the cackle of fowls, for the 
 Brigadier's wife is an expert in poultry, and from 
 behind us in the cool shades of the large house came 
 the rattle of the looms, where the Bhatus were at 
 work as weavers. 
 
 The handsome Bhatu said to me, * Our people 
 were a race of soldiers. We served a mighty Rajah, 
 who gave us many lands, and we were rich. Once 
 we refused to fight for him ; our lands w^re taken 
 from us and we became a wandering people. That 
 is a long time ago. Since then our people have been 
 dacoits and outcasts. There has been no place where 
 we could rest. Our sufferings have been very great. 
 The police used to make our women do what they 
 asked ; if we resisted they placed brass pots in our 
 camps and we were arrested for stealing. You must 
 do what the police tell you, right or wrong, or you 
 go to jail. It is not safe for a Bhatu outside the 
 Settlement.' 
 
 I asked him about the religion of the Bhatus. 
 ' We know there is a God, but we do not know 
 anything about Him. We do not know what He 
 wants. Our bhagats (fakirs, or holy men) know
 
 300 THE BHATUS AND A BRIGADIER 
 
 something about the devils. After death we live in 
 another world, but we do not know what it is like. 
 We do not think much about these things. Mostly 
 we talk about stealing and fighting and the police.' 
 
 'Do you worship your ancestors?' I asked. 
 
 'No!' he answered emphatically. 'We are very 
 angry with our ancestors. All our troubles have 
 come from them. If they had fought for the great 
 Rajah we should not have suffered. And for many 
 years all our ancestors have been dacoits. There 
 are boys of twelve among our people who are first- 
 rate dacoits. They can attack a man in the dark 
 and rob him. They can take jewels from women. 
 They learn from their fathers, and they are not 
 afraid. We think our fathers have led us into 
 wrong. We know that dacoiting is wrong because 
 we get sent to jail.' 
 
 The Brigadier in charge of this work, who acted 
 as interpreter, said to me : ' The Bhatus have a 
 very bad name, especially the women. The women 
 are dancers, beggars, and prostitutes. The men are 
 fearless and very cunning. A police superintendent 
 told me that with five Bhatus he would storm any 
 village in India. They are audacious, strong, and 
 extraordinarily ferocious. They fight with two long 
 sticks in their hands. They approach an adversary 
 carrying both these sticks, and from either hand 
 fling one at his face with frightful force, and then 
 spring upon him with the other. While the women 
 dance or beg, the men go into the jungle and hunt 
 for pig and deer. They are a bold people, rather 
 a proud people; but they are perfectly amenable 
 to discipline when they are sure of kindly treatment.' 
 
 The Bhatu told me about marriage customs. He 
 said that the women are more numerous among 
 Bhatus than the men, the opposite condition of
 
 THE BHATUS AND A BRIGADIER 301 
 
 things to that which obtains among the Haburas, 
 a tribe presently to be considered. They are very 
 strict about their marriage ceremony, even when the 
 bride is a professional woman. Everything must be 
 done with much pomp and in due order. No one can 
 be married without a feast. Parents demand as 
 much as four hundred rupees for a daughter, but 
 the money is generally spent in a ceremonial 
 debauch of which the bridegroom and his relations 
 are careful to obtain an adequate share. They drink 
 country arrack at these festivals, but it is only at 
 weddings that they give way to drink with intemper- 
 ance. To get a young girl for his wife is the chief 
 desire of a Bhatu, and when he has saved enough 
 money for this purpose his chief occupation is to 
 guard his possession from the police. 
 
 The reader may remember that I quoted 
 Sir Bamfylde Fuller as saying that certain thieves 
 in India can steal the bedclothes from a sleeper. 
 As the Bhatus are expert and most daring burglars, 
 and as I had established a complete confidence with 
 my friend on the veranda, I asked him through the 
 interpreter to tell us how these burglaries are com- 
 mitted — to tell us the secret of these extraordinary 
 visitations. While he was speaking, after a con- 
 sultation with the poor fellow clamouring to be 
 admitted to the Settlement, the old woman flashed 
 angry eyes at him and muttered in far louder tones 
 her mysterious and never interrupted soliloquy. 
 
 He told me that the burglars go to a burying 
 ground where a dead virgin has lately been given 
 to the flames, and carefully collect a portion of her 
 ashes, these ashes they take to their bhagat, or 
 magician, who performs certain ceremonies over 
 them, and returns them to the burglars. The ashes 
 are now ready for use. ' We go to a house,' said
 
 302 THE BHATUS AND A BRIGADIER 
 
 the Bhatu, ' enter it very carefully, and sprinkle 
 these ashes on the faces of the sleepers. We have 
 to be very careful not to make the slightest noise in 
 entering the house, but as soon as we have sprinkled 
 the ashes we may make just as much noise as we 
 like ; the sleepers will not wake till the spell is worn 
 off in the morning.' 
 
 He was perfectly natural in this narration, and it 
 was evident from the anger and annoyance in the 
 eyes of the withered old woman on the steps below 
 him, that he was telling me a genuine secret of his 
 people ; but it seemed so incredible that the ashes 
 of a virgin could act in this magical fashion and I 
 was so sure of being imposed upon, that I turned 
 to the Native Salvationist with a smile and asked 
 him what he thought of the tale. 
 
 To my surprise I found that the Salvationist was 
 not smiling, on the contrary that he was grave and 
 thoughtful. He answered my question in these 
 words, ' I have never heard this account before; it 
 seems to me impossible to be true, but it makes me 
 think, because in two or three recent burglaries the 
 police have found a greenish-grey ash scattered about 
 the house, particularly round the beds where people 
 have slept.' 
 
 Now, it is possible that the bhagat is not content 
 with ceremonial rites when he handles the ashes, 
 and that he either impregnates them with a powerful 
 narcotic or that he substitutes for them altogether 
 something of a soporific character : however that 
 may be, it is interesting to bear in mind that both 
 Dr. Frazer and Mr. Edgar Thurston give many 
 instances in their books of the savage belief in the 
 virtue of almost everything attaching to a virgin — 
 from a drop of her blood to her ashes after death. 
 And Mr. Thurston, who probably knows more about
 
 THE BHATUS AND A BRIGADIER 303 
 
 the primitive peoples of Southern India than any 
 man now living, tells me that in certain districts a 
 pregnant woman is very often attacked and murdered 
 for the sake of that which she carries, and that the 
 buried bodies of little girls are constantly dug up 
 because of the magical value attached to everything 
 about them. 
 
 The Indian Brigadier in charge of the Bhatu 
 Settlement is a man of culture whose mind is 
 governed by liberal ideas. He is a man, too, of 
 practical common sense, with unusual powers of 
 organization : the last man in the world to attach any 
 importance to the superstitions of uncivilized peoples. 
 But he told me that there are many things in the 
 practice of the Criminal Tribes which cannot be 
 satisfactorily explained on natural grounds : and in 
 telling me the story of his own life he referred to an 
 incident which makes it certain for him that we are 
 governed more than we yet realize by invisible forces. 
 
 He was born in Southern India — his father a high- 
 caste Hindu who had been converted to Christianity 
 by the American Mission, his mother a Tamil Chris- 
 tian. Soon after marriage the man became dissolute 
 and intemperate in his habits. Two children were 
 born of the marriage, and the poor woman, who 
 appears to have been something of a saint, was 
 greatly distressed by this degrading and ruinous 
 change in her husband's character. 
 
 ' When the days came,' said the Brigadier, ' that 
 my father abandoned himself to drink, my mother 
 used to pray for him, remaining for hours upon her 
 knees. One night she had a dream. She dreamed 
 that she was in the jungle with my sister, then a 
 child in the arms. As she wandered through the 
 jungle, very distressed and unhappy, like one who 
 had lost her way, a gharry suddenly appeared before
 
 304 THE BHATUS AND A BRIGADIER 
 
 her in the trees, shining with light, the horses as if 
 fashioned from fire ; and in the gharry was seated 
 an old man with a beard of flowing white and 
 garments that shone like the horses. She was afraid, 
 and stood still, holding my sister to her breast. But 
 the old man said to her, " Come near," and as he 
 spoke she lost her sense of dread, and moved for- 
 ward. Then the old man said to her, " Be at peace, 
 and do not distress yourself ; in three years and three 
 months it will be well with you." Then he vanished 
 from her sight. When she woke in the morning 
 the impression of this dream was so vivid that it 
 was as if she had truly been in the jungle and had 
 actually seen the old man and heard him speak. 
 She made a note of the dream and the prophecy, said 
 nothing about the matter, and continued her daily 
 life as before. My father became worse and worse; 
 the prosperity of the home began to dwindle; my 
 poor mother never knew a single hour of peace and 
 hope ; in fact, you could scarcely imagine a home 
 more wretched and more threatened with ruin. This 
 state of things continued for three years and three 
 months, and then to the very day, my father dis- 
 appeared. Without a word, without a hint, without 
 a quarrel, without warning of any kind, he vanished. 
 My mother went to the police, and to the mission : 
 everything was done to discover whether he was 
 alive or dead, but no information could be got of 
 any kind. It was really as if the earth had opened 
 and swallowed him up. From that day to this, 
 nearly forty years, no news has been forthcoming 
 as to what happened to him. 1 often discussed the 
 matter with my mother and she was always perfectly 
 clear that the day of his disappearance fulfilled the 
 prophecy of her dream. Both she and myself were 
 struck by the incongruousness of the gharry in this
 
 THE BHATUS AND A BRIGADIER 305 
 
 dream, but my mother declared emphatically that it 
 was a veritable gharry, and not a chariot or vehicle 
 of a more striking kind. One cannot explain these 
 things. They happen ; we are surprised by them ; 
 and we go on.' 
 
 The disappearance of the father plunged the 
 family into poverty. The mother dressed as a 
 widow, gave up the use of flowers, and went as nurse 
 to the minister and his wife in charge of the 
 American Mission. This couple appear to have been 
 very noble people. The Brigadier's eyes grew 
 tender when he spoke about them. ' He was like a 
 father to me, and she was a second mother. They 
 loved us, my sister and myself, and they gave 
 themselves to us as if we had been their own 
 children.' The boy was clever and passed from the 
 mission school to the higher education of a college 
 course. I have not seen a Native of India with a 
 finer shaped head, or more intelligent eyes; but for 
 his dark skin he would pass for a typical French 
 savant — a bright, rapid, and vivacious intelligence. 
 While he was at college, the missionaries were 
 obliged to return to America. He went to see them 
 off from Madras, and so great was his grief at 
 parting from them that he could not restrain his 
 tears. While he stood there, vainly struggling to 
 restrain his grief, he saw some Europeans dressed 
 in Native clothes, two women and a man, who 
 attracted his attention even in his grief; he saw them 
 through his tears. After parting from his friends, 
 he wandered wretchedly through the streets of 
 Madras, like a dog bereft of his master. Darkness 
 fell on the city, and still he could not bear to go 
 back to college. As he entered a certain street he saw 
 a hall into which people were passing as if for a 
 meeting. He approached the door, looked in, and
 
 o 
 
 06 THE BHATUS AND A BRIGADIER 
 
 saw the three Europeans in Native dress who had 
 attracted his attention a few hours before. Struck by 
 the coincidence, and curious to discover who they 
 were, he entered the hall. 
 
 ' I had no knowledge at that time,' he told me, 
 ' of the Salvation Army, and this meeting made a 
 very great impression on my mind. I was struck 
 by the earnestness and sincerity of the Salvationists. 
 I also felt a lack in myself of something which was 
 essential to my peace of mind. For many weeks 
 and months afterwards I was haunted by the picture 
 of those three people on the platform, indeed it is 
 an ineffaceable impression to this day. I was 
 extremely wretched and unhappy. I missed my 
 American missionaries with my whole heart, and I 
 was fighting against sin. I was about eighteen 
 years of age ; and although I was pure, and had no 
 impulse at all towards immorality, I was so quick- 
 tempered and so ungoverned in my anger, that I 
 felt in despair about myself. It is curious that 1 
 was of a very shy and retiring disposition ; not a 
 man, one would say, to fly in a passion and lose 
 control of himself. But so it was. The least 
 opposition or annoyance flung me into a rage, and 
 in a rage I was capable of anything — violence and 
 ferocity of a dreadful nature. I used to go into the 
 hills and pray; I was very constant in my attendance 
 at church. I wanted to feel that God was near me; 
 that He was not afar off; that He was not half real, 
 but actually real, and close at my heart to strengthen 
 my better resolutions and guard me against anger. 
 
 ' I must confess to you that I had inherited 
 something of Hinduism in my nature. The Hindu 
 religion teaches that a man must work out his own 
 salvation, that escape from existence can only be 
 won by the work of the man himself, it is he who
 
 THE BHATUS AND A BRIGADIER 307 
 
 must do everything. Now, although I had faith in 
 God, and although my object was the very opposite 
 of the Hindu religion, I was yet trying to reach my 
 goal by the same methods. Nothing that I had 
 learned from the American Mission gave me any 
 other conception of the Christian religion. I 
 thought I could win God. Not till later in my life 
 did the truth flash upon the darkness of my soul 
 like a great light — the truth that consciousness of 
 God and freedom from sin are not to be won by 
 effort, or by formality of any kind — but by recep- 
 tiveness of the heart. 
 
 ' This truth came to me when I was staying with 
 my sister, who had married a Native clergyman. 
 I met at her house a Salvationist, a relation of her 
 husband. The sight of the uniform revived in my 
 mind the picture of the meeting in Madras, and I 
 was conscious at once of a singular, 1 may really 
 say a magnetic attraction in the man. So great 
 indeed was the attraction of this Salvationist, he was 
 a Hindu, that I told him all my troubles that very 
 evening, and after he had comforted and encouraged 
 me, we spent the whole night on our knees praying 
 to God for illumination. It came at daybreak. 
 Quite quietly and naturally, but with a sense of 
 serenity for my heart that I cannot express to you, 
 the light entered, and I saw that God loves a man 
 in spite of his sins and in spite of his failures. It 
 was this wonderful knowledge that God really had 
 love for me, that His attitude towards me was that 
 of a father, irrespective altogether of what I was, 
 in spite altogether of my sins — it was this knowledge 
 that entered into my troubled soul and into my 
 exhausted heart, just like a Voice breathing the 
 words of Christ, Peace be still. My relief was so 
 great that I rose up and said, " He has given me
 
 o 
 
 08 THE BHATUS AND A BRIGADIER 
 
 His love. I know now the only happiness, the only 
 satisfaction." 
 
 ' Instead now of dwelling on myself, and striving 
 to make my own way, I thought instantly of others, 
 and longed to share with them the knowledge of God 
 which had given such wonderful and beautiful peace 
 to my own soul. But when I spoke to my sister and 
 my brother-in-law about becoming a Salvationist 
 they opposed the idea. My brother-in-law said to 
 me, " This is only an emotion; it will wear off; }^ou 
 will be sorry if you take a step such as you contem- 
 plate in your natural excitement." The Salvation 
 Army meant poverty, and in those days it also meant 
 ostracism. The other missions disliked its methods, 
 and Government officials felt greatly annoyed by the 
 appearance of Europeans in our Indian costume. 
 My mother implored me not to throw away my life. 
 I was taken to village meetings, and my brother-in- 
 law held out to me the prospect of becoming a 
 respectable clergyman with a decent income and a 
 comfortable house. I was influenced by these ideas, 
 but I still wanted to be a Salvationist, because I felt 
 there was no utter happiness and no complete satis- 
 faction without a total surrender of the soul to a life 
 of self-sacrifice. However, I let them arrange for 
 me to enter a theological college, and started off one 
 day to enter on my training for a clergyman. By 
 some miscalculation I arrived a day too soon, and 
 having nothing to do I journeyed to the town where 
 my sister was living that I might spend the afternoon 
 with her. There in her house I met the Salvationist 
 who had so greatly influenced me and who had 
 brought me to a true knowledge of God. It was a 
 difficult moment for all of us. My sister and my 
 mother had carefully kept us apart ; I had never seen 
 him nor heard from him since our first meeting; and
 
 THE BHATUS AND A BRIGADIER 309 
 
 now, just as I was about to begin my training for 
 the Church, we encountered. During the time I 
 was at the house we were never left alone together, 
 and I could see that my brother-in-law was deter- 
 mined to save me from the man's influence. But 
 when he came to go for bullock-carts, it was dis- 
 covered that only one could be found, and so in spite 
 of all their precautions, I and the Salvationist were 
 obliged to travel together. I am more grateful than 
 I can tell you that there was only one bullock-cart 
 to be had that night. For as we journeyed together, 
 the man's magnetism overcame me, all my enthu- 
 siasm revived, and I felt as sure as I have felt of 
 anything in my life, that God's Will with me was 
 that I should become a Salvationist. Instead of 
 going to the theological college, I went straight to 
 Madras, and offered myself to the Army. Some 
 weeks afterwards while I was at a meeting a message 
 came that I was wanted outside, and going to the 
 door I found a well-known missionary waiting to 
 speak to me. He was one of the best missionaries 
 in India, a man of extraordinary goodness, and one 
 who had exercised a certain charm over my mind. 
 He came, at the wish of my mother and my brother- 
 in-law, to beg me to enter the theological college and 
 to consecrate my life to the ministry of the American 
 mission. We spoke together for fifteen minutes. 
 How I answered him I do not remember now ; it is 
 all like a dream : but I know that he returned to my 
 sister and my brother-in-law, and said to them, 
 " You must let him be; he has been called by God." 
 And since that day I have never known unhappiness 
 or dissatisfaction. I have lived every hour. Wherever 
 I have been sent I have found a sphere of useful- 
 ness, and now, in charge of this Settlement, I am 
 happier than I have ever been — my one distress that
 
 310 THE BHATUS AND A BRIGADIER 
 
 we have not more money to take more of these poor 
 Bhatus into our care.' 
 
 The Settlement is one for which Fakir Singh has 
 a particular affection, and the least imaginative man, 
 I think, could not fail to be struck if he saw these 
 Bhatus, these former murderers, burglars, and 
 dacoits, working intelligently at the looms, peace- 
 fully cultivating the land, and learning with pleasure 
 and delight to be dairy-men and poultry-keepers, 
 under the spell of kindness and the magic of Chris- 
 tian love. 
 
 The Brigadier is not a man to exaggerate or to 
 prophesy millennial bliss. He acknowledges that to 
 make some of the older Bhatus understand Chris- 
 tianity is impossible. He does not anticipate that 
 he will soon be in a position to flourish the announce- 
 ment of wholesale conversions among the Bhatus in 
 the delighted faces ot a pious missionary-supporting 
 public in America and England, But he is con- 
 vinced, with no shadow of misgiving, that kindness 
 can reclaim these people from crime and barbarism, 
 that a few years will suffice to make the Settlement 
 a self-supporting colony of manufacture and agricul- 
 ture, and that education and the influence of Chris- 
 tianity will convert the whole of the next generation 
 to moral ideas and the standards of civilization. 
 
 I visited the looms and purchased some of the 
 products, which are now pronounced to be by an 
 exacting housekeeper, of a very good quality. The 
 men at the looms appeared to me a fine and handsome 
 race, a race of beings no whit inferior to any of the 
 peoples of India except some of the highest Brah- 
 mans, Parsis, and certain of the hill tribes. They 
 have a manly and vigorous look, hold themselves 
 well, and are not sleepy, dull and torpid with that 
 inhuman inertness of the Doms. I imagine that
 
 THE BHATUS AND A BRIGADIER 311 
 
 under the care of such a man as the Brigadier there 
 will be no difficulty in bringing these intelligent, 
 courageous, and energetic people into the first ranks 
 of Indian humanity. 
 
 ' I find,' he said, ' that they are anxious to learn 
 weaving, and that they soon grasp the difficulties 
 of that trade. Indeed, I should say that they were 
 unusually quick at learning. But the older men, and 
 the women long accustomed to a life of prostitution, 
 are only anxious to enter the Settlement as a place 
 of peace and security. I have no illusions on that 
 head. Some show a keener and quicker intelligence 
 than others, some respond to Christian ideas very 
 easily, and many are by nature what one would call 
 good men and virtuous women. In fact, they are a 
 mixed body, representing many stages of human 
 progress. But who can doubt that the worst as well 
 as the best of them, should be delivered from their 
 wretched and useless life and helped towards some- 
 thing which is at least consecrated by Christianity?' 
 
 I am glad to say that the people of Moradabad 
 now take a kindly interest in the Settlement, and 
 that the Brigadier finds he can dispose of almost all 
 his products among the European community.
 
 THE HABURAS AND A CHOKIDAH 
 
 A MILE or two from Moradabad is the Settlement, 
 provided by the Government and managed by the 
 Salvation Army, for a tribe known as the Haburas, 
 to whom reference was made in the last chapter. 
 These people are almost as fierce as the Bhatus and 
 almost as animal as the Doms. They occupy a 
 mid-way position between the beastlike races of 
 man, and the races who have come by audacity and 
 valour to the semblance of civilized humanity. 
 
 The Settlement lies some way from a road, and 
 in crossing the land with my friend the Brigadier — 
 whose name of Jivandham, Joy of Life, harmonized 
 with the beautiful morning on which this visit was 
 paid — I saw some of the Haburas at work in the 
 fields. A group of men, cutting down a tall reed 
 grass with instruments resembling our bill-hooks, 
 attracted my notice, but I learned with surprise that 
 they were not Haburas. ' We have to employ these 
 men,' said the Brigadier; 'for the work of cutting 
 this sharp and stubborn reed is beyond the skill and 
 beyond the strength of the Haburas.' He told me 
 that the hands of the Haburas are as soft and tender 
 as children's from centuries of idleness, and that 
 they become easily disheartened if given work which 
 taxes their strength or skill. ' They are so back- 
 ward,' he said, 'that they cannot even build their
 
 THE HABURAS AND A CHOKIDAH 313 
 
 own mud houses; we have to employ men to build 
 and repair all our buildings. As for this reed, it is 
 not a serious matter, we pay piece work, and the sale 
 of the reed leaves us a profit.' 
 
 Presently we passed a genuine Haburah. He was 
 a small old man, naked save for his loin cloth, and 
 so wrinkled and shrivelled and pathetic that one 
 could not look at him without compassion. He was 
 seated on the ground, his little legs open, and with 
 a scraping instrument, was scratching and dragging 
 from the land between his feet, a small plant that 
 suggested a straggling carnation root fresh from the 
 nursery and very much scorched by the sun, and in 
 most urgent need of moisture. This little dried up 
 plant he placed in a bag at his side, and went on 
 scraping at another. I learned that this is a plant 
 of exceeding value in India, a plant holding the 
 highest honour in the estimation of many a great 
 Sahib and many a great Rajah — for it is the dub 
 grass (cynodon dactylon) which to the horse in India 
 is what meadow hay is to the horse in England. 
 * We sell it in Moradabad,' said the Brigadier, ' and 
 get a good price for it.' 
 
 The shrivelled old man on the ground had feet and 
 hands as narrow as any girl twelve years of age. It 
 was a curious contrast to look from these pretty 
 extremities — the soles of the feet and palms of the 
 hands as white as any European's — to the bald head, 
 the furrowed brow, the dim and sunken eyes, the 
 indrawn lips, and curving chin of his withered 
 countenance. I was struck by the extreme dimness 
 of his eyes, and spoke to the Brigadier about their 
 condition. He addressed a question to the old man, 
 and then, stooping forward, lifting a lid, and tilting 
 up the head so that the sun struck full in the eye, he 
 said, ' He is almost blind.'
 
 314 THE HABURAS AND A CHOKIDAH 
 
 We continued our walk across the land, and 
 presently came in sight of what seemed to be a 
 mud fort. I must explain that our carriage had been 
 met in the road by the chokidah of the Settlement, 
 once the head man of these Haburas, and this man 
 had insisted, in spite of my wish to leave it in the 
 carriage, on carrying a heavy coat which 1 had been 
 wearing on account of the cold. When I noticed the 
 distance which still lay between us and the Settle- 
 ment, the sun being now at its hottest, and the walk 
 of a good heating nature in spite of the cold air from 
 the snow mountains, I spoke of this coat to the 
 Brigadier and asked whether it could not be left on 
 the ground till we returned. He laughed and said, 
 ' Oh, the chokidah feels no weight, I assure you ; 
 have you noticed him ?' I turned and saw that the 
 man was literally quivering with pride. ' He is a 
 fine fellow,' said the Brigadier, ' by far the best of 
 the Haburas, and to appear in the Settlement 
 carrying the coat of a white man, will be an event 
 of great consequence to him. Long after you are 
 back in England, he will remind his people that he 
 carried the Sahib's coat through the village. When 
 you think that a year or two ago he was a dacoit, 
 probably a murderer, it is rather striking. But 
 these Criminal Tribes, the best of them at any rate, 
 are like that; trust them, put them on their honour, 
 give them authority; and they are splendid.' I 
 asked him to thank the chokidah for putting himself 
 to so much trouble on my account. When he got 
 the message, he turned to me with eyes that flashed, 
 showed me white teeth in the proudest of smiles, and 
 salaamed with a grave dignity. 
 
 We passed through the gateway of the Settlement 
 — a most rickety and fragile pair of gates like magni- 
 fied hurdles — and greeted by a Native Salvationist
 
 THE HABURAS AND A CHOKIDAH 315 
 
 who lives among the people — came into this little 
 centre of reclamation, this village of Haburas. 
 
 The place was like a good-sized farm-yard, 
 120 yards square, with the difference that the low 
 mud hovels enclosing it were not for animals but 
 for humanity. Here and there in the centre were 
 young trees bandaged and swathed in reeds to 
 protect them from the buffaloes and goats which 
 roamed about among the people. Everywhere one 
 saw cocks and hens of a rather sorry description, 
 and dogs of no description at all. Against the walls 
 of the houses men were lying in a half-sleep, their 
 eyes blinking in the sunlight. In the entrances to 
 the hovels one saw mothers searching in the heads 
 of their children for lice and fleas. Little naked boys 
 dragging sticks too long for them through the dust, 
 stopped in their dissipation of chasing fowls, to stare 
 at the visitors. Some of the children wore round 
 their necks a string hanging with stones, beads, 
 bones, and claws — the gift of their priest; they were 
 all horribly dirty. A man came towards us carrying 
 a child on his arm, and leading another by the hand; 
 he wore the most pathetic expression on his face, 
 bowed himself earthwards, and then looked at me 
 with all the imploring appeal of a practised beggar 
 in London but wedded with such a poignancy and 
 profundity of sincerity that I was touched to the 
 heart. ' He wants you to know,' said the Native 
 Salvationist, ' that his wife died last week, and that 
 he is very sad.' 
 
 An old man rose from the dust as we approached 
 him, and stood before me, a living skeleton. One 
 could have said every bone was visible in his body, 
 from the knife-edged ribs to the most delicate tendons 
 in the wrist. Such poverty of body I have seen but 
 once before; such age but seldom; such living death
 
 3i6 THE HABURAS AND A CHOKIDAH 
 
 never. He stood there, his arms extended from the 
 side, his hands open, his almost invisible eyes 
 peering at me from the depths of the sockets, the 
 hairless skull bowed towards his breast. It was his 
 welcome. 
 
 ' This man,' said the young Salvationist, ' is very 
 old. He remembers the Mutiny.' 
 
 I noticed a brown string bound tightly round his 
 wrist, so that it was almost buried in the withered 
 skin. ' How did he come by that string?' I asked. 
 The old man told the Salvationist in a quavering 
 voice that it had been tied there by the priest as a 
 cure for spleen. I asked some questions about his 
 life, and standing there in the sunshine and the dust, 
 with his chest curved inward, his knees standing far 
 over, and his pathetic arms hanging feebly at his 
 sides, he told us what he could remember of the 
 past. 
 
 He was born, he said, when the tribe was on 
 a long march. He remembers that as a child he 
 lived in villages, jungle villages, but that as he grew 
 older he was always marching about, here and there, 
 to and fro. He never worked except to hunt ; the 
 Haburas eat lizards, cats, mice, tortoises, foxes and 
 jackals. He was taught religion by his parents. If 
 he never ate rabbit, they told him, he would go to a 
 happy place when he died. That is the only com- 
 mandment he was ever taught — Thou shalt not eat 
 rabbit. It was for him all the law and the prophets, 
 and as he had a wholesome fear of devils he was 
 careful to keep it. The rabbit appears to occupy in 
 the superstitions of the Haburas the place more 
 amply filled by the cow in those of the Hindus. As 
 for stealing and murder, these things were not con- 
 sidered wrong. All the Haburas go in for dacoity, 
 housebreaking and murder.
 
 THE HABURAS AND A CHOKIDAH 317 
 
 He told us that he is perfectly sure devils exist 
 and that they haunt the world and afflict humanity. 
 On one occasion, he told us, as a party of which 
 he was a member were returning at night from the 
 jungle, a female devil suddenly rose from the earth 
 and caught hold of him by the arm ; he shook her 
 off and hastened after the others, who had taken to 
 their heels. Next day one of the party went blind 
 and never saw again. 
 
 I asked if the Haburas pray to the devils. He 
 told us that they pray regularly to the evil spirits 
 and offer sacrifices to them, convinced that all the 
 trouble and sickness and harassing which afflict them 
 proceed from the devils. He said the Haburas are 
 terribly afraid to die because of the demons. The 
 demons are so bad now ; what will they be in the 
 next world and after death ? Terrible, terrible ! He 
 shook his old head, heaved a sigh, and moisture 
 w^elled up into his almost sightless eyes. The young 
 Salvationist laid a hand on fiTis arm, said something 
 to him which was evidently intended for encourage- 
 ment, and we passed on. I looked back and saw 
 that the poor old being was still shaking his 
 head. 
 
 We came upon a group of more vigorous and 
 cheerful men, who grinned self-consciously and 
 behaved like nervous children when we stopped to 
 speak to them. I asked if they could show me one 
 of the lizards they eat. A man went off, dived into 
 a hovel, and returned with a big, fat, dust-coloured 
 lizard which he dropped at my feet. I was surprised 
 to see that this creature, still living, made no effort 
 to escape; it remained prone on the ground, its 
 tongue shooting from its thin lips, its bead-like eyes 
 blinking in the light. ' They cook it alive,' said the 
 Indian Salvationist; 'they make a fire, throw the
 
 3iS THE HABURAS AND A CHOKIDAH 
 
 lizard in, and when it is baked they remove the 
 skin, which easily comes off, and eat the flesh.' 
 
 ' But,' I said, ' does it make no effort to escape?' 
 
 'Oh, no,' he replied; 'you see, they break the 
 backbone directly they catch the creature.' He 
 stooped and lifted the lizard from the ground. ' This 
 one has its back broken.' 
 
 One was shocked, of course, inexpressibly 
 shocked, but — ' they know not what they do.' For 
 to these men, from the first hour of consciousness, 
 life is a hideous torture and a frightful wretchedness. 
 Haunted by devils, oppressed by their priests, 
 harried and driven by police, they inhabit a universe 
 which is full of oppugnance, hostility, and cruelty; 
 they are wanderers on an earth which shows them 
 no kindness, which hides even its mice and lizards 
 from them ; which burns up their bodies with heat 
 and buries its water deep under the ground where 
 they cannot reach it — a universe without love, with- 
 out happiness, without rest; a universe which flashes 
 a sword in their face whithersoever they turn and 
 stands ever ready to strike them from behind with 
 the dagger of their own necessities. If you could 
 look into the faces of these people you would see 
 there a bitterness, a hopelessness, and a despair such 
 as would almost terrify your well-being and make 
 you afraid. They are like men who have been 
 stretched on the rack, broken on the wheel, and cast 
 into the wilderness to die. They have none of the 
 rounded animalism and dough-like stolidity of the 
 Doms ; they are just human, just living, just con- 
 scious. Nature has brought them to that point where 
 they can experience suffering and exercise reflection, 
 and then has abandoned them. 
 
 But dreadful as they are and unintentionally brutal 
 as they are, these men respond to human kindness.
 
 THE HABURAS AND A CHOKIDAH 319 
 
 There are only a few of them ever likely to become 
 intelligent weavers and carpenters, but they may in 
 time succeed as scientific husbandmen of a rather 
 primitive type; and certainly there is ample evidence 
 to show that in their hearts there is something which 
 welcomes kindness, is grateful for kindness, and 
 endeavours to express gratitude. 
 
 The Salvationist's wife, an Indian, who lives 
 with her husband and children in this mud enclosure 
 — a very pretty and cheerful little creature — told me 
 that she is not in the least afraid of the Haburas. 
 ' At first I was afraid ; there was a great fight one 
 night; and I thought they would kill each other; 
 but my husband went and spoke to them and they 
 were quiet. Some of the men and women are really 
 trying to be good. Some of them are good. I like 
 them very much. They are just like children; if 
 you treat them like children they will do what you 
 ask them and listen to you when you try to teach 
 them.' 
 
 It is only quite lately that the Haburas came into 
 the hands of the Salvation Army, and experienced 
 for the first time in their existence the influence of 
 kindness. In another generation or two they will 
 be a fine race of useful and upright people. 
 
 I pointed to the gates as we went out, and asked 
 the Brigadier whether such a flimsy protection was 
 sufficient at night. 
 
 ' No,' he said, with a smile, ' but there we have 
 all the protection we need ' — and he pointed to the 
 proud and strutting chokidah whose body was 
 turned that the Haburas might be quite certain that 
 he really did carry the Sahib's coat upon his arm.
 
 THE LION IN THE WAY 
 
 It is a foolish calumny to exhibit the Indian Govern- 
 ment, as some men now do, in the character of a 
 lolling epicure or a bedizened circus master. There 
 may be, as there are in all governments, matters for 
 criticism, but I think there is no government in the 
 world more earnest in the cause of progress and 
 enlightenment than the Government of India, no 
 government in the world than can show a more 
 impressive record of achievement, no government 
 that is served by a more faithful, industrious, and 
 human-hearted Civil Service. It is enough for the 
 critics of this Government, if they can obtain one or 
 two narratives of English rudeness to Indian gentle- 
 men, to condemn the whole Government; and the 
 visitations of plague and famine are sufficient for 
 them to prove that the Government is idle and 
 iniquitous. 
 
 What is the real truth ? From men of such com- 
 manding genius as Sir John Hewett down to the 
 humblest engineer employed by the State, the whole 
 Indian Government is ceaselessly employed in 
 developing the resources of the country and pro- 
 moting the prosperity of democracy. The Govern- 
 ment, for instance, supplies ' more than a third of 
 the total irrigation of the country.' 
 
 Not only do these canals increase prosperity :
 
 THE LION IN THE WAY 321 
 
 they create it. Two of the Punjab canals literally 
 have converted desolate uninhabited plains into 
 thriving countries. Along the banks of the 
 Chenab canal now stretch fields and villages 
 inhabited by a million people, where twelve years 
 ago a few nomads wandered over a desert of 
 parched earth and camel-thorn. The State irriga- 
 tion works of India are, of their kind, the greatest 
 and most beneficent triumphs of engineering that 
 the world has seen.* 
 
 Sir Louis Dane said to me in his picturesque way, 
 ' We are adding an Egypt a year to the Empire by 
 our canals, but England takes no notice.' All this 
 Socialistic work is nothing to the Socialist at home. 
 Let a young tea planter object in his railway carriage 
 to a Native who collects at bedtime his lice in a box, 
 lest he should hurt them by lying on them, and the 
 fact that the Indian Government has bestowed happi- 
 ness and prosperity on a million people inhabiting 
 what was once a desert of parched earth, is but a 
 flourish of jingoism to the outraged propriety of our 
 universal reformer. 
 
 Perhaps few people in England realize, from the 
 Tory who violently supports it to the Socialist who 
 as violently defames it, how far the Government of 
 India has gone along the road of what we should 
 term in England the wildest and most godless 
 Socialism. To begin with the soil of India is 
 national property, and the land tax is national 
 revenue. Imagine such a state of things in England I 
 Again, the railways of India are national property, 
 and the State lets them out to Syndicates and largely 
 controls their management. Imagine such a condi- 
 tion of things in England I Again, the national 
 
 * studies of Indian Life and Sentiment, by Sir Bamfylde Fuller 
 P- 195- 
 
 Y
 
 322 THE LION IN THE WAY 
 
 revenue of India, with no Navy to pay for, is devoted 
 in enormous sums to the development of the country. 
 Imagine such a thing in England ! Strange is it 
 not that the home Conservative defends in India 
 what he would die to oppose in England, and the 
 Socialist attacks in India what he so eloquently 
 demands for England! 
 
 Let the reader judge between the poor calumny 
 of these extreme Socialists and the sober words of 
 Sir John Hewett. That great administrator, in 
 addressing an Industrial Conference, convened by 
 himself, to increase the prosperity of the United 
 Provinces, had the honesty and courage to make 
 these following references before an audience com- 
 posed chiefly of Indians: — 
 
 ' One experienced manager of a cotton mill in 
 these provinces, speaking at the Industrial Confer- 
 ence at Benares in 1905, said : — 
 
 ' " Go where you will and search where you may, 
 you will find everywhere the same complaint, and 
 that is the poor quality of labour. And it is poor 
 because the labouring n:ian is not thrifty. He only 
 values money for whatever it can give him at the 
 moment. He does not value work for work's sake. 
 To him it is unfortunately a matter of complete 
 indifference whether his work is bad or good. He 
 does not value time, because his practice is not to 
 do as much as possible in a given time, but as little 
 as possible." 
 
 ' One of the leading merchants in Calcutta writes 
 to me as follows: — 
 
 • " Keep in mind, however, the good old British 
 system of apprenticeship which ensures a boy mas- 
 tering his craft and generally loving it too. The 
 Indian people don't go to work in the mills for the 
 love of the thing, but to make a living. I have spent
 
 THE LION IN THE WAY 323 
 
 thirty-three years inside mills here, but not one 
 Indian has sugested an improvement in machinery 
 or treatment of raw material. Such a state of things 
 would be impossible in Britain. The workman there 
 is very low down in the scale who does not plan 
 and think out schemes to make his tools more 
 effective." 
 
 ' ]\Ir. Chatterjee has noticed the low intellectual 
 standard of the handloom weavers, and advocates " a 
 very wide extension of primary education among the 
 weaving classes." ' 
 
 And he proceeded as follows: — 
 
 ' Gentlemen, when I began my address I said that 
 the problem before us was no light one. It is equally 
 certain that it is of the utmost importance to this 
 country that every effort should be made to solve it 
 without delay. In no country that I know of have 
 the conditions now existing in India ever presented 
 themselves before. We have a large and expanding 
 railway system ; we have four or five great centres 
 of industry which would compare favourably with 
 many of the industrial centres of Europe; we have 
 the richest possible collection of mineral and vege- 
 table products ; we have a foreign trade of nearly 
 212 millions sterling, much of which consists in the 
 export of our valuable raw products in return for 
 manufactured articles made in the United Kingdom 
 and foreign countries. In certain of our ports 3'ou 
 might imagine yourself in one of the bustling cities 
 of Europe. Take a few miles' journey into the 
 interior of the country, and you will see hardly any 
 signs of industrial enterprise, and will at once recog- 
 nize that you are in a country the inhabitants of 
 which are far too much dependent on a single 
 industry, viz. agriculture. For such a condition of 
 things we can find no precedent, and it is vain to
 
 324 THE LION IN THE WAY 
 
 look for precedent in our efforts to remedy it. Two 
 problems set themselves palpably before us. First, 
 we must educate people so as to divert their energies 
 to industrial pursuits other than agricultural. We 
 must educate skilled labour for all our industries. 
 We must develop among our workmen an interest 
 in their work to replace the feeling that the day's 
 work is only done for the day's wage; and we 
 must bring up educated foremen, supervisors, and 
 managers. We must encourage research into the 
 potential value of our raw produce. Secondly, we 
 must endeavour to overcome the shyness of capital, 
 and success in this respect cannot be achieved unless 
 the leaders of the people throw themselves enthu- 
 siastically into the work. 
 
 ' We have now to consider on the facts that will 
 be laid before us what principles we can and should 
 adopt. I have no fear that you will shrink from 
 your responsibilities as the most representative body 
 hitherto assembled in India to grapple with these 
 weighty problems. I have no fear that you will be 
 timid in experiment or fearful of risk where novel 
 conditions must be dealt with, or shackled by prece- 
 dent where no true precedent exists. I have no fear 
 that you will accept past failure without investigating 
 its causes to see if they cannot be removed. For my 
 part I consider that the object to be gained is worth 
 a heavy sacrifice. I confess that my imagination is 
 powerfully affected by the opportunities of the 
 present occasion. We cannot regulate the sunshine 
 and the shower, the seed time and the harvest ; that 
 is beyond the power of man. But we can control, 
 to some extent, the disposal of the products of the 
 earth, thereby opening new avenues to employment 
 and spreading greater prosperity over the land. We 
 may make some mistakes; we may spend some
 
 THE LION IN THE WAY 325 
 
 money unprofitably; but I am confident that we are 
 entering to-day on labours which will not be in 
 vain.' 
 
 Do not these remarks convince one of an honest 
 determination and even an enthusiastic devotion, in 
 the cause of Indian prosperity? Are they not the 
 utterances of a practical statesman whose supreme 
 objective is the progress and development of the 
 common people ? 
 
 Such is the spirit which animates the Indian 
 Government. Into whatever province I went I found 
 men of great ability and strong earnestness, spend- 
 ing themselves for the peoples of India, giving 
 their days to the labour of promoting the wealth 
 and happiness of democracy — and enthusiastic about 
 it. In no single province did I hear of any legisla- 
 tion which by the greatest stretch of imagination 
 could be designated class legislation ; the entire 
 energies of Government, the entire forces of a 
 brilliant and assiduous Civil Service, are devoted to 
 the uplifting and safeguarding of Indian democracy. 
 
 I do not strain metaphor when I liken the twelve 
 hundred Englishmen at the head of the Indian 
 Government to the managers of a commercial enter- 
 prise whose whole object and purpose in existence is 
 the prosperity of their undertaking. Between each 
 province there is a jealousy, a trade rivalry, a spirit 
 of competing enthusiasm. It is the strain and energy 
 of these countrymen of ours to excel each other in 
 the great adventure of Indian prosperity. 
 
 Consider for a moment what this Government has 
 done. First, it has established peace throughout the 
 length and breadth of India, a peace in which the 
 humblest outcast can walk unafraid and the most 
 industrious pursue his calling without risk. This by 
 itself, considering the racial conflicts and religious
 
 326 THE LION IN THE WAY 
 
 animosities of the immense continent, is an achieve- 
 ment of the first magnitude. But the Government 
 has not been content with this achievement. It has 
 lighted the torch of education, and it has preached 
 the gospel of humanity. The widow is no longer 
 allowed to immolate herself upon the pyre of her 
 husband ; the rich man is no longer allowed to rob 
 and oppress the poor; the devotees are no longer 
 allowed to fling themselves under the wheels of 
 Jagannat; torture has ceased as a legal instrument, 
 and human sacrifices have been stamped out. 
 Hospitals have been built for the poor whom the 
 Brahman priest and the caste doctor would not touch. 
 Colleges have been set up for the youth who desires 
 learning. The doors of the Civil Service have been 
 opened freely to Indians of every race and caste. 
 Small-pox has been largely brought under control. 
 Famine is recognized as Government's concern. And 
 the revenue of the State has been devoted with 
 lavish hands to reclaiming the desert, regenerating 
 humanity, and prospering the hand of Science. A 
 more Socialistic Government, as I said above, is 
 scarcely to be found in the whole world. If it is 
 not a Government of the people for the people, it is 
 a Government of enlightened European democracy 
 working for progress, enlightenment, and truth 
 among a people dominated and degraded and 
 enslaved by a religious aristocracy. It is a Govern- 
 ment which has bestowed Freedom on those who 
 were slaves. 
 
 Never was the real position of things in India 
 better stated than by Mr. Valentine Chirol in the 
 ' Conclusion ' to his great monograph on ' Indian 
 Unrest ' : — 
 
 We do not rule India, as is sometimes alleged,
 
 THE LION IN THE WAY 327 
 
 by plavintj off one race or one creed against 
 another and by accentuating and fostering these 
 ancient divisions, but we are able to rule because 
 our rule alone prevents these ancient divisions 
 from breaking out once more into open and san- 
 guinary strife. British rule is the form of govern- 
 ment that divides Indians the least. The majority 
 of intelligent and sober-minded Indians who have 
 a stake in the country welcome it and support it 
 because they feel it to be the only safeguard 
 against the clash of rival races and creeds, which 
 would ultimately lead to the oppressive ascendency 
 of some one race or creed ; and the great mass of 
 the population yield to it an inarticulate and in- 
 stinctive acquiescence because it gives them a 
 greater measure of security, justice, and tran- 
 quillity than their forbears ever enjoyed. 
 The same writer in summing up the tributary 
 
 causes of modern unrest — 
 
 the great confused movement which is stirring the 
 stagnant waters of Indian life — 
 
 enumerates — 
 
 the steady impact of alien ideas on an ancient and 
 obsolescent civilization ; the more or less imperfect 
 assimilation of those ideas by the few; the dread 
 and resentment of them by those whose traditional 
 ascendency they threaten ; the disintegration of old 
 beliefs, and then again their aggressive revival; 
 the careless diffusion of an artificial system of 
 education, based none too firmly on mere inlel- 
 lectualism, and bereft of all moral or religious 
 sanction ; the application of Western theories of 
 administration and of jurisprudence to a social 
 formation stratified on lines of singular rigidity; 
 the play of modern economic forces upon primi- 
 tive conditions of industry and trade; the constant
 
 328 THE LION IN THE WAY 
 
 and unconscious but inevitable friction between 
 subject races and their alien rulers; the reverbera- 
 tion of distant wars and distant racial conflicts; 
 the exaltation of an Oriental people in the Far 
 East; the abasement of Asiatics in South Africa — 
 all these and many other conflicting influences 
 culminating in the inchoate revolt of a small but 
 very active minority which, on the one hand, 
 frequently disguises under an appeal to the 
 example and sympathy of Western democracy a 
 reversion to the old tyranny of caste and to the 
 worst superstitions of Hinduism, and, on the other 
 hand, arms, with the murderous methods of 
 Western Anarchism, the fervour of Eastern 
 mysticism compounded in varying proportions 
 of philosophic transcendentalism and degenerate 
 sensuousness. 
 
 I have the highest authority for saying that Indian 
 unrest, while it is a troublesome matter, is not suffi- 
 ciently serious to cause alarm. It is impossible that 
 any mutiny could dislodge the British Raj, and the 
 result of a sanguinary revolution, if it ever came 
 to that would (I am told) only serve to make us 
 better friends. Without artillery the mutineers 
 would be powerless against our trained forces; and 
 the telegraph, the telephone, and wireless telegraphy 
 are weapons in the hands of Government not only 
 to guard against surprise but to attack instantly at 
 every point of danger. Furthermore, there is no 
 indication that the revolutionists dream of so prodi- 
 gious a folly as a second mutiny; all the evidence 
 points to the likelihood that they will even abandon 
 murder and assassination and develop some form of 
 passive resistance or universal strike. 
 
 The best way to prevent any such catastrophe is
 
 THE LION IN THE WAY 329 
 
 the original policy of the Indian Government, a 
 policy which is now receiving the support of all 
 cultured and sensible people, namely, a policy of 
 industrial development. And I should like to say 
 that there is not a province or district in India, the 
 Government of which does not gratefully acknow- 
 ledge the great assistance it has received in this field 
 of enterprise from the Salvation Army. To the 
 Salvation Army belongs the credit of Land Banks, 
 the revival of spinning as a cottage industry,* the 
 growing of the most suitable mulberries for silk- 
 worms, the employment of Criminal Tribes in 
 agriculture, the extended use of cassava, and many 
 other highly important developments in trade and 
 industry. 
 
 For too long the young men of India have 
 regarded Western education only as a ladder to 
 Civil Service employment or as an avenue to the 
 Bar. Disappointed of employment after years of 
 admirable thrift and most painful study, they have 
 become the easy and embittered victims of the sedi- 
 tionist and the priest. To turn their attention from 
 the learned professions to the active field of com- 
 mercial and industrial expansion, to give them the 
 glow of enterprise and the courage of initiative, this 
 is the policy of the Indian Government and already 
 it is beginning to justify itself. 
 
 ' The hour of political reform,' said Madame 
 de Remusat, ' is also that of educational schemes.' 
 India illustrates the truth of this significant saying, 
 and the whole future of the continent may be said 
 to hang on the educational schemes which are now 
 fermenting in the minds of people conscious of a 
 
 * The improved handloom invented by an English Salvationist in 
 India has won gold medals and first prizes at innumerable exhibi- 
 tions, and is now being largely adopted by the Government as a 
 means for saving the millions of hand weavers from extinction.
 
 330 THE LION IN THE WAY 
 
 political existence. On this subject, beyond ven- 
 turing to express the opinion that Government 
 should raise the salaries of schoolmasters to a point 
 which will attract the first and noblest minds in the 
 country — perhaps the simplest solution of the Educa- 
 tional Question in England as well as in India — I 
 will make a few quotations from the addresses of 
 Sir George Clarke, Governor of Bombay, to show 
 my readers in what spirit the Indian Government 
 is confronting perhaps the most difficult of all its 
 problems : — 
 
 ' In words which ought to be printed in letters of 
 gold in every class room in the world, Ruskin has 
 defined w'hat should be the aims of the schoolmaster. 
 "The entire object of education," he wrote, "is to 
 make people not merely do the right things, but 
 enjoy the right things — not merely industrious, but 
 to love industry — not merely learned, but to love 
 learning — not merely pure, but to love purity — not 
 merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice." 
 Those are counsels of perfection enshrining ideals 
 which may be unattainable except in individual 
 cases. Yet surely Senates of Universities and 
 Governments, which have grave responsibilities for 
 the education of the people, in India especially, 
 should hold fast to such ideals which supplv the only 
 valid tests by which their educational achievements 
 can be judged. In so far as education in India pro- 
 duces results approximating to the conditions laid 
 down by Ruskin, it will be a life-giving force, 
 purifying and invigorating the body politic. It can 
 only accomplish these results if the true ends are 
 ever kept in view by those who direct its policy and 
 its methods. 
 
 ' Our education is never complete. We can and 
 we ought to go on learning to our life's end, and
 
 THE LION IN THE WAY 331 
 
 at best Collegiate training is but a foundation upon 
 which we may build if we choose. To those of you 
 who have made no plans for the future, I suggest 
 consideration of the teacher's profession. It is 
 poorly paid as I have pointed out. It is not honoured 
 as it should be and will be in time to come ; but there 
 is no other walk of life in which a young Indian can 
 render his country so great and so lasting a service. 
 It is the earnest and conscientious teacher alone who 
 can train the minds and bodies and help to form the 
 characters of the rising generation. He only can 
 effectively fight the good fight against superstition, 
 ignorance and ruinous customs. The noble spirit of 
 self-renunciation dwells among you, and in the ranks 
 of our teachers we ha\e some shining examples of 
 practical devotion. As 1 hope I have explained, we 
 need many more such examples, and for those of you 
 who will accept self-sacrifice and forgo material 
 advantage fine careers are open — careers which will 
 develop what is best in you and will assuredly bring 
 you abiding happiness. I conclude my address as I 
 began with some words of Ruskin in which we may 
 all find help and inspiration : " Let every dawn of 
 morning be to you as the beginning of life, and every 
 setting sun be to you as its close; then let every one 
 of these short lives leave its sure record of some 
 kindly thing done for others, some goodly strength 
 or knowledge gained for yourselves." To the young 
 men and women who to-day end their period of 
 pupilage and stand at the great parting of the ways 
 in their lives I can offer no truer advice than these 
 noble words.' 
 
 From these brief extracts the fair-minded reader 
 will perceive not only that the Educational Question 
 in India is regarded in a wise and statesmanlike 
 manner, but that the spirit which informs the Indian
 
 332 THE LION IN THE WAY 
 
 Government is one of which England has reason to 
 be proud. There is in that Government, whatever 
 its shortcomings, a note of fatherhness, a strain of 
 paternal tenderness; and however implacable it may 
 be to fomenters of disorder and preachers of sedition, 
 it acts as a providence to the law-abiding millions of 
 India, and seeks their welfare while it covers their 
 weakness with the shield of the British Navy. 
 
 There is a Lion in the way, but this Lion is not 
 so fierce as he is painted. Let any man turn to the 
 past history of India and compare those blood- 
 stained pages with the documents of the past fifty 
 years, and he must come to the conclusion, if he is 
 a just judge, that the presence of the British Lion 
 in India has been a mercy to that country and a 
 blessing to civilization. 
 
 In the attitude of Government towards Education, 
 in their realization that moral teaching is essential, 
 and that the schoolmaster should serve commerce as 
 well as literature, one perceives the great hope of the 
 future. And we may be certain that just as the 
 Indians free themselves from the incivilities, isola- 
 tions, and social barbarisms of their perishing super- 
 stitions, so they will meet in the Englishmen of India 
 a body of men not only willing to be their friends 
 but ready to share with them even more than at the 
 present moment the burden of Government.
 
 THE NEW BIRTH 
 
 ' It was Christianity,' says Mr. Bernard Lucas, 
 ' which awoke the West from the sleep which 
 followed the mighty activity of the Greek mind, 
 and set her feet in the path of true progress. It is 
 Christianity which has stirred India from her still 
 longer sleep, and Jt will be Christianity which will 
 offer to her the material for a spiritual life and 
 thought which will bring untold blessing to the 
 world.' Indirectly, as I have attempted to show all 
 through this book, the religion of Jesus has exercised 
 a vast and miraculous influence on the peoples of 
 India; and this influence would unquestionably have 
 been vaster, more miraculous, and direct, if Chris- 
 tianity had been presented to India by a united and 
 rejoicing Christendom as the blessing and good-news 
 of a Heaven-Father. 
 
 In concluding this book I should like to leave in 
 the reader's mind^ with the sentiment of hope, the 
 stronger and more masculine inspiration of an 
 earnest purpose. India can be won for progress, 
 because it can be won for Christ ; and it can be won 
 for Christ swiftly and victoriously if the followers 
 of Jesus awaken to the new-birth of Christianity and 
 give themselves with enthusiasm to this moving 
 spirit of emerging truth. 
 
 What is this new-birth of a religion whose glory
 
 334 THE NEW BIRTH 
 
 is that never once has it stood still but always has 
 marched abreast of the conquering human mind? 
 In a single word, it is a resurrection from sorrow 
 to joy. All that the strokes of science have inflicted 
 on this religion is to destroy its accretions; the reli- 
 gion itself rises from the ruin of those accretions with 
 its first beauty undiminished and its first incompar- 
 able glory heightened and enhanced. No longer do 
 men regard themselves as living under the frown of 
 the displeasure of the Infinite; no longer do they 
 feel themselves to be miserable and guilty wretches 
 crawling through the hostilities of threescore years 
 and ten to the anguish of eternal torment; no longer 
 have they any consciousness of the Everlasting God 
 as a blundering Creator, a devil-thwarted Provi- 
 dence, a sulking, sullen, and disappointed Omnipo- 
 tent. Fear towards the Universe has died out of the 
 European mind. No longer, therefore, can they 
 regard Jesus as a sacrificial victim. The sins which 
 punish the body and narrow the sympathies, which 
 embitter existence and hamper progress, they recog- 
 nize now in the light of God's evolving revelation 
 as the inheritance of a remote and soulless animalism 
 from which they have been mercifully and most 
 patiently brought by the inspiration of a holy Spirit. 
 They have ceased to think of a Devil in their recog- 
 nition that the first parent of all sickness, sorrow, 
 misery, and evil is human Ignorance. Every man 
 who has dispelled ignorance by the light of Know- 
 ledge they recognize as a servant of truth and a 
 minister of God. And they will never again, so long 
 as civilization advances, surrender their reasons and 
 their souls to the magician, the soothsayer, and the 
 priest. 
 
 In the first brightness of absolute knowledge, 
 when the Churches trembled and the atheist made
 
 THE NEW BIRTH 335 
 
 his boast, it seemed as if Jesus had fallen from the 
 glory of Saviour to the humbler greatness of prophet 
 and idealist. But it was only for a little while. The 
 human heart, whose emotions are ahead of all know- 
 ledge, the human heart created by God and restless 
 till it rest in Him, looked back across the icons of 
 its journey under the stars to see w'hat light from 
 heaven had streamed upon the pathway of antiquity, 
 what voice from God had sounded through the con- 
 fusion of times past; and there was none greater than 
 Jesus. In a sublime loveliness of beauty, He met 
 the searching gaze of the troubled, backward-looking 
 legions of humanity; and when they turned to go 
 forward again, He was there in front of them — the 
 true Shepherd and the Light of the World. 
 
 He remains not only the one Ideal of humanity, 
 but the sole Hope of immortal life. He is divine 
 because He lives still in the midst of humanity. He 
 is a Saviour because He still exalts human nature. 
 He is the Way, because our divinest instincts pro- 
 claim it right to follow Him : the Truth, because in 
 Him alone can the nations advance with safety : the 
 Life, because by Him alone can the soul be born 
 again. 
 
 It is quite certain that men will come to Him 
 more and more; indeed, He has never been so dili- 
 gently sought, so passionately desired, as in these 
 present days; the very controversy which still rages 
 round the four iittle simple beautiful documents 
 which preserve for us the essential sweetness of His 
 Character, is but a witness to His attraction ; nor 
 can any man imagine a time in which it will be for 
 the world as if He had never existed. But, there is 
 one immense and separating difiference between the 
 present-day quest of Jesus and the quest of other 
 times. It is not with a hunger to surrender the
 
 336 THE NEW BIRTH 
 
 reason and to rest in the bosom of authority like a 
 tired and frightened child, that the world now seeks 
 the Christ; it seeks Him by the reason and for the 
 reason, swept towards Him it is true by the purest 
 instincts and divinest emotions of the heart, but 
 determined in the strength of its God-given reason 
 to find the absolute Jesus, not a false Christ, not 
 a Chimasra, not a Legend. 
 
 And it is surely the business of those to whom 
 Christ is a blessing and a power, to clear away from 
 before the feet of those who seek Him all the 
 obstacles and barricades of error which timorous 
 ignorance and jealous superstition have set up in 
 every age between the world and its Light, and 
 which still persist for the darkness of unnumbered 
 souls. 
 
 India, as I hope this book may be the means of 
 showing, brings home to the honest mind with an 
 irresistible force, the knowledge that well-nigh all 
 our Christian ceremonial and ritual is the vestigial 
 product of superstition and idolatry. And India 
 teaches us that a sacrificing priesthood engirded by 
 ceremonial and ritual has always been the instrument 
 of pessimism, terror, and abasement. Reflection on 
 these two indisputable facts must force the mind to 
 their two logical and illuminating conclusions, con- 
 clusions which, the more they penetrate the human 
 conscience, the more swiftly will they hasten the 
 new-birth of Christianity. We must conclude that 
 the ceremonial and ritual of a degraded superstition 
 cannot be the true method of a spiritual religion ; 
 and equally are we forced to the conclusion that the 
 pessimism of our religion, so similar to the pessi- 
 mism of Hinduism, must have its origin in the 
 tradition and authority which have so closely copied 
 the methods of superstition.
 
 THE NEW BIRTH 337 
 
 Out of these conclusions there rises the new 
 Christianity, the ' evangelium,' or ' glad-tidings ' of 
 Jesus. Always there has been this Christianity 
 living in the hearts of men, but it has never yet 
 become a world religion. The morality of Jesus has 
 saved the world from death, but the religion of Jesus 
 has not yet fired the world with joy. Not until men 
 live beautiful and fearless lives in the sure know- 
 ledge that God is a Father, will the earth ring with 
 joy and the soul of man sing with blessing. And 
 never will the Fatherhood of God come home to 
 humanity while the Athanasian definitions, the quar- 
 relling theologies, and the trivial superstitions of 
 symbolism stand between the souls of men and the 
 pronouncement of Christ — ' I am come that they 
 might have life and that they might have it more 
 abundantly. . . . My Joy no man taketh from you. 
 . . . Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same 
 is My brother, and My sister, and mother. . . . 
 Come unto Me, all ye that are weary and heavy- 
 laden. ... I am the Light of the World. . . . 
 When he was yet a great way oflf, his father saw 
 him, and had compassion. . . . Our Father Which 
 art in heaven.' 
 
 It is the work of the Twentieth Century to rescue 
 the glad-tidings of Jesus from the ruins of the gloom, 
 and menace, and pessimism of a falling ecclesias- 
 ticism. We cannot hope for an immediate millen- 
 nium or even anticipate a cessation of hostilities. 
 There will be fierce fighting, a period of darkness 
 and despair, perhaps a moment of relapse into 
 paganism. But the victory will come. Christ will 
 conquer because there is no other. 
 
 And I cannot imagine a more hopeful beginning 
 for this great conflict than that which India appeals 
 to us to make now ; a beginning which all those
 
 338 THE NEW BIRTH 
 
 who really rely upon Christ, and not upon the habits 
 or traditions of a particular Church, should be most 
 willing to make — the deliverance of a single message. 
 
 It is impossible at present that the missionaries 
 should teach either a uniformity in acts of worship 
 or that they should agree to an entire absence of 
 ceremonial ; but they would be only the soulless parts 
 of a dead machinery if they refused to consider 
 whether they cannot agree to present to India a 
 single message of the essentials of Christianity. 
 
 The Fatherhood of God, the necessity for a cleansed 
 heart, the certainty of rest in Christ, the surety of 
 everlasting joy and felicity for the pure and righteous 
 — these simple things are the essentials of that 
 teaching which is now broken up into a hundred 
 contradictory, contending, and competing theses. 
 Is it not possible to agree that only the essentials, 
 the indisputable and beautiful essentials of the 
 Master's teaching, should be presented to India, that 
 all which lies beyond the moral essentials should be 
 left to India herself to discover and evolve? 
 
 At least let the Churches decide this central and 
 determining question — Is the religion of Jesus only 
 an evolution of the older religion of Buddha, the 
 religion of sorrow, resignation, and non-existence, 
 or is it the sole and solitary religion of joy, action, 
 and hunger after God? 
 
 Not only India waits for that answer, but the whole 
 world. 
 
 My book is finished. 
 
 That it will vex some people and give a dire offence 
 to many, I am well aware : that it has a thousand 
 imi)erfections and affords but a glimpse of a vast 
 country and a strangely heterogeneous humanity, 
 no one could be more poignantly sensible than
 
 THE NEW BIRTH 339 
 
 myself ; nevertheless, on one score I venture to 
 express satisfaction with my work, and on this score 
 I am full willing that it should stand its trial. It 
 tells the truth. 
 
 It destroys the illusion that there is any mysterious 
 holiness, or any magic of occultism, in the religion 
 of Hinduism. 
 
 It shows the position at which Christianity now 
 stands in the life of India. 
 
 It proves that ceremonialism, symbolism, and 
 priestcraft are the instruments of a dying supersti- 
 tion, not the spirit of a living and achieving religion. 
 
 And it points to a true interpretation of rational 
 religion as the one strength we possess, under an 
 enlightened and benevolent government, to safe- 
 guard evolving civilization in a country roused from 
 immemorial torpor to a knowledge of science and 
 the boasts of materialism. 
 
 These are the solid and practical truths concerning 
 modern India, truths which it is urgent all men 
 should recognize and know ; and because my book 
 states these truths clearly and simply, and proves 
 them out of the mouths of Indians themselves, I 
 dare to think that in spite of many shortcomings and 
 in spite of innumerable blemishes, it is a good book 
 and a useful book.
 
 NOTES 
 
 Page ii 
 
 The success of the Salvation Army in India must not be 
 ascribed only to the genius of Fakir Singh. To begin with, his 
 marriage to a daughter of General Booth carried into the 
 mission field of India one of the most able children of a unique 
 family, and the influence of Emma Booth in the affairs of the 
 Salvation Army in India is felt to this day. The success of the 
 Army, as so many of the narratives in this book witness, seems 
 really to belong to the sincerity of its missionaries, both Euro- 
 pean and Indian. When Fakir Singh left India for America 
 the work proceeded without let or hindrance, carried forward 
 by the earnestness and devotion of its officers and converts. 
 The personality of General Booth has also been a vast influence 
 in this crusade. His visits to India have been occasions of 
 extraordinary enthusiasm. It is also his plan of employing 
 women as missionaries which has had such an awakening 
 effect upon the peoples of India, particularly the poorer classes 
 who are so wonderfully amenable to sympathy and gentleness. 
 If I have formed a correct opinion, the secret of the success of 
 the Salvation Army in India is the same in America, England, 
 and most of the other countries where it has organized itself, 
 to wit, tremendous earnestness carried forward on a tide of 
 sweeping enthusiasm inspired by unquestioning faith in the 
 Bible and unfailing love for humanity. And one must not 
 omit from our count, the organizing genius of Mr. Bramwell 
 Booth who from the International Headquarters of the 
 Salvation Army in Queen Victoria Street, directs this great 
 tide of world-wide enthusiasm and keeps the Army ever at 
 its work of redemption. 
 
 Page 36 
 
 The following account from the book of Abb^ Dubois men- 
 tioned below, will give the reader a luminous idea of the 
 Hindu's attitude both toward women and sorrow : — 
 
 The happiest death for a woman is that which overtakes her 
 while she is still in a wedded state. Such a death is looked
 
 NOTES 341 
 
 upon as the reward of jsfoodness extending back for many 
 generations; on the other hand, the greatest misfortune that 
 can befall a wife is to survive her husband. 
 
 Should the husband die first, as soon as he breathes his last 
 the widow attires herself in her best clothes and bedecks herself 
 with all her jewels. Then, with all the sifs^ns of the deepest 
 g^rief, she throws herself on his body, embracing it and uttering 
 loud cries. She holds the corpse tightly clasped in her arms 
 until her parents, generally silent spectators of this scene, are 
 satisfied that this first demonstration of grief is sufficient, 
 when thev restrain her from these sad embraces. She yields 
 to their efforts with great reluctance, and with repeated pre- 
 tences of escaping out of their hands and rushing once again 
 to the lifeless remains of her husband. Then, finding her 
 attempts useless, she rolls on the ground like one possessed, 
 strikes her breast violently, tears out her hair, and manifests 
 manv other signs of the deepest despair. Now, are these noisy 
 professions of grief and affliction to be attributed to an excess 
 of conjugal affection, to real sorrow? The answer will appear 
 rather perplexing, when we remark that it is the general 
 custom to act in this manner, and that all these demonstrations 
 are previously arranged as a part of the ceremonies of 
 mourning. 
 
 After the first outbursts of grief, she rises, and, assuming a 
 more composed look, approaches her husband's body. Then 
 in one continuous strain, which would hardly be possible under 
 real affliction, she apostrophizes her husband in a long series 
 of questions, of which I give a summary below : — 
 
 ' Why hast thou forsaken me? What wrong have I done 
 thee that thou shouldst thus leave me in the prime of my life? 
 Had I not for thee all the fondness of a faithful wife? Have I 
 not alwavs been virtuous and pure? Have I not borne thee 
 handsome children? Who will bring them up? Who will take 
 care of them hereafter? Was I not diligent in all the duties of 
 a household? Did I not sweep the house every day, and did 
 I not make the floor smooth and clean ? Did I not ornament 
 the floor with white tracery? Did I not cook good food for 
 thee? Didst thou find grit in the rice I prepared for thee? 
 Did I not serve up to thee food such as thou lovedst, well 
 seasoned with garlic, mustard, pepper, cinnamon, and other 
 spices? Did I not forestall thee in all thy wants and wishes? 
 What didst thou lack while I was with thee? Who will take 
 care of me hereafter?' 
 
 And so on. At the end of each sentence uttered in a plaintive 
 chanting tone, she pauses to give free vent to her sobs and 
 shrieks, which are also uttered in a kind of rhythm. The 
 women that stand around join her in her lamentations, chant- 
 ing in chorus with her. Afterwards, she addresses the gods, 
 hurling against them torrents of blasphemies and imprecations.
 
 342 NOTES 
 
 She accuses them openly of injustice in thus depriving- her of 
 her protector. This scene lasts till her eloquence becomes 
 exhausted, or her lungs are wearied out and she is no longer 
 capable of giving- utterance to her lamentations. She then 
 retires to rest for a while, and to prepare some new phrases 
 against the time when the body is being- prepared for the 
 funeral pyre. 
 
 The more vehement the expressions of a woman's grief, the 
 more eloquent and demonstrative her phrases, the more 
 apparently genuine her contortions on such occasions, so much 
 the more is she esteemed a woman of intelligence and educa- 
 tion. The young women who are present pay the most minute 
 attention to all she says or does; and if they observe anything- 
 particularly striking in her flights of rhetoric, in her attitudes, 
 or in any of her efforts to excite the attention of the spectators, 
 they carefully treasure it in their memory, to be made use of 
 should a similar misfortune ever happen to themselves. If a 
 wife who was really afflicted by the death of her husband con- 
 fined herself to shedding real tears and uttering real sobs, she 
 would be thoroughly despised and considered an idiot. The 
 parents of a young widow once complained to me of her 
 stupiditv as follows : * So foolish is she that, on the death of 
 her husband, she did not utter a single word; she did nothing- 
 but cry, without saying anything.' 
 
 Page 53 
 
 ' The most popular of the divine hierarchy of the Hindus — 
 the goddess known as the " Great Mother " — is depicted as an 
 ogress. She is black in face : her eyes are fierce : blood drops 
 from crimson mouth and protruding tongue : she is garlanded 
 with human skulls. . . . The cult of Siva has degenerated into 
 phallic-worship in one direction and into demon-worship in the 
 other.' . . . ' Kali is propitiated by bloody sacrifices of 
 buffaloes and goats. To the extremists among- her followers 
 sexual restraint is a denial of authority. In her name prostitu- 
 tion has become a temple service, and her attributes have 
 corrupted deplorably the instincts of youth/— Studies of Indian 
 Life and Sentiment, by Sir Bamfylde Fuller. 
 
 Page 55 
 
 The reader who wishes to make himself acquainted with the 
 barbarous customs which have flourished under Hinduism, 
 from superstitions connected with animals down to mutilations, 
 tortures and human sacrifices (Meriah) could not do better than 
 consult the Ethnographic Notes in Southern India of Mr. Edgar 
 Thurston, published by the Madras Government.
 
 NOTES 343 
 
 Page 57 
 
 Dr. Barnett, Professor of Sanskrit at University College, 
 London — a discriminating admirer of Eastern literature, 
 describes the Brahmanic priestcraft as ' perhaps more crassly 
 material in spirit and in practice than any other in tiie 
 records of literature.' In I'he Heart of India, page 25, he says 
 of this priestcraft : ' An immensely intricate web of ritual— 
 often of the most gruesome and butcherly kind — was spun 
 around the whole of Indian life, with the avowed object of 
 forcing from the powers of nature the gifts of worldly welfare 
 which were theirs to bestow ; and the ghostly power of the 
 Brahman became supreme in the land.' 
 
 At pages 19 and 20, he says, ' In Indian metaphor, the 
 gods are the milch-kine of the faithful, the priests their 
 milkers. Wealth and worldly welfare are the chief objects of 
 religion.' 
 
 The same author quotes (page 11 a) some Telugu satires on 
 the Brahmans : ' Will the application of white ashes do away 
 with the smell of a wine-pot? Will a cord cast over your 
 neck make you twice-born ? What are you better for smearing 
 your body with ashes ? Your thoughts should be set on God 
 alone ; for the rest, an ass can wallow in dirt as well as you. 
 The books that are called Vedas are like courtesans, deluding 
 men, and wholly unfathomable : . . ' In spite of this con- 
 tempt, in spite of a hundred efforts to get rid of this insolently 
 tyrannical and obviously superstitious priestcraft, Brahmanism 
 remains the master of India. 
 
 Page 147 
 
 The Abb6 Dubois in his admirable book Hindu Manners, 
 Customs, and Ceremonies, tells the following stories of two 
 Indians who sought to become holy men after the Hindu 
 fashion :■ — 
 
 ' I was a novice for four months,' said one of them, ' under 
 a Sannyasi who had built himself a hermitage in a lonely spot 
 not very far from the town of Bellapuram. Following his in- 
 structions, I spent the greater part of each night awake, 
 occupied in keeping my mind an absolute blank and thinking 
 of nothing. I made superhuman efforts to hold my breath as 
 long as possible, and only breathed when I was on the point 
 of fainting. This suffocating exercise made me perspire pro- 
 fusely. One day, at high noon, I thought I saw a bright 
 moon, which seemed to move and sway from side to side. 
 Another time I imagined myself enveloped in darkness at 
 midday. My director, the Sannyasi, who had warned me that 
 while going through this course of penance I should see 
 marvels, was greatly pleased when I mentioned these visions
 
 344 NOTES 
 
 to him. He congratulated me on the progress I was making, 
 and prescribed fresh exercises which were even more severe 
 than the first. The time was not far distant, he assured me, 
 when I should experience much more surprising results from 
 my penance. At last, worn out by these foolish and fatiguing 
 practices, and fearing lest my brain might really be turned, 1 
 left the Sannyasi and his meditative penances, and returned to 
 my former state of life.' 
 The other man said : — 
 
 ' The Sannyasi under whose direction I placed myself had 
 built his hermitage at some distance from the fort of Namakal, 
 in a desert spot. Amongst other exercises which he lay down 
 for me, he obliged me to stare at the sky every day without 
 blinking my eyes or changing my position. This prolonged 
 effort inflamed my eyes terribly and often gave me dreadful 
 headaches. Sometimes I thought I saw sparks of fire in the 
 air; at others I seemed to see fiery globes and other meteors. 
 My teacher was much pleased with the success of my efforts 
 and with the progress I was making. He had only one eye, 
 and I knew that he had lost the other in following out this 
 practice, which he assured me was indispensable if I wished to 
 attain to perfect spirituality. But at last I could bear it no 
 longer, and fearing that I might lose the sight of both eyes, I 
 bade farewell to meditation and the celestial firmament. I 
 also tried another kind of exercise for a time. My master told 
 me that an infallible means for making rapid progress towards 
 spirituality was to keep all the apertures of my body completely 
 closed, so that none of the five pranams (winds) which are in 
 it could escape. To do this I had to place a thumb in each 
 ear, close my lips with the fourth and little fingers of each 
 hand, my eyes with the two forefingers, and my nostrils with 
 the two middle fingers ; and to close the lower orifice I had to 
 cross my legs and sit very tightly on one of my heels. While 
 in this attitude I had to keep one nostril tightly shut, and 
 leaving the other open I had to draw in a long deep breath; 
 then, immediately closing that nostril, I had to open the other 
 and thoroughly exhale the air I had first inhaled. It was of 
 the greatest importance that the inhalation and the exhalation 
 should not be performed through the same nostril. I continued 
 this exercise until I lost consciousness and fainted away,' 
 
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 cloth, 1/- net ; popular edition 
 
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 Popular edition 
 
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 THE LAST SENTENCE 
 
 
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