THE WEB OF INDIAN 
 
 LIFE 
 
 BY 
 
 THE SISTER NIVEDITA 
 
 (MARGARET E. NOBLE) 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
 
 HORNBY ROAD, BOMBAY 
 6 OLD COURT HOUSE STREET. CALCUTTA 
 167 MOUNT ROAD, MADRAS 
 LONDON AND NEW YORK 
 

 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 PRESENTED TO 
 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 BY EVERETT H. RANKIN, 1912 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 LOUISE SPIEKER RANKIN 
 
Cornell University Library 
 DS 421.N75 1918 
 
 The web of Indian life / 
 
 3 1924 023 638 335 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924023638335 
 
THE WEB OF 
 INDIAN LIFE 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 CRADLE TALES OF HINDUISM 
 With Frontispiece. Crown 8vo. 
 
 FOOTFALLS OF INDIAN mSTORY 
 
 With 6 Coloured Plates and 22 other Illustrations. 
 Extra Crown 8vo. 
 
 AN INDIAN STUDY OF LOVE AND DEATH 
 Crown 8vo. 
 
 STUDIES FROM AN EASTERN HOME 
 
 With a Portrait, Prefatory Memoir by S. K. 
 Ratcliffe, and Appreciations from Professor 
 Patrick Gkddes, Professor T. K. Cheyne, Mr. 
 H. W. Nevinson, and Mr. Rabindranath 
 Tagore, Crown 5vo. 
 
 RELIGION AND DHARMA 
 
 Crown 8vo. 
 THE MASTER AS 1 SAW HIM 
 
 Being Pages from the I,ife of the Swaml 
 
 Vivckananda. Crown Svo. 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
 BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, MADRAS. LONDON, AND NEW YOKK 
 
THE WEB OF 
 INDIAN LI FE 
 
 BY 
 
 THE SISTER NIVEDITA 
 
 (MARGARET E. NOBLE) 
 
 OF RAMAKRISHNA-VIVEKANANDA 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 SIR RABINDRANATH TAGORE 
 
 NEW EDITION 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
 
 HORNBY ROAD, BOMBAY 
 
 6 OLD COURT HOUSE STREET, CALCUTTA 
 
 X67 MOUNT ROAD, MADRAS 
 
 LONDON AND NEW YORK 
 
 I0i8 
 
F*'rst F.dilio)t, May 1904 
 New Impression, Augtist 1904 
 
 New Edition, July igo6 | 
 
 New Impressions, October 1914 
 
 and July igi8 
 
IN sending this book out into the world, I desire to 
 record my thanks to Mr. Romesh Chunder Duit for 
 his constant interest and encouragement, and also to 
 Prof. Patrick Geddes, who, by teaching me to under- 
 stand a little of Europe, indirectly gave me a method 
 by which to read my Indian experiences. 
 
 N IV EDIT A, 
 
 of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda. 
 
WAH GURU KI fate! 
 VICTORY TO THE GURU 
 
 FOR THE FIRM ESTABLISHMENT 
 OF NATIONAL RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 The Setting of the Warp 
 
 The Eastern Mother .... 
 
 Of the Hindu Woman as Wife 
 
 Love Strong as Death .... 
 
 The Place of Woman in the National Life 
 
 The Immediate Problems of the Oriental 
 
 Woman . . ... 
 
 The Indian Sagas ..... 
 Noblesse Oblige : A Study of Indian Caste 
 The Synthesis of Indian Thought 
 The Oriental Experience 
 The Wheel of Birth and Death 
 The Story of the Great God : Siva or 
 
 Mahadev . . 
 
 The Gospel of the Blessed One 
 Islam in India ... 
 
 An Indian Pilgrimage .... 
 On the Loom of Time .... 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 17 
 29 
 
 45 
 57 
 
 77 
 
 95 
 
 116 
 
 137 
 168 
 178 
 
 191 
 
 205 
 
 221 
 237 
 253 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Indians, like all other peoples of the world, are 
 naturally susceptible to flattery. But unfortunately 
 they have been deprived of their share of it, even in 
 wholesome measure, both by the Fates presiding at 
 the making of their history as weU as by the guests 
 partaking of their salt. We have been declared 
 inefficient in practical matters by our governors, 
 foreign missionaries have created a vast literature 
 proclaiming our moral obliquity, whUe casual 
 visitors have expressed their opinion that we are 
 particularly uninteresting to the intellectual mind 
 of the West. Other peoples' estimate of our work 
 is a great part of our world, and the most important 
 other peoples in the present age being the Europeans, 
 it has become tragic in its effect for us to be unable 
 to evoke their appreciation. There was a time 
 when India could touch the most sensitive part of 
 Europe's mind by storming her imagination with a 
 gorgeous vision of wealth. But cruel time has done 
 its work and the golden illusion has vanished, leaving 
 the ragged poverty of India open to public inspec- 
 tion, charitable or otherwise. Therefore epithets of 
 a disparaging nature from the West finds an easy 
 target in India, bespattering her skin and piercing 
 her vital parts. Epithets once given circulation 
 die hard, for they have their breeding-places in our 
 mental laziness and in our natural readiness to 
 believe that whatever is different from ourselves 
 
vi INTRODUCTION 
 
 must be offensive. Men can live through and die 
 happy in spite of disparagement, if it comes from 
 critics with whom they have no deahngs. But 
 unfortunately our critics not only have the power 
 to give us a bad name, but also to hang us. They 
 play the part of Providence over three hundred 
 millions of aliens whose language they hardly know, 
 and with whom their acquaintance is of the surface. 
 Therefore the vast accumulation of calumny against 
 India, continually growing and spreading over the 
 earth, secretly and surely obstructs the element of 
 heart from finding an entrance into our government. 
 
 One can never do justice from a mere sense of 
 duty to those for whom one lacks respect. And 
 human beings, as we are, justice is not the chief 
 thing that we claim from our rulers. We need 
 sympathy as well, in order to feel that we have 
 human relationship with them and thus retain as 
 much of our self-respect as may be possible. 
 
 For some time past a spirit of retaliation has 
 taken possession of our literature and our social 
 world. We have furiously begun to judge our 
 judges, and the judgment comes from hearts sorely 
 stricken with hopeless humiliation. And because 
 our thoughts have an organ whose sound does not 
 reach outside our country, or even the ears of our 
 governors within its boundaries, their expression is 
 growing in vehemence. The prejudice cultivated on 
 the side of the powerful is no doubt dangerous for 
 the weak, but it cannot be wise on the part of the 
 strong to ignore that thorny crop grown on the 
 opposite field. The upsetting of truth in the 
 relationship of the ruler and the ruled can never be 
 compensated by the power that lies in the grip of 
 the mailed fist. 
 
 And this was the reason which made us deeply 
 
INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 grateful to Sister Nivedita, that great-hearted 
 Western woman, when she gave utterance to her 
 criticism of Indian life. She had won her access to 
 the inmost heart of our society by her supreme gift 
 of sjnnpathy. She did not come to us with the 
 impertinent curiosity of a visitor, nor did she 
 elevate herself on a special high perch with the idea 
 that a bird's eye view is truer than the human view 
 because of its superior aloofness. She lived our life 
 and came to know us by becoming one of ourselves. 
 She became so intimately familiar with our people 
 that she had the rare opportunity of observing us 
 unawares. As a race we have our special limitations 
 and imperfections, and for a foreigner it does not 
 require a high degree of keen-sightedness to detect 
 them. We know for certain that these defects did 
 not escape Nivedita's observation, but she did not 
 stop there to generalize, as most other foreigners 
 do. And because she had a comprehensive mind 
 and extraordinary insight of love she could see the 
 creative ideals at work behind our social forms and 
 discover our soul that has living connexion with its 
 past and is marching towards its fulfilment. 
 
 But Sister Nivedita, being an idealist, saw a great 
 deal more than is usually seen by those foreigners 
 who can only see things, but not truths. Therefore 
 I have heard her being discredited by the authority 
 of long experience, which is merely an experience of 
 blindness carried through long years. And of these 
 I have the same words to say which I said to those 
 foreign residents of Japan, whose long experience 
 itself was like a film obscuring the freshness of their 
 sight, making them conscious of only some outer 
 details, specially where they irritated their minds. 
 Instead of looking on the picture side of the ceinvas, 
 if they look on the blank side it wiU not give any 
 
viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 more value to their view because of the prolonged 
 period of their staring. 
 
 The mental sense, by the help of which we feel 
 the spirit of a people, is like the sense of sight, or of 
 touch — it is a natural gift. It finds its objects, not 
 by analysis, but by direct apprehension. Those 
 who have not this vision merely see events and 
 facts, and not their inner association. Those who 
 have no ear for music, hear sounds, but not the 
 song. Therefore when, by reason of the mere 
 lengthiness of their suffering, they threaten to 
 establish the fact of the tune to be a noise, one need 
 not be anxious about the reputation of the music. 
 Very often it is the mistakes which require a longer 
 time to develop their tangles, while the right answer 
 comes promptly. 
 
 It is a truism to say that shadows accompany 
 light. What you feel as the truth of a people, has 
 its numberless contradictions, just as the single fact 
 of the roundness of the earth is contradicted by the 
 innumerable facts of its hills and hollows. Facts 
 can easily be arranged and heaped up into loads of 
 contradiction ; yet men having faith in the reality 
 of ideals hold firmly that the vision of truth does not 
 depend upon its dimension, but upon its vitality. 
 And Sister Nivedita has uttered the vital truths 
 about Indian life. 
 
 Rabindranath Tagore 
 
 October 21, 1917 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE SETTING OF THE WARP 
 
 A HOUSE of my own, in which to eat, sleep, and 
 conduct a girls' school, and full welcome accorded 
 at any hour of day or night that I might choose to 
 invade the privacy of a group of women friends hard 
 by : these were the conditions under which I made 
 my entrance into Hindu life in the city of Calcutta. 
 I came when the great autumn feast of the Mother 
 was past ; I was there at the ending of the 
 winter when plague broke out in our midst, and 
 the streets at night were thronged with seething 
 multitudes, who sang strange litanies and went half 
 mad with religious excitement ; I remained through 
 the terrific heat, when activity became a burden, and 
 only one's Hindu friends understood how to live ; 
 I left my home for a time when the tropical rains 
 had begun, and in the adjoining roads the cab- 
 horses were up to their girths in water hour after 
 hour. 
 
 What a beautiful old world it was in which I spent 
 those months ! It moved slowly, to a different 
 rhythm from anything that one had known. It was 
 a world in which a great thought or intense emotion 
 was held as the true achievement, distinguishing the 
 day as no deed could. It was a world in which men 
 in loin-cloths, seated on door-sills in dusty lanes, said 
 things about Shakespeare and Shelley that some of 
 us would go far to hear. It was full of gravity, 
 
2 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 simplicity, and the solid and enduring reality of great 
 character and will. 
 
 From all round the neighbourhood at sunset 
 would come the sound of gongs and bells in the 
 family-chapel of each house, announcing Evensong. 
 At that same hour might the carpenter be seen 
 censing his tools, or the schoolboy, perhaps, his 
 inkstand and pen, as if thanking these humble 
 creatures of the day's service ; and women on their 
 way to worship would stop wherever a glimpse of the 
 Ganges was possible, or before a bo-tree or tulsi- 
 plant, to salute it, joining their hands and bowing 
 the head. More and more, as the spirit of Hindu 
 culture became the music of life, did this hour and 
 that of sunrise grow to be the events of my 
 day. One learns in India to believe in what 
 Maeterlinck calls " the great active silence," and in 
 such moments consciousness, descending like a 
 plummet into the deeps of personality, and leaving 
 even thought behind, seems to come upon the un- 
 measured and immeasurable. The centre of gravity 
 is shifted. The seen reveals itself as what India 
 declares it, merely the wreckage of the Unseen, cast 
 up on the shores of Time and Space. Nothing that 
 happens within the activity of daylight can offer a 
 counter-attraction to this experience. But then, as 
 we must not forget, the Indian day is pitched in its 
 key. Tasks are few, and are to be performed with 
 dignity and earnestness. Everything has its aureole 
 of associations. Eating and bathing — with us 
 chiefly selfish operations — are here great sacra- 
 mental acts, guarded at all points by social honour 
 and the passion of purity. From sunrise to sunset 
 the life of the nation moves on, and the hum of 
 labour and the clink of tools rise up, as in some vast 
 monastery, accompanied by the chanting of prayers 
 and the atmosphere of recollectedness. The change 
 itself from daylight to darkness is incredibly swift. 
 
THE SETTING OF THE WARP 3 
 
 A few fleecy clouds gather on the horizon and pass 
 from white, maybe, to orange and even crimson. 
 Then the sun descends, and at once we are alone 
 with the deep purple and the tremulous stars of the 
 Indian night. Far away in the North, hour after 
 hour, outlines go on cutting themselves clearer 
 against the green and opal sky, and long low cliffs 
 grow slowly dim with shadows on the sea. The North 
 has Evening : the South, Night. 
 
 Tropical thunderstorms are common through April 
 and May at the day's end, and the terrible convul- 
 sion of Nature that then rages for an hour or two 
 gives a simple parallel to many instances of violent 
 contrast and the logical extreme in Indian art and 
 history. This is a land where men will naturally 
 spend the utmost that is in them. And yet, side by 
 side with the scarlet and gold of the loom, how 
 inimitably delicate is the blending of tints in the 
 tapestry ! It is so with Indian life. The most 
 delicate nuance and remorseless heroism exist side 
 by side, and are equally recognised and welcomed, 
 as in the case of a child I knew — a child whose great 
 grandmother had perhaps committed suttee — who 
 ran to his mother with the cry, " Mother ! Mother t 
 save me from Auntie I She ifi beating me with her 
 eyes ! " 
 
 The foundation-stone of our knowledge of a people 
 must be an understanding of their region. For 
 social structure depends primarily on labour, and 
 labour is necessarily determined by place. Thus we 
 reach the secret of thought and ideals. As an 
 example of this we have only to see how the North- 
 man, with his eyes upon the sun, carries into 
 Christianity the great cycle of fixed feasts that 
 belongs to Midsummer's Day and Yule, approxi- 
 mately steady in the solar year; while the child of 
 the South, to whom the lunar sequence is everything. 
 
4 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 contributes Easter and Whitsuntide. The same 
 distinction holds in the history of Science, where 
 savants are agreed that in early astronomy the sun 
 elements were first worked out in Chaldea and the 
 moon in India. To this day the boys and girls at 
 school in Calcutta know vastly more about the moon 
 and her phases than their English teachers, whose 
 energies in this kind have been chiefly spent in 
 noting the changes in shadow-length about an upright 
 stick during the course of day. Evidently Education 
 — that process which is not merely the activity of 
 the reading and writing mill, but all the preparedness 
 that life brings us for all the functions that life 
 ilemands of us — Education is vitally determined by 
 circumstances of place. 
 
 The woman pausing in the dying light to salute 
 the river brings us to another such instance. There 
 is nothing occult in the passion of Hindus for the 
 Ganges. Sheer delight in physical coolness, the joy 
 of the eyes, and the grat'tu le of the husbandrtian 
 made independent of rain, are sufficient basis. But 
 when we add to this the power of personification 
 common to naives peoples, and the peculiarly Hindu 
 genius of idealism, the whole gamut of associations 
 is accounted for. Indeed, it would be difficult to 
 live long beside the Ganges and not fall under the 
 spell of her personality. Yellow, leonine, imperious, 
 there is in her something of the caprice, of the almost 
 treachery, of beautiful women who have swayed the 
 wills of the world. Semiramis, Cleopatra, Mary 
 Stuart, are far from being the Hindu ideal, but the 
 power of them all is in that great mother whom 
 India worships. For to the simple, the Ganges is 
 completely mother. Does she not give life and food ? 
 To the pious she is the bestower of purity, and as 
 each bather steps into her flood, he stoops tenderly 
 to place a little of the water on his head, craving 
 pardon with words of salutation for the touch of bis 
 
THE SETTING OF THE WARP 5 
 
 foot. To the philosopher she is the current of his 
 single life, sweeping irresistibly onward to the 
 universal. To the travelled she tells of Benares and 
 the mountain snows, and legends of Siva the 
 Great God, and Uma Himavutee, mother of all 
 womanhood. Or she brings memories of the Indian 
 Christ and His youth among the shepherds in the 
 forests of Brindaban on her tributary Jumna. And 
 to the student of history she is the continuity of 
 Aryan thought and civilisation through the ages, 
 giving unity and meaning to the lives of races and 
 centuries as she passes through them, carrying the 
 message of the past ever into the future, a word of 
 immense promise, an assurance of unassailable cer- 
 tainty. But with all this and beyond it all, the 
 Ganges, to her lovers, is a person. To us, who 
 have fallen so far away from the Greek mode of 
 seeing, this is difficult perhaps to understand. But 
 living in a Calcutta lane the powers of the imagina- 
 tion revive ; the moon-setting becomes again Selene 
 riding on the horse with the veiled feet ; Phoebus 
 Apollo rising out of one angle of a pediment is a con- 
 vincing picture of the morningsky ; andthe daycomes 
 when one surprises oneself in the act of talking with 
 earth and water as conscious living beings. One is 
 ready now to understand the Hindu expression of 
 love for river and home. It is a love with which the 
 day's Hfe throbs. "Without praying, no eating! 
 Without bathing, no praying ! " is the short strict 
 rule to which every woman at least conforms; 
 hence the morning bath in the river is the first great 
 event of the day. It is still dark when little com- 
 panies of women of rank begin to leave their houses 
 on foot for the bathing-stairs. These are the proud 
 and high-bred on whom "the sun has never 
 looked." Too sensitive to tolerate the glance of 
 passers by, and too faithful to forego the sanctifying 
 immersion, they cut the knot of both difficulties at 
 
6 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 once in this way. Every moment of the ablution 
 has its own invocation, and the return journey is 
 made, carrying a brass vessel full of the sacred water 
 which will be used all day to sprinkle the place in 
 which any eats or prays. 
 
 Their arrival at home finds already waiting those 
 baskets of fruit and flowers which are to be used in 
 worship ; for one of the chief acts of Hindu devotion 
 consists in burying the feet of the adored in flowers. 
 The feet, from their contact with ail the dusty and 
 painful ways of the world, have come to be lowliest 
 and most despised of all parts of the body, while the 
 head is so sacred that only a superior may touch it. 
 To take the dust of the feet of the saints or of an 
 image, therefore, and put it upon one's head, is 
 emblematic of all reverence and sense of unworthi- 
 ness, and eager love will often address itself to the 
 " lotus-feet " of the beloved. Amongst my own 
 friends, health forbade the bathing before dawn, and 
 poverty did not allow of the visit to the river in 
 closed palkee every day. But half-past nine or 
 ten always found the younger women busy 
 bringing incense and flowers and Ganges water for 
 the mother's " puja," as it is called ; and then, 
 while she performed the daily ceremonies, they 
 proceeded to make ready the fruits and sweets which 
 were afterwards to be blessed and distributed. 
 
 It is interesting to see the difference between a 
 temple and a church. The former may seem 
 absurdly small, for theoretically it is simply a covered 
 shrine which contains one or other of certain images 
 or symbols, before which appropriate offerings are 
 made and prescribed rituals performed by duly 
 appointed priests. The table is only properly 
 called an altar in temples of the Mother ; in other 
 cases it would be more correct perhaps to speak of 
 the throne, since fruit and flowers are the only 
 
THE SETTING OF THE WARP 7 
 
 sacrifices permitted. So it is clear that the Eastern 
 temple corresponds to that part of the Christian 
 church which is known technically as the sanctuary. 
 The worshipper is merely incidental here ; he sits 
 or kneels on the steps, and pays the priest to per- 
 form for him some special office ; or he reads and 
 couiempiates the image in a spirit of devotion. The 
 church, on the other hand, includes shrine and con- 
 gregation, and has more affinity to the Mohammedan 
 mosque, which is simply a church with the nave 
 Unroofed. 
 
 Temples are not very popular in Bengal, every 
 house being supposed to have its chapel or oratory, 
 for which the ladies care, unless the family be rich 
 enough to maintain a chaplain. Even the services 
 of a Brahmin in the house or neighbourhood, how- 
 ever, will not dispense them from the offering of 
 elaborate personal puja before the morning meal 
 can be thought of. I can never forget a reproach 
 levelled at myself on this point. 
 
 It was my first morning in a Hindu home. I had 
 arrived at dawn, tired and dusty after days of rail- 
 way travel, and had lain down on a mat spread on 
 the floor, to sleep. Towards eight o'clock, the 
 thought of my tea-basket brightened my despair, 
 and I turned eagerly to open and secure its refresh- 
 ment. Suddenly a little boy stood before me like a 
 young avenging angel. His great brown eyes were 
 full of pain and surprise, such as only a child's face 
 ever adequately shows. He did not know much 
 English and spoke deliberately, laying terrible 
 emphasis on each word, " Have — you — said — your 
 — prayers ? " he said. 
 
 It is a little strange, during the rains, to have to 
 take an umbrella to go upstairs, but without my two 
 courtyards in the middle of the house the hot 
 weather would have been insupportable in Calcutta. 
 
8 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 These make the Eastern home, by day, a cave of all 
 winds that blow, and at night a tent roofed in by the 
 starry universe itself. No one who has not expe- 
 rienced it can know quite what it means to return in 
 the evening and open the door upon the sky and 
 stars that one is leaving without. The Indian 
 night is in itself something never to be forgotten. 
 Vast and deep and black it seems, lighted by large 
 soft stars that throb and gleam with an unknown 
 brilliance, while the stillness is broken only by some 
 night-beggar who chants the name of God in the 
 distant streets, or by the long-drawn howl of the 
 jackals crying the quarters of the night across the 
 open plain. Even the moonlight itself, with the 
 palm-trees whispering and throwing ink-black 
 shadows, is not more beautiful than these solemn 
 "dark nights," when the blindness and hush of 
 things brood over the soul with their mighty 
 motherhood. 
 
 Just as the housewives of some European univer- 
 sity town in the Middle Ages would feel responsible 
 for the welfare of the "poor scholar," so to the 
 whole of Hindu society, which has assimilated in its 
 own way the functions of the university, the 
 religious student is a common burden. Where he 
 is, there is the university, and he must be supported 
 by the nearest householders. For this reason, I, 
 being regarded as a student of their religion, my 
 good neighbours were unfailing of kindness in the 
 matter of household supplies. Perhaps the most 
 striking instance of this lay in the fact that when I 
 was to have a guest I had only to say so, and 
 friends in the vicinity would send in a meal ready- 
 cooked, or the necessary bedding, without my even 
 knowing the names of those to whom I owed the 
 bounty. And with all this, there was no question 
 as to the course of my study or the conclusions I 
 
THE SETTING OF THE WARP 9 
 
 ■was reaching — no criticism, cither, of its form. 
 They simply accorded to a European woman the 
 care they were accustomed to bestow on the ashen- 
 clad ascetic, because they understood that some 
 kind of disinterested research was her object also, 
 and they knew so well that the management of 
 affairs was no part of the function of the scholar. 
 What do we not read of the depth of a culture that 
 is translated and re-applied with such ease as this ? 
 And what do we not learn of the intellectual 
 freedom and development of the people ? 
 
 Few things, even in Indian life, are so interesting 
 as this matter of the social significance of the 
 beggar. That distaste for property which we see 
 in such lives as Kant's and Spinoza's resolves itself 
 readily in the Indian climate into actual destitution. 
 Shelter and clothing are hardly necessities there : a 
 handful of rice and a few herbs such as can be 
 obtained at any door are alone indispensable. But 
 everything conspires to throw upon such as beg the 
 duty of high thinking and the exchange of ideas 
 with their supporters. Hence the beggar makes 
 himself known by standing in the courtyard and 
 singing some hymn or prayer. He comes always, 
 that is to say, in the Name of God. There is a 
 whole literature of these beggars' songs, quaint and 
 simple, full of what we in Europe call the Celtic 
 spirit. In his lowest aspect, therefore, the Indian 
 beggar is the conserver of the folk-poetry of his 
 country. Where his individuality is strong, how- 
 ever, he is much more. To the woman who serves 
 him he is then the religious teacher, talking with 
 her of subjects on which she can rarely converse, 
 and in this way carrying the highest culture far and 
 wide. 
 
 It is said that the deep familiarity of Punjabi 
 women with Hindu philosophy is the result of the 
 strong recrudescence of the characteristic national 
 
lo THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 charity under Runjeet Singh. When we think of 
 the memories that would linger behind such a 
 visitor — the man whose whole face spoke know- 
 ledge, standing at the door one noon and asking 
 alms — we come upon a trace of the feeling that 
 paints the Great God as a beggar. 
 
 It is droll to find that the whole city is parcelled 
 out into wards, each of which is visited regularly on 
 a given day. My days were Wednesday and Sunday, 
 and going out one of these mornings about nine, I 
 was fortunate enough to catch the whole procession 
 coming up the lane. Men and women they were, 
 elderly for the most part, but hale and well, with 
 their long staffs in the right hand, and metal or 
 wooden bowls in the left — amongst the niost cheerful 
 human beings I ever saw. The fact of this regular 
 division of the city puts the afTair at once on the 
 basis of a poor-rate (of which we have none in 
 India), and shows that in ways appropriate to 
 themselves the Hindu people are as able organisers 
 as any. It may be that in Western cities the work- 
 house is a necessary solution, but certainly this 
 Indian distribution of want over the wealthier 
 community, with its joining of the act of giving to 
 the natural sentiment, seems a good deal less 
 mechanical and more humane than ours. It is very 
 amusing sometimes to see how tenacious people are 
 of their own superstitions. I have seen an English 
 woman made really unhappy because an Indian 
 beggar would not accept a loaf she bought and 
 handed to him, while he would have been very 
 thankful for the money that it cost. The donor and 
 her friends were in despair at what they regarded as 
 utterly impracticable. Yet to the onlooker it seemed 
 that the obstinacy was on their own side. In 
 England we are warned that alcohol is a constant 
 temptation to the poor and ill-fed ; it is better, 
 therefore, to give food than money. In India, on 
 
THE SETTING OF THE WARP ii 
 
 the other hand, there is no risk whatever on this 
 score ; for not one man in a hundred ever tasted 
 liquor, and at the same time a Hindu beggar at least 
 may not eat bread made with yeast, or baked by any 
 but Hindus of his own or better caste. Now the 
 offering made in this case was of yeast-made bread, 
 baked by a Mohammedan, and handled by a 
 Christian ! To the poor man it was evident that 
 the lady was willing to give ; why should she load 
 her gift with impossible conditions ? And for my 
 own part I could but echo, why ? 
 
 Among the quaintest customs are those of the 
 night-beggars. These are Mohammedans, but all 
 fields are their pasture. They carry a bowl and a 
 lamp as their insignia of ofHce. It is common 
 amongst these gentlemen to fix on a sum at sunset 
 that they deem sufficient for their modest wants, 
 and to vow that they shall know no rest till this is 
 gathered. As the hours go on, therefore, they call 
 aloud the balance that remains ; and persons coming 
 late home or watching by the sick are often glad to 
 pay the trifle and gain quiet. Yet there is something 
 weird and solemn in waking from sleep to hear the 
 name of Allah cried beneath the stars in a kind of 
 Perpetual Adoration. 
 
 Like a strong tide beating through the months, 
 rise and fall the twelve or thirteen great religious 
 festivals, or Pujas. Chief of them all, in Bengal, is 
 the autumn Durga-Puja, or Festival of the Cosmic 
 Energy. A later month is devoted to the thought 
 of all that is gentle and tender in the Motherhood of 
 Nature. Again it is the Indian Minerva, Saraswati, 
 who claims undivided attention. Those who have 
 lived in Lancashire will remember how the aspect of 
 streets and cottages is changed towards Simnel 
 Sunday. Every window is decorated with cakes, 
 and every cake bears a spirited picture in comfits of 
 
12 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 some coaching or other local scene. And every- 
 where, with us at Christmas-time, the shops are gay 
 with holly and mistletoe, so that there is no mis- 
 taking the time of year. Similarly, in Calcutta, as 
 each puja comes round, characteristic articles appear 
 in the bazaars. At one time it is hand-screens 
 made of beetles' wings and peacocks' feathers, and 
 every shop and every pedlar seems to carry these 
 beautiful fans. Through September and October, 
 as the Durga-Puja approaches, the streets resound 
 with carols to the Mother. But the most charming 
 of all is the Farewell Procession with the Image. 
 
 For no image may be kept more than the pre- 
 scribed number of days, usually three. Up to the 
 evening before the fea."*, it is not sacred at all, and 
 any one may touch it. x'hen, however, a Brahmin, 
 who has fasted all day, meditates before the figure, 
 and, as it is said, " magnetises " it. The texts he 
 chants are claimed to be aids to the concentration of 
 his own mind, and to have no other function. When 
 the image has been consecrated it becomes a sacred 
 object, but even then it is not actually worshipped. 
 Its position is that of a stained-glass window, or an 
 altar-piece, in an Anglican church. It is a sugges- 
 tion offered to devout thought and feeling. On the 
 step before it stands a brass pitcher full of water, 
 and the mental effort of the worshipper is directed 
 upon this water; for even so, it is said, does the 
 formless Divine fill the Universe. It would seem 
 that the Hindu mind is very conscious of the possi- 
 bility that the image may thwart its own intention 
 and become an idol ; for not only is this precaution 
 taken in the act of adoration, but it is directed that 
 at the end of the puja it shall be conveyed away and 
 thrown bodily into the river 1 On the third evening, 
 therefore, towards sunset, the procession forms itself, 
 little contingents joining it from every house in the 
 village as it passes the door, each headed by one or 
 
THE SETTING OF THE WARP 13 
 
 two men bearing the figure of the god or goddess, 
 and followed by the children of the family and others. 
 It is a long and winding march to the Ganges' side. 
 Arrived there, the crown is carefully removed, to be 
 kept a year for good luck ; and then, stepping down 
 into the stream, the bearers heave up their load and 
 throw it as far as they can. We watch the black 
 hair bobbing up and down in the current for awhile, 
 and then, often amid the tears of the children, turn 
 back to the house from which a radiant guest has 
 departed. There is quietness now where for three 
 days have been worship and feasting. But the tired 
 women are glad to rest from the constant cooking, 
 and even the babies are quickly cheered, for it will 
 be but a month or two till some new festival shall 
 bring to them fresh stores of memory. 
 
 The great decorum of Oriental life is evident 
 when one has to come or go through a Hindu city in 
 the evening. Doorways and windows are flanked 
 with broad stone benches, and here, after the evening 
 meal, sit numbers of men in earnest conversation. 
 But any woman is safe in such a street. Not even 
 the freedom of a word or look will be offered. As 
 Lakshman, in the great Epic, recognised among the 
 jewels of Sita only her anklets, so honour demands 
 of every man that he look no higher than the feet of 
 the passing woman ; and the behest is so faithfully 
 observed that on the rare occasions when an Indian 
 woman may need to undergo the ordeal I have 
 known her own brother to let her go unrecognised. 
 For one need not say that women do now and then 
 slip out on foot at nightfall, accompanied by a maid 
 bearing a lamp, to enjoy an hour's gossip in some 
 neighbour's house. We are all familiar with the 
 powers of criticism of quiet women who never strayed 
 into the great world, or saw more than the view 
 from their own thresholds would reveal. What is 
 
14 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 true in this respect of the Western cottage is true 
 also of the Eastern zenana. Woman's penetration 
 is everywhere the same. Her good breeding makes 
 everywhere the same demands. On one occasion I 
 had the misfortune to introduce into my Indian 
 home a European whose behaviour caused me the 
 deepest mortification. But the ladies sat on the 
 case when she had gone, and gravely discussed it in 
 all its bearings. Finally it was gently dismissed 
 with the remark, " she was not well-born." On 
 another occasion I came in one evening at the 
 moment of some distinguished friend's arrival. Such 
 was the empressentent of her reception, the warmth 
 of the inquiries after her health and so on, that I felt 
 myself to be certainly an intrusion. But a quiet 
 hand detained me when I would have slipped away. 
 "Wait," said the Mother, "till I have finished, for I 
 haven't the least idea who she is ! " 
 
 There were, however, certain practical diiBculties 
 in the life. It had taken some time, in the first 
 place, to discover a house that could be let to an 
 Englishwoman ; and when this was done it was still 
 a few weeks before a Hindu caste-woman could be 
 found who would be my servant. She turned up at 
 last, however, in the person of an old, old woman, 
 who called me " Mother," and whom I, at half her 
 age, had to address as "Daughter" or "Jhee." 
 This aged servitor was capable enough of the 
 wholesale floodings of the rooms which constituted 
 house-cleaning, as well of producing boiling water at 
 stated times for the table and the bath. For some 
 reason or other she had determined in my case to 
 perform these acts on condition that I never entered 
 her kitchen or touched her fire or water-supply. 
 Yet hot water was not immediately procurable. And 
 the reason ? We possessed no cooking-stove. I 
 asked the price of this necessary article, and was told 
 
THE SETTING OF THE WARP is 
 
 six farthings. Armed with which sum, sure enough, 
 my trusty retainer brought home a tile, a lump of 
 clay, and a few thin iron bars, and constructed from 
 these, with the greatest skill, the stove we needed. 
 
 It took some days to set and harden, but at last 
 the work was complete. Afternoon tea, prepared 
 under my own roof, was set triumphantly before 
 me, and my ancient "daughter" squatted on the 
 verandah facing me, with the hot kettle on the stone 
 floor beside her, to see what strange thing might 
 come to pass. I poured out a cup of tea and held 
 out the pot to Jhee for more hot water. To my 
 amazement she only gave a sort of grunt and dis- 
 appeared into the inner courtyard. When she came 
 back, a second later, she was dripping with cold 
 water from head to foot. Before touching what I 
 was about to drink she had considered a complete 
 immersion necessary ! 
 
 How happy were those days in the little lane! 
 how unlike the terrible pictures of the Hindu 
 routine which, together with that of the Pharisees in 
 the New Testament, had embittered my English 
 childhood ! Constant ablutions, endless prostra- 
 tions, unmeaning caste-restrictions, what a torture 
 the dreary tale had been 1 And the reality was so 
 different I My little study, with its modern pictures 
 and few books, looked out on the cheeriest of neigh- 
 bours. Here, a brown baby, with black lines under 
 his eyes, and a gold chain round his waist, carried 
 in triumph by his mother or nurse; there, some 
 dignified woman, full of sweetness, as a glance 
 would show, on her way to the bathing-ghat; 
 again, a quiet man, with intellectual face and 
 Oriental leisure ; and, above it all, the tall palm- 
 trees, with little brown villages and fresh-water 
 tanks nestling at their feet, while all kinds of birds 
 flew about fearlessly just outside my window, and 
 
i6 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 threw their shadows across my paper as I wrote. 
 The golden glow of one's first sensation suffuses it 
 still. It was all like a birth into a new world. 
 
 One evening, as I prepared for supper, a sound of 
 wailing broke the after-darkness quiet of the lane, and 
 making my way in the direction of the cry, I entered 
 the court-yard of some servants' huts, just opposite. 
 On the floor of the yard a girl lay dying, and as we 
 sat and watched her, she breathed her last. Hours 
 went by, and wliile the men were away at the 
 burning-ghat, making arrangements for the funeral- 
 fire that would be over before dawn, I sat with the 
 weeping women, longing to comfort them, yet know- 
 ing not what to say. At last the violence of their 
 grief had exhausted them, and even the mother of 
 the dead girl lay back in my arms in a kind of 
 stupor, dazed into forgetfulness for awhile. Then, 
 as is the way of sorrow, it all swept over her again, 
 in a flood of despair. " Oh ! " she cried, turning 
 to me, "what shall I do ? Where is my child 
 now ? " 
 
 I have always regarded that as the moment in 
 which I found the key. Filled with a sudden pity, 
 not so much for the bereaved woman as for those to 
 whom the use of some particular language of the 
 Infinite is a question of morality, I leaned forward. 
 "Hush, mother!" I said, "your child is with the 
 Great Mother. She is with Kali ! " And then, for 
 a moment, with memory stilled, we were enfolded 
 together, Eastern and Western, in the unfathomed 
 depths of consolation of the World-Heart. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE EASTERN MOTHER 
 
 These eighteen centuries has Europe been dreaming 
 of the idyll of the Oriental woman. For Asia is one, 
 and the wondrous Maiden of all Christian art, from 
 the Byzantines down to yesterday — who is she, of 
 what is she aware, save that she is a simple Eastern 
 mother ? Of what fasts and vigils are we told in 
 her case, that she should have known herself, or 
 been known, as Queen of Saints ? A rapt humility, 
 as of one whose robe was always, indeed, her veil ; 
 a touch of deep silence, and that gracious richness 
 of maternity which we can infer from the full and 
 rounded sweetness of the Child who grew within 
 her shadow — what more do we know of the Blessed 
 Virgin than these things ? 
 
 What more we may desire to know we can learn 
 in the East itself — in India as well as anywhere. 
 For in the period before Islam had defined itself, 
 overflowing Chaldea, with the impulse, perhaps, of 
 the pastoral life, become aggressive, to re-make the 
 desert — in the days when Palestine and Lebanon 
 were cultivated lands, inhabited by peasants of the 
 early type, not as yet made a burnt-offering on the 
 altar of crusading fury, in the closing centuries of 
 the pre-Christian era — the common life of Syria had 
 a still wider identity with that of Hindus than it has 
 to-day. The ceremonial washings of Pharisees and 
 Sadducees, the constant purifying of the cup and 
 
i8 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 platter, the habitual repetition of a single name or 
 prayer, which some later phase of the Christianising 
 consciousness has stigmatised as "vain" — these 
 things were not like, they were, what we know to- 
 day as Hinduism, being merely those threads of the 
 one great web of Asiatic Ufe that happened to touch 
 the Mediterranean coast. 
 
 And in matters so fundamental as the relation of 
 mother and child, religious teachers come only to 
 enforce the message of the race. Is it not said by 
 the Prophet himself that the man who kisses the feet 
 of his mother finds himself in Paradise ? 
 
 Yet how frail and slight and young is often the 
 mother so tenderly adored! No Madonna of the 
 Sistine Chapel can give that lofty purity of brow or 
 delicate untouched virginity of look of any one of 
 these Hindumother-maidens, whose veil half covers, 
 half reveals, as he rests on her left arm, her son ! 
 
 The picture is too central to Indian life to have 
 demanded literary idealising. Poetic and mytho- 
 logical presentments of the perfect wife there are in 
 plenty : of motherhood, none. Only God is wor- 
 shipped as such by men and children and by mothers 
 themselves as the Holy Child ! Here the half pathos 
 of Western maternity, with its perpetual suggestion 
 of the brood-hen whose fledglings are about to escape 
 her, is gone, and an overwhelming sense of tender- 
 ness and union takes its place. To one's mother 
 one always remains a baby. It would be unmanly 
 to disguise the fact. And yet for her sake most of 
 all it is needful to play the man, that she may have 
 a support on which to lean in the hour of darkness 
 and need. Even a wife has no power to bring 
 division between a mother and her son, for the wife 
 belongs almost more to her husband's mother than 
 to himself. There can, therefore, be no jealousy at 
 the entry of another woman into his life. Instead 
 of this, it is she who urges the marriage ; every 
 
THE EASTERN MOTHER 19 
 
 offering is sent out in her name; and the procession 
 that wends from the bridegroom's house to the bride's 
 some few days before the wedding, bearing unguents 
 and fragrant oils for the ceremonial bath, carries her 
 loving invitation and goodwill to the new and longed- 
 for daughter. 
 
 Even in Indian home life, then, full as this is of 
 
 intensity of sweetness, there is no other tie to be 
 
 compared in depth to that which binds together the 
 
 mother and her child. With the coming of her first- 
 
 I born, be it boy or girl, the young wife has been 
 
 • advanced, as it were, out of the novitiate. She has 
 become a member of the authoritative circle. It is 
 'as if the whole world recognises that henceforth 
 
 '/there will be one soul at least to whom her every act 
 i| is holy, before whom she is entirely without fault, and 
 
 • enters into the conspiracy of maintaining her child's 
 ■ reverence. 
 
 For there are no circumstances sufficient in Eastern 
 eyes to justify criticism of a mother by her child. 
 Their horror of the fault of Gertrude is almost 
 exaggerated, yet Hamlet's spell is invariably broken 
 when he speaks of the fact. To him, her sin should 
 be sacred, beyond reproach ; he ought not to be able 
 to think of it as other than his own. 
 
 The freedom and pleasantries of filial sentiment 
 in the West are thus largely wanting in that of the 
 East. A determined stampede of babies of from 
 three to six may, indeed, take place day after day 
 through the room where their mother is at prayer. 
 There may even be an attempt at such an hour to 
 take the city by assault, the children leaping 
 vociferously on the back of that good mother, whose 
 quiet of conscience depends, as they well know, on 
 her perfect silence, so that she can punish them only 
 by turning towards them the sweetest of smiles. 
 "Why, mother," said her family priest to one who 
 appealed to him regarding devotions interrupted 
 
20 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 thus, " the Lord knows that you are a mother, and 
 He makes allowance for these things ! " But though, 
 in the Oriental home, the wickedness of live years 
 old may find such vent as this, the off-hand cama- 
 raderie that learns later to dub its parents " mater" 
 and "governor" suggests a state liitle short of 
 savagery, and the daughter who permits herself to 
 precede her father is held guilty of sacrilege. The 
 tenderness of parents corresponds to this veneration 
 of children, and we only learn the secret cf feelings 
 so deep-rooted when we find that every child is a 
 nurseling for its first two years of life. Conscious- 
 ness and even thought are thus awakened long 
 before the closest intimacy is broken, and a 
 dependence that to us of the West is but a vague 
 imagination, to the Eastern man or woman is a 
 living memory. 
 
 How completely this may become an ingrained 
 motive we see in the case of that Mogul Emperor 
 who is remembered simply as " the Great." For 
 Akbar had a foster-brother in the Rajput household 
 whither his father Humayum had fled before his 
 birth and where his first six years of life were 
 passed. Akbar's mother dying, the Rajput Queen 
 took the babe to nurse with her own son, and 
 brought up ihe boys in this respect as brothers, 
 though the guest was a Mussulman of Tamerlane's 
 descent, and her own the proudest Hindu blood on 
 earth. Events swept the children apart in boyhood, 
 and, destiny fulfilling itself, he who came of a race 
 of conquerors ascended the throne of Delhi, after 
 many years, as Emperor of India. Then he found 
 his Rajput subjects difficult indeed to subjugate. In 
 them, the national idea renewed itself again and 
 again, and insurrection followed insurrection. There 
 was one name, moreover, in every list of rebels, and 
 men wondered at the indulgence with which the 
 august ruler passed it by so often. At last some 
 
THE EASTERN MOTHER 21 
 
 one ventured to point it out, protesting that justice 
 must surely be done now. "Justice, my friend!" 
 said the lofty Akbar, turning on his counsellor, 
 "there is an ocean of milk between him and me 
 and that justice cannot cross ! " 
 
 This long babyhood creates a tie that nothing 
 can break. The thoughts and feelings of woman- 
 hood never become ridiculous in the eyes of the 
 Indian man. It is no shame to him that his mother 
 could not bear a separation ; it is right and natural 
 that he should be guided by this wish of hers. None 
 but the hopelessly degraded ever reacts against 
 woman's weakness in active cruelty. If one asks 
 some hard worker in his old age to what he owes 
 his habit of industry or his determined perseverance 
 over detail, it is more than likely that his reply will 
 take us back to his infancy, and the wishes that a 
 young mother, long dead, may have expressed for 
 him. Or the man, in perplexity as to the course he 
 should pursue, will go as naturally as a child, to 
 test his question in the light of her feminine in- 
 tuition. In all probability, she is utterly unlearned, 
 but he knows well the directness of her mind, and 
 judges rightly that wisdom lies in love and experi- 
 tnce, having but little to do with letters. 
 
 Surely one of the sweetest happenings was that 
 of a little boy of six who became in later life ex- 
 tremely distinguished. His mother, too shy to 
 express the wish for instruction to her learned hus- 
 band, confided in her son, and day after day he 
 would toddle home from the village school, slate and 
 pencil in hand, to go once more through his mor- 
 ning's lesson with her, and so, with mutual secrecy, 
 she was taught to read by her own child I With 
 almost all great men in India the love of their 
 mothers has been a passion. It is told of a famous 
 Bengali judge who died some twenty-five years ago 
 —one whose judicial decisions were recorded and 
 
22 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 quoted, even by the Englishmen who heard them, 
 as precedents in English law, it is told of this man, 
 when on his deathbed, that his mother stumbled 
 and hurt her foot on the threshold of his room one 
 morning, as she came after bathing to visit him. 
 Another moment, and, weak as he was, he had crept 
 across the floor, and lay before her, kissing the 
 wounded foot again and again, and bathing it in hot 
 tears of self-reproach for the pain it suffered. Such 
 stories are remembered and repeated in Indian 
 society, not because they occasion surprise, but 
 because they make the man's own name holy. The 
 death scene with Aase would redeem Peer Gynt 
 himself. None who is sound in this basic relation- 
 ship of life can be altogether corrupt in the rest, nor 
 can his decisions, however adverse, be completely 
 repugnant to us. How curious are the disputes that 
 agitate Christendom as to the sentiment one may 
 fittingly indulge towards the mother of a beloved 
 Son 1 Is her supreme position in His life not self- 
 evident ? What, then, could be more convincing of 
 union with Him than sweetness of feeling and words 
 of endearment addressed to her ? And so, with its 
 wonderful simplicity, the great heart of the East 
 sweeps aside our flimsy arguments and holds up to 
 us the fact itself. 
 
 But it is not the great alone who worship mother- 
 hood in India. Never can I forget the long hours 
 of one hot March day, when I sat by the bedside of 
 a boy who was dying of plague. His home was of 
 the humblest, a mud hut with a thatched roof. His 
 family were Sudras, or working-folk. Even his 
 father, it appeared, could not read or write. The 
 boy was eleven or twelve years of age, an only 
 child, and he was doomed. The visitor's sole real 
 usefulness lay in taking precautions against the 
 spread of the disease. 
 
 Amongst the veiled and silent women who came 
 
THE EASTERN MOTHER 13 
 
 and went at the other side of the little court where 
 the boy lay, was one who slipped noiselessly to his 
 bedside whenever she could, and exposed herself to 
 the infection with a recklessness born of ignorance. 
 At last I attempted to reason with her, urging her, 
 as gently as I could, to remain at some distance 
 from the lad, and thus avoid the danger for herself 
 and others. 
 
 She turned to obey without a word, but as she 
 went the tears poured down her poor thin cheeks, 
 and lifting the corner of her sari to wipe them away, 
 she tried to stifle the sobs she could not altogether 
 repress. At that moment the words reached me 
 from the doorway. " She is his mother." What I 
 did can be imagined. Suddenly I discovered that 
 the boy must be fanned, and that there was a place 
 behind his pillow out of the line of the air current. 
 Here, with his head almost resting on her feet, his 
 mother sat henceforth, crouched up, attending to 
 her child through happy hours. 
 
 Often he would grow delirious, and forget her 
 presence. Then he would toss his head from side 
 to side, and his fever-lighted eyes stared blankly at 
 me, while he uttered his one cry, " Ma ! Ma ! Mataji I 
 — Mother 1 Mother ! honoured Mother ! " To my 
 Western ears it seemed a strange cry for a child of 
 the slums I Sometimes, as memory returned, he 
 would smile at me, mistaking me for her, and once 
 he snatched at my hand and then carried his own to 
 his lips. Sweet, unknown mother, forgive me these 
 thefts of love, that rent the veil from a graciousness 
 so perfect, an adoration so deep ! 
 
 That day, alas, was their last together. All 
 through the hours, the child had struggled to repeat 
 the name of God. Late in the afternoon he stumbled 
 on a hymn that was much sung at the time about the 
 streets ; but he could not say it, and it was my part 
 to take up the words and stand repeating them 
 
24 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 beside him. A smile of relief passed over his face ; 
 he lay quiet for a moment. Then his breath came 
 shorter and shorter, and as the sun set, with his 
 mother's eyes upon his face, he died. 
 
 Of such stuff as this are the teeming millions of 
 the Hindu people made. In moments of mortal 
 agony, wiien Western lips would frame a prayer, 
 perhaps half an oath, the groan that they utter is 
 ever the cry of the child in its deepest need, " Oh, 
 Mother ! " 
 
 But it is easy to multiply instances. What we 
 want is that epic of motherhood, of which each 
 separate mother and her child are but a single line or 
 stanza, that all-compelling imagination of the race, 
 which must for ever be working itself out through 
 the individual. 
 
 We talk glibly of Dante's " Vision of Hell." How 
 many of us have looked into hell, or even seen it 
 from afar off, that we should appreciate what it 
 means to descend there? When the gloom of 
 insanity falls upon the soul so that it turns to rend 
 and destroy its dearest and best, when the blight of 
 some dread imagination covers us with its shadow, 
 is it lover, or child, or servant, who will still find in 
 our maimed and maleficent presence his chiefest 
 good ? There is One indeed whom we cannot 
 imagine as forsaking us. One whose will for us has 
 been the law of righteousness, and yet for whose 
 help we shall cry out instinctively in the moment of 
 the commission of a crime. And like the love of 
 God in this respect is, to Hindu thinking, that of a 
 mother. Transcending the wife's, which may fluc- 
 tuate with the sweetness bestowed upon it, the 
 mother's affection, by its very nature, grows deeper 
 with deep need, and follows the beloved even into 
 hell. A yearning love that can never refuse us ; a 
 benediction that for ever abides with us ; a presence 
 from which we cannot grow away ; a heart in which 
 
THE EASTERN MOTHER 25 
 
 we are always safe ; sweetness unfathomed, bond 
 unbreakable, holiness without a shadow — all these 
 indeed, and more, is motherhood. Small wonder 
 that the innermost longing of every Hindu is to find 
 himself at home in the Universe, with all that comes 
 thereby of joy or sorrow, even as a baby lying 
 against its mother's heart ! This is the dream that 
 is called Nirvana, Freedom. It is the ceasing from 
 those preferences that withhold us that is called 
 Renunciation. 
 
 The very word " mother " is held to be sacred, 
 and good men offer it to good women for their 
 protection. There is no timely service that may 
 not be rendered to one, however young or beautiful, 
 by the passing stranger, if only he first address her 
 thus. Even a father, looking at some small 
 daughter, and struggling to express the mystery of 
 futurity that he beholds in her, may address her as 
 "little motbtr." And the mother of the nation, 
 Uma Himav 'itee, is portrayed always as a child, 
 thought of always as a daughter of the house. In 
 motherhood alone does marriage become holy ; with- 
 out it, the mere indulgence of affection has no right 
 to be. This is the true secret of the longing 
 for children. And to reach that height of wor- 
 ship in which the husband feels his wife to be 
 his mother, is at once to crown and end all lower 
 ties. 
 
 Who that has ever watched it can forget a Hindu 
 woman's worship of the Holy Child ? A small 
 brass image of the Baby Krishna lies, or kneels at 
 play, in a tiny cot, and through the hours of morn- 
 ing, after her bath and before her cooking, the 
 woman, who may or may not herself be wife and 
 mother, sits offering to this image flowers and the 
 water of the bath, fruits, sweets, and other things — 
 her oblations interspersed with constant acts of 
 meditation and silent prayer. She is striving to 
 
26 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 worship God as the Child Saviour, struggh'ng to 
 think of herself as the Mother of God. She is 
 ready enough to give her reason, if we ask her. 
 "Does my feeling for my children change according 
 to what they do for me ? " she questions in return : 
 " Even so should one love God. Mothers love most 
 those who need most. Even so should one love 
 God." The simple answer is worth a world of 
 theology. Nor is it forgotten presently that the 
 other children, made of flesh and blood, and answer- 
 ing to her call, are likewise His images. In every 
 moment of feeding, or training, or play, of serving or 
 using or enjoying, she may make her dealing with 
 these an act of devotion. It was her object, during 
 the hours of worship, to come face to face with the 
 Universal Self. Has she done this, or has she 
 brooded over the ideal sentiment till she has made 
 of herself the perfect mother ? 
 
 By her child, again, her intention can never be 
 doubted. She may turn on him now a smile and 
 then a face of sorrow, now a word of praise and 
 again an indignant reproach. But always, equally, 
 she remains the mother. The heart of hearts of 
 her deed is unfailing love. She knows well, too, 
 that nothing her babies do can mean anything else. 
 The sunny and the petulant, the obedient and the 
 wilful, are only seeking so many different ways to 
 express a self-same dependence. To each she 
 accords the welcome of his own nature. In such a 
 reconciliation of opposites, in such a discovery of 
 unity in variety, hes the whole effort and trend of 
 Eastern religion. 
 
 For what thought is it that speaks supremely to 
 India in the great word " Mother " ? Is it not the 
 vision of a love that never seeks to possess, that is, 
 content simply to be — a giving that could not wish 
 return : a radiance that we do not even dream of 
 grasping, but in which we are content to bask, 
 
THE EASTERN MOTHER 27 
 
 letting the eternal sunshine play around and through 
 us? 
 
 And yet, and ^t, was there ever an ideal of such 
 strength as this, that was not firm-based on some 
 form of discipline ? What, then, is the price that 
 is paid by Hindu women for a worship so precious ? 
 The price is the absolute inviolability of marriage. 
 The worship is, at bottom, the worship of steadfast- 
 ness and purity. If it were conceivable to the Hindu 
 son that his mother could cease for one moment to 
 be faithful to his father — whatever the provocation, 
 the coldness, or even cruelty, to which she might be 
 subjected — at that moment his idealism of her would 
 become a living pain. A widow remarried is no 
 better in Hindu eyes than a woman of no character, 
 and this is the case even where the marriage was 
 only betrothal, and the young fiancee has become 
 what we know as a child-widow. 
 
 This inviolability of the marriage tie has nothing 
 whatever to do with attraction and mutual love. 
 Once a wife, always a wife, even though the bond 
 be shared with others, or remain always only a name. 
 That other men should be only as shadows to her, 
 that her feet should be ready at all times to go forth 
 on any path, even that of death, as the companion 
 of her husband, these things constitute the purity of 
 the wife in India. It is told of some wives with 
 bated breath, how, on hearing of the approaching 
 death of the beloved, they have turned, smiling, 
 and gone to sleep, saying, " I must precede, 
 not follow ! " and from that sleep they never woke 
 again. 
 
 But if we probe deep enough, what, after all, is 
 purity ? Where and when can we say it is, and 
 how are we to determine that here and now it is 
 not ? What is there sacred in one man's monopoly ? 
 or if it be of the mind alone, how can any physical 
 test be rightly imposed ? 
 
28 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 Purity in every one of its forms is the central 
 pursuit of Indian life. But even the passion of this 
 search grows pale beside the remorseless truthful- 
 ness of Hindu logic. There is ultimately, admits 
 India, no single thing called purity : there is the 
 great life of the impersonal, surging through the 
 individual, and each virtue in its turn is but another 
 name for this. 
 
 And so the idea of the sanctity of motherhood, 
 based on the inviolability of marriage, finds due and 
 logical completion in the still greater doctrine of the 
 sacredness of religious celibacy. It is the towering 
 ideal of the supersocial life — " As Mount Meru to a 
 fire-fly " compared to that of the householder — 
 which gives sanction and relation to all social 
 bonds. In proportion as the fact of manhood 
 becomes priesthood, does it attain its full glory ; 
 and the mother, entering into the prison of a sweet 
 dedication, that she may bestow upon her own 
 child the mystery of breath, makes possible in his 
 eyes, by the perfect stainlessness of her devotion, 
 the thought of that other life whose head touches 
 the stars. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 OF THE HINDU WOMAN AS WIFE 
 
 Of the ideal woman of the religious orders the West 
 to-day has very little notion. Teresa and Catherine 
 are now but high-sounding names in history ; 
 Beatrice, a true daughter of the Church, is beloved 
 only of the poets; and Joan of Arc, better under- 
 stood, is rightly felt to be by birth the nun, but by 
 genius the knight. Yet without some deeper sense 
 of kindred with these it will be hard to understand 
 a Hindu marriage, for the Indian bride comes to 
 her husband much as the Western woman might 
 enter a church. Their love is a devotion, to be 
 offered in secret. They know well that they are the 
 strongest influence, each in the other's life, but 
 before the family there can be no assertion of the 
 fact. Their first duty is to see that the claims of 
 others are duly met, for the ideal is that a wife 
 shall, if that be possible, love her husband's people 
 as she never loved her own ; that the new parents 
 shall be more to her than the old ; that she can 
 bring no gift into their home so fair as a full and 
 abundant daughlerhood and a confirmation of their 
 supreme place in their son's love. Both husband 
 and wife must set their faces towards the welfare 
 of the family. This, and not that they should love 
 each the other before all created beings, is the 
 primal intention of marriage. Yet for the woman 
 supreme love also is a duty. Only to the man his 
 
30 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 mother must stand always first. In some sense, 
 therefore, the relation is not mutual. And this is in 
 full accordance with the national sentiment, which 
 stigmatises affection that asks for equal return as 
 " shopkeeping." When her husband is present or 
 before honoured guests the young wife may not 
 obtrude herself on the attention of her elders. She 
 sits silent, with veil down, plying a fan or doing 
 some little service for the new mother. But through 
 the work of the day she is a trusted helpmeet, and 
 the relation is often very sweet. Nothing is so 
 easy to distinguish as the educational impress of 
 the good mother-in-law. Dignity, with gaiety and 
 freedom, is its great feature. The good breeding of 
 the Hindu woman is so perfect that it is not noticed 
 till one comes across the exception — some spoilt 
 child, perhaps, who, as heiress or beauty has been 
 too much indulged; and her self-assertiveness and 
 want of restraint, though the same behaviour might 
 seem decorous enough in an English girl of her age, 
 will serve as some measure for the real value of the 
 common standard. 
 
 It is not merely in her quietness and modesty, 
 however, that the daughter-in-law betrays good 
 training. She has what remains with her through- 
 out life — a savoir faire that nothing can disturb. I 
 have never known this broken ; and I saw an extra- 
 ordinary instance of it when a friend, the shyest of 
 orthodox women, consented to have her photograph 
 taken for one who begged it with urgency. She 
 stipulated, naturally, that it should be done by a 
 woman. But this was found to be impossible. "Then 
 let it be an Englishman," she said with a sigh, 
 evidently shrinking painfully from the idea of a 
 man, yet feeling that the greater the race-distance 
 the less would be the impropriety. The morning 
 came, and the Englishman arrived, but in the Indian 
 gentlewoman who faced him there was no trace of 
 
OF THE HINDU WOMAN AS WIFE 31 
 
 self-consciousness or fear. A superb indifference 
 carried her through the ordeal, and would have 
 been a sufficient protection in some real difBculty. 
 
 All the sons of a Hindu household bring their 
 wives home to their mother's care, and she, having 
 married her own daughters into other women's 
 families, takes these in their place. There is thus 
 a constant bubbling of young life about the elderly 
 woman, and her own ptosition becomes a mixture of 
 the raoiher-suzeraine and lady abbess. She is well 
 aware of the gossip and laughter of the girls 
 amongst themselves, though they become so demure 
 at her entrance. Whispering goes on in corners 
 and merriment waxes high even in her presence, 
 but she ignores it discreetly, and devotes her atten- 
 tion to persons of her own age. In the early 
 summer mornings she smiles indulgently to find 
 that one and another slipped away last night from 
 her proper sleeping-place and betook herself to the 
 roof, half for the coolness and half for the mysterious 
 joys of girls' midnight gossip. 
 
 The relationship, however, is as far from famili- 
 arity as that of any kind and trusted prioress with 
 her novices. The element of banter and freedom' 
 has another outlet, in the grandmother or whatever 
 aged woman may take that place in the community 
 house. Just as at home the little one had coaxed 
 and appealed against the decisions of father or 
 mother to the ever-ready granddam, so, now that 
 she is a bride, she finds some old woman in her 
 husband's home who has given up her cares into 
 younger hands and is ready to forego all responsi- 
 bility in the sweetness of becoming a confidante. 
 One can imagine the rest. There must be many a 
 difficulty, many a perplexity, in the new surround- 
 ings, but to them all old age can find some parallel. 
 Looking back into her own memories, the grand- 
 mother tells of the questions that troubled her when 
 
33 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 she also was a bride, of the mistakes that she made, 
 and the solutions that offered. Young and old take 
 counsel together, and there is even the possibility 
 that when a mother-in-law is unsympathetic, her 
 own mother-in-law may intervene on behalf of a 
 grandson's wife. Before the grandmother, there- 
 fore, there is none of that weight of reverence 
 which can never be lightened in the mother's pi^e- 
 sence. Even the veil need not be dropped. The 
 familiar " thou " takes the place of the stately 
 " you," and there is no respect shown by frigid 
 reserve. 
 
 Long ago, when a child's solemn betrothal often 
 took place at seven or eight years of age, it was to 
 gratify the old people's desire to have more children 
 about them that the tiny maidens were brought into 
 the house. It was on the grandmother's lap that the 
 little ones were made acquainted ; it was she and her 
 husband who watched anxiously to see that they 
 took to each other ; and it was they again who 
 petted and comforted the minute grand-daughter-in- 
 law in her hours of home sickness. Marriage has 
 grown later nowadays, in answer amongst other 
 things to the pressure of an increasing poverty, and 
 it does not happen so often that an old man is seen 
 in the bazaar buying consoling gifts for the baby 
 brides at home. But the same instinct still obtains, 
 of making the new home a place of choice, when 
 between her twelfth and fourteenth year — the girl's 
 age at her first and second marriages — the young 
 couple visit alternately in each other's families. 
 
 The Hindu theory is that a long vista of com- 
 mon memory adds sweetness even to the marriage 
 tie, and whether we think this true or not, we have 
 all known happy marriages on such a basis. But 
 about the mutual sentiment of old and young there 
 can be no theory, because there is no possibility of 
 doubt. In all countries in the world it is recog- 
 
OF THE HINDU WOMAN AS WIFE 33 
 
 aised as amongst the happiest things in life. The 
 reminiscence of Arjuna, one of the heroes of the 
 great War-Epic, gives us the Indian explanation 
 of this fact. " I climbed on his knee," he says, 
 speaking of the aged knight Bhishma, head of his 
 house, " all hot and dusty from my play, and flinging 
 my arms about his neck, I called him ' Father.' " 
 " Nay, my child," he replied, as he held me to his 
 breast, " not thy father but thy father's father ! " 
 With each generation, that is to say, the tie has 
 deepened and intensified. 
 
 In all cases where one or two hundred persons 
 live under the same roof, a complex etiquette 
 grows up, by which gradations of rank and defer- 
 ence are rigidly defined. Under the Hindu system 
 this fund of observation has so accumulated that 
 it amounts now to an accomplished culture — a com- 
 pleted criticism of life — rich in quaint and delightful 
 suggestions for humanity everywhere. We may 
 not know why a mother's relatives are apt to be 
 dearer than a father's, but the statement will be 
 approved as soon as made. It has not occurred 
 to us that our relations to an elder sister and a 
 younger are not the same: in India there is a 
 different word for each, for whole worlds of sweet- 
 ness lie a world apart in one name and the other 
 to the Hindu mind. Yet a cousin is constantly 
 called brother or sister, the one relation being 
 merged entirely in the other. The mere use of a 
 language with this degree of definiteness implies 
 an emotional training of extraordinary kind. It is, 
 of course, best suited to natures of great richness 
 of feeling. In these, sentiment is developed in 
 proportion to expression, and the same attitude that 
 makes every one in the village " Aunt " or " Uncle ' 
 to the children, produces an ultimate sense of kin- 
 ship to the world. This is perhaps the commonest 
 characteristic of Hindu men and women ; shy at 
 
 c 
 
34 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 first, and passive to slight stimulus, as are all great 
 forces, when once a relationship is established, they 
 believe in it absolutely, blindly ; are ready to go to 
 the uttermost in its name ; and forget entirely all 
 distance of birth or difference of association. The 
 weak point in the system appears when it has to 
 deal with the harder, more arid class of natures. 
 In these there is less inner response to the outer 
 claim , expressions of difference, therefore, become 
 less sincere and more abject. This is but a poor 
 preparation for the open air of the modern world, 
 where seniority, sanctity, and rank have all to be 
 more or less ignored, and man stands face to face 
 with man, free and equal so far as the innate man- 
 hood of each can carry. But such persons — though, 
 naturally enough, they cluster round the powerful 
 foreigner as moths about a lamp — are the failures of 
 Hinduism, not its types, and they are very few. In 
 a perfected education, Western ideals of equality 
 and struggle would present themselves to these for 
 their choosing, while far away in Europe, maybe, 
 hearts born too sensitive for their more rudimentary 
 emotional surroundings would be thankful in turn to 
 find life made richer by Indian conceptions of human 
 relationship. 
 
 In a community like that of the Hindu home — as 
 in all clan-systems — the characteristic virtue of every 
 member must be a loyal recognition of common 
 duties and dangers. And this is so. The wife 
 who refused to share her husband's obligation to a 
 widowed sister and her children was never known 
 in India. Times of stress draw all parts of the vast 
 group together ; none of the blood can cry in vain 
 for protection and support ; even a " village-connec- 
 tion " (i.e., one who is kin by association only) finds 
 refuge in his hour of need. This great nexus of 
 responsibility takes the place of workhouse, hospital, 
 orphanage, and the rest. Here the lucky and the 
 
OF THE HINDU WOMAN AS WIFE 35 
 
 unlucky are brought up side by side. For to the 
 ripe and mellow genius of the East it has been 
 always clear that the defenceless and unfortunate 
 require a home, not a barrack. 
 
 Into this complex destiny the bride enters finally, 
 about her fourteenth year. Till now she has been 
 a happy child, running about in freedom, feet shod 
 and head bare, eating and drinking what she would. 
 Till now, life has been full of indulgences — for her 
 own parents, with the shadow of this early separa- 
 tion hanging over them, have seen no reason for a 
 severity that must bring in its train an undying 
 regret. From the moment of her betrothal, how- 
 ever, the girl's experience gradually changes. Just 
 as the young nun, if she runs to find her thimble, 
 will be sent back to bring it " more religiously," so 
 about the newly married girl there grows a subtle 
 atmosphere of recollectedness. The hair is parted, 
 no longer childishly brushed back ; and at the part- 
 ing — showing just beyond the border of the veil 
 with which her head now is always covered — appears 
 a touch of vermilion, put there this morning as she 
 dressed in token that she wished long life to her 
 husband ; much as one might, in taking up a fan, 
 blow a kiss from its edge to some absent beloved 
 one. The young wife's feet are unshod, and the 
 gold wedding bracelet on the left wrist, and a few 
 ornaments appropriate to her new dignity, supply 
 the only hint of girlish vanity. But she has more 
 jewels. These that she wears daily are of plain 
 gold, more or less richly worked, but on her wed- 
 ding night she wore the siti, or three-lined coronal, 
 set with gems, and arms and neck were gay with 
 flashing stones. All these were her dower, given 
 by her father to be her personal property, and not 
 even her husband can touch them without her con- 
 sent, though he will add to them occasionally at 
 festive moments. She will wear them all now and 
 
36 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 again, on great occasions, but meanwhile the silver 
 anklets and the golden necklet and a few bangles 
 are enough for daily use. The girl knows her right 
 to her own ornaments quite well, and the world will 
 never hear how often the wife or the mother has 
 hastened to give up the whole of this little resource 
 in order that son or husband might weather a storm 
 or receive an education. The one thing from which 
 she will never part, however, unless widowhood lays 
 its icy hand upon her life, is that ring of iron 
 covered with gold and worn on the left wrist, which 
 is the sign of the indissoluble bond of her marriage 
 — her wedding-ring in fact. 
 
 With all the shyness of the religious novice comes 
 the girl to her new home. Its very form, with its 
 pillared courtyards, is that of a cloister. The con- 
 stant dropping of the veil in the presence of a man, 
 or before a senior, is the token of a real retirement, 
 the sacrament of an actual seclusion, within which 
 all the voices of the world lose distinctness and 
 individuality, becoming but faint echoes of that which 
 alone can call the soul and compel the eager feet. 
 For India has no fear of too much worship. To her, 
 all that exists is but a mighty curtain of appear- 
 ances, tremulous now and again with breaths from 
 the unseen that it conceals. At any point, a pin- 
 prick may pierce the great illusion, and the seeker 
 become aware of the Infinite Reality beyond. And 
 who so fitted to be the window of the Eternal 
 Presence as that husband, who is at once most 
 adored and loved of all created beings ? 
 
 For there is a deep and general understanding of 
 the fact that only in its own illumination, or its own 
 feeling, can the soul find its highest individuation. 
 To learn how she can offer most becomes thus the 
 aim of the young wife's striving. All her dreams are 
 of the saints — women mighty in renunciation : Sita, 
 whose love found its richest expression in the life- 
 
OF THE HINDU WOMAN AS WIFE 37 
 
 long farewell that made her husband the ideal king ; 
 Sati, who died rather than hear a word against 
 Siva, even from her own father; and Uma, realising 
 that her love was given in vain, yet pursuing the 
 more eagerly the chosen path. " Be like Savitri," 
 was her father's blessing, as he bade her the bridal 
 farewell, and Savitri — the Alcestris of Indian story 
 — was that maiden who followed even Death till she 
 won back her husband's life. Thus wifehood is 
 thought great in proportion to its giving, not to its 
 receiving. It would never occur to any one, in 
 writing fiction, or delineating actual character, to 
 praise a woman's charms, as we praise Sarah 
 Jennings', on the score that she retained her hus- 
 band's affection during her whole life. A good man, 
 says the Hindu, does not fail his wife, but, apart 
 from this, coquetry and vanity, however pleasing in 
 their form, could never dignify marriage. Lifelong 
 intimacy, to be beautiful, must boast deeper founda- 
 tions — the wife's love, daring all and asking for no 
 return ; the mother's gentleness, that never changes ; 
 the friend's unswerving generosity. To the grave 
 Oriental there is something indecorous in the dis- 
 cussion of the subject on any but this highest basis. 
 And yet Persia, the France of Asia, must have been 
 a perpetual influence towards romanticism in Hindu 
 life. There is said to be no love poetry in the 
 world so impassioned as the Persian. The famous 
 verse : 
 
 Four eyes met. There were changes in two souls. 
 
 And now I cannot remember whether he is a man and I a 
 
 woman, 
 Or he a woman and I a man. All I know is, 
 There were two : Love came, and there is one. . . . 
 
 we must believe completely representative of its 
 spirit.* The Persian language, however, has onljf 
 
 * This verse is actually old Bengali, of the sixteenth 
 ceBtnry. 
 
38 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 touched India through the Court of Delhi and 
 through letters. It has been the possession of the 
 Indo-Mohammedan, and of any man here and there 
 who took the time and trouble to master its litera- 
 ture ; but the world of Hindu womanhood has 
 remained probably as remote from it as though it 
 belonged to another planet. 
 
 This is not true to the same extent of the 
 romantic aspect of Christianity. The letters taught 
 in English schools result very much in novel- 
 reading, and an indigenous school of fiction has 
 grown up, in the form of books and magazines, 
 which is likely to modify popular ideas on this 
 subject profoundly. Meanwhile, and for long to 
 come, it remains true that according to Hindu 
 notions, the eyes of bride and bridegroom are to be 
 directed towards the welfare of the family and not of 
 themselves, as the basis of society : it is the great 
 springs of helpfulness and service, rather than those 
 of mutual love and romantic happiness that marriage 
 is expected to unloose. Selfish wives and jealous 
 husbands there must be, as among all peoples. But 
 it is a fact, nevertheless, that here the absolute 
 stainlessness of the wife is considered but pre- 
 liminary to the further virtue demanded of her, 
 the sustaining of the honour of her husband's 
 house. 
 
 With this clue it becomes easy to understand 
 even what the West considers to be the anomalies 
 of Hindu custom — the laws regarding rare cases of 
 polygamy and adoption. For it is legally provided 
 that if a woman remain childless her husband may 
 after seven years, and with her permission, take a 
 second wife, in the hope of gaining a son. to succeed 
 to his place. On the European basis of individualism, 
 the permission would probably be impossible to 
 obtain ; but with the Eastern sense of family obliga- 
 tion, this has not always been so, and I have 
 
OF THE HINDU WOMAN AS WIFE 39 
 
 myself met the son of such a marriage whose story 
 was of peculiar interest. The elder wife had insisted 
 that the time was come for the alternative to be tried, 
 and had herself chosen the speaker's mother as the 
 most beautiful girl she could find, for the husband. The 
 marriage once over, she made every effort to make it 
 a success, and welcomed the new wife as a younger 
 sister. Not only this, but when the son was born, 
 such was her tenderness that he was twelve years 
 old before he knew that she was not his mother. 
 After her death, however, the younger wife became 
 head of the house. Amongst the children to be fed, 
 there were degrees of kindred, certain adopted 
 orphans, two or three cousins, and himself. He was 
 the eldest of all, and protested loudly that he came 
 in last, and his cousins only second, for his mother's 
 attentions. " Nay, my child," she answered, with a 
 Hindu woman's sweetness and good sense, " if I 
 desired to neglect thee, I could not do it. Is it not 
 right, then, first to serve those who have no protec- 
 tion against me ? " 
 
 The family life which such a story discloses is 
 singularly noble, and it is not necessary to suppose 
 that polygamy entailed such generosities oftener 
 than we find monogamy do amongst ourselves. In 
 any case, the same tide that brings in individualism 
 has swept away this custom ; and whereas it never 
 was common it is now practically obsolete, except 
 for princes and great nobles, and even amongst 
 these classes there are signs of a radical change of 
 custom. 
 
 " Where women are honoured, there the gods are 
 pleased : where they are dishonoured, religious acts 
 become of no avail." " In whatever family the 
 husband is contented with his wife, and the wife with 
 her husband, in that house will good fortune 
 assuredly abide." Few books offer such delights to 
 their readers as that known as the " Laws ot Manu." 
 
40 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 It is in no sense a collection of Acts of Parliament, 
 for the one attitude throughout is that of the witness, 
 and the hastiest perusal shows that it represents the 
 growth of custom during ages, and is in no sense the 
 work of a single hand. This is indeed its first and 
 most striking beauty. As must be, of course, it often 
 happens that the superstition of a habit is stated as 
 graxH'ly as its original intent, but rarely so as to 
 obscure that first significance, or leave it difficult of 
 restoration, and from cover to cover the book throbs 
 with the passion for justice, and the appreciation of 
 fine shades of courtesy and taste, clothed in calm 
 and judicial form. Especially of this type are those 
 dicta on the rights of women, which are household 
 words in Indian homes. We all know the reaction 
 of the written word on life. Fact once formulated 
 as scripture acquires new emphasis, a certain occult 
 significance seems to attach to it, and the words, " it 
 is written " become terrible enough to affright the 
 devil himself. In this way the fear of a feminine 
 curse has become a superstition in India, and I have 
 seen even a low-class mob fall back at the command 
 of a single woman who opposed them. For is it not 
 written in the book of the law that " the hou'-e which 
 is cursed by a woman perishes utterly, <7s«/(/c,sV/Y)ir(f 
 by a sacrifice for the death of an euctiiy " ? — strange 
 and graphic old phrase, pregnant of woe I 
 
 It is evident then that the laws of Manu are rather 
 the unconscious expression of the spirit of the 
 people than a declaration of the ideals towards which 
 they strive. And for this reason they would afford 
 the most reliable foundation for a healthy criticism 
 of Indian custom. The conception of domestic 
 happiness which they reveal is very complete, and 
 no one who has seen the light on an Indian woman's 
 face when it turns to her husband — as I have seen 
 it in all parts of the country — can doubt that that 
 conception is often realised in hfe. For if the 
 
OF THE HINDU WOMAN AS WIFE 41 
 
 characteristic emotion of the wife may be described as 
 passionate reverence, that of the Hindu husband is 
 certainly a measureless protection. If we may 
 presume to analyse things so sacred as the great 
 mutual trusts of life, it would seem that tenderness 
 is the ruling note of the man's relation. Turning as 
 he does to the memory of his own mother for the 
 ideal perfection, there is again something of 
 motherhood in what he brings to his wife. As a 
 child might do, she cooks for him, and serves him, 
 sitting before him as he eats to fan away the flies. 
 As a disciple might, she prostrates herself before 
 him, touching his feet with her head before receiving 
 his blessing. It is not equality. No. But who 
 talks of a vulgar equality, asks the Hindu wife, when 
 she may have instead the unspeakable blessedness of 
 offering worship ? 
 
 And on the man's side, how is this received ? 
 Entirely without personal vanity. The idea that 
 adoration is the soul's opportunity has sunk deep 
 into the life of the people. And the husband can 
 recognise his wife's right to realise her highest 
 through him without ever forgetting that it is her 
 power to love, not his worthiness of love, that is 
 being displayed. Indeed, is not life everywhere of 
 one tint in this regard ? Does anything stir our 
 reverence like an affection that we feel beyond our 
 merit ? 
 
 It is often glibly said that this habit of being 
 served spoils the Indian man and renders him 
 careless of the comfort of others. I have never 
 found this to be so. It is true that Indian men do 
 not rise when a woman enters, and remain standing 
 till she is seated. Nor do they hasten to open the 
 door through which she is about to pass. But then 
 it is not according to the etiquette of their country 
 to do these things. With regard to the last point, 
 indeed, their idea is that man should precede woman, 
 
42 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 maintaining the tradition of the path-breaker in the 
 iungle ; and one of the most touching incidents in 
 the national epic of heroic love is Sita's request to 
 go first along the forest paths, in order to sweep 
 the thorns from her husband's path with the end of 
 her veil. Needless to say, such a paradox is not 
 permitted. 
 
 Thus, honour for the weaker is expressed in one 
 way in England and quite otherwise in Hindostan, 
 but the heart of conduct is the same in both countries. 
 The courtesy of husbands to their wives is quite un- 
 failing amongst Hindus. "Thou shalt not strike a 
 woman, even with a flower," is the proverb. His 
 wife's desire for companionship on a journey is the 
 first claim on a man. And it is very touching to 
 notice how, as years go on, he leans more and more 
 to the habit of addressing her as " O thou, mother of 
 our son ! " and presenting her to new comers as " my 
 children's mother," thus reflecting upon her his 
 worship of motherhood. In early manhood he trusts 
 to her advice to moderate the folly of his own rasher 
 inclinations ; in old age he becomes, as everywhere 
 in the world, more entirely the eldest of her bairns, 
 and she more and more the real head and centre of 
 the home. But always she remains as she was at 
 the beginning, Lakshmi, her husband's Goddess of 
 Fortune. In those first days he ate from no hand 
 but his mother's or hers ; and one of her devotions 
 was the fast, not broken till he had eaten and their 
 talk was over, though her evening meal might in this 
 way be delayed till long past midnight. Now, with 
 the responsibilities of her household upon her, she 
 feeds a whole multitude before she takes her own 
 turn, and still the mutual pact of soul and soul has 
 not been broken by the strife of " rights." These 
 two have all these years been each other's refuge 
 against the world. And not once have they felt so 
 separated as to offer thanks, or speak, either of the 
 
OF THE HINDU WOMAN AS WIFE 43 
 
 other, by name, as if head and hand could be different 
 individuals ! 
 
 On that first bridal evening, the little bride was 
 borne before her young husband, and they were told 
 that the moment was auspicious for their first shy 
 look. Then the old Vedic fire was called to witness 
 their rites of union ; the girl flung the garland of 
 flowers about the neck of her bridegroom, in exquisite 
 symbolism of the bond that was to hold them ; and 
 finally they took seven steps together, hand in hand, 
 while the priest chanted appropriate texts for each 
 stage of life. Such was their wedding. Since then, 
 the rights of one have been the rights of the other ; 
 joys, griefs, and duties have been held in common. 
 Till now, if the bride of that distant night be 
 entirely fortunate, the prayer of her childhood is 
 fulfilled to her in the end of her days, that prayer 
 that said : 
 
 From the arms of husband and sons, 
 When the Ganges is full of water. 
 May I pass to the feet of the Lord. 
 
 It has seemed to me in watching Hindu couples 
 that they were singular in the frequent attainment 
 of a perfect intimacy. To what is this due ? Is it 
 the early association, or the fact that courtship comes 
 after marriage, not before ? Or is it the intense dis- 
 cipline of absolute reserve in the presence of others ? 
 The people themselves, where their attention is 
 called to it, attribute the fact to child-marriage. I 
 remember asking a friend of my own, a man of 
 wealth and cultivation, orthodox and childless, " If 
 you could put away personal considerations, and 
 speak only from the outside, which do you think 
 better in the abstract, our marriage-system or 
 yours ? " 
 
 He paused, and answered slowly, " I think — ours ; 
 for I cannot conceive that two people could grow 
 
44 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 into each other, as my wife and I have done, under 
 any other." 
 
 Amongst the luxuries of the West I have some- 
 times thought that the deepening of the human tie 
 was proportionate to simpHcity of surroundings. A 
 people to whom all complexity of externals is im- 
 possible must live by thought and feeling, or perish 
 in the wilderness. 
 
 But whatever be the truth on this point, I have 
 seen clearly and constantly that the master-note by 
 which the Hindu woman's life can be understood in 
 the West is that of the religious life. This is so, 
 even with the wife. Cloistered and veiled, she 
 devotes herself to one name, one thought, yet is 
 never known to betray the fact, even as the nun 
 steals away in secret to kneel before the Blessed 
 Sacrament. The ideal that she, like the nun, 
 pursues, is that of a vision which merges the finite 
 in the infinite, making strong to mock at separation, 
 or even at change. And the point to be reached in 
 practice is that where the whole world is made 
 beautiful by the presence in it of the beloved, where 
 the hungry are fed, and the needy relieved, out of a 
 joyful recognition that they wear a common humanity 
 with his ; and where, above all, the sense of unrest 
 and dissatisfaction is gone for ever, in the overflowing 
 fulness of a love that asks no return except the 
 power of more abundant loving. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 LOVE STRONG AS DEATH 
 
 As to the skies their centre is the Polar Star, so to 
 the Eastern home the immovable honour of its 
 womanhood. Here is the secret of that worship of 
 the mother in which all union of the family and all 
 loyalty to its chief are rooted. Woman in the West 
 may thirst for the glory of love or the power of 
 wealth : in Asia, her characteristic dreams are of 
 perfectness and purity and faith. Woman in the 
 West is a queen, exposed to the fierce light that 
 beats upon a throne, putting to good or evil use the 
 opportunities of sovereigns. Even queens in the 
 East are too sacred to be looked upon by common 
 eyes. They grow, like the tall white lilies of 
 annunciation, set in the dimness beside some altar, 
 screened from the very glances of the faithful at 
 their prayers. The long silken tent through which 
 such ladies move from palace-door to carriage-step 
 is no vulgar prison, but a shrine. Bereft of its 
 concealment, they would feel dishonoured, un- 
 protected, as does the widowed gentlewoman, com- 
 pelled to fight for bread, amongst the struggling 
 crowd. 
 
 The very possibility of this blaze of publicity shed 
 on delicate high-bred womanhood is repugnant to 
 the Oriental mind. Remoteness and shadow, silence 
 and obscurity, seem to it the true environment of 
 holiness. And woman is held to be so much a 
 
46 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 sacred mystery that no man may even mention the 
 name of another's wife to him. " Are they at home 
 all well ? " is the guarded form which the necessary 
 inquiry for her health has to take. The outer 
 courts of the house, where the men pass the day, 
 the verandah and the stoop, where neighbours meet 
 and chat, these are but public places. Here the 
 intellectual life may be lived, and civic affairs trans- 
 acted. But it IS by the cool grey threshold of the 
 inner, the women's rooms, that the world of home is 
 entered. And what an ocean of passionate loving 
 surges through the quiet walls ! Here the wife 
 listens for the feet of the returning husband. Here 
 the widow sobs for him who will return no more. 
 Here scamper home the babies to find mother or 
 aunt, grave elder sister, or twin-souled younger 
 comrade. Here youth lays its plans and brings its 
 perplexities, while old age looks on, with the quiet 
 eyes of experience and of faith. Here passes, in 
 short, all that mingling of smiles and tears, of 
 laughter and prayer, of charm and weariness, that 
 goes to make up the bitter-sweet sacrament of daily 
 life. Only the art of mediaeval Holland speaks a 
 passion for home as ardent as this of the Orient, 
 which as yet has found no voice ! 
 
 Standing without in the noonday hush and looking 
 into the semi-darkness of the women's apartments 
 it is as if one caught a glimpse of some convent 
 garden, full of rare and beautiful flowers. This is 
 the women's hour. Their natural guardians are all 
 absent, sleeping, or at business. Only in the outer 
 court a drowsy servant guards the entrance. An air 
 of innocent raillery, of delicate gaiety, pervades all. 
 Friendly confidences and gentle fun are being 
 exchanged. It is now that the long melancholy cry 
 of the pedlar is heard, with his " Bracelets and 
 bangles — who wants ? " or " Good, good cloth ! " or 
 what not. And the wandering merchant may be 
 
LOVE STRONG AS DEATH 47 
 
 called in, to add amusement to the moment by his 
 baiting and bargaining. 
 
 Noonday passes, and slender widows in their long 
 white veils fall to telling their beads, unnoticed and 
 absorbed. Here and there a mother glides away to 
 prepare for the children's coming home from school. 
 The sound of laughter and talk dies gradually down, 
 and afternoon wears on to evening, and the hour 
 of prayer. So passes the day's drama, with all its 
 blending of subdued tints, from dainty rose to ashen 
 grey. Yet almost all the windows of the home look 
 inwards, and four blank walls enclose the whole. 
 True indeed is it that silence and shadow are the 
 ideals of this, the life of Eastern womanhood. 
 
 But the ideal itself, that it may be fixed and per- 
 petuated, requires its culminating types and centres, 
 its own duly consecrated priesthood, whose main 
 task in life shall be to light its lamp and wait upon 
 its altar. And such persons, in the world of Indian 
 women, are the widows. Literature consists largely 
 of man's praise of woman in relation to himself; yet 
 it remains eternally true that this heroine of man — 
 Helen, Desdemona, Beatrice — is but one modification 
 or other of her who goes unseen, unhymned, un- 
 named, the woman of solitude, the woman who 
 stands alone. 
 
 Neither Europe nor the modern spirit can claim 
 the glory of having created the idea of woman as an 
 individual. Queen Hatasu had it, in ancient Egypt. 
 In still older Chaldea, Semiramis had it. In the 
 sagas of the North, it is true, no woman goes unwed. 
 But no sooner does Christianity — the Mission of the 
 Asiatic Life — appear amongst us, than mediaeval 
 history blossoms into its Hildas, and Teresas, 
 and Joans, its Saxon Margarets and its Spanish 
 Katherines. It is the self-protecting woman only, 
 who is born perhaps of the nineteenth century. Of 
 old it was held by Frank and Saxon, by Latin and 
 
48 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 Teuton, that she who did not marry needed the 
 protection of the Church. And in Asia to this day 
 it is believed that she requires the sanction of the 
 rehgious life itself, though that life be lived for the 
 most part within the community-house. For the 
 only unmarried woman in India is the widow, and 
 especially the child-widow — that is, one whose 
 betrothed has died before actual marriage. 
 
 A kind of faithfulness is implied in this, which is 
 quite different from the faithfulness of the West. 
 There, it is counted for great fidelity if amidst the 
 growing complexities of life there run the stream of 
 a strong and constant memory ; if the bereaved wife 
 be true to the idea for which the husband stood; if 
 she carry his name as a banner, whose new adherents 
 are won by the power of her own consecration. In 
 India, no growth of complexity can be permitted. 
 Where the life stood when its companion was 
 smitten down, there it must remain, till a second 
 death completes the releasing of that one being who 
 only seemed to others to be two. 
 
 How wonderful is death ! So cold, so still ! 
 The mind is withdrawn from the senses, and 
 steadied, that enters its presence but for a moment. 
 They who dwell there find release into a great calm. 
 The Hindu widow lives out her life with her soul 
 ever present at the burning-ghat. Her white sari, 
 unbordered, her short hair, her bareness of jewels, 
 her scant food and long prayers, her refusal to meet 
 guests and join in festivities, — all these things are 
 but the symbols of its abiding lights and shadows. 
 She has found her vocation, so to speak, and as a 
 nun must henceforth direct her life. If she be a 
 child-widow, this is only the more true. Then, the 
 church in which she lingers is more apt to be the 
 thought of the Divine itself. But if in her widow- 
 hood she can remember what it was to be a wife, 
 her altar will be the name of the dead husband, and 
 
LOVE STRONG AS DEATH 49 
 
 her austerities will carry with them the unspeakable 
 gladness of the memory that half of all their merit 
 goes to him. This belief in a mystic union of souls 
 was the motive of suttee, — a sacrifice that was 
 supposed to lift the husband's soul at once into 
 bright places, and bring his wife to enjoy them 
 beside him for thousands of years. Who, with 
 such an idea deep-ingrained, could not laugh at 
 fire? 
 
 It is clear that this scheme of the widow's life is 
 inherent in a great simplicity. A marriage which 
 had but one duty could alone have led to this 
 bereavement which has but one thought. And yet 
 we must understand that it is in this terrible blight 
 of love that the strong woman finds her widest 
 individual scope. 
 
 It is told of Bhashkaracharya, the mathematician, 
 that he had but one child, the maiden Lilavati. 
 Casting her horoscope carefully, he discovered that 
 there was only a single moment in her life when she 
 could be married without fear of widowhood. Pre- 
 parations were made for the wedding accordingly, 
 and the father himself constructed an instrument by 
 which to regulate the time of the ceremonies. Water 
 would be admitted drop by drop through a certain 
 hole, from one pot to another, and its reaching a 
 given height was the signal for the sacramental act. 
 
 The marriage-rites began, but the child Lilavati 
 grew tired, and went wandering from room to room 
 in search of amusement. In some obscure corner 
 she came upon an unaccustomed-looking pot, and 
 leaned over its edge to watch how the inner section 
 was gradually sinking in the water which it contained. 
 As she did so a tiny pearl fell all unnoticed from her 
 wedding -crown, and stopped the hole through which 
 the water passed ! Time went on, but the vessel 
 sank no further. "Ah!" exclaimed Bhashkaracharya 
 sorrowfully, when, the hour already past, he found 
 
so THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 the jewel that had frustrated all his caution, "it is 
 useless for a man to fight against his destiny ! " 
 
 Within some few weeks or months the little bride 
 was left a widow. But now her great father resolved 
 to make of her a woman so learned that she should 
 never sigh for earthly happiness — a resolve in 
 which he succeeded to such an extent that to this 
 day it is not known whether the abstruse treatise 
 named " Lilavati " was merely dedicated to her, or 
 whether she asked the questions to which it contains 
 ihe answers. 
 
 This story is historic. But simple instances 
 abound in every village. The kind widowed aunt 
 who lived in the opposite house to ours, did she not 
 count every soul in the Calcutta lane, together with 
 her brother's children, as her own ? " Do not 
 leave this country," she would say to some member 
 of our household every now and then, " for you 
 know I count you all my bairns ! " When the man 
 in the next house died of cholera, it was not we, 
 the European neighbours, but this Pishi-ma of ours, 
 who was first on the scene with disinfectants. 
 When the immediate necessity of cleansing the 
 whole house was explained, it was still another and 
 older widow lady who listened, and carried out the 
 work with her own hands. Indeed, wherever one is 
 called in time of need, one finds a group of widow- 
 women already present. There is no act of nursing 
 that these are not ready, and even eager, to perform ; 
 no disease so loathsome or dangerous that they will 
 not gladly take a sick child into their arms ; no injury 
 so bitter that it will prevent their weeping sorrowful 
 tears of sympathy with the injured in his hour of 
 pain and loss. 
 
 It is quite natural that widows should be more free 
 for the civic life than other women. Wives have 
 their husbands' comforts to attend to, and mothers 
 their thousand and one maternal cares. But the 
 
LOVE STRONG AS DEATH 51 
 
 widow, and above all the childless widow, in her 
 agony of solitude, can hear the sobs of children not 
 her own, can stretch hands across the desert of her 
 own mourning to those who are ill, or in poverty, 
 and desolation. In the last generation lonely women 
 had still more scope than they have now. I have 
 heard of one who never sat down to the midday 
 meal till a servant brought her word that every soul 
 in the village had already eaten. Almost every family 
 can remember some aged dame of its own who was 
 famed for her skill in all sorts of remedies for man 
 and beasts. The very cow-goddesses, who are 
 worshipped in Himalayan villages in time of cattle 
 pestilence, may have been actual Hindu women of 
 this type, raised to the rank of deities. But the last 
 half-century in India has been rapidly accomplishing 
 the decay of the middle classes ; and with this decay, 
 brought about by the shrinking of wealth in its old 
 channels, the fall of woman, in social and material 
 power, proceeds apace. Yet still the widows 
 represent the intellectual centres amongst women. 
 The more modern they are, the less likely is it that 
 they can reel off Sanskrit verses, but the more 
 probable that they read books in the vernaculars. 
 In any case, they produce the saints ; and the position 
 of a woman-saint in India is such that no man in her 
 neighbourhood will venture on a journey without 
 first presenting himself before her veiled form, taking 
 the dust of her feet, and receiving her whispered 
 blessing. 
 
 Widows have constantly distinguished themselves, 
 especially in Bengal, as administrators of land and 
 wealth. Of this pattern was the great Mahratta 
 Queen of Indore, Ahalya Bai. Her husband died 
 while waging war with Scindia and another, and her 
 first act was to disband her armies, and send word 
 to the sovereigns that she was at their mercy, a 
 defenceless woman. The expected result followed 
 
52 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 in the complete abandonment of all hostilities. After 
 which, Ahalya Bai Rani lived and reigned for many 
 a long year eating the Hindu widow's handful of rice 
 of her own cooking, and spending her great revenues 
 in public works on the largest scale. 
 
 For the wife becomes regent when a man dies 
 during the minority of his son; and even if the latter 
 be already of age, his ownership of an estate is by no 
 means free and complete during the lifetime of his 
 mother. The whole world would cry shame if he 
 acted without her occasional advice, and, indeed, the 
 Indian woman's reputation for business capacity is 
 so like the French that it is commonly said of 
 encumbered property that it needs a widow's nursing. 
 
 In such a case there is, however, for the wealthy 
 woman one temptation. Throughout her married 
 life her relation with her father's house has remained 
 close and intimate. At least once a year, if not 
 oftener, she has returned to it on visits. Her eldest 
 child was born there under her own mother's care. 
 Her girlhood's friends have perpetually renewed 
 her youthful memories by hastening to see her on 
 her arrival, and talk over old times. It was many a 
 year before the revival of familiar associations ceased 
 to make her wholly a child again, so that she would 
 run bare-headed down the lane to a neighbour's house, 
 rejoicing in the unaccustomed freedom of the fact 
 that the only men she was likely to meet were 
 practically her own brothers, for she had played with 
 them in babyhood. 
 
 But if the relation to her early home and to her 
 past be thus deep and exquisite, what are we to say 
 of the bond that knits together the Hindu sister and 
 her brother ? Here is the tie that offers to the 
 woman of responsibilities her great temptation ; for 
 it is considered hard, and yet essential, for one who 
 administers a dead husband's wealth not to bestow 
 it in these channels, not to submit to management 
 
LOVE STRONG AS DEATH 53 
 
 and direction, not to transfer possession gradually 
 from the one house to the other. And the very 
 insistence upon the dishonour of such a course is in 
 itself testimony to the affection that tempts. The 
 perfect wife is she who loves her husband with a 
 love that forgets even father and brothers if need be. 
 But how arduous is such perfection to attain ! One 
 day in the Hindu sacred year is known as "The 
 Feast of Brothers, " because on it sisters are visited 
 and give their benisons. And so, even about the 
 detached life of the married woman, made inde- 
 pendent of her father's care, early associations 
 continue to twine and grow stronger. They never 
 cease to be an organic part of her life ; and if the 
 stress of her existence throws her back upon them, 
 she knows that on which she leans, that it will not 
 fail her at her need, or prove a false staff, breaking 
 in her hand. 
 
 And yet her natural longing, in the first days of 
 her widowhood, is to remain, unless forbidden by his 
 poverty, in the household of her father-in-law, for 
 herein lies all her loyalty to the dead. Nay, it will 
 often happen that even a child-widow is anxiously re- 
 tained by her husband's parents, as a token, in some 
 sort, left by him who is gone. All the glory of 
 womanhood lies in such things as these. Even in 
 her own home, too, a widow has the right to be 
 exacting on a thousand little points regarding her 
 dead husband. Do her father and brothers not re- 
 member the great days of obligation of the household 
 into which she married ? Do they require reminder, 
 instead of hastening to be beforehand with her, in 
 suggesting the gifts and offerings she would do well 
 to send ? Ah, then, it is only herself for whom they 
 cease to weary themselves, or do they forget his 
 dignity who should be as dear as their own blood. And 
 for her own part she watches with solicitude all that 
 passes in the family whose name she bears. Is a new 
 
54 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 bride received among them ? From her own diminish- 
 ing store of jewels will be sent some trifle — may be 
 only a couple of tiny gold jasmine flowers for the ears 
 ■ — by the bereaved to the newly-wedded daughter-in- 
 law. Or she hears of sickness and arrives to nurse. 
 She comes to wait on the aged, or will assume charge 
 of the young while grave elders go on pilgrimage. 
 All this implies a network of social ideals that tends 
 to make it difficult to divert the income arising from 
 alliance. 
 
 Over and above her alleged common sense, on the 
 other hand an estate that passes into the hands of a 
 woman ruler enjoys the economic advantage of her 
 freedom from personal extravagance ; for the energy 
 with which a widow pursues after abstinence is 
 extraordinary. To this day she lives in an ancient 
 India, created by her own habits. In Calcutta she 
 drinks only Ganges water, holding that the municipal 
 supply is contaminated by European use. She will 
 eat only rock-salt in order to avoid the pollution of 
 manufacturing processes When ill she accepts 
 treatment only from the old Indian doctors, the 
 vaidya or the kaviraj, and pays fantastic sums for 
 their medicines if they come from Benares or some 
 other seat of classic learning. If well, she eats one 
 meal of cooked food prepared with her own hands 
 at or after mid-day, and only a slight refection ot 
 milk, fruit, and unleavened bread at nightfall. Her 
 hair is cut short (or in some parts of India the head 
 is shaved), perhaps originally to remove the tempta- 
 tion of beauty, but, as far as custom knows and 
 questions, only that she may bathe the more 
 frequently and easily — every bath conveying to her 
 the notion of a baptism. 
 
 Such is her ordinary routine. Her occasional 
 dissipations consist in a pilgrimage, an extra 
 visit to a temple at dawn or after sunset, or 
 attendance at some ceremony of epic recitation. 
 
LOVE STRONG AS DEATH 55 
 
 Is it not well said that she knows no extrava- 
 gance ? 
 
 It is because her life is holier than that of others 
 that no hand must touch her food, though she may 
 prepare and serve the meals of any in the house. 
 For the same reason, if questions of precedence 
 arise, she stands higher than married women. Did 
 she not rise before dawn to tell her beads, or to sit 
 for an hour in meditation ? Then, when her room 
 was cleaned and ordered, did she not go to the river 
 for the morning bath ? Returning with the wet sari 
 that she had washed, according to daily custom, with 
 her own hands, did she not don the silken garment 
 and pass to that ceremonial worship, with flowers 
 and offerings, that lasts for at least an hour or 
 more, and only when that worship was ended could 
 she begin to think of cooking her meal. With the 
 waning of the afternoon she falls again to telling 
 her beads, right hand and rosary both concealed in 
 a little bag. At the moment of " candlelight," she 
 passes once more into actual meditation. Then an 
 hour's chat, the frugal evening meal, and so to bed, to 
 begin at dawn on the morrow again the daily round. 
 
 An incomparable moment in the history of a 
 Hindu family is that of the return to it of a young 
 daughter freshly widowed. Unspeakable tenderness 
 and delicacy are lavished on her. A score of 
 reasons for the mitigation of her rule are thought 
 out and urged. In spite of her reluctance, the 
 parents or parents-in-law will insist. Sometimes 
 the whole family will adopt her austere method 
 of living for a few months, and keep pace with 
 her self-denials step by step, till she herself 
 discovers and breaks the spell. " Well, well ! " 
 exclaimed an old father brooding over the ruin of 
 his child's happiness at such a crisis, " it was high 
 time for me to retire from the world ; can we not 
 renounce together, little mother ?j" And while she is 
 
56 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 supported by her father's strong arm, the mother's 
 wings are open wide, to fold closer than ever before 
 the bird that has flown home with the arrow in its 
 heart. Indeed, this union of theirs has become 
 proverbial, so that if some small son be uncommonly 
 helpful and chivalrous to his mother, friendly 
 neighbours will say, in banter : " But this is no boy 1 
 This is surely your widowed daughter, mother!" 
 So pass the years, till, it may be, the mother, herself 
 widowed, becomes as a child, falling back upon the 
 garnered strength of her own daughter. Life ebbs: 
 but discipline gathers its perfect fruit, in lives 
 stately and grave and dignified, for all their simplicity 
 and bareness ; in characters that are the hidden 
 strength alike of village and of nation ; in an ideal of 
 sainthood justified ; an opportunity of power created. 
 In the long years of her mature life we picture the 
 Madonna standing always beneath the Cross. And 
 we are right. But patience ! not for ever shall she 
 stand thus. It shall yet come to pass that in high 
 heaven a day shall dawn, on which, wearing the self- 
 same meekness, clothed in self-same humility, the 
 Mother of Sorrows shall be crowned — and that by 
 her own Son I 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE PLACE OF WOMAN IN THE NATIONAL LIFE 
 
 As the light of dawn breaks on the long curving 
 street of the Indian village the chance passer-by will 
 see at every door some kneeling woman, busied with 
 the ceremony of the Salutation of the Threshold. 
 A pattern, drawn on the pavement, in lines of 
 powdered rice, with flowers arranged at regular 
 points within it, remains for a few hours, to mark 
 the fact that cleansing and worship have been per- 
 formed. The joy of home finds silent expression in 
 the artistic zest of the design. Wealth or poverty 
 betrays itself, according as the flowers are a bright 
 network of neuter gourd-blossoms, a stiff little row 
 of two or three white daisies, or some other offering, 
 more or less humble, as the case may be. 
 
 But everywhere we read a habit of thought, to 
 which all things are symbolic : the air upon the door- 
 step full of dim boding and suggestiveness as to the 
 incomings and outgoings which the day shall witness ; 
 and the morning opening and setting wide the door 
 an act held to be no way safe unless done by one 
 who will brood in doing it upon the divine security 
 and benediction of her beloved. 
 
 Such thought was the fashion of a very ancient 
 world — the world in which myths were born, out of 
 which religions issued, and wherein our vague and 
 mysterious ideas of " luck " originated. The custom 
 bears its age upon its brow. For thousands ol years 
 
58 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 must Indian women have risen with the light to 
 perform the Salutation of the Threshold. Thousands 
 of years of simplicity and patience, like that of the 
 peasant,>^ike that of the grass, speak in the beautiful 
 rite. It is this patience of woman that makes 
 civilisations. It is this patience of the Indian woman, 
 with this her mingling of large power of reverie, 
 that has made and makes the Indian nationality. 
 
 On its ideal side, the life of an Indian woman is a 
 poem of the Indian soil. For all that coherence and 
 social unity which the West has lost within the last 
 few centuries remain still in the Orient intact. 
 Eastern life is an organic whole, not only as regards 
 the connectedness of its parts amongst themselves, 
 but also in the larger matter of their common relation 
 to place. Even in a city, the routine of a Hindu 
 home is an unbroken reminiscence of the ancestral 
 village ; orthodox Hfe is simply rural life maintained 
 unmodified under adverse conditions. 
 
 Perhaps this is nowhere more strikingly illustrated 
 than in all that concerns the place of the cow in 
 domestic life. Journeying over the country, the eye 
 learns to look to the grazing-lands in order to gauge 
 the prosperity of districts. For in climates which 
 horses support with difficulty the patient bullock is 
 the friend of agriculture, and without his aid the 
 fields could not be kept under the plough.* Thus 
 the Aryan and the cow between them have made 
 India what she is ; and never does the peasant forget 
 the fact. Five thousand years of love and gratitude 
 have been sufficient, on the other hand, to humanise 
 the quadruped ; and the soft eyes of the gentle 
 beast, as we see it in this Eastern land, look out on 
 
 « It is a fundamental law of Indian economics, but one little 
 known to present administrators, that for every acre of land 
 kept in cultivation, the village should have the grant of one 
 acre of grazing land free. The reason and the necessity are 
 alike obvious. 
 
WOMAN IN THE NATIONAL LIFE 59 
 
 us, with a satisfied conviction of kinship and mutual 
 trust, for which the Western barbarian is but little 
 prepared. Its breeds and sizes are almost innumer- 
 able. Benares, and the rich mercantile quarters of 
 Northern cities, maintain the lordly Siva's bulls, who 
 come and go about the streets eating from what 
 shop-front or stall they choose, entirely unmolested. 
 The south, again, possesses a kind of bullock little 
 larger than a Newfoundland dog, which is neverthe- 
 less strong enough to draw a cart containing a 
 couple of men ; and perhaps there are no beasts of 
 draught in the world finer than the Mysore bullocks. 
 But almost all Indian cattle are smaller than their 
 Western compeers and all are characterised by a 
 prominent hump, in front of which the yoke is placed. 
 
 It is no wonder that the life of the cow has so 
 large a place in that scheme of the national well- 
 being which we call Hinduism. Who has realised 
 the ages that it must have taken to stock the country 
 with the necessary numbers — ages in which the 
 destruction of one life so precious under the weight 
 of hunger would be an irredeemable crime against 
 society ? It is only natural that the poetry of the 
 people should find in these anipials one of its central 
 motives; for all that domestic affection which we 
 spend on the dog and cat, making of such dumb 
 creatures actual comrades and hearthside friends, is 
 here lavished on them. Even in the towns, where 
 the stones of the courtyard are the sole pasture, 
 they are kept, and in the huts of the poor the room 
 occupied by the milk-giver is to the full as good as 
 that of any of the family. 
 
 We find it difficult in the North to distinguish the 
 natural festivals of fruit gathering and harvest home 
 from purely religious rites. There is an exaltation 
 of feeling and imagination, and a closeness to the 
 powers of nature, in the one case as in the other, 
 which forms a link between them. The occasion of 
 
6o THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 receiving a new cow into a Hindu family is tinged 
 with a like sentiment. The whole household turns 
 out to welcome the incoming member, who is deco- 
 rated with flowers and fed daintily as soon as she 
 enters the gates of the dwelling, while endearments 
 are lavished on her in the effort to make her accept 
 the strange abode as home. The psychology of this 
 is not purely self-interested, as when we butter the 
 cat's paws that she may never be happy at a distance 
 from our hearth. There is a habitual, almost an 
 instinctive, recognition in India of the fact that mind 
 is the controlling element in life, and it has become a 
 second nature with them to appeal directly to it. 
 Even in the case of what we are pleased to term the 
 lower animals, it requires no argument to show a 
 Hindu that the cow will maintain her health and 
 perform all her functions better if her feeling goes 
 with, instead of against, her new environment. 
 The fact is self-evident to him. And in the ceremony 
 of welcome, the intrusion of any violent thought or 
 emotion upon the family circle would be earnestly 
 deprecated, and every effort put forth to hold the 
 mental atmosphere in gentleness and calm. 
 
 This way of looking at things finds striking illus- 
 tration in the education of girls. For throughout a 
 woman's life the cow is to be her constant companion. 
 It is important, therefore, that she be duly equipped 
 with the knowledge of its management and treatment. 
 This necessity is expressed in folk-form by the 
 statement that few families are blessed with good 
 fortune in the three matters of children, of money^ 
 and of milk. Even if the home be full of the 
 laughter of little voices, and if there be money 
 enough to feed them, is not the milk apt to turn 
 sour or the cow to run dry ? It is essential, then, to 
 choose brides for our sons who have " a lucky hand 
 with the cow " ; and to attain the " lucky hand " 
 little girls are made to rise at five o'clock in the 
 mornings, and to sit for an hour or more before her,. 
 
WOMAN IN THE NATIONAL LIFE 6i 
 
 hanging garlands on her neck, offering flowers at 
 her feet, giving her delectable things to eat, and 
 repeating texts and verses full of the expression of 
 reverence and gratitude.* 
 
 And, indeed, there is no end to the household 
 debt. " Milk is the only food," said a Hindu, " that 
 is the product of love." Probably for this reason — 
 in a country where so much thought is given to the 
 mental effects of what is eaten — it is the favourite, 
 being held, with fruit and honey, to be fit nourish- 
 ment for the saints. But fuel and medicine also are 
 provided by the bovine mother. Cowdung is held 
 to have antiseptic and purifying properties, and to 
 spread it with her own hands, making the mud floor 
 damp proof, and giving it the breath ever fragrant 
 to the peasant, would be thought no more disgraceful 
 to the princess fallen upon evil days of poverty than 
 to the humbler daughter of any poor but well- 
 descended house. 
 
 From the Punjab to Cape Comorin, evenfall — the 
 who is it? moment of Japan, and the yellow dust 
 hour of China — is known as the ttmi of cowdust, 
 recalling in a word the picture of the village, 
 and the herds driven home along the lanes for the 
 night. 
 
 It is one of the great glories of countries of the 
 Asiatic type, ranking beside their universal recog- 
 nition of the sacredness of letters, that in them the 
 simple life of the commonwealth as a whole, and not 
 the artificial and luxurious routine of courts, has 
 always been regarded as the social type. Hence in 
 India, labour, rising into government, stands side by 
 side with prayer and motherhood as the main 
 opportunity of woman, and as her integral contribu- 
 
 * I was informed by so authoritative a body as the professors 
 in the Minnesota College of Agriculture, U.S.A., that this pro- 
 cedure of the Hindu woman is strictly scientific. "The cow is 
 only able to yield her full possibility of mill: to a milker whom 
 she regards as her own child. 
 
62 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 tion to the national righteousness. The domestic 
 necessities of pastoral, may bear less heavily upon 
 her than those of peasant communities, leaving her 
 more time for the use of the needle; but in Arabia, 
 as in India, the ideal must needs be fulfilled, and 
 " Our Lady of the Moslems " * is loved for the fact 
 that, though the daughter of the Prophet, she turned 
 the millstone with her own delicate hands, and toiled 
 in frugal household ways for the good of those 
 dependent on her care, almost as much as for the 
 sweet intercession by which she named "the salvation 
 of all Mussulmans " as the dowry she would claim of 
 God on the Day of Judgment. 
 
 In India, the cowhouse, the dairy, the kitchen, the 
 granary, the chapel, with numerous other offices, 
 divide the day-long attentions of the ladies of the 
 family. In rich old houses there will be a large 
 cooking-room and verandah for the cooks, and in 
 addition, not one but a series of kitchens for the use 
 of mother, daughters, and daughters-in-law. And 
 the herb gardens and orchards are accessible only 
 from the zenana. In all these things nothing is more 
 noticeable than the readiness and spontaneity with 
 which work is subdivided, and the peaceable way in 
 which it is carried out. This is most striking with 
 regard to the preparation of food, a service into which 
 the Indian has been taught from childhood to pour 
 a concentrated sweetness of love and hospitality. 
 Perhaps there is no single institution amongst 
 ourselves by which we can convey an idea of the joy 
 it gives the master of a household to see many mouths 
 fed at his cost, or the mistress to feel that she serves 
 them all. Every woman being a cook, and often of 
 great skill, it was in years gone by considered as the 
 highest compliment to receive an invitation from a 
 
 * Our Lady of the Moslems. — Fatima, daughter of the 
 Prophet and Khadijah. The Prophet loved her more than any 
 other created being. 
 
WOMAN IN THE NATIONAL LIFE 63 
 
 neighbouring family on the occasion of some impor- 
 tant festivity, to come and help faire la cuisine. 
 Even Hindu society, however, is affected by the 
 ideals of Western organisation, and emergency-work 
 nowadays tends more and more to be laid on the 
 shoulders of Brahmins imported for the occasion, 
 but not regarded socially as servants, in spite of the 
 fact that they accept a daily wage. 
 
 There is thus a point of view from which the lives 
 of Indian women may be considered as a vast 
 co-operation of the race to perform necessary labour, 
 dignifying it meanwhile by every association of 
 refinement, tenderness, and self-respect. And it 
 might also be claimed that the orthodox Hindu 
 household is the only one in the world which 
 combines a high degree of civilisation with the 
 complete elimination of any form of domestic slavery. 
 Certainly slavery in Asia, under the regimes of 
 great religious systems, has never meant what 
 Europe and America have made of it. There are 
 still livine persons who were bought in their child- 
 hood as Ghulams by Rajputni and Bengali families. 
 These were orphans, brought up and educated along 
 with the children of the household, but made useful 
 in minor ways. It never occurred to any one that 
 when the days of wage-earning arrived, the quondam 
 master and mistress had any claim whatever upon 
 the emoluments of their dependents, yet they could 
 not be held to have done their duty until they had 
 married and settled them in life appropriately. It is 
 a curious consequence of this humanity of custom 
 that the word " slave " cannot be made to sting the 
 Asiatic consciousness, as it does the European. 
 
 As one travels through regions not yet exhausted 
 by famine, the signs of Indian peasant happiness 
 become familiar to the eye. The mud homestead, 
 built on its high plinth with deep verandahs, decently 
 thatched or tiled, and almost hidden in clusters of 
 
64 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 cocoanut palms, bamboos, and plantains, the stretch 
 of green with its grazing cows, or rice-fields and 
 mango orchards, the unbroken dome of blue, edged 
 off, on the horizon, by the tremulous line of foliage 
 where new bamboos veil some fresh village or farm- 
 house, such is the picture beloved by the Indian 
 heart. Even in the distant cities, every festival-day 
 brings back its memory ; for the jars of water, with 
 cocoanuts for lids, and the green shoots of plantain, 
 •standing against the pillars, with the garlands of 
 mango- leaves above the doorway, are the "aus- 
 picious," and therefore universal decoration. 
 
 It is her longing for this natural setting of grove, 
 river, and meadow, that makes the housewife so 
 contented with the severe architectural form of her 
 home, bidding her seek for no irrelevant decorative 
 detail. The Indian does not live in whom the 
 passion for nature is not conscious and profound. 
 And the marble palaces of Rajputana and the North, 
 in which buildings are made beautiful, instead of 
 having beautiful things put into them, are directly 
 related, through this ideal, to the peasant cottages 
 and farmhouses of Bengal. 
 
 Indeed, if we would draw the life of an Indian 
 woman truly, it is in a long series of peasant pictures 
 that it must be outlined. Every plant, flower, fruit, 
 in its own season, calls up some historic or poetic 
 association. Under the kodhumba tree, whose 
 blossoms occur in stiff balls, like those of our plane, 
 stood Krishna, playing on the flute. In the 
 magnificent shade and coolness of the bo — the tree 
 whose leaves are so delicately poised that they 
 quiver like those of our aspen, even in the stillest 
 noon — Buddha, in the heart of the night, attained 
 Nirvana. The soft sirisha flower that "can bear 
 the weight of bees, but not of humming-birds," 
 reminds one of all exquisite and tender things — the 
 lips of a woman, the heart of a child, and so oa 
 
WOMAN IN THE NATIONAL LIFE 65 
 
 The amloki fruit is not only wholesome and delicious 
 for household use, making the work of preserving 
 it an act of merit, but its very name is famous 
 throughout Buddhist Asia, carrying one back to the 
 great age when it was a constant architectural 
 ornament. The fragrance of the mango-blossom is 
 one of the five arrows of Cupid's bow. The custard- 
 apple was the favourite fruit of Sita. 
 
 Such are a few only of the complex associations 
 that have in the course of ages accumulated about 
 the common Indian life. No home is so bare that it 
 is not beautified by this wealth of dreams, for it has 
 !ong ago sunk into the very structure of the language. 
 No caste is so high, nor is any outcast so low, as to 
 be beyond its reach. It is an immense national 
 possession, creating mutual sentiment and common 
 memory, offering abundance of material also for the 
 development of individual taste and imagination, 
 and above all acting as an organic and indestructible 
 bond, to attach the Indian mind eternally to its 
 own soil, and in every sense involving permanence 
 of relation, silently and rigorously to exclude the 
 foreigner. 
 
 Men are of course initiated into their share of this 
 inheritance in infancy. Afterwards, from their study 
 of letters, they may return and refresh the domestic 
 folklore with a greater accuracy. But the women 
 live always in its atmosphere. This is the actuality 
 against whose background their simple pious lives 
 are set. And through them it maintains unabated 
 its volume and continuity. 
 
 We see thus that the Indian organisation of life 
 and society is coherent and necessary, and that its 
 methods and ideals, having sprung directly from the 
 soil, have a stability due to correspondence with their 
 environment which is inconceivable to persons who 
 are themselves content to be favoured members of 
 most favoured nations. 
 
66 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 The social unity, as of an individual organism, 
 was expressed in quaint form in the old-time myth 
 that Brahmins sprang from the lips of the Creator, 
 warriors from His arms, the people from His thighs, 
 and the working classes from His feet. But the way 
 in which physical conditions imposed themselves 
 upon the Creator Himself in this process could not 
 be recognised by early observers, who had seen 
 nothing outside their own country. 
 
 The modern student, however, educated by a wide 
 range of geographical impressions, cannot fail to be 
 struck with another feature of the Indian synthesis — 
 its completely organic character in a territorial sense. 
 Every province within the vast boundaries fulfils 
 some necessary part in the completing of a nation- 
 ality. No one place repeats the specialised function 
 of another. And what is true of the districts holds 
 equally good of the people as a whole, and the women 
 in particular. In a national character we always find 
 a summary of the national history. Of no country 
 is this more true than of India. 
 
 The Bengali wife worships her husband, and 
 serves her children and her household with all the rapt 
 idealism of the saints. The women of Maharashtra 
 are as strong and as actual as any in the West. 
 The Rajputni queen prides herself on the unflinching 
 courage of her race, that would follow her husband 
 even into the funeral fire, yet will not permit a king 
 to name his wife as amongst his subjects. The 
 woman of Madras struggles with agony to reach the 
 spiritual pole-star, building up again and again, like 
 some careful beaver, any fragment of her wall of 
 custom that the resistless tides of the modern world 
 may attempt to break away. And the daughters of 
 Guzerat are, like the women of merchant-peoples 
 everywhere, soft and silken and flower-like, dainty 
 and clinging as a dream. 
 
 Or we may penetrate into the Moslem zenana, to 
 
WOMAN IN THE NATIONAL LIFE 67 
 
 find the same graceful Indian womanhood, sometimes 
 clad in the sari, sometimes in the short Turkish 
 jacket, but always the self-same gentle and beautiful 
 wifehood and motherhood, measuring itself in all its 
 doings as much against the standards of religious 
 >bligation, and as little against those of fashion, as 
 any of its Hindu compatriots might do. 
 
 Nor, amongst these strong outstanding types, is 
 there any failure of individual achievement. Brynhild 
 herself was not more heroic than thousands of whom 
 the Rajput chronicles tell. Nay, in the supreme 
 act of her life, the mystic death on the throne of 
 flame beside the dead Sigurd, many a quiet Httle 
 Bengali woman has been her peer. Joan of Arc 
 was not more a patriot than Chand Bibi,* or the 
 wonderful Queen of Jhansi, who, in the year 1857, 
 fought in person with the British troops. The 
 children of men who saw it talk to this day of the 
 form of this woman's father swinging on the gibbet, 
 high above the city walls, hanged there by her order 
 for the crime of making a treaty with the English, 
 to deliver the keys into their hands. They talk, too, 
 of her swift rush at the head of her troops across 
 the drowsy midday camp, her lance poised to pierce, 
 her bay mare Lakshmi straining every muscle, the 
 whizz of the charge so unexpected that only here 
 and there a dazed white soldier could gather presence 
 of mind to fire a shot at the cavalcade already passed. 
 And old men still sing her glory with tears choking 
 the voice. 
 
 But the Rani of Jhansi, though a queen, was no 
 purdah woman. She was a Mahratta, with a passion 
 for her country, and practised from girlhood in the 
 chase. She had been the real heart of the kingdom 
 ever since her marriage, for her husband was only a 
 
 • Chand Bibi. — The heroic princess, who defended Ahmed- 
 Bagar against the armies of Akbar. Killed by mutineers, 1^99. 
 
68 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 handsome figure-head, who spent in making feeble 
 poetry the time he might have given to rule or to his 
 wife. Her life had been, in fact, as solitary as that 
 of a mediaeval saint. And her ostensible reason for 
 fighting was the right to adopt an heir. There has 
 always indeed been a great development of the 
 political faculty amongst Mahratta women, a develop- 
 ment which is by no means lost at the present day. 
 It is well known that, long before the time of tha 
 Queen of Jhansi, Sivaji owed the inspiration that 
 led to the national reawakening to his mother rather 
 than to his father. 
 
 If again we desire to hear of the woman of 
 romance, is it not sufficient to cite the name of that 
 Empress to whom the Taj Mahal was built? To 
 Hindus as to Mohammedans this palace of the dead 
 is holy, for to the one as to the other it speaks with 
 silent eloquence of the perfect wife. We may dream 
 as inadequately as we please of the Queen Arjmand 
 Banu, Crown of the Palace, but two things we 
 cannot forget. One is the tender thought of the 
 woman who could detach herself from the very 
 pains of death to assure her husband that she desired 
 a tomb worthy of his love; and the other is the 
 image of the passing of Shah Jehan, in the sunset- 
 lighted balcony, with his eyes fixed on the snow- 
 white pile at the bend in the river, and his heart 
 full of the consolation of having wrought for her he 
 loved, through the space of twenty years, a wort 
 that she had surely accepted at the last. The words, 
 " Even I, even I, am Beatrice," are not more full ol 
 the triumphant close of love than this picture of the 
 death of the Mogul Emperor. 
 
 Yet we have to admit that to the Asiatic woman 
 in general society does not offer the kingdom of 
 beauty and charm as her sphere. The foster-mother 
 of Moses the mother of Jesus, the wife of the Prophet, 
 Khadijah, and his daughter Fatima, are the true 
 
WOMAN IN THE NATIONAL LIFE 69 
 
 exemplars of the Moslem woman. And the ideal 
 achievements of Hindu womanhood are likewise ot 
 wisdom and service and renunciation, rather than of 
 power and love. Hindu lyrics of romance are always 
 put into the mouth of Radha the shepherdess, sing- 
 ing to Krishna ; and it is interesting to note how the 
 motive of each lover is placed always in the feeling 
 of the other, and how quickly any departure from 
 this canon would disgust Indian taste. Even Persian 
 poetry, the classic of the Mohammedan, is said by 
 those who know it to have avoided in a wonderful 
 way the use of " he and she." " Be I the string, 
 the note be thou ! Be thou the body, I the life ! 
 Let none hereafter say of us that one was I, another 
 thou." Is this spoken between two lovers, or is it 
 entirely of the soul ? 
 
 There is doubtless some truth in the idea that 
 society in a military state tends always to seclude 
 its women. The fact that in the aristocratic strict- 
 ness of retreat the Mussulmannin ranks first, the 
 Rajputni second, and the Bengali woman only third, 
 in India, goes far to support this conclusion. But 
 the case of the Rani of Jhansi is sufficient indication 
 that the custom is by no means so universal as is 
 often stated. The lower classes move freely in all 
 countries, for household work and the earning of 
 their livelihood compel ; and the screen is always 
 more easily lifted for the Hindu than for the 
 Mohammedan. A thousand considerations intervene 
 to mitigate its severity in the case of the former, 
 while in the South and West, where Moslem rule 
 was brief, and Moslem fashions had little force, it is 
 actually non-existent. 
 
 By this it is not to be understood that any Hindu 
 women meet men outside their kindred with the 
 freedom and frankness of their Western sisters. 
 Very old adaptations of the Ramayana show us 
 the brother-in-law who has never looked higher than 
 
70 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 the heroine's feet, and the wife who blushes rather 
 than mention her husband's name. But the power 
 of the individual to isolate himself in the midst of 
 apparently unrestrained social intercourse is 
 necessary in all communities, and has its corres^ 
 pondence in Western society itself. Freedom i» 
 granted only to the self-disciplined. It might be 
 added that a good wife has as little occasion to 
 realise the possible jealousy of her husband in the 
 East as in the West, and that an unreasonable fit of 
 suspicion would be considered the same weakness 
 and insult by the one society as by the other. 
 
 The liberty of Madras and Bombay is, however, 
 a reality for all its limitations. And in certain parts 
 of the province of Malabar woman is actually in the 
 ascendency. This curious country, of women 
 learned in Sanskrit, and kings who rule as the 
 regents of their sisters, will have many disclosures 
 to make to the world when India shall have pro- 
 duced a sufficient number of competent sociologists 
 of her own blood. It is commonly said to be cha- 
 racteristically polyandrous ; but it is not so, in the 
 same sense as Tibet and some of the Himalayan 
 tribes, for no woman regards herself as the wife of 
 two men at once. The terra matriarchal is more 
 accurate, inasmuch as the husband visits the wife in 
 her own home, and the right of inheritance is 
 through the mother. Thus, far from India's being 
 the land of the uniform oppression of woman by a 
 uniform method, it represents the whole cycle of 
 feminist institutions. There is literally no theory 
 of feminine rights and position that does not find 
 illustration somewhere within her boundaries. 
 
 With regard to the seclusion of women by Hindus, 
 tiie statement that it arose as a protection against 
 the violence of a ruling race is thoughtless and 
 untrue. The custom in its present rigour dates 
 undoubtedly from the period of Moslem rule. 
 
WOMAN IN THE NATIONAL LIFE 71 
 
 Where that rule was firm and long established, it 
 has sunk deep into Hindu habit, and in Bombay and 
 Madras, under opposite conditions, has been almost 
 passed by. In the plays of Kalidas, and in old 
 Sanskrit literature generally, there is abundant 
 evidence that it was not practised in its modern 
 form in the Vedic, Buddhistic, or Puranic periods. 
 
 But although it dates from the era of Ghazni or 
 Ghor — except where the Rajput made an inde- 
 pendent introduction of the purdah — there is nothing 
 to show that the cloistering of women was spread in 
 Hindostan by other means than by the force of 
 fashion and imperial prestige. Indeed, sooner or 
 later we have to face the question : What induced 
 the Mohammedan to screen his women ? Islam 
 derives the religious sanction of its social institu- 
 tions from Arabia, and the Arab woman is said to 
 enjoy considerable freedom and power. Hence it is 
 sometimes claimed that the Mussulman himself 
 adopted the practice from Persia, from China, or from 
 Greece. Such explanations are little more than 
 recriminatioa What are we to regard as the root 
 of a convention which in certain parts of the Orient 
 appears to be almost instinctive ? Climate, inducing 
 scantiness of clothing, cannot be the whole secret, 
 for in that case Madras would be more deeply 
 permeated by the custom than Bengal, whereas the 
 Tery opposite is the fact. 
 
 Might we not as well reverse the inquiry, and try 
 to assign some reason for the Western assumptioa 
 of equality between man and woman? The first 
 point that strikes us is the very uneven distribution 
 of the theory in Europe itself. It is by no means so 
 strong in Latin as in Teutonic countries, nor so 
 clearly formulated amongst the Germanic peoples as 
 in the Norse Sagas. This fact lends colour to the 
 theory of modern sociologists that fisher-life is the 
 source of ail equality between the sexes. For the 
 
72 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 man, pursuing the conquest of the sea, must leave 
 his wife regnant over the affairs of field and farm. 
 It is supposed by some that the very use of the 
 wedding-ring originated in the investiture of woman 
 at marriage, by means of the signet-ring, with a 
 fulness of authority similar to the husband's outside, 
 over all that lay within the house. Surely it is clear 
 that land and sea are not the only possible antitheses, 
 but that wherever a race is employed in a sustained 
 and arduous conquest of Nature there it will tend 
 towards fulness of co-operation, similarity of manners, 
 and equality of rights as between men and women ; 
 and that, other things being equal, under long-settled 
 conditions, from which anxiety is largely eliminated, 
 there is a progressive inclination towards divergence 
 of their lines of activity, accompanied by the more 
 complete surrender of woman to the protection of 
 man, and the seeking of her individuality in the 
 sphere of morals and emotion. 
 
 The tendency to divergence of function would be ac- 
 celerated in Asia by the nature of the climate, which 
 makes stillness and passivity the highest luxury. 
 This fact would combine again with military pre- 
 possessions, to make the custom of seclusion especi- 
 ally characteristic of royal households, and having 
 once achieved such social prestige it would speedily 
 extend over wide areas. Thus it becomes charac- 
 teristic of conquering races, and among Hindus is 
 imitated with marked energy by Bengal, which is not 
 only the most idealistic of all the Indian provinces, 
 but also — owing to the existence of the zemindar 
 class — the most persistently feudal, after Rajputana. 
 
 If this theory be correct, the freedom of the 
 Indian woman of the first Aryan period is to be 
 explained as an outcome of the struggle with earth 
 and forest. The early immigrations of agricultural 
 races across the Himalayas from Central Asia must 
 have meant a combat with Nature of the severest 
 
WOMAN IN THE NATIONAL LIFE 73 
 
 kind. It was a combat in which the wife was the 
 helpmeet of the husband. If he cleared the jungle 
 and hunted the game, she had to give aid in field and 
 garden. The Aryan population was scanty, and she 
 would often be required to take his place. Vicissi- 
 tudes were many. At a moment's notice she must 
 be prepared to meet an emergency, brave, cheerful, 
 and self-helpful. In such a life woman must move 
 as easily as roan. 
 
 It began to be otherwise, however, when the 
 eountry was cleared, agriculture established on the 
 Aryan scale, and the energy of the race concentrated 
 on the higher problem of conserving and extending 
 its culture of mind and spirit. It is doubtful whether 
 Indian philosophy could ever have been completed 
 on other terms than on those of some measure of 
 seclusion for woman. '' This world is all a dream : 
 God alone is real," such an ultimatum could hardly 
 have been reached in a society like that of Judaism, 
 where love and beauty were held as the seal of divine 
 approval on a successful life. Not that India would 
 decry these happy gifts. But they are secular joys 
 in her eyes, not spiritual. " The religion of the wife 
 lies in serving her husband: the religion of the 
 widow lies in serving God," say the women ; and 
 there is no doubt in their minds that the widow's 
 call is the higher of the two. 
 
 While we talk of the seclusion of woman, however, 
 as if it were a fact, we must be careful to guard 
 against misconception. In society and in the streets 
 of Indian cities, it is practically true that we see 
 men alone. This fact makes it a possibility for the 
 religious to pass his life without looking on the face 
 of any woman, save such as he may call " Mother." 
 Inside the house, if we penetrate so far, we shall 
 probably meet with none but women. But if we live 
 there day after day, we shall find that every woman 
 has familiar intercourse with some man or men in 
 
74 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 the family. The relation between brothers ana 
 sisters-in-law is all gaiety and sweetness. Scarcely 
 any children are so near to a woman as the sons of 
 her husband's sisters. It is the proud prerogative 
 of these, whatever be their age, to regard her as 
 their slave. There is a special delicacy of affection 
 and respect between the husband's father and his 
 daughter-in-law. Cousins count as brothers and 
 sisters. And from the fact that every woman has 
 her rightful place in some family it follows that 
 there is more healthy human intercourse with men 
 in almost every Hindu woman's life than in those of 
 thousands of single women, living alone, or following 
 professional careers, in the suburbs of London and 
 other Western cities. 
 
 It is an intercourse, too, that is full of a refined 
 and delicate sense of humour. Indian men who 
 have been to Europe always declare that the zenana 
 woman stands unrivalled in her power of repartee. 
 English fun is apt to strike the Eastern ear as a little 
 loud. How charming is the Bengali version of 
 " the bad penny that always turns up," in, " I am 
 the broken cowrie that has been to seven markets " I 
 That is to say, " I may be worthless, but I am 
 knowing." 
 
 We are too apt to define the ideal as that towards 
 which we aspire, thinking but rarely of those 
 assimilated ideals which reveal themselves as custom. 
 If we analyse the conventions that dominate an 
 Indian woman's life we cannot fail to come upon an 
 exceedingly stern canon of self-control. The close- 
 ness and intimacy of the family life, and the number 
 of the interests that have to be considered, make 
 strict discipline necessary, doubtless, for the sake of 
 peace. Hence a husband and wife may not address 
 each other in the presence of others. A wife may 
 not name her husband, much less praise him, and so 
 on. Only little children are perfectly untrammelled, 
 
WOMAN IN THE NATIONAL LIFE 75 
 
 and may bestow their affection when and where they 
 will. All these things are for the protection of the 
 community, lest it be outraged by the parading of a 
 relationship of intimacy, or victimised by an enthu- 
 siasm which it could not be expected to share. 
 
 This constant and happy subordination of oneself 
 to others does not strike the observer, only because 
 it is so complete. It is not the characteristic of the 
 specially developed individual alone, for it is recog- 
 nised and required, in all degrees of delicacy, by 
 society at large. Unselfishness and the thirst for 
 service stand out in the Western personality against 
 a background of individualistic conventions, and 
 convey an impression of the eagerness and struggle 
 of pity, without which the world would certainly be 
 the poorer. But the Eastern woman is unaware of 
 any defiance of institutions. She is the product of an 
 ethical civilisation. Her charities are required of her. 
 Her vows and penances are unknown even to her 
 husband ; but were they told, they would scarcely 
 excite remark in a community where all make similar 
 sacrifices. 
 
 This is only to say that she is more deeply self- 
 effacing and more effectively altruistic than any 
 Western. The duty of tending the sick is so much 
 a matter of course to her that she does not dream of 
 it as a special function, for which one might erect 
 hospitals or learn nursing. Here, no doubt, she 
 misses a great deal, for the modern organisation of 
 skill has produced a concentration of attention on 
 method that avails to save much suffering. Still, we 
 must not too carelessly assume that our own habit 
 of massing together all the hungry, sick, and insane, 
 and isolating them in worlds visited throughout with 
 like afflictions to their own, is the product of a 
 higher benevolence on our part. 
 
 Throughout the world women are the guardians 
 •f humanity's ethical ideals. The boy would not 
 
76 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 be so anxious to carry the dead to the burning ghat 
 if his mother had not filled his babyhood with 
 admiration of the deed. The husband would not be 
 so strenuous to return home at his best if his wife 
 did not understand and appreciate his noblest 
 qualities. But, even beyond this, women give 
 themselves as the perpetual illustration of the ideal. 
 The words, " He that will be chief among you let 
 him be your servant," fall on Western ears with a 
 certain sense of sublime paradox. But the august 
 Speaker uttered the merest truism of that simple 
 Eastern world in which He moved. He roused no 
 thrill of surprise in the minds of His hearers, for to 
 each his own mother was chief, and yet servant 
 of all. 
 
 Those who, knowing the East, read the list of the 
 seven corporal works of mercy, may well start to 
 imagine themselves back in the Hindu home watch- 
 ing its laborious, pious women as they move about 
 their daily tasks, never questioning the first necessity 
 of feeding the hungry, harbouring the harbourless, 
 and the like. Truly the East is eternally the mother 
 of religions, for the reason that she has assimilated 
 as ordinary social functions what the West holds to 
 be only the duty of officialism or the message of the 
 Church, and to those who deeply understand it may 
 well seem that Christianity in Europe is neither 
 more nor less than the mission of the Asiatic Life. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE IMMEDIATE PROBLEMS OF THE 
 ORIENTAL WOMAN 
 
 The student of Greek vases cannot fail to be struck 
 by the frequent repetition of a single theme — the 
 procession of women to and from the well. In 
 ancient Greece, in Palestine, and in India up to the 
 era of water-taps and street hydrants, that is to say 
 till the other day, the women had an established 
 social centre, the well from which the community 
 drew its supply of drinking water. Hither, in the 
 last hours before sundown, came the maidens of 
 various households, young daughters-in-law, maybe, 
 in charge of some elderly aunt or mother-in-law, or 
 with each other's company for chaperonage, each 
 bearing her shining metal vessels to be filled. And 
 thence, their mutual talk and task being ended, went 
 the girls to their homes, with towering loads some 
 two or three pots high, and superb swaying walk. 
 Sometimes, it is said, for a trial of skill, they would 
 run and skip, and even dance, as they went along 
 the road, and never a drop of water spilled the while. 
 The hour was held in great esteem. The way was 
 avoided by men, and the women proved, what all 
 women know, that their real motive in dressing well 
 is to compete with each other, not to shine in the 
 eyes of the sterner sex. Showy silver anklets, the 
 pearl-decorated pad or ring on which the water-pots 
 rested on the head, saris draped as severely as in 
 
78 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 Greek statues — all these beauties were arranged for 
 the discriminating envy or sympathy of sister eyes, 
 not for the enjoyment of a being who may be trusted 
 to think his own wife and sisters beautiful, yet 
 tannot do them the honour to remember what jewels 
 and clothes they wear. 
 
 For a vanity not less than that which chooses a 
 gown in Paris, can go to so simple a matter as the 
 fitting of a dark-blue sari against a fair complexion, 
 that the wearer may look " like the full moon in the 
 midnight sky," the placing of opal or diamond on 
 one nostril or the other, or the selecting of a glass 
 bangle of white or green, according to the tint of the 
 brown skin. The vanity may be no less, and the 
 highest skill always desires the eye of the keenest 
 connoisseur. 
 
 This picture of the women drawing water has its 
 pendant in the cluster of men who gather for friendly 
 smoke or chat at evening about the smouldering log, 
 lighted on the outskirts of the village by any 
 wandering sannyasin who may have taken up his 
 abode for a few days beneath the local banyan tree. 
 But this suggests a wider, more cosmopolitan 
 relation. The men's talk is apt to be of other lands 
 than their own, and the strange customs and lapses 
 of customs prevailing there. Their interests are 
 rather general, abstract, impersonal. For the yellow- 
 robed guest of the village is, it must be remembered, 
 a traveller of the ancient time. He has not journeyed 
 in railway trains and lived in hotels. Rather, 
 tramping his way from village to village, he has 
 shared, at each halting-place, in its personal drama ; 
 has begged a meal daily from door to door ; has 
 eaten, therefore, the characteristic food, cooked and 
 served according to the ways of each district. By 
 such modes the geographical sense of this old-time 
 wayfarer is developed far beyond that of a genera- 
 tion that Hves on maps and learns from the schedules 
 
THE ORIENTAL WOMAN 79 
 
 of facts known as newspaper reports and the journals 
 of other men's travels. And it is his geographical 
 knowledge that he shares with the men of the 
 '/(Uage where he eats and sleeps for a few days. 
 In the old Sanskrit books, kings are represented 
 as receiving such guests with the question, 
 " What have you seen elsewhere ? " and asking 
 before they depart, " And what have you noted 
 here?" 
 
 But amongst the women gathered about the well 
 it was the civic life that found expression, the civic 
 life of the village or small township. Here they could 
 \ form a consolidated feminine opinion, of great weight 
 I in local affairs, and exchange the news of the day 
 { with each other. The better organisation of public 
 convenience now deprives them of the laborious 
 necessity of meeting in the old way ; but it is much 
 to be desired that, with the dying out of their ancient 
 forms and institutions, new occasions of assembly 
 and new subjects of discussion might spontaneously 
 arise. At present Indian emotion spends itself 
 more and more within the home. Woman, always 
 dominant in private life, by her very affection is co- 
 operating with the loss of public institutions to 
 restrict the activity of Man. Surely, then, Europe 
 has no right to grow contemptuous if rich men prove 
 effeminate and poor men inefficient, or taunt India 
 with the fact that she has not yet seized the elhos of 
 the West, that her princes send out no expeditions 
 to discover the South Pole, and her youth grow up 
 with no consuming curiosity about rocks and stars ; 
 for the European organisation quietly defeats all 
 through which the people are accustomed to find 
 expression and yet fails to call them to new respon- 
 sibilities, in which their mind and character could 
 receive adequate scope and stimulus in a different 
 form. 
 
 it is quite evident that if the centre of social 
 
80 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 gravity is some day to be shifted, if the intellectual 
 atmosphere of India is yet to be saturated with 
 fresh ideals, not only must her womanhood partici- 
 pate in the results of the implied revolution, but 
 they must contribute largely to bringing it about. 
 For it is the home, not the factory, that fills life with 
 inspiration; and the school, in British India, is no 
 more than a mill or institution in which children 
 master the reading and writing necessary to future 
 clerkships, as they might learn the technical processes 
 of any other industry. A census-taking, index- 
 making age conceives that without literacy there is 
 no education, as if to read the Sirand Magazine were 
 greater than to be the mother 'of Shakespeare. 
 With such an age it is difficult to argue regarding 
 the existing education of a Hindu woman. Yet if a 
 thorough training in a national mode of living, and 
 I that extremely complicated, be an education, she 
 i has something ; for the ordinary wife can act in any 
 capacity, from that of cook or dairy-mistress to that 
 of chief of commissariat and general administrator 
 for a hundred or more persons If a knowledge of 
 language, poetry, and folk-lore, with all thereby con- 
 noted of logical and imaginative development, form 
 an education, she has this, sometimes to the extent 
 of understanding and reciting works in Sanskrit. 
 More: poor women who may not be able to read 
 and write are deeply, and even passionately, 
 possessed of the spirit of the ancient culture. The 
 philosophy of Maya, not seldom bewildering to the 
 Western savant, has no difficulty for them. They 
 understand to a hair the meaning of the word 
 Nirvana. It is no one special command to deny 
 oneself and take up a cross and follow, that has 
 weight with them ; but the bearing of the great law 
 of renunciation on the personal reahsation of 
 freedom, -^dd to all this the inbred habit of life 
 in community, and it will appear that under the old 
 
THE ORIENTAL WOMAN 8i 
 
 scheme women found not only a training and a 
 discipline, but also a career. 
 
 It was a preparation and an oppdrtunity fitted 
 only, it is true, to the soil on which it grew. This 
 limitation pervades the whole of the Indian civili- 
 sation. The Indian mind is more contented with 
 the architectural and natural beauties of the home, 
 more free from a desire for extraneous decorative 
 detail, than any other taste in the world, perhaps, 
 and in the same way it has devised a daily round of 
 duty which belongs strictly to its place. The good 
 mother-in-law occupies the position of the lady of 
 the manor in English feudal days. But whereas the 
 manorial household could be transplanted to any age 
 or clime almost intact — Japan, Rajputana, Turkey, 
 Scandinavia, and Spain furnishing parallels fairly 
 complete — the same is not true of the Indian type. 
 Here the girls gathered round its head are the wives 
 of her sons, instead of her husband's vassals. And 
 it is the care of babies, the treatment of animals, and 
 all kinds of cooking and domestic offices, rather 
 than deft spinning and dainty embroidery, with 
 which they are busied under her. Caste equalises 
 the dignity of beggar and king, and the form of 
 work is merely a question of wealth. 
 
 At the same time, while every detail of the Indian 
 domestic system is justified and justifiable, we cannot 
 refuse to admit that some great educational readjust- 
 ment is necessary at this moment, if only because 
 long habit blinds the eye to the forest that looks 
 much upon the trees ; but when the trees grow too 
 scanty it is the forest, as a whole, that demands our 
 care. To-day every Indian woman can cook, and 
 that well. But she cannot sew, and she has nothing 
 but gossip and prayer when the afternoon siesta is 
 over wherewith to occupy her leisure. The great- 
 grandmothers of the present generation were as 
 busy in spinning as our own ancestresses, and one 
 
 f 
 
8z THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 of the chief domestic joys was to take the yarn to the 
 weaver with the measure of grain for which he would 
 make it into a web. To-day, alas, the weaver finds 
 it difficult enough to maintain himself by the fine 
 work, for which there is always some market, 
 shrunken though it be, and the common sari of the 
 women's daily wear is spun and woven by machinery, 
 far away in Manchester or Glasgow. Here also, 
 then, the modern revolution has narrowed her lot. 
 A like destruction is being felt in all directions. 
 Higher standards of comfort are rapidly arising. 
 The days when the little boys in the village school 
 wrote on the floor in sand are long past. Even the 
 palm-leaf manuscript is little more than a memory. 
 Steel pen, instead of wooden stylus, cheap paper, 
 smooth writing fluids are everywhere. Soap* is 
 becoming a necessity. European utensils for clean- 
 ing, for cooking, and even for eating, are coming 
 into use. Certain kinds of furniture are growing 
 familiar. Kerosene and tin and modern glass are to 
 be found in every village. But this does not mean 
 that the people are learning to provide these things 
 for themselves, much less does it imply that they are 
 mastering their use and incorporating their produc- 
 tion under the old caste-crafts, bringing their Indian 
 taste and intelligence to bear upon creating new 
 modifications of Western forms. What it does 
 mean is that the country has already become a host 
 to the parasite of European trade. Absolutely and 
 fatally obedient to laws of patent and copyright, the 
 people accept any new convenience as it stands, 
 allow the village craftsman to go by the door, cease 
 
 * Lest it should be thought that India had ever been a land 
 •f the unclean, let me point out here that the use of earths and 
 oils for the bath has always been compulsory. There is, per- 
 haps, no people in the world from whom the culture of the skia 
 receives so much attention, or where it is so successful. But 
 manufactured soap, as producing a chemical changa on the 
 •pidermis, is theoretically disapproved. 
 
THE ORIENTAL WOMAN 83 
 
 to use the old-fashioned utensil, whatever it may 
 have been, and allow the stereotyped ugliness of the 
 new acquisition to corrupt taste and standards as 
 long as it lasts. Even the brass-smiths have quietly 
 accepted the fact that their metal is cheapest brought 
 in sheets from Europe, and housewives mourn in vain 
 that their beautiful brass cooking vessels are no 
 longer fit to be heirlooms, as were those of their 
 grandmothers. In all this India is not more careless 
 or easy of corruption than European countries them- 
 selves. She has more to lose and is more defenceless, 
 that is all, and she has not learnt to think of such 
 questions on the national scale. 
 
 Orthodoxy does, of course, oppose some obstacle 
 to this process of decay. It would still be accounttd 
 an act of vulgarity if a man of means gave a piece cf 
 English cotton as wearing apparel to a friend. Soap, 
 kerosene oil, and the substitution of chairs for mats, 
 are still regarded askance by the leaders of pious 
 opinion. But this opposition savours too much of 
 mere prejudice. Therefore it can only retard, it 
 cannot overcome, the evil. What is wanted in this 
 regard is a dynamic orthodoxy, capable of enforcing 
 a decision that only what Indian people can make 
 ought Indian persons to use. And such a canon, it 
 is needless to point out, would have to find its root 
 and strength in the women, who are buyers and 
 consumers, reaching the craftsmen through con- 
 stituted social and religious channels. Once having 
 obtained a grip of the national conscience, no political 
 or commercial cajolery would be of the slightest 
 avail against this principle ; but then, if the people 
 were capable of understanding and carrying out 
 such an idea — women, priests, pundits, heads of 
 castes, and labourers — the whole problem would 
 already have been solved, and there would be no 
 disaster from which India must be saved. 
 
 It is clear that as the objective of the old education 
 
84 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 of Indian women lay in character, the new cannot aim 
 lower. The distinctive element, therefore, in their 
 future training cannot be reading and writing — 
 though these will undoubtedly grow more common — 
 but the power to grasp clearly and with enthusiasm 
 the ideas of nationality, national interests, and the 
 responsibility of the individual to race and country. 
 Even in Europe, habits and opinions tend to stereo- 
 type and harden themselves quite as much as in the 
 Orient. But at present there is still a certain flexi- 
 bility. This flexibility rather than any definite 
 change is what the East requires. It is a form of 
 freedom and mastery. European communities, in 
 consequence of this mobility of structure, enjoy a 
 power of intelligent co-operation towards new but 
 agreed ends which is universally desirable. India 
 has the power to act, but the end must be familiar. 
 A few women will organise themselves at a moment's 
 notice to cook for hundreds or even thousands of 
 guests, without the least waste of energy or temper 
 such as Western women would incur in organising 
 a soup-kitchen. But if we call the guests " the un- 
 employed," and refer to them as " a social problem," 
 the Oriental becomes bewildered, as would we in 
 like manner were it proposed to us to regard them 
 all as visitors. It is clear that the Western mode of 
 approaching such tasks can only be acquired by 
 India, if it be necessary, through an enlarged idea of 
 the public Ife. 
 
 When the women see themselves in their true 
 place, as related to the soil on which they live, as 
 related to the past out of which they have sprung; 
 when they become aware of the needs of their own 
 people, on the actual colossal scale of those needs ; 
 when the mother-heart has once awakened in them 
 to beat for land and people, instead of family, village, 
 and homestead alone, and when the mind is set to 
 explore facts in the service of that heart — then and 
 
THE ORIENTAL WOMAN 85 
 
 then alone shall the future of Indian womanhood 
 dawn upon the race in its actual greatness; then 
 shall a worthy education be realised ; and then shall 
 the true national ideal stand revealed. 
 
 Such a change, however, is only possible as a 
 direct growth out of old conceptions. The national 
 idea cannot be imposed from without — it must 
 develop from within. And this will be in full con- 
 gruity with the national religions. Islam, in the 
 days of its power, rejoiced to establish itself as 
 Indian on Indian soil. The architectural works of 
 the Mogul emperors are full of enthusiasm for the 
 Indian past, for the Indo-Saracenic style owes as 
 much to Rajputana as to Mecca and Constantinople. 
 Asiatic among Asiatics — there was no wide gap 
 between Mussulman conquerors and Hindu con- 
 quered : no gap in taste, or morals, or style of 
 thought and education. The newcomer settled down 
 as a child of the land, in his own home. His children 
 were first Indian, and only in the second place 
 members of the Mohammedan confraternity. To- 
 day, under the necessity of a secular expression, 
 there is nothing whatever to prevent him from 
 projecting himself upon the cause of his own people, 
 both Hindu and Mohammedan, and working for them 
 with that same power with which his fathers once 
 made the deserts of Arabia ring. For the Hindu, 
 the point should be still more obvious. His avatars 
 have lived always for humanity. They have appeared 
 in the hour of the national need. They have been 
 followed by waves of popular and political rejuven- 
 ance. Neither Hinduism nor Mohammedanism has 
 been weak in putting forward the claims of soil. 
 The sacred texts go so far as to say that he who 
 dies for his country at once attains the Beatific 
 Vision. With regard to their fundamental duties, 
 both faiths stand like converging artillery in the 
 world of motive, ready to shoot forth individuals 
 
86 THE WEB OF INOIAN LIFE 
 
 upon the great common task of remaking the 
 motherland. 
 
 But for all this again, there must be a re-reading 
 of orthodoxy, a re-discovery of essentials. Already 
 the revolution has commenced that is to bring this 
 about. Already India has begun to realise that if 
 poverty is to be defeated, if national efficiency is to 
 be achieved, she dare not continue much longer to 
 glorify the element of blind refusal. Vital ortho- 
 doxy, however we define it, certainly cannot be the 
 child of fear alone, always on the defensive, never 
 becoming aggressive, its best courage that of endur- 
 ance or resignation. He whose idea has ceased to 
 advance is already in retreat. There was a time 
 when everything in India was her own. In those 
 days she went forward freely, welcoming the new as 
 an advance in power and knowledge, not meeting it 
 with terror as a defilement. Indian orthodoxy, then, 
 must learn once more to strugg'^; forward. But we 
 are met by a host of questions. Amongst many 
 conflicting paths, which is to be chosen ? Towards 
 what goal ? By what methods ? What is to be in- 
 cluded ? What eliminated ? Here are the actual 
 difficulties. Every one is agreed that certain things 
 must be done, but no one can distinctly picture how. 
 
 Yet the weakness is easy enough to probe. The 
 West conquers the East, as long as the East on the 
 one hand shuns it as contamination, or, on the 
 other, accepts it as a bribe. The idea of assimila- 
 ting just so much of Western science as shall enable 
 India to compete in the same market by the same 
 processes as the West is as delusive as it is mean. 
 The idea of refusing to participate in Western 
 methods, and dying of starvation if need be, martyrs 
 to national purity, is manifestly impracticable for the 
 people at large, even if it had not long ago been 
 carried out of reach of all on the high tides of 
 economic disaster. What then ? 
 
THE ORIENTAL WOMAN 87 
 
 Western Science must be recognised as holy. The 
 idea of that Science must be grasped and pursued for its 
 otvn sake. Modern astronomy must claim its " star- 
 intoxicated " prophets in the East as in the West 
 Geology, physics, biology, and the sublime and 
 growing sciences of man, history and morals, must 
 be felt in India as new modes of the apprehension 
 of truth, studied passionately without ulterior object, 
 as the religious experience is now followed, at the 
 cost of all. 
 
 Such an attitude is, indeed, of the very essence of 
 the Asiatic genius. To it mathematics have never 
 sunk to the position which they tend to occupy in 
 Europe — a convenient means for the measurement 
 of secular utilities — but have always been held 
 as a sacred inviolable method of expressing the 
 fundamental unity of phenomena. The learned man 
 will mention this subject with the same throb in his 
 voice that we may give to a great picture or a 
 moving poem. The Indian imagination regards all 
 knowledge of beatitude. Nor is any intellect in the 
 world more keenly logical and inquisitive, or at the 
 same time more disinterested and comprehensive in 
 its grasp. A great Indian school of science is there- 
 fore no absurdity, but, under necessary conditions, 
 one of the most attainable of all ambitions. The 
 Hindu has but to realise that the world waits for the 
 hundred and eight Upanishads of modern know- 
 ledge ; the Mussulman needs only to understand 
 that the time is again ripe for Averrhoes and 
 Avicenna ; and both will make, not only their own 
 opportunity, but a new era in culture as well. 
 
 This is not merely an inspiration of defence. 
 Oriental methods have had an unparalleled success in 
 producing a widely extended amelioration of con- 
 duct and cultivation of mind. Any large country 
 town in India may be observed, and the number (^ 
 its saints and scholars counted. Not even the most 
 
88 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 favoured of London suburbs can boast, of its com- 
 mercial or scientific order, so many men severely 
 learned. But the old Indian learning is now com- 
 plete. The task is done. There is nothing left for 
 5he common mind to add. 
 
 It is necessary, therefore, as a vindication of that 
 great intellectual vigour which it has actually bred, 
 that new worlds of mental conquest should be found, 
 new subjects opened, and a new development 
 initiated, in which the common people shall measure 
 their strength against the modern world, and learn 
 their power. 
 
 Out of such a revolution, but as an incident, not 
 as its main goal, must inevitably arise a develop- 
 ment of mechanical skill which, in the East, might 
 steer clear of the demoralisation produced elsewhere 
 by the worship of usefulness and privilege. It is 
 certain that if India throw herself freely upon a 
 mechanical era, she will restore to the factory hand 
 those human qualities and ethical prerogatives which 
 in the West he tends more and more to lose. 
 
 In order to make such changes possible, however, 
 there would need to be a spontaneous appearance, 
 in various parts of the country, of persons with the 
 synthetic habit of mind and heart. India is actually 
 a unity, but few of her people realise the fact, and 
 fewer still feel the appropriate emotion. No 
 parochial ambition can, at this juncture, save the 
 motherland. The Mahratta may not seek the good 
 of Maharashtra, nor the Sikh of the Punjab. There 
 must be no revival of forgotten feuds. Not in such 
 things lies the thrill of nationality. Rather, all 
 must unite in a common glorification of India and 
 the whole Indian past. Each must recognise what 
 the others have contributed. There must be 
 thinkers able to take advantage of every accident 
 in local history, and to turn it to the advantage of 
 the one great cause. The passion of nationality 
 
THE ORIENTAL WOMAN 89 
 
 was so strong in the Punjab, in Rajputana, and 
 under Sivaji, that it broke even the power of the 
 Mogul Empire. Yet the fact that she has never had 
 any definite and consolidated form of her own may 
 be the critical element in the history of Bengal, to 
 make her the welder and fuser of all the provinces 
 to-day. 
 
 Such an inspiration as this is social as well as 
 political. It is religious in the highest sense. It 
 has to fill home, school, and market-place. There 
 is no question therefore as to its requiring the co- 
 operation of woman with man. For her, also, there 
 is a new and greater orthodoxy. She must become 
 of her own freedom that which custom now makes 
 her. Eastern piety is often good bacteriology. 
 Sitola, the Smallpox Goddess, is depicted as riding 
 on the washerman's donkey, an unclean beast. But 
 requiring to be worshipped with water and broom, 
 and isolation of the patient. The myth is admirable. 
 Europe can show nothing of its kind so good. But 
 the next step is, obviously, facts at first hand. 
 Woman must be enabled to know, think, and judge 
 freely, on all questions such as those of food and the 
 public health. The severe exigencies of modern 
 labour make the old food and cooking entirely in- 
 sufficient. Dyspepsia has become a national curse ; 
 yet this is certainly one of the difficulties that could 
 be overcome. An extended choice of food-stufFs, and 
 the alternative of simple methods of preparation, 
 would be fully consonant with orthodoxy, which has 
 always aimed at making the body the servant of 
 man, and not his master. 
 
 With increasing poverty, and the tendency to 
 break up the family into smaller groups, the career 
 within the community-house is becoming limited. 
 This will have to be counterbalanced by some increase 
 of the power to consider national and communal 
 responsibilities. The Mahabharata, the Ramayana 
 
90 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 and the Puranas, represent the culture of nationality 
 popularised. Every ritual, every sacrament, is full 
 of unwritten history. But the times demand a direct 
 and simple knowledge of the fact even more than of 
 the vehicle. To meet this demand, however, is not 
 to attack orthodoxy, but to fulfil it, to carry it to its 
 highest power. 
 
 There is no question here of educating an intellect 
 hitherto left in barbarous ignorance. Only those 
 can do vital service to the Indian woman who, in a 
 spirit of entire respect for her existing conventions 
 and her past, recognise that they are but offering 
 new modes of expression to qualities already 
 developed and expressed in other ways under the 
 old training. Therefore the fundamental task of 
 grasping and conveying the inspiration of the West 
 must be performed by Easterns for Easterns, and 
 not by foreigners. 
 
 Nor ought the result of such a process to be in 
 any sense denationalising. To assimilate an ideal 
 and make our own persons a demonstration of its 
 power — this is not imitation. A merely imitative 
 apprehension of the West — like that of the clerk in 
 his office, the constitutional agitator in politics, the 
 manufacturer who knows only enough of mechanical 
 industry for a cheek-by-jowl competition with 
 Manchester — is indeed the parent of death to the 
 Orient. But to achieve a living, forceful, heart-to- 
 heart appropriation of the Western energy and its 
 immediate re-translation into Eastern terms, is not 
 death but life. 
 
 The East suffers, as has been said, from the very 
 perfection of its formulae. " Tell the truth," says 
 the commandment in the Occident ; and again, " Be 
 courteous in thy speech." How often have we not 
 seen crude logic struggle blindly to co-ordinate these 
 conflicting dicta, with how many degrees of ill- 
 success ! But in the East, for more than two 
 
THE ORIENTAL WOMAN 91 
 
 thousand years, people have lived under the shadow 
 of Manu's saying : " Tell the truth, but not that 
 which is unpleasant r tell the pleasant, but not that 
 which is untrue." Alas, its completeness leaves 
 nothing to be added 1 That unconquered space 
 wnich the mind needs to bring out its fullest poten- 
 tiality ; that strip of wilderness to be empirically 
 observed and reclaimed, and finally annexed to the 
 territory of prescribed law ; that sense of personal 
 adventure on the great ocean of truth, there to 
 encounter tempests of doubt and negation and over- 
 come by slowly gathered knowledge only, — all these 
 are now most attainable in the view of the Universe 
 which is presented by Western science. 
 
 Very little that deserves the name of Education 
 has been attempted in modern India. A machine 
 has been created ; an organisation stands ready. 
 But nothing in all this represents the work of the 
 people themselves, for ends which they spontaneously 
 perceive to be good in themselves. Moreover, 
 liberal ideals of what Education means are wanting. 
 It is obvious that no system can be complete till 
 secular culture exists in all forms and grades as does 
 religious culture now, from that of the child playing 
 with sense-impressions, up to the solitary student, 
 standing on mountain-peaks of knowledge where 
 human foot before his has never trodden, and yet 
 finding abundance of sympathy and understanding 
 and new stimulus again, in the social matrix out of 
 which he climbed, when he returns to recount his 
 vision and his wandering. 
 
 The process of creating a great nation out of the 
 rich civilisations and faiths of an Eastern land is by 
 no means simple. Yet there is not a single weapon 
 that is not ready to hand. Long ages of peace (for 
 the trifling feuds of dynasties do not disturb the 
 fundamental peace of agricultural peoples) have 
 somewhat puerilised the military factors in the faiths. 
 
92 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 Yet still the fencing is exhibited at the Mohurrum ; 
 still the weapons are carried in procession at the 
 feast of Durga ; still the great Kayasth* families of 
 Bengal and the Kshatriyas of Rajputana practise the 
 annual Worship and Tribute of the Sword. And 
 still the women throng to the temples with lighted 
 candles on the eve of the Birth-feast of the War- 
 Lord in December, to make it the most imposing in 
 the year. A still more extraordinary paradox lies 
 in the fact that it is India the peaceful, the patient, 
 the entirely submissive, which possesses the most 
 militant and stirring of all the world's Evangels — the 
 Gospel of the Blessed One, uttered from a war-chariot 
 on the actual field of battle. 
 
 There is another feature necessary to the making 
 of a great people — a sense of community among all 
 classes. Sharp distinction of races and manners has 
 made the pariahs of the South a byword among the 
 nations, and the very name of India a synonym for 
 caste as opposed to nationality. Yet even in the 
 South, and amongst these same pariahs, the effort 
 has been made. The whole life of Ramanuja, the 
 great religious leader, was as passionate an offering 
 to the despised and rejected as that of the Teacher 
 of Galilee is represented to have been. Even here, 
 then, the national consolidation sounds no new note 
 in Hindu ears. Islam is nothing if not a great 
 mission of fraternity. Guru Nanak in the North, f 
 and Ramanuja in the South, { have preached the 
 same doctrine in words and lives made ever memor- 
 able. And if once the mother-heart of India can 
 
 * Kayasth families. — The Kayasths are the second caste of 
 Bengal. They claim descent from the old Kshatriya, or military 
 caste, but the authenticity of this genealogy is disputed. 
 
 t Guru Nanak in the North. — Guru Nanak was the first of 
 the ten leaders or Gurus who formed the Sikh nation — the 
 people of the Punjab. He was born 1469. 
 
 t Ramanuja in the South. — A saint and teacher of marvellous 
 love and mercy. He lived in the twelfth century. 
 
THE ORIENTAL WOMAN 93 
 
 grasp the meaning and necessity of these incidents 
 in its own history, we shall see all barriers broken, 
 all difficulties overcome, and a new age inaugurated 
 that shall be at once the flowering-point and blossom 
 of all the realisations of the past. 
 
 But how do we propose that Indian women shall 
 grasp an idea of such vastness as this of Nationality ? 
 How arc they to acquire the knowledge necessary to 
 define it ? And how are they to grow in clear and ac- 
 curate mastery of essential facts ? Is it to be expected 
 that the conventional channels of their education — 
 the Homeric singers who chant the epics from door 
 to door — is it to be expected that these shall trans- 
 form themselves at a stroke from pious rhapsodists 
 into heroic bards, chanting of nationality ? No, it is 
 clear enough that such a change could only befall 
 them as result, not cause, of some great upheaval, 
 from which the nation herself had emerged radiant, 
 victorious, impressing herself upon the imaginations 
 of her own children for ages to come. But the 
 spring of such an upheaval, where is that to be 
 found ? 
 
 In answer to such questions we can only assure 
 ourselves that when the world is ripe for some 
 epochal idea — as the Indian world is surely ripe to- 
 day — that idea pours itself in from all sides upon 
 the waiting consciousness. The very stones speak 
 it, and the timbers out of the wall cry out and answer 
 them ; some immense struggle for the common good 
 precipitates itself ; idea and struggle act and react, 
 each throwing the other into greater distinctness, 
 till the goal of both is finally achieved. 
 
 This is the more true in these days of telegraphy 
 and letter-writing, of a common language and cheap 
 print. A process which in Asoka's India would 
 have taken at least two hundred years, may now be 
 accomplished in a single decade. And wherever a 
 word of English goes, the national idea constitutes 
 
94 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 for itself the necessity of an apostolate. No one can 
 say exactly how it will come to birth among the 
 women. Some will catch it for themselves. Some 
 will gather it from the men Some are possessed of 
 it already. But it is certain that woman, with her 
 determinately synthetic interests, will refuse long to 
 be baulked of her right to consider things as a 
 whole. The interest of the mother is ever with the 
 future. Woman will readily understand that a single 
 generation of accomplished defeat is sufficient to 
 divorce a whole race from its patrimony ; and she 
 will determine, and effectively determine, that the lot 
 of her own sons shall be victory, and not surrender. 
 And if once the Oriental woman seize the helm of 
 the ship in this fashion, solving the problems of her 
 whole country, whom is it suggested that she shall 
 afterwards petition for the redress of her own griev- 
 ances ? 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE INDIAN SAGAS 
 
 Unseen, but all pervasive, in the life of every com- 
 munity, is the great company of the ideals. No 
 decalogue has half the influence over human conduct 
 that is exercised by a single drama or a page of 
 narrative. The theory of chivalry interests us, but 
 the Idylls of the King help to mould our character. 
 
 The whole of history, in so far as it may be 
 known, is the common possession of the race ; but, 
 in addition to this, every language makes its own 
 tontribution of literary creations, and national cus- 
 tom determines the degree in which these shall 
 become available to all classes of the community, 
 thereby reacting upon the national type. Few have 
 tonsidered how much might be done to ennoble and 
 dignify common life in England by a wider disper- 
 sion of the love for Shakespeare. As it is, the 
 Bible being the only book that is used in this sense, 
 the careers and opinions of a few Syrian shepherds 
 are apt to be more potent among us than that great 
 Brutus, Desdemona, Horatio and their kindred, who 
 are the offspring of the genius of our countryman, 
 and in some sense therefore the fruit of English 
 civic life itself. 
 
 It is said that in Greece the poetry of Homer and 
 Euripides is known amongst the poorer classes to 
 this day ; and certain it is that the Catholic Church 
 has done a great and little-understood service, in 
 
96 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 bringing the lives of the saints of all countries to 
 bear upon the development of each. Every man 
 habitually measures himself against some model, 
 therefore every addition to the range of available 
 types is to be welcomed. A king feels himself to 
 be one of a class of royal persons who must be not 
 only authoritative but also picturesque in their 
 behaviour. And, whether he likes it or not, by this 
 standard he knows himself to stand or fall. His 
 very rank forces his pattern upon him. Amongst 
 those of smaller place and greater personal freedom, 
 capacity more readily shows its own complexion. 
 Some of us, were our commonplace faculties 
 touched with divine fire, would find our destiny in 
 the qualities of the ideal merchant and adminis- 
 trator. That peculiar form of integrity, dignity, and 
 wisdom that belongs to such a function would prove 
 to be ours, or attainable by us. But although this 
 is probably the commonest logical issue in English 
 national life at present, it does not follow that every 
 Englishman is fitted to achieve it. Here and there, 
 especially perhaps among the Celtic contingent, we 
 find one born for the quite different goal of perfect 
 knighthood. Loyalty to leader and comrade, sym- 
 pathy for the oppressed, far-shining fearlessness 
 and love of freedom, are traits characteristic of an 
 age of chivalry ; and persons who embody them 
 represent such a period, it being neither more nor 
 less admirable than that of merchant-prince and 
 caravan-chief. The potentialities of one man lead 
 towards sainthood, of another to poetry, of a third 
 to science or mechanics. One gravitates into leader- 
 ship, another as naturally becomes disciple. One 
 enjoys knowledge, another ignorance. 
 
 Were all of us developed to our own utmost we 
 may take it that every place in life would be filled, 
 every part in the world-drama played, but by men 
 and women of such ripe and determined personality 
 
THE INDIAN SAGAS 97 
 
 that we could no more confuse one with the other 
 than we could mistake the conduct of Helen of 
 Troy for that of Elisabeth of Hungary, or hers for 
 that of Faust's Gretchen. 
 
 We have to notice, moreover, ithat in European 
 life only the born idealist is deeply influenced by 
 any of the miscellaneous characters of history and 
 literature. Religion alone amongst us can exercise 
 this compelling power on a large scale. And this 
 is related to the fact that only religion gives ideals 
 themselves as motives. Circumstances have in 
 many cases offered such a setting that a life has 
 been forced into brilliance and distinction, but the 
 self-born intention of the saints could never be 
 wholly fulfilled. Iphigenia could hardly have refused 
 her sacrifice. Joan of Arc, on the contrary, must 
 always have felt that the sword of Michael might 
 have been held still more stainless and with a greater 
 courage. It is this fact that gives to the ideals of 
 religion their supreme power of individuation. We 
 must remember also that they differ from others in 
 making a universal appeal. The girl who aimed at 
 becoming Portia would be guilty of vanity : she 
 whose model is the Blessed Virgin receives the 
 respect of all. To imitate Socrates would be a 
 miserable affectation : to imitate the religious hero 
 is regarded as a common duty. 
 
 It may seem impossible to dower the heroes and 
 heroines of literature with this projective energy of 
 the lives of saints ; but in India, as to some extent 
 in Iceland, the feat has been accomplished. For 
 India is also one of the saga-lands. At every lull 
 in her history we may hear the chanting of her 
 bards, and the joy of her people in the story of 
 their past. The long twilight of the North is no 
 better adapted to the growth of such a literature 
 than the deep and early night of the South. In 
 verandahs and courtyards, with the women con- 
 
 6 
 
- p8 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 cealed behind screens at the back, it has been the 
 Indian fashion for hundreds of years through the 
 winter months to gather at dusk round the seat of 
 the Wandering Teller, and listen hour after hour 
 to his stirring theme. Surrounded by lights and 
 flowers, gay carpets and burning incense, there is in 
 his performance a mixture of reading, song, and story. 
 It is something of opera, sermon, and literature all 
 in one. 
 
 Ever since the commencement of our era the 
 Hindu people have possessed in their present forms 
 two great poems, the Mahabharata and the Rama- 
 yana.* The first of these is their Wars of Troy, 
 their Heimskringla, their Morte d' Arthur. That is 
 to say, it is the book of the Deeds and the Wars of 
 the Heroes. Thanks to the long-established culture 
 of the race, and the prestige which all literature 
 enjoys as " sacred," the Mahabharata is to this day 
 the strongest influence in the shaping of the lives 
 and ambitions of Hindu boys. 
 
 The battle which it describes took place, if at all, 
 very nearly fifteen hundred years before the birth of 
 Christ. It lasted many days, and the field of combat 
 was called Kurukshetra, being situated on that great 
 plain near Delhi where critical moments in the 
 history of India have been so often decided. For 
 many a century after Kurukshetra the wandering 
 bards all over India sang of the great battle ; and 
 when any new theme claimed their creative powers, 
 it had to be recounted as if originally told by one of 
 the heroes to another at some particular moment in 
 the course of the main narrative. In this way the 
 heart's heart of the whole poem, the Bhagavad Gita 
 (a title translated by some scholars as " Gospel of 
 the Bhagavats ") brings an interesting instance of 
 
 * The theory of the dates of the Mahabharata and Ramayana 
 put forward in this chapter is that of Mr. Romesb Chunder 
 butt. 
 
THE INDIAN SAGAS 99 
 
 double drama with it. The Gita consists in itself of 
 a dialogue between a young Chieftain and Krishna, 
 the Divine Personage who is acting as his charioteer, 
 at the moment of the opening of the eighteen days' 
 combat. But the device which enables the conver- 
 sation to be given in detail is the picture of an old 
 blind king, head of one of the rival houses, seated 
 some miles away, and attended in his anxiety by a 
 man of what is called yogic, or hyper-sesthetic, that 
 is, psychic sense, who utters to him every word as 
 it is spoken. 
 
 The exquisite story of Savitri, similarly, is told by 
 a rishi, or great sage, to Yudisthira, at the close of 
 day, during the banishment of the five Pandavas to 
 the forest. 
 
 On this plan, more than half the country-side 
 tales of Northern India could be woven into the 
 Mahabharata when it was first thrown into form by 
 some unknown hand, three or four centuries before 
 Christ. It underwent its final recension not more 
 than two or three hundred years later — a possible 
 fifteen hundred years after the occurrence of the 
 events which are its central theme. It is easy to see 
 that this saga fulfils thus all the conditions of great 
 epic poetry. The stories that it tells have been 
 worked over by the imagination of singers and 
 people for hundreds of years. They have become 
 simple, direct, inevitable. They are spoken out of 
 the inmost heart of a nation not yet dreaming of 
 self-consciousness. They are nothing if not Abso- 
 lutely sincere. 
 
 Comparing the Mahabharata with the Iliad and 
 Odyssey, we find it less formed, less highly-wrought ; 
 more amorphous, but also more brilliant and intense. 
 To quote a great writer on Indian thought — " Out- 
 line is entirely lost in colour." 
 
 These characteristics do not hold good to the same 
 extent of the second Indian epic, the Ramayaca 
 
lOO THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 which has a closely-worked motive running through- 
 out. This poem — the tale of the Exile of Sita and 
 Rama — received its present form not long after the 
 Mahabharata, early in the Buddhist period. It is 
 supposed that under Buddhist influence the monastic 
 life had come to be so honoured that the flower of 
 the nation were drawn to it, rather than to the 
 mingled responsibilities and joys of the home. The 
 romantic reaction in ideals which was inevitable 
 gathered itself about the ancient theme of a princely 
 couple of the house of Oudh, in whom all that was 
 precious in monasticism was found blended with all 
 that was desirable in sovereignty and love. The 
 strong and quiet story spoke straight to the heart of 
 the people, and to this day there are no characters 
 so beloved by the masses as those of the Ramayana, 
 no one force that goes so far towards the moulding 
 of Indian womanhood, as the ever-living touch of 
 the little hand of that Sita who is held to have been 
 Queen of Ayodhya thousands of years ago.'- 
 
 The Ramayana, then, is a love-story which grew 
 up and came to its flowering in the beginning of the 
 Christian era. But it is unlike all other romances 
 of that early epoch in the subtlety and distinctive- 
 ness of its various characters, and in the complexity 
 of its interpretation of life. For though humanity 
 itself may differ little from age to age, we have been 
 accustomed to look for a definite growth in its 
 literary self-reflection. We expect primitive poetry 
 to be preoccupied with events, portraying men and 
 women only in bold outline, as they move with 
 simple grandeur through their fate. We do not 
 look to it for subtle analysis of motive, or any exact 
 mingling of the sweet and bitter cup of the personal 
 life. The progress of literature up to this time has 
 been largely, as we think, the intensifying recogni- 
 tion of human variation within a given psychological 
 area. And in making such a statement we take 
 
THE INDIAN SAGAS loi 
 
 pains to eliminate from the word " progress " all 
 sense of improvement, since Homer remains for ever 
 superior to Browning. Simply, we find in art a 
 parallel to the physical process by which the race 
 moves on from strong family and communal types to 
 a universal individual divergence. An overwhelming 
 appreciation of spiritual content is what we have 
 been ready in Europe to call "the modem spirit." 
 It is a question whether the name can stand, how- 
 ever, when the Indian Epics become better known ; 
 for, strangely enough, in spite of their age and the 
 heroic nature of their matter, they are permeated 
 with this very quality. In the Ramayana especially, 
 as incident leads to incident, we have to realise that 
 this is no story told for our amusement, but a 
 woman's soul laid bare before us, as she climbs 
 from steep to steep of renunciation. 
 
 Perhaps only those who are in touch with national 
 aspiration can fully understand the roundness and 
 plasticity of its drama, but even the most cursory 
 reader must be struck with this insight and delicacy 
 of the Ramayana. 
 
 It is more to-day than a completed work of art ; 
 it is still a means for the development of the popular 
 imagination. Even amongst the written versions we 
 find no two quite alike. All children are brought up 
 on the story, yet those who can read the original 
 Sanskrit are few in number. To meet this fac( 
 translations have been made into various vernaculars 
 by great poets from time to time — into Bengali, for 
 instance, by Kritibas, and into Hindi by Tulsidas. 
 Special incidents again have been selected and 
 worked up into great episodes in Sanskrit, by one 
 and another, such as Bhavabhuti in his " Exile ot 
 Sita," or Datta in the " Epic of Ravana." 
 
 In these versions the story becomes more and 
 more clearly defined. Pulsing through every Rama- 
 yana runs the Hindu reverence for Rama as man, 
 
io» THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 husband, and king. This reverence may seek new 
 modes of expression, but it can never admit that 
 that which is expressed was at any time less than 
 the ideal. Yet we must remember that that ideal is, 
 in the ancient terms, Oriental rather than Occidental. 
 It belonged to a conception of duty that placed 
 Society far above the individual, and made the 
 perfect king seek the good of his people without 
 . any consideration for his own or his wife's happiness. 
 The fact that made his marriage perfect was its 
 complete demonstration that it was as possible for 
 two as for one to devote themselves first to the 
 general weal. For the acquiescence of Sita is given 
 in her twenty years of silent banishment. Once 
 during that time, says one of the regional poets, 
 she saw her husband as he passed through the 
 forest where she was and kept silence still. And 
 though the incident is an addition not found in the 
 original, it only serves to bring out more clearly the 
 intention of the first poem, where every dumb 
 moment of those twenty years speaks louder than 
 words the wife's acquiescence in her husband's 
 will. 
 
 Behind the vernacular translators stand all those 
 old nurses and granddams on whose laps the poets 
 themselves first heard the great tale ; and it is their 
 perfect freedom to give their own versions of each 
 episode — as must any of us in recounting actual 
 happenings — that keeps it fresh and living and 
 explains its changes of tint in the hands of genius. 
 
 Without the recognition of this working of the 
 communal consciousness on the theme, there can be 
 no complete criticism of the Ramayana, for of this 
 are all new transcribings of the story born. It is 
 more or less in this fashion that the old tale is 
 told: 
 
 Long ago, in the age of the heroes, there dwelt 
 kings in Oudh, of whose race came one Rama, heir 
 
THE INDIAN SAGAS 103 
 
 to the throne, great of heart, and goodly to look 
 upon. And Rama was wedded to Sita, daughter oi 
 , Janaka the king, fairest and purest of all the children 
 of men. Now Rama had been trained in all know- 
 ledge and in the sports of princes, living, as was the 
 manner of those days, in the forest, with his brother 
 Lakshman, in the care of a great sage. And it 
 happened, after he was come home again and wedded 
 with Sita, that there arose a trouble between the 
 king his father, and one of the younger queens, 
 Kaikeyi, who desired that her son Bharata should 
 inherit the throne, and pleaded that her husband 
 had once promised her whatever gift she should 
 desire. And when one told Rama of this contention 
 that was embittering his father's age, he replied at 
 once by a vow to renounce the throne and retire to 
 the forest for fourteen years. And gladly, he said, 
 was this vow made, since it would give pleasure to 
 Kaikeyi, his stepmother, and confer on Bharata, his 
 younger brother, the kingdom and its wealth. And 
 Sita, overhearing the vow, added hers to his, in spite 
 of his entreaties that she should not quit her royal 
 state. Lakshman also declared that he would not 
 be separated from his elder brother. So all three 
 fared forth together into the great forest. Thither, 
 shortly after, followed Bharata, saying that the king 
 their father was now dead of grief at the wrong done 
 his eldest son, and imploring Rama to return and 
 take his own place in his kingdom, for Bharata had 
 mingled no whit in the scheming of Kaikeyi. But 
 Rama refused till the days of his vow should be 
 ended ; after fourteen years, he said, he would return 
 and reign. Then, very reluctantly, went Bharata 
 back to Oudh, but he carried with him the sandals 
 of Rama, declaring that these should hold the throne, 
 and he himself sit always below them, governing in 
 their name. 
 
 Left in the forest, the life of Sita, Eama, and 
 
104 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 Lakshtnan, became that of gentle anchorites, and 
 they grew great in all manner of woodcraft, so that 
 the wild creatures answered to their call. But 
 Rama and Lakshman never ceased to remember 
 their knighthood, holding themselves ready with 
 sword and bow for the service of all who were in 
 i distress. It was on one of their expeditions of 
 knight-errantry that they offended a great ogress, and 
 brought on themselves the enmity of her powerful 
 kinsman, Ravana the Ten-headed, king of the island 
 of Lanka or Ceylon. 
 
 It was inevitable that some of the skalds who 
 chanted the deeds of Rama should attach them- 
 selves specially to the character of this mythical 
 Ravana, elaborating all connected with him. Hence, 
 just as Hector and Andromache are amongst the 
 most beautiful figures in the Iliad, so, in the Indian 
 poem, is Mandodari, the wife of Ravana, one of the 
 strongest personages, at least from a literary point 
 of view. To this day old wives tell of an incident 
 that has crept into no published poem. When the 
 time came, they say, that Rama had conquered and 
 slain his ten-headed foe, Mandodari was inconsolable 
 that she was now a widow. Then it was declared 
 to her that, till her husband's funeral fire was dead she 
 should be no widow, and that that fire should burn 
 for ever. And so, sure enough, we have only to shut 
 our ears tight, and we hear the roaring of the flames 
 that are burning Ravana to ashes ! 
 
 For so it was, that Rama had to defeat and slay 
 this evil king in order to recover Sita, who had 
 been stolen from him. The story of the Taking 
 of Sita is as beautiful as Pluto's Capture of 
 Proserpine. 
 
 It is the close of day in the forest, and Sita is 
 alone. Lakshman — one of the most " perfect gentle 
 knights " in the whole range of fiction — has left her, 
 at her earnest entreaty that he should go to seek for 
 
THE INDIAN SAGAS 105 
 
 Rama, but he has first drawn three circles about her 
 with the end of his bow, and warned her not to step 
 outside. The sun is not yet set, however, when a 
 Brahmin appears, ashen-clad, with matted locks, and 
 begs for charity. Sita pleads that it is late and she 
 is alone, imploring him to go. And this he promises 
 to do if only first she will step outside and give him 
 a little food. She is full of dim forebodings of evil, 
 but pity at last gains the upper hand of fear ; she 
 steps out of her enchanted circles to bestow alms on 
 him ; he throws off the disguise of the Brahmin, 
 appears as Ravana himself, and carries her off to his 
 kingdom in his chariot. It is during the first terrible 
 moment of the journey that Sita drops her jewels 
 stealthily behind her, in order that those coming after 
 may be able to trace her flight. 
 
 Surely this picture of the exiled queen, standing 
 amidst the long shadows in her simple hut, lost 
 in the struggle between her desire to aid and 
 all the invisible safeguards of her womanhood, 
 is one that deserves the brush of some great 
 painter. 
 
 For years Sita is kept confined in Lanka, and 
 Rama and Lakshman, in their progress through 
 what is depicted as the wilderness of Southern 
 India, owe her discovery and much of their success 
 in finally releasing her, to the services of their great 
 ally, Hanuman, the monkey-general. It is supposed 
 that if there be any historical foundation for the 
 legend of the Ramayana, this name of Hanuman 
 may refer to the chieftain of some strong aboriginal 
 tribe. In any case, he stands to-day for all that is 
 great in discipleship. Filled with the worship of 
 Rama, he brings to his service the unquestioning 
 obedience of a child and the genius of a man. It is 
 in his presence and that of Lakshman that Sita goes 
 proudly, at her own request, through that ordeal by 
 fire which is to prove her stainlessness, and he 
 
io6 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 declares that at death the names of Sita and Rama 
 win be found written on his heart. 
 
 It is now time for the return to the kingdom, and 
 Sita and Rama go back to Oudh, reigning there in 
 perfect happiness close upon a year. Then comes 
 the great crisis of their parting, in deference to the 
 \ people's doubt of Sita. She retires to a distant 
 ! forest, to live the life of a nun, under the care of 
 Valmiki, the old hermit ; and Rama sits alone on the 
 ; throne of Oudh for the rest of his life. Once only 
 does he speak of his loss. His subjects desire him 
 to take a new queen, for the performance of a state 
 sacrifice that he cannot make alone. But here the 
 wrath of the king blazes forth. No woman .shall 
 ever be put in Sita's place, but a golden image of 
 her is made, and fills her part in the appointed 
 ceremonies. 
 
 Shortly after her arrival in the forest, Sita had 
 become the mother of twin sons, and Valmiki, their 
 foster-father, brings these up as princes, only taking 
 care to add to their education the knowledge of his 
 own great poem, the Ramayana. He allows it to 
 be supposed, also, that their mother is dead. When 
 the boys are some twenty years of age, news goes 
 about the country of a great religious festival to be 
 held at the Court of Ayodhya, and the hermit 
 makes ready to go up to it, taking his two 
 foster-sons in the character of minstrels, and the 
 queen. 
 
 The rest of the story is inevitable. The eyes of 
 Rama discover his boys as they recite before him 
 the deeds of his own past, and calling Valmiki to 
 him, he speaks with hopeless longing the name of 
 Sita. The old man draws her forward, and she 
 unveils her face to her husband. At this moment, 
 as the two look, each upon the face that has been 
 present to every thought for twenty years, the 
 murmur of the people's doubt is once more heard, 
 
THE INDIAN SAGAS 107 
 
 and the cry rises from the crowd, " Let her be 
 tried by fire I " 
 
 No woman's pride could brook this renewed insult. 
 Sita, the proud, the silent, the stainless, cries out for 
 death. At her words, the ground opens, a chariot 
 appears, and in the arms of her Mother Earth she 
 is withdrawn from the world of men. Rama waits 
 only to bestow the kingdom on his sons, and then 
 plunges into the forest, to be for ever lost to humanity. 
 
 The story of the Mahabharata would be less easy 
 to recount. Mighty warriors, beautiful women, and 
 great saints move to and fro across its scenes in a 
 glittering melee. The local colour is rich to a fault. 
 The poem abounds in descriptions of social customs, 
 domestic comfort, the fashions of old armour and 
 similar details. But it is in the conception of 
 character which it reveals that it becomes most 
 significant. Bhishma, the Indian Arthur, is there, 
 with his perfec* knighthood and awful purity of soul. 
 Lancelot is there — a glorified Lancelot, whose only 
 fall was the utterance of a half-truth once, with 
 purpose to mislead — in the person of the young 
 king, Yudisthira. And Krishna, the Indian Christ, 
 is there, in that guise of prince and leader of men 
 that has given him the name in India of "The 
 Perfect Incarnation." One of the rival houses 
 consists of a family of no less than a hundred 
 children, so that the multiplicity of persons and 
 incidents is best left to the imagination. Yet certain 
 main features belong to the treatment of all charac- 
 ters ahke. For the attention of the poet-chronicler 
 is fixed on the invisible shackles of selfhood that 
 bind us all. He seems to be describing great events ; 
 in reality he does not for one instant forget that he 
 is occupied with the history of souls, depicting the 
 incidence of their experience and knowledge on the 
 external world. 
 
io8 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 One story is typical. The young princes are 
 taking a lesson in shooting, and a clay bird has 
 been set up as target. One by one they are asked 
 by their master what they see. They reply, " A 
 bird," "A branch supporting a bird," and so on. 
 Till at last he puts the question to Arjuna, one of 
 the youngest, and receives the answer, "A bird's 
 head, and in that head only the eye." The moment 
 of the telling of this story to an Indian child is tense 
 with feeling. For it embodies the culminating ideal 
 of the nation, inasmuch as " Concentration of Mind " 
 stands among Hindus for the supreme expression 
 of that greatness which we may recognise in honour 
 or courage or any kind of heroism. 
 
 The central character of the Mahabharata fulfill 
 a very subtle demand. Bhishma is intended for 
 the type of king and knight. Now, knighthood 
 implies the striking of many blows, and kinghood 
 the protecting of manifold and diverse interests, but 
 perfection requires that nothing shall be done from 
 the motive of self-interest. In order, therefore, that 
 he may display all the greatness of character that is 
 possible to man in these relations, Bhishma is made, 
 as heir to the throne, to renounce all rights of suc- 
 cession and even of marriage, at the beginning of his 
 life, by way of setting his father free to marry a 
 fisher-girl whom he loves, and make her son his 
 heir. 
 
 From this point, having set aside the privileges of 
 parent and sovereign, Bhishma is made to bear to 
 the full the responsibilities of both ; and finally, in 
 the energy and faithfulness of his military service, 
 life itself can only be taken from him when he with 
 his own lips has given instructions for his defeat. 
 In Bhishma, therefore, we have the creation of a 
 people who have already learnt to regard detach- 
 ment as a necessary element of moral grandeur. 
 
 It is strange to us, but perfectly consistent with 
 
THE INDIAN SAGAS 109 
 
 this point of view, that as long as Bhisma remains a 
 militant figure in the battle of Kurukshetra he is 
 acting as generalissimo for what he regards as the 
 worse cause of the two. He has done his best to 
 prevent the war, but when it is determined on, he 
 sets himself to obey his sovereign, in the place that 
 is his own. He is filled, as the Indian poet repre- 
 sents him, with supernatural assurance that his side 
 must lose, yet he strikes not a single blow either 
 more or less for this consideration. In like manner 
 it is told of Krishna that after he has done his 
 utmost for peace in the interests of justice, he is 
 approached by both parties for his aid, and that such 
 is the calmness of his outlook on life that he submits 
 the matter to a moral test. To one claimant he will 
 give his armies ; the other he will serve in person 
 unarmed, he says, leaving the choice to themselves. 
 It is clear that the man whose greed and ambition 
 are plunging whole nations into war will not have 
 the spiritual insight to choose the Divine Person 
 for his champion, rather than great hosts. And he 
 does not. 
 
 Such stories illustrate the Hindu endeavour to 
 understand every man's relation to a given situation, 
 and to read in conflicting lines of conduct that same 
 irresistible necessity which, acting from within, hurls 
 each one of us upon his fate. In this endeavour 
 lies the real secret of that tolerance which has so 
 puzzled observers in the Indian people. Not only 
 has there never been religious persecution among 
 Hindus, but the sceptic, the atheist, or the Christian 
 missionary is as free to preach on the steps of the 
 temple as the believing priest. The European 
 correlative of the trait is found in the dramatist or 
 novelist of genius who can represent the motives of 
 opposing sides so as to draw equally upon our sym- 
 pathy; but this has always been an exceptional 
 ability with us, and not a common attitude of mind. 
 
no THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 In the Mahabharata itself the most perfect expression 
 of such reconciliation of opposites is perhaps found 
 in the story of Shishupal, the enemy of Krishna. 
 Shishupal's mother had won Krishna's promise that 
 her son might sin against him a hundred times, and 
 yet be forgiven. But this cup of error was already 
 full, when his crowning blasphemy occurred. The 
 occasion was that of the offering of certain honours 
 to the Chief of Knights. Krishna, in right of his 
 divinity, had already been named, and the decision 
 that to him should the sacrifice be made was spoken. 
 To the deep-rooted hostility of Shishupal, however, 
 this was unendurable. He broke out into indignant 
 protest. In what sense, he asked, was Krishna 
 greatest of the knights ? Was not Bhishma present ? 
 Was not Yudisthira their liege ? Let the honours 
 be paid to one of these. 
 
 Shocked and outraged, every one looked to 
 Bhishma to punish the impiety ; but that aged 
 clansman's face was turned towards the Avatar. 
 Then, as all waited in suspense, from behind the 
 Blessed Knight flashed forth the bright discus of 
 Vishnu, and striking the helmet of Shishupal clove 
 him through, even to the ground. And lo, before 
 their eyes, the soul of that sinful one came forth like 
 a mass of flame, and passed over and melted into th? 
 feet of Krishna. " For even the enemies of God go 
 to salvation," says the old chronicler, "by thinking 
 much upon Him." A later increment of explanation 
 makes the point still clearer. It had happened in 
 some previous age that a great and enlightened 
 spirit had fallen under a curse — had strayed, that is 
 to say, into those circles of destiny that would 
 involve him in human birth. And the All-Merciful, 
 being touched with pity, offered him the path of 
 return through seven births as the friend of God, or 
 three as His enemy. The second alternative was 
 his instant choice, and he became in one life Ravana 
 
THE INDIAN SAGAS in 
 
 the foe of Rama ; in another, a certain persecuting 
 king ; and in the third, this Shishupal, now once 
 more absorbed into Eternal Bhss. 
 
 Few characters in Hterature can rank with the 
 heroic figure of young Kama. Dark with anger, but 
 perfect in chivalry, he resents to the death a slight 
 levelled at his birth, yet turns in the midst of princely 
 acclaims to salute reverently the aged charioteer 
 supposed to be his father. Full of a palpitating 
 humanity is Draupadi, the Pandava Queen. Beau- 
 tiful and high-spirited as she is, she has all a woman's 
 inability to keep a secret, and her foolish boastful- 
 ness almost betrays the heroes before their time is 
 ripe. The strongest attraction of such figures is 
 always the actuality. There is nothing incredibly 
 exalted about them, but good and evil are entwined 
 in their natures, strong and heroic though they be, as 
 in us all. 
 
 The end of Bhishma is like that of some ancient 
 Norseman. Lying on the field of battle where he 
 fell, he refuses to be moved, and asks only for a bed 
 and pillow such as are fit for knightly bowmen. One 
 of the young chiefs divines his meaning, and, step- 
 ping forward, shoots arrows into the earth till what 
 was desired has been provided. And on his bed of 
 arrows Bhishma dies. 
 
 Such are some of the characters who form the 
 ideal world of the Hindu home. Absorbed in her 
 "worship of the Feet of the Lord," the little girl sits 
 for hours in her corner, praying, " Make me a wife 
 like Sita ! Give me a husband like Rama ! " Each 
 act or speech of the untrained boy rushing in from 
 school, may remind some one, half-laughing, half- 
 admiring, of Yudisthira or Lakshman, of Kama or 
 Arjuna, and the name is sure to be recalled. It is 
 expected that each member of the family shall have 
 his favourite hero, who will be to him a sort of 
 
112 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 patron saint, and may appear as the centre of the 
 story, if he is bidden to recount it. Thus, when one 
 tells the Ramayana, Ravana is the hero ; another 
 makes it Hanuman ; only the books keep it always 
 Sita and Rama. And it is well understood that the 
 chosen ideal exercises a preponderant influence over 
 one's own development. None could love Lakshman 
 without growing more full of gentle courtesy and 
 tender consideration for the needs of others ; he 
 who cares for Hanuman cannot fail to become more 
 capable of supreme devotion and ready service. And 
 justice itself must reign in the heart that adores 
 Yudisthira. 
 
 The character of Bhishma in the Mahabharata as 
 that of Sita in the Ramayana is a proof that Indian 
 philosophy was completed before the Epics. But 
 that philosophy itself, we must remember, was 
 directly related to the common life of common folk. 
 Only this fact can explain the recognition and 
 welcome of such conceptions by the whole nation. 
 Let us look at the love story of Sita. Her feeling 
 is consecrated by the long years of poverty 
 filled with worship, in the forest. When it is 
 thus established, she undergoes the dreary per- 
 secution and imprisonment at the hands of Ravana. 
 Every moment finds her repeating the name 
 of Rama, her faith unshaken in her ultimate 
 rescue. At the end she herself suggests the 
 fiery ordeal, and goes through it with dauntless 
 courage. 
 
 Then for one short year, as wife, and queen, and 
 future mother, she tastes of entire earthly happiness, 
 only to be swept away from her home again in the 
 sternness of her husband's will for his people's good. 
 Through twenty years of acquiescent silence she 
 keeps now, in all its fulness, that love that sent her 
 first to share Rama's exile in the forest, and yet 
 the perfection of her pride of womanhood is shown 
 
THE INDIAN SAGAS 113 
 
 when she dies of the insult conveyed in a spoken 
 doubt. 
 
 We believe vaguely that the power to renounce 
 distinguishes the human from all life known to us ; 
 but a conception of renunciation so searching, so 
 austere as this appals us. It is clear that a com- 
 manding philosophy of self-discipline lay behind, or 
 the poet's hand could not have been so remorseless ; 
 but it is also clear that that philosophy was living in 
 the heart and effort of the people, or Sita and Rama 
 could not have been so loved. 
 
 We ask in vain what can have been the life of 
 India before she found refuge and direction in such 
 dreams as these. For to-day it has become so one 
 with them that all trace of the dawn before they 
 were is lost. They penetrate to every part of the 
 country, every class of society, every grade of edu- 
 cation. Journeying in the mountains at nightfall, 
 one came upon the small open hut of the grain- 
 dealer, and saw, round a tiny lamp, a boy reading 
 the Ramayana in the vernacular to a circle of his 
 elders. At the end of each stanza they bowed their 
 heads to the earth, with the chant, "To dear Sita's 
 bridegroom, great Rama, all hail I " The shopkeeper 
 in the city counts out his wares to the customer, 
 saying, " One (Ram), two (Ram), three (Ram)," 
 and so on, relapsing into a dream of worship when 
 the measuring is done. Nay, once at least it is told 
 how at the " Four (Ram) " the blessed name was 
 enough to touch the inmost soul of him who uttered 
 it, and he rose up then and there and left the world 
 behind him. The woman terrified at thunder calls 
 on " Sita Ram I " and the bearers of the dead keep 
 time to the cry of " Rama Nama Sattva hai ! " (" The 
 name of the Lord alone is real 1 ") 
 
 What philosophy by itself could never have done 
 for the humble, what the laws of Manu have done 
 only in some small measure for the few, that the Epics 
 
 H 
 
114 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 have done through unnumbered ages and are doing 
 still for all classes alike. They are the perpetual 
 Hinduisers, for they are the ideal embodiments of 
 that form of life, that conception of conduct, of which 
 laws and theories can give but the briefest abstract, 
 yet towards which the hope and effort of every Hindu 
 child must be directed. 
 
 We are in the habit of talking of the changeless 
 East ; and, though there is a certain truth in tht 
 phrase, there is also a large element of fallacy. One 
 of the most striking features of Hindu society 
 during the past fifty years has been the readiness of 
 the people to adopt a foreign form of culture and to 
 compete with those who are native to that culture 
 on equal terms. In medicine, in letters, in science, 
 even in industry, where there has been opportunity, 
 we are astonished at the intellectual adaptability of 
 the race. Is the mere beckoning of the finger of the 
 nineteenth century enough to subvert predilections 
 as old as Babylon and Nineveh ? we ask, amazed. 
 By no means, ouch changes as these are merely 
 surface deep. The hauteur of the East lies in the 
 very knowledge that its civilisation has nothing to 
 fear from the social and intellectual experiments of 
 its youngsters, or even from such complete changes 
 of mental raiment as amongst newer peoples would 
 constitute revolutions of thought, for the effort of 
 Eastern civilisation has always been to the solitary 
 end of moralising the individual, and in this way it 
 differs essentially from Western systems of culture, 
 which have striven rather for the most efficient use 
 of materials. If Alexander, capable of organising 
 the largest number of his fellows most effectually for 
 a combination of military, commercial, and scientific 
 ends in that most difficult form, an armed expedi- 
 tion over hostile territory — if Alexander be taken aa 
 the type of Occidental genius, then, as the culmina- 
 ting example of the Oriental, we must name Buddha ; 
 
THE INDIAN SAGAS 115 
 
 for clear and intense conceptions of perfect renuncia- 
 tion and inner illumination are the hidden springs of 
 Hindu living, around which the home itself is built. 
 These it is of which the Epics are the popular 
 vehicles, these it is which give its persistence to 
 Indian civilisation through the centuries, and this is 
 why no examination syllabus, no alien's kindly in- 
 spiration, no foreigner's appreciation or contempt, 
 can ever hope to have one iota of permanent in- 
 fluence on the national education at its core. 
 
 Reforming sects are very apt to reject what is 
 much cultivated amongst the orthodox — the folk-lore 
 that has grown up round the Epics in the Puranas 
 and other literature. But to the poems themselves 
 all cling fast. None fail to realise that they bear 
 the mark of supreme literature, and so they remain 
 a constant element, capable, like all great interpre- 
 tations of life, of infinitely varied application, a 
 treasure gi eater, because more greatly used, than 
 any Anger ol Achilles, or Descent into Purgatory, 
 amongst them all. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 NOBLESSE OBLIGE : A STUDY OF INDIAN CASTE 
 
 A GRAVER intellectual confusion than that caused by 
 the non-translation of the word Caste * there has 
 seldom been. The assumed impossibility of finding 
 an equivalent for the idea in English has led to the 
 belief that there is something mysterious and unpre- 
 cedented in the institution. People become bewil- 
 dered as to whether it is a religious or a social 
 obligation. Every one demands of the reformer a 
 conflict with it. The whole question grows obscure 
 and irritating. 
 
 Yet all this time we have had an exact synonym 
 for the word, and the parallel is the closer since our 
 word connotes the same debatable borderland 
 between morals and good taste. Caste ought to 
 stand translated as honour. With Oriental quaint- 
 ness, it is true, India has given a certain rigidity to 
 this idea, but her analysis of the thing itself is as 
 profound as it is acute. 
 
 Our conduct is commonly governed far more by 
 social habit than by considerations of right and 
 wrong. When the tide of the ethical struggle has 
 once set in over some matter, we may regard our- 
 selves as already half-lost. Why are my friend's 
 open letters absolutely safe in my presence, though 
 I am longing for the information they convey ? Why 
 
 * The word Caste is of Portuguese origin. 
 
A STUDY OF INDIAN CASTE 117 
 
 can money given for one purpose not be used for 
 another, when all the canons of common sense and 
 expediency urge that it should ? Who will confess 
 to an effort in speaking the truth at any cost what- 
 ever ? Why, when I am annoyed, do I not express 
 myself in the language of Billingsgate ? To each of 
 which questions one would reply, somewhat 
 haughtily, that the point was one of honour, or, 
 that such happened to be the custom of one's 
 class. 
 
 Yet if we examine into the sanction which honour 
 can invoke there is nothing beyond a rare exercise 
 of the power of ostracism. The Church excom- 
 municates, the law imprisons, but society merely 
 "cuts" the offender in the street. Yet which of 
 these three inflicts the deepest wound? It is as 
 true of London as of Benares that caste-law is the 
 last and finest that controls a man. For it comes 
 into operation at that precise point where tribunals 
 fail. It takes cognisance of offences for which no 
 judge could inflict penalties. It raises standards 
 and demands virtues that every man will interpret 
 according to the stringency of his pride, and yet 
 that no one can feel himself to have wholly fulfilled. 
 And it does all this without once permitting the 
 sensation of merit. Having done all, one remains 
 an unprofitable servant. For no one would count 
 the punctual discharge of debts (all debts are debts 
 of honour), the hauteur that brooks no stain upon 
 the name, the self-respect that builds the whole 
 ethical code upon itself, as religious observances. 
 These things were due, we say, to our birth or 
 blood, or position before men. It is true that their 
 non-fulfilment would leave a stain upon the con- 
 science, and it is also true that the attemp, to work 
 out the obligations of honour must be the immediate 
 test of the sincerity of one who proposes to lead a 
 life of greater devotion and earnestness than common. 
 
ii8 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 Still, caste is not the same thing as personal piety, 
 and perhaps for this reason complete renunciation 
 of its claims and benefits is essential in India to the 
 monastic life. 
 
 There is another point about our Western concep- 
 tion of noblesse oblige. Few as the persons may be 
 who could formulate their sentiment, the fact per- 
 vades the whole of the social area. Each class has 
 its own honour. If honourable employers feel com- 
 pelled to think of the comfort of their workers, 
 honourable servants feel equally compelled to keep 
 their lips shut cii their masters' affairs, and either 
 responds to an appeal in the name of his ideal. The 
 priest may find the honour of his profession in con- 
 flict with that of the detective, but all the world will 
 uphold the faithfulness of both.' The efificient realisa- 
 tion of his ideals by the schoolmaster will involve an 
 occasional pardon, even of a grave offence, if he 
 conceives forgiveness to be the best formative influ- 
 ence which at the moment he can command. The 
 very same effort in the merchant will require a dis- 
 tribution of punishment that is rigorous and just, 
 since order, integrity, and unfailing promptitude — 
 not the development of human character — are his 
 ends. Thus every man, in every critical act of his 
 life, calls silently for the judgment of his peers and 
 refuses all other. 
 
 The weaknesses of caste everywhere are manifold. 
 For society, like the individual, is always apt to 
 insist upon the tithing of mint and rue, and to neg- 
 lect the weightier matters of the law. But it is not 
 usually the martyr who marks its worst failure. He 
 is the white dove cast forth by crows, that is, a 
 member of a higher tried by consensus of the lower 
 castes. We have here a case of government usurp- 
 ing the functions of society, much as if the head- 
 master should exercise authority in a dispute among 
 boys. For it is essential to the very idea of honour 
 
A STUDY OF INDIAN CASTE ng 
 
 that every caste should be autonomous. The true 
 failure of caste occurs whenever it establishes such 
 an ascendency of social opinion over the individual's 
 conscience that his power of advance is impeded and 
 he becomes less of a man, or less really beneficent 
 socially, by remaining more of a gentleman — a state 
 of things which is not uncommon among ourselves. 
 For we may postulate that all ideals are helpful only 
 in so far as they subserve a man's manhood and 
 freedom, and destructive the instant they render 
 him less able to express his own inmost will. It is 
 he, therefore, who ought to have been a martyr and 
 chose ease who is the true caste victim, not the hero 
 of an auto-da-fL 
 
 -. That this is a real danger we all know. Wha/ 
 Protestant has never exalted the creed of his sect 
 over freedom of thought ? What Catholic has never 
 put comfort above spirituality? What politician 
 has not preferred party above principle ? What 
 student of science has never been prejudiced against 
 new truth ? And if we look without, where do we 
 not see the mere breaker of conventionality treated 
 as outside brotherhood ? Where do we not find 
 persons conforming to usages that displease them, 
 merely because they would be inconvenient to 
 dispute ? 
 
 A certain sweeping justification of such facts may 
 be urged, inasmuch as there are circumstances under 
 which the cohesion of the group is well worth the 
 sacrifice of the liberty of a few individuals. And 
 the habitual outrage of custom without reason is 
 perhaps rightly held to be as anti-social as any 
 felony. In the last resort, however, social pressure 
 must be held in bounds, for nothing should interfere 
 with a man's right to try himself, or sap the roots 
 of his independence. And society is a vague and 
 irresponsible magistrate, with so little illumination 
 as to his own purposes and tendencies that he 
 
I20 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 frequently mistakes the pioneers of his march for 
 
 deserters and orders the stoning of prophets, whose 
 sepulchres and monuments will be erected by his 
 children. 
 
 The question of the inner trend or intention of the 
 social movement must form the law in whose name 
 all doubtful cases are tried. And, while it is never 
 easy to determine the point accurately for one's own 
 people, in the case of the Hindu race the supreme 
 purpose of their past evolution is quite apparent. 
 Even a cursory reading of the Laws of Manu dis- 
 plays Indian society as united in a great co-operation 
 for the preservation of the ancient race-treasure of 
 Sanskrit literature. 
 
 The feeling must have grown up when the Vedas 
 alone required conserving, and the families entrusted 
 wiih various portions were encouraged to become in 
 all ways dependent on the community, that every 
 energy might be devoted to the task in hand. This 
 is the real meaning of prostration at the feet of 
 Brahmins, of the great merit acquired by feeding 
 them, and of the terror of the crime of killing one. 
 It is not the man, it is race-culture that is destroyed 
 by such an act. 
 
 As ages went on and the Upanishads and other 
 things were added to the store, that which was 
 hitherto memorised became entrusted to writing. 
 The Vedas became Scriptures — and now the methods 
 of psychology, of astronomy, of mathematics, made 
 themselves felt as integral parts of the Aryan treasure, 
 in common with Sanskrit literature. This widened 
 the conception of culture without liberalising the 
 social bearings of the question, and the Brahmin 
 caste continued to be recognised as the natural 
 guardians of all learning, the old religious composi- 
 tions being still regarded as the type. 
 
 If we ask how it happened that the Aryan folk 
 became so early conscious of their responsibility in 
 
A STUDY OF INDIAN CASTE 121 
 
 the matter of Sanskrit letters, there can be only one 
 answer. They found themselves in the presence of 
 other and unlearned races. This point brings us to 
 the question of the origin of strongly differentiated 
 castes in general. In its nature caste is, as we have 
 seen, honour ; that is to sa^', an ideal sentiment by 
 whose means society spontaneously protects itself 
 from some danger against which it is otherwise 
 defenceless. For instance, life in Texas having been 
 for many years dependent on the possession of 
 horses, and safeguards against the horse-thief being 
 few and difficult, he came to be the object of un- 
 precedented social abhorrence. Horse-stealing was 
 the last crime a lost soul would stoop to. In a 
 similar way, as some think, may have grown up the 
 Indian feeling about cow-killing. If the catUe, in 
 time of stress, were killed for food, agriculture would 
 be unable to take a new start, and so a people accus- 
 tomed to eat beef grasped the situation pierhaps, and 
 renounced tlie practice. But since these two senti- 
 ments pervade whole nations, they are not exactly 
 what we are accustomed to think of as caste, inas- 
 much as in the latter there is a distinct gradation of 
 rank connected with the sentiment. In the term 
 "blackleg" applied by trade unionists to competing 
 forms of labour, we have an instance of the kind we 
 want. Here we have an occupational group giving 
 birth immediately to the ideal which is necessary to 
 its safety. Throughout the worlds of love, of war, 
 and of work, indeed, honour is an instinct of the 
 very greatest potency. How few men, after ali, 
 desert to an eneniy as spies ! How strong is the 
 feeling of class-obligation amongst servants and 
 working men ! This element is ven- evident in the 
 Indian industrial castes, which are often simply 
 hereditary trade-unions. No Englishman is so 
 powerful, nor is any Hindu so hungry, that one man 
 could be bribed to take up the trade of another. 
 
122 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 Nothing would induce the dairyman, for instance, 
 to take charge of a horse, or a laundryman to assist 
 the household. 
 
 But the very strongest, and perhaps also ugliest, 
 of all possible roots of caste is the sense of race, the 
 caste of blood. We have an instance of this in the 
 animositj' that divides white men from negroes in the 
 United States, and we have other instances, less 
 talked of, all up and down our vast British posses- 
 sions. There is probably no other emotion so in- 
 human which receives such universal sympathy as 
 this. For it is fundamentally the physical instinct 
 of a vigorous type to protect itself from fusion. And 
 both sides participate in the revulsion. Here we 
 have the secret of rigid caste, for the only rigid 
 caste is hereditary, and of hereditary caste the 
 essential characteristic is the refusal of inter- 
 marriage. 
 
 Granting, then, what could not well be denied, 
 that the Aryan forefathers found themselves in India 
 face to face with inferior and aboriginal races, what 
 may we gather, from the nature of the caste system 
 to-day, to have been the elements of the problem, as 
 they more or less clearly perceived it ? 
 
 Those elements we may infer to have been four 
 in number. 
 
 1. They desired above all things to preserve the 
 honour of their daughters from marriage with lower 
 and savage peoples. Exclusion from marriage with 
 any but one's own caste became the rigorous rule, 
 the penalty fell on the father and the family that 
 permitted a woman to go unguarded on this head. 
 To this day, if a son marry beneath caste he degrades 
 himself; but if a daughter be wrongly given, the 
 whole family becomes out-casted. 
 
 2. They seem to have desired to preserve the 
 aboriginal races, on the one hand from extermina- 
 tion, and on the other from slavery of the person — 
 
A STUDY OF INDIAN CASTE 123 
 
 two solutions which seemed later the only alterna- 
 tives to Aryan persons in a similar position ! 
 
 Those aborigines, therefore, who became depen- 
 dent on the Aryan population, had their definite 
 place assigned them m the scale of labour, and their 
 occupations vere secured to them by the contempt 
 of the superior race. 
 
 We must not forget, in the apparent harshness of 
 this convention, its large factor of hygienic caution. 
 The aborigines were often carrion-eaters, and 
 always uncleanly in comparison with their neigh- 
 bours. It was natural enough, therefore, that there 
 should be a refusal to drink the same water, and so 
 on. 
 
 On the other hand, it is one of the mistakes of 
 caste everywhere, that it institutionalises and per- 
 petuates an inequality which might have been 
 minimised. But we must not forget, in the case of 
 the Indian system, the two greater evils which were 
 avoided altogether. 
 
 3. The Aryans realised very clearly that it was 
 not only their race but also their civilisation that 
 must be maintained in its purity. The word Aryan 
 implies one acquainted with the processes of agricul- 
 ture, an earer of the ground, to use an Elizabethan 
 word — accustomed therefore to a fixed and indus- 
 trialised mode of living, evidently in contrast to 
 others who were not. 
 
 Fire and the processes of cooking and eating 
 food are easily distinguished as the core of the 
 personal life and establishment in a climate where 
 habits can at any time be made so simple as in 
 India. It is these that can never be dispensed 
 with, though they may be arranged for to-night 
 in a palace, and to-morrow in the jungle under a 
 tree. 
 
 In view, then, of the necessity of safeguarding the 
 system of manners, grew up the restrictions against 
 
124 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 eating with those of lower caste, or allowing them to 
 touch the food and wants of their betters. The fact 
 that the Aryan could eat food cooked by Aryan 
 hands alone, implied that the strictest preliminaries 
 of bathing had been complied with. 
 
 By a continuous crystallisation, all caste laws — 
 from being the enunciation of broad canons of 
 refinement as between Aryan and non-Aryan — came 
 to be the regular caste- barriers between one class 
 and another of the same race. In this way they 
 lost their invidious character. 
 
 It is undeniable that this caste of the kitchen, 
 so wittily named " don't touchism " by a modern 
 Hindu leader, lends itself to abuse and becomes an 
 instrument of petty persecution more readily than the 
 intermarriage laws. Some of the saddest instances 
 of caste-failure have occurred here. Nevertheless, 
 the original intention remains clear and true, and is 
 by no means completely obscured, even with the 
 lapse of ages. 
 
 4. It was, however, in their perception of the 
 fourth element of the problem that the early Aryans 
 triumphantly solved the riddle of Humanity. They 
 seem to have seen clearly that amongst the aborigines 
 of India themselves were many degrees of social 
 development already existent, and that these must 
 be preserved and encouraged to progress. 
 
 From such a comprehension of the situation 
 sprang the long and still growing graduation of 
 non-Aryan castes, some of which have established 
 themselves in the course of ages within the Aryan 
 pale. Marriage, for instance, is an elaborate and 
 expensive social function in the highest classes. 
 But as we descend it becomes easier, till amongst 
 the Baghdis, Bauris, and other aboriginal castes, 
 almost any connection is ratified by the recognition 
 of women and children. This is a point in which 
 Eastern scores over Western development ; for in 
 
A STUDY OF INDIAN CASTE 125 
 
 Europe the Church has caused to be reckoned as 
 immoral what might, with more philosophy, have been 
 treated as the lingering customs of sub-organised 
 race-strata. 
 
 As is the nature of caste, mere social prestige 
 constitutes a perpetual stimulus and invitation to 
 rise, which means in this case to increase the 
 number of daily baths and the cleanliness of cook- 
 ing, and to restrict to purer and finer kinds the 
 materials used for food, approximating continually 
 toward the Brahmin standard. For is it not true 
 that noblesse 'oblige? This fact it is that makes 
 Hinduism always the vigorous living banyan, driving 
 civilisation deeper and wider as it grows, and not 
 the fossilised antiquity superficial observers have 
 supposed. 
 
 Such, then, is the historic picture of the rise of 
 caste. The society thus originated fell into four 
 main groups : 
 
 (i) Priests and learned men — the Brahmins ; 
 
 (2) The royal and military caste ; 
 
 (3) Professional men and merchants — the middle- 
 class or bourgeoisie, as wt say in Europe ; and 
 
 (4) The working people, or sudras, in all their 
 divisions. 
 
 (Of the second group only the Rajput branch re- 
 mains now stable. For the military caste, finding 
 itself leaderless under the Maurya dynasty, is said to 
 have become literary, and is certainly now absorbed 
 in the bourgeoisie.) 
 
 This functional grouping, however, is traversed 
 in all directions nowadays by the lines of caste. 
 In the mountains it is no uncommon thing to find 
 the Brahmin acting as a labourer, impressed as a 
 coolie, or working as a farmer, and in the cities he 
 belongs largely to the professional ranks. Many 
 of India's most learned and active sons, on the 
 other hand, belong to the third and even fourth 
 
126 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 divisions. And the new castes, which are of 
 constant growth, are less easy than the old to 
 classify. 
 
 Every new community means a new caste in India. 
 Thus we have the Mohammedan, the Christian, and 
 the modern reform castes — of all of which one pecu- 
 liarity is non-belief in the caste principle ! — as well 
 as others. And who shall determine, for instance, 
 to which of the four main grades Mohammedanism, 
 with its inclusion of peasant, citizen, and prince, 
 belongs ? 
 
 The fact is, if a man's mode of life be acceptable 
 to his own caste-fellows, the rest of Indian society 
 has no quarrel with it. And this autonomy of castes 
 it is which is the real essential for social flexibility 
 and fundamental equality. As bearing on this point, 
 few utterances have ever been so misquoted as the 
 great dictum of Buddha, that " he who attains to 
 God is the true Brahmin." For this is misquoted 
 whenever it is made to imply that the Brahmin holds 
 in any sense a monopoly in religion. No possible 
 statement could be more foreign to the genius of 
 Hinduism. When we read that shortest and greatest 
 of India's gospels, the " Bhagavad Gita " (a poem 
 composed by Brahmins, preserved by Brahmins, and 
 distributed through the length and breadth of the 
 country, always by Brahmins), we find ourselves in 
 the presence of the most comprehensive mind that 
 ever contemplated Hindu life. The compassion of 
 Buddha, perhaps, looms greater across the centuries, 
 but in dealing with social problems his very tender- 
 ness and spiritual fire make him second to Krishna, 
 who was always calm, broad, and consistently 
 national in his outlook. We must accept the Gita 
 as an authoritative pronouncement on Hindu society. 
 And the Gita rings with the constantly reiterated 
 implication that " he who attains to God is the true 
 man," while it interprets all life and responsibility as 
 
A STUDY OF INDIAN CASTE 127 
 
 a means to this end. Thus, " Better one's own duty, 
 though imperfect, than the duty of another well dis- 
 charged. Better death in one's own duty ; the duty 
 of another brings on danger." We have to remem- 
 ber, too, that the Gita is made up of the very best of 
 the Vedas and Upanishads, and was specially 
 written for the benefit of women and the working 
 classes, who, as destitute of classical learning, had 
 little chance of studying these great scriptures. But 
 its contents were to depend upon Brahmin effort 
 for promulgation. Another witness to the fact that 
 spirituality has always been regarded in India as 
 the common human possession lies in the Hindu 
 word for religion itself — dharmma, or the matt-ness 
 of man. This is very striking. The whole weight 
 of the conception is shifted away from creed, much 
 more from caste or race, to that which is universal 
 and permanent in each and every human being. 
 And, last of all, we may remember that the greatest 
 historical teachers of Hinduism — Rama, Krishna, 
 and Buddha, besides many of the Upanishadic 
 period — were men of the second, or military, caste. 
 
 No, the Brahmin was never in any sense the 
 privileged monopolist of religion : he was a common 
 channel of religious lore, because his actual function 
 was Sanskrit culture, and Sanskrit happens to be the 
 vehicle of the most perfect religious thought that the 
 world ever produced, but " realisation " itself has 
 always been recognised as a very different matter 
 from this, and, Brahmin or non-Brahmin, has been 
 accepted wherever it appeared. The advantage that 
 the priestly caste did undoubtedly enjoy, however, 
 lay in the fact that in their case the etiquette of rank 
 led directly to the highest inspiration, as the scholar's 
 life, even in its routine, will be nearest to that of the 
 saint 
 
 One peculiarity of the place of the religious life in 
 the Indian system is that it is an inclusive term for 
 
128 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 all forms of higher individuation. Theoretically, to 
 the Hindu mind, all genius is inspiration, the per- 
 ception of unity ; and the mathematics of Euclid or 
 the sculpture of Michael Angelo would be as authentic 
 an expression of the religious consciousness as the 
 sainthood of Francis. Only the result of this method 
 of interpretation is that sainthood takes precedence 
 of all others as the commonest form of greatness. 
 Scientific research, as in the astronomy of Bhashkar 
 Acharya and the psychology of Patanjali, has not 
 had sufficient opportunity of securing defined and 
 independent scope. And literature has been yoked to 
 the car of mythology as much as the art of mediasval 
 Italy. 
 
 Nevertheless, India is too well acquainted with 
 genius to forget that the caste of the spirit is beyond 
 human limitation, often beyond recognition. It is 
 held that the best lower men can do for that brother- 
 hood which asserts itself in the consciousness of 
 greatness is to give it freedom. Hence a man can 
 always be released from social obligations if he 
 desire to live the life of ideas, of the soul. Only, 
 it is held that if he will not fulfil the law, neither 
 shall he add to the burdens of the community. 
 So he who claims to be one of the great spiritual 
 beyond-castes must renounce family and property, 
 relying upon the charity of men for his daily bread, 
 and knowing well that for any work of scholarship 
 — such as the observatories at Benares and Jeypore 
 — a Hindu govsrnment at least would provide him 
 ample means. It is only as long as one avails 
 oneself of the benefits of the social structure that 
 it is held not unreasonable to require conformity to 
 its usages. 
 
 This renunciation is Sannyas, the Indian form of 
 monasticism, and Sannyas, theories to the contrary 
 notwithstanding, has always been open to all castes. 
 Indeed, it is held that when the responsibilities of 
 
A STUDY OF INDIAN CASTE 125 
 
 life are over, a man's duty is to leave the world and 
 spend the remainder of his days in that state ; and 
 in some parts of Northern India one meets with 
 "Tyagi Mehtars," or monastics who were by birth 
 the lowest of the low. 
 
 Theoretically, the monk is caste-fellow of the 
 whole world, prepared to eat with any one ; and 
 where, by sheer dint of spirituality and self- 
 discipline, such a feeling is realised, every Hindu in 
 India considers the broken bread of this lover of 
 mankind as sacramental food. It is usual, too, to 
 eat from the hands of holy men without inquiry as 
 to their standing when in the world. 
 
 One of the most interesting points in all this to a 
 Western mind is the diiference implied and estab- 
 lished between the caste of priests or chaplains on 
 the one hand, and the fact of spiritual realisation, 
 outside all caste, on the other. Nothing in the 
 Indian thought about life can be more striking than 
 this. The family chaplain in Bengal may be the 
 official teacher, but every man and woman discards 
 his authority silently the instant they find some soul 
 (in the world or out of it ; it may be husband or 
 child, or the holy man living in his garden ; usually 
 it is an ascetic), with a quickening spiritual touch 
 upon their own. He or she then becomes the guru, 
 or teacher, and this relationship is made the central 
 fact of life. 
 
 The appearance of this new teacher, when he is 
 powerful enough to be an important social pheno- 
 menon, is the historic origin of almost all new 
 castes. The Sikh nation was formed in this 
 way by a succession of gurus. Chaitanya wel- 
 comed all castes to Vaishnavism and made it 
 possible for them to rise thereby. The scavengers, 
 too low to venture to claim either Hinduism 
 or Mohammedanism as their own, were raised in 
 consideration and self-respect by Guru Nanuk 
 
I30 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 and Lai Begi Mehtar — the last a saint of their own 
 degree. 
 
 The preacher arises and proclaims the new idea. 
 He gathers about him men of ail classes : the 
 educated won to the semce of his thought, the 
 ignorant swept in by the radiance of his personality. 
 Amongst his disciples distinctions of caste break 
 down. The whole group is stamped with his 
 character and prestige. Eventually, if it contain a 
 preponderance of Brahmin elements, it may take 
 rank with the best, carrying certain individuals up 
 with it. But if it be composed chiefly of the scum 
 of society, it will remain little considered ; and yet, 
 in the strength of its religious and intellectual 
 significance may certainly claim to have progressed 
 beyond its original point. Such is likely to be the 
 fate of the present Christian converts. Those who 
 are recruited from the lowest pariahs may acquire a 
 certain prestige from their new faith and take a 
 better place in the social scale, consequently, in 
 centuries to come. At the same time we must not 
 forget that forty or fifty years ago, conversions were 
 made that undoubtedly involved great sacrifices, and 
 the descendants of these Christians may lose rather 
 than gain in the long run. 
 
 Taking the history of Hinduism as a whole, we 
 observe a great systole and diastole of caste, the 
 Buddhist and the present Christian periods ranking 
 as well-marked eras of fusion, while the intervening 
 centuries are characterised by progressive definition, 
 broken every now and then by a wave of reform 
 which thought itself a movement towards caste 
 abolition, but ended simply in the formation of a 
 new group. For this is the fact in which all 
 would-be reformations in India find at once their 
 opportunity and their limit. It may now be 
 taken as proved that in order to affect caste 
 widely the agitator would need to aim deeper than 
 
A STUDY OF INDIAN CASTE 131 
 
 the external phenomena, at underlying spiritual 
 impulses. 
 
 If this theory of caste be valid, then, we find that 
 the word signifies not so much mere rank in society 
 as the standard of honour which is associated with 
 rank. And as the private's conduct may be governed 
 as much as his officer's by enlightened self-respect, 
 we have seen that honour is something which applies 
 to the whole of society equally. Even Tennyson, it 
 will be remembered, pictures the countrj' youth as 
 outvaunting Lady Clara Vera de Vere in her pride 
 of birth. The word caste, therefore, is by no means 
 that antithesis of democracy which has been so 
 commonly assumed. 
 
 Neither, amongst a people familiar with the pro- 
 cess of self-organisation, would it prove any barrier 
 to efficient co-operation. For the one essential to 
 this power is an established habit of ignoring all 
 points of mutual difference not germane to the 
 matter in hand. What we call good-breeding, or 
 what India calls caste, ought to make this easier. 
 For any group of men met together for a common 
 purpose find their individual rights secured to them 
 in this way, and are free, by age-long acceptance, 
 from any suspicion of another's desire to interfere 
 with them. This is a basis of strength and not of 
 weakness; so that it seems, if Indian men and women 
 are not at present capable of combined action to any 
 great degree, it is a matter of their own neglect of 
 the habit, and not a necessary consequence of their 
 institutions. We need not too readily accept the 
 statement of such weakness, either, as infallible. 
 My own observation has been that the Hindu people 
 are capable enough of vigorous co-operation along 
 the lines natural to them, those of the undivided 
 family, the village community, and others. That 
 inability which Europeans would show to face 
 
132 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 these tests, they may be expected to display before 
 ours 
 
 To be absolutely just, however, we must admit 
 that the observance of caste law has entailed many 
 foolish and irritating losses upon society during the 
 last fifty years. We have seen that there are 
 definite reasons, not wanting in cogency, why a 
 man of good birth should not eat in all companies, 
 or of food cooked by hands supposed less cleanly. 
 Such rules, however, cannot be kept by those who, 
 for any reason, cross the seas to Europe. This fact, 
 more than any other detail, makes it a matter of 
 out-casting to take the journey, and persecutions 
 have sometimes ensued which are shocking to con- 
 template. A man may care little about the loss of 
 station for his own sake, but the shoe pinches when 
 he finds himself unable to make worthy marriages 
 for his daughters ; hence he will often submit to a 
 heavy fine in order to buy back his position. This 
 rouses the cupidity of ignorant and conventional 
 persons who happen to have authority with the 
 stay-at-home community, and such are apt to be 
 unscrupulous in bringing about the ruin or recanta- 
 tion of any who resist their power. This is a series 
 of events which does occur occasionally ; but it need 
 not be supposed that every Europe-returning Hindu 
 who is kept at arm's length is a martyr. There is 
 an element of distrust for the moral results of a 
 visit to the West in the situation ; and this is not 
 altogether unreasonable. It is chiefly with regard 
 to possibilities of political, practical, or technical 
 education that caste deterrence is to be regretted, 
 and it is obvious that as communities progress in 
 the power of estimating modern conditions, they 
 must recognise the suicidal nature of such an attitude. 
 Yet it is curious to note here how caste may become 
 thus a very real instrument of equality, for the 
 power of the individual to advance is by this means 
 
A STUDY OF INDIAN CASTE 133 
 
 kept strictly in ratio to the thinking of the society 
 in which he lives. This fact is characteristic. The 
 good of caste, of race, of family stands first, and 
 only second that of the individual man or woman in 
 India. To take another plane. Let a man of the 
 lower castes become wealthy, and he is compelled 
 to educate men of his own rank to marry his 
 daughters. Thus the group to which he owes birth, 
 vigour, and development receives from him again 
 the benefits of his life's work. This is the exact 
 opposite of the European device, where the upper 
 class absorbs money, talent, and beauty from the 
 lower, while that is continually recruited by the 
 failures from above. 
 
 The fact that every human force is polar m its 
 moral activity needs little demonstration in the case 
 of social pride. Every day we see this working on 
 the one hand for the highest idealism, on the other 
 for revolting egotism. Social exclusiveness may 
 be condoned, it may even be robbed of its sting 
 but, esjsecially when coupled with personal exulta- 
 tion, it can never be made anything but vulgar- 
 looking to the disinterested outsider. It is not to be 
 supposed that Indian caste forms any exception to 
 this rule of double effect. Nevertheless, it is well to 
 underetand the conditions of the sentiment, perceiv- 
 ing how inevitably this very thing repeats itself 
 wherever two ph3sically-distinguishable races are 
 found side by side. 
 
 And it cannot be denied that great benefits as 
 well as great evils have accrued from caste. It is 
 an institution that makes Hindu society the most 
 eclectic with regard to ideas in the world. In India 
 all religions have taken refuge* — the Parsi before 
 
 * Parsi, Jew. Christian. — The Parsis took reinge in India a 
 thousand years ago, fleeing before the Mohammedan conquest 
 of Persia. There are ancient communities of Jews and Christians 
 also from Asia Minor and Syria. 
 
134 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 the tide of Mussulman conquest ; the Christians of 
 Syria; the Jews. And they have received more 
 I than shelter — they have had the hospitality of a 
 world that had nothing to lear from the foreigner 
 who came in the name of freedom of conscience. 
 Caste made this possible, for in one sense it is the 
 social formulation of defence minus all elements of 
 aggression. Again, surely it is something that in a 
 country conquered for a thousand years the door- 
 keeper of a viceroy's palace would feel his race too 
 good to share a cup of water with the ruler of all 
 India. We do not easily measure the moral strength 
 that is here involved, for the habit of guarding the 
 treasure of his birth for an unborn posterity feeds a 
 deep, undying faith in destiny in the Hindu heart. 
 "To-day here, to-morrow gone," says the most 
 ignorant sotto voce as he looks at the foreigner, and 
 the unspoken refrain of his thought is, " 1 and mine 
 abide for ever." Caste is race-continuity ; it is the 
 historic sense ; it is the dignity of tradition and of 
 purpose for the future. It is even more : it is the 
 familiarity of a whole people in all its grades with 
 the one supreme human motive — the notion of 
 noblesse oblige. For though it is true that all 
 men are influenced by this principle, it is also pro- 
 bably true that only the privileged are very conscious 
 of the fact. Is caste, then, simply a burden, to be 
 thrown off lightly, as a thing irksome and of little 
 moment? 
 
 And yet, if India is ever to regain national efS- 
 ciency, this old device of the forefathers must be 
 modified in the process, — exactly how, the Indian 
 people themselves can alone determine. For India 
 to-day has lost national efficiency. This fact there 
 is no gainsaying. Her needs now are not what they 
 were yesterday. The Brahmins lose distinctiveness 
 in these days of cheap printing and widespread 
 literacy. But this only means that the country 
 
A STUDY OF INDIAN CASTE I35 
 
 requires multiplied methods of self-expression as the 
 goal and summit of her national endeavour. She 
 wants a greater flexibility, perhaps, a readier power 
 of self-adjustment than she has ever had. But it 
 ought to comt in an influx of consciousness of those 
 great spiritual tides on whose surface all questions of 
 caste and non-caste can be lifted into new and 
 higher inter-relations. Chief among all her needs is 
 that of a passionate drawing together amongst her 
 people themselves. The cry of home, of country, 
 of place is yet to be heard by the soul of every Indian 
 man and woman in Hindustan, and following hard 
 upon it must sound the overtones of labour and of 
 race. 
 
 Then the question of whether to walk or not in the 
 ways of the forefathers will be lost in the knowledge 
 of the abundant power to hew out new roads, as those 
 fathers did before them. Has India the possibilities 
 still left in her own nature which can bring to her such 
 an epoch ? 
 
 There are some who believe that there is no task 
 beyond the ultimate power of the Hindu peoples to 
 perform. The nation that has stood so persistently 
 for righteousness through untold ages, has conserved 
 such vast springs of vigour in itself, as must ulti- 
 mately enable her to command Destiny. The far- 
 seeing wisdom and gentleness of her old constitution 
 may unfit her for the modern world, but they are a 
 sure proof, nevertheless, of her possession of suffi- 
 cient sense of affairs to guide her to a full development 
 once more. 
 
 For, after all, who were these old forefathers, with 
 their marvellous cunning ? What inspired them so 
 to construct the social framework that every act of 
 rebellion and invasion should end henceforth only in 
 contributing a new morsel of colour to fit into the old 
 mosaic ? Ah, who were they indeed ? We may 
 well ask, for have we not all this time been calling 
 
136 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 by their name one far greater than they, one 
 infinitely more deserving of our reverence — the 
 Communal Consciousness, namely, of a mighty 
 patient people, toiling on and on through the ages up 
 the paths of knowledge, destroying never, assimila- 
 ting always, what they gain of truth and science, and 
 hesitating only a little before fresh developments, 
 because they are so preoccupied with the problems 
 of the past that they do not realise that that stage is 
 done, and that the sun is risen to-day on a new land- 
 scape, confronting them with fresh perils and 
 unthought-of difficulties ? 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE SYNTHESIS OF INDIAN THOUGHT 
 
 When existence was not, nor non-existence. 
 When the world was not, nor the sky beyond, 
 What covered the mist ? By whom was it contained ? 
 What was in those thick depths of darkness ? 
 
 When death was not, nor immortality. 
 
 When night was not separate from day. 
 
 Then That vibrated motionless, one with Its own glory, 
 
 And beside That, nothing else existed. 
 
 When darkness was hidden in darkness. 
 Undistinguished, like one mass of water. 
 Then did That which was covered with darkness 
 Manifest Its glory by heat. 
 
 Now first arose Desire, the primal seed of mind, 
 [The sages have seen all this in their hearts, 
 Separating existence from non-existence.] 
 Its rays spread above, around, and below, 
 The glory became creative. 
 The Self, sustained as cause below. 
 Projected, as Effect, above. 
 
 Who then understood ? Who then declared 
 
 How came into being this Projected ? 
 
 Lo, in its wake followed even the Gods, 
 
 Who can say, therefore, whence It came ? 
 Whence arose this projected, and whether sustained or 
 
 not, 
 He alone, O Beloved, who is its Ruler in the highest 
 
 heaven knoweth. 
 Nay, it may be that even he knoweth it not ! 
 
 Rig. Veda : Hymn of Creation. 
 
 I 
 
 Like the delicate charm that is common to honour- 
 able women ; like the distinctive greatness of saints 
 and heroes ; like the intellectual breadth of a univer- 
 
138 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 sity city ; like all the finest things in the world in 
 fact, Indian thought had remained till the year 1893 
 without a definition, and without a name. For the 
 word dharmma can in no sense be taken as the 
 name of a religion. It is the essential quality, the 
 permanent, unfluctuating core, of substance, — the 
 man-ness of man, Itfe-ness of life, as it were. But as 
 such it may assume any form, according to the 
 secret of the individuality we are considering. To 
 the artist his art, to the man of science his science, 
 to the monk his vow, to the soldier his sovereign's 
 name, to each believer his own particular belief — 
 any of these, or all, may be dharmma. There is 
 indeed another, and collective sense — somewhat 
 akin to the English commonwealth, or, better still, 
 perhaps, translated as the national righteousness — 
 but even this does not connote a creed. It applies 
 to that whole system of complex action and inter- 
 action, on planes moral, intellectual, economic, 
 industrial, political, and domestic — which we know 
 as India or the national habit. It was for this 
 dharmma that the Rani of Jhansi fought. By their 
 attitude to it Pathan, Mogul, and the Englishman, 
 are judged, each in his turn, by the Indian peasantry. 
 As head of this system, Judisthira, the Indian 
 Charlemagne, received the name by which the people 
 know him to this day, of Dharmma-Raja. And 
 what this dharmma was, in all its bearings, is perhaps 
 best laid down in the charge of the dying Bhishma 
 to the future sovereigns of India, in the eighteenth 
 book of the Mahabharata. 
 
 It is clear that such a conception is very inade- 
 quately rendered by the EngKsh word "religion." 
 It is clear also that to dissect out and set in order 
 the distinctively religious elements in an idea so 
 definite at its centre, and so nebulous at its edges — 
 claiming thereby to have defined the religion of the 
 Indian peoples — would be a task of extreme difficulty. 
 
SYNTHESIS OF INDIAN THOUGHT 139 
 
 It must have been in the face of just such problems 
 that Max Milller exclaimed, "Ancient words are 
 round, and modern square ! " 
 
 As the forest grows spontaneously, of many 
 kinds, each like all the others only in the common 
 fact of the quest of light, and every plant having a 
 complete right to regard its own as the chosen seedj 
 so amongst the Hindu people, up to the twentieth 
 century of this Christian era, grew faiths and creeds. 
 Islam itself was scarcely an exception to this rule. 
 For the spirit that makes a township, after learning 
 English, differentiate itself sharply into Hindu and 
 Mohammedan social cliques, is of modern growth. 
 It appears to be a result of that false interpretation 
 which reads the history of India as an account of the 
 struggle between the two ideas. In the life of the 
 villages there is no such strong distinction. In 
 Bengal and Behar, the sons of Hindu and Moham- 
 medan gentlemen grow up in the closest fraternity 
 and fellowship. In the North-West Provinces they 
 mingle their names. In the Moslem zenanas of the 
 same districts the Hindu babies of the village are 
 privileged guests. Every Hindu guru accepts 
 Mohammedan as well as Hindu disciples. Every 
 Mohammedan fakir is sought by Hindu as well as 
 Mohammedan devotees. In the South, narrowly 
 orthodox as the South is counted, the proudest 
 feature of Trevandrum is the shrine dedicated to a 
 Mohammedan princess, who forsook courts and 
 palaces for the worship of Trevandrum's local god. 
 Over and over again, in the political world, have 
 the armies of Delhi and the nawabs been led to 
 victory by Hindu generals; and in every Native 
 State to this day will be found positions of respon- 
 sibility and power assigned to men whose creed is 
 that which the sovereign's is not. A more beautiful 
 tribute was never surely paid than that spoken of 
 the Mahratta queen : "she was peculiarly kind and 
 
I40 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 considerate to such of her subjects as differed from 
 her in faith." But indeed the intolerance of Mo- 
 hammedanism itself has been grossly exaggerated 
 by Christian observers, who seem curiously incom- 
 petent to grasp the secret of an Eastern attitude. 
 This intolerance could never, for instance, be com- 
 pared with that of theRoman Church. The necessity 
 of making a strong and competent nation out of a 
 few warring tribes led to the enunciation of a brief 
 and simple religious thesis ; but the Prophet did not 
 fail, in true Asiatic fashion, to remind his people 
 that " God is the God of all creatures, not of one 
 section only," and to exempt especially from con- 
 demnation all the alien religions definitely known to 
 him, namely, Christianity and Judaism, " the peoples 
 of the Book." Truly the quarrel of that stern spirit 
 of righteousness was with unfaithfulness, not with 
 other faiths, however strongly, under unforeseen 
 military and political exigencies, it might seem to 
 lend itself to the contrary interpretation. The fact 
 that Mohammedans have sometimes held another 
 opinion is no argument as to the teaching of their 
 religion in its purity, and it must be remembered 
 that " dog of an infidel " is an expression hurled 
 as freely against Spaniard and Crusader, as ever 
 against what Christians called a Pagan. No. The 
 feud between Delhi and Ghazni was no more a battle 
 between Din and Dharmiiia than was that so long 
 existing betv^een France and England, the combat of 
 the Catholic against the Protestant Churches. Even 
 Sikh and Mahratta risings were only the psychologi- 
 cal transfer of regional power-centres. The famous 
 jewelled shawl of the Hindu State of Baroda was 
 made quite naturally under the old regime, to be sent 
 to the tomb of Mohammed at Medina ! 
 
 Some air of the deserts, some tradition of the 
 pastoral habit, some strong memory of Persia and 
 Arabia, must indeed have come with the successful 
 
SYNTHESIS OF INDIAN THOUGHT 141 
 
 invader to make the stay-at-home invaded resenting 
 and distrustful. But the talk about cow-killing can 
 hardly be taken as sincere, since in that case the 
 arms of chivalrous Hindus would to-day be turned 
 against a newer power. It must be understood as 
 purely symbolic of the strained relations naturally 
 existing between industrialised agricultural com- 
 munities on the one hand, and on the other the 
 militant sons of the desert accustomed to live by 
 keeping and killing flocks and herds. But the same 
 process that tamed the nomad into a member of a 
 peasant community, and converted boatmen and 
 tillers of the soil into Mussulmans, minimised in 
 course of time even these differences of association. 
 The familiar sight of the Mohammedan bhtsti, holding 
 his goatskin below the hydrant-mouth for water, 
 and the Hindu water-carrier with his earthen pot 
 coming in his turn, is an instance of the contrast as 
 it now exists. Two different civilisations stand side 
 by side, but they are friendly castes, not rival 
 nationalities. 
 
 In the religious consciousness of Islam there is 
 nothing that is without analogy amongst the faiths 
 that have sprung up on Indian soil. Every one is 
 tolerant of the idea of " the one true church," for it 
 is held by Hindus to be a necessity of the early 
 stages of religious development. Allah is of course 
 the Personal God : but then the worshipper of 
 Vishnu has always had to admit his brother's right 
 to offer praise to Siva, though the name left himself 
 unstirred. Why not Allah, therefore, equally ? 
 The Hindu uses images : to the Mussulman the 
 image is abhorrent. True, but every Hindu hopes 
 to escape some day from the necessity of using 
 images. Who is not touched by the devotional 
 custom of Hindu women, bathing the reflection of 
 the Holy Child in the mirror and saying, " This 
 which we bathe is not the image: neither is the 
 
142 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 image He whom we worship ! " Are not the saints 
 for ever teUing the idolater that even to name the 
 Infinite Unity is sacrilege ? And what Mohammedan 
 saint has failed to say the same? The dispute 
 about the image, in the light of such facts, becomes 
 a mere difference of opinion as to the use of the 
 concrete in the early stages of an education. Indeed, 
 Hinduism itself has shown its power in modern 
 times to throw out sects that decry the use of 
 images as strongly as Islam. 
 
 Hence it would appear that the important points 
 at issue between Hindus and Mussulmans are rather 
 details of purification and domestic practice, than 
 religious or doctrinal. This fact becomes increas- 
 ingly evident as the higher phases of the two faiths 
 are reached. For the more completely either is 
 realised, the more perfectly is it fused in the other. 
 Sufi-ism* leads the soul by love, and the Vedanta 
 leads it by knowledge, love, or emancipated motive, 
 as the case may be ; but for both alike the theme is 
 of a common goal, where all sense of difference shall 
 cease, and the small self be swallowed up in the 
 universal. Of each of the two faiths, then, it may be 
 said, that it has nothing to lose and everything to 
 gain by the more complete development of the other. 
 Mohammed, Krishna, Buddha, Sankaracharya,t are 
 not so many deplorable obstacles in each other's 
 
 * Sufi-ism. — A mystic set of Mohammedans. It rose in 
 Persia, and at first suffered persecution, because the doctrine of 
 the one-ness of the soul with the Divine sounded to the orthodox 
 Mohammedan like a suggestion that a creature could be 
 " partner with God." The Sufis now maintain secrecy as to 
 their experiences and convictions. Their doctrines and those of 
 Hindu Vedantism are practically identical. 
 
 t Sankaracharya. — "The father of modern Hinduism," often 
 foolishly referred to as "a persecutor of Buddhism." A great 
 saint and scholar. Born in Malabar, Southern India, 788 a.d. 
 Wrote several famous commentaries, notably that on the 
 Vedanta-Sutra, in which be formulated what is known as the 
 philosophic doctrine of " Adwaita." He is said to have died at 
 the age of thirty-two. 
 
SYNTHESIS OF INDIAN THOUGHT 143 
 
 paths, but rather widely separated examples of a 
 common type — the radiant Asiatic personage, whose 
 conception of nationality lies in a national righteous- 
 ness, and whose right to be a leader of men rests on 
 the fact that he has seen God face to face. Such 
 souls cannot fail to recognise each other, and the 
 Prophet was not slow to salute Moses and the 
 Christ, the only examples of his own order whose 
 names he knew. 
 
 Thus it is easy to realise that as long as Hinduism 
 remained nameless and vague, the sense of differ- 
 ence between itself and Islam was also obscure, 
 subject to all the mitigating influences of a common 
 Orientalism, intensified here and there doubtless by 
 political ideas, but tempered again by manifold social 
 and economic bonds. And if, with definition, the 
 Indian religions are to take on a more sectarian 
 character, is it not clear that this is only in order to 
 be joined again with the faith of Arabia, in a new 
 and deeper consciousness of that which is their 
 actual ground of union — the Asiatic synthesis of 
 life? 
 
 It is not difficult to understand the mental outlook 
 that is expressed in the namelessness of Hinduism, 
 An immense people, fiUing a vast territory, un- 
 conscious of the completeness of their boundaries, 
 or of any sharpness of contrast between themselves 
 and neighbouring nations, were necessarily incapable 
 of summing up their thought, to give it a name. A 
 knowledge of limits and of difference there must be, 
 before there can be definition, and it is only when 
 India sees herself reflected as a whole in the glass 
 of a foreign administration and a foreign language 
 that she can dream of limitation. Besides, in things 
 religious, what was there that was not included 
 within the Hindu area ? If, crossing the Himalayas 
 and reaching China and Mongolia, men came in 
 contact with unknown rites and superstitions, they 
 
144 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 could always supply parallel or analogy from their 
 home life and association. Strange and powerful 
 goddesses were adored in China. But the worship 
 of the Mother is so old in India that its origin is lost 
 in the very night of time. What an age of common 
 faiths that must have been that left us the Virgin 
 Kanya (Kanya Kumari) as tutelary deity of Cape 
 Comorin, and Kwannyon the Mother as the giver of 
 all blessings, in Japan to this day 1 Who is to say 
 which is older, Kari, the Mother-Queen of Heaven, 
 of Chinese mythology, or Kali of Bengal ? Even 
 these conceptions, however, dating as they clearly 
 must from the days of that matriarchate when 
 nations and races were not yet differentiated — even 
 these do not represent the earliest stratum of religi- 
 ous thought in India or in Asia. 
 
 All through the Old Testament, and throughout 
 the story of the rise of Mohammedanism, we hear 
 of " stones " as objects of worship. It is the black 
 and mystic Kaaba, that is to this day the symbol of 
 their unity to all the peoples of Islam. And through- 
 out India still there are races of working folk who 
 ask no better symbol of divinity than rude stones, 
 selected with some care possibly, and then set up, 
 singly or in a row, perhaps in an enclosure, perhaps 
 not, to be regarded henceforth as objects of rever- 
 ence. The people who use these emblems — for 
 they cannot be regarded as images — may be any- 
 thing, from sudras, or peasants, as I have seen them 
 in the South, to Bhutias, or gipsy-like wanderers, as 
 one meets with them in the Himalayas. 
 
 Everywhere in common life the miraculous 
 elements are fire and light. And perhaps it is 
 natural that oil, with its mystic power of leaping 
 into flame, should be the characteristic offering in 
 the worship of these stones. A Bhutia shrine will 
 sometimes contain nothing but lamps. These are 
 small and made of iron, like round-bowled dessert- 
 
SYNTHESIS OF INDIAN THOUGHT 145 
 
 spKjons at right angles to the handle, which is a spike 
 stuck into the ground, and I have seen as many as 
 sixteen or seventeen in one tiny temple. There was 
 here neither image nor symbol other than the lamps 
 themselves, and the pilgrim on leaving would tear 
 off a shred of his garment, and tie it to a bush or a 
 tree close by, there joining hundreds of tokens like 
 itself of the wayfaring congregation whose spirits 
 had met unseen in a common act of adoration. But 
 the place, as is always the case with these peasant 
 oratories, was where the view was finest, and the 
 cry of the soul to commune with Nature most 
 intense. Sometimes the sacred stones themselves 
 are smeared with oil, for the very touch of the 
 wondrous fluid that nourishes light seems to be 
 holy. 
 
 To richer races in India only clarified butter is 
 good enough for use in the service of the altar, and 
 we of Europe require the great wax tapers. But 
 can we not trace through all these a single common 
 process of the sanctification of labour by the products 
 of labour? "We worship the Ganges with the 
 water of the Ganges, but we musf worship," said a 
 Hindu. Similarly does the peasant dream of the 
 sacred oil, and the pastoral Toda* worship his cow- 
 bells. Is it not true that if all could be blotted out 
 in a moment from the human memory, the Eucharist 
 and the sanctuary-lamp from Christianity, flickering 
 light and fragrant flowers from the Mussulman 
 grave, oils and fruits and incense from the Eastern 
 worshipper, it would only be to spring forth fresh 
 again to-morrow — corn, wine, and oil to the peasant, 
 scented gums to the lover of gardens, the Good 
 Shepherd the ideal of the herdsman, the ship of 
 salvation the hope of fisher-folk ? What are myth- 
 ologies after all but the jewel-casket of humanity, 
 
 * Toda. T- An aboriginal tribe in the Neilgherris, 
 
 K 
 
146 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 by means of which its wealth of dreams and loves 
 and sighs in every generation becomes the unperish- 
 ing and imperishable treasure of the after-comers ? 
 The mystery of the birth of faith is about us 
 always. 
 
 All the great Asiatic faiths — that is to say, the 
 world-religions — would seem to have been born of 
 the overflow of something that may be called tenta- 
 tively the Aryan thought-power, upon the social and 
 religious formations of earlier ages. Taoism in 
 China, Zoroastrianism in Persia, and Hinduism in 
 India, are all as three different applications of a 
 single original fund of insight and speculation, and 
 Islam itself has incorporated Sufi-ism after reaching 
 the Aryan region. Doubtless of all these India 
 developed her share of the inheritance with the 
 greatest freedom and perfection, but we recognise 
 common elements in all alike. 
 
 As the basis of Indian thonght rests deep in the 
 very foundation of human evolution, so it has not 
 failed, at each new point in the historic development, 
 to add something to the great superstructure. The 
 whole story of India may be read in a philosophic 
 idea. The constitutional ceremonies of the kingdom 
 of Travancore contain clear indications of the trans- 
 ition from the matriarchate which was probably 
 characteristic of the old Dravidian* civilisation, to 
 the patriarchate, which was Aryan. In the yearly 
 
 * Dravidian civilisation. — The country of Dravida is that in 
 the south of the Indian Peninsula, and includes Malabar. The 
 languages of this region are non-Sanskritic, and the architecture 
 peculiar and imposing. Some scholars are inclined to suppose 
 a common origin for the Dravidian, Babylonian, and ancient 
 Egyptian civilisations. 
 
SYNTHESIS OF INDIAN THOUGHT 147 
 
 village-worship of the heroic figures of the " Mahab- 
 harata " which is common throughout the South, 
 we have what may be the effort of distant peoples 
 to include themselves in the " Great India " of 
 Bhishma, Judisthira, and the national Epics.* The 
 charge of country gunpowder which is fired off in 
 the temples of the Southern Dekkan on festival 
 days is sufficient evidence that orthodoxy was once 
 aggressive, eager, absorbent of things new, fearful 
 of nothing, and friendly to advance. It is a popular 
 superstition that the East stands still. Children 
 observe no motion of the stars. But the fact is that 
 one generation is no more like another at Benares 
 than in Paris. Every saint, every poet, adds some- 
 thing to the mighty pile which is unlike all that went 
 before. And this is quite as true of the thought 
 expressed in the vernaculars, as of the all-domina- 
 ting culture contained in the classic Sanskrit. 
 Chaitanya in Bengal, the Ten Gurus of the Sikhs, 
 Ram Das and Tokuram in Maharashtra, and 
 Ramanuja in the South — each of these was to his 
 own time as the very personification of the national 
 philosophy, relating it again in its wholeness to the 
 common life. Each such great saint appears to the 
 people as the incarnation, the revelation, of them- 
 selves and their own powers, and the church 
 founded by him becomes a nation. Thus arose the 
 Mahratta Confederacy. Thus arose the kingdom of 
 Lahore. And far away in Arabia, Islam formed 
 itself in the same fashion. For the law that we are 
 considering is not peculiar to India ; it is common 
 to the whole of Asiatic life. 
 
 The Hindu world in its entirety, then, is one with 
 
 * In Southern India, rude figures of men and horses, of heroic 
 size, are made of clay, hard-baked, and kept in enclosures outside 
 the villages for annual worship. The illiterate worshipper 
 explains these figures as likenesses of the characters in the 
 Mahabharata 
 
148 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 the highest philosophy of Hinduism. The much- 
 talked of Vedanta is only the theoretic aspect of 
 that synthesis whose elements make up the com- 
 mon life. The most unlettered, idolatrous-seeming 
 peasant will talk, if questioned, of the immanence 
 of God. He recognises that Christianity is funda- 
 mentally true, because the missionaries are clear 
 that there is but one Supreme. The question, 
 What would happen could the nation be divorced 
 for a single generation from the knowledge of San- 
 skrit ? is only another way of asking. What is the 
 actual dynamic force existing at a given moment in 
 the Hindu people ? What are the characteristic 
 ideas that are now an inbred habit, past the reach 
 of authority to substantiate, or disaster to shake ? 
 It is given only to great events and to the imagina* 
 tion of genius to find the answer to such questions. 
 Yet some indications there are, of what that answer 
 might be. 
 
 Buddhism was the name given to the Hinduism 
 of the first few centuries of the Christian era, when 
 precipitated in a foreign consciousness. What 
 authority did it claim ? What explanations did it 
 give of the existence of the physical universe ? Of 
 the soul ? Of evil ? What did it offer to humanity 
 as the goal of the ethical struggle ? The answer to 
 these questions will certainly have to be given in 
 terms of ideas, or variants of ideas, derived from 
 the pre-existent stock of Hinduism. And so, though 
 the particular formulation may be regarded as 
 heresy, the significance of its testimony on the 
 point we are considering cannot be disputed. It 
 must be remembered that there never was, in India, 
 a religion known as Buddhism, with temples and 
 priests of its own order. There was a tendency 
 towards popularising truths that had previously 
 been regarded as fit only for the learned, and there 
 was an immense unofficial enthusiasm for a tower- 
 
SYNTHESIS OF INDIAN THOUGHT 149 
 
 ing personality, doubtless, and for the interpreta- 
 tions which were identified with him, even as there 
 is in Bengal to-day for Chaitanya. There came 
 also to be a vast imperial organisation, highly 
 centralised, coherent in all its parts, full of the 
 geographical consciousness, uttering itself in similar 
 architectural forms in the East and West of India, 
 passionately eager to unify and elevate the people 
 and to adorn the land. This Indian Empire was in 
 full and living communication with China, Japan, 
 Syria, and Egypt. It had traffic and commerce by 
 land and sea. It sent abroad ambassadors, mer- 
 chants and missionaries. And within its own terri- 
 tories it made roads, planted trees and orchards, 
 dug wells, established hospitals, and insisted on the 
 cessation of violence even towards dumb creatures.* 
 Just as the Protestant Reformation, releasing the 
 mental energy of the people from thraldom to 
 authoritative commentaries, has been the power 
 within the rise of modern Europe, so the kernel and 
 spring of the Asokan and succeeding empires was a 
 similar assertion — not of the right of private judg- 
 ment : this never required vindication in India : but 
 — of the equal right of every section of society to 
 enter the super-social, or monastic life. For we 
 must not forget that in the East enfranchisement is 
 always primarily religious and moral, not political. 
 Power civic and national is there amongst the direct 
 effects of the higher consciousness, never its cause. 
 It is a man's right to renounce the world, and not 
 manhood suffrage, which constitutes his equality 
 with the highest. This sudden realisation of the 
 spiritual life in all parts of society at once conferred 
 on every man under Buddhism, whatever his birth 
 or position, the right to make his opinion felt, the 
 strength to exercise his full weight of moral in- 
 
 * Asoka's inscriptions on the Dhauli rock, Orissa, and a 
 Girnar in Gujrat. 
 
ISO THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 fluence. The result was an immense consolidation 
 and blossoming of nationality. Men felt that they 
 walked on air. They were born to receive and 
 pass on the great message of human brotherhood. 
 They were to go out into all the world and preach 
 the Gospel to every creature. What must not have 
 been the faith and enthusiasm of the common people, 
 when merchants, traders, and caravan-servants could 
 sufBce to make a permanent contribution to the reli- 
 gion of the powerful Empire of China? It was a 
 great age, and only those who have seen the colossal 
 fragments which remain of it to this day can form 
 any idea of its wealth and vigour. 
 
 And yet Asoka's conversion had not been to a 
 new religion, but only into the piety of his time. " I, 
 King Piyadasi, beloved of the gods, obtained true 
 intelligence ten years after my anointing." Hence 
 the thing that we call Buddhism ends its career in 
 India very gradually. He who has first visited 
 Ellora * is surprised, on entering Elephanta, t to 
 find the Buddha-like figure on his left to be Siva, 
 and the Triumph of Durga on his right. At Ellora 
 itself there must be a gap of centuries between 
 the cathedral-like caves of the Thin Thai J and of 
 Kailash. § Yet even there we see the solitary figure 
 of the teaching or the meditating Buddha give place 
 by degrees to a rich pantheon of devas and guardian 
 kings. But the hope and delight that are expressed 
 
 * Ellora. — Buddhist cave-temples close to the north-western 
 frontier of the Nizam's dominions. The town of Rosa, con- 
 taining the tomb of Aurungzeeb, is close by ; and the whole is 
 a few miles from Daulatabad, the ancient Deogiri. 
 
 + Elephanta. — A series of cave- temples on an island in the 
 Bay of Bombay, between the second and the seventh century. 
 
 t The Thin Thai. — A cave-temple at Ellora which consists of 
 three tiers or storeys. Hence its name. The most perfect of 
 the non-Brahmanical structures. 
 
 § Kailash. — The most ornate and modern of all the cave- 
 temples at Ellora. Cut with marvellous elaboration out of 
 solid rock. 
 
SYNTHESIS OF INDIAN THOUGHT 151 
 
 so freely in the architecture and sculpture, and in 
 the cosmopolitan intercourse of the Buddhist period 
 die away imperceptibly into the rich imagery of 
 the Puranic age,* and the manifold social and 
 political problems of Sankaracharya and the age 
 of chivalry. 
 
 The common tendency of Brahmins and yogis , 
 had been to hold out the emancipation of the 
 whole nature through self-discipline as the goal of 
 endeavour. This doctrine came to be regarded in a 
 loose way as characteristically Hindu. The Buddhist 
 conviction was, on the other hand, that the same 
 goal was to be reached, not so much by a gradual 
 ' ripening of the self, as by ceasing from the illusion 
 of egoism. Nirvana, not Mukti, became the watch- 
 word. The fact that these two ideas are related to 
 each other as the obverse and reverse of a coin, 
 cannot have escaped the contemporary mind. But 
 its own generation must have given a more antipodal 
 value to the divergence than is obvious to Western 
 thought at the present day. It would seem to them 
 to include all possible theological differences, and it 
 is not unlikely that this fact contributed largely to 
 the belief so explicitly stated in the Gita, and so 
 markedly Indian, that all religions express a single 
 truth. 
 
 In the period of the Upanishads, the conception 
 of Brahman — the one real appearing as many — had 
 been reached. This implies the doctrine of Maya, or 
 the illusion of things, as popularised under Buddhism. 
 It is clear that in this theory the whole question of 
 the origin of evil is put aside. Evil and good are 
 
 • The Puranic age. — The Puranasare the third class of Hindu 
 sacred literature, tlie first being the Vedas and Upanishads, and 
 the second the national Epics. They consist of a series of books 
 of very mixed character, of which the representative specimens 
 were written between the sixth and twelfth centuries. Hence 
 this period is spoken of as " the Puranic Age." 
 
152 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 alike shadows on the wall, cast by our sense of 
 personal convenience in magnified and distorted 
 form. The saints recognise neither pain, insult, 
 nor self-interest, being swallowed up in the joy of 
 God. 
 
 The cyclic manifestation of the Cosmos — never 
 created, but eternally self-existent, self-destroying, 
 self-repeating — was another idea sown broadcast by 
 Buddhist teachers. Here we have an interpretation 
 that is significant of the immense scientific energy 
 that has always gone hand in hand with Hindu 
 religious speculation, making the spirit of research 
 inherent in the spirit of devotion. Perhaps had 
 orthodoxy offered the same resistance to science in 
 the East that it did in the West, Indian investigation 
 would have appeared more imposing to-day in the 
 eyes of foreigners. But the only thing that the 
 Indian priesthood has conceived itself set to guard 
 has been the social system. It has opposed nothing 
 save social aberrations. Knowledge has gone un- 
 hindered. And it will not be difficult to show that 
 the much vaunted science of Moorish Spain was 
 neither more nor less than the tapping of Indian 
 culture for the modern world. 
 
 But perhaps the most significant of all points in 
 the Buddhist propaganda is its assumption that the 
 word of the Blessed One Himself is all-sufficient 
 authority. Hinduism recognises only one proof, and 
 that is direct perception. Even the sacred writings 
 give as their sanction the direct perception of saints 
 and sages, and the Vedas themselves declare that 
 man must reach beyond the Vedas. That is to say, 
 the books allege as their authority that realisation 
 , out of which they were written. The Jains refuse 
 the authority of the Vedic texts. But there is 
 less divergence between them and other sects of 
 
SYNTHESIS OF INDIAN THOUGHT 153 
 
 Hinduism than would appear on the surface. 
 Common language and the historic acceptance of 
 the race alike, lead up to the last great pronounce- 
 ment on the subject — " By the Vedas no books are 
 meant. They mean the accumulated treasury of 
 spiritual laws discovered by different persons in 
 different times." 
 
 " It is Veda," we say in India of a statement 
 which we perceive to be profoundly true. It is held 
 in a general way that there are two classes of 
 Scripture, one Vedas, the other Puranas. Vedas 
 are eternal truth. Puranas are characterised by 
 containing stories of the creation and destruction of 
 the world, tales of the life and death of holy persons 
 and avatars, accounts of their miracles, and so on. 
 These elements are commonly mixed up, but can 
 easily be disentangled. Thus, when the Christian 
 Gospel says, " Thou shall love the Lord thy God 
 with all thy heart and with all thy soul," it speaks 
 Veda; but when it says, "Jesus was born in Beth- 
 lehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king" it 
 is only a Puran, and may contain some elements of 
 error; 
 
 And so, if the word be rightly defined, it may be 
 said that the Vedas themselves are the sanction of 
 Buddhism, of Mohammedanism, of Christianity, and 
 of Confucianism ; but it may at the same time be 
 claimed on behalf of India that there, and not in the 
 West, has this fact been understood. 
 
 Some of the greatest of French and English 
 thinkers hold that the history of the West is made 
 into a unity by the evolution of science and its pro- 
 gressive application to life, from the sixth century 
 before Christ to the present day. These thinkers 
 maintain that Greece, Imperial Rome, and the 
 Catholic Church have been the three integral 
 formative influences of what we call the European 
 mind. To the student of Oriental history it appears 
 
IS4 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 equally clear that the history of Asia is that of a 
 single living organism, of which India may be taken 
 as the heart and focus. Regarded thus, in relation 
 to its surroundings, the culture to which we give 
 the name of Indian thought becomes likewise a 
 unity, as clear, as continuous, as consistent in its 
 development as is the evolution of the scientific 
 idea in the West. Considered as an appanage of 
 Europe, India is meaningless; taken in and for 
 herself, and for that to which she rightly belongs, 
 it need not surprise us if we find her the essential 
 factor of human advance in the future as in the 
 past. 
 
 Ill 
 
 India is the heart of Asia. Hinduism is a con- 
 venient name for the nexus of Indian thought. It 
 would appear that it takes some thousand to fifteen 
 hundred years to work out a single rhythm of its 
 great pulsation. For this is about the period that 
 divides the war of the Mahabharata from Buddha, 
 Buddha from Sankaracharya, and Sankaracharya 
 from Ramakrishna, in whom the immense pile 
 reaches the crowning sell-consciousness. Of the 
 long prehistoric evolution that went to the building 
 up of Mahabharata, Great India, the heroic age, 
 we can say little, for nothing is left to us, save the 
 legend of Sita and Rama, out of the night of time. 
 Yet we kow that this period must have been long. 
 Three thousand years seems not too much, if enough, 
 to allow. Behind this again loom up the millenniums 
 spent on the tableland of Central Asia, that head- 
 water of world-civilisation where Aryan man entered 
 the patriarchate, and closed the account of his first 
 combat with Nature, having tamed the beasts, 
 learned the use of tools, domesticated corn and fire. 
 
SYNTHESIS OF INDIAN THOUGHT 155 
 
 produced the fruit-trees, and divided the week.* 
 Of the sublime dreams, the poetry and song with 
 which he consoled himself during those ages ot 
 herculean struggle, the fragments known as the 
 " Rig Veda " still remain. And we learn therein 
 how broad was his outlook upon Nature, even as 
 that of the mind that declared " and the evening and 
 the morning were the first day." How long did it 
 last ? Was it ten thousand years ? Were there 
 another five thousand before the war of Mahabharata 
 .... However this be, the enthusiasm of succeed- 
 ing periods strikes us as extraordinary. 
 
 There is no question that the characteristic pro- 
 duct of the civilisation that succeeded the Great 
 War was the forest-universities, notes of whose 
 sessions have become the Sutras and Upanishads. 
 But we must not forget also that during the same 
 period the Vedas was written down, and the search- 
 ing scrutiny of society initiated which was later to 
 result in those accumulations of reverent and sym- 
 pathetic interpretations now known to us as the 
 Laws of Manu. 
 
 It is only with difficulty that we realise the sense 
 of vastness to which the thinkers of this period 
 strove to give expression. The Celt, it has been 
 said, strives ever towards the infinite of emotion. 
 The Hindu, in the same way, cannot rest content, 
 short of the infinite of thought. We see this, even 
 so early as the hymns of the Rig Veda. " When 
 darkness was hidden in darkness, undistinguished, 
 like one mass of Water," opens the great Anthem 
 of Creation. Still larger is the sweep of the Upani- 
 shads — " they that see the Real in the midst of this 
 Unreal, they that behold life in the midst of this 
 
 * That learned and fascinating book, " The Arctic Home in 
 the Vedas," is destined to work a revolution in our ideas on this 
 subject, if the author's theory be correct, it would appear that 
 Aryan culture was not acquired in Central Asia. 
 
1 56 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 death, they that know the One in all the changing 
 manifoldness of this universe, unto them belongs 
 eternal peace — unto none else, unto none else." 
 The Vedas were the capital with which Aryan 
 culture began its occupation of India, and these 
 immense and subtle generalisations of the Upani- 
 shads represent the first achievement of the national 
 mind in its new place. Surely this is the secret of 
 the striking fact in Indian history that all great eras 
 of rejuvenescence, such as Sankaracharya's, and 
 even minor movements of reconstruction like Guru 
 Nanuk's, and Rahianuja's, have had to go back to 
 the forest sutras and place themselves in structural 
 continuity with them. In this light we begin to 
 suspect that the war of the Mahabharata itself repre- 
 sents the apparent exhaustion of Vedic inspiration 
 at the end of the first period, and the restora- 
 tion of pristine vigour by force of Krishna's per- 
 sonality. 
 
 The twilight of Indian forests in the pre-Buddhis- 
 tic age is resonant, to the historic ear, with chants 
 and prayers. But the succeeding epoch leads us 
 into the busy life of villages and cities. For the 
 ballads and songs of the people are crystallising now 
 into the great Epics. Their religious activity — 
 stirred by the sublime spectacle of a life that repre- 
 sents the whole of Upanishadic culture, the national 
 dream in its completeness — occupies itself with 
 gathering together, and weaving into a whole, all the 
 religious ideas innate amongst the masses, and those 
 peculiar to the Indian environment. There is a 
 sudden accession of force given to such practices as 
 pilgrimage and relic-worship, and Brahmin intelli- 
 gence is more or less unconsciously preoccupied 
 with the interpretation of images, symbols, and 
 rituals, in relation to those truths which had been 
 the first realisation of the race. The distinction and 
 larger scope of this Buddhist period lay to a great 
 
SYNTHESIS OF INDIAN THOUGHT 157 
 
 extent in its political, commercial, and sub-religious 
 elements, in letters, arts, and sciences. 
 
 Certain evils must have come in the train of the 
 ideas then elaborated, essential as they were to 
 prove themselves in the long run to the completed 
 fabric of Hinduism. We can understand that 
 monastic notions may have attracted too much of 
 the national energy out of the safe paths of domestic 
 virtue, v>?ith a tendency to bring about not only the 
 depletion of family life, but the disintegration of 
 morality itself. No doubt it was at this time, and 
 to meet this error, that the song of the ideal sang 
 itself so clearly, first through the lips of Kalidas,* 
 in his "Birth of the War- Lord," and again, in the 
 final recension of the Ramayana, as the love of Sita 
 for Rama, that glorified wifehood, before which the 
 renunciation and faith of the cloister grow pale. 
 
 From the point of view of purity of doctrine, we 
 can believe, too, that the very breadth of the wel- 
 come extended to religious ideas of all kinds, 
 especially in the closing centuries of this age, had 
 led to the undue emphasising of the popular notions, 
 to the inclusion of an unnecessary multiplicity of 
 symbols, and possibly to the interpretation of 
 symbols already existing in rude or gross ways. 
 ] But agitation against abuses has never been the 
 I method of Hinduism. Rather has the faith pro- 
 ; gressed by lifting repeatedly in moments of crisis 
 the banner of the highest ideal. Already, in the era 
 we are considering, this organic law of the national 
 genius, the law of the avatars, was well known. 
 "Whenever the dharmma decays, and when that 
 which is not dharmma prevails, f then I manifest 
 
 * Kalidas — the poet. — One of the famous " nine gems " of the 
 Court of Viltramaditya, of Ujjain. Kalidas may have lived in 
 the sixth century a.d. or earlier. He wrote the play of 
 "Sakuntala," virbich so deeply touched the poet Goethe. 
 
 i- Literally, the a-dharma — non-dharma. The prefix is 
 privative. See p. 138. 
 
iS8 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 myself. For the protection of the good, for the 
 destruction of the evil for the firm establishment of 
 the national righteousness, I am born again and 
 again." So says the Bhagavad Gita — and never 
 was any prophecy more conclusively vindicated than 
 this, by the appearance of Sankaracharya, early in 
 the ninth century after Christ. 
 
 This wonderful boy — for he died at the age of 
 thirty-two — was born at the end of the eighth 
 century, and had already completed a great mission 
 when most men are still dreaming of the future. 
 The characteristic product of Oriental culture is 
 always a commentary. By this form of literature 
 the future is knit firmly to the past, and though the 
 dynamic power of the connecting idea may be 
 obscure to the foreigner, it is clearly and accurately 
 conveyed to the Eastern mind itself. The whole of 
 Confucianism is contained in a commentary on the 
 Eking, or Book of Change, and European Protestan- 
 tism might almost be described as a special kind of 
 commentary on the Christian sacred literature. The 
 Sanskrit sulras lend themselves to critical writing, 
 and even demand it, in a special degree : for the 
 word sutra means thread, and is applied to works 
 ' which are only the main line of a given argument, 
 ' and require expansion at the end of every sentence. 
 This literary convention obtains in all Oriental 
 countries, and must date from the period when the 
 main function of writing was to assist memorising. 
 Obviously, by writing a new commentary on a given 
 sutra, the man of genius has it in his power to re- 
 adjust the relationship between a given question and 
 the whole of current opinion. Hence it is not 
 surprising to find that the masterpiece of Sankara- 
 charya's life was a commentary on the Vedanta- 
 Sutra. 
 
 The problems which faced the Indian mind during 
 his lifetime, with the single exception that the 
 
SYNTHESIS OF INDIAN THOUGHT 159 
 
 country was then rich and prosperous, must have 
 been curiously like those of the present day, and it 
 is difficult to avoid the conclusion that in his eyes 
 they assumed national dimensions. Religious 
 practices had lost their primitive simplicity, and 
 also perhaps their compelling power. Ideas as to 
 national and unnational (for the word " orthodox " 
 was but the Asiatic word for " national ") were con- 
 flicting and confused. Men lived much in the 
 thought of the recent sectarian developments of the 
 faith, and tended to lose sight of its austere impera- 
 tive, pointing to the highest realisation, of its 
 antiquity, and its close-knit continuity. Lukshmi, 
 Goddess of Fortune, was one of the chief objects of 
 worship. Sects and kingdoms alike had lost their 
 sense of mutual solidarity. Never perhaps was an 
 Asiatic people nearer precipitating itself on a purely 
 secular development. 
 
 At this moment the whole of the national genius 
 awoke once more in Sankaracharya. Amidst all the 
 brilliance and luxury of the age, in spite of the rich 
 and florid taste of the Puranic period, his soul 
 caught the mystic whisper of the ancient rhythm of 
 the Vedic chants, and the dynamic power of the 
 faith to lead the soul to super-consciousness, became 
 for him the secret of every phase of Hinduism. He 
 was on fire with the love of the Vedas. His own 
 poems have something of their classical beauty and 
 vigour, and his books may almost be described as 
 chains of quotations from the most piercing and 
 comprehensive sentences of the Upanishads, to 
 which he has contributed Hnks and rivets. 
 
 Sankaracharya wandered, during his short Hfe, 
 from his birthplace in the South as far as the 
 Himalayas, and everything that he came across in 
 his travels related itself to the one focus and centre, 
 in his mind. He accepted each worship, even that 
 from which he was at first adverse, but always 
 
i6o THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 because he found that the great mood of One- 
 without-a-second was not only the Vedic, but also 
 the Puranic goal. This is the doctrine that he 
 expresses in his twelve epoch-making commentaries, 
 especially in his crowning work, the commentary on 
 the Vedanta Sutra. And this idea, known as the 
 Adwaita Philosophy, constitutes, for the rest of the 
 Hindu period, the actual unity of India. 
 
 Western people can hardly imagine a personality 
 such as that of Sankaracharya. In the course of so 
 few years to have nominated the founders of no less 
 than ten great religious orders, of which four have 
 fully retained iheir prestige to the present day; to 
 have acquired such a mass of Sanskrit learning as 
 to create a distinct philosophy, and impress himself 
 on the scholarly imagination of India in a pre- 
 eminence that twelve hundred years have not 
 sufficed to shake ; to have written poems whose 
 grandeur makes them unmistakable, even to the 
 foreign and unlearned ear ; and at the same time to 
 have lived with his disciples in all the radiant joy 
 and simple pathos of the saints — this is greatness 
 that we may appreciate, but cannot understand. 
 We contemplate with wonder and delight the devo- 
 tion of Francis of Assisi, the intellect of Abelard, the 
 force and freedom of Martin Luther, and the political 
 efficiency of Ignatius Loyola ; but who could imagine 
 all these united in one person ? 
 
 Subsequent critics have painted Sankaracharya 
 as the persecutor of Buddhists. Inasmuch as he 
 asserted a co-ordination of mythologies and doctrines, 
 instead of preaching a single exclusive method of 
 salvation ; inasmuch as to him the goal was a posi- 
 tive, and not a negative affirmation, and in so far 
 also as he insisted upon the worthlessness of ritual 
 apart from philosophy, of worship without illumina- 
 tion, he may be taken as the enemy of one school or 
 another. It is almost unnecessary to add that this 
 
SYNTHESIS OF INDIAN THOUGHT i6i 
 
 enmity was purely controversial in its character, 
 and to Buddhists of the Northern School, a clearer 
 historic knowledge will reveal him as the very 
 opposite of a persecutor, as, rather, another example 
 of the race of inspired religious teachers to which 
 their own apostle, Nagarjuna, belonged. * 
 
 Buddhism as a whole, with the succeeding 
 Puranism, had been the creation of the lay mind, 
 the creation of the people. The work of Sankara- 
 charya was the relinking of popular practice to the 
 theory of Brahman, the stern infusion of mythologi- 
 cal fancies with the doctrine of the Upanishads. He 
 took up and defined the current catchwords — maya, 
 karma, reincarnation, and others — and left the, 
 terminology of Hinduism what it is to-day. At the- 
 same time, we must not neglect to remind ourselves 
 that in all this, if he had been other than the 
 expression of that which it was the actual tendency 
 of the race to formulate, he would not have found the 
 scope he did. The recognition of a great man is as 
 essential a factor in his history as his own power 
 and character. His complete appropriation by his 
 nation only shows that he is in perfect unison with 
 its thought and aspiration. 
 
 The two or three centuries immediately succeeding 
 Sankaracharya are commonly known as the dark 
 ages of Indian history. The application of the term 
 is obscure. In what sense were these ages dark ? 
 They were centuries of chivalric dominance, and in 
 many a Rajput line the bardic annals are still pre- 
 served that will one day enable a generation of 
 Indian historians to read their record. Even the wars 
 of such a period were never destructive ; for, apart 
 from their specially chivalrous character, Oriental 
 
 * Nagarjuna. — An Indian monk, whose name is well known 
 in China and Japan. He followed in the wake ol previous 
 teachers, in the second century of the Christian era. He gave 
 ultimate theological form to the first school of Buddhism. 
 
 L 
 
iC2 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 military usage has always secured the safety of 
 non-combatants. The lives of water-carriers and 
 commissariat servants were scrupulously respected 
 in Asiatic warfare. It is said, indeed, that the 
 European gipsy is an example of this. These poor 
 people were originally a tribe of petty merchants 
 who used to accompany the march of armies. 
 Wherever the camp was pitched, they could run up 
 a bazaar in half an hour, and their caste-honour lay 
 in telling neither side the secrets of the other. When 
 Genghis Khan invaded Hungary, these particular 
 clans were carried there, never to return.* 
 
 But it was not only camp-followers who were 
 protected by a law such as that which now defends 
 the Red Cross Sisterhoods of Europe. A like 
 consideration prevailed, with regard to the peasant 
 working in the fields, and the craftsman toiling at 
 his anvil. The young crops were honoured in 
 ancient combat, as would be Cologne Cathedral or 
 Notre Dame de Paris in modern. Under these 
 circumstances a battle became only a deadly form of 
 tournament, involving in its peril none but fighting 
 men. 
 
 But if such contests could not become destructive, 
 neither could they succeed in educating the masses 
 of the people to the common duty of military defence. 
 This result could only be achieved when a religious 
 idea should become the war-cry of whole regions, 
 conferring on all men the right of struggle without 
 distinction of caste. This right, so necessary to the 
 completion of nationality, the Mohammedan invasion 
 gave, and it is difficult to imagine any other way in 
 which the lesson could have been widely learnt. 
 
 The great tide of vigour that emanated from 
 Sankaracharya swept round India by south, west, 
 and north, in a spiral curve. Ramanuja, Mad- 
 
 • In the year 1200 a.d. 
 
SYNTHESIS OF INDIAN THOUGHT 163 
 
 havacharya,* Ram Das and Tukarani,f the Sikh 
 GurusJ and Gauranga, || were all in turn its products. 
 Wherever it touched the Mussulman consciousness, 
 it created, chiefly by means of contest, a well-centred 
 nation. Where it did not come in contact with 
 Mohammedanism, as in the extreme south, this 
 spiritual energy did not succeed in evoking a 
 nationality. And where it did not lead to definite 
 fighting, as in Bengal under Chaitanya, the sense of 
 national existence remained more or less potential. 
 Thus the advent of Islam into India during the post- 
 Sankaracharyan period cannot be regarded as a 
 revolutionary invasion, inasmuch as under the new 
 power there was no loss of Asiatic modes. New 
 arts of luxury were introduced, but the general 
 economic system remained undisturbed. India 
 received a more centralised government than had 
 been possible since the Asokan Empire, but no new 
 forces came into operation, tending to reduce her 
 own children to the position of agricultural serfs or 
 tenants. And we have seen that even the wars 
 which arose between contiguous populations of 
 Hindus and Mohammedans must be regarded rather 
 as those athletic contests between brothers and 
 cousins which confer individuality, than as conquests 
 on the one side or the other. The victor after victory 
 attempts neither to exclude his rival's creed from 
 
 * Ramanuja and Madhavacharya. — Flourished in the South 
 of India in the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. 
 
 f Ram Das and Tukaram. — Two Mahratta saints to whose 
 inspiration Sivaji's passionate defence of his own people was 
 due. Tukaram was born about 1605. 
 
 t The Sikh Gurus. — These were ten in number, Guru Nanuk 
 born 1469, was the first, and Guru Govind Singh, who died 
 1708, was the last. By the lives and teachings of these ten 
 leaders was formed the Hindu nation of the Punjab, the Sikhs. 
 Amritsar is still the sacred city of this sect of Hinduism. 
 
 § Gauranga. — Another name for Chaitanya, born i486, the 
 saint in whom Bengal first begins to realise herself as a uniied 
 consciousness. 
 
i64 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 office, nor to create invidious distinctions. "The 
 great bankers and nobles of Bengal remained Hindu 
 under the rule of the Nawabs, as naturally as the 
 Mussulman maintained his face in the shadow of a 
 Hindu throne."* 
 
 Nor have the clearness and self-consciousness 
 that its definition has added to Hinduism in any 
 way tended to impair its inclusiveness. For the 
 personality that the nineteenth century has revealed 
 as the turning-point of the national development is 
 that of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa,f whose name 
 stands as another word for the synthesis of all 
 possible ideals and all possible shades of thought. 
 In this great life, Hinduism finds the philosophy of 
 Sankaracharya clothed upon with flesh, and is made 
 finally aware of the entire sufficiency of any single 
 creed or conception to lead the soul to God as its 
 true goal. Henceforth, it is not true that each form 
 of life or worship is tolerated or understood by the 
 Hindu mind : each form is justified, welcomed, set 
 up for its passionate loving, for evermore. Hence- 
 forth, the supreme crime for the follower of any 
 Indian sect, whether orthodox or modern, philosophic 
 or popular, shall be the criticism of any other, as if 
 it were without the bounds of "the Eternal Faith." 
 " Man proceeds from truth to truth, and not from 
 error to truth," becomes in future the formula that 
 constitutes belief. 
 
 At this point we could almost have prophesied, 
 had it not already happened, that some great disciple 
 of this master would declare, on behalf of the whole 
 nation, that the final differentia of Hinduism lay in 
 the acceptance of the doctrine of the Istha Devata, 
 i.e., the right of every man to choose his own 
 
 * Torrens' " Empire in Asia." 
 
 t Ramakrishna Paramahamsa lived in a temple-garden out- 
 side Calcutta from 1853 to 1886. His teachings have already 
 become a great intellectual force. 
 
SYNTHESIS OF INDIAN THOUGHT 165 
 
 creed, and of none to force the same choice on any 
 other.* 
 
 At last, then, Indian thought stands revealed in 
 its entirety — no sect, but a synthesis; no church, 
 but a university of spiritual culture — as an idea of 
 individual freedom, amongst the most complete that 
 the world knows. Certain conceptions, such as 
 maya, karma, and reincarnation, popularised by 
 Buddhism, and mukhti or the beatific vision, sown 
 broadcast alike by Sankaracharya and the Sufis, are 
 characteristic of large areas. But they are nowhere 
 and in no sense regarded as essential. For it is as 
 foreign to the genius of Hinduism to require an oath 
 of conformity to any given religious tenet whatever, 
 as it would be to the habits of an Oxford don to 
 require adherence to the doctrines of Plato as against 
 those of Aristotle. It would thus appear that the 
 reforming sects of the Mohammedan period and of 
 the nineteenth century itself, have to the full as 
 good a right to call themselves Hindu as the most 
 orthodox priest of Siva, or the most learned Sanskrit 
 pundit. 
 
 We have seen then, that it is certainly a mistake 
 to read the history of India at any time as the 
 account of a struggle between Hindu and Moham- 
 medan thought, though it is a mistake which is 
 perhaps inseparable from the European conception 
 of the influence of faith on politics. But it cannot, 
 on the other hand, be too clearly understood that 
 the problem which the Indian idea has had to face, 
 during the period between Sankaracharya and the 
 
 * I desire to say that in thus referring to my own gurus, Sri 
 Ramakrishna Paramabamsa and the Swami Vivekananda, I do 
 not intend to imply that every one will or ought to be willing to 
 assign them the same place in the evolution of Hinduism that 
 seems to myself to belong to them. Whether their names be 
 accepted or not, however, I believe that all Hindus will agree 
 regarding the ideas which are here stated as constituting 
 Hinduism. 
 
i66 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 nineteenth century, was the inclusion of the 
 Mohammedan element in a completed nationality. 
 From the nineteenth century onwards, it becomes 
 the realisation of that single united nationality, 
 amidst the vast complexity which has been the 
 growth of ages. 
 
 It is said that nations and systems of culture fulfil 
 special functions, as organs of huiftanity just as 
 individuals fulfil special uses in the community. If 
 this be so, it would almost appear that within the 
 bounds of India lies one of the focal or polar points 
 of the race. The great task of the reconciliation of 
 opposites would seem to devolve on the peoples 
 within this pale. It is not enough that the Mussul- 
 man should inhabit the pastoral belt, the Mongolian 
 rest secure behind the Thian Shan, and the Aryan 
 and Dravidian dwell peacefully side by side in the 
 Southern peninsula. It was decreed from the 
 beginning, it lay unavoidably in the very nature of 
 things, that sooner or later all these should meet in 
 the land of the Indus, and learn their mutual 
 significance and responsibilities. Buddhism may be 
 regarded in one aspect as simply the synthesis of 
 Eastern Asia. Neo-Hinduism (to borrow a term 
 which has been coined in no friendly spirit) is 
 equally indicative of a place found in Aryan thought 
 for Semitic formuJEe, and who shall say what is yet 
 to be born of that conjunction between all these, in 
 which Asia shall find herself to be — not, as she has 
 so long been told, " merely a congeries of geo- 
 graphical fragments," still less a concert of rival 
 political units, held in mechanical combination by a 
 dui admixture of mutual hopes and recriminations, 
 but a single immense organism, filled with the tide 
 of one strong pulsating Hfe from end to end, firm- 
 rooted in the soil of common origins and common 
 modes ? The value which we may attach to the 
 prospect of this future will depend on the idea that 
 
SYNTHESIS OF INDIAN THOUGHT 167 
 
 we have already been able to form, of the place of 
 Asia in the evolution of humanity, but to those who 
 foresee a future moralisation of international relations 
 it may well appear that this question is among the 
 most important in the world. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE ORIENTAL EXPERIENCE 
 
 The spiritual intellect refuses to believe in any 
 good tidings of dogmas and happenings. It is 
 St. Thomas Aquinas himself who points out that 
 prayer cannot avail to change the will of God, but 
 may, in any given case, be the appointed means of 
 its accomplishment. Truth is not something that is 
 told of in books or stated in words. It is the self- 
 evident, the ultimate. It is that of which all our 
 modes of seeing and saying are but so many 
 refractions through a falsifying medium. All the 
 teachings of Christianity put together are but as a 
 vase or form, within which is conveyed to us the 
 central actuality, the beautiful myth of the Christian 
 soul. 
 
 And rightly so. For what is the real stuff of the 
 human tragedy, the hunger for bread, or the longing 
 for salvation ? The answer is not doubtful. And 
 this, although it may be, more than half of us are 
 without any conception of that which we seek to 
 save, or what it is from which we seek to fly. The 
 fact remains, the human race is dominated by an 
 inexpressible dtsire for the well-being of a meta- 
 physical something which it cannot conceive of, but 
 calls the soul. And any scheme, even the wildest, 
 that makes profession of accomplishing this object, 
 will meet with some measure of welcome and 
 approval, provided only that he who offers is 
 
THE ORIENTAL EXPERIENCE 169 
 
 sufficiently convinced of the efficacy of his own 
 method. 
 
 Most beautiful, perhaps, of all those known to us, 
 is the series of pictures in which Catholicism paints 
 her promise of deliverance. The little bark of life, 
 in which the soul puts out to sea, to be guided in its 
 tossings and wanderings by a science that the Church 
 names saving knowledge ; the mysterious transition 
 of death, by which it lands on the shores of purifi- 
 cation; and, finally, the pain of sanctification ex- 
 hausted, its being received up into heaven, and 
 attainment of the Beatific Vision. 
 
 But, after ail, are not the symbols somewhat 
 crude ? Heaven and hell, reward and punishment ! 
 Is it not possible for even a child to go beyond 
 these ? Can we attempt to describe what is meant 
 by the moral sense, without implying that we would 
 choose good, though we suffered countless ages for 
 it, and refrain from evil, though it brought us 
 Heaven ? Besides, are there not amongst us parents 
 who refuse to act out a melodrama of judgment 
 every time a baby steals a sugar-plum ? Is the 
 whole universe, multiplied by eternity, only one 
 vast kindergarten ? Or are we somewhere to learn 
 that in self-control itself is beatitude ? How are we 
 to believe in salvation that is expressed as an event ? 
 in unchangeable happiness conferred upon us from 
 without ? in a process of knowledge and praise ? 
 
 Do we not feel within us an ungovernable pro- 
 test against these artificialities, an irrepressible 
 claim for something that is the Nature-of-things, 
 and requires no stage-management ; a desire to be 
 done with vicissitudes, alike of heaven and hell, 
 salvation and perdition, and find some fixed mean, 
 some centre of enduring poise, which shall confer 
 freedom from all perception of antitheses, and know- 
 ledge at last of That which is the thing in itself? 
 Or are we so in love with the limitations of the 
 
I70 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 personal existence, with the fact that our good is 
 another's ill, that present joy is future pain, that we 
 would, if we could, prolong the experience ? 
 
 Some such protest, at least, is apt to be roused in 
 the Oriental by Western dreams of a future life. It 
 is all physical, all sense-impression, he says, and as 
 such is necessarily subject to that law of change and 
 decay which must sooner or later apply to all com- 
 pounds. In the sublime imagination of the Beatific 
 Vision, he catches a hint of a deeper reality, but 
 why, he asks, this distinction between time and 
 eternity? Can the apprehension of the Infinite 
 Good be conditioned by the clock? Oh, for a 
 knowledge undimensioned, untimed, effect of no 
 cause, cause of no effect! Reaching That, and 
 That alone, we could be sure of unchanging bliss, 
 of existence ultimate. But if accessible at all, it 
 must be now in the earth-life or never. It must 
 transcend and still the life of the senses, when the 
 senses are most active ; it must absorb and trans- 
 mute the personal, when personality is capable of 
 every eager claim, or remain for ever incredible, 
 save as one swing of a pendulum, some day to be 
 reversed. 
 
 This is the illumination that India calls the know- 
 ledge of unity, and the gradual appropriation of it 
 by the whole nature, so that it ceases to be mere 
 words and becomes a living actuality, she names 
 realisation. Thus every step, every movement in 
 life is either dull and dead, or on fire with the grow- 
 ing knowledge that we know as spirituality. The 
 highest genius becomes only an incident on the road 
 to supreme blessedness. And the passionless desire 
 of Pheidias that wrought Olympian Zeus, the love 
 of Dante for Beatrice, the "glorious nothingness" 
 of S. Teresa, and the light on the face of Faraday the 
 physicist, are all alike and all equally beads on that 
 rosary whereon the soul's experience is told. For the 
 
THE ORIENTAL EXPERIENCE 171 
 
 whole story in all its forms is summed up, to Indian 
 thinking, in the struggle to pass from the perceiving 
 of manifoldness to the perceiving of One, and every 
 heightening of common knowledge is to be regarded 
 as a step towards this. The kitten at play will 
 pursue first one object and then another with all the 
 bewilderment and disconnectedness of the animal 
 mind, while even the youngest baby will show the 
 superiority of human faculty by its greater persist- 
 ence of purpose and pertinacity of desire. The 
 man of low type is led hither and thither by every 
 impulse ;of sensation, while Archimedes is so ab- 
 sorbed in thought that he never perceives the 
 Roman enter his presence, nor dreams of begging 
 more than time to finish his speculation. 
 
 It must be remembered that to the Eastern in- 
 tellect man himself is the universe, for all differentia- 
 tion is within the mind. India may accept as a 
 working hypothesis the theory that sociology is the 
 synthesis of all the sciences, but her own funda- 
 mental conviction is that psychology occupies this 
 place. Hence to her, power is always lodged in 
 personaHty. Mind is the lord of body, undoubtedly ; 
 but mind, like body, is only the tool of the great 
 Self of Things that stands behind and uses both for 
 its own purpose. Like a strangely complex tele- 
 scope, one part of the instrument stands pointed to 
 give reports of many kinds — of light, sound, weight, 
 smell, taste, and touch ; and by another we are led 
 to conceive of vast ranges of these, outside the 
 possibilities of our immediately perceiving, by which 
 we can build up the conception that we call the 
 Cosmos. But, according to Indian thinking again, 
 perfect control over the apparatus has only been 
 attained when every part of it can be directed at will 
 to a common point — the whole power of investiga- 
 tion brought to bear on any object. When this is 
 done, when the intensest vibration of the whol>". 
 
]72 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 being is reached and every faculty is convergent on 
 the point of attention, then declares India, we, being 
 one, perceive oneness, the mind sees truth face to 
 face. 
 
 How we shall interpret and express the vision is 
 determined wholly by our own past language and 
 discipline. The mother comes out of it to love and 
 serve ; Joan of Arc commands armies with unfalter- 
 ing insight ; Sir Isaac Newton gives us the law of 
 gravitation ; Mozart produces his Requiem Mass, and 
 Ihe Messiah comes down from the mountain side 
 whispering, " I and My Father are One." That is 
 to say, the self-limited joys of sense have given way 
 to the pursuit of the good of others as an end in 
 itself. The man is overpowered by a beauty and a 
 truth that he must needs share with the whole 
 world. Or the finite personality is completed, trans- 
 cended, in union with the absolute and universal. 
 
 There are thus, as the East counts, two modes of 
 existence — one the personal, or egoistic, and the 
 other the impersonal, or supra-personal, where 
 egoism and altruism are alike forgotten. The 
 realisation of this illimitable existence is itself sal- 
 vation, and is to be reached in life, not death. Con- 
 centration is its single secret, and real power is 
 always power over oneself. 
 
 What, then, are the common hindrances to this 
 centring of thought and feeling that we are not all 
 constantly immersed in the Divine intoxication ? 
 And what are the paths by which we are ordinarily 
 led to overcome such hindrances ? For it is to be 
 supposed that, if the experience be authentic, men 
 first stumbled upon it by accident, and formulation 
 of theory came afterwards. 
 
 The mind of man sweeps an infinite circle, and 
 from every point upon the immeasurable circum- 
 ference runs a life-path to the division of Unity as 
 the common centre. Each man is, as it were, a 
 
THE ORIENTAL EXPERIENCE 173 
 
 new window through which all others may look upon 
 the Infinite, each life a new name for That which we 
 call God. The paths, therefore, are countless. No 
 two methods can be exactly the same. Yet there are 
 certain broad characteristics which are more or less 
 general. 
 
 The soul that thirsts for service, gradually expung- 
 ing from the area of motive even the subtler shades 
 of selfishness — such as the preference for special 
 forms of activity, exactingness on behalf of work, 
 and desire for sympathy and affection as the result 
 — this soul will more readily than another lose itself 
 in the supreme intuition of the good of others. 
 "The People" with Mazzini, "the fair realm of 
 France " with Joan of Arc, the fulfilment of duty to 
 his country with the great sovereign or statesman, 
 are amongst the forms which this realisation takes. 
 In such a mood of uttermost blessedness, some have 
 even suffered death by fire. 
 
 The temporary experience, in which the subject 
 becomes unconscious of bodily sensation, is called 
 samadhi. The process by which he comes out of 
 samadhi time after time, to work its volume of force, 
 so to speak, into his daily life, is known as realisa- 
 tion. And the path of service in purity of motive, is 
 spoken of as karma-yoga, or divine union by work. 
 
 Again, we can in some measure understand the 
 development of a nature to whom everything appears 
 in degrees of lovableness. This was undoubtedly 
 the method of S. Francis, and after him of S. Teresa. 
 It is called in India bhakti, or devotion. Gradually, 
 in such souls — guided by the thought of reaching 
 the Infinite in abnegation of self — the power of love 
 becomes a fire scorching, burning, consuming the 
 barriers of individuality. " One cannot understand," 
 says S. Teresa, " what is meant by talking of the 
 
174 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 impermanence of worldly joys. For one would 
 renounce them so much the more gladly, could they 
 but be eternal." Then there is a fusing of all things 
 in the one conception of the Beloved. Lastly, dis- 
 tinction ceases, self is forgotten, there is left nothing, 
 save the Infinite Love. First the prayer of quiet, 
 then the prayer of Union, last the irresistible 
 rapture, says the great Carmelite. Such is bhakti- 
 yoga, the road by which the vast majority of the 
 saints have gone. 
 
 Highest of all, however, is Union by knowledge, 
 ox jnana-yoga. A life whose whole struggle is the 
 passion for truth ; a soul to which falsehood or 
 superstition is the worst of sins; a mind clear as 
 the black depths of a mountain-pool ; an atmosphere 
 of joy, all stillness, all calm, all radiance without 
 emotion ; to these comes the growing intensity of 
 recognition, the increasing power of direct vision, 
 and finally that last illumination, in which there is 
 neither knower, knowing nor known, but all is one in 
 Oneness. It is much to be regretted that we have 
 in English no word corresponding to jnana. In- 
 sight has a certain affinity, but is not sufficiently 
 intense. The fact is, the habit of thought that leads 
 up to the conception is foreign to us : a true parallel- 
 ism is, therefore, out of the question. 
 
 The greatest jnani that has appeared in human 
 history was undoubtedly Buddha, for the calmness 
 of intellect predominates in Him, living through a 
 ministry of more than forty years, though it was 
 the immense outburst of His love and pity (explained 
 as the fruit of five hundred sacrifices of Himself) 
 that drove Him forth on His passionate quest to 
 serve mankind. Then He is also in a high degree 
 a combination of the three types of realisation — by 
 intellect, heart and work. Some measure of this 
 amalgamation there must be in all who use their 
 knowledge for the good of others, of whom the 
 
THE ORIENTAL EXPERIENCE 175 
 
 Incarnations are the culminating type. For in 
 jnana by itself, the personal existence is seen to be 
 a dream, a mere illusion, and it is impossible for 
 him, who has once received its overwhelming reve- 
 lation, to believe that there exist outside himself 
 other centres of illusion for whose emancipation he 
 might work 
 
 For karma, or service, again, there could be no 
 sufficient motive, without the impulse of bhakti. And 
 the madness of divine love, unlighted by knowledge, 
 unawaking to compassion, is almost unthinkable. 
 
 Such are the three ways — truth, devotion, and 
 good works — by which it is said that souls may 
 reach their goal. He who has attained, and remains 
 in life, is called a Paramahamsa, or swan amongst 
 men. And of all such, SukS — he to whom it was 
 given while in mortal form to drink a handful of the 
 waters of the ocean of super-consciousness — is ideal 
 and head. For most men die, it has been said, 
 having heard only the thunder of its waves upon 
 the shore ; a few come within sight : fewer still 
 taste ; to Sukfi alone was it given to drink. Many 
 Mohammedan saints have become Paramahamsas, 
 and are equally loved and reverenced by all religions 
 alike. 
 
 So far of the apprehension of unity when con- 
 sciousness and self-direction have made it vital 
 spirituality. The hindrance to our reaching it is 
 always, it is declared, one, namely, under whatever 
 guise, want of the power to give up self. " When 
 desire is gone, and all the cords of the hearts are 
 broken, then" says the Upanishad, "a man attains 
 to immortality." And by " immortality," it should 
 be understood, is here meant the quality of death' 
 lessness. For this reason, all religions are a call 
 to renunciation ; all ethics negate selfishness of 
 personality ; all disciplines are a repression of indi- 
 vidual impulse. In the Indian doctrine of One 
 
176 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 immanent in the many, all these receive interpretr. 
 tion. The scholars austerity of study ; the artist's 
 striving to become the witness; the lover's desire 
 to sacrifice himself; all speak, however uncon- 
 sciously, of our longing not to be, that the infinite, 
 the universal consciousness, may abide within us. 
 
 The fact that the final achievement is variously 
 known as Freedom, Mukti, or Nirvana, the annihila- 
 tion of the limited, requires, at this point, little 
 explanation. The idea that the perception of mani- 
 foldness is Maya or illusion, that the One is the real, 
 and the many unreal, underlies the whole theory. 
 "They that behold the One in all the changing 
 manifoldness of this universe, unto them belongs 
 eternal peace — unto none else, unto none else." 
 
 Obviously, the final truth of the doctrine is 
 capable of no other proof or disproof than that of 
 experience. But the attitude to it of the common 
 Indian mind is strictly scientific. We cannot prove, 
 save by making the experiment, but we can point to 
 the fact that the accumulated observation of life 
 goes to establish the tenableness of the proposition, 
 says India in effect. And when we are shown one 
 morality that does not demand the holding of unity 
 of principle against manifoldness of impulse ; one 
 science that does not grow by the correlating of 
 apparent discrepancies in continually stricter unities ; 
 or one character that does not find perfection in 
 surrendering the personal to the impersonal, the 
 theory of Maya — real unity amidst apparent diversity 
 — will fall to the ground, and must be acknowledged 
 a misconception. Hitherto, it may be claimed, the 
 whole history of the world has not sufficed to furnish 
 the required exception. 
 
 Thus the beatific vision of Hinduism is not unlike 
 that of Dante's Empyrean, only it is to be relegated 
 to no distant future, but triumphantly vindicated 
 within mortality itself. The name of God and the 
 
THE ORIENTAL EXPERIENCE 177 
 
 conventions of piety are as unreal as anything else 
 in Maya, but they have the power of enabling us to 
 break its bondage, whereas the delights of the senses 
 only fasten it the tighter. 
 
 One point remains. The doctrine with which we 
 have been dealing represents a national culture. 
 Very few in the West can be said to have grasped 
 the whole secret of that for which their country 
 stands. Very few will be found to understand 
 deeply any given idea or subject. The very reverse 
 is the case in the East. Men who have no eman- 
 cipation into the scheme of modern knowledge are 
 emancipated into the sequence of renunciation and 
 freedom. Though India is daily losing her grip on 
 her own character, she is still the motherland of 
 hundreds of the saints. And amongst that people 
 of ancient aristocracies the realm of the ideal is so 
 completely democratised that the poorest peasant, 
 the meanest workman, comprehends what is meant 
 by the great daily prayer of Hinduism : — 
 
 From the Unreal, lead us to the Real I 
 
 From darkness, lead us unto light I 
 
 From death, lead us to immortality ! 
 
 Reach us through and through ourself, 
 
 And evermore protect us — O Thou Terrible ! — 
 
 From ignorance by Thy sweet compassionate Face. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 THE WHEEL OF BIRTH AND DEATH 
 
 Reflection has taught me that there is nothing 
 mightier than Destiny. . . . Zeus bows to her power. 
 She surpasses iron in hardness. — Euripedes' AUtstis. 
 
 Heredity is a condition, not a destiny. — Bjornson. 
 
 As a man casts off worn-out clothes, and puts on 
 others which are new, so the embodied casts off worn- 
 cut bodies, and puts on others which are new. — 
 Bhagavad Giid. 
 
 The crucial feature of the Greek conception of life 
 was the dramatic distinction which it made between 
 will and the conditions with which will had to cope. 
 Just as surely as our birth on the planet Earth 
 gives us a place, definite, however infinitesimal, in 
 the solar system, relating us in our degree to all 
 that occurs within the orbit of the farthest satellite, 
 so it is clear that our position, geographically, 
 ethnologically, historically, upon that planet, places 
 us from the beginning at definite points on lines of 
 cause and effect, to which, as human beings, we can 
 but exercise the function o* a'^ceptance. This Not- 
 to-be-refused, which modern science calls natural 
 law, was simply to the Greek an unexplained and 
 unexplored Necessity or Fate. 
 
 To the ancients, a curse, for example, was no 
 exercise of the volition of the speaker. It was in no 
 sense a threat. Our own more frivolous use of the 
 word is a case of degradation by the death of a 
 conception. To the old Greek, as indeed to the 
 
THE WHEEL OF BIRTH AND DEATH 179 
 
 Hindu and the Norseman, a curse was entirely a 
 prophecy. It was pronounced by way of warning 
 or revelation that upon a certain act certain results 
 would be found to follow Apollo perceives that if 
 Laios begets a son, disaster will result. He does 
 not determine that it shall be so. Evidently, will is 
 regarded as free up to a certain point, or we should 
 not have the alternative imagined, of begetting no 
 son. But to CEdipus and his children there is no 
 alternative ; he and they have been born in that 
 circle of destiny where they can only fulfil the lot 
 marked out. 
 
 This fact the Greek mind appears to accept with- 
 out further inquiry For it, overwhelming interest 
 attaches, not to an analysis of the nature and condi- 
 tions of fate, but to the spectacle of the human will 
 in spiritual conflict with it. This spectacle is the 
 theme of the whole of Hellenic tragedy. The 
 Christian doctrine of grace introduces something 
 confused and miraculous into the European idea of 
 life, and for centuries the pursuit of the knowledge 
 of things as they are is thwarted by a supernatural 
 metaphysic of things as they ought to be, and are 
 not. With the Renaissance, however, the intellect 
 of Europe springs back sharply to the Greek posi- 
 tion. Macbeth and Othello are in some ways as 
 completely Hellenic as anything of iEschylus, 
 Temptation is once more placed outside a man ; 
 true and false incentives are inextricably blended ; 
 and the will is shown as the mere plaything of its 
 own blindness. On these points, and in the feeling 
 of vastness with which he covers his subject, Shakes- 
 peare's delineation is all Greek. 
 
 In Macbeth, it is true, a sense of ethical suffering 
 somewhat blurs the outline. But nothing dims the 
 perfect beauty of Othello. Untortured by misgiving 
 its heroic figures move from the dawn of their love 
 to the noontide of supreme vindication of its purity 
 
i8o THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 in death. The particular problem is not antique. 
 Its delicacy of tint is somewhat modern, but in sim- 
 plicity and grandeur, in the conviction that life is a 
 mere straw swept along on the current of necessity 
 Othello is an ancient drama. 
 
 One great difference between the Hellenisms of 
 antiquity and of the Renaissance lay in the fact that 
 organisation was at the disposal of the modern. 
 Isolated genius writes dramas, elaborates philoso- 
 phies, or carves statues : organised genius produces 
 scientific inquiry. In some sense modern science is 
 nothing but the efficient development of the 
 Aristotelian and Alexandrian elements of classical 
 thought. The human will itself, however, is the 
 one thing eternally baffling to human research. 
 There is no crucible in which it can be melted. All 
 science, therefore, resolves itself into the old 
 problem of the Greek dramatist — the problem of due 
 observation of the conditions which confront the 
 will ; and it is by a strictly logical development of 
 the thought of the ancients — a thought which 
 scarcely dreamt of any distinction between a man 
 and his body — that we arrive at the modern concep- 
 tion of body-and-brain as the last and crucially 
 important element of destiny. 
 
 Its naivete is at once the strength and weakness of 
 European thought. The springs of modern fiction 
 are still brackish with the salt of our enthusiasm 
 about heredity. Recent talk of degeneration is little 
 more than the bitterness left within a cup. Like 
 every single truth mistaken for the whole, heredity 
 would impose as great a bondage on the human 
 spirit as any system ot fatalism. Of what use the 
 fight against the weakness or ignorance of one's 
 ancestors ? What hope of victory over the taint 
 that is in the blood ? And yet, high over all law 
 and all instruments rose, rises, and shall for ever 
 rise, the human will, its brow bright with the sun- 
 
THE WHEEL OF BIRTH AND DEATH i8i 
 
 shine of freedom, its foot on the foe that our subtle 
 criticism had pronounced invincible, serene in the 
 knowledge of its own power to defy alike heredity 
 and the nature-of-things, and make for itself out 
 of the web of failure the mantle of a supreme 
 victory. 
 
 But this will so often seems asleep I Unaroused, 
 or ignorant as a child, it has turned aside perhaps 
 for every wayside flower, for any shining pebble, 
 and in the hour of the crisis is simply missing. Or 
 it may be that it suffers from some base intoxication 
 of falsehood or desire, and has fallen down to kiss 
 the feet of evil as though it were good, courting 
 slavery and defeat as maidens to be caressed. 
 Surely here, and here alone, is the crux of things, 
 in the difference between the enlightened and the 
 unenlightened will. Necessity is but the sum of the 
 conditions. Heredity is but one, though the most 
 critical, of those conditions. In the setting of the 
 will itself towards bondage or towards freedom lies 
 the secret of the unity of life. 
 
 There are thus three factors in the interpretation 
 of human life, and it has been the distinction of 
 Asiatic thought to have recognised all three. A 
 profound certitude that cause must sooner or later 
 be followed by effect, while effect has as surely been 
 preceded by cause, gives to the Indian temperament 
 an air of quiet resignation which is far from being 
 the inactive fatalism so commonly supposed. For 
 there is surely the difference of extremes between a 
 dignified acceptance of things because they are 
 unaccountable and not to be interfered with, and a 
 similar dignified acceptance because they are so 
 entirely accountable that events require no accelera- 
 tion ! 
 
 That India understands the doctrine of heredity is 
 demonstrated by caste. There alone, amongst all 
 the countries of the world, it has been held for ages 
 
i82 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 an unpardonable social dishonour to allow the dis- 
 eased or deformed or mentally alienated to marry. 
 For such, the quietly enforced decree of caste has 
 been always — no posterity. But more than this, 
 the very meaning of the institution is, amongst 
 other things, the attempt to develop still further the 
 brain of the Brahmin, the hand of the toolbearer, 
 and every form of expert faculty. It is true that it 
 rejects the crossing of blood as a means to this end, 
 but it looks to the cumulative influence of careful 
 selection from generation to generation, to that of 
 the occupational environment, and to the inheritance 
 of the effects of clean-feeding. The last is held 
 specially important to the user of the brain : hence 
 the Brahmin represents more than any other the 
 fibre produced by countless generations of care in 
 this respect, and the lower we go in society the less 
 do we find of such transmission. 
 
 But the Indian comprehension of the nature of 
 things and of heredity as complementary elements 
 in the scheme presented to the will has never meant 
 blindness to the last and most important considera- 
 tion of all — the efficiency of the will itself. If this 
 were not the determining factor, India would say, it 
 would not be possible, as it is, to watch two brothers, 
 with the same inheritance, the same material oppor- 
 tunities, and the same moral environment, journey, 
 one to glory and the other to shame, by a common 
 road. And if it were not also the ultimate standard 
 of success or failure, the Greek story of Aristides, 
 for instance, would lose all its pathos. For we all 
 know how, when an ignorant man asked his help in 
 casting his vote for the condemnation of Aristides, 
 the great man first complied with his request, and 
 then, on mildly inquiring its reason, was answered, 
 " I am tired of hearing him called ' the just.' " 
 
 Is it here, or in the story of Dives and Lazarus, 
 that we catch a glimpse of inequality ? Which is 
 
THE WHEEL OF BIRTH AND DEATH 183 
 
 the crueller perplexing of our sense of justice — that 
 one man receives wealth and another poverty, or 
 that one cannot wish well, nor another ill ? 
 
 The answer of India is not doubtful. There is 
 one tool and only one, she says, that is finer than 
 the most perfect human brain, and that is the tool 
 of a noble intention. No more than other delicate 
 instruments is this, she claims, immediately pro- 
 ducible wherever we may wish to see it. Just as 
 faculty grows from feeble and unrationalised to its 
 perfection, just as organisms progress from minute 
 and simple to large and complex, so must we suppose 
 that will passes through all the stages of egotism 
 till it reaches that illumination which we know as 
 perfect charity. At each stage the possibilities of 
 aspiration are limited, though they become less and 
 less so as the goal is approached. The whole Hindu 
 outlook is thus critical and scientific. There is no 
 longer a vague horrible something called sin : this 
 has given place to a clearly defined state of igno- 
 rance, or blindness of the will. Nor is this ignorance 
 conceived of as a stationary or fixed quantity. So 
 surely as trees grow and rivers seek the sea will it 
 sooner or later give place to knowledge, in every 
 human soul ; and then a man's mere forgetfulness 
 of his limited personahty and its aims may look to 
 others like nobility : to himself it will not even be 
 apparent, lost in the larger yearning of more 
 universal life. Thus a great and generous thought 
 is like a position near the river-mouth to the water 
 springing at the source, not by any means to be 
 reached without traversing the complete distance. 
 The supreme good fortune possible to man would 
 consist of a noble intention, joined to a great brain, 
 joined to an external position of mastery and freedom 
 an advantageous point, that is to say, on some line 
 of cause and effect. Such, we may take it, to 
 Gautama the Buddha, was the opportunity of his 
 
i84 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 birth. Most lives, however, represent every possible 
 degree, and combination of degrees, of the three 
 conditions. We see the great position made the 
 background of stupidity and meanness. We see 
 the kind wish rendered futile by feebleness of 
 intellect. Very occasionally there is no discord 
 between person and circumstance ; but now and 
 again the discrepancy takes the acute form of the 
 lion caught in the net, or the common criminal 
 wearing an emperor's crown. Whence have these 
 anomalies arisen ? In what firm order do they stand 
 rooted ? 
 
 The Hindu mind seems always to have been 
 possessed of th<?i:*uiet confidence that all phenomena 
 will yield themselves to a rational explanation. 
 Since " that which exists is one," it is absurd to 
 suppose an ultimate contradiction between the 
 human reason and the universe. The mind that is 
 normal and right amongst its fellows is normal and 
 right in its relation to things. If we see and hear 
 and taste, it is because in primal vibration there is 
 something correspondent to sight and sound and 
 the rest, of which our human sense has been the 
 necessary outcome. Our faculty, that is to say, 
 may be feeble, but we must assume it to be true. 
 If thirty years of life can impress us with a sense 
 of terrible duration, utterly disproportionate to their 
 relative importance, it is because in the Absolute 
 there is no passage of time, all the infinite eternities 
 of consciousness lying in the Now. If human love 
 can oppress us with a vastness undreamed of, 
 suddenly opened before us, it is because in it we have 
 approximated to a state which transcends all limit 
 and all change. Whatever be the nature of the 
 Real it must include, not exclude, consciousness. 
 This being so, we must take it that the order of 
 things as we see them — time, space, and causation 
 — applies to life itself as naturally as to all that 
 
THE WHEEL OF BIRTH AND DEATH 185 
 
 within the limits of life we perceive. Our appearance 
 here from birth to death is a simple case of the 
 sequences that every moment of our stay brings to 
 our notice. It is the eifect of some cause which 
 could no more have failed to find its fulfilment in 
 time and space than the self-striking of a bird's wing- 
 could fail to be accompanied by flight. Everything, 
 again, within the general effect, is a subordinate 
 effect conditioned by its own subordinate cause. 
 Physical, mental, and moral, are only terms denoting 
 so many dimensions, as it were, within which the 
 seed has germinated and come to its fruition. So 
 much for the effect. Do things, as we see them, 
 give us any hint as to the nature of the cause? 
 Yes, there is one force — the force of desire — that 
 we see at work daily, making, cherishing, gathering, 
 action and its fruits. Without this as creative 
 antecedent it will be found on examination that 
 nothing that we know of comes to pass. Hence if 
 life as a whole be regarded as but a phenomenon 
 similar in kind to those which it encloses, we are 
 impelled to the conclusion that of it also the efficient 
 cause has been the human will. We dreamed of 
 ourselves as bodies. Falling into some strange 
 error, we longed for the sweets of sense. And we 
 awoke and, without knowing it, found ourselves in 
 prison, there but to continue adding to the energy of 
 those desires, each of which was already a fetter 
 binding us the faster. Such is the Hindu inter- 
 pretation of our presence here. Of what led to our 
 self-deceit he attempts no account, conceiving that 
 his right to a rational theory applies only to the 
 phenomenal, meaning those things that are perceived 
 within the play of reason. 
 
 Thus, life is a harvest reaped at birth. It is also 
 the sowing of fresh harvests for the painful reaping 
 of the future. Every act is as a seed, effect of past 
 cause, cause of effect to come — Karma. The unend- 
 
i86 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 ing wheel of birth and change and death. For the 
 Hindu does not consider that a single life alone is 
 to be accounted for. The very constitution of our 
 minds forces on us the idea that phenomena are 
 cyclic ; that appearances recur ; that the starry 
 Universe itself blooms and will wither like another 
 flower. Clearly then the causes that have placed 
 us here to-day must bring us again ; must, in the 
 circling of infinite ages, have brought us infinite 
 times before. This is the doctrine of Reincarnation. 
 Our ignorance now tells of a deeper ignorance in 
 the past. The desires that burn within us are but 
 our subjective apprehension of what is yet to be. 
 For that which we long for must come to our hand. 
 The Karma of each birth is only the harvest of our 
 ancient wishes. 
 
 What the victim of desire so constantly forgets, 
 however, is the twofold nature of things, and their 
 constant state of flux. Good brings evil ; wealth is 
 succeeded by poverty : love is but a messenger sent 
 before the feet of sorrow. In fact, the seeming 
 benefits of material things are in reality scourges, 
 sooner or later to lash the very back of him who 
 drew them to himself. None, for instance, could be 
 so puerile as to declare palaces, jewels, and horses 
 as good in themselves, so that their chance possession 
 now and again should be any compensation for the 
 suffering of requiring them. It is little more exalted, 
 says the Hindu, to claim love, intellect, and salva- 
 tion, as necessities. The world of Maya consists of 
 the perpetual alternation of opposites. Every 
 desire carries its fulfilment, its decay, and its retri- 
 bution hidden within itself. That what we would 
 have we must first give, is the lesson of austerity. 
 
 The Karma of an individual, then, consists of a 
 given condition of taste or knowledge, a given 
 physical equipment, and a given share of material 
 fortune or misfortune. Taste sometimes rises to 
 
THE WHEEL OF BIRTH AND DEATH 187 
 
 genius, or sinks to brutish appetite. Tiie physical 
 equipment may include a mathematician's brain, a 
 violinist's hand, or a body tortured by perverse 
 temptations. In any case, according to the theory, 
 the will that has come to administer, earned exactly 
 that endowment, and in this respect hfe is justly 
 distributed. It is thought not unnatural that the 
 soul of a Bach should seek incarnation in a family 
 of musicians, since here it could best find the condi- 
 tions it demanded. With regard to such matters, a 
 vast lore has been accumulated, into which it is in- 
 teresting to dip. There is a popular belief amongst 
 Hindus that marriage is always contracted between 
 the same two persons, and that the merit of either 
 is divided equally with the other. However this 
 may be, love at first sight — an occasional experience 
 the world over ! — is held a sure proof of past friend- 
 ship and acquaintance. Very perfect relationships, 
 by which is meant, amongst other things, those that 
 are complex in their quality, would be considered in 
 the same way, to be long-rooted. The religious life 
 is one of the most fascinating subjects of speculation. 
 It will sometimes happen that the stern ascetic in the 
 midst of his austerities yields to, or at least har- 
 bours, some vain desire. This is enough to precipi- 
 tate him once more into the world, where his position 
 and power will be exactly equal to the severity of 
 his past renunciations. He may thus very easily 
 become a monarch, and it is believed that a faint 
 memory of the religious habit often haunts the 
 throne. The great Akbar of Delhi told of such a 
 reminiscence in his own case. He had been a 
 monastic novice, and had fallen in love ! When 
 sovereignty was exhausted, however, he would 
 return to his prayers and gain freedom, without 
 another fall. An impression of this kind about Queen 
 Victoria was the real secret of the influence of her 
 name in India — an influence, be it added, which 
 
i88 THE WEP OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 would have been much deepened had she succeeded 
 in abdicating some few years before her death, in 
 order to devote the rest of her life to God. 
 
 We must remember, however, that the Oriental, 
 born to the idea of re-incarnation, rarely becomes so 
 infatuated with it as to make it his sole dependence 
 in interpreting life. He does not lose his head over 
 it, as may one who hears of it for the first time. He 
 is well aware that, on his own hypothesis, we are 
 engaged in the sowing of seed, as well as the reaping 
 of grain. He will not therefore attempt to explain 
 every new introduction from an imaginary past. 
 This life is to him but one measure in a long passage 
 of music. The great majority of its tones gain all 
 their beauty and meaning from the fact that they were 
 prepared beforehand and will be resolved after, but 
 some nevertheless are new. That we do not, as a 
 rule, remember our pasts is, he argues, no disproof 
 of their existence, since neither do we remember our 
 birth and infancy. 
 
 It is this clearness of logical speculation that lends 
 its terror to the Indian notion of existence. To the 
 wise man, frankly, life is a bondage, and the only 
 question how to be freed from it. Suicide cannot 
 solve the problem. The reasons for this act may be 
 frivolous or weighty. It is an instrument as much 
 within a man's own power as the tools of his calling 
 or the weapons of self-defence. Only, it offers no 
 escape from the misery of existence. Can the 
 schoolboy make progress in arithmetic by wiping 
 from his slate the sum he could not work ? Will not 
 that particular difficulty recur whenever he would 
 take an onward step, confusing, taunting, blinding 
 him, till it is conquered ? Even so is the lot of the 
 suicide, thinks the Hindu. He desired to escape the 
 rope of justice? Then in some future incursion into 
 life it will become his Karma to stand on the scaffold 
 and undergo the extreme penalty, for a crime he has 
 
THE WHEEL OF BIRTH AND DEATH 189 
 
 not committed. He would flee from a dishonour he 
 had not strength to endure ? No coward's self- 
 banishment shall sufRce to save him. Sooner or 
 later the ordeal must be met and faced. Or was it 
 the abstract hatred of life that used his own hand to 
 slay the man ? Fool ! saw he not that the act 
 was part and parcel of an extreme self-indulgence, 
 and must bring its terrible consequence of exile 
 from all that could make existence beautiful and 
 blessed ? 
 
 Desire, in short, is the ego-centripetal, the self- 
 assertive, self-regarding force. The current must 
 be turned out deliberately, not drawn inward. 
 The passion for self must be destroyed in the thirst 
 for service. Desire must be burnt to ashes in the 
 fires of renunciation. Then, and then only, will there 
 be escape from the incessant turning of the wheel. 
 Then alone can the victim become the conqueror, and 
 the slave master of the world. 
 
 This is the " cosmic suicide " of Schopenhauer, 
 the much talked-of " pessimism " of the East. It 
 is indeed a familiar conception to all Hindus, so 
 familiar as to be an integral part of language. But 
 it is hardly " pessimism." Does the prophecy of 
 victory carry with it sadness? the certain promise of 
 his freedom embitter the slave ? There is a sense in 
 which, if Hindu philosophy be not optimistic, it is 
 difficult to know what the world means by optimism. 
 Taking the doctrine of reincarnation as a whole, we 
 find it so necessary to the theory of Maya that even 
 the Buddhist formulation could not exist without 
 some version of it. At the same time, a clear 
 understanding of it is a valuable corrective of slip- 
 shod misconceptions as to the philosophy of illusion. 
 That this involves no lazy intellectual uncertainty 
 regarding phenomena we have seen, since the whole 
 doctrine of Karma is based on the Hindu's implicit 
 conviction of the entire calculableness of law. It 
 
rgo THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 cannot be too clearly understood that the argument 
 of Mayja is compatible with, and tenacious of, the 
 severest scientific research, and that to Oriental 
 thinking, only that man who has in his own person, 
 by some method of self-discipline, achieved a realisa- 
 tion, compared to which all that we know through 
 the senses is unreal, has a right to speak of the 
 phenomenal universe as, to him, fundamentally an 
 illusion. The effort to reach this vision remains, 
 nevertheless, to the Oriental mind the one end and 
 justification of existence, the one escape from the 
 wheel of life, and mankind is for ever divisible into 
 those who see and struggle towards such a goal, and 
 those who are engaged in sowing the wind, and 
 reaping the whirlwind, of Desire. 
 
 The battlefield of Kurukshetra lies silent these 
 many centuries, yet still to the ear of the wise man 
 it echoes the doom of Humanity in the terrible words 
 " of that which is born, death is certain . of that 
 which is dead, birth is certain." 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE STORY OF THE GREAT GOD : SIVA OR 
 MAHADEV 
 
 Thou that art knowledge itself, 
 
 Pure, free, ever the witness. 
 
 Beyond all thought and beyond all qualities, 
 
 To Thee, the only true Guru, my salutation, 
 
 Siva Guru ! Siva Guru ! Siva Guru ! 
 
 Salutation to Siva, as the Teacher of the Soul. 
 
 In India's great moments, the Himalayas have 
 always been her highway, not her boundary. Those 
 strings of pack-mules, with their sorry-locking rice- 
 bags, that we meet on every hill-path, as we wander 
 through the mountains, are the remains of a great 
 continental traffic that once carried the religion into 
 China. For beliefs, like diseases, do not travel 
 alone. The pilgrim is accompanied by the pedlar : 
 the begging-friar dogs the footsteps of the merchant ; 
 the faith follows the line of trade. It may be that 
 if Chinese silk and turquoise had not found their 
 way to India many centuries before the birth of 
 Buddha, the news of the Great Nirvana could never 
 have reached the remoter East. 
 
 To this day, we find ancient capitals and their 
 ruins, old fortresses, royal temples, scattered up and 
 down the heights from Beluchistan to Nepal, in 
 regions long depopulated. And Himalayan shrines 
 and cities have an art and architecture of their own, 
 \/hich is more severely beautiful, because more 
 
192 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 directly related to the common early Asiatic, than 
 the later styles, to be found further south. For 
 the first culture-area of humanity had these 
 mountains as its rim. Long before a local pre- 
 possession had named the Mediterranean, Asia was. 
 And of that Asia, Egypt, Greece, Etruria, were 
 outlying provinces. The Saracen and Moor, with 
 all that they brought of art and chivalry, with all 
 the intellectual vividness they conferred on Europe, 
 were but the relic-mongers of its past. In the 
 West, even now, we admit a people to be civilised 
 only if we can trace its intellectual descent from 
 this ancient Asia. 
 
 Above all, it is the broken voices of its primitive 
 consciousness that are hailed to-day in every civilised 
 country as divine revelations. India herself is no 
 exception to this rule. For all the migrations of 
 Asokan and other periods pale beside the memory 
 of the still more significant era when for the first 
 time there came to settle on the Northern Plain 
 those little communities of people, already agricul- 
 tural and industrial in their habits, who carried with 
 them the culture of Central Asia. It was not a 
 regimented immigration. The Lall Kaffir, or pale 
 folk, dwelling to this day in the Hindu Kuch, were 
 not deserters, turning aside from the line of march. 
 We must rather suppose a gradual overflow, through 
 many centuries, of the Himalayan region. And yet, 
 at some time or place, it must have been sufficiently 
 consolidated and self-organised to become conscious 
 of its great heritage of thought, to commit its 
 knowledge to writing, and to give form and definition 
 to the Aryan civilisation. 
 
 Wherever and whenever it may have happened, 
 this was the moment at which long ages of accumu- 
 lating reflection and observation precipitated them- 
 selves into form as the Vedas. Even so are all 
 Scriptures born. The Tartar herdsman, facing his 
 
THE STORY OF THE GREAT GOD 193 
 
 unknown future as a peasant, records at once his 
 ideals and his memories, and we have the Eki, or 
 Book of Change, of the Chinese people. The austere 
 self-isolation of a few tribes of Syrian shepherds 
 fronts with terror the degradation of Babylonian 
 cities, and the prophets pour out their sublime woes. 
 The Latin Church carries to the Norse peasant with 
 one hand the waters of baptism, with the other the 
 script, by means of which he is to write down his 
 magnificent sagas. The old order blossoms into 
 complete self-consciousness at that very instant when 
 every petal trembles to the fall; 
 
 So passed the Vedic age, for the Aryans settled 
 down in India, and became Hindus. The process 
 by which this was accomplished must have been 
 complex and gradual. In some directions towards 
 a greater luxury, it must have been fundamentally a 
 simplification of life. The builders of the Himalayas 
 had used wood and stone. The builders of the plains 
 used bamboos, mud, and bricks ; and their archi- 
 tectural designs began to approximate to those of 
 pottery. The weavers of Central Asia had worked 
 in wool, doubtless of marvellous dyes. The crafts- 
 men of the South were driven to cotton and silk. 
 That system of ritual purification which was 
 common to the whole of the Asiatic culture, and 
 which is still retained by Europe in the form of 
 sacraments and rubrics, must have been deepened 
 and extended to meet the new climatic conditions. 
 Natural metaphor underwent transformation. Cool- 
 ness was exchanged for warmth as the qualification 
 of friendship. Himalayan scenery was no longer 
 present to give constant birth to grand myths and 
 colossal imaginary. That gradual absorption of 
 regional thought and worship began, which was to 
 produce what in its latest phase would be known as 
 Hinduism. But it was always to be absorption. 
 It was always to be the play of the Aryan intellect 
 
194 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 upon the indigenous symbol ; never the acceptance 
 of a superstition that could not be rationalised. 
 This wonderful continuity of thinking marks the 
 solidarity of Hinduism as nothing else could. Every 
 creed within its frontiers — and they are wide enough 
 to include all types of religious thought — can prove 
 the Vedas to be its authority. Even the image of 
 the Goddess Kali is held to be foreshadowed in the 
 sublime Anthem to Creation of the Rig- Veda : 
 
 The Self sustained as Cause below, 
 Projected as Effect above. 
 
 We find in India, then, a classical nation like 
 Egypt or Greece, which has been allowed to develop 
 freely on the mental plane, and has held the thread 
 of its thought unbroken to the present day. It may 
 be said broadly that great culture and subjective 
 philosophies are almost always continental in their 
 origin, while the sense of nationality and insistence 
 on the beautiful are insular. If this be true, it 
 would explain the greater sympathy between Hellenic 
 and Japanese developments than between Greek and 
 Indian. 
 
 For the Hindu imagination long ago detached 
 itself from the cycle of physical beauty, to seek its 
 fullest satisfaction in subtler realms. This fact is 
 extraordinarily evident in Kalidas' poem of "The 
 birth of the War- Lord," where he depicts the woo- 
 ing of Mahadev by Uma, the Himalayan princess. 
 Here the poet places his heroine at the very acme 
 of maidenly charm, kneeling in worship to lay 
 flowers at the feet of the Great God, and having as 
 her background the forest of plum and cherry and 
 almond, all suddenly burst into blossom, because to 
 them comes Spring, as the comrade of Love. And 
 then, with a single sweep of the brush, the picture 
 is blotted out : the Great God has vanished from 
 beneath his cedar ; Eros is burnt to ashes ; and the 
 
IHE STORY OF THE GREAT GOD 195 
 
 royal maiden kneels alone, while the bitter wailing 
 of Desire, the beautiful wife of Love, fills the whole 
 woodland. Uma's triumph is reached, and the 
 Divine Spouse drawn to her side, only when, in the 
 midst of unheard-of austerities, she gives supreme 
 proof of courage and devotion as nun and worshipper 
 instead of woman and lover. This touch lies far 
 beyond the range of the Greek. 
 
 A similar tendency to use physical symbolism as 
 a system of notation merely, instead of seeking in it 
 the direct and adequate expression of spiritual con- 
 ceptions, as did the classical genius of Europe, is to 
 be found throughout the whole conception of Siva or 
 Mahadev, the Great God Himself. The tiger-skin 
 in which he is clad, and some of the names of this 
 deity, induce Tod in his " Annals of Rajasthan " to 
 regard him as simply a new version of the Greek 
 Bacchus. It is a great deal more likely that behind 
 the two, in the dim North, and in the distant past — 
 in some Lake Manasarovar of thought, to quote 
 Max Miiller — ^there may loom up a common ancestor. 
 But this probability only makes more significant the 
 divergences between the two conceptions. 
 
 Any one who visits Northern India must desire 
 to know the meaning of the little black stones under 
 every conspicuous tree, which are so evidently set 
 up for v/orship. They are said by Europeans to be 
 of phallic origin; but if so, Hindus are no more 
 conscious of the fact than we of the similar origin 
 of the maypole. Wherever one goes, one finds 
 them, by the roadsides in cities and villages, on the 
 river-banks, or inside the entrance to a garden, ii 
 there is a tree that stands alone. For in such 
 places one is glad to think that the Great God, 
 begging His handful of rice from door to door, 
 may have seated Himself to bless us with His 
 meditation. 
 
 The small stone pillar, called the lingam — the 
 
196 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 word lingam is literally symbol — may have been 
 taken from the bed of a stream, and in that case is 
 likely to be of a long egg-shape. But if it has been 
 cut by the hand of man, it is short and slightly 
 tapering, with a thimble-like top. Sometimes, in all 
 good faith, the features of a human face have been 
 more or less crudely marked on it, with white paint. 
 In any case, it is only a question of time till some 
 woman, passing by on her way from bathing, stops 
 to pour a little water, or sprinkle a few grains of 
 rice tenderly over the head of the stone, perhaps 
 also to add bel-leaves, trifoliate like our clover; 
 or a garland of white flowers ; or, prompted 
 by a heart more devoted and loving than usual, 
 to touch it with a spot of sandal-paste, so cool 
 and refreshing in this hot climate! Then the 
 earth is touched with the head, and the worshipper 
 passes on. 
 
 The simple act is not without its perplexities, and 
 we seek for interpretation. At first in vain. Or 
 the explanations given are more bewildering than 
 helpful. Hindus are too conscious of the symbolistic 
 nature of every faith, and too sensitive also to the 
 scornful irreverence of most foreign inquirers, to 
 speak out, or argue out, the heart of their heart with 
 the passing stranger. Rather they will turn on one, 
 with a strange pity. " Do you not understand," 
 they will say, " that this is the Great God who is 
 emblemed here ? He can have neither visitor, nor 
 history, nor worshipper. Such things are vaip 
 dreams of men. Only for our own hearts' ease, and 
 to carry ourselves nearer to the inner vision, do we 
 set up a stone whereon we may offer rice and water 
 and lay a leaf or two 1 " It will be difficult in all 
 India to find a woman so simple, or a peasant so 
 ignorant, that to them worship is not, as some one 
 has said, " a conscious symbolism, instead of a frag- 
 tjient of primitive personification." Yet by degrees 
 
THE STORY OF THE GREAT GOD 197 
 
 the great myth leaks out. Little by little we learn 
 the associations of the name. 
 
 The lingam, after all, is but a fragment of stone. 
 Far better images of Mahadev are those who come 
 and go yonder, amidst the passing crowd — the 
 monks and beggars, some clad only in ashes with 
 matted hair, others with shaven head, and clothed 
 from throat to foot in the sacred yellow, but most of 
 them bearing one form or another of staff or trident, 
 and carrying a begging bowl. And finer still will 
 these be, when, retiring into the forest, or climbing 
 to the verge of eternal snows, they sit, even like 
 this stone lingam, bolt upright in the shelter of tree 
 or rock, lost to the world without, in solitary medi- 
 tation. 
 
 About the whole conception there is a striking 
 reminiscence of the Himalayas. Whether we will 
 or not we are carried back, as we listen, to the great 
 age of the Vedas, when the Aryan immigration was 
 still taking place. It is a day of sacrifice, and at the 
 forest-clearing people and priests are met, to heap 
 the offerings on the mighty fire, chanting appro- 
 priate texts. Hour after hour, sometimes day after 
 day, the mound of pure flame lasts, and long after 
 it has ceased the hot white ashes lie in their immense 
 bed, thriUing now and then to a faint trickling 
 spark, sighing themselves out into the coldness of 
 death. Who was it that first came and rubbed 
 himself with those soft white ashes, in order to be 
 clothed upon with the worship of God and separa- 
 tion from the world ? Who was it that first retired 
 into cave or jungle, and meditated, until his hair 
 became a tangled mass, and his nails grew long, and 
 his body emaciated, and he still pursued the sublime 
 bliss of the soul ? However the idea of such an ex- 
 terior grew, the whole genius of India has spoken for 
 many a century in just such a picture — the hermit 
 clad in wooH-ashes, with masses of neglected hair, 
 
198 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 piled on the top of his head, indifferent to the whole 
 world, bent only on thought. 
 
 As the Aryans wandered in sight of the snow- 
 mountains, with the fire-sacrifice for their central 
 rite, an indissoluble connection arose in their minds 
 between the two ideas. Were not the flames of the 
 offerings white like the Himalayas, always mounting 
 upward like the aspiring peaks, leaving behind them 
 ashes for eternal frost ? Those snowy heights, we 
 must suppose, became the central objects of their 
 love. Lifted above the world in silence, terrible in 
 their cold and their distance, yet beautiful beyond 
 all words, what are they like ? Why, they are like 
 — a great monk, clothed in ashes, lost in his medita- 
 tion, silent and alone I They are like — like — the 
 Great God Himself, Siva, Mahadev ! 
 
 Having arrived at this thought, the Hindu mind 
 began to work out all sorts of accessories and symbols, 
 in which sometimes the idea of flame, sometimes of 
 mountain, sometimes of hermit is uppermost — all 
 contributing to the completed picture of Siva, the 
 Great God. 
 
 The wood was borne to the sacrifice on a bull: Siva 
 possesses an old bull, on which he rides. 
 
 As the moon shines above the mountains, so He 
 bears on His forehead the new moon. 
 
 Like the true ascetic, begging food at the house- 
 holder's door. He is pleased with very simple gifts. 
 The cold water of the bath, a few grains of rice, and 
 two or three green bel-leaves, are His whole offering 
 in the daily worship. But the rice and water must 
 be of the purest, for they are presented to a most 
 honoured guest. Evidently the bel-leaf, like the 
 shamrock, refers to the Trinity. For, as we all 
 know, this doctrine is Hindu as well as Christian 
 and Egyptian. 
 
 To show how easily Siva can be pleased, the people 
 tell a pretty story. A poor huntsman — that is to 
 
THE STORY OF THE GREAT GOD 199 
 
 say, one of the lowest of the low — once came to the 
 end of a day's hunting without having snared or 
 killed a single creature. Night came on, and he was 
 far from home, in the jungle, alone. Near by stood 
 a bel-tree, with branches near the ground, and he 
 was glad to climb, into it, to pass the night in shelter 
 from wild beasts. But as he lay crouching in its 
 branches, the thought of his wife and children 
 starving at home would come to him, and for pity of 
 their need great tears rolled down his cheeks, and 
 falling on the bel-leaves broke them by their weight, 
 and carried them to the ground. Under the sacred 
 tree, however, stood a Siva-lingam, image of Siva, 
 and the tears fell, with the leaves, on its head. 
 That night a black snake crept up the tree, and 
 stung the man. And bright spirits came, and 
 carried his soul to Heaven, and laid it down at the 
 feet of Siva. 
 
 Then, in that holy place, rose the clamour of many 
 voices questioning : " Why is this savage here ? 
 Has he not eaten impure foods? Has he oflFered 
 right sacrifices ? Has he known the law ? " But 
 the Great God turned on them all in gentle surprise : 
 " Did he not worship Me with bel-leaves and with 
 tears ? " He said. 
 
 Looking closer at the flame, however, one thing 
 was very clear. It was white, but it had a blue 
 throat — we see it even when we light a match! — 
 and in order to bestow a blue throat upon Siva, the 
 following story arose : 
 
 Once upon a time, all the splendour and glory of 
 the gods seemed to be vanishing from them. (Are 
 such tales, we wonder, a reminiscence of the period 
 when the old gods, Indra, Agni, and the lords of the 
 universe, found themselves growing unfashionable, 
 because the Trinity, Brahma — Vishnu — Siva, was 
 coming into favour ?) What to do, the gods did not 
 know, but they determined to pray to Vishnu, the 
 
200 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 Preserver of the World, for advice. He told them, 
 perhaps contemptuously, to " go and churn the 
 ocean 1 " and the poor gods trooped forth eagerly to 
 do his bidding. 
 
 They churned and churned. Many great and 
 splendid things came foaming up, and they seized 
 them with avidity, here a wonderful elephant, there 
 a princely horse, again a beautiful wife for some one. 
 Each was only greedy to be first in the handling oi 
 the next delight, when all at once something black 
 began to come. Welling up and up, and then 
 spreading over the whole ocean, it came. " What 
 is it ? " they asked each other in horror. It was 
 poison — death to them, death to the world, death to 
 the universe. It came to their very feet, and they 
 had to retreat rapidly in fear. Already they were 
 in the midst of darkness, and there was nowhere 
 that they could flee, for this dense blackness was 
 about to cover all the worlds. In this moment of 
 mortal terror, all the gods with one voice called on 
 Siva. He had taken no part in the receiving of 
 gifts, maybe He w ould be able to help them now. 
 Instantly, the great White God was in their midst. 
 He smiled gently at their dilemma and their fear, 
 and stooping down He put His hand into the waves, 
 and bade the poison flow into the hollow of His 
 palm. Then He drank it, willing to die, in order to 
 save the world. But that which would have been 
 enough to destroy all created beings was only enough 
 to stain His throat, hence He bears there a patch of 
 blue for ever. 
 
 Perhaps one of the most characteristic myths that 
 have clustered round the name of Mahadev is the 
 Legend of the Boar-Hunt. As we read it, we stand 
 on the snowy heights of the third range of the 
 Himalayas, and seem to watch a mighty snow-storm 
 sweeping through the ravine before us. 
 
 Arjuna, one of the principal heroes of the Great 
 
THE STORY OF THE GREAT GOD 201 
 
 War, and the second figure in the dialogue ol the 
 Gita, had gone up into the mountains, to spend 
 three months in worshipping Siva, and invoking His 
 blessing. Suddenly one day as he was praying and 
 offering flowers before the lingam, he was roused by 
 a wild boar, which was rushing forward to attack 
 him. It was only an instant, and Arjuna, the 
 practised archer, had seized his bow and shot the 
 animal. But at the self-same moment a shout of 
 warning was heard, and simultaneously with Arjuna's 
 a second arrow pierced the body of the beast. The 
 hero raised his eyes, and saw, coming towards him, 
 a formidable-looking hunter and huntress, followed 
 by an innumerable retinue of women, attired for the 
 chase, and attended, at some distance, by a dim host 
 of shadows — the armies of demons and hobgoblins. 
 A second later, the whole hunt had come to a stop 
 before him. 
 
 " The quarry was mine ! " cried the Hunter — and 
 his voice sounded like the winter-blasts, amongst the 
 mountains — " the quarry was mine. Mine is the 
 lordship of these forests ! How dared you touch 
 it?" 
 
 At this address, Arjuna blazed with anger, and 
 picking up the bow and arrows that he had thrown 
 aside before returning to his worship, he challenged 
 the Hunter to a personal combat. 
 
 " Accepted," was the reply, and the duel began. 
 But to the hero's dismay, he seemed to be attacking 
 some terrible phantom, for, one after another, his 
 good stout arrows disappeared into the person of 
 his antagonist, working him no harm. 
 
 "Let's wrestle then ! " shouted Arjuna, and casting 
 aside his bow, he flung himself upon his foe. He 
 was met by the quiet touch of a hand on his heart, 
 and fell to the ground stunned. 
 
 " Well, come on ! " said the Hunter, as he recovered 
 himself a few seconds later, and turned aside from 
 
202 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 the contest. But he seemed almost intoxicated. " I 
 must finish my worship first," he said, in a thick 
 voice, taking up a garland of flowers, to fling about 
 the Siva-lingam. The next moment the eyes of 
 Arjuna were opened, for the Hunter towered above 
 him, blessing him, and the flowers were aL'iut his 
 neck. 
 
 " Mahadev ! Mahadev ! " cried the worshipper, 
 flinging himself on the ground, to touch with his 
 head the feet of the God. But already the hunt 
 had swept on down the valley, and the Hunter 
 and Huntress had disappeared, with all their 
 train. 
 
 Such are a few of the stories told of Siva, so 
 deeply loved by all his devotees. To them there is 
 nothing in the world so strong and pure and all- 
 merciful as their great God, and the books and poems 
 of Hindus are very few in which he is not referred 
 to with this passionate worship. 
 
 Sometimes He is entirely a personification of the 
 Himalayas, as when the Milky Way is made to fall 
 upon his head, wander round and round amongst 
 the tangled locks, and issue from them at last as the 
 Ganges. Indeed, the imagination of the people may 
 be said to make of their northern ranges one vast 
 shrine to Him ; for it is far away, they say, across 
 Uie frost-bound heights, where the Himalayas are at 
 their mightiest and India passes into Thibet, that 
 the Lake Manasarovar lies, at the foot of the great 
 ice-peak of Kailash. Here is the reign of silence 
 and eternal snow, and here, guarding the north, is 
 the holy home that Siva loves. 
 
 He is the very soul of gentleness, refusing none. 
 Up here have gathered round Him all those who 
 were weary of earth, having found no acceptance 
 amongst the fortunate. The serpents, whom all the 
 world hates and denies, come to Kailash, and 
 
THE STORY OF THE GREAT GOD 203 
 
 Mahadev finds room for them in His great heart. 
 And the tired beasts come — for He is the refuge of 
 animals — and it is one of these, a shabby old bull, 
 that He specially loves and rides upon. 
 
 And here, too, come the spirits of all those men 
 and women who are turbulent and troublesome and 
 queer, the bad boys and girls of the grown-up world, 
 as it were. All the people who are so ugly that no 
 one wants to see them ; those who do things 
 clumsily, and talk loudly, and upset everything, 
 though they mean no harm, and the poor things 
 who are ridden by one idea, so that they never can 
 see straight, but always seem a little mad — such 
 are the souls on whom He alone has mercy. He is 
 surrounded by them, and they love and worship 
 Him. He uses them to do His errands, and they 
 are known as Siva's demons. 
 
 But Siva is more even than this. He is the Self- 
 born, the eternally-existent postulate of freedom and 
 purity and light. He is the great teaching soul of 
 things. His function is to destroy ignorance, and 
 wherever knowledge is achieved, He is. His name 
 of " Hara ! Hara ! " (" The Free 1 The Free ! ") was 
 the battle-cry of the Mahrattas. More yet. He is 
 Rudra, the Storm, the Terrible; and it is under 
 this aspect that Hinduism raises to Him its daily 
 cry: 
 
 Evermore protect us, — O thou terrible ! — 
 
 From ignorance, by thy sweet compassionate face. 
 
 For, after all, a human quality is always limited to 
 one of two, the Divine must be lifted above good as 
 well as evil, above joy as well as pain. We have 
 here the Indian conception of same-sightedness, and 
 perhaps its devotional significance is nowhere inter- 
 preted as in the Hindi song of Surdas, which is 
 here repeated as a nautch-girl was heard to sing it 
 in a Rajput Court : 
 
eo4 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 O Lord, look not upon my evil qualities ! 
 Thy name, O Lord, is Same-sightedness, 
 By Thy touch, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me pure.* 
 
 One drop of water is in the sacred Jumna, 
 Another is foul in the ditch by the roadside, 
 But when they fall into the Ganges, 
 Both alike become holy. 
 
 One piece of iron is the image in the temple. 
 Another is the knife in the band of the butcher, 
 But when they touch the philosopher's stone, 
 Both alike turn to gold. 
 
 So, Lord, look not upon my evil qualities I 
 Thy name, O Lord, is Same-sightedness, 
 Make as both the same Brahman. 
 
 • LtfaciiKj), Make us both the same Brahman — i.e.. Let the 
 Singer — low dancing-girl as she may be — become one with God 
 Himself in the Supreme Essence, Brahman. The theological 
 conception here is so difficult for Western readers that I have 
 preferred to use the simpler alternative translation also furnished 
 by my Master, the Swami Vivekananda. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF THE BLESSED ONE 
 
 "We worship Thee, Seed of the Universe, 
 
 Thou one mnbroken Soul. 
 
 We worship Thee, whose footstool is worshipped by the Gods. 
 
 Thou Lord of the Saints, 
 
 Physician of the World-disease, 
 
 To Thy lotas-feet our salutation, O Great Soul I 
 
 Hindu form of salutation to a Divini Inctmation. 
 
 It is told of a certain Bodhisattva that, all his 
 struggles done and illumination reached, he was 
 about to pass over into Nirvana. But as his feet 
 touched the threshold of supreme blessedness there 
 rose to his ears the sound of the sorrowful crying 
 of humanity. Then turned that great soul back 
 from Nirvana and entered again into life, declaring 
 that till the last grain of dust in the universe had 
 passed in before him, he would by no means go 
 into salvation. And this Bodhisattva is he who sits 
 on the throne of the Dalai-Lama in Tibet, watching 
 the world of men with eyes of divine pity from afar 
 off. 
 
 Called by various names, arrayed in widely- 
 differing garb, we come constantly in Hinduism on 
 the attempt, as here in the story of the Dalai-Lama, 
 to express the idea that in the great Heart of the 
 Absolute there dwells an abiding charity towards 
 men. It would seem as if, to the religious instinct 
 
2o6 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 of humanity, the dream of " the pursuit of the soul 
 by God " is a necessity ; and the Hindu, well aware 
 of the impossibility of giving it logical expression, 
 veils his effort in mythology. Whence the stories oi 
 the Avatars. For our conception of the doctrine of 
 reincarnation is only complete when we understand 
 that now and again the Eternal Love is represented 
 as projecting itself into the sphere of manifestation, 
 taking shape as a man, in order to act as a lamp 
 amidst the darkness of delusion, a counter-magnetism 
 to the attractions of desire. 
 
 It is absurd, says the Hindu — whose imagination 
 can never be charged with provincialism — to think 
 that such an Incarnation, supposing it to occur at 
 all, could visit the world only once. Is respect of 
 persons a divine attribute ? Or is the need of man- 
 kind at any time less than complete ? Can we 
 believe, again, that the power of creative energy to 
 assume and throw oflf the shell of personality is 
 exhausted in a single effort ? Rather must the 
 taking upon Himself of mortal form and limitations 
 be to the all-pervasive " as the lifting of a flower's 
 fragrance by the summer breeze," a matter of 
 play; or like the shining of a lamp through the 
 window wherein it is set, without effort — nothing 
 more. 
 
 The orthodox Hindu is thus usually in no position 
 to deny the supernatural character of the Babe of 
 Bethlehem. He is only unable to admit that the 
 nature of Christ stands alone in the history of the 
 world, holding that his own country has seen even 
 more than the three — Rama, Krishna, and Buddha 
 — who were His brothers. Still more cogently does 
 he claim sometimes that all these and possibly others 
 of whom he has not heard, are but one soul, one 
 expression of Godhead coming back at different 
 times to lay hold on the hearts of men. And he 
 quotes in support of this contention the familiar 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE BLESSED ONE 207 
 
 words of Krishna : " Whenever religion decays, and 
 when irreligion * prevails, then I manifest myself. 
 For the protection of the good, for the destruction of 
 the evil, for the firm establishment of the dhamtma, 
 I am born again and again." 
 
 It is natural enough to the Hindu intellect that 
 around each such forth-shining of the Divine should 
 grow up a new religious system or Church. But 
 each of these is only a special way of expressing 
 the one fundamental doctrine of Maya, a new mode 
 of endearing God to man. At the same time it is 
 thought that every one, while recognising this 
 perfect sympathy of various faiths for one another, 
 should know how to choose one amongst them for 
 his own, and persist in it, till by its means he has 
 reached a point where the formulae of sects are 
 meaningless to him. " For it is good," say the 
 people, " to be born in a church, though it is foolish 
 to die there." 
 
 In this sense — somewhat diflferent from the 
 
 religious partisanship of Europe — the popular and 
 
 growing belief of the Hindu masses consists of 
 
 various forms of the worship of Khrishna. It is 
 
 this creed that carries to those who need it, a 
 
 religious emotionalism like that of the Salvation 
 
 Army or of Methodism. In the hottest nights, 
 
 during periods of " revival," the streets of a city 
 
 will be crowded with men bearing lights and banners, 
 
 and dancing themselves into a frenzy to such words 
 
 as: 
 
 Call on the Lord, 
 
 Call on the Lord, 
 
 Call on the Lord, little brother 
 
 Than this name of the Lord, 
 
 For mortal man, 
 
 There is no other way. 
 
 • Literally, dharmma and a-dharmma. The prefix here 
 adversative — dharmma and non-dharmma. See p. 276. 
 
208 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 Khrishna, like Rama and like Buddha, is con- 
 sidered to be a special incarnation of Vishnu, Goe- 
 the Preserver. It is therefore pertinent to appeal 
 to Him for the goods of life, for consolation in 
 sorrow, for deliverance from fear. He is known as 
 the Holy Child, born in humility amidst cowherds 
 by the Jumna ; the Gentle Shepherd of the People, 
 the Wise Counsellor, the Blessed Lord, tender 
 Lover and Saviour of the human soul ; and by other 
 names not less familiar to ourselves. It is an image 
 of the Baby Krishna that the Indian mother adores 
 as the Bambino, calling it " Gopaia," her cowherd. 
 His name fills gospels and poems, the folk-songs of 
 all Hindu races are full of descriptions of Him as 
 a cowherd wandering and sporting amongst His 
 fellows ; and childish literature is full of stories 
 of Him, curiously like European tales of the Christ- 
 child. To the ecstatic mystic. He is the Divine 
 Spouse. 
 
 If we dip into His history we shall think it a 
 strange medley. So many parts were never surely 
 thrust upon a single figure ! But through it all we 
 note the predominant Indian characteristics, — 
 absolute detachment from personal ends, and a 
 certain subtle and humorous insight into human 
 nature. 
 
 His main spiritual significance for India does not, 
 perhaps — with one exception — attach to that part of 
 His life which is related in the Mahabharata, but 
 rather to what is told of Him in the Purinas — works 
 not unlike our apocryphal Gospels. But the one 
 exception is important. It consists of no less an 
 incident than that conversation with the chieftain 
 Arjuna which comprises the Bhagavad Gita, or 
 Song of the Blessed One. Of this little poem — only 
 some three or four times the length of the Sermon 
 on the Mount, and shorter even than the Gospel of 
 St. Mark — it may be said at once that amongst the 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE BLESSED ONE 209 
 
 sacred writings of mankind there is probably no 
 other which is at once so great, so complete, and so 
 short. It provides the worship of Krishna — and 
 incidentally all kindred systems — with that open 
 door upon abstract philosophy without which no cult 
 could last in India for a week. But it is by no means 
 the property of the Vaishnavas exclusively. From 
 Kashmir to Cape Comorin it is bone of the bone and 
 flesh of the flesh of all forms of religious thought. 
 
 Its ideas are unmistakably Indian in colour : its 
 feeling is just as unmistakably universal. The voice 
 that speaks on the field of Kurukshetra is the same 
 voice that reverberates through an English child- 
 hood from the shores of the Sea of Galilee. We 
 read the gracious words, " Putting aside all doc- 
 trines, come thou to Me alone for shelter — I will 
 liberate thee from all sins, do not thou grieve." 
 " Fixing thy heart on Me, thou shalt, by My grace, 
 cross over all difBculties," and we drop the book, 
 lost in a dream of One who cried to the weary and 
 heavy laden, " Come unto Me." We certainly now 
 understand, and cannot again forget, that for the 
 Indian reader the eyes of the Lord Krishna are 
 most kind, His touch infinitely gentle, and His heart 
 full of an exceeding great compassion, even as for 
 us are the eyes and the hand and the heart of Him 
 Who spoke of Himself as the Good Shepherd. 
 
 Like our own Gospels, the Gita abounds in quaint 
 and simple metaphors. "As a lamp in a sheltered 
 spot, not flickering," must be the mind. All under- 
 takings are surrounded with evil, " as fire with 
 smoke." The round of worship is " as a wheel re- 
 volving." So great is wisdom that though thou 
 shouldst be " even the most sinful of all sinners, 
 thou shalt cross safely to the conquest of all sin by 
 the bark of wisdom alone." One of the most 
 beautiful, referring to those perceptions which con- 
 stitute the Universe as we know it, says, " All this 
 
 o 
 
2IO THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 is threaded upon Me as gems upon a string." 
 Nothing is mentioned that would not be familiar to 
 the poorest peasant, living on a fertile plain, 
 diversified only by a river and an occasional walled 
 city. 
 
 And indeed it was for these, labouring men, un- 
 lettered and poor, that the Glta, with its masterly 
 simplicity, was written. To those who had thought 
 salvation and the beatific vision as far beyond their 
 attainment as a knowledge of the classics — to these 
 humble souls the Divine Voice declares that, by 
 worshipping God and doing at the same time the 
 duty of his station, every man may attain perfec- 
 tion. " Better for one is one's own duty, however 
 badly done, than the duty of another, though that be 
 easy." Again and again, as we read the Gita, we 
 are driven to the conclusion that we hear an infinite 
 mercy addressing itself to a people who had 
 imagined the knowledge of God to be the monopoly 
 of priesthoods and religious orders, and bidding 
 them be of good courage, for the true monk is he 
 " who neither hates nor desires," the true worshipper 
 any one who " off"ers to Me with devotion even a 
 leaf or a flower or a cup of water." No wonder 
 that the Indian people, saluting a Divine Incarna- 
 tion, call Him the Physician of the world-disease t 
 Never did speech know how to be more interior. 
 " Those who worship Me, renouncing all actions in 
 Me, regarding Me as supreme, meditating on Me 
 with entire devotion, for them whose thought is 
 fixed on Me, I become ere long, O son of Pritha, the 
 Saviour out of the ocean of this mortal world." . . . 
 " For I am the abode of Brahman, the Immortal and 
 the Immutable, the Eternal Substance, and the un- 
 failing Bhss." We kneel in a vast silence and dark- 
 ness, and hear words falling like water drop by 
 drop. 
 
 Nothing is omitted from the Glta that the uncon- 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE BLESSED ONE 211 
 
 soled heart requires. There are even the tender 
 promises of daily bread, so dear to the anxious ; 
 "They who depend on Me, putting aside all care, 
 whatsoever they need, I myself carry it to them," 
 runs one verse. Of this a beautiful story is told in 
 the villages. The Brahmin sat copying the text, 
 but when the word " carry " had been written, he 
 felt a doubt. " My dear," he said, turning to con- 
 sult his wife, " thinkest thou not it is irreverent to 
 say ' carry ' here ? Did not our Lord not mean 
 'send?'" "Beyond a doubt, beloved," answered 
 his wife, "it is as thou sayest. Let the word be 
 • send.' " Then the man took his penknife and 
 erased the word he had just written, substituting 
 his own emendation for it. A moment later he rose 
 up to go and bathe. But his wife stood before him 
 with troubled face. " I told thee not," she said, 
 "that there is no food in the house, and nought 
 have I to cook for thee." The Brahmin smiled 
 gently. " Let us call upon our Lord to fulfil His 
 own promise," he replied quietly; "meantime, I 
 shall go and bathe," and he passed into the next 
 room. Only a few minutes had he gone, when his 
 wife was called to the door by a beautiful youth, 
 who stood there with a basketful of delicious foods, 
 ready for eating. " Who sent me this ? " the 
 woman asked in amazement. " Your husband 
 called me to carry it," said the lad carelessly, 
 putting the basket as he spoke into her hands. But 
 to her horror, as he lifted his arms, the housewife 
 noted cuts and gashes above his heart, " Alas, my 
 poor child, who hath wounded thee ? " she cried. 
 "Your husband, mother, before he called me, cut 
 me with a small sharp weapon," was the quiet 
 answer. Dumb with astonishment, the Brahmin's 
 wife turned away to bestow the viands he had 
 brought, and when she came back to the door the 
 youth had gone. At that instant her husband 
 
212 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 re-entered the room, having returned, as she sup- 
 posed from bathing. Her wonder about the food was 
 forgotten in indignant sympathy. " Why," she 
 cried, " didst thou so hurt thy messenger ? " Tlie 
 man looked at her witho-ut understanding. " Him 
 whom thou sentest to me with food, as thou didst go 
 to bathe," she explained. " To bathe ! " he stam- 
 mered, " I have not yet been ! " Then the eyes of 
 husband and wife met, and they knew both who had 
 come to them, and how they had wounded the heart 
 of the Lord. And the Brahmin returned to the 
 sacred text, and once more erasing a word restored 
 it to its original form, for there can be no doubt that 
 the true reading is, "They who depend on Me, 
 casting aside all care, whatsoever they need, I myself 
 carry it to them." 
 
 Such are some of the associations which cling to 
 the little image of Krishna that the children about 
 Calcutta can buy for a few farthings. It is made of 
 lime, and painted blue — for just as white, to the 
 dweller amongst northern snows, signifies purity, 
 so blue, the colour of sky and ocean, to the child of 
 the South, is the token of the Infinite. The left 
 hand of the image holds a flute to the lips ; the right 
 carries a thin golden scroll, referring to the Gita. 
 The feet are crossed carelessly, like those of any 
 strolling peasant-player, and the head is crowned. 
 Simple toy as it is, there is hardly a detail of the 
 composite figure in which a devotional system does 
 not centre. 
 
 " O Thou that playest on the flute, standing by 
 the water-ghats, on the road to Brindaban ! " sing 
 the lovers of Krishna, and their hearts melt within 
 them while they sing, pierced as by S. Teresa's 
 wound of seraphic love. Of all its elements, how- 
 ever, there is none which has the unequalled impor- 
 tance to the world of the scroll in the right hand, 
 both as throwing light on Indian habits of thought 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE BLESSED ONE 213 
 
 and as an exposition of the science of religion. 
 The questions, therefore, On what fundamental 
 experience does the Glta base itself? To what 
 does it appeal ? What does it single out in life as 
 requiring explanation ? What is its main impera- 
 tive? are of singular interest. That place which 
 the four Gospels hold to Christendom, the Gita 
 holds to the world of Hinduism, and in a very real 
 sense, to understand it is to understand India and 
 the Indian people. 
 
 II 
 
 It is believed by Hindus that when great forces are 
 in action, on occasions such as those of battle and 
 earthquake, a certain state of etheric vibration is 
 produced, which makes it easy for minds trembling 
 on the verge of supreme knowledge to vault the 
 barricades of sense and find illumination. Perhaps 
 this is because a great intensity of experience has 
 to be found and transcended. Perhaps the condi- 
 tions, apparently simple, are really more complex 
 than this. At any rate, the story of the Bhagavad 
 Glta is of the coming of such beatitude to a young 
 soldier named Arjuna, some three thousand years 
 ago. 
 
 Incidentally, the opening of the poem presents us 
 with an impressive picture of an ancient battlefield. 
 On the great plain of Kurukshetra, already the scene 
 of the prayers and austerities of saints and pilgrims 
 for hundreds of years, two armies face each other. 
 The leaders of both sides occupy chariots drawn by 
 white horses ; over each waves his personal ensign ; 
 and each carries a conch-shell, by way of trumpet, 
 to enable him to give signals and enforce attention 
 \o his commands. Both armies are represented as 
 great hosts, but indications are not wanting that 
 that of Duryodhana, the usurper, under the leader- 
 
214 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 ship of Bhishma, is the larger and stronger. And 
 this is natural, since Duryodhana, rightly or wrongly, 
 is still suzerain of the whole country, while the five 
 Pandava brothers, his cousins, are only bent on the 
 recovery of their rights from him. We have to call 
 to mind that this is an ancient battle, consisting of 
 an immense number of small fights, before we are 
 able to give our thoughts calmly to the narrative, for 
 we are told that from all parts of the field and on 
 both sides the white conch-shells have been blown, 
 giving the signal for assault, and that already " the 
 discharge of weapons " has begun, when Arjuna 
 requests Krishna, who is acting as his charioteer, to 
 drive him into the space between the two hosts, that 
 he may single out those with whom he is to enter 
 into personal combat during the fra}'. 
 
 The sight of the foe, however, has an extra- 
 ordinary effect on the mind of the chieftain. Instead 
 of looking on his enemies with an accession of faith 
 in the justice of his own cause and a heroic determi- 
 nation to struggle to the last in its defence, he seems 
 to realise for the first time the consequences of the 
 attack. Amongst the foe stand all he has ever 
 loved or honoured — Bhishma, the head of his house, 
 the adored grandsire of his childhood ; Drona, to 
 whom he owes his education, and for whom he 
 cherishes a passionate reverence ; and cousins and 
 relatives innumerable besides, of whom the very 
 worst is an old playfellow or a gallant combatant in 
 tourney. The path to victory lies through the 
 burning-ghat of the dead ! The ashes of all he loves 
 arc scattered there 1 As he realises this, Arjuna's 
 great bow slips from his hand, and he sinks to the 
 floor of his chariot in despair. We must remember 
 that this is no mere failure of courage. The soldier 
 has been tried and proved too often to be open for a 
 moment to such an imputation. Neither is he repre- 
 sented as entertaining the slightest doubt of ultimate 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE BLESSED ONE 215 
 
 triumph. To the fortunes of war he gives not a 
 thought, assuming, as do all brave men, that they 
 must follow the right. He simply realises that for 
 the sake of a few years of dominion he is about, with 
 his own hand, to rid the earth ofeverything he loves. 
 He realises, too, that this widespread slaughter will 
 constitute an enormous social disaster. 
 
 This feeling of Arjuna's finds religious expression. 
 " I desire not victory, O Krishna, neither kingdom 
 nor pleasures. ... It would be better for me if the 
 sons of Dritarashthra, arms in hand, should slay me, 
 unarmed and unresisting, in the battle." Surely the 
 moral situation is finely conceived ! A prince, of 
 the proudest lineage on earth, is eager to be oflfered 
 up as a sacrifice rather than accept empire at the 
 price to be paid for it. On the battlefield of life 
 does any case need better stating ? Yet this thirst 
 for martyrdom, which looks so like renunciation, is 
 really quite another thing. " Thou art grieved for 
 those who require no grief, yet thou speakest 
 words of wisdom," says Krishna. For, instead of 
 the actual indifference to the world and to his own 
 part in it, of one who perceives that all before him is 
 unreal, Arjuna is betraying that determination to 
 maintain things as they are which belongs to those 
 who hold that affection at least is a very actual good. 
 It is on this distinction that the whole treatise is 
 based. 
 
 At first, indeed, the charioteer affects to meet the 
 chieftain's hesitation with all the contempt of knight- 
 hood for panic. " Yield not to unmanliness, O son 
 of Pritha ! " he exclaims. " 111 doth it become thee. 
 Cast off this base weakness, and arise, O terror of 
 foes." It is not till Arjuna, with a touching acknow- 
 ledgment of grief and confusion, makes a supreme 
 appeal for intellectual enlightenment, that Krishna, 
 in the character of divine teacher, enters on that 
 immortal pronouncement regarding the Real and 
 
2i6 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 unreal, which ends by sending the knight back to 
 the duty of his birth, unshrinking, with the words : 
 " Firm, with undoubting mind, I obey Thy word." 
 
 As the dialogue proceeds, the dramatic element 
 disappears. The echoes of battle die away. We 
 are standing alone in some chamber of the soul, 
 holding that colloquy between human and divine, 
 finite and infinite, which never ceases during life for 
 any one of us, however little able we may be to 
 disentangle it from the voices of the world. At the 
 culminating moment of the interview, when the 
 worshipper receives the sudden revelation of all 
 existing in and by the Lord Krishna, as mere multi- 
 form expressions of His sole energy, even at this 
 moment, and during the rapt and broken praise 
 which follows it, we find nothing discordant in the 
 mise-en-scene. A chariot of war has become, as only 
 a Hindu pen could have made it, silent as any cell 
 of meditation. The corner of a battlefield has grown 
 as remote from the whirl of life as the inmost 
 recesses of a heart at prayer. 
 
 The main argument is, as we might expect, that 
 as all appearances are delusive, action is to the wise 
 man indifferent, and should be performed, once he is 
 sure that he is called to it, without fear of conse- 
 quences. " Him the wise call a sage — the man 
 whose undertakings are all devoid alike of objects 
 and desires, whose acts have been burnt to ashes in 
 the fire of wisdom." " Never did I not exist, nor 
 thou, nor these rulers of men ; and no one of us will 
 ever hereafter cease to exist." Therefore, " Free 
 from hope and from selfishness, without any anxiety 
 of mind, plunge thou into battle ! " 
 
 The words are addressed to one who is pre- 
 eminently a man of action, a soldier — supposed, 
 saving a due regard for his military honour, to be 
 swayed by the passion for justice, and the impulse 
 to defend it. These things being the stake, throw 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE BLESSED ONE 217 
 
 for them, and throw boldly, says Krishna, and as 
 results, take whatever may chance to come. " Man 
 has always the right to work : man has no right to 
 the results of work," is as much the heart and core 
 of the Gita, as " Thou hast no right to success if 
 thou art not also equal to failure," is of Stoicism. 
 In application the two doctrines seem identical, but 
 we have only to read, in order to see the advantage 
 which the idea of Maya gives to the Indian thinker. 
 Clear, sharp, incisi/e as chisel-strokes, are the 
 utterances of Epictetus : like thunderbolts out of a 
 tropical night the words of Krishna. 
 
 The Gita, however, does not consist of a single 
 chain of reasoning, moving in definite progression 
 from beginning to end. Rather is the same thing 
 said over and over again, in as many different ways 
 as possible. Sometimes even a form of words is 
 repeated, as if nothing mattered save to make the 
 meaning clear. There is ample scope here for the 
 digressive energy of ages, of which the outcome is 
 the richly-woven texture, set here and there with 
 those strangely-cut Oriental jewels, which must 
 remain amongst the greatest recorded words of 
 religion to all time. 
 
 But readers will completely miss the sense of 
 the Gita who permit themselves to forget its first 
 ringing words : " Yield not to unmanliness, O son 
 of Pritha i 111 doth it become thee. Shake off this 
 base weakness, and arise, O terror of foes ! " The 
 book is nowhere a call to leave the world, but 
 everywhere an interpretation of common life as the 
 path to that which lies beyond. " Better for a man 
 is his own duty, however badly done, than the duty 
 of another, though that be easy." " Holding gain 
 and loss as one, prepare for battle." That the man 
 who throws away his weapons, and permits himself 
 to be slain, unresisting, in the battle, is not the hero 
 of religion, but a sluggard and a coward ; that the 
 
2i8 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 true seer is he who carries his vision into action, 
 regardless of the consequences to himself; this is 
 the doctrine of the Gita, repeated again and again. 
 The book is really a battle-cry. Spirituality is with 
 it no retreat from men and things, but a burning 
 fire of knowledge that destroys bondage, consumes 
 sluggishness and egoism, and penetrates everywhere. 
 Not the withdrawn, but the transfigured life, radiant 
 with power and energy, triumphant in its selfless- 
 ness, is religion. 
 
 The Gita is to-day the gospel of the Indian 
 Revival. And never was book so well suited to 
 such function. For its eighteen chapters are the 
 expression of an overwhelming national vitality. It 
 is as true of peoples as of individuals, that when 
 the age is full and rich, living is apt to outrun 
 knowing. It is then that large questions press for 
 solution. Great areas of experience require to be 
 related to their common centre and to each other. 
 And so pre-eminently does the Gita do this, that 
 the Mussulman and the Christian can sit indif- 
 ferently with the Hindu to gather its interpreta- 
 tions. 
 
 The nature of all faith, the relation of all worship 
 to worshipped and worshipper, the dependence of 
 knowledge on non-attachment under all its forms: 
 it is with problems like these, and not with any 
 particular Credo, that the Gita concerns itself. It is 
 at once therefore the smallest and most comprehen- 
 sive of the scriptures of the world. 
 
 That indifference to results is the condition of 
 efficient action is the first point in its philosophy. 
 But there is no doubt that the action should be 
 strenuous. Let every muscle be hard, every limb 
 well-knit, let the mind sweep the whole horizon of 
 fact ; with the reins in hand, the fiery steeds under 
 control, with the whole battlefield in view, and the 
 will of the hero lifted high to strike for justice, 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE BLESSED ONE 219 
 
 ' Arise ! " thunders the voice of Sri Krishna, " and 
 be thou an apparent cause ! " 
 
 It is the supreme imperative. Play thy whole 
 part in the drama of time, devoting every energy, 
 concentrating the whole force. " As the ignorant 
 act from selfish motives, so should the wise man act, 
 unselfishly." 
 
 Just as the child sees the sun above his head, and 
 the earth beneath his feet, distinguishing himself 
 from both, while to the man of science, sun, planet, 
 and child are all single points in a great ocean of 
 force-matter, absolutely continuous from its centre 
 to its farthest bounds, so to us all, in the 
 sense-plane of thought, God, soul, and relation 
 exist. Having reached that truth, however, which 
 is the Beatific Vision, any one of them will seem 
 the whole, for all conception of limitation will be 
 blotted out. As we ourselves are seen to be but 
 light transformed; as thought and perception, life 
 and motion, sun and planet, are all but different 
 manifestations of a something that we call Solar 
 Energy, so God, self, and universe, are now 
 known to be only distinctions made by sense 
 in that one, Brahman, " the immortal and im- 
 mutable, the eternal substance, and the unfailing 
 Bliss." 
 
 Anaccountof such a vision gives us the culminating 
 chapter of the Gita. Krishna suddenly bursts forth 
 on the sight of his astonished worshipper as the 
 Universal Form, in Whom all that exists in one. 
 Characteristically Indian in expression, full of the 
 blaze and terror of the cosmos, this great scene can 
 only perhaps be thoroughly appreciated by a 
 Western mind if it has first understood something 
 of the craving that it fulfils, caught some flash may- 
 be of jthe radiance it describes. Yet if the rest of 
 the Glta were destroyed, this one chapter might 
 take its place, for it makes all its logic actual. 
 
220 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 Arjuna's single sight becomes the sacrament of a 
 whole world's hope. 
 
 It was midnight when I reached Thaneswar. 
 The fierce white light of a tropical moon bathed the 
 great common in front, where only trees and bushes, 
 with their coal-black shadows, could be seen, and 
 not a single human habitation was in sight. Behind, 
 the dik-bungalow lay in darkness, and the train by 
 which I had come had passed on long ago into the 
 night. One was alone on the Plain of Kurukshetra 
 with three thousand years. 
 
 But the silence did not remain unbroken. Clear 
 and distinct on the still air rose the accents of the 
 immortal dialogue. " Man has the right to work : 
 man has no right to the fruits of work," said, once 
 more, the divine Charioteer. Yet many a memorable 
 battle has been fought, India herself has heard a 
 thousand dialogues, preaching the truths of the 
 Bhagavad Gita. Why, asked my heart, does one 
 come to this spot ? For what thing, above all 
 others, does the world remember Kurukshetra ? 
 
 And then I saw why, never to forget. Kuruk- 
 shetra was the place of the Great Vision, the field 
 of the Divine Illumination of Arjuna. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 ISLAM IN INDIA 
 
 The single continent of the Old World, outside the 
 forests of Africa, is broadly divisible into the agricul- 
 tural valleys of the East, the sands and steppes of 
 the pastoral belt, and the countries of the European 
 coast-line — and the geographical division is strangely 
 correspondent to the history of its moral develop- 
 ment. Civilisation and religion are born amongst 
 peasants, become aggressive amongst sailors, and are 
 passed from one to the other by the nomad races of 
 the desert strip. 
 
 For adequate culture-histories of Venice, Genoa, 
 and the Crusades, the world is still waiting. When 
 they are written, men will be astonished to learn 
 both how completely Europe is indebted to Asia, and 
 also how far the Semitic races have been in modern 
 times the stewards of that debt. 
 
 It has been administered through the Jew as well 
 as the Mussulman. But the Jew was the spiritual 
 heir of Egypt, and as such could not individualise 
 the desert pure and simple. His religious ideas 
 were too complex, his social system too exclusive, 
 his national sentiment too unfixed. When he ceased 
 to be a peasant in Syria, the world was before him 
 as scholar and trader. 
 
 To the Arab, on the other hand, belonged the 
 
222 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 shifting constancy of the desert sands. No luxury 
 of cities could fire him with ambition to leave home 
 and kindred, the scanty fare and hardy contests of 
 his youth, that he might eat well and sleep soft 
 amongst aliens. To this day the seamen in the Red 
 Sea or the Indian Ocean will pass those curious, 
 square-sailed boats known as Arab dhows, and will 
 carelessly shout their bearings in answer to the 
 inquiry of the navigators within, who are steering 
 their way on the ocean as they would across the 
 desert, by the position of the sun. But these boats 
 are rude merchantmen merely, not emigrant vessels. 
 They are going out, only that they may return and 
 enrich their own people with the benefits of trade. 
 When the Arab of old did set his eyes upon the 
 capitals of the world it was to possess them. He 
 went forth in his armies, taking his kindred with 
 him, and seated himself in their palaces, upon their 
 thrones. And yet the city where that idea of his 
 own solidarity was born which enabled the Mussul- 
 man to ignore petty feuds for a great unifying idea, 
 was the open port of its day and place, and the 
 Prophet himself was more travelled than most of 
 his contemporaries. It is always so. Behind the 
 rise of a world-swaying idea there is always the 
 sentiment of the advancement of truth, the impulse 
 to assimilate all that is newest and best in foreign 
 influences ; there is always, too, the power of out- 
 look in more than common degree. Mohammed had 
 reached his burning tenderness for his own people, 
 and his consciousness of a national perplexity, by 
 direct contact with Syrian market-places and 
 Byzantine townsfolk. Long talks beside the caravan 
 fires at night with men of many different nations, 
 had given him his education, setting dim thoughts 
 and mighty longings vaguely astir within him. It 
 is difficult for the modern world to realise the 
 largeness of primitive thought and personality. We 
 
ISLAM IN INDIA 223 
 
 feel that we have triumphed mightily in the inven- 
 tion of the steam-engine and the railway train ; and 
 so, along one line, we have. We forget, however, 
 that henceforth the leader of our travel is to be a 
 mere mechanic, managing a few cog-wheels, and 
 superintending water and coal. Once upon a time, 
 in the same capacity, he was something of patriarch, 
 savant, poet, and ship's captain all in one. 
 
 Similarly of the personal courage required in war, 
 and the breadth of nature-painting in early literature. 
 The progress of time and thought means the dete- 
 rioration of these qualities. No modern poet can 
 speak of the sunset like a Red Indian. No user of 
 Maxim guns has the personal prowess of an old- 
 time pirate. Strong individuality is demanded by 
 undeveloped, unregimented conditions, and later 
 civilisation is only a specialisation upon this, grow- 
 ing by degrees more subtle and detailed, in which 
 the man has often lost in proportion as the institution 
 has gained. 
 
 Depth of observation, vastness and nobility of 
 hope, and wealth of assimilated experience — all, in 
 short, that constitutes essential education — are often 
 but inversely proportioned to literacy. Therefore 
 there is no room for the library-and-museum learned 
 of the twentieth century to refer to a camel-driver 
 of the seventh as ignorant. The Prophet Mohammed 
 can have been nothing of the sort. With rare beauty 
 and sweetness of nature, he combined social and 
 political genius, towering manhood, and an intellec- 
 tual culture of no mean kind. As has so often been 
 the case with the initiators of new faiths, he was in 
 a special sense the blossom of the old, for not only 
 were his family the guardians of the Kaabah, but 
 his father had been intended in his childhood to be 
 a sacrifice to the gods, and Mohammed was an only 
 son, early orphaned. Indeed, had he belonged to 
 any city but Mecca, the pilgrim-centre of the Arabian 
 
224 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 peninsula, he could not possibly have seen the 
 Islamising of the whole Arab people within his single 
 lifetime. 
 
 We think of the Prophet too much as the preacher 
 of a religion, too little as the maker of a nationality. 
 We hear the Name of God so frequently that we 
 forget the love of humanity that is taught. We fail, 
 in short, to understand the Asiatic character both of 
 messenger and message. 
 
 In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. 
 
 But the word that follows argues little enough, at 
 least in early days, about the Unity of God. After 
 all, this is a fact that we recognise instinctively. No 
 man, least of all the dweller in the desert, in his 
 heart believes that God is two. The Prophet's first 
 task is to give life and vigour to this supreme intui- 
 tion by making it only the starting-point of a search- 
 ing appeal to conscience, an authoritative condemna- 
 tion of insincerity and evil custom, and terrible 
 pictures of judgment and hell-fire. In all this he 
 must only have uttered what was already in the air. 
 Social life in Arabia must have been ripe for 
 change. The sacredness of property, the protection 
 of childhood, and the fixing of woman's status, had 
 already doubtless been felt as necessities by good 
 men of all tribes and cities. But the gigantic power 
 of conviction that could use these very reforms as a 
 means of welding the scattered and divided kin- 
 ships into a single brotherhood, fired with a common 
 purpose of righteousness and armed with the mighty 
 weapon of a divine mission — this was the sole right 
 of one whose boyhood had been spent among the 
 sheepfolds, and whose manhood had known the 
 solitary watch, with the awful trance of revelation, 
 in the mountain caves. 
 
 From one point of view, Islam represents a tran- 
 
ISLAM IN INDIA 225 
 
 sition between Asia and Europe. An Asiatic people 
 takes on the consolidation, the mobility, and the 
 miUtarism of a European State. It anticipates the 
 West in so doing by many a century. It accom- 
 plishes the Napoleonic task of destroying the Persian 
 and Byzantine empires, and setting itself up in their 
 place ; and yet, inasmuch as it does all this in the 
 strength of an idea, inasmuch as its sanction lies in 
 one man's superconscious inspiration, it remains at 
 heart profoundly Asiatic. 
 
 The relation between the master and his disciples 
 is always one of the most vital elements in the life 
 of Asia. In this case, whole nations are the 
 disciples of a single man. They are taken into his 
 kindred. They form his family. They strive to 
 approximate to his method of Ufe — in dress, food, 
 manners, even to some extent in language. When- 
 ever they pray, they place themselves mentally in 
 Arabia. Such facts make reUgion in the East a 
 matter of enormous social consequence. The con- 
 vert in India immediately changes his style of 
 cookery. One can eat a dinner in that coimtry, 
 Hindu, Mohammedan, Parsi, Jain, Jewish, Christian 
 or Buddhist in kind ; but assuredly without chang- 
 ing his food no man could be held to have sincerely 
 changed his faith. It is inevitable, therefore, that 
 communities which accept the creed of Islam should 
 become Arabised in every possible way. 
 
 This does not mean, however, that they should 
 remake the desert. Mohammed's whole polity 
 made towards settled and industrial conditions. His 
 last great speech, in which he gathers all his people 
 together, knowing not if he shall ever again addres! 
 them, reminds them of the sacredness of privatt 
 property, and the rights of women, slaves ano 
 children. Nor was there any barbarism about the 
 Mohammedan empires of the next six or seven 
 centuries. Western Asia did not fail to build itself 
 
226 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 upon the arts of the Roman Empire, did not fail to 
 assimilate Hellenic culture, and to display an 
 original impetus in science, from the blending of 
 Greek and Oriental elements: The history of the 
 great Spanish schools is too well known to need 
 comment. The splendours of the Abbasside Caliphs 
 at Baghdad were well borne out by the Ommiades 
 at Cordova, and an architecture that deserves to be 
 the wonder of the world was the fruit of Saracenic 
 civilisation. The blasting of Persia, Syria, and 
 Asia Minor, would seem to have been the work of 
 the Mogul invasions of Genghis Khan and Tamer- 
 lane, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. 
 These invasions sound through the pages of history 
 like irruptions of subterranean forces. They were 
 similar to, but incomparably vaster than, those 
 which brought about the sack of Rome by Alaric 
 and Genseric, and which left the city and Campagna, 
 under the guardianship of monks, to the insidious 
 decay of many centuries. The geographical position 
 jf the Eternal City and her surroundings was, how- 
 ever, some protection, whereas the Eastern 
 provinces were exposed to the tramp and re-tramp 
 of every hostile force. Gibbon says of Genghis 
 Khan that he destroyed in four days what five 
 hundred years had not sufficed to restore. The 
 common statement that the blighting of Asia Minor 
 has been the work of Mohammedanism may there- 
 fore be put down to historical ignorance and 
 theological prejudice. 
 
 The utmost stigma that can attach to Saracenic 
 governments has been that they have cot had the 
 energy and patience to bend themselves in such 
 cases to the incredible task of beginning all over 
 again the work of civilisation and polity. But are 
 they peculiar in this ? Would France, England, or 
 Italy — were the past blotted out, and all sovereign 
 and responsible persons removed, as at a single 
 
ISLAM IN INDIA 227 
 
 blow — show more courage, more persistence, than 
 the Arab or the Turk ? The very grandeur of the 
 cities that had vanished would add to the hopeless 
 inactivity of the generations that found themselves 
 orphaned and despoiled. An additional factor in 
 the case is — not the genius of Islam, whose purely 
 destructive and desolating tendencies may at least 
 be questioned by those who have seen its work in 
 India, but — the nature of all conquests. The whole 
 opportunity of a conqueror lies in the loyal sub- 
 mission of himself to the past of the conquered. 
 Failing this, the structure that he rears must be, if 
 not destructive, at least evanescent. No power 
 remains at its height for ever ; and in this decline, 
 the ability to guard with decency and stability what 
 it has created, preserving the hope and possibility 
 of resurrection, will depend exactly on the amount 
 of force that was put into that creation. 
 
 It is a curious fact that from the Parthenon to 
 the Taj Mahal, the appearance of a memorable 
 national art has always been coeval with the exist- 
 ence of a powerful centralising consciousness. 
 Pericles adorned Athens with the tribute of the 
 Greek States. Ancient Rome was decorated with 
 the trophies of the world. Mediaeval cathedrals 
 and town-halls grew out of the vigorous craft and 
 municipal solidarity. Florence and the Vatican 
 were the blossoms of the Church. The commercial 
 nexus of Venice was an empire wide as the planet. 
 The diggers of Buddhist cave-temples in India, and 
 the builders of Indo-Saracenic palaces and tombs, 
 alike worked under the shadow of imperial thrones, 
 which articulated for them the enthusiasm of the 
 wholeness of things. 
 
 But what of a flower without leaf, stem and root ? 
 Times of blossom are few and far iDetween, at least 
 equally sacred and important is the task of maintain- 
 ing and increasing the common life. Even so with 
 
228 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 the growth of nations. The humble, mole-like work 
 of developing civilisation through the daily life and 
 the simple home, is still more important than the 
 ephemeral glory of an age of exploitation, and the 
 persistence of a nationality is assuredly proportionate 
 to the degree in vi^hich it represents the utmost of 
 such unseen, steady, and joyous co-operation 
 amongst its members. 
 
 It may be charged indeed against the flying 
 squadrons of the desert that of such slow-accumu- 
 lating toil they brought too little to the making of 
 Baghdad, and the ruling of Damascus. It may be 
 urged that in the stimulating union of Chinese, 
 Hindu, Persian and Hellenic elements, over which 
 the Arab there reigned supreme, there was too little 
 intensity of culture and research ; that the regal 
 race was content to furnish its universities with 
 translations only of the foreign texts on which so 
 much of their learning was based ; that there was 
 too marked a tendency to despise the associations 
 of its subjects; too great a readiness to build its 
 own mosques out of the ruins of their palaces ; and 
 finally, that to a struggle so easy, an end was 
 inevitable, a decay as long and inglorious as its 
 triumph had been brilliant and short-lived. Such 
 arguments may be true, but their truth constitutes a 
 reproach against all conquests, not a stain on the 
 Arab faith. 
 
 No one can stand and face the ruins behind the 
 Kutb-Minar* at Delhi, no one can realise, even 
 dimly, the beauty of Persian poetry, without under- 
 standing that Arab, Slav, Afghan, and Mogul came 
 to India as the emissaries of a culture different 
 
 * Kutb-Minar, a amous tower or minaret, about eleven miles 
 from Delhi. 
 
ISLAM IN INDIA 229 
 
 indeed from, but not less imposing than, that of the 
 people of the soil. The arches in the broken screen 
 of Altamish, as it is called, which are all that remains 
 of a mosque of the twelfth century, are as perfect in 
 taste and devotional feeling as anything in the 
 Gothic. The complete building must have lacked 
 somewhat in weight and solidity, but it was not the 
 work of ruffians and barbarians, nor were the men 
 who thronged to it for prayer, mere lovers of wanton 
 destruction. 
 
 A Hindu historian would have the first right to 
 chant the psean of the Mussulman faith, for it was 
 upon Akbar, a sovereign of that creed, that the 
 inspiration dawned to make a nation and a nation- 
 ality out of the peoples of modern India. 
 
 The sixteenth century in Europe has been known 
 as the era of great kings, Leo X. of the Papacy, 
 Charles V. of the Empire, Henry IV. of France, and 
 Elizabeth of England, are amongst the strongest 
 personalities to whom thrones were ever given. And 
 if we take the English Tudors alone, we shall find 
 four notable figures, with strong policies of their 
 own, out of the five members of that dynasty. About 
 the last two, there is, however, one peculiarity. 
 Even those who sympathise most strongly with the 
 Catholic Queen would probably recognise that it was 
 well for the country that Elizabeth reigned after 
 her, and not before. Few would dispute the greater 
 statesmanship, and more synthetic character of the 
 policy, of the latter of these two sovereigns. 
 Indeed the fact is well enough proved by the loyalty 
 and enthusiasm with which her Catholic subjects 
 united with the Protestant to repel the Spanish 
 Armada. 
 
 The history of India, from the middle of the six- 
 teenth to the end of the seventeenth centuries, 
 displays a curious parallelism and contrast to this 
 of England during the sixteenth. The reign of 
 
230 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 Akbar was contemporary with that of Elizabeth, 
 and, with a still greater statesmanship and breadth 
 of mind and heart, he undertook to inaugurate a 
 vast national, as distinguished from a sectarian 
 policy. Few indeed of the world's monarchs have 
 ever used so marvellous an opportunity with such 
 wisdom and magnanimity as this Emperor of Delhi. 
 An almost equal sympathy with the speculations of 
 all religions, a deep understanding and admiration 
 of the old Indian system, with a desire only to 
 complete and extend, never to nullify it ; a love of 
 everything that was national, with a habit of striking 
 swiftly and pardoning generously — all these qualities 
 gave Akbar a place in the hearts of his subjects 
 which makes " Secundra, the Great," a sufficient 
 name for him to this day. He had been born in a 
 Rajput household, and his greatest act, after the 
 modelling of his administration on the ancient 
 " dharmma," was the marrying of a Hindu princess, 
 and making her the mother of the heir-apparent. 
 Aurungzeeb was the first of his successors who was 
 not Indian in this complete sense, of having had a 
 Mussulman father and a Hindu mother. 
 
 Akbar's three immediate descendants — Jehangir, 
 his son. Shah Jehan, his grandson, and Aurungzeeb, 
 his great-grandson — were all men of marked ability. 
 They retained intact the empire which his genius 
 had consolidated. But unfortunately, of them all, 
 Aurungzeeb's was the sectarian and somewhat 
 narrowly devotional temperament of the English 
 Catholic queen, better fitted to make him a saint of 
 Islam than welder of the Indian nationality ; and 
 Shah Jehan alone had a genius of administration 
 comparable to his grandfather's of initiation. In 
 other words, India had the misfortune in her own 
 case to see Elizabeth succeeded, not preceded by 
 Mary. 
 
 Such were the four great Moguls, whose united 
 
ISLAM IN INDIA 231 
 
 reigns began two years before the accession of 
 Elizabeth, and ended at the date of the Parliamentary 
 union of England and Scotland, scarcely yet two 
 hundred years ago. Their Tartar blood, for they 
 came of the race of Tamerlane, gave them unflagging 
 energy and perseverance. Their Mohammedan 
 faith gave them strength and simplicity of creed, 
 unexhausted by the three hundred years' adhesion 
 of their tribes. Their soldierly origin gave them 
 the power to adopt the ruder side of military life at 
 a moment's notice, while, at the same time, all their 
 habits and associations imposed on them the power 
 and means of unequalled splendour. Such were 
 they all ; but of them all, Akbar stands unrivalled 
 in liberal statesmanship, and Shahjehan in personal 
 genius. 
 
 In the hands of this last monarch the unity of 
 India became a visible fact, symbolised by the 
 dazzling beauty of his building, and even Leo X, 
 must give way to him for taste. Now it was the 
 Taj, raising its stately head above its jewelled walls 
 and lace-carved windows of white marble, in incon- 
 solable love and sorrow. Again, it was the Pearl 
 Mosque of Agra, vast in proportion and almost un- 
 adorned, in severity of creamy stone, of sun-steeped 
 court, and shadowed aisles and sanctuary. Yet once 
 more some dainty palace or exquisite oratory, the 
 baths of an empress or the hall of audience of a 
 king, testified to the fact that a lord of artists sat 
 upon the throne. But it was not only in white 
 marble that Shah Jehan gave the reins to his pride 
 in the Indian soil and the Indian people. He built 
 the modern Delhi, with her red walls, her broad 
 streets, and her magnificent fortress. He made the 
 peacock throne, of gold and jewels, which was re- 
 moved to Persia by Nadir Shah a hundred years 
 later. He and his court and household were collec- 
 tors of choice books and pictures. And, Hke all the 
 
232 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 Moguls, he was himself a past master in the art of 
 illuminating manuscripts. 
 
 Not the least part of the beauty of his buildings 
 lies in the acoustic properties of their domes, which 
 act as bells, taking up every whisper and groan that 
 may sound below them, and making it into music in 
 the height above. There is no voice so harsh or 
 Vulgar that it is not in their presence made rich and 
 harmonious; and if any poor old Mussulman be 
 asked why every mosque is domed, he will answer 
 in bewilderment that he can only suppose that it is 
 to make the name of Allah resound again and 
 again. 
 
 In all this Shah Jehan proved himself the monarch, 
 not of some section, but of all his subjects, and as 
 such he is regarded by India to this day. He 
 might not be in active sympathy with every phase 
 of the popular creeds, but there is none who is cut 
 off from sympathy with him. The enthusiasm that 
 spoke in his works is deeply understood. His 
 addition of a third style to the architectural glories 
 of the country is never forgotten. And it is still 
 remembered by the people that, according to the 
 unanimous voice of history, India was never so well 
 administered as in his day. 
 
 The Mohammedan brought roses into India. 
 " They are of the caste of the emperors," said a 
 Hindu, sitting near, as two beggars came into my 
 verandah in a southern province and offered me 
 these flowers, " they are of the caste of the emperors. 
 Even their begging is that of kings ! " 
 
 The remark is significant of a liberalising in- 
 fluence upon social usage wherever the Mogul 
 Empire has penetrated ; for orthodox Hinduism is 
 perhaps a little too barren of all luxury, a little too 
 much hemmed-in by strict requirements and con- 
 sideration of the highest motives. " The West," it 
 has been said, " has mastered the knowledge of the 
 
ISLAM IN INDIA 233 
 
 ways and means of life, and this the East may well 
 accept from her." Mohammedanism is much more 
 than a half-way house towards the point at which 
 such knowledge becomes possible. It is even said 
 sometimes by Hindus that no gentleman can fulfil 
 the requirements of modern life unless he have a 
 Mohammedan servant. 
 
 The very courtesy of Mohammedan bearing speaks 
 of palaces and of military life. Were India an in- 
 dependent country, her most important embassies 
 would doubtless be filled by Moslems. The act of 
 salutation is almost as a devotion amongst the sons 
 and daughters of Islam. The pause of reverence, 
 the evident depth of feeling with which the hand of 
 the elder is lifted by the younger to the forehead 
 and then kissed, the beautiful words, " Salaam alai- 
 kum ! " (" Peace be unto you ! "), which accompany 
 a bow — all these things are the tokens of a culture 
 of humanity which produces a depth of sympathy 
 and tenderness not unworthy of that Prophet whose 
 burning love of God found no adequate expression 
 save in the love and service of man. It is a 
 humanity in which still breathes the fragrance of 
 that great pastoral peace of desert and steppe which 
 is the living force and unity of the whole Moslem 
 world, however the accidents of time or place may 
 seem to betray it. The patriarch seated at his tent 
 door welcoming strangers, loving and just in his deal- 
 ings with wives and kindred, trusted and revered by 
 all his tribe, and giving his very heart, as is the 
 fashion of the men of Islam, to little children, 
 is an integral imagination of the race. There 
 is nothing in the world so passionately tender 
 as a Hindu mother, unless it be a Mohammedan 
 father. 
 
 It is this human aspect of the Arab faith that pre- 
 pares us for its proselytising power in India. It 
 represents to the low-caste Hindu what the Budd- 
 
234 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 hist orders once represented — a perfect democracy, 
 in which stains of birth, of blood, of occupation, are 
 all blotted out by the utterance of the formula of 
 fraternity, "There is no God but God, and 
 Mohammed is his Prophet." However low and 
 degraded was a man's past, he may now be and do 
 whatever he desires and can. The word " Sheikh " 
 prefixed to his name indicates that he comes of a 
 family so adopted by conversion ; and the vast 
 majority of Mohammedan cultivators, boatmen, and 
 builders in India, are thus Hindu by blood and in- 
 stinct, and Moslem by creed. The gods of the old 
 faith become the saints or " pirs " of the new. They 
 pray at their tombs to the dead, as well as for them, 
 and are regarded indulgently by the orthodox and 
 learned of their new faith as illiterate, and therefore 
 superstitious. That brotherhood which is talked of 
 by Christianity is realised by Islam. The message 
 of the Prophet is a message of humanity and 
 freedom to the whole race of man. 
 
 Most religions have two phases : one the Puritan, 
 and the other the ornate. The Puritan side of Islam 
 finds expression in the Sunni sect, and the ornate 
 aspect in the Shiah. It is the Shiahs who com- 
 memorate the Caliph Ali and the deaths of Hassan 
 and Hussain. They carry the tombs of the martyrs 
 in procession at the Mohurrum, and whenever they 
 are bereaved they mourn for the family of Ali instead 
 of for their own. Geographically, the Shiahs are 
 Persian, and in India are most numerous in Bengal 
 and round Lucknow. The sterner and narrower 
 teachings of Sunnl-ism formed the royal faith of 
 Delhi and Hyderabad. Besides these, there is a 
 third sect of Mohammedans in India, known as the 
 Wahabi. This is described somewhat satirically as 
 the religion of those who had one parent a Shiah, 
 and the other a Sunni. It is in fact a modern re- 
 form. As amongst Hindus, however, his particular 
 
ISLAM IN INDIA 235 
 
 shade of religion is a matter of the individual's own 
 choice, and the women are even more pronounced 
 than the men, regarding personal doctrinal convic- 
 tion. 
 
 The influence of the Indian environment is felt, 
 further, in many of the social developments of the 
 Islamic community. It is not unnatural that there 
 should be a great aptitude for the formation of 
 castes, and a stern refusal to break bread with those 
 who are not of the chosen group. In other direc- 
 tions also there is an approximation of custom. 
 Many Mussulman families in Bengal would turn 
 with horror from the eating of beef. The wife 
 insists that her own hands and no others shall cook 
 the food eaten by the husband. The re-marriage of 
 widows is discountenanced by the highest standards 
 of taste, and in the royal family of Delhi the life of 
 a widowed princess was spent exactly like that of a 
 Hindu woman who had lost her husband — in 
 austerity, prayer, and study. Finally, that hymn 
 to the Ganges which is among the first things learnt 
 by a Hindu child, was written three or four 
 centuries ago by a Mussulman. 
 
 On its divine side, ignoring those dim reaches of 
 Sufi-ism which only the saints attain, and where all 
 saints, of all faiths, are at one, ignoring, too, all 
 sectarian differences as between Sunnis and Shiahs, 
 Islam stands in India as another name for bhakti, or 
 the melting love of God. In the songs of the people 
 the Hindu name of Hari, and the Mohammedan 
 Allah are inextricably blended, and as one listens to 
 the boatmen singing while they mend their nets, 
 one cannot distinguish the hymn from the poem of 
 love. 
 
 It was Mohammed's realisation of God's love for 
 man, however little he may have put it into words, 
 that thrilled through the Arab world, and drew the 
 tribes as one man, to fight beneath his banner. His 
 
236 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 was no triumph of the fear and majesty of God. 
 Five times every day, after his ablutions, does the 
 pious Mohammedan turn towards Mecca and say : 
 
 Praise be to God, the Lord of the worlds, 
 
 The compassionate, the merciful. 
 
 King of the day of judgment ! 
 
 Thee we worship, and Thee we ask for help. 
 
 Guide us in the straight way. 
 
 The way of those to whom Thou art gracious ; 
 
 Not of those upon whom is Thy wrath, nor of the erring. 
 
 And again : 
 
 Say : He is one God ; 
 
 God the Eternal. 
 
 He begetteth not, nor is begotten; 
 
 Nor is there one like unto Him. 
 
 The prayer and creed, for all their ring of pride 
 and awe, are not the words of beaten slaves, but of 
 loved and loving children, confident of the depth of 
 that mercy whereto they appeal. Something there 
 was indeed in the fierce ethical passion of 
 Mohammed, the basis of his piercing appeal to the 
 conscience of his people, which might look like 
 terrorism. If all men knew of hell and judgment, 
 he said, what he did, there would be little laughter 
 and much weeping amongst them. But all this is 
 on behalf of conscience and the voice of righteous- 
 ness. A nature itself so radiant in compassion for 
 women, for the poor, for slaves, and for dumb beasts, 
 could not long remain in contemplation of the 
 terrors of the Divine. Throughout the creation he 
 Tees one law writ large, "Verily my compassion 
 u)vercometh my wrath," and Mohammed, who believes 
 in austerity, but not in self-mortification, feels all 
 the passion of the Flagellant, as he utters the word 
 Islam, or uttermost surrender of self to the Truth 
 that is in God. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 AN INDIAN PILGRIMAGE 
 
 The old roads of Asia are the footways of the 
 world's ideas. There is a camel-track that crosses 
 the desert from Egypt into " Sooria," broken at the 
 Suez Canal by a ferry. What road in Europe^ 
 Roman or barbarian, can compare in charm and 
 pathos with this sandy path ? On it we might yet 
 see a woman carrying a child on the back of an ass, 
 and an old man leading them, even as the legends 
 picture the Flight of the Holy Family. By it long 
 ago marched the armies of Egypt to meet those of 
 Assyria in destructive conflict on the borders of 
 Israel. By it Judea sent the streams of her burning 
 thought and fierce ethical emotion to Alexandria, 
 before Christianity was born. 
 
 Similarly, all over India, away from her ancient 
 high roads, and thrown hke a network across het 
 proudest Himalayas, are little thread-like paths like 
 this — ways made indeed by the feet of men, but 
 worn far deeper by the weight of impelling 
 ideas than by the footprints of the toil-stained 
 crowds. 
 
 Such roads must once have connected China with 
 Kashmir. Afghanistan, always a province of India, 
 must by just such paths have sent its wandering 
 merchants with nuts and raisins to the South, as 
 long ago as the days of Solomon. Even now it is 
 by ways unpaved, deep-trodden, that the long-haired 
 
238 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 goats scramble down with their loads through the 
 snowy defiles from Bokhara and Thibet, to be 
 sheared in the sunny valley of the Jhelum, and 
 furnish wool for its famous shawls. Which comes 
 first, we wonder, commerce or pilgrimage, the trade 
 route or the palmer's path ? Would it not appear 
 that the utilities of exchange draw men from their 
 homes to points organically related, and does it not 
 seem reasonable to believe that associations of 
 beauty, arising spontaneously at place after place 
 on the line of march, give birth to the notion of 
 religious privilege and obligation in making a return 
 to particular spots ? 
 
 At any rate, it is certain that behind sanctity of 
 pilgrimage lies admiration of place, of art, even of 
 geographical significance. Benares in the North, and 
 Conjeeveram* in the South, are loved and visited in 
 India for the same reason as Durham or Cologne 
 amongst ourselves. They are cathedral cities, rich 
 in architecture, in treasure, and in the associations 
 of saints and scholars. Jagannath f is placed where 
 it is, for sheer beauty of the sea, and perhaps a little 
 also for the old cosmopolitan grandeur of the port 
 through which flowed the Eastern trade. Allahabad 
 is sacred, because there two mighty rivers join their 
 waters, making her the strategic key to two vast 
 basins, inhabited by different races, with diverse 
 traditions, hopes, and folk-lore. It is the solemn 
 beauty of the Himalayas that makes them the refuge 
 
 • Conjeeveram. — A town in the Madras Presidency, which 
 contains some of the most beautiful specimens of Dravidian 
 architecture. Often called the Benares of the South. Ramanuja 
 lived here, and Sankaracharya visited it. 
 
 t Jagannath. — Or Juggurnath — Lord of the Universe. The 
 famous place of pilgrimage, and the " Car of Juggurnath," on 
 the coast of Orissa, at Puri. This temple is distinguished for 
 the fact that all castes eat together of its consecrated food. The 
 oneness of all men is the religious idea which is associated 
 with it. 
 
AN INDIAN PILGRIMAGE 239 
 
 of holy men. The four most meritorious pilgrimages* 
 of the Hindus are the four extreme points of India 
 — North, South, East, and West — knowing which 
 the country must be known. The worship of the 
 Ganges, and the reverence that makes a Dekkan 
 villager journey, as an act of piety, to look on the 
 face of one who has seen any of the seven sacred 
 rivers, amongst peoples less poetic, would be simply 
 called the love of place. How large an element in 
 Hinduism is the folk-lore of the country ! To the 
 student who is looking for this, it appears to be past 
 all computing. The Mahabharata, the Ramayana, 
 and the Puranas are to a great extent the outpouring 
 of passionate fancy in local interpretation. In the 
 story of Sati, the perfect wife, who can miss the 
 significance of the fifty-two places in which fragments 
 of the smitten body fell ? " And one finger fell in 
 Calcutta, and that is still the Kalighat. . . . And the 
 tongue fell at Kangra (Jowalla Mukhi) in the North 
 Punjaub, and appears to this day as licking tongues of 
 fire, from underneath the ground. . . . And the left 
 hand fell at Benares, which is for ever Onnopurna, 
 the Giver of Bread," No foreigner can understand 
 the crowding of associations into these few sentences. 
 
 Even the Pole Star has its Indian myth in the 
 legend of the child Dhruwa, whose heart was the 
 steadiest point in all the universe. 
 
 Nor is the historic element lacking, in this un- 
 conscious worship of country. Like that of some 
 Indian Bernadette is the story told at a beautiful 
 Southern temple of a cowherd who had one cow that 
 gave no milk. He followed her into the jungle, and 
 found a natural lingam in the rock, over which she 
 poured her offering freely, of her own devotion. 
 
 • " The four pilgrimages," which constitute the Hindu 
 counsel of perfection, are Kedar Nath in the Himalayas, in the 
 extreme North ; Dwarka Nath in the West ; Rameshwaram ia 
 the South ; and Puri, or Jagannatb in the East. 
 
240 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 And, in proof of the occurrence, does the temple 
 altar not consist to-day of that same lingara set id 
 rough living rock ? Of such stories the villages are 
 full. Assuredly, a deep and conscious love of place 
 pervades the whole of the Indian scheme. It has 
 never been called patriotism, only because it has 
 never been defined by boundaries of contrast ; but 
 the home, the village, the soil, and, in a larger sense, 
 the rivers, the mountains, and the country as a 
 whole, are the objects of an almost passionate 
 adoration. And nowhere are we more impressed 
 by the completeness of Eastern idealism, than in 
 this, its relating of itself to Nature. Norway, with 
 her broken crags and azure seas and sombre pines, 
 her glacier-crowned mountains, and her island- 
 dotted fjords, is surely beautiful. But Norway's 
 memories are always of the heroes, and we miss 
 those voices of the saints that greet us at every turn 
 in every part of India. Brittany, windy and grey, 
 storm-tost and boulder-strewn, is beautiful. Here 
 too the miles are marked with rude Calvaires, and 
 the tales of the saints lie like her own moorland 
 mists across the whole Breton land. But this 
 Catholic sainthood never reaches the stern in- 
 tellectual discipline of Hinduism, and we long in 
 vain for that mingling of mystic passion and 
 philosophic freedom, where holiness merges into 
 scholarship, that at once distinguishes the Orient, 
 and weds its races and all their dreams to their own 
 soil. It might almost have been S. Francis, but it 
 is actually a Bengali poem of the people, that says : 
 
 Oh. Mother Earth, Father Sky, 
 
 Brother Wind, Friend Light, 
 
 Sweetheart Water, 
 
 Here take my last salutation with folded hands ! 
 
 For to-day I am melting away into the Supreme, 
 
 Because my heart became pure. 
 
 And all delusion vanished, 
 
 Through the power of your good company; 
 
AN INDIAN PILGRIMAGE 241 
 
 Beauty of place translates itself to the Indian 
 consciousness as God's cry to the soul. Had 
 Niagara been situated on the Ganges, it is odd to 
 think how different would have been its valuation 
 by humanity. Instead of fashionable picnics and 
 railway pleasure-trips, the yearly or monthly incur- 
 sion of worshipping crowds. Instead of hotels, 
 temples. Instead of ostentatious excess, austerity. 
 Instead of the desire to harness its mighty forces to 
 the chariot of human utility, the unrestrainable 
 longing to throw away the body, and realise at once 
 the ecstatic madness of Supreme Union. Could 
 contrast be greater ? 
 
 It is commonly said that Hindus derive the idea 
 of pilgrimage from the Buddhist worship of relics. 
 But the psychological aspects of the custom make 
 this appear unlikely. Doubtless the great commercial 
 nexus of the Buddhist period made transport easy, 
 and thus strengthened and stimulated the tendency, 
 just as railways have in modern times opened up 
 the country, and created the possibility of a 
 geographical sense amongst classes who in older 
 days could not have aspired to travel far or often. 
 But in its essence, the institution is so entirely an 
 expression of love for the Motherland, that it 
 must have been anterior to Buddhism by at least as 
 much as the Aryan occupation of India. If one 
 visits the Kennery caves, hidden amongst the jungles 
 to the north of Bombay, this fact is brought home to 
 one. Here are a hundred and eight cells, cut out of 
 the solid rock. They are grouped in pairs; each 
 pair has its own water-supply ; and, wherever the 
 view is finest, wherever a glimpse can be caught of 
 the meeting-line of sea and forest, there a staircase 
 and seat will be found specially carved in the stone, 
 for purposes of contemplation. For Nature is the 
 eternal fact, and the landscape from this point a 
 thousand years ago was as beautiful as it is to-day. 
 
 Q 
 
242 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 Ellora shows at a glance that through century 
 after century it has been a holy place. The 
 Buddhist found it already so, and in due time the 
 Mussulman confirmed the ancient choice, by bring- 
 ing his illustrious dead to lie in the mighty fane on 
 its hilltop. But why was it first selected ? None 
 who has wakened to the dewy freshness of its 
 morning, none who has gazed thence across the 
 sea-like plain, can ask. To all eternity, while the 
 earth remains what she is, Ellora will be one of the 
 spots where the mystery of God is borne in, in 
 overwhelming measure, upon the souls of men, 
 whatever their associations, whatever their creed. 
 
 But we are dominated more by the idea that is 
 behind us than by the spontaneous impressions of 
 our senses. To the nomad of the desert, accustomed 
 to the shifting of hot sands, and ceaseless moving 
 of the camp, with what coolness and refreshment 
 must rise the thought of death ! Mussulman piety 
 has three motives — the glory of man, the charm of 
 woman, and the holiness of the grave. In very 
 early times we see the august pastor Abraham 
 seeking out a cave in which to place the body of his 
 wife. Death, the fixed, the still, the cold, must be 
 shrined within the steady and imperishable. " The 
 long home," a great rock in a weary land, endless 
 rest, eternal cold and silence, all these are to be 
 found in the grave. Is it not easy to understand that 
 while the peasant, from the banks of the Ganges to 
 the banks of the Tiber, turns naturally to burning of 
 the dead, the wilderness-dwellers bury him deep in 
 mother earth, or build him about with unyielding 
 granite, and thenceforth make this dwelling-house of 
 the beloved as the centre of their own wanderings ? 
 
 Hence, what the sacred place of pilgrimage is 
 to the Hindu, that the Taj Mahal or the tomb of 
 Aurungzeeb, or the ever-memorable grave at Medina, 
 is to the pious Mussulman. Almost every Moham- 
 
AN INDIAN PILGRIMAGE 243 
 
 medan village in India, too, has its sleeping-place of 
 some " pir " or saint ; and I have seen a poverty- 
 stricken God's acre, where the sole treasure of the 
 people was a gnarled and scarcely-living stump, that 
 marked the last home of a long-remembered holy 
 man. For it is the ideal of the desert — rest from 
 their wanderings and shadow from its scorching 
 sun — it is this ideal, and not the natural dictation of 
 their own birth-place, that has become the guiding- 
 power behind the life and choice of these Moslemised 
 Indian folk. And yet all their old poetry of soil 
 comes out in the spot they choose ! The tomb in 
 the village-grove ; the Taj at the river-bend ; the 
 iris-covered graves on the riversides and hillocks of 
 Kashmir ; what pictures do these make at dawn and 
 sunset, or through the long Indian night, with its 
 mysterious voices sighing and whispering about the 
 dead ! Surely, by thus adding the pastoral tradition 
 to her own, India grows rich, not poor, in the things 
 that form the true wealth of men. 
 
 A pilgrim's camp is like some scene taken out of 
 the Middle Ages ^ Or, rather, it would be like it, 
 but that is so largely depleted of militant elements. 
 The Nagas, or armed friars, are no menace to any- 
 thing in the modern system, which indeed at this 
 moment they do not understand ; and the authority 
 that actually protects and keeps order amongst the 
 pilgrims is to be sought rather in the unarmed 
 district officer, or tehsildar, than in anything that 
 could be recognised as forceful by the naked eye. 
 In the South, which is the home of orthodoxy, 
 pilgrimage has gone out of fashion since the advent 
 of railways. Fewer people, certainly fewer widows, 
 visit Benares, since it became easier to do so. And 
 those who have seen a genuine crowd of shrine- 
 farers, in some place remote from steam, cannot 
 wonder at the shock which the pious imagination 
 sufiFers at the sight of a locomotive. Amongst other 
 
244 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 things that the religious traveller has a right to 
 expect is the opportunity of a flight from the New 
 India to the Old, as an actual environment. From 
 any point where many ways meet, and various 
 streams of pilgrims converge upon each other, the 
 road to the sacred place will be divided into regular 
 stages of a day's journey, and at each halting-place 
 a camp will be pitched for the night. Even these 
 rest-camps will be situated as far as possible at 
 spots peculiar for their beauty or interest. Is there 
 a cluster of springs? The place is said to be 
 "holy," and we must halt there for worship. 
 Originally, this referred only to beauty and con- 
 venience ; but in process of time one cannot doubt 
 that a certain atmosphere of insight and devotion 
 has really thrown its halo about the dust and water 
 of the locality, and in the place where so much 
 simple faith has spent its rapture, the highest love 
 and praj'er have become easier to all comers. 
 
 But the temples are all visited, the bathing is 
 performed, evening worship is over, and silence and 
 sleep fall upon the pilgrims' camp. The moon 
 grows to the full, for we must arrive at the goal on 
 the fifteenth day. And again, it is the simple beauty 
 of the world which determines the law, that under 
 the young moon shall be the going forth, and with 
 her wane the return home. The moon is near the 
 full, and weariness sleeps sound. At what hour is 
 the first tent struck ? When does the first sleeper 
 rouse himself, and take again to the road ? Who 
 can tell ? Certainly not one who has never been 
 able to rise so long before dawn that others were 
 not up and afoot before her, their tents gone, and 
 little heaps of white ashes from the cooking-fires the 
 only sign of their twelve hours' tenancy of tree- 
 shadow or stream-side. 
 
 On go the pilgrims, singly or in groups. Old 
 women, bent double with age and toil, hobbling along 
 
AN INDIAN PILGRIMAGE 245 
 
 by the help of the pointed alpenstock. Monks of all 
 descriptions are to be seen. Some of them are 
 covered with ashes, have long reddish-looking hair, 
 wear only the yellow loin-cloth, and carry curious 
 tongs and begging-bowls. These may be Yogis, of 
 the order that believes in the mortification of the 
 flesh ; or Nagas, the militant monks, who were 
 once ready to defend the Faith at any moment, and 
 who to this day are powerfully organised to meet the 
 shock of a world that has long ago, alas, passed 
 away like a dream. The sannyasin, often a man of 
 modern education, decently clad in the sacred 
 salmon-yellow, accepting no alms save food, refusing 
 the touch of any metal, is here, doing the distance 
 cheerfully on foot. Next comes an ascetic, with 
 withered arm held aloft and useless this many a 
 long year. Again, a proud mahunt, abbot of some 
 rich foundation, master of elephants and treasure 
 uncounted, is borne past. Or, as one climbs, having 
 abandoned the open dandy that costs such intoler- 
 able labour to the bearers on a mountain march, one 
 may be joined in kindly chat by some one or two of 
 the "Naked Swamis" — men who wear neither 
 ashes nor clothing beyond the necessary scanty rag, 
 who wander amongst sunny deserts and snowy 
 mountains alike indifferent to heat and cold, and of 
 whom, when one talks with them, one remembers 
 nothing, save that here are friends of the culture of 
 scholars, and the breeding and rank of gentlemen. 
 
 But the crowd is still more motley. In camp, the 
 strips of yellow cloth that so often do duty as a 
 shelter for the religious, stand side by side with 
 tents of all sizes and conditions. And here now are 
 zenana-ladies carried in scarlet-covered palkees ; 
 other women, again, on horseback ; men and women 
 alike on foot, or in open dandies ; householders, 
 widows, sannyasinis in beads and yellow cloth ; 
 there are even some, too weak for walking or climb- 
 
246 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 ing, who are borne in straw chairs, strapped to the 
 back of a man carrying a stout staff. On and on 
 presses the irregular host, mixed up with Mohamme- 
 dan baggage-carriers and servants, cooks, and food- 
 vendors of all sorts. 
 
 Here the road is broken by a glacier. There it 
 becomes a mere goat-path, running across dangerous 
 crags. Here is the lake into which an avalanche, 
 brought down by their hymn of triumph, once 
 precipitated thousands of returning pilgrims. Now 
 we have reached the heights where the ground is 
 carpeted with edelweiss instead of grass. Again, 
 we are wandering amidst wildernesses of flowers, 
 while every few yards the dominant note in the 
 composition is changed imperceptibly : first the 
 yellow wallflower, then flame-coloured Iceland 
 poppies, again the long-stalked single-headed 
 Michaelmas daisy of the Himalayas. When the 
 journey began, almost the only blossoms were the 
 orchids on the tree-trunks in the region of maiden- 
 hair fern. Now we have passed the last of the pine 
 woods. Even the white birches, like smitten silver 
 veining blown sharp and twisted against the moun- 
 tain sides, are gone : and to-night, when the tents 
 are pitched over purple and white anemones, there 
 will be no fuel save the juniper scrub that clings to 
 the face of the rock in sheltered niches. On the 
 edge of the last glacier, growing beside the gentian, 
 we find an evergreen forget-me-not, unknown to us 
 hitherto, and making the third or fourth new species 
 — from a large crimson and purple myosotis onwards 
 — which our pilgrimage has bestowed. 
 
 Our neighbours in the tents about us are not 
 amusing themselves by botanising, probably, but 
 they are communing with Nature none the less 
 truly than ourselves. On the last day, drawing 
 dear to the shrine, we shall see them risk their lives 
 to gather the great nodding columbines and the 
 
AN INDIAN PILGRIMAGE 247 
 
 little Alpine roses growing on the rocks. Their 
 talk is all of Siva. As they are borne along, they 
 are striving, doubtless, to fix their minds on the 
 repetition of His name, or the contemplation of His 
 form. But the awesome grandeur and beauty of 
 the heights about them will always be remembered 
 by them as the Great God's fit dwelling-place. 
 They are in a church. Rocks and glaciers form 
 the sanctuary. Snowy passes are the pillared aisles. 
 Behind them stand the pine-forests for processions 
 of singers carrying banners, and overhead are the 
 heavens themselves for cathedral roof. It is the 
 peculiarity of Eastern peoples to throw upon the 
 whole of Nature that feeling which we associate 
 only with the place of worship. But is their love 
 less real, or greater, for this fact ? 
 
 The day of the full moon comes, the last and 
 most dangerous points are surmounted, and the 
 Shrine is reached. Happy the man or woman, who, 
 on this journey to God, is snatched out of life ! One 
 false step, and the soul that was struggling to see 
 may be carried up at once in a swift sure flight. Or 
 death may come in other ways. " It is so beauti- 
 ful ! I must be one with it ! " sighed a man who 
 stood on a precipice, looking down at the valleys. 
 And before any one could stop him, he was gone. 
 Such things are not premeditated. There is a 
 genuine ecstasy of the soul in which it hears the 
 voice of the Eternities calling to it, and the prisoning 
 body becomes suddenly intolerable. Is it a stain 
 upon Hinduism that it has never called this " suicide 
 while of unsound mind " ? 
 
 But the Shrine itself — where is it ? what is it ? 
 Perhaps a temple, placed above some gorge, on a 
 beetling rock, with sister snows in sight. Perhaps 
 the source of a sacred river. Perhaps a cave, in 
 which continual dripping of water makes a stalagmite 
 of ice, a huge crystalline lingam that never melts. 
 
248 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 One can picture how such a place would first be 
 discovered. Some party of shepherds, losing them- 
 selves and their flocks amongst the ravines on a 
 summer day, and entering the cavern by accident, 
 to find there the presence of the Lord Himself. Men 
 and beasts, awed and worshipping, how dear is such 
 a picture to the Christian heart I 
 
 Worship! Worship! The very air is rent with 
 prayer and hymns. From the Unreal to the Real ! 
 From the Many to the One ! Lord of Animals ! 
 Refuge of Weariness ! Siva ! Siva ! the Free ! the 
 Free ! 
 
 Hours pass, and ere dawn next day the descent to 
 the valleys is begun. Wonderful is the snowy 
 stillness of the lofty pass, when, with our faces set 
 homewards, the moon fades behind us, and the sun 
 rises before. The pilgrims march with less 
 regulanty now. All are anxious to return, and 
 some push on, while others break off from the line 
 of route. We reach our own village, and say fare- 
 well to the acquaintances of the pilgrimage, adding 
 what comfort we may to the provision for their 
 further journeying. The nights grow dark now, 
 and the great experience becomes a memory, marked 
 always, however, in the Hindu's life, by some special 
 abstinence, practised henceforth as the pilgrim's 
 thank-offering. 
 
 It is easy to believe that the scenes in which we 
 bave mingled are nowadays denuded of half their 
 rightful elements ; that once upon a time as many of 
 the travellers would have been Tartar or Chinese as 
 Indian ; that the shrine represents what may have 
 been the summer meeting of great trading caravans ; 
 that Nagarjuna and Bodhidharmma, going out to 
 the Further East with their treasures of Indian 
 thought, were in the first place pilgrims on some 
 such pilgrimage as this. Even now, many of the 
 functions of a university are served by the great 
 
AN INDIAN PILGRIMAGE 249 
 
 gathering. Hundreds, or even thousands, oi 
 religious men meet, in a manner to eliminate 
 personal ties of friendship and affection, and 
 emphasise and refresh the ideal and intellectual 
 aspects of their lives. 
 
 At the vast assemblies of sflrfA«s, which occur once 
 in every twelve years at Hurdwar, at Nasick,at Ujjain, 
 and at Allahabad, there are fixed halls of learned dis- 
 putation, where, for hundreds of years, Hindu philo- 
 sophy has been discussed, determined, and expanded, 
 something in the fashion of the Welsh Eisteddfod. 
 Here come the wandering monks from every part of 
 India. Here the householder finds himself in 
 vigorous and renewed relation to his faith. Here 
 fresh voices of learning and devotion are able to win 
 for themselves ecclesiastical authority. Such oppor- 
 tunities must have been the means by which San- 
 karacharya asserted his undisputed mastery of the 
 world of Hindu scholarship. Did it, we wonder, 
 occur to Alexander that learned Greeks might be sent 
 to such wandering colleges in order to hear and to 
 tell new things ? 
 
 Sanskrit is the lingua franca of this ancient 
 learning. To this day the visitor to a Calcutta toll* 
 may hear the boys dispute with each other on time- 
 worn themes in the classic tongue, and may picture 
 himself back in the colleges of Thebes or Athens in 
 the long ago. But here in the great ntelas are the 
 crowning achievements towards which are directed 
 the hardier ambitions of those Brahman boys. And 
 we need not wonder at their enthusiasm for such 
 distinction. The great open competition, with its 
 
 * Toll. — A toll is a Sanskrit school, in vtrhich a Brahman 
 lived with his disciples, studying and teaching. The ideal toll 
 consisted of a series of mud cottages with wide verandahs, built 
 round a small lake or " tank," with its cluster of bamboos, 
 palms, and fruit-trees. Poverty and learning weie the inspira- 
 tion of the community. These tolls formed the old Indian 
 universities. 
 
Missing Page 
 
AN INDIAN PILGRIMAGE 251 
 
 that all great accumulation is for subsequent great 
 distribution. 
 
 It is a strange world that has been revealed to us 
 in this camp of pilgrimage, and it is not easy to reach 
 its full significance. Scarcely in any two tents do 
 they understand each other's language, and we shall 
 do better to ask for bread in Sanskrit than in English. 
 Malabaris and Bengalis, Sikhs and Madrasis, Mah- 
 rattas and even Mussulmans, dwell side by side for 
 the nonce. Could incongruity and disunion be more 
 strongly illustrated ? 
 
 Yet it was unity and not disunity that impressed us 
 as we looked. From one end of the camp to the other 
 the same simple way of life, the same sacramental 
 reverence for food and bathing, the same gentleness 
 and courtesy, the same types of face and character, 
 and, above all, one great common scheme of thought 
 and purpose. 
 
 The talk may be in different languages ; but no 
 matter at what tent door we might become eaves- 
 droppers, we should find its tone and subject much 
 the same — always the lives of the saints, always the 
 glory of the soul, always fidelity to guru and dharmtna. 
 By two formulae, and two alone, renunciation 
 and freedom from personality, is all life here 
 interpreted. 
 
 Other countries have produced art, chivalry, heroic 
 poems, inventive systems. In none of these has 
 India been altogether wanting, yet none is her dis- 
 tinguishing characteristic. What, then, has she given 
 to the world that is beyond all competition ? To-day 
 her gifts are decried by all men, for to-day the 
 mighty mother is become widowed and abased. She 
 who has held open port to all fugitives is unable now 
 to give bread to her own children. She with whom 
 Parsi, ]t.w, and Christian have been thankful to take 
 refuge, is despised and ostracised by all three alike. 
 She who has prized knowledge above all her 
 
252 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 treasures, finds her learning now without value in the 
 markets of the world. It is urged that the test of 
 utility is the true standard for things transcendental, 
 and that an emancipation into modern commerce and 
 mechanics is a worthier goal for her sons' striving 
 than the old-time aim of knowledge for its own sake, 
 the ideal for itself. 
 
 And the modem world may be right. 
 
 But, even so, has India in the past given nothing, 
 without which our whole present would be- the 
 poorer ? 
 
 Who that has caught even a whisper of what her 
 name means can say so ? Custom kept always as an 
 open door, through which the saints may dance into 
 our company, thought sustained at a level where 
 religion and science are one, a maze of sublime 
 apostrophes and world-piercing prayers ; above all, 
 the power to dream rare dreams of the Word be- 
 coming flesh and dwelling among men that they may 
 behold His glory — are these things nothing ? If, after 
 all the higher transformation of man be the ultimate 
 end of human eflFort, which has more uceply vindi- 
 cated its right to exist, the modem nexus of commerce 
 and finance, or that old world on which we have gazed 
 in the pilgrims' camp ? 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 ON THE LOOM OF TIME 
 
 The essential differences between countries of the 
 Asiatic and European types are as yet but little 
 understood, and a main difficulty in the growth of 
 an understanding is the absence of elements in the 
 English language, embodying any wide power of 
 social survey. The disciples of Auguste Comte 
 have done much to popularise certain important 
 words and conceptions, but the hearts of angels and 
 the tongues of poets would be too little to meet all 
 the necessities of the task. 
 
 The word theocracy, for instance, which is essential 
 to an understanding of Asia, either territorial or 
 historic, has but an ambiguous sound in English. 
 To the learned Positivist it means "the social 
 system built up on theism " ; to the vulgar, it indi- 
 cates some fabulous scheme of divine monarchy, 
 such as is popularly attributed to Israel before the 
 days of Saul, or to England in the dreams of Oliver 
 Cromwell. 
 
 To persons thinking in the latter fashion, the two 
 statements that India is a theocracy, and that it is 
 at present occupied by the British raj, seem in- 
 compatible. It is clear that only detailed and 
 penetrative knowledge of concrete examples can 
 build up in our minds such a conception of the 
 essentials of a theocratic system as shall give us the 
 power of handling the term as confidently and 
 
254 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 intelligently as we now feel capable of using more 
 purely political expressions. And of such examples 
 it will be found best to take the nearest first. 
 
 In the history of the world, the city of Rome 
 occupies a unique position, as the Occidental cradle 
 and battle-field of two opposing forces, the Imperial 
 and the Theocratic, or, as one may prefer to call 
 them, the European and the Asiatic ideas. For it 
 was Rome that first imposed upon the West that 
 notion of organised force which is almost all that is 
 at present meant by the state-empire. And through 
 all the feuds and disorders of the Middle Ages, it 
 was the Roman impulse that was working itself out 
 by the energy of barbarian peoples, to its perfect 
 triumph in the nineteenth century. Caesar conceived. 
 Napoleon completed, the imperial scheme. Alexander 
 as an individual may have seen what they saw: but 
 Greece was far too near to Asia, and his military 
 designs could but evaporate before their time into 
 mere learned observations and the exchange of 
 interesting thought. 
 
 It was left to Rome to elaborate into fixity of 
 precision that destiny which could not perhaps have 
 been avoided by the peoples of a coast-line, kept 
 militant by the daily conquest of Nature, tempted to 
 aggression by the very habits of their life. For 
 empire in the European sense is a very different 
 thing from the marauding hosts of the East going 
 -lut to warfare headed by a commander of brilliant 
 prowess. Rome instituted, and modern Europe has 
 inherited, the idea of one people exploiting another, 
 under rights strictly defined by law, with an 
 appearance of order which would deceive the very 
 elect. 
 
 The Caesars failed by the strength of the un- 
 assimilable elements which their Empire had to 
 meet. Napoleon failed because those whom he 
 temporarily subdued were as strong to re-act in 
 
ON THE LOOM OF TIME 255 
 
 imitation as to be assimilated. To-day the Roman 
 Empire is represented by some eight or ten emulous 
 peoples and princes, all armed to the teeth, all bent 
 on appropriating the world. But it is the Roman 
 Empire still. 
 
 And yet Rome herself is the one character whose 
 part in the drama is completely transformed. For 
 no one yet thinks of her as the metropolis of the 
 juvenile kingdom of Italy. To the imagination of 
 humanity she is still the city of the Church. St. 
 Peter's and the Vatican still form her central point. 
 The Pope still rules. This contrast between her 
 first and second selves is much more startling than 
 the transition by which the brigand-chief becomes 
 the sainted ancestor. Before it happened, it would 
 have seemed far more absurd than it would be 
 to-day to propose to make the name of Oxford or 
 Benares a synonym for the vulgar competition of 
 trade. For Rome, the supreme, the invincible, has 
 actually been conquered by the ideas of the East. 
 The poor and the lowly have taken her by storm. 
 Henceforth is she to be in Europe not the voice of 
 domination, but of renunciation ; not the teacher of 
 aggression, but of self-sacrifice ; royal in her rank 
 and her prerogatives certainly, but far more deeply 
 and truly the friend of the people than of kings. 
 Henceforth, those who are in a special sense her 
 children will live sequestered from the world, pursuing 
 after poverty instead of riches, after self-mortification 
 instead of self-indulgence ; men and women apart, 
 as in the Eastern household. Every simple act that 
 she enjoins will possess a sanctity out of all propor- 
 tion to its intrinsic value. Her customs will become 
 rituals. Her journeys will be pilgrimages. The 
 simplest ordinances of life, administered by her, 
 will now be sacraments. The expression of her 
 forgiveness will be absolution ; of her affection, a 
 benediction. Her very rulers will claim no personal 
 
250 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 right to their high places, but will declare themselves 
 simple executors of the divine will " Servant of 
 the servants of God " will be, to the thinking of the 
 world, their proudest title. 
 
 In the eyes of the Church, henceforth, all men 
 are to be equal, at least until one has made himself 
 a saint, and another Judas. The differences of rank 
 established by the world are to be as nothing before 
 her, and even ecclesiastical gradations are to be 
 merely as conditions on which grace can work. 
 Many of the saints will be humble and unlearned. 
 Many a bishop will reach the lowest hell. Rank, 
 at least theoretically, is nothing to Rome. Her 
 children are all to be the sharers of a common 
 supernatural life, of which a religious banquet is the 
 token. A great responsibility is to rest upon them, 
 of living worthily of the name by which they are 
 called. Their life, as related to each other and to 
 her, can be expressed only in terms of the ex- 
 ploration and manifestation of certain ideals, laid 
 down broadly in authoritative writings, known as 
 Scriptures, and with less clearness and power 
 in secondary writings and teachings, called tradi- 
 tions. 
 
 In other words, the Imperial city has transformed 
 herself into a pure theocracy. If we blot out the 
 idea of birth by a sacramental rite, and substitute 
 that of a chosen place and race, keeping everything 
 else approximately the same, the Church is re-trans- 
 muted into any one out of half a dozen Eastern 
 countries — ancient Egypt, Judaea, Arabia, modern 
 India — under the government of the religious idea. 
 Here, too, the priesthood dominates ail classes 
 equally, and the priestly interpretation of life pre- 
 vails—the very gifts one brings home from a journey 
 are explained as temple-offerings. Here, too, the 
 political system is extraneous : custom is sacred, so 
 that a grammar of habit takes the place of legisla- 
 
ON THE LOOM OF TIME 257 
 
 tion ; men and women live apart ; merit is the sole 
 real condition of social prestige ; and so on. 
 
 It is due to the purely natural character of the 
 great complexus, that we have in India the — to us 
 so extraordinary — spectacle of a society handed over 
 to the power of a priesthood, without in any way ^ 
 losing its sense of the universal sacredness of learning I 
 and freedom of thought. In the case of Rome, where 
 an artificial system was created on the basis of a 
 foreign experience, the crude temper of the old 
 imperialism betrayed itself primarily against mind 
 and thought, which it conceived as the legitimate 
 sphere of its authority. In Catholic Europe, a man 
 might scarcely venture to believe that the earth 
 moves; must apologise for enjoying the cosmic 
 speculations of La Place ; could hardly study Plato 
 without grave suspicion. In India, atheism itself j 
 might be preached on the very steps of the temple./ 
 All that the people would demand of the preacher; 
 would be sincerity.*- In Christendom, knowledge 
 has been so much feared that men have again and 
 again suffered torture and death for no other crime. 
 In India, knowledge has always been held to be 
 beatitude. Abundance of words, in every Indian 
 language, testify to the honour paid to scholars. 
 Persian and English books are held as sacred as the 
 Sanskrit. And we should seek in vain, throughout 
 history and language, for any trace of limitation 
 imposed, or suggested to be imposed, upon the mind 
 of man. 
 
 Even the vexed question of the right of literature 
 to reveal more than is permitted to conversation, was 
 
 • The Charvaka system of philosophy, one of the orthodox 
 schools, is a purely agnostic formulation, I have myself met a 
 Charvaka on a pilgrimage. His statements of belief sounded 
 like mockery of the people about him. The word " orthodox ' ' 
 here only means that by adopting Charvaka doctrines, a man 
 did not cease to be called a Hindu. 
 
 R 
 
Missing Page 
 
ON THE LOOM OF TIME 259 
 
 it is obviously the final record of a long research, 
 carried out, not by a single individual, but by a whole 
 school, experimenting continuously through many 
 generations. Each man's labour was conditioned by 
 the fact that he had no laboratory and no instruments 
 outside his own body, and there can be no doubt that 
 life was often sacrificed to the thirst for knowledge. 
 The whole, therefore, is like a resume of two or three 
 centuries of the conclusions of some English Royal 
 Society, or some French Academy of Sciences, 
 dating from two to three thousand years ago. And 
 we must remember that, if the terminology of this 
 old science has a certain quaintness in our ears, 
 this is probably not greater than that which our own 
 talk of forces and molecules, of chemical affinities 
 and sphygmographic records, would have, if it were 
 suddenly recovered, after a lapse of two thousand 
 years, by a new civilisation, stationed, say, in 
 Mexico. 
 
 What is true of the psychology is equally true ot 
 Indian mathematics, astronomy, surgery, chemistry. 
 The Oriental predilection for meditative insight is an 
 advantage in the field of mathematics, where deduc- 
 tion is a necessity. But at the same time its funda- 
 mental solidity and originality are shown by the fact 
 that highly abstruse problems are stated by Hindu 
 thinkers in concrete, and even in poetic terms. And 
 it will be remembered that less than a hundred years 
 ago, De Morgan* celebrated the solution at sight of 
 certain hitherto uncompleted problems of " Maxima 
 and Minima," by a young Hindu called Ram 
 Chandra. 
 
 The law of gravitation itself was enunciated and 
 discussed by Bhashkar Acharya in the twelfth cen- 
 tury. And the antiquity of the Sanskrit word 
 
 * De Morgan died 1871. P6re Gratry and George Boola 
 were other distinguished mathematicians deeply aware of their 
 indebtedness to Eastern systems. 
 
26o THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 shunyo, for nought, together with the immemorial 
 distribution of the system all over the country, con- 
 clusively proves that our decimal notation is Indian, 
 and not Arabic, in origin. 
 
 How is it, then, we repeat, that a more imposing 
 scientific activity has not been the result of a faculty 
 so undeniable? Many considerations may be 
 adduced in explanation. There is a vast inter- 
 national organisation of scientific efTort in Europe 
 to-day, operating to make an incomparable sum of 
 results. Ancient India knew what was meant by 
 scientific co-operation, but by organisation scarcely. 
 And no one nation, working alone, could have pro- 
 duced the whole of what we know as Modern 
 Science, or even one division of it. Ancient 
 Greece gives us the first word on electricity. What 
 a leap from this to Volta and Galvani ! Where, 
 again, had these been without the German Hertz, 
 the French Ampere, the Hindu Bose ? And then 
 Italy for a second time takes up the thread of 
 inquiry, and produces the apparatus for wireless 
 telegraphy. 
 
 Again, we must remember that in Europe to-day 
 we have renounced almost everything for science. 
 Art and letters are almost at a standstill. In these 
 departments — at least, in every country outside 
 France and Russia — we are living almost entirely 
 on the treasures of the past. In religion we see the 
 same superficial eclecticism, the same absence of 
 genuine contemporary impulse. But India never 
 was in this position. Side by side with the learned 
 man, speculating or experimenting on the secrets of 
 Nature, the builders were raising the village temple, 
 the shuttle flew to and fro in the loom, the clink of 
 the tools was heard in the brass-smithy, the palace 
 pundits busied themselves with their collection of 
 ancient texts, the saints poured forth the rapture of 
 their souls, the peasant waked and slept in the good 
 
ON THE LOOM OF TIME 261 
 
 company of Nature, rice-field and palm-tree, cattle 
 and farmstead. Faith, art, and industry lived on 
 undisturbed. 
 
 After all, is it not possible that we deceive our- 
 selves ? The true secret of our elimination of every 
 other intellectual activity in favour of science, is it 
 really the depth of our enthusiasm for knowledge, or 
 is it not rather our modern fever for its mechanical 
 application ? How far is the passion for pure truth 
 unimpaired by commercial interests ? How far is our 
 substitution of specialisms for synthesis conditioned 
 by finance merely ? When our utilitarian ingenuity 
 draws nearer exhaustion, when the present spasm of 
 inventive ability has worked itself out, then, and not 
 till then, will come the time for estimating the actual 
 profundity and disinterestedness of our scientific 
 ardour. Will our love of knowledge continue to 
 drive us on to a still deeper theoretic insight, or will 
 our investigations languish in our hands, lingering 
 on as a mere fashion in learning, even as Aristotle 
 lingered on through the Middle Ages? Till such 
 questions are nearer finding their answer we are in no 
 position to assume that the present period is, oris not, 
 ultimately scientific. 
 
 Meanwhile, in India this danger of a mercenary 
 science was always foreseen, and viewed with per- 
 haps an exaggerated horror, so that from the begin- 
 ning the disciple has been required to seek know- 
 ledge for its own sake, renouncing all ulterior 
 motive. The value derived at the present stage of 
 development from incorporating a progressive science 
 in a progressive civilisation was thus lost ; although 
 we must remember that in a very real sense such a 
 transition, shorn of its lower elements, has occurred 
 in the East from prehistoric times, whenever new 
 plants and animals were to be domesticated, or new 
 tools invented. On the other hand, it is still open 
 to India, facing the actual conditions of the modern 
 
262 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 world, to prove that the innate capacity of her 
 people for scientific work and inquiry has been in no 
 way lessened by this long abstention from its vulgar 
 profits. 
 
 In spite, nevertheless, of the relative non-develop- 
 ment of natural science in India, it is the perfect 
 compatibility of the Hindu religious hypothesis with 
 the highest scientific activity, that is to make that 
 country within the present century the main source 
 of the new synthesis of religion for which we in the 
 West are certainly waiting. Several nations cannot 
 suddenly come into contact by the use of a common 
 language without a violent shock being given to their 
 prejudices in favour of local mythology. Such an 
 occurrence was inevitable in English-speaking coun- 
 tries under present circumstances, and has been 
 accelerated, as it happens, by the agnosticism born 
 of scientific activity. Christianity, moreover, has 
 been further discredited by the discovery that its 
 adherents possess no ethics sufficiently controlling 
 to influence their international relations, and finally 
 by that worship of pleasure which an age of exploi- 
 tation necessarily engenders. Thus neither the 
 sentiment of childhood, the reasoning of theology, 
 the austerity of conscience, nor the power of 
 idealism, has been strong enough to maintain the 
 creed of the West against the assaults to which the 
 age has seen it subjected. Everything seems to be 
 going through a transition. Social morality, intel- 
 lectual formulas, legal and economic relationships, 
 all have broken loose from their old moorings, and 
 are seeking for re-adjustment. The first agony of 
 the loss of belief is now over, but it has only given 
 place to a dreary hopelessness, a mental and 
 spiritual homelessness, which drives some in whom 
 heart predominates into the Church of Rome, while 
 others in whom the faculties are more evenly 
 balanced, try to forget their need in social service, 
 
ON THE LOOM OF TIME 263 
 
 or in the intellectual and artistic enjoyments of an 
 era of resumSs. 
 
 Protestantism has at last delivered herself of a 
 genuinely religious product of the highest order, in 
 that love of naked truth which finds its voice and 
 type in modern science. For all other forms of non- 
 Catholicism are more or less compromises, mere half- 
 way-houses on the road to this. But, even in this, the 
 environment of spirituality and the communion of 
 saints are apt to be left behind with the Mediaeval 
 Church. Is there no way to combine these things ? 
 Can the devotional attitude receive no justification 
 from the clear and unbiased mind ? Does religion, 
 which has made so much of /aiik, want less than 
 absolute conviction as its basis ? Is that sentiment 
 which has produced all the greatest art, and almost 
 all the greatest conduct, to be relegated to the 
 mental lumber-room, as, after all, only a supersti- 
 tion ? Surely, if so, there is an eternal inharmony 
 and divergence between the creative and the 
 inquiring faculties of man. 
 
 But the very constitution of our minds forbids us 
 to accept this paradox. It may be that we are no 
 longer able to believe in the exclusive authenticity 
 of any single religious system. But we are fast 
 inclining to the opinion that even here there must 
 be some observable sequence; that creeds and 
 mythologies must be as genuine a product of the 
 Unity-of-Things as the animals and the plants ; that 
 order and meaning there must be, in the one case 
 as in the other. Instead, therefore, of a contempt- 
 uous disregard of all faiths as equally untrue, we are 
 beginning to adopt to all alike an attitude of respect 
 as equally significant. 
 
 Only in India has this recognition of law in 
 religious conceptions ever been held in its complete- 
 ness as a part of religion itself. Only in India have 
 inspired teachers been able to declare that the name 
 
264 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 of God, being also an illusion, differed only from 
 worldly things in having the power of helping us to 
 break our bondage to illusion, while they, on the 
 other hand, increased it. Only in India has it been 
 counted orthodoxy to believe that all is within the 
 mind, that the forms of gods are but objectifications 
 of our own sense of what is best to be attained, that 
 prayer is only the heightening of will. And there- 
 fore it is from India that we shall gather that intel- 
 lectualisation of belief which is to re-establish, in 
 the name of a new and greater synthesis, our confi- 
 dence in our own past. In this new synthesis every 
 element of our own thought must find a place — the 
 conception of humanity and the worship of truth, of 
 course, because without these it would have no 
 raison d'etre. But even the emotionalism of the 
 negro must not go unplaced, uninterpreted, any 
 more than that wondrous mood in which the 
 explorer of knowledge finds himself launched on a 
 vision of Unity that he dare not name. Neither the 
 Catholic organisation of monasticism nor the Protes- 
 tant (taken from the Mohammedan) inspiration of 
 common prayer can be left out. There must be a 
 religious consciousness strong enough to recognise 
 the anguish of denial as its own most heroic experi- 
 ence, and large enough to be tender and helpful to 
 the ignorance of a child. 
 
 In that other synthesis which grew up under the 
 Roman Empire, all the Mediterranean peoples and 
 those originally related to them found a part. The 
 doctrine of immortality came from the desert ; 
 resurrection, mediatorship, and personal conscious- 
 ness of sin from ancient Egypt ; many elements 
 from Persia and Syria ; purity and asceticism from 
 the Asokan Essenes; the basis of ethics to be trans- 
 cended from Judsea ; the spirit of inquiry and the 
 necessary feeling of an intellectual void from 
 Greece, or at least from the Greek elements in 
 
ON THE LOOM OF TIME 265 
 
 Mediterranean society ; the instinct of organisation 
 from Rome ; and the all-absorbing renunciation and 
 compassion for the world that alone can give 
 sufficient nucleus for a new religion from one sweet 
 central Personality, in whom each of these various 
 hungers found its own Bethlehem — its house of 
 bread. 
 
 Similarly, in the new up-growth of our own days, 
 many preparatory influences now at work are to find 
 fulfilment. All who have felt the love of the dis- 
 inherited and oppressed, all who have followed truth 
 for its own sake, all who have longed to lose them- 
 selves in a paradise of devotion and been refused by 
 the armed reason standing at the gate, all who have 
 felt out for a larger generalisation, as they saw the 
 faith of their babyhood falling away from them, — 
 all these have helped and are helping to build up 
 the new consciousness, to make the faculty that is 
 to recognise and assimilate the doctrine of the future. 
 But the evangel itself will be mainly drawn from 
 India. 
 
 And then, having thus renewed the sources of the 
 world's inspiration, we may be pardoned if we ask, 
 What of India herself? The Egyptian delivered up 
 his whole treasure, and where is he now ? Buried 
 under many a layer of foreign invasion ; tilling the 
 soil as patiently and hopelessly as one of his own 
 oxen ; scarcely remembered, even as a name, by 
 those who make so-called plans for the country's 
 good, and are wakened only to a stupid wonder, as 
 at the sound of something familiar from books, when 
 they hear that to kill a cat to-day in the bazaar in 
 Cairo would almost cost a man his Hfe. The Jews 
 produced Jesus, and what have they become? 
 Pariahs and fugitives amongst the nations of men. 
 Who remembers them with any feeling of gratitude 
 for that which they have given? A miserable 
 formula, " the Jews who crucified Him," has taken 
 
266 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 the place amongst the devout of any memorial 
 of the fact that they created the language, the 
 thought, the habits of life, and the outlook of 
 righteousness, in which He assumed the garb of 
 humanity. 
 
 Is something of this sort to be the fate of India? 
 To give a religion to the world may be a sufficient 
 proof that one's past was not in vain, but evidently 
 it is no sort of safeguard for the future. The 
 process by which the peoples of a vast continent 
 may become mere hewers of wood and drawers of 
 water has already begun, is already well afoot. 
 Their indigenous institutions are all in decay. Their 
 prosperity is gone. Some portion or other of the 
 immense agricultural area is perpetually under 
 famine. Their arts and industries are dead or dying. 
 They have lapsed into mere customers for other 
 men's cheap wares. Even their thought would seem 
 to be mainly imitative. The orthodox is apt to tread 
 the round of his own past eternally. The unorthodox 
 is as apt to harness himself to the foreign present, 
 with an equal blindness. In suicidal desperation, 
 the would-be patriotic reiterate the war-cries of 
 antagonistic sects, or moan for the advent of a new 
 -eligion, as if, by introducing a fifth element of 
 discord, the Indian peoples could reach unity. 
 Nor does the education at present offered promise 
 any solution of the problem. It is the minimum 
 that is possible to the efficient clerk, and even that 
 minimum is undergoing reduction rather than 
 increase. 
 
 In spite of the absence of any theory of history 
 that might elucidate the course of events in the East 
 during the next two centuries, one truth reveals 
 itself with perfect plainness. A nation becomes 
 whatever she believes herself to be. She is made 
 great, not by her relative superiority, but by her 
 thought about herself. It becomes important there- 
 
ON THE LOOM OF TIME 267 
 
 fore to ask — What conception of her own nature 
 and power forms the inheritance of India ? 
 
 As Roman Catholicism is but one element inhering 
 in a great whole called Christianity, and as a man 
 may well claim to be a good Christian without being 
 a Catholic, so the religious system of Hinduism is 
 only a fragment inhering in a vast social-industrial- 
 economic scheme called the dharmma, and a man 
 may well and rightly be the servant of the dharmma, 
 without calling himself a Hindu. It is this dharmma, 
 in its large and non-sectarian activity, that determines 
 the well-being of every child of the Indian soil. The 
 word itself is an ancient name for national righteous- 
 ness or national good. It is true that the Brahmin 
 who bows before one who is net the rightful king is 
 held many times accursed by Manu. It is true that 
 the Bhagavad Gita is the only one of the world- 
 gospels that turns on the duty of fighting for the 
 true sovereign against usurpers. And yet it is also 
 a fact that the person of the ruler is always a matter 
 of singular indifference to the theocratic conscious- 
 ness. It has been hitherto indeed a mere detail for 
 military persons to fight out amongst themselves. 
 The secret of so curious an attitude is reached when 
 we discover that in the eyes of the Indian peasant, 
 the sovereign himself is only the servant of the 
 dharmma. " If he uphold it, he will stay : if not, 
 he will have to go," they all say when questioned. 
 Little do they dream, alas ! that themselves and their 
 children and their children's children may be swept 
 into oblivion also by that same failure to uphold ! 
 
 Thus, whoever was the master that an Indian 
 statesman served, whether Hindu, Mussulman, or 
 British sat upon the throne, it was the minister's 
 duty, as the loyal and obedient child of an Asiatic 
 race, to use all his influence in the best interests of 
 his people and his country. It is this elenient in 
 the national system that tends, with its great regard 
 
268 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 for agriculture, to rank the cow almost on a level 
 with the human members of the commonwealth, 
 making the Hindu sovereign forbid beef-eating 
 within his frontiers. It was this that made a certain 
 prince, in despair, hand over his salt-mines to the 
 British Government, rather than obey its mandate 
 to tax this commodity to his people, and thus derive 
 personal benefit from their misfortune. It was this 
 that made it incumbent upon many of the chiefs in 
 the old days to provide, not only salt, but also water 
 and fruit free to their subjects, a kind of " noblesse 
 oblige" that has left the wayside orchard outside 
 every village in Kashmir, till that favoured land is 
 almost like the happy island of Avilion, " fair with 
 orchard lawns, and bowery hollows crowned with 
 summer sea." It was this power of the dharmma 
 to safeguard the welfare of its people, through a law 
 as binding upon the monarch as upon his subjects, 
 that brought about the immense network of custom 
 which regulated the relief of beggars, the use of 
 water, the provisioning of pilgrimages, habits of 
 sanitation, distribution of grazing-lands, the forest- 
 rights of the peasant, and a thousand other matters 
 of importance. The mere fact that the king's 
 personal devotions were offered in a mosque could 
 not interfere with his acceptance of the system, in 
 any important measure. It was the language of 
 rule, dominating all rulers alike, by every detail of 
 birth and upbringing, and by the very impossibility 
 of imagining any deviation. Hence it could never 
 be more than a question of time till some new prince 
 had assimilated the whole, and Mussulman co- 
 opErated actively with Hindu in the great task of 
 enforcing and extending the essentials of the 
 common weal. We may regret, but we cannot 
 condone, the strange indolence by which the Indian 
 people have permitted themselves to lose sight of 
 these national and civic responsibilities of their 
 
ON THE LOOM OF TIME 269 
 
 ancient civilisation, and become absorbed in its 
 personal and domestic rites. Nor can we for one 
 moment admit that this substitution of the trees for 
 the forest deserves the name of orthodoxy, — faith- 
 fulness to the dharmma. 
 
 It is, however, an essential weakness of theocratic 
 rule that while it can tolerate any neighbour, it has 
 no idea of dominating and unifying diverse elements 
 round itself. The great mass of its subjects, too, 
 see life indirectly through the nimbus of the super- 
 natural. Instead of subordinating the priesthood 
 in national affairs to the recognised leaders of the 
 nation, exalting it only in its rightful capacity of in- 
 fluence upon the social and individual conscience, a 
 theocracy is apt to require that its leaders move, 
 encumbered by the counsels of the priests. 
 
 It was the Prophet's clear perception of these 
 facts that gave its peculiar characteristics to Islam. 
 He established a strong confraternity, and made 
 subscription to a brief and concise formula its sole 
 condition of membership. But Arab blood was com- 
 paratively unmixed, and the greater part of Moham- 
 med's work was done for him, in the close bond of 
 consanguinity that united his central group. At 
 one bound, and without any means save that power 
 of personality which is the first demand of the 
 theocratic method, he performed the double task of 
 creating an all-absorbing consciousness of nation- 
 ality, and carrying his people through the required 
 emancipation of thought. To this day the great 
 Semitised belt that divides Eastern Aryans and 
 Mongolians from Europe, reminds us, whenever we 
 look at the map, of the reality of his achievement. 
 And the history of the origins of European learning 
 remains to attest the enthusiasm of freedom which 
 he conferred on the Saracenic intellect. 
 
 Geographical conditions impose upon India the 
 same necessity of unification at all costs, and yet 
 
270 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 combine with other facts to make her the meeting- 
 ground of all races. Especially is this the case in 
 modern times, when the ocean has become a road- 
 way instead of a boundary. She is almost a museum 
 of races, creeds, and social formations, some hoary 
 with age, some crude with excessive youth. Thus 
 her problem is vastly more difficult than that [of 
 Arabia before the seventh century. Yet she con- 
 tains in herself every element of self-recovery. 
 
 If the fact had been open to doubt before, the 
 British rule, with its railways, its cheap postage, 
 and its common language of affairs, would suffi- 
 ciently have demonstrated the territorial unity of 
 the country. We can see to-day that India's is an 
 organic, and no mere mechanical, unity. " The 
 North," it has been said, " produces prophets, the 
 South priests." ft.nd it is true that her intellectual 
 and discriminating faculty, her power of recognition 
 and formulation, lies in the South ; that Mahratta, 
 Mussulman and Sikh, form her executive ; while to 
 Bengal, the country that has fought no battle for 
 her own boundaries, falls the office of the heart, 
 which will yet suffuse all the rest with the realisation 
 of the vast inclusiveness of meaning of the great 
 word " India." Historically the Indian unity is 
 obvious. And if socially it appear doubtful, the 
 country itself could set aside the doubt in an instant 
 by grasping that intuition of nationality which alone 
 is needed to give the spiritual impulse toward con- 
 solidation. 
 
 But the bare fact of an actual social, historical, 
 and geographical unity, waiting for precipitation as 
 a national consciousness, is not the only possession 
 of India at the present crisis. She has a great past 
 to return upon, and a clearly defined economy for 
 model. Her traditions are unstained. There is no 
 element of national life — art, poetry, literature, 
 philosophy, science — in which she has not at some 
 
ON THE LOOM OF TIME 271 
 
 time been exceptionally strong. She has organised 
 at least two empires of commanding character. In 
 architecture, three of the most imposing styles in the 
 world have been hers — the.Dravidian in the South, 
 the Buddhist across middle India from Orissa to 
 Bombay, and the Indo-Saracenic in the North. 
 
 There can be little doubt that her next period will 
 confront India with the necessity of introducing 
 some community of ritual as between priest and 
 people ; and this of itself must create fresh archi- 
 tectural needs, a new architecture of the communal 
 consciousness which would be sufficient to make the 
 required appeal to the national imagination, and at 
 the same time give the needed scope to the passion 
 of democracy. 
 
 For in looking to the growth of a sentiment 01 
 nationality as the solution of Indian problems, we 
 are of course turning away from kings and priests, 
 and appealing to Woman and the People. A similar 
 appeal, in the only form possible to the unmixed 
 theocracy of that day, was made by Buddhism ; and 
 the whole history of India, from the Christian era 
 onwards, is the story of the education of the popular 
 consciousness, by the unifying and ameliorating in- 
 fluence of Hinduism, as it was then thrown open. 
 To-day, if we adopt, moral and intellectual tests as 
 the criteria of civilisation, we can hardly refuse to 
 admit that in such issues the East has been more 
 successful than the West. In strength of family ties ; 
 in sweetness and decorum of family life ; in wide- 
 spread understanding of the place of the personal 
 development in the scheme of religion as a whole ; 
 in power of enjoyment of leisure, without gross 
 physical accompaniments ; in dignity, frugality, con- 
 tinuous industry without aggressive activity ; in 
 artistic appreciation of work done and doing ; and 
 above all in the ability to concentrate the whole 
 faculty at will, even the poorest classes in India, 
 
272 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 whatever their religion, will compare favourably with 
 many who are far above them in the West. Such 
 are some of the results of the Buddhist period. 
 
 The Mogul Empire fell into decay and failed, 
 simply because it did not understand how to base 
 itself on a great popular conception of Indian 
 unity. It could neither assimilate the whole of the 
 religious impulse of India, nor yet detach itself com- 
 pletely from it. Hence, as a government, it suc- 
 ceeded neither in rooting itself permanently, nor in 
 creating that circuit of national energy which alone 
 could have given it endurance. Nevertheless, it 
 contributed invaluable elements to the national life 
 of the future, and it is difficult to see how that hfe 
 could hope to organise itself without its memorable 
 preliminary experiment. 
 
 The foreign character of the English period pro- 
 duced, as its first effect, a wide sense of bewilder- 
 ment and unrest, which gave birth to a hundred 
 projected panaceas. There were social reformers, 
 who thought that by a programme more purely 
 destructive than they then realised, their Mother- 
 land would be best served. And while we may 
 deprecate the form taken by their zeal, we can but 
 admit that no other testimony could have been given 
 to the living energy of the race which would have 
 been so convincing. If Indian civilisation had 
 really been stationary, as is so sapiently supposed 
 by the West, the embers could hardly have leaped 
 into such flame, at the bare touch of new ideas. If, 
 on the other hand, the country had accepted the 
 superficial theory, and run agate in the endeavour 
 to reform itself, we could not thereafter have con- 
 ceived of India as possessing sufficient depth and 
 stability to make hope possible. Meanwhile the 
 reformers have not failed to bring forth fruit. They 
 have produced groups of persons who represent 
 what is valuable in Western thought and habits, 
 
ON THE LOOM OF TIME 273 
 
 without necessarily being denationalised, and they 
 have demonstrated once for all the fact that India 
 contains sufficient forces of restitution within her- 
 self to be completely independent of foreign advice 
 and criticism. 
 
 Next came political agitators, who seemed to 
 think that by entire deference to an alien idea their 
 country would be saved. There can be no doubt 
 that here also a valuable contribution had been 
 made. The foreign idea can never save India — 
 indeed, the use of the word " politics " in the present 
 state of the country may strike some of us as a 
 painful insincerity — but at the same time, the 
 mastery and assimilation of the foreigners' method 
 is an absolute necessity. The education of the 
 people, also, to a knowledge of their common 
 interests, and the throwing of a net of friendship 
 and mutual intercourse all over the country, are 
 great services. 
 
 Outside social and political movements, again, 
 there are a hundred emancipations and revivals of 
 religious centres, all of which are noteworthy symp- 
 toms of inherent vitality. And still a fourth school 
 declares that the one question of India lies in the 
 economic crisis, and that that once surmounted all 
 will be well. 
 
 At this moment, however, a new suspicion is 
 making itself heard, a suspicion that behind all these 
 interpretations — the social reform, the political 
 agitation, religious movements, and economic 
 grievances — there stands a greater reality, domina- 
 ting and co-ordinating the whole, the Indian nationa? 
 idea, of which each is a part. It begins to be thought 
 that there is a religious idea that may be called 
 Indian, but it is of no single sect ; that there is a 
 social idea, which is the property of no caste or 
 group ; that there is a historic evolution, in which 
 all are united ; that it is the thing within all these 
 
 s 
 
274 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 which alone is to be called " India." If this con- 
 ception should prevail, it will be seen that social, 
 political, economic, and religious workers have all 
 alike helped to reveal it; but it can never be 
 allowed that the whole problem is economic, grave 
 as the last-mentioned feature of the situation un- 
 doubtedly is. It is not merely the status, but the 
 very nature and character of the collective person- 
 ality of a whole nation, occupying one of the largest 
 areas in the world, that has to be recaptured. In 
 the days when ancient Egypt made an eternal 
 impression on human civilisation, the personal 
 belongings of her great nobles were no more than 
 those of an Indian cowherd to-day. It was the senti- 
 ment of fraternity, the instinct of synthesis, the mind 
 of co-ordination, that were the secret of her power. - 
 
 The distinctive spirituality of the modern world 
 depends upon its ability to think of things as a 
 whole, to treat immense masses of facts as units, to 
 bring together many kinds of activity, and put them 
 in true relation to one another. This is the reality 
 of which map, census, and newspaper, even cata- 
 logue, museum and encyclopaedia, are but outer 
 symbols. In proportion as she grasps this inner 
 content will India rise to the height of her own 
 possibilities. 
 
 The sacraments of a growing nationality would 
 lie in new developments of her old art, a new 
 application of her old power of learnedness, new 
 and dynamic religious interpretations, a new ideal- 
 ism in short, true child of the nation's own past.with 
 which the young should throb and the old be 
 reverent. The test of its success would be the 
 combining of renewed local and individual vigour 
 with a power of self-centralisation and self-expression 
 hitherto unknown. 
 
 But before such a result could come about, we 
 must suppose the children of every province and 
 every sect on fire with the love of the Motherland. 
 
ON THE LOOM OF TIME 275 
 
 Sikh, Mahratta, and Mussulman, we must imagine 
 possessed each by the thought of India, not of his 
 own group. Thus each name distinguished in the 
 history of any part would be appropriated by the 
 country as a whole. The Hindu would prostrate 
 himself on the steps of the mosque, the Mohammedan 
 offer salutation before the temple, the Aryan write 
 the history of Islam with an enthusiasm impossible 
 to those within its walls, the Semite stand forth as 
 the exponent of India's heroic past, with the 
 authority of one who sees for the first time with the 
 eyes of manhood. For we cannot think that a mere 
 toleration of one another's peculiarities can ever be 
 enough to build up national sentiment in India. As 
 the love of David and Jonathan, a love |the stronger 
 for distance of birth, such is that last and greatest 
 passion which awakes in him who hears the sorrow- 
 ful crying of the young and defenceless children of 
 his own mother. Each difference between himself 
 and them is a source of joy. Each need unknown 
 to himself feeds his passion for self-sacrifice. Their 
 very sins meet with no condemnation from him, 
 their sworn champion and servant. 
 
 But has India to-day the hidden strength for such 
 developments ? What of the theocratic conscious- 
 ness ? What of warring religious convictions ? 
 
 Whether or not she has adequate strength for 
 her own renewal, only the sons of India are com- 
 petent to judge. But it is certain that in the 
 nationalising of a great nation, the two theocracies 
 would reach, on the human side, their common flower- 
 ing-point. Do not all kingdoms of God hold forth the 
 hope of a day when the lame shall walk, and the blind 
 see, the leper be cleansed, and the poor have the 
 Gospel preached unto them ? The theocratic con- 
 sciousness is never jealous of the social good, but 
 profoundly susceptible of it. It seeks it indeed as 
 its true goal. What of the theocratic consciousness, 
 what of religion, should a day ever come to pass in 
 
276 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE 
 
 'Which men discovered that divine revelations were 
 meant to unite humanity, not to sunder it ? Surely 
 the question is hardly serious. The old orthodoxy 
 of the Arab would still be the austerity of the 
 Mohammedan. The ancient piety of the Hindu 
 would still and for ever be the church of the devoted 
 life. Yet both would have found new purpose and 
 common scope, in the re-making of the Motherland. 
 
 Nevertheless, the question remains. The road is 
 clear, but has India strength to follow it ? 
 
 Jackals prowl about the buried cities and deserted 
 temples of the Asokan era. Only a memory dwells 
 within the marble palaces of the Mogul. Is the 
 mighty Mother not now exhausted ? Having given 
 to the world, is it not enough ? Is she again to 
 rouse and bestir herself for the good of her own 
 household ? Who can tell ? Yet in all impotence 
 and desolation of the present, amidst the ruin of his 
 country and the decay of his pride, an indomitable 
 hope wakes still in the heart of the Indian peasant. 
 " That which is, shall pass : and that which has 
 been, shall again be," he mutters " to the end of 
 time." And we seem to catch in his words the 
 sound of a greater prophecy, of which this is but the 
 echo — 
 
 " Whenever the dharmma decays, and a'dharmma 
 prevails, then I manifest myself. For the protection 
 of the good, for the destruction of the evil, for the firm 
 establishment of 
 
 THE NATIONAL RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 I am born again and again." 
 
 PBIprrED AT THK COMPLBTB PRESa 
 
 WB5T NOltWOOD 
 
 LOHCOH