Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 097, January, 1876

Pitying they stand. For thee who would not weep?
Well it beseems these men to weep for thee,
Whose flags (as erst they own) control the deep,
Whose conquering sails o'ershadow every sea.

Yet not in pity only, but in hope,
Spring the hot tears the brave for thee may shed:
Thy chain shall prove but a sand-woven rope;
But sleep thou still: the sky is not yet red.

Sleep till the mighty helmsman of the world,
By the Almighty set at Fortune's wheel,
Steers toward thy freedom, and, once more unfurled,
The banner of St. Mark the sun shall feel.

Then wake, then rise, then hurl away thy yoke,
Then dye with crimson that pale livery,
Whose ghastly white has been the jailer's cloak
For years flung o'er thy shame and misery!

Rise with a shout that down thy Giants' Stair
Shall thy old giants bring with thundering tread—
The blind crusader standing stony there,
And him, the latest of thy mighty dead.

Whose patriot heart broke at the Austrian's foot,
Whose ashes under the black marble lie,
From whose dry dust, stirred by the voice, shall shoot
The glorious growth of living liberty.

    FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE.

SKETCHES OF INDIA

I

"Come," says my Hindu friend, "let us do Bombay."

The name of my Hindu friend is Bhima Gandharva. At the same time, his name is not Bhima Gandharva. But—for what is life worth if one may not have one's little riddle?—in respect that he is not so named let him be so called, for thus will a pretty contradiction be accomplished, thus shall I secure at once his privacy and his publicity, and reveal and conceal him in a breath.

It is eight o'clock in the morning. We have met—Bhima Gandharva and I—in "The Fort." The Fort is to Bombay much as the Levee, with its adjacent quarters, is to New Orleans; only it is—one may say Hibernice—a great deal more so. It is on the inner or harbor side of the island of Bombay. Instead of the low-banked Mississippi, the waters of a tranquil and charming haven smile welcome out yonder from between wooded island-peaks. Here Bombay has its counting-houses, its warehouses, its exchange, its "Cotton Green," its docks. But not its dwellings. This part of the Fort where we have met is, one may say, only inhabited for six hours in the day—from ten in the morning until four in the afternoon. At the former hour Bombay is to be found here engaged at trade: at the latter it rushes back into the various quarters outside the Fort which go to make up this many-citied city. So that at this particular hour of eight in the morning one must expect to find little here that is alive, except either a philosopher, a stranger, a policeman or a rat.

"Well, then," I said as Bhima Gandharva finished communicating this information to me, "we are all here."

"How?"

"There stand you, a philosopher; here I, a stranger; yonder, the policeman; and, heavens and earth! what a rat!" I accompanied this exclamation by shooing a big musky fellow from behind a bale of cotton whither I had just seen him run.

Bhima Gandharva smiled in a large, tranquil way he has, which is like an Indian plain full of ripe corn. "I find it curious," he said, "to compare the process which goes on here in the daily humdrum of trade about this place with that which one would see if one were far up yonder at the northward, in the appalling solitudes of the mountains, where trade has never been and will never be. Have you visited the Himalaya?"

I shook my head.

"Among those prodigious planes of snow," continued the Hindu, "which when level nevertheless frighten you as if they were horizontal precipices, and which when perpendicular nevertheless lull you with a smooth deadly half-sense of confusion as to whether you should refer your ideas of space to the slope or the plain, there reigns at this moment a quietude more profound than the Fort's. But presently, as the sun beats with more fervor, rivulets begin to trickle from exposed points; these grow to cataracts and roar down the precipices; masses of undermined snow plunge into the abysses; the great winds of the Himalaya rise and howl, and every silence of the morning becomes a noise at noon. A little longer, and the sun again decreases; the cataracts draw their heads back into the ice as tortoises into their shells; the winds creep into their hollows, and the snows rest. So here. At ten the tumult of trade will begin: at four it will quickly freeze again into stillness. One might even carry this parallelism into more fanciful extremes. For, as the vapors which lie on the Himalaya in the form of snow have in time come from all parts of the earth, so the tide of men that will presently pour in here is made up of people from the four quarters of the globe. The Hindu, the African, the Arabian, the Chinese, the Tartar, the European, the American, the Parsee, will in a little while be trading or working here."

"What a complete bouleversement," I said, seating myself on a bale of cotton and looking toward the fleets of steamers and vessels collected off the great cotton-presses awaiting their cargoes, "this particular scene effects in the mind of a traveler just from America! India has been to me, as the average American, a dream of terraced ghauts, of banyans and bungalows, of Taj Mahals and tigers, of sacred rivers and subterranean temples, and—and that sort of thing. I come here and land in a big cotton-yard. I ask myself, 'Have I left Jonesville—dear Jonesville!—on the other side of the world, in order to sit on an antipodal cotton-bale?'"

"There is some more of India," said Bhima Gandharva gently. "Let us look at it a little."

One may construct a good-enough outline map of this wonderful land in one's mind by referring its main features to the first letter of the alphabet. Take a capital A; turn it up side down; imagine that the inverted triangle forming the lower half of the letter is the Deccan, the left side representing the Western Ghauts, the right side representing the Eastern Ghauts, and the cross-stroke standing for the Vindhya Mountains; imagine further that a line from right to left across the upper ends of the letter, trending upward as it is drawn, represents the Himalaya, and that enclosed between them and the Vindhyas is Hindustan proper. Behind—i.e. to the north of—the centre of this last line rises the Indus, flowing first north-westward through the Vale of Cashmere, then cutting sharply to the south and flowing by the way of the Punjab and Scinde to where it empties at Kurrachee. Near the same spot where the Indus originates rises also the Brahmaputra, but the latter empties its waters far from the former, flowing first south-eastward, then cutting southward and emptying into the Gulf of Bengal. Fixing, now, in the mind the sacred Ganges and Jumna, coming down out of the Gangetic and Jumnatic peaks in a general south-easterly direction, uniting at Allahabad and emptying into the Bay of Bengal, and the Nerbudda River flowing over from the east to the west, along the southern bases of the Vindhyas, until it empties at the important city of Brooch, a short distance north of Bombay, one will have thus located a number of convenient points and lines sufficient for general references.

This A of ours is a very capital A indeed, being some nineteen hundred miles in length and fifteen hundred in width. Lying on the western edge of this peninsula is Bombay Island. It is crossed by the line of 19° north latitude, and is, roughly speaking, halfway between the Punjab on the north and Ceylon on the south. Its shape is that of a lobster, with his claws extended southward and his body trending a little to the west of north. The larger island of Salsette lies immediately north, and the two, connected by a causeway, enclose the noble harbor of Bombay. Salsette approaches near to the mainland at its northern end, and is connected with it by the railway structure. These causeways act as break-waters and complete the protection of the port. The outer claw, next to the Indian Ocean, of the lobster-shaped Bombay Island is the famous Malabar Hill; the inner claw is the promontory of Calaba; in the curved space between the two is the body of shallow water known as the Back Bay, along whose strand so many strange things are done daily. As one turns into the harbor around the promontory of Calaba—which is one of the European quarters of the manifold city of Bombay, and is occupied by magnificent residences and flower-gardens—one finds just north of it the great docks and commercial establishments of the Fort; then an enormous esplanade farther north; across which, a distance of about a mile, going still northward, is the great Indian city called Black Town, with its motley peoples and strange bazars; and still farther north is the Portuguese quarter, known as Mazagon.

As we crossed the great esplanade to the north of the Fort—Bhima Gandharva and I—and strolled along the noisy streets, I began to withdraw my complaint. It was not like Jonesville. It was not like any one place or thing, but like a hundred, and all the hundred outré to the last degree. Hindu beggars, so dirty that they seemed to have returned to dust before death; three fakirs, armed with round-bladed daggers with which they were wounding themselves apparently in the most reckless manner, so as to send streams of blood flowing to the ground, and redly tattooing the ashes with which their naked bodies were covered; Parsees with their long noses curving over their moustaches, clothed in white, sending one's thoughts back to Ormuz, to Persia, to Zoroaster, to fire-worship and to the strangeness of the fate which drove them out of Persia more than a thousand years ago, and which has turned them into the most industrious traders and most influential citizens of a land in which they are still exiles; Chinese, Afghans—the Highlanders of the East—Arabs, Africans, Mahrattas, Malays, Persians, Portuguese half-bloods; men that called upon Mohammed, men that called upon Confucius, upon Krishna, upon Christ, upon Gotama the Buddha, upon Rama and Sita, upon Brahma, upon Zoroaster; strange carriages shaded by red domes that compressed a whole dream of the East in small, and drawn by humped oxen, alternating with palanquins, with stylish turnouts of the latest mode, with cavaliers upon Arabian horses; half-naked workmen, crouched in uncomfortable workshops and ornamenting sandal-wood boxes; dusky curb-stone shopkeepers, rushing at me with strenuous offerings of their wares; lines of low shop-counters along the street, backed by houses rising in many stories, whose black pillared verandahs were curiously carved and painted: cries, chafferings, bickerings, Mussulman prayers, Arab oaths extending from "Praise God that you exist" to "Praise God although you exist;"—all these things appealed to the confused senses.

The tall spire of a Hindu temple revealed itself.

"It seems to me," I said to Bhima Gandharva, "that your steeples—as we would call them in Jonesville—represent, in a sort of way, your cardinal doctrine: they seem to be composed of a multitude of little steeples, all like the big one, just as you might figure your Supreme Being in the act of absorbing a large number of the faithful who had just arrived from the dismal existence below. And then, again, your steeple looks as if it might be the central figure of your theistic scheme, surrounded by the three hundred millions of your lesser deities. How do you get on, Bhima Gandharva, with so many claims on your worshiping faculties? I should think you would be well lost in such a jungle of gods?"

"My friend," said Bhima Gandharva, "a short time ago a play was performed in this city which purported to be a translation into the Mahratta language of the Romeo and Juliet which Shakespeare wrote. It was indeed a very great departure from that miraculous work, which I know well, but among its many deviations from the original was one which for the mournful and yet humorous truth of it was really worthy of the Master. Somehow, the translator had managed to get a modern Englishman into the play, who, every time that one of my countrymen happened to be found in leg-reach, would give him a lusty kick and cry out 'Damn fool!' Why is the whole world like this Englishman?—upon what does it found its opinion that the Hindu is a fool? Is it upon our religion? Listen! I will recite you some matters out of our scriptures: Once upon a time Arjuna stood in his chariot betwixt his army and the army of his foes. These foes were his kinsmen. Krishna—even that great god Krishna—moved by pity for Arjuna, had voluntarily placed himself in Arjuna's chariot and made himself the charioteer thereof. Then—so saith Sanjaya—in order to encourage him, the ardent old ancestor of the Kurus blew his conch-shell, sounding loud as the roar of a lion. Then on a sudden trumpets, cymbals, drums and horns were sounded. That noise grew to an uproar. And, standing on a huge car drawn by white horses, the slayer of Madhu and the son of Pandu blew their celestial trumpets. Krishna blew his horn called Panchajanya; the Despiser of Wealth blew his horn called the Gift of the Gods; he of dreadful deeds and wolfish entrails blew a great trumpet called Paundra; King Yudishthira, the son of Kunti, blew the Eternal Victory; Nakula and Sahadeva blew the Sweet-toned and the Blooming-with-Jewels. The king of Kashi, renowned for the excellence of his bow, and Shikandin in his huge chariot, Dhrishtyadumna, and Virata, and Satyaki, unconquered by his foes, and Drupada and the sons of Drupadi all together, and the strong-armed son of Subhadrá, each severally blew their trumpets. That noise lacerated the hearts of the sons of Dhartarashtra, and uproar resounded both through heaven and earth. Now when Arjuna beheld the Dhartarashtras drawn up, and that the flying of arrows had commenced, he raised his bow, and then addressed these words to Krishna:

"'Now that I have beheld this kindred standing here near together for the purpose of fighting, my limbs give way and my face is bloodless, and tremor is produced throughout my body, and my hair stands on end. My bow Gandiva slips from my hand, and my skin burns. Nor am I able to remain upright, and my mind is as it were whirling round. Nor do I perceive anything better even when I shall have slain these relations in battle, I seek not victory, Krishna, nor a kingdom, nor pleasures. What should we do with a kingdom, Govinda? What with enjoyments, or with life itself? Those very men on whose account we might desire a kingdom, enjoyments or pleasures are assembled for battle. Teachers, fathers, and even sons, and grandfathers, uncles, fathers-in-law, grandsons, brothers-in-law, with connections also,—these I would not wish to slay, though I were slain myself, O Killer of Madhu! not even for the sake of the sovereignty of the triple world—how much less for that of this earth! When we had killed the Dhartarashtras, what pleasure should we have, O thou who art prayed to by mortals? How could we be happy after killing our own kindred, O Slayer of Madhu? Even if they whose reason is obscured by covetousness do not perceive the crime committed in destroying their own tribe, should we not know how to recoil from such a sin? In the destruction of a tribe the eternal institutions of the tribe are destroyed. These laws being destroyed, lawlessness prevails. From the existence of lawlessness the women of the tribe become corrupted; and when the women are corrupted, O son of Vrishni! confusion of caste takes place. Confusion of caste is a gate to hell. Alas! we have determined to commit a great crime, since from the desire of sovereignty and pleasures we are prepared to slay our own kin. Better were it for me if the Dhartarashtras, being armed, would slay me, harmless and unresisting in the fight.'

"Having thus spoken in the midst of the battle, Arjuna, whose heart was troubled with grief, let fall his bow and arrow and sat down on the bench of the chariot."

"Well," I asked after a short pause, during which the Hindu kept his eyes fixed in contemplation on the spire of the temple, "what did Krishna have to say to that?"

"He instructed Arjuna, and said many wise things. I will tell you some of them, here and there, as they are scattered through the holy Bhagavad-Gitá: Then between the two armies, Krishna, smiling, addressed these words to him, thus downcast:

"'Thou hast grieved for those who need not be grieved for, yet thou utterest words of wisdom. The wise grieve not for dead or living. But never at any period did I or thou or these kings of men not exist, nor shall any of us at any time henceforward cease to exist. There is no existence for what does not exist, nor is there any non-existence for what exists.... These finite bodies have been said to belong to an eternal, indestructible and infinite spirit.... He who believes that this spirit can kill, and he who thinks that it can be killed—both of these are mistaken. It neither kills nor is killed. It is born, and it does not die.... Unborn, changeless, eternal both as to future and past time, it is not slain when the body is killed.... As the soul in this body undergoes the changes of childhood, prime and age, so it obtains a new body hereafter.... As a man abandons worn-out clothes and take other new ones, so does the soul quit worn-out bodies and enter other new ones. Weapons cannot cleave it, fire cannot burn it, nor can water wet it, nor can wind dry it. It is impenetrable, incombustible, incapable of moistening and of drying. It is constant; it can go everywhere; it is firm, immovable and eternal. And even if thou deem it born with the body and dying with the body, still, O great-armed one! thou art not right to grieve for it. For to everything generated death is certain: to everything dead regeneration is certain.... One looks on the soul as a miracle; another speaks of it as a miracle; another hears of it as a miracle; but even when he has heard of it, not one comprehends it.... When a man's heart is disposed in accordance with his roaming senses, it snatches away his spiritual knowledge as the wind does a ship on the waves.... He who does not practice devotion has neither intelligence nor reflection. And he who does not practice reflection has no calm. How can a man without calm obtain happiness? The self-governed man is awake in that which is night to all other beings: that in which other beings are awake is night to the self-governed. He into whom all desires enter in the same manner as rivers enter the ocean, which is always full, yet does not change its bed, can obtain tranquillity.... Love or hate exists toward the object of each sense. One should not fall into the power of these two passions, for they are one's adversaries.... Know that passion is hostile to man in this world. As fire is surrounded by smoke, and a mirror by rust, and a child by the womb, so is this universe surrounded by passion.... They say that the senses are great. The heart is greater than the senses. But the intellect is greater than the heart, and passion is greater than the intellect....

"'I and thou, O Arjuna! have passed through many transmigrations. I know all these. Thou dost not know them.... For whenever there is a relaxation of duty, O son of Bharata! and an increase of impiety, I then reproduce myself for the protection of the good and the destruction of evil-doers. I am produced in every age for the purpose of establishing duty.... Some sacrifice the sense of hearing and the other senses in the fire of restraint. Others, by abstaining from food, sacrifice life in their life. (But) the sacrifice of spiritual knowledge is better than a material sacrifice.... By this knowledge thou wilt recognize all things whatever in thyself, and then in me. He who possesses faith acquires spiritual knowledge. He who is devoid of faith and of doubtful mind perishes. The man of doubtful mind enjoys neither this world nor the other, nor final beatitude. Therefore, sever this doubt which exists in thy heart, and springs from ignorance, with thy sword of knowledge: turn to devotion and arise, O son of Bharata!…

"'Learn my superior nature, O hero! by means of which this world is sustained. I am the cause of the production and dissolution of the whole universe. There exists no other thing superior to me. On me are all the worlds suspended, as numbers of pearls on a string. I am the savor of waters, and the principle of light in the moon and sun, the mystic syllable Om in the Vedas, the sound in the ether, the essence of man in men, the sweet smell in the earth; and I am the brightness in flame, the vitality in all beings, and the power of mortification in ascetics. Know, O son of Prithá! that I am the eternal seed of all things which exist. I am the intellect of those who have intellect: I am the strength of the strong.... And know that all dispositions, whether good, bad or indifferent, proceed also from me. I do not exist in them, but they in me.... I am dear to the spiritually wise beyond possessions, and he is dear to me. A great-minded man who is convinced that Vasudevu (Krishna) is everything is difficult to find.... If one worships any inferior personage with faith, I make his faith constant. Gifted with such faith, he seeks the propitiation of this personage, and from him receives the pleasant objects of his desires, which (however) were sent by me alone. But the reward of these little-minded men is finite. They who sacrifice to the gods go to the gods: they who worship me come to me. I am the immolation. I am the whole sacrificial rite. I am the libation to ancestors. I am the drug. I am the incantation. I am the fire. I am the incense. I am the father, the mother, the sustainer, the grandfather of this universe—the path, the supporter, the master, the witness, the habitation, the refuge, the friend, the origin, the dissolution, the place, the receptacle, the inexhaustible seed. I heat. I withhold and give the rain. I am ambrosia and death, the existing and the non-existing. Even those who devoutly worship other gods with the gift of faith worship me, but only improperly. I am the same to all beings. I have neither foe nor friend. I am the beginning and the middle and the end of existing things. Among bodies I am the beaming sun. Among senses I am the heart. Among waters I am the ocean. Among mountains I am Himalaya. Among trees I am the banyan; among men, the king; among weapons, the thunderbolt; among things which count, time; among animals, the lion; among purifiers, the wind. I am Death who seizes all: I am the birth of those who are to be. I am Fame, Fortune, Speech, Memory, Meditation, Perseverance and Patience among feminine words. I am the game of dice among things which deceive: I am splendor among things which are shining. Among tamers I am the rod; among means of victory I am polity; among mysteries I am silence, the knowledge of the wise....

"'They who know me to be the God of this universe, the God of gods and the God of worship—they who know me to be the God of this universe, the God of gods and the God of worship—yea, they who know me to be these things in the hour of death, they know me indeed.'"

When my friend finished these words there did not seem to be anything particular left in heaven or earth to talk about. At any rate, there was a dead pause for several minutes. Finally, I asked—and I protest that in contrast with the large matters wherof Bhima Gandharva had discoursed my voice (which is American and slightly nasal) sounded like nothing in the world so much as the squeak of a sick rat—"When were these things written?"

"At least nineteen hundred and seventy-five years ago, we feel sure. How much earlier we do not know."

We now directed our course toward the hospital for sick and disabled animals which has been established here in the most crowded portion of Black Town by that singular sect called the Jains, and which is only one of a number of such institutions to be found in the large cities of India. This sect is now important more by influence than by numbers in India, many of the richest merchants of the great Indian cities being among its adherents, though by the last census of British India there appears to be but a little over nine millions of Jains and Buddhists together, out of the one hundred and ninety millions of Hindus in British India. The tenets of the Jains are too complicated for description here, but it may be said that much doubt exists as to whether it is an old religion of which Brahmanism and Buddhism are varieties, or whether it is itself a variety of Buddhism. Indeed, it does not seem well settled whether the pure Jain doctrine was atheistical or theistical. At any rate, it is sufficiently differentiated from Brahmanism by its opposite notion of castes, and from Buddhism by its cultus of nakedness, which the Buddhists abhor. The Jains are split into two sects—the Digambaras, or nude Jains, and the Svetambaras, or clothed Jains, which latter sect seem to be Buddhists, who, besides the Tirthankars (i.e. mortals who have acquired the rank of gods by devout lives, in whom all the Jains believe), worship also the various divinities of the Vishnu system. The Jains themselves declare this system to date from a period ten thousand years before Christ, and they practically support this traditional antiquity by persistently regarding and treating the Buddhists as heretics from their system. At any event, their religion is an old one. They seem to be the gymnosophists, or naked philosophers, described by Clitarchos as living in India at the time of the expedition of Alexander, and their history crops out in various accounts—that of Clement of Alexandria, then of the Chinese Fu-Hian in the fourth and fifth centuries, and of the celebrated Chinese Hiouen-Tsang in the seventh century, at which last period they appear to have been the prevailing sect in India, and to have increased in favor until in the twelfth century the Rajpoots, who had become converts to Jainism, were schismatized into Brahmanism and deprived the naked philosophers of their prestige.

The great distinguishing feature of the Jains is the extreme to which they push the characteristic tenderness felt by the Hindus for animals of all descriptions. Jaina is, distinctly, the purified. The priests eat no animal food; indeed, they are said not to eat at all after noon, lest the insects then abounding should fly into their mouths and be crushed unwittingly. They go with a piece of muslin bound over their mouths, in order to avoid the same catastrophe, and carry a soft brush wherewith to remove carefully from any spot upon which they are about to sit such insects as might be killed thereby.

"Ah, how my countryman Bergh would luxuriate in this scene!" I said as we stood looking upon the various dumb exhibitions of so many phases of sickness, of decrepitude and of mishap—quaint, grotesque, yet pathetic withal—in the precincts of the Jain hospital. Here were quadrupeds and bipeds, feathered creatures and hairy creatures, large animals and small, shy and tame, friendly and predatory—horses, horned cattle, rats, cats, dogs, jackals, crows, chickens; what not. An attendant was tenderly bandaging the blinking lids of a sore-eyed duck: another was feeding a blind crow, who, it must be confessed, looked here very much like some fat member of the New York Ring cunningly availing himself of the more toothsome rations in the sick ward of the penitentiary. My friend pointed out to me a heron with a wooden leg. "Suppose a gnat should break his shoulder-blade," I said, "would they put his wing in a sling?"