have "gone glimmering through the dream of things that were." The sun
had scarcely risen, and I was sitting in the cosy cabin of my yacht
enjoying my "chota hazree," which, being interpreted, means "lesser
presence," and in Anglo-Indian speech signifies an "eye-opener" of tea
and toast--the greater presence appears some hours later and we call it
breakfast. I will not say that the view from my cabin windows was
enchanting. The placid waters of the broad creek would have been
pleasant to look upon if the level rays of the sun in his strength had
not skimmed them with such a blinding glare, but the low, flat-topped
hills that bounded them were forbidding.
The people said truly that God had made this a country of stones, but
they forgot that He had clothed the stones with trees of evergreen
foliage and a dense undergrowth of shrubs and grass, to protect and hold
together the thick bed of loam which the fallen leaves enriched from
year to year. It was the axes of their fathers that felled the trees,
to sell for fuel, and the billhooks of their mothers that hacked away
the bushes and grubbed up their very roots to burn on the household
cooking hole. Then the torrential rains of the south-west monsoon came
down on the naked, defenceless, parched and cracked soil and swept it in
muddy cascades down to the sea, leaving flats of bare rock, strewn thick
with round stones, sore to the best-shod foot of man and cruel to the
hoofs of a horse. About and among the huts of the unswept and malodorous
hamlet just above the shore there were fine trees, mango, tamarind,
babool and bor, showing what might have been elsewhere.
On the rounded top of the highest hill frowned in black ruin an old
Mahratta fort, covered on the top and sides and choked within by that
dense mass of struggling vegetation which always takes possession of old
forts in India. The weather-worn stones and crumbling mortar seem to
feed the trees to gluttony. First some bird-drops the seeds of the
banian fig into crevices of the ramparts, and its insidious roots push
their way and grow and grow into great tortuous snakes, embracing the
massive blocks of basalt, heaving them up and holding them up, so that
they cannot fall. Then prickly shrubs and thorny trees follow, fighting
for every inch of ground, but quite unable to eject the gently
persistent custard-apple, descended doubtless from seeds which the
garrison dropped as they ate the luscious fruit, on account of which the
Portuguese introduced the tree from South America. I had penetrated
into that fort and had seen something of the snakes and birds of night,
but not the ghosts and demons which I was assured made it their
habitation by day.
On a level place a little below the fort stood two monuments, telling of
the days when the Honourable East India Company maintained a "Resident"
at this place. Here he lived in proud solitude, upholding the British
flag. But his wife and the little one on whose face he had not yet
looked were on their way from Bombay in a native "pattimar" to join him,
and as he stood gazing over the sea at the red setting sun one 5th of
October, he thought of the glad to-morrow and the end of his dreary
loneliness. It fell to him to put up one of these monuments, with a
sorrowful inscription to all that was left to him on the following
morning, the "memory" of a beloved wife and an infant thirty-one days
old, drowned in crossing the bar on October 6, 1853.
We have strewed our best to the weeds unrest,
To the shark and the sheering gull.
If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid in full.
I carried my gun and rifle with me in my yacht. They served to keep up
my character as a sportsman, and did not often require to be cleaned. So
the morning calm of my mind was lashed into an unwonted tempest of
excitement when my jolly skipper, Sheikh Abdul Rehman, came in and told
me briefly that a "bag" (which word does not rhyme with rag, but must
be pronounced like barg without the _r_ and signifies a tiger or
panther) had killed a cow in the village the night before last.
When he added that the villagers had set a spring gun for it last
evening and it had returned to the "kill" and been badly wounded, my
excitement was turned into wrath. I had been at anchor here all
yesterday. The Indian ryot everywhere turns instinctively to the _sahib_
as his protector against all wild beasts. What did these men mean by
keeping their own counsel and setting an infernal machine for their
enemy? Abdul Rehman explained, and the explanation was simple and
sufficient. My fat predecessor in the appointment that I held had no
relish for sport and kept no guns, so the simple villagers, when they
saw my boat with its familiar flag, looked for no help from that
quarter. However, I might still win renown off that wounded "bag," if it
was not a myth; but, to tell the truth, I was sceptical. The tiger and
the panther are not nomads on rocky plains, like the antelope. I landed,
notwithstanding, promptly and visited the scene. Sure enough, there was
a young heifer lying on its side, with the unmistakable deep pits where
the jaws of the panther had gripped its throat, and a gory cavity where
it had selected a gigot for its dinner.
Round the corpse the villagers had arranged a circular fence of thorns,
with one opening, across which they had stretched a cord, attached at
the other end to the trigger of an old shooting iron of some sort,
charged with slugs and looking hard at the opening. The gun had gone off
during the night, and the ground was soaked with blood. A few yards off
there was another great swamp of blood. The beast had staggered away and
lain down for a while, faint and sick. Then it had got up and crawled
home, still dripping with blood, by which we tracked it for a good
distance, but the trace grew gradually fainter and at last ceased
altogether.
"It has gone to the fort," said the men--"bags always go to the fort." I
pointed out that, if it had meant to go to the fort, it would have gone
towards the fort, instead of in another direction; but the argument did
not move them. "The fort is a jungle, and where else should a 'bag' take
refuge but in a jungle?" However, I was obstinate, and pursued the
original direction until we arrived at the brow of the hill, where it
sloped steeply down to the sea. The whole slope, for half a mile, was
covered with a dense scrub of Lantana bushes. This is another plant
introduced in some by-gone century from South America, and planted first
in gardens for its profuse clusters of red and pink verbena-like
blossoms (it is a near relation of the garden verbena), whence it has
spread like the rabbit in New Zealand, and become a nuisance. "There," I
cried, pointing at the scrub, "there, without doubt, your wounded 'bag'
is lying."
Some of the men, unbelieving still, were amusing themselves by rolling
large stones down the slope, when suddenly there was a sound of
scrambling, and across an opening in the scrub, in sight of us all, a
huge hyaena scurried away "on three legs." I sent a man post-haste for
my rifle, which I had not brought with me, never expecting to require it
until a regular campaign could be arranged. As soon as it arrived, we
formed in line and advanced, throwing stones in all directions.
Make no offering of admiration at the shrine of our hardihood, for we
were in no peril. Among carnivorous beasts there is not a more
contemptible poltroon than the hyaena, even when wounded. A friend of
mine once tied up a billy goat as a bait for a panther and sat up over
it in a tree. In the middle of the night a hyaena nosed it from afar,
and came sneaking up in the rear, for hyaenas love the flesh of goats
next to that of dogs. But the goat saw it, and, turning about bravely,
presented his horned front. This the hyaena could not find stomach to
face. For two hours he manoeuvred to take the goat in rear, but it
turned as he circled, and stood up to him stoutly till the dawn came,
and my friend cut short its disreputable career with a bullet.
To return to my story, we had not gone far when, on a lower level, not
many yards from me, I was suddenly confronted by that repulsive,
ghoulish physiognomy which can never be forgotten when once seen, the
smoky-black snout, broad forehead and great upstanding ears. Instantly
the beast wheeled and scrambled over a bank, receiving a hasty rear
shot which, as I afterwards found, left it but one limb to go with, for
the bullet passed clean through a hindleg and lodged in a foreleg. It
went on, however, and some time passed before I descried it far off
dragging itself painfully across an open space. A careful shot finished
it, and it died under a thick bush, where we found it and dragged it
out. It proved to be a large male, measuring 4 feet 7 inches, from which
something over a foot must be deducted for its shabby tail.
The natives all maintained still that their cow had been killed by a
panther, saying that the hyaena had come on the second night, after
their manner, to fill its base belly with the leavings. And there was
some circumstantial evidence in favour of this view. In the first place,
I never heard of a hyaena having the audacity to attack a cow; in the
second, the tooth-marks on the cow showed that it had been executed
according to the tradition of all the great cats--by seizing its throat
and breaking its neck; and in the third, a hyaena, sitting down to such
a meal, would certainly have begun with calf's head and crunched up
every bone of the skull before thinking of sirloin or rumpsteak. But the
absurdity of a panther being found in such a region outweighed all this
and I scoffed.
I was yet to learn a lesson in humility out of this adventure. Two years
later I sailed over the bar and dropped anchor at the same spot. I was
met with the intelligence that on the previous evening two panthers had
been seen sitting on the brow of the hill and gazing at the beauties of
the fading sunset, as wild beasts are so fond of doing. A night or two
later a cow was attacked in a neighbouring field, and, staggering into
the village, fell down and died in a narrow alley between two houses.
The panther followed and prowled about all night, but the villagers,
hammering at their doors with sticks, scared it from its meal.
I at once had a nest put up in a small tree, and took my position in it
at sunset. The common people in India do not waste much money on lamp
oil, preferring to sleep during the hours appointed by Nature for the
purpose, so it was not long before all doors were securely barred and
quietness reigned. Then the mosquitoes awoke and came to inquire for me,
the little bats (how I blessed them!) wheeled about my head, the
night-jar called to his fellow, and the little owls sat on a branch
together and talked to each other about me. Hour after hour passed, and
it became too dark in that narrow alley to see a panther if it had come.
So I came down and got to my boat. The panther was engaged a mile away
dining on another cow! On further inquiry I learned that there was some
good forest a day's journey distant, and it was quite the fashion among
the panthers of that place to spend a weekend occasionally at a spot so
full of all delights as this dark, jungle-smothered fort.
XIV
THE PURBHOO
I do not believe that the Member of Parliament who moved the adjournment
of the House to consider the culpable carelessness of the Government of
India in allowing the Rajah of Muttighur to fall into the moat of his
own castle when he was drunk, could have told you what a Purbhoo is, not
though you had spelled it Prabhu, so that he could find it in his
_Gazetteer_. Of course he saw hundreds of them during that Christmas
which he spent in the East before he wrote his book; but then he took
them all for Brahmins. He never noticed that the curve of their turbans
was not the same, and the idol mark on their foreheads was quite
different, nor even that their shoes were not forked at the toes, but
ended in a sharp point curled upwards. And if he did not see these
things which were on the surface, what could he know of matters that lie
deeper?
Now the first and most important thing to be known respecting the
Purbhoo, the fundamental fact of him, is that he is not a Brahmin. If he
were a Brahmin, one essential piece of our administrative apparatus in
India would be wanting, and without it the whole machinery would
assuredly go out of order. Nor is it easy to see how we could replace
him. Not one of the other castes would serve even as a makeshift. They
are all too far removed from the Brahmin. But the Purbhoo is near him,
irritatingly near him, and he has proved in practice to be just the sort
of homoeopathic remedy we require, the counter-irritant, the outward
blister by wise application of which we can keep down the internal
inflammation.
In speaking of the Brahmin as an inflammation in the body politic I
disown all offensive and invidious implications. I am only using a
convenient simile. You may reverse it if you like and make the disease
stand for the Purbhoo, in which case the Brahmin will be the blister.
Which way fits the facts best will depend upon which caste chances at
the time to be nearest to the vitals of Government.
The case stands thus. Before the days of British rule the Brahmin was
the priest and man of letters, the "clerke" in short. The rajahs and
chiefs were much of the same mind as old Douglas:
Thanks to Saint Bothan son of mine,
Save Gawain, ne'er could pen a line,
Gawain being a bishop. As a Mohammedan gentleman related to one of the
ruling Indian princes put the matter when speaking to me a few years
ago, "In those days none of us could write. Our pen was the sword. If
any writing had to be done the Brahmin was called in." And no doubt he
did excellent service, being diligent, astute, and withal pliant and
diplomatic. If to these qualities he added ambition, he might, and often
did, become a Cardinal Wolsey in the state. In Poona, for example, the
Brahmin Prime Minister gradually overshadowed the Mahratta king, and the
descendant of Shivajee was put on a back shelf as Rajah of Sattara,
while the Peishwa ruled at the capital.
Of course this carnal advancement was not gained without some sacrifice
of his spiritual character, and the "secular" Brahmin had to bow, _quoad
sacra_, to the penniless Bhut, or "regular" Brahmin, who, refusing to
contaminate his sanctity by doing any kind of work, ate of the temple,
or lived by royal bounty or private charity, and by the free breakfasts
without which a marriage, "thread ceremony" or funeral in a gentleman's
house could not be respectably celebrated. Idleness and sanctity are a
powerful combination, and it is written in the _shastras_ that every day
in which a holy man does no work for his bread, but lives by begging, is
equal in the eyes of the gods to a day spent in fasting; so, though the
prospect of power and wealth might tempt a few restless and wayward
spirits, the great mass of the Brahmin caste clung to the sacred
calling.
All this time the Purbhoo was in the land, but insignificant. He had no
sacred calling. Tradition assigned him a hybrid origin. He could not
presume to be a warrior, because his mother was a _shoodra_, nor could
he condescend to be a farmer, for his father was a _kshutriya_. So the
gods had given him the pen, and he was a writer--not a secretary, but a
humble quill-driver. But when the Portuguese and then the British came
upon the scene, not ruling by word of mouth, like the native rajahs, but
inditing their orders and keeping records, the Purbhoo saw an open door
and went in.
Then the Brahmin woke up, for he saw that he was in evil case. The
spirit of the British _raj_ was falling like a blight and a pestilence
upon the means by which he had lived, drying up the fountains of
religious revenue and slowly but surely blighting the luxuriance of that
pious liberality which always took the form of feeding holy men. He
found that he must work for his bread whether he liked it or not, and
the only implement of secular work that would not soil his priestly hand
was the pen. And this was already taken up by the Purbhoo, who carried
himself haughtily under the new _regime_ and showed no mind to make way
for the holier man. Hence sprang those bitter enmities and jealousies
which have done so much to lighten the difficulties of our position.
The British Government has often been accused of acting on the maxim,
_Divide et impera_. It is a libel. We do not divide, for there is no
need. Division is already there. We have only to rejoice and rule. How
well and justly we rule all the world knows, but only the initiated know
how much we owe to the fact that the talents and energies which would
otherwise be employed in thwarting our just intentions and
phlebotomising the ryot are largely preoccupied with the more useful
work of thwarting and undermining each other.
What could a collector do single-handed against a host of clerks and
subordinate magistrates and petty officials of every grade, all armed
with the awfulness of a heaven-born sanctity, all hedged round with the
prestige of an ancient supremacy, endowed with a mole-like genius for
underground work which the Englishman never fathoms, and all leagued
together to suck to the uttermost the life blood of those inferior
castes which were created expressly for their advantage?
_He_ is working in a foreign language, among customs and ways of thought
which it takes a lifetime to understand: _they_ are using their mother
tongue and handling matters that they have known from childhood. _He_
cannot tell a lie and is ashamed to deceive: _they_ are trained in a
thrifty policy which saves the truth for a last resort in case
everything else should fail. He would be helpless in their hands as a
sucking child. But he knows they will do for him what he cannot do for
himself. The Purbhoo will lie in wait for the Brahmin, and the Brahmin
will keep his lynx eye on the Purbhoo. And woe to the one who trips
first. So the collector arranges his men with judicious skill to the
fostering of each other's virtue, and the result is most gratifying.
The country blesses his administration, and his subordinates are equally
surprised and delighted at their own integrity.
I speak of a wise and able administrator. There are men in the Indian
Civil Service who are neither wise nor able, and some who are not
administrators at all, having most unhappily mistaken their vocation.
When such a one becomes collector of a district his _chitnis_, or chief
secretary, sees that that tide in the affairs of men has come which,
"taken at the flood, leads on to fortune," and his caste-fellows all
through the service are filled with unholy joy. But he does nothing rash
or hasty. Wilily and patiently he goes to work to make his own
foundation sure first of all. He studies his chief under all conditions,
discovers his little foibles and vanities and feeds them sedulously. He
masters codes, rules and regulations, standing orders, precedents and
past correspondence, till it is dangerous to contradict him and always
safe to trust him. In every difficulty he is at hand, clearing away
perplexity and refreshing the "swithering" mind with his precision and
assurance. He becomes indispensable. The collector reposes absolute
confidence in him and is proud to say so in his reports.
Then the _chitnis_, if he is a Brahmin, addresses himself to the task of
eliminating the Purbhoo from the service, or at least depriving him of
place and power. It is a delicate task, but the Brahmin's touch is
light. He never disparages a Purbhoo from that day; "damning with faint
praise" is safer and as effectual. He practises the charity which
covereth a multitude of faults, but he leaves a tag end of one peeping
out to attract curiosity, and if the collector asks questions, he is
candid and tells the truth, though with manifest reluctance. Then he
grapples with the gradation lists, which have fallen into confusion, and
puts them into such excellent order that the collector can see at a
glance every man's past services and present claims to promotion. And
from these lists it appears that clearly, whenever any vacancy has to be
filled, a Brahmin has the first claim. And so, as the shades of night
yield to the dawn of day, the Purbhoo by degrees fades away and
disappears, and the star of the Brahmin rises and shines everywhere with
still increasing splendour.
But the Purbhoo possesses his soul in patience, and keeps a note of
every slip that the Brahmin makes. For the next _chitnis_ may be a
Purbhoo, and then the day of reckoning will come and old scores will be
paid off. The Brahmin knows that too, and the thought of it makes him
walk warily even in the day of his prosperity. Thus our administration
is saved from utter corruption.
XV
THE COCONUT TREE
Among the classic fairy-tales which passed like shooting stars across
those dark hours of our boyhood in which we wrestled with the grim
rudiments of Latin and Greek, and which abide in the memory after nearly
all that they helped to brighten has passed away, there was one which
related to a contest between Neptune and Minerva as to which should
confer the greatest benefit on the human race. Neptune first struck his
trident on the ground (or was it on the waves? "Eheu fugaces"--no, that
also is gone), and there sprang forth a noble steed, pawing the ground,
terrible in war and no less useful in peace. Then the watery god leaned
back and smiled as if he would say, "Now, beat that." But the Goddess of
Wisdom brought out of the earth a modest, dark tree bearing olives and,
in classic phrase, "took the cake," Oriental mythology is more luxuriant
and fantastic than that of the West, but I do not know if it has any
legend parallel to this. If it has, then I am sure the palm is awarded
to the deity who gave to the human race the tree that bears the coconut.
Passing a confectioner's shop, I saw a tempting packet labelled
"Cokernut Toffee." I bought a pennyworth and gave it to my little girl,
and
"I laye a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge."
How many boys and girls are there in this kingdom to whom the word
coconut connotes an ingredient which goes to the making of a very
toothsome sweetie? And how many confectioners and shop girls are there
whose idea is no broader? Again:
"I laye a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge,
And merrie sang the Birde as she sat upon the spraye."
And I said, "Little Bird, what do you know of the coconut?" And it made
answer, "It is a cup full of food, rich and sweet, which kind hands hang
out for me in winter," How narrow may be the key-hole through which we
take our outlook on things human and divine, never doubting that we see
the whole! In our own British Empire, only a few thousand miles away,
sits a mild Hindu, almost unclad and wholly unlettered, to whom the tree
that bore the fruit that flavoured the toffee that my little girl is
enjoying seems to be one of the predominating tints of the whole
landscape of life. It puts a roof over his head, it lightens his
darkness, it helps to feed his body, it furnishes the wine that maketh
glad his heart and the oil that causeth his face to shine, and time
would fail me to tell of all the other things that it does for him. As a
type and symbol, it is always about him, spanning the sunshine and
shower of life with bows of hope.
The coconut tree is a palm, and has nothing to do with cocoa of the
breakfast table. That word is a perversion of "cacao," and came to us
from Mexico: the other is the Portuguese word "coco," which means a nut.
It is what Vasco da Gama called the thing when he first saw it, and the
word, with our English translation added, has stuck to it. The tree is,
I need scarcely say, a palm, one of many kinds that flourish in India.
But none of them can be ranked with it. The rough date palm makes dense
groves on sandy plains, but brings no fruit to perfection, pining for
something which only Arabia can supply; the strong but unprofitable
"brab," or fan palm, rises on rocky hills, the beautiful fish-tailed
palm in forests solitarily, while the "areca" rears its tall, smooth
stem and delicate head in gardens and supplies millions with a solace
more indispensable than tobacco or tea. But the coconut loves a sandy
soil and the salt breath of the sea and the company of its own kind. The
others grow erect as a mast, but the gentle coconuts lean on the wind
and mingle the waving of their sisterly arms, casting a grateful shade
on the humble folk who live under their blessing.