Part 16 (1/2)
When the Hindoo has seized this idea, it takes strong hold of his imagination. As he stands on the banks of the Ganges at night, and sees its broad current quivering under the rays of the full moon, it seems indeed as if it were the clear stream flowing through the calm breast of G.o.d himself, bearing life from Him to give life to the world. Hence in his creed it has all the virtue and the ”divine power that belongs in the Christian system to the blood of Christ. It makes atonement for sins that are past.” ”He that but looks on the Ganges,”
says the Hindoo proverb, ”or that drinks of it, washes away the stains of a hundred births; but he that bathes in it washes away the stains of a thousand births.” This is a virtue beyond that of the Nile, or the rivers of Damascus, or of the Jordan, or even of
Siloa's brook That flowed fast by the oracle of G.o.d.
It is a virtue which can be found alone in that blood which ”cleanseth from all sin.”
The spectacle of such superst.i.tion produced a strong revulsion of feeling, and made me turn away from these waters that cannot cleanse the guilty soul, nor save the dying, to the Mighty Sufferer, whose blood was shed for the sins of the world, and I seemed to hear voices in far-off Christian lands singing:
E'er since by faith I saw the stream Thy flowing wounds supply, Redeeming love has been my theme, And shall be till I die.
But I do not sit in judgment on the Hindoos, nor include a whole people in one general condemnation. Some of them are as n.o.ble specimens of humanity, with as much ”natural goodness” as can be found anywhere; and are even religious in their way, and in zeal and devotion an example to their Christian neighbors. Of this, a very striking instance can be given here.
On the other side of the Ganges lives a grand old Hindoo, the Maharajah of Benares, and as he is famed for his hospitality to strangers, we sent him a letter by a messenger (being a.s.sured that that was the proper thing to do), saying that we should be happy to pay our respects to my lord in his castle; and in a few hours received a reply that his carriage should be sent to our hotel for us the next morning, and that his boat would convey us across the river. We did not wait for the carriage, as we were in haste to depart for Calcutta the same forenoon, but rode down in our own gharri to the river side, where we found the boat awaiting us. On the other bank stood a couple of elephants of extraordinary size, that knelt down and took us on their broad backs, and rolled off at a swinging pace to a pleasant retreat of the Maharajah a mile or two from the river, where he had a temple of his own, situated in the midst of beautiful gardens.
On our return we were marched into the courtyard of the castle, where the attendants received us, and escorted us within. The Maharajah did not make his appearance, as it was still early, but his secretary presented himself to do the honors, giving his master's respects with his photograph, and showing us every possible courtesy. We were shown through the rooms of state, where the Prince of Wales had been received a few weeks before. The view from the terrace on the river side is enchanting. It is directly on the water, and commands a view up and down the Ganges for miles, while across the smooth expanse rise the temples and palaces of the Holy City. What a place for a Brahmin to live or to die!
This Maharajah of Benares is well known all over India. He is a member of the Viceroy's Council at Calcutta, and held in universal respect by the English community. Sir William Muir, who is one of the most p.r.o.nounced Christian men in India, whom some would even call a Puritan for his strictness, told me that the Maharajah was one of the best of men. And yet he is of the straitest sect of the Hindoos, who bathes in the Ganges every morning, and ”does his pooja.” In all religious observances he is most exemplary, often spending hours in prayer. The secretary, in excusing his master's absence, said that he had been up nearly all night engaged in his devotions. How this earnest faith in a religion so vile can consist with a life so pure and so good, is one of the mysteries of this Asiatic world which I leave to those wiser than I am to explain.
We had lingered so long that it was near the hour of our departure for Calcutta, and we were three miles up the river. The secretary accompanied us to the boat of the Maharajah, which was waiting for us, and bade us farewell, with many kind wishes that we might have a prosperous journey. Lying against the bank was the gilded barge in which the Maharajah had received and escorted the Prince of Wales.
Waving our adieu, we gave the signal, and the boatmen pushed off into the stream. It was now a race against time. We had a long stretch to make in a very few minutes. I offered the men a reward if they should reach the place in time. The stalwart rowers bent to their oars, their swarthy limbs making swift strokes, and the boat shot like an arrow down the stream. I stood up in the eagerness and excitement of the chase, taking a last look at the sacred temples as we shot swiftly by.
It wanted but two or three minutes of the hour as our little pinnace struck against the goal by the bridge of boats, and throwing the rupees to the boatmen, we hurried up the bank, and had just time to get fairly bestowed in the roomy first-cla.s.s carriage, which we had all to ourselves, when the train started for Calcutta, and the towers and domes and minarets of the holy city of India faded from our sight.
Thinking! Still thinking! What does it all mean? Who can understand Hindooism--where it begins and where it ends? It is like the fabled tree that had its roots down in the Kingdom of Death, and spread its branches over the world. Behind it, or beneath it, is a deep philosophy, which goes down to the very beginnings of existence, and touches the most vital problems of life and death, of endless dying and living. Out of millions of ages, after a million births, following each other in long succession, at last man is cast upon the earth, but only as a bird of pa.s.sage, darting swiftly through life, and then, in an endless transmigration of souls, pa.s.sing through other stages of being, till he is absorbed in the Eternal All. Thus does man find his way at last back to G.o.d, as the drop of water, caught up by the sun, lifted into the cloud, descends in the rain, trickles in streams down the mountain side, and finds its way back to the ocean. So does the human soul complete the endless cycle of existence, coming from G.o.d and returning to G.o.d, to be swallowed up and lost in that Boundless Sea.
Much might be said, by way of argument, in support of this pantheistic philosophy. But whatever may be urged in favor of Hindooism in the abstract, its practical results are terrible. By a logic as close and irresistible as it is fatal, it takes away the foundation of all morality, and strikes down all goodness and virtue--all that is the glory of man, and all that is the beauty of woman. It is nothing to the purpose to quote the example of such a man as the Maharajah of Benares, for there is a strange alchemy in virtue, by which a pure nature, a high intelligence, and right moral instincts, will convert even the most pernicious doctrines to the purpose of a spiritual life.
But with the ma.s.s of Hindoos it is only a system of abject superst.i.tion and terror. As we rolled along the banks of the Ganges, I thought what tales that stream could tell. Could we but listen in the dead of night, what sounds we might hear! Hus.h.!.+ hark! There is a footstep on the sh.o.r.e. The rushes on the bank are parted, and a Hindoo mother comes to the water's edge. Look! she holds a child in her arms.
She starts back, and with a shriek casts it to the river monsters.
Such scenes are not frequent now, because the government has repressed them by law, though infanticide is fearfully common in other ways. But even yet in secret--”darkly at dead of night”--does fanaticism sometimes pay its offering to the river which is wors.h.i.+pped as a G.o.d.
This is what Hindooism does for the mother and for her child. Thus it wrongs at once childhood and motherhood and womanhood. Who that thinks of such scenes can but pray that a better faith may be given to the women of India, that the mother may no longer look with anguish into the face of her own child, as one doomed to destruction, but like any Christian mother, clasp her baby to her breast, thanking G.o.d who has given it to her, and bidden her keep it, and train it up for life, for virtue and for happiness.
But is there any hope of seeing Hindooism destroyed? I fear not very soon. When I think how many ages it has stood, and what mighty forces it has resisted, the task seems almost hopeless. For centuries it fought with Buddhism for the conquest of India, and remained master of the field. Then came Mohammedanism in the days of the Mogul Empire. It gained a foothold, and reared its mosques even in the Holy City of the Hindoos. To this day the most splendid structure in Benares is the great Mosque of Aurungzebe. As I climbed its tall minaret, and looked over the city, I saw here and there the gilded domes and slender spires that mark the temples of Islam. But these fierce iconoclasts, who set out from Arabia to break the idols in pieces, could not destroy them here. The fanatical Aurungzebe could build his mosque, with its minaret so lofty as to overtop all the temples of Paganism; but he could not convert the idolaters. With such tenacity did they cling to their faith, that even the religion of the Prophet could make little impression, though armed with all the power of the sword.
And now come modern civilization and Christianity. The work of ”tearing down” is not left to Missions alone. There is in India a vast system of National Education. In Benares there is an University whose stately halls would not look out of place among the piles of Oxford. In the teaching there is a rigid--I had almost said a religious--abstinence from religion. But science is taught, and science confutes the Hindoo cosmogony. When it is written in the Puranas that the world rests on the back of an elephant, and that the elephant stands on the back of a tortoise, and the tortoise on the back of the great serpent Naga, it needs but a very little learning to convince the young Hindoo that his sacred books are a ma.s.s of fables.
But this does not make him a Christian. It lands him in infidelity, and leaves him there. And this is the state of the educated mind of India, of what is sometimes designated as Young India, or Young Bengal. Here they stand--deep in the mire of unbelief, as if they had tried to plant their feet on the low-lying Delta of the Ganges, and found it sink beneath them, with danger of being buried in Gangetic ooze and slime. But even this is better than calling to G.o.ds that cannot help them; for at least it may give them a sense of their weakness and danger. It may be that the educated mind of India has to go through this stage of infidelity before it can come into the light of a clearer faith. At present they believe nothing, yet conform to Hindoo customs for social reasons, for fear of losing caste. This is all-powerful. It is hard for men to break away from it in detail. But once that a breach is made in their ranks, the same social tyranny may carry them over _en ma.s.se_, so that a nation shall be born in a day.
At present the work that is going on is that of sapping and mining, of boring holes into the foundation of Hindooism; and this is done as industriously, and perhaps as effectively, by Government schools and colleges as by Missions.
At Benares we observed, in sailing up and down the Ganges, that the river had undermined a number of temples built upon its banks, and that they had fallen with their huge columns and ma.s.sive architecture, and were lying in broken and shapeless ma.s.ses, half covered by the water. What a spectacle of ruin and decay in the Holy City of the Hindoos! This is a fit ill.u.s.tration of the process which has been going on for the last half century in regard to Hindooism. The waters are was.h.i.+ng it away, and by and by the whole colossal fabric, built up in ages of ignorance and superst.i.tion, will come cras.h.i.+ng to the earth. Hindooism will fall, and great will be the fall of it.
CHAPTER XXI.
CALCUTTA-FAREWELL TO INDIA.
It is a good rule in travelling, as in rhetoric, to keep the best to the last, and wind up with a climax. But it would be hard to find a climax in India after seeing the old Mogul capitals, whose palaces and tombs outs.h.i.+ne the Alhambra; after climbing the Himalayas, and making a pilgrimage to the holy city. And yet one feels a _crescendo_ of interest in approaching the capital. India has three capitals--Delhi, where once reigned the Great Mogul, and which is still the centre of the Mohammedan faith; Benares, the Mecca of the Hindoos; and Calcutta, the capital of the modern British Empire. The two former we have seen; it is the last which is now before us.
Our route was southeast, along the valley of the Ganges, and through the province of Bengal. What is the magic of a name? From childhood the most vivid a.s.sociation I had with this part of India, was that of Bengal tigers, which were the wonder of every menagerie; and it was not strange if we almost expected to see them crouching in the forest, or gliding away in the long gra.s.s of the jungle. But Bengal has other attractions to one who rides over it. This single province of India is five times as large as the State of New York. It is a vast alluvial plain, through which the Ganges pours by a hundred mouths to the sea, its overflow giving to the soil a richness and fertility like that of the valley of the Nile, so that it supports a population equal to that of the whole of the United States. The cultivated fields that we pa.s.s show the natural wealth of the country, as the frequent towns show the density of the population. Of these the largest is Patna, the centre of the opium culture. But we did not stop anywhere, for the way was long. From Benares to Calcutta is over four hundred miles, or about as far as from New York city to Niagara Falls. We started at eleven o'clock, and kept steadily travelling all day. Night fell, and the moon rose over the plains and the palm groves, and still we fled on and on, as if pursued by the storm spirits of the Hindoo Kylas, till the morning broke, and found us on the banks of a great river filled with s.h.i.+pping, and opposite to a great city. This was the Hoogly, one of the mouths of the Ganges, and there was Calcutta! A carriage whirled us swiftly across the bridge, and up to the Great Eastern Hotel, where we were glad to rest, after travelling three thousand miles in India, and to exchange even the most luxurious railway carriage for beds and baths, and the comforts of civilization. The hotel stands opposite the Government House, the residence of the Viceroy of India, and supplies everything necessary to the dignity of a ”burra Sahib.” Soft-footed Hindoos glided silently about, watching our every motion, and profoundly anxious for the honor of being our servants. A stalwart native slept on the mat before my door, and attended on my going out and my coming in, as if I had been a grand dignitary of the Empire.
Calcutta bears a proud name in the East--that of the City of Palaces--from which a traveller is apt to experience a feeling of disappointment. And yet the English portion of the city is sufficiently grand to make it worthy to rank with the second cla.s.s of European capitals. The Government House, from its very size, has a ma.s.sive and stately appearance, and the other public buildings are of corresponding proportions. The princ.i.p.al street, called the Chowringhee road, is lined for two miles with the handsome houses of government officials or wealthy English residents. But the beauty of Calcutta is the grand esplanade, called the Maidan--an open s.p.a.ce as large as our Central Park in New York; beginning at the Government House, and reaching to Fort William, and beyond it; stretching for two or three miles along the river, and a mile back from it to the mansions of the Chowringhee Road. This is an immense parade-ground for military and other displays. Here and there are statues of men who have distinguished themselves in the history of British India.