THE REALMS OF GAUTAMA
Difficult, indeed, would it be to choose a more striking introduction to
the wonderland of the Far East than that egg-shaped remnant left over
from the building of India. How incomplete and lusterless seems the
picture drawn by the anticipating imagination when one stands at last in
the midst of its prolific, kaleidoscopic life! Sharp and vivid are the
impressions that come crowding on the traveler in jumbled, disordered
succession, and he experiences a confusion such as comes with the first
glance at a great painting. He must look again and again before the
underlying conception stands out clearly through the mass of unfamiliar
detail.
It would have been strange if the white man of peripatetic mood had not
found his way to this Eden of the eastern seas. Within ten minutes of my
landing I was greeted by a score of “beachcombers” gathered in the black
shade under the portico of a large government building. In garb, they
were men of means. It costs nothing worth mentioning to keep spotless
the jacket and trousers of thinnest cotton that make up the wardrobe of
the Indias. More than their sun-baked faces, their listless movements
and ingrown indolence betrayed them as “vags.” Those of the band who
were not stretched out at full length on the flagging of the veranda
dangled their feet from the encircling railing or leaned against the
massive pillars, puffing lazily at pipe or cigarette. On the greensward
below, two natives sat on their heels before portable stands, rising now
and then to pour out a glass of tea for the “comber” who tossed a Ceylon
cent at their feet.
Theoretically, the party had gathered to seek employment. The morning
hour, since time immemorial, had called the exiles together in the shade
of the shipping office to lay in wait for any stranger, the “cut of
whose jib” stamped him as a captain. “Shipping,” however, was dull.
Imbued with the habit, “the boys” continued to gather, but into their
drowsy yarning rarely intruded the fear of being driven forth from this
island paradise.
Now and again some energetic member of the band rose to peer through the
open door of the shipping office; yet retreated hastily, for a roar as
of an angry bull was the invariable greeting from within. When courage
came, I ventured to glance inside. A burly Englishman, as nearly naked
as a mild sense of propriety permitted, lay on his back in a reclining
chair, on the arm of which he threw a mass of typewritten sheets every
half-minute, to mop up the perspiration that poured down his rotund face
and hairy chest in spite of the heavy velvet _punkahs_ that swung slowly
back and forth above him.
“Shippin’ master,” volunteered a recumbent Irishman behind me. “But
divil a man dast disturb ’im. If you valy your loife, kape out of ’is
soight.”
At noonday the office closed. The beachcombers wandered languidly away
to some other shaded spot, and seeking refuge from the equatorial sun in
a neighboring park, I dreamed away my first day’s freedom from the
holly-stone. A native runner roused me towards nightfall and thrust into
my hands a card setting forth the virtues of “The Original and
Well-Recognized Sailors’ Boarding House of Colombo, under Proprietorship
of C. D. Almeida.” It was a two-story building in the native quarter of
Pettah, of stone floor, but otherwise of the lightest wooden material.
The dining-room, in the center of the establishment, boasted no roof.
Narrow, windowless chambers of the second story, facing this open space,
housed the seafaring guests.
Almeida, the proprietor, was a Singhalese of purest caste. His white
silk jacket was modestly decorated with red braid and glistening brass
buttons. Beneath the folds of a skirt of gayest plaid peeped feet that
had never known the restraint of shoes, the toes of which stood out
staunchly independent one from another. For all his occupation he clung
stoutly to the symbols of his social superiority—tiny pearl earrings and
a huge circle comb of celluloid. Fate had been unkind to Almeida. Though
his fellow-countrymen, with rarely an exception, boasted thick tresses
of long, raven-tinted hair, the boarding master was well nigh bald. His
gray and scanty locks did little more than streak his black scalp, and
the art of a lifetime of hair dressing could not make the knob at the
back of his head larger than a hickory nut. Obviously no circle comb
could sit in position so insecure; at intervals as regular as the
ticking of his great silver watch, that of Almeida dropped on the ground
behind him. Wherever he moved, there slunk at his heels a native urchin
who had known no other task in many a month than that of restoring to
its place the ornament of caste.
[Illustration: An outrigger canoe and an outdoor laundry in Colombo,
Ceylon]
[Illustration: Road-repairers of Ceylon. Highway between Colombo and
Kandy]
The simple formality of signing a promise-to-pay made me a guest. Four
white men and as many black leaned their elbows on the unplaned table,
awaiting the evening meal. In an adjoining grotto, two natives were
stumbling over each other around a kettle and a fire of fagots. Both
were clothed in the scantiest of breechclouts. Now and then they
squatted on their smoothly polished heels, scratched savagely at some
portion of their scrawny bodies, and sprang up again to plunge both
hands into the kettle.
In due time the mess grew too hot for stirring. The pair resumed their
squat and burst forth in a dreadful chatter of falsetto voices. Then
fell ominous silence. Suddenly the cooks dashed into the smoke that
veiled the entrance to the cave, and, flinging themselves upon the
caldron, dragged it forth into the dining-room. The senior scooped out
handfuls of steaming rice and filled our plates. The younger returned to
the smoky cavern and laid hold on a smaller pot that contained a curry
of chopped fish. Besides these two delicacies, there were bananas in
abundance and a chettie of water, brackish, discolored and lukewarm.
Having distributed heavy pewter spoons among the guests, the cooks
filled a battered basin with rice and, dropping on their haunches,
thrust the food into their mouths with both hands. The blazing fagots
turned to dying embers, the wick that floated in a bottle of oil lighted
up a bare corner of the table, and the rising moon, falling upon the
naked figures, cast weird shadows across the uneven floor.
Almeida took his leave. The dropping of his comb sounded twice or thrice
between the dining-room and the street, and the patter of his bare feet
mingled with the whisper of the night outside. I laid my head on a hand
as a sign of sleepiness, and a cook led the way to the second story and
into one of the narrow rooms. It was furnished with three wooden tables
of Dachshund legs. From two pegs in the wall hung several diaphanous
tropical garments, the property of my unknown roommates. I inquired for
my bed; but the cook spoke no English, and I sat down on the nearest
table to await a more communicative mortal.
A long hour afterward two white men stumbled up the stairs, the first
carrying a candle high above his head. He was lean and sallow,
gray-haired and clean shaven, with something in his manner that spoke of
better days. His companion was a burly, tow-headed Swede.
“Oho! Ole,” grinned the older man; “here’s a new bunkie. Why don’t you
turn in, mate?”
“Haven’t found my bed yet,” I answered.
“Your bed!” cried the newcomer, “Why, damn it, man, you’re sitting on
it.”
I followed the example of the pair in reducing my attire to the
regulation coolie costume and, turning my bundled clothing into a
pillow, sweated out the night.
Over the tea, bananas, and cakes of ground cocoanut that made up the
Almeida breakfast, I exchanged yarns with my companions of the night.
The Swede was merely a sailor; the older man a less commonplace being.
He was an Irishman named John Askins, a master of arts of Dublin
University and a civil engineer by profession. Twenty years before, an
encroaching asthma had driven him from his native island. In his
wanderings through every tropical country under British rule, he had
picked up a fluent use of half the dialects of the east, from the
clicking Kaffir to the guttural tongue of Kabul. Not by choice was
Askins, M. A., a vagabond. Periodically, however, employment failed him
and he fell, as now, into the ranks of those who listened
open-mouthed—when he chose to abandon the slang of “the road” and the
forecastle—to his professorial diction.
Brief as was my acquaintance with Ceylon, I had already discovered two
possible openings to the wage-earning class. The first was to join the
police force. Half the European officers of Colombo had once been
beachcombers. Between them and our band existed a liaison so close that
the misdemeanors of “the boys” were rarely punished, and more than one
white castaway was housed surreptitiously in the barracks on Slave
Island. I had no hesitancy, therefore, in applying for information to
the Irishman whose beat embraced the cricket-ground separating Pettah
from the European quarter.
He painted the life in uniform in glowing colors. His salary was fifty
rupees a month. No princely income, surely, for bear in mind that it
takes three rupees to make a dollar. The “graft,” too, he admitted
sadly, was next to nothing. Yet he supported a wife—a white one, at
that, strange to say—and three children, kept several servants, owned a
house of his own, and increased his bank account on every pay day.
Ludicrous, you know, is the cost of living in Ceylon.
I hurried eagerly away to the office of the superintendent of police. An
awkward squad of white recruits was sprinkling with perspiration the
green before the government bungalow, from which a servant emerged to
inquire my errand. The alacrity with which I was admitted to the inner
sanctum aroused within me visions of myself in uniform that were by no
means dispelled by the hasty examination to which the superintendent
subjected me.
“Yes! Yes!” he broke in, before I had answered his last question; “I
think we can take you on all right. By the way, what part of the country
are you from? You’ll be from Yorkshire side, I take it?”
“United States.”
“A-oh! You don’t say so? An American! Really, you don’t look it, you
know. What a shame! Had a beat all picked out for you. But as an
American you’d better go to the Philippines and apply on the force
there. We can’t give you anything in Ceylon or India, don’t you know.
Awfully sorry. Good day.”
None but a man ignorant of the ways of the Far East could have conceived
my second scheme in one sleepless night. It was suggested by the fact
that, in earlier years, I had, as the Englishman puts it, “gone in for”
cross-country running. Returning to Almeida’s, I soon picked up a
partner for the projected enterprise. He was a young and lanky
Englishman, who, though he had never indulged in athletic sports, was
certain that in eluding for a decade the police of four continents he
had developed a record-breaking stride.
In a shady corner of Gordon Gardens we arranged the details of our plan,
which was—why not admit it at once?—to become ’rickshaw runners. The
hollow-chested natives who plied this equestrian vocation leased their
vehicles from the American consul. That official surely would be glad to
rent the two fine, new carriages that stood idle in his establishment.
The license would cost little. Cloth slippers that sold for a few cents
in the bazaars would render us as light-footed as our competitors. We
could not, of course, offer indiscriminate service. Half the population
of Colombo would have swept down upon us, clamoring for the unheard-of
honor of riding behind a sahib. But nothing would be easier than to hang
above our licenses the announcement, “for white men only.”
“By thunder,” enthused the Briton, as we turned out into the sunlight
once more, “it’s a new scheme all right, absolutely unique. It’s sure to
attract attention mighty quick.”
It did. So quickly, in fact, that had there been a white policeman
within call when we broached the subject to the American consul, we
should have found lodging at once in two nicely padded chambers of the
city hospital.
“Did you two lunatics,” shrieked my fellow-countryman, from behind the
protecting bulwark of his desk, “ever hear of Caste? Would the Europeans
patronize you? You bet they would—with a fine coat of tar and feathers!
You’d need it, too, for those long, slim knives the runners carry. Of
all the idiotic schemes! Why, you—you—don’t you know that’s a crime—or,
if it isn’t, the governor would make it one in about ten minutes. Go lie
in the shade somewhere until you get your senses—if you’ve got one!”
Years ago, I came to the conclusion that the day of the enterprising
young man is past. But it was cruel of the consul to put the matter so
baldly. Luckily, the Englishman possessed four cents or we should have
been denied the bitter joy of drowning our grief and dissolving our
partnership in a glass of arrack.
From the distance of the western world the rate in Almeida’s boarding
house—a half rupee a day—does not seem exorbitant. It was, however. In
the native restaurants that abounded in Colombo, one could live on half
that amount; and as for lodging—what utter foolishness to pay for the
privilege of sleeping on a short-legged table when the ground was so
much softer? No sooner, therefore, had a pawnbroker of Pettah appraised
my useless winter garments at two rupees than I paid my bill at the
“Original Boarding House” and became resident at large.
On the edge of the native section stood an eating shop that had won the
patronage of half the beachcombers in the city. It was a low, thatched
shanty, constructed, like its neighbors, chiefly of bamboo. The front
wall—unless the canvas curtain that warded off the blazing sunshine be
reckoned such—was all doorway, before which stood a platform heaped high
with multicolored tropical fruits.
A dozen white men bawled out a greeting as I pushed aside the curtain
and crowded into a place on one of the creaking benches around the
table. At the entrance stood the proprietor, guarding a home-made safe,
and smiling so vociferously upon whomever added to its contents that his
circle comb rose and fell with the exertion. Plainly in sight of the
yawning customers, in a smoke-choked back room, two chocolate-colored
cooks, who had evidently divided between them a garment as large as a
lady’s handkerchief, toiled over a long row of kettles.
The dinner was table d’hôte, and cost four cents. A naked boy set before
me a heaping plate of rice, four bananas, a glass of tea, and six small
dishes of curried vegetables, meat, and shrimps. The time had come when
I must learn, like my companions, to dispense with table utensils. I
began the first lesson by following the movements of my fellow-guests.
Each dug in the center of his mound of rice a hole of the size of a
coffee-cup. Into this he dumped the curries one after another and buried
them by pushing in the sides of the excavation. The interment finished,
he fell upon the mess with both hands, and mixed the ingredients as the
“board-bucker” mixes concrete—by shoveling it over and over.
Let no one fancy that the Far East has no etiquette of the table. It was
the height of ill-breeding, for example, to grasp a handful of food and
eat it from the open palm. Obviously, the Englishman beside me had
received careful Singhalese training. Without bending a joint of his
hand, he plunged it into the mixture before him, drew his fingers
closely together, and, thrusting his hand to the base of the thumb into
his mouth, sucked off the food by taking a long, quick breath.
I imitated him, gasped, choked, and clutched at the bench with both
hands, while the tears ran in rivulets down my cheeks. ’Twas my
introduction to the curries of Ceylon. A mouthful of cayenne pepper
would have tasted like ice cream in comparison. The stuff was so
calorific—in chillies, not in temperature—that it burned my fingers.
“Hot, Yank?” grinned the Englishman. “That’s what all the lads finds ’em
when they first get out here. In a week they’ll be just right. In a
month you’ll be longin’ for Madras where they make ’em ’otter.”
The dinner over, the guests threw under their feet the food that
remained; washed their fingers, surreptitiously, of course, in a chettie
of drinking water; and sauntered out into the starlit night. Across the
way lay the cricket ground of Colombo, a twelve-acre field, silent and
deserted. While the policeman yawned at the far end of his beat, I
scrambled over the bamboo fence, and, choosing a spot where the grass
was not entirely worn off, went to bed. The proverbial white elephant
was never more of a burden than my kodak had become. Hitherto, I had
easily concealed it in a pocket of my corduroy coat. Now my entire
wardrobe could have been packed inside the apparatus, and wherever I
wandered I was forced to lug the thing under one arm, like a pet poodle,
wrapped in a ragged cover that deceived the covetous as to its real
value. By night it served as pillow, and so fixed a habit had its
possession become, that I ran no more risk of leaving it behind than of
going away without my cap.
The grassy slope was as soft as a mattress, the tepid night breeze just
the right covering. I quickly fell asleep. A feeling, as of someone
close at hand, aroused me. Slowly I opened my eyes. Within a foot of me,
his naked body glistening in the moonlight, crouched a coolie. I bounded
to my feet. But the native was quicker than I. With a leap that would
have done credit to a kangaroo, he shot suddenly into the air, landed
noiselessly on his bare feet some three yards away, and, before I could
take a step in his direction, was gone.
Midnight, certainly, had passed. The flanking streets were utterly
deserted. Not a light shone in the long rows of shops. Only the
ceaseless chanting of myriads of insects tempered the stillness of the
night. I drew a cord from my pocket, tied one end to the kodak and
another to a wrist, and lay down again. The precaution was wisely taken.
A tug at my arm awakened me a second time and, as I started up, a black
rascal, closely resembling my first visitor, scampered away across the
playground. Dawn was drawing a thin gray line on the black canvas of
night. I left my bed unmade and wandered away into the city.
Before the sun was high I had found employment. A resident in the
Cinnamon Gardens had advertised for a carpenter, and for the three days
following I superintended the labors of a band of coolies in laying a
hardwood floor in his bungalow. During that period, a rumor, spreading
among the beachcombers, aroused them to new wakefulness. Colombo was
soon to be visited by a circus! It was not that the mixed odor of
sawdust and pink lemonade appealed greatly to “the boys.” But tradition
whispered that the annual show would bring employment to more than one
whose curry and rice advanced with laggard steps.
Dropping in at Almeida’s when my task was ended, I found Askins agog
with news of the coming spectacle.
“She’ll be here in a week or ten days,” he cried, gayly. “That means a
few dibs a day for some of us. For circuses must have white men. Niggers
won’t do. That’s our game, Franck. Just lay low and when she blows in,
we’ll swoop down on the supe and get our cognoms on the pay roll.
“Or say!” he went on, in more excited tones. “Better still! You won’t
need to lie idle meantime, either. An idea strikes me. Remember the
arrack shop where the two stokers set us up a bottle of fire-water the
other day? Well, just across the street is the Salvation Army. Now you
waltz down to the meeting there to-night and get converted. They’ll hand
you down a swell white uniform, put you right in a good hash-house, and
throw a few odd grafts in your way. All you’ll have to do’ll be to baste
a drum or something of the kind twice a day, and you can have quite a
few chips tucked away by the time the circus comes.”
“Good scheme,” I answered, “but I’ve got a few chips tucked away now,
and if she isn’t due for ten days that will give me time for a jaunt
into the interior of the island.”
“Well, it’s a ramble worth making,” admitted the Irishman, “but look out
for the sun, and be sure you’re on hand again for the big show.”
The city of Colombo is well spread out. Though I set off early next
morning, it was nearly noon when I crossed the Victoria bridge at Grand
Pass and struck the open country. Great was the contrast between the
Ceylon of my imagination and the reality. A riot of tropical vegetation
spread out on every hand; in the dense shadows swarmed naked humans
uncountable. But jungle was there none, neither wild men, nor savage
beasts. Every acre was producing for the use of man. The highway was
wide, well-built as in Europe, close flanked on either side by thick
forests of towering palm trees. Here and there, bands of coolies
repaired the roadway, or fought back the aggressive vegetation with
ax-like knives. Clumsy, broad-wheeled bullock carts, in appearance like
our “prairie schooners,” creaked by behind humped oxen ambling seaward
at a snail’s pace. Under his protecting roof, made, not of canvas, as
the first glimpse suggested, but of thousands of leaves sewn together,
the scrawny driver grinned cheerily and mumbled some strange word of
greeting. Even the heat was less infernal than I had anticipated. The
glare of sunshine was dazzling; a wrist uncovered for a moment was
burned red as with a branding-iron; my face shown browner in the mirror
of each passing stream; but often are the sun’s rays more debilitating
on a summer day at home.
In the forest the slim bamboo and the broad-leafed banana tree abounded;
but the cocoanut palm predominated. In every grove, prehensile coolies,
armed with heavy knives, walked up the slender trunks, and, hiding
themselves in the tuft of leaves sixty feet above, chopped off the nuts
in clusters of three. One could have recited a poem between the moment
of their launching and the time when they struck the soft, spongy earth,
to rebound high into the air. ’Tis a national music, the dull, muffled
thump of cocoanuts, as reminiscent, ever after, of dense, tropical
forests as the tinkle of the donkey bell of Spain, or the squawk of the
water wheel of Egypt.
I stepped aside from the highway in the mid-afternoon, and lay down on a
grassy slope under shielding palms. A crackling of twigs drew my
attention, and, catching sight of a pair of eyes filled with mute
wonder, I nodded reassuringly. A native, dressed in a ribbon and a
tangle of oily hair, stepped from behind a great drooping banana leaf
and advanced with faltering steps. Behind him emerged a score of men and
boys, as heavily clothed as the leader; and the band, smiling like a
company of ballet dancers en scène, moved forward hesitatingly, halting
frequently to exchange signs of mutual encouragement. Their timidity was
in strange contrast to the boisterous or menacing attitude of the Arab.
One felt that a harsh word or a gesture of annoyance would have sent
these deferential country-folk scampering away through the forest. A
white man, whatever his station in life, is a tin god in Ceylon.
With a simultaneous gurgle of greeting, the natives squatted in a
semicircle at the foot of the knoll on which I lay, as obsequious in
manner as loyal subjects come to do homage to their cannibal king. We
chatted, intelligibly if not glibly, in the language of signs. My pipe
aroused great curiosity. When it had burned out, I turned it over to the
leader. He passed it on to his companions, each and all of whom, to my
horror, tested the strange thing by thrusting the stem halfway down his
throat and sucking fiercely at it. Even when they had examined every
other article in my knapsack, my visitors were not content, and implored
me with tears in their eyes to give them leave to open my kodak. I
distracted their attention by a careful inspection of their tools and
betel-nut pouches. With truly Spanish generosity they insisted on
presenting me with every article that I asked to see; and then sneaked
round behind me to carry off the gift while I was examining another.
I rose to continue my way, but the natives burst out in vigorous
protest, and, despatching three youths on some unknown errand, dropped
again on their haunches and fell to preparing new chews of betel-nut.
The emissaries soon returned, one carrying a jack-fruit, another a bunch
of bananas, and the third swinging three green cocoanuts by the
rope-like stem. The leader laid the gifts, one after another, at my
feet. Two men armed with jungle knives sprang forward, and while one
hacked at the adamantine jack-fruit, the other caught up a cocoanut,
chopped off the top with one stroke, and invited me to drink. The
milk—the national beverage of Ceylon—was cool and refreshing, but the
meat of the green nut as inedible as a leather strap. The jack-fruit, of
the size and appearance of a water melon, was split at last into
longitudinal slices. These, in turn, split sidewise into dozens of
segments not unlike those of the orange, each one containing a large,
kidney-shaped stone. The meat itself was white, coarse-grained, and
rather tasteless. The bananas were smaller, but more savory than those
of the West Indies. When I had sampled each of the gifts, I distributed
them among the donators, and turned down to the highway.
It is easy to account for the vagabond’s fondness for tropical lands. He
loves to strut about among reverential black men in all the glory of a
white skin; it flatters him astonishingly to have native policemen and
soldiers draw up at attention and salute as he passes; he adores, of
course, the lazy indolence of the East. But all these things are as
nothing compared with his one great advantage over his brother in
northern lands. He escapes the terror of the coming night. Only he who
has roamed penniless through a colder world can know this dread; how,
like an oppressive cloud, rising on the horizon of each new day, it
casts its gloom over every niggardly atom of good fortune. In the north
one must have shelter. Other things which the world calls necessities
the vagrant may do without, but the night will not be put off like
hunger and thirst. In the tropics? In Ceylon? Bah! What is night but a
more comfortable day? If it grows too dark for tramping, one lies down
in the bed under his feet and rises, refreshed, with the new dawn.
From my forest lodging bordering the twenty-first mile post, I set out
on the second day’s tramp before the country people were astir. The
highway, bursting forth from the encircling palm trees now and then,
stalked across a small, rolling plain. Villages rose with every mile,
rambling, two-row hamlets of bamboo, where elbow room was ample. Between
them, isolated thatched cottages peeped from beneath the trees. Here
were none of the densely-packed collections of human stys so general in
Italy and the land of the Arab; for Ceylon, four centuries tributary to
Europe, knows not the fear of marauding bands.
As the sun climbed higher, grinning groups of rustics pattered by, the
men beclouted, the women clad in a short skirt and a shorter waist,
between which glistened ten inches or more of velvety brown skin. Hunger
and thirst come often in the tropics, but never was highway more
liberally stocked with food and drink. Half the houses displayed for
sale the fruits of the surrounding forest, and tea and cocoanut cakes
could be had anywhere. On a bamboo pedestal before every hovel, however
wretched, stood an earthenware _chettie_ of water, beside which hung as
a drinking-vessel the half of a cocoanut-shell; commonly slimy and
moss-grown. Great was the joy of every family whose hut I entered—silent
joy, generally, for the unhoped-for honor of welcoming a white man left
one and all, from the half-naked wife to the babe in arms—no household
lacked the latter—speechless with awe and veneration. They are charming
children, these smiling brown people, and industrious, though moving
always after the languid manner of the tropical zone.
Bathing is the national hobby of Ceylon. Never a stream crawling under
the highway but was alive with splashing natives. Mothers, plodding
along the route, halted at every rivulet to roll a banana leaf into a
cone-shaped bucket and pour uncounted gallons of water on their
sputtering infants, crouched naked on the bank of the stream. Travelers
on foot or by bullock cart took hourly dips en route. The husbandman
abandoned his tilling at frequent intervals to plunge into the nearest
water hole. His wife, instead of calling on her neighbors, met them at
the brook and, turned mermaid, gossiped in cool and comfort. The men,
subjected only to a loin cloth, gave no heed to their clothing. The
women, wound from knees to armpits in gossamer-like sheets of snowy
white, emerged from their aquatic couches and, turning themselves round
and round in the blazing sunshine like spitted fowls over a fire,
marched homeward in dry garments.
With the third day the landscape changed. The slightly rolling lowlands
of the coast gave way to tea-clad foothills, heralding the mountains of
the interior. The highway, mounting languidly, offered noonday vista of
the ranges that have won for Ceylon the title of “Switzerland of the
tropics.” Here were none of the rugged peaks and crags of the Alps nor
the barren wilderness of Palestine. Endless, to the north and south,
hovering in a sea-blue haze, stretched rolling mountains, thick clothed
in prolific vegetation. Unaggressive, effeminate they seemed, compared
with northern highlands; summits and slopes a succession of graceful
curves, with never an angular stroke, hills plump of contour, like
Ruben’s figures.
[Illustration: Singhalese ladies wear only a skirt and a short waist,
between which several inches of brown skin are visible]
[Illustration: A Singhalese woman rarely misses an opportunity to give
her children a bath]
Try as I would, I had not succeeded in making my daily expenditures
since leaving the coast more than ten cents. Near the summit of the
route I paused at an amateur shop by the wayside. It was a pathetic
little hovel, built of rubbish picked up in the forest. A board,
stretched like a counter across the open doorway, was heavily laden with
bananas. Near at hand a plump, brown matron, in abbreviated skirt and a
waist little more than neckerchief, was spreading out grain—with her
feet—on a long grass mat. Unfortunately, the list of Singhalese words
that I had jotted down at the dictation of Askins lacked the
all-important term “how much.” I pointed at the fruit and tossed a coin
on the counter. It was a copper piece, worth one and three-fourths
cents; enough, surely, for the purchase of a half-dozen bananas. The
matron approached, picked up the coin gingerly, and, turning it over and
over in her hand, stared at me with wide-open eyes. Had I been niggardly
in my offer? I was thrusting a hand into my pocket for another copper,
when the female, motioning to me to open my knapsack, dropped into it
three dozen bananas, hesitated, and, assuming the air of one whose
conscience is master of his cupidity, added a fourth cluster.
A furlong beyond, in a shaded elbow of the route, I turned to the task
of lightening my burden. Small success would have crowned my efforts but
for the arrival of a fellow-wayfarer. He was a man of fifty or sixty,
blacker of skin than the Singhalese. A ten-yard strip of cloth, of a
pattern in which two-inch stripes of white and brilliant red alternated,
was wrapped round his waist and fell to his knees. Over his head was
folded a sheet of orange hue. In either hand he carried a bundle,
wrapped in cloth and tied with green vines. The upper half of his face
was that of meekness personified; the rest was covered with such a beard
as one might swear by, deeply streaked with gray.
Painfully he limped to the roadside, and squatted on his heels in the
edge of the shade. By every token he was “on the road.”
“Have a bite, Jack?” I invited, pushing the fruit towards him.
A child’s voice squeaked within him. Gravely he rose to his feet to
express his gratitude in every known posture of the human figure except
that of standing on his head. That formality over, he fell to with a
will—and both hands—so willingly in fact that, with never a pause nor a
choke, he made way with twenty-eight bananas. Small wonder if he would
have slept a while in the edge of the shade after so noteworthy a feat.
I rose to plod on, however, and he would not be left behind,—far behind,
that is. Reiterated solicitations could not induce him to walk beside
me; he pattered always two paces in the rear, too mindful of his own
inferiority to march abreast with a sahib. From the gestures and gasps
that my questions drew forth, I gathered that he was a _yogi_, a holy
man—temporarily at least—bound on a pilgrimage to some shrine in the
mountains. Two hours beyond our meeting, he halted at a branch road,
knelt in the highway, and, ere I had divined his intention, imprinted a
sonorous kiss on the top of one of my Nazarene slippers. Only my
dexterity saved the other. He stood up slowly, almost sadly, as one
grieved to part from good company—or bananas, shook the dust of the
route from his beard, and, turning into the forest-throttled byway, was
gone.
Night, striding over the mountains in the seven-league boots he wears in
the tropics, playfully laid hand on me just at the entrance to the inn
of the Sign of the Palm Tree. The landlord demanded no fee; the far-off
howling of dogs lulled me to sleep. With dawn, I was off once more.
Sunrise waved his greeting over the leafy crests of the Peradiniya
Gardens, and her European residents, lolling in their church-bound
’rickshaws, stared at my entrance into the ancient city of Kandy.
Centuries ago, this mountain-girdled metropolis of the interior was the
seat of the native king. To-day, the monarch of Ceylon is a bluff
Englishman, housed within sight of the harbor of Colombo in a stone
mansion more appropriate to Regent’s Row than to this land of swaying
palm trees. The descendant of the native dynasty still holds his mock
court in the capital of his forefathers, struggling against the
encroachment of trousers and cravats and the wiles of courtiers
stoop-shouldered with the wisdom of Oxford and Cambridge. But his duties
have narrowed down to that of upholding the ancestral religion. For
Kandy is a holy city. Buddhists, not merely of Ceylon but of India and
the equatorial islands, make pilgrimage to its ancient shrine. Long
before the coming of the Nazarene, tradition whispers, there was found
in Burma one of the teeth of Gautama, the Enlightened One. How it came
to be picked up thus far from the burial place of the Wandering Prince
is as inexplicable as the discovery of splinters of the true Cross in
strange and sundry regions far distant from Calvary. Be that as it may,
a rich embassy from the king of Burma bore the relic to this egg-shaped
island, and over it was erected the celebrated “Temple of the Tooth.”
[Illustration: The woman who sold me the bananas]
[Illustration: The thatch roof at the roadside, under which I slept on
the second night of my tramp to Kandy]
It is a time-worn structure of gray stone, simple in architecture from
the view point of the Orient, set in a lotus grove on the shores of a
crystal-clear lake. Mindful of the assaults that I had more than once
provoked by entering a house of worship in the East, I contented myself
with a circuit of its double, crenelated walls and a peep up the broad
steps that led to the interior.
The keeper of the inn to which fate assigned me had two sons, who,
thanks to the local mission-school, spoke fluent English. The older was
a youth of fifteen. In the West he would have been rated a child. Here
he was accepted as a man, to whom the problems of life had already taken
form. Our conversation turned naturally to the subject of religion;
naturally, because that subject is always first and foremost in the
East. His religion sets for the Oriental his place in the community; it
tells him what work he shall do all the days of his life, what his
children and his children’s children shall do. According to the dictates
of his faith he eats or refrains from eating, he seeks repose or watches
out the night, he greets his fellow-beings or shuns them like dogs.
Society is honey-combed with sects and creeds and castes. Every man
wears some visible symbol of his religion, and before all else he
scrutinizes the sign of caste of any stranger with whom he comes in
contact. No secondary matter, nor something to be aired once a week, is
a man’s religion in the East. It stalks at his heels as relentlessly as
his shadow at noonday.
“I suppose,” I was saying, soon after the son of the innkeeper had
broached this unavoidable topic, “I suppose that, as you have been
educated in a Protestant school, you are a Christian?”
The youth eyed me for a moment with noncommittal gravity.
“May I know,” he asked in reply—to change the subject, I
fancied—“whether you are a missionary?”
“On the contrary,” I protested, “I am a sailor.”
“Because,” he went on, “one must know to whom one speaks. I am a
Christian always—when I am in school or talking to missionaries.
“There are many religions in the world, and surely that of the white man
is a good religion. We learn much more that is useful in the schools of
the Christians than in our own. But, my friend,” he leaned forward with
the earnestness of one who is about to disclose a great secret, “there
is but one true religion. He who is seeking the true religion—if _you_
are seeking the true religion, you will find it right here in our island
of Ceylon.”
It comes ever back to that. Hordes of missionaries may flock to the
“heathen” lands, bulky reports anent the thousands who have been
“gathered into the fold” may rouse the charity of the pious at home; yet
in moments of sober earnest, when, in the words of Askins, “it comes to
a show-down,” the convert beyond seas is a stout champion of the faith
of his ancestors.
“Many people,” continued my informant, “nearly all the people of Ceylon
who would learn from the Christians, who are hungry and poor, or who
would have work, pretend the religion of the white man. For we receive
more, the teachers are our better friends if we tell them we are
Christians. And surely we do the right in saying so? We wish all to
please the missionaries and we have no other way to do; for it gives
them much pleasure to have many converts. Have you, I wonder,” he
concluded, “visited our Temple of the Tooth.”
“Outside,” I answered. “Are sahibs allowed to enter?”
“Surely!” cried the youth, “The Buddhists have not exclusion. We are
joyed to have white men in our temples. To-night, we are having a
service very important in the Temple of the Tooth. With my uncle, who
keeps the cloth-shop across the way, I shall go. Will you not forget
your religion and honor us by coming?”
“Certainly,” I answered.
Two flaring torches threw fantastic shadows over the chattering throng
of Singhalese that bore us bodily up the broad stairway to the sacred
shrine. In the outer temple, at the top of the flight, surged a maudlin
multitude around a dozen booths devoted to the sale of candles, bits of
cardboard, and the white lotus-flower sacred to Gautama, the Buddha.
Above the sharp-pitched roar of the faithful sounded the incessant
rattle of copper coins. The smallest child, the most ragged mendicant,
struggled against the human stream that would have swept him into the
inner temple, until he had bought or begged a taper or flower to lay in
the lap of his favorite statue. From every nook and corner, the effigy
of the Enlightened One, defying in posture the laws of anatomy, surveyed
the scene with sad serenity.
[Illustration: Singhalese infants are very sturdy during the first
years.]
[Illustration: The yogi who ate twenty-eight of the bananas at a
sitting.]
Of all the throng, I alone was shod. I dropped my slippers at the
landing, and, half expecting a stern command to remove my socks,
advanced into the brighter light of the interior. A whisper rose beside
me and swelled in volume as it passed quickly from mouth to
mouth:—“Sahib! sahib!” I had dreaded lest my coming should precipitate a
riot, but Buddha himself, arriving thus unannounced, could not have won
more boisterous welcome. The worshipers swept down upon me, shrieking
their hospitality. Several thrust into my hands newly purchased
blossoms, another—strange action, it seemed then, in a house of
worship—pressed upon me a badly-rolled cigar of native make; from every
side came candles and matches. At the tinkle of a far-off bell the
natives fell back, leaving a lane for our passing. Two saffron-robed
priests, smiling and salaaming at every step, advanced to meet me and
led the way to a balcony overlooking the lake.
In the semi-darkness of a corner squatted, in scanty breechclouts and
ample turbans, three natives,—low-caste coolies, no doubt, to whom fell
the menial tasks within the temple inclosure; for before each sat what
appeared to be a large basket. I took station near them with my
attendant priests, and awaited “the service very important.”
Suddenly the cornered trio, each grasping in either hand a weapon
reminiscent of a footpad’s billy, stretched their hands high above their
heads and brought them down with a crash that would have startled a less
phlegmatic sahib out of all sanity. What I had taken for baskets were
tom-toms! Without losing a single beat, the drummers began, with the
third or fourth stroke, to blow lustily on long pipes from which issued
a plaintive wailing. I spoke no more with my interpreter. For the
“musicians,” having pressed into service every soundwave lingering in
the vicinity, monopolized them during the ensuing two hours. Two simple
rules govern the production of Singhalese music: first, make as much
noise as possible all the time; second, to heighten the effect, make
more.
Puffing serenely at my stogie, I marched with the officiating monks, who
had given me place of honor in their ranks, from one shrine to another.
Behind us surged a murmuring, self-prostrating multitude. No one sat
during the service, and there was nothing resembling a sermon. The
priests addressed themselves only to the dreamy-eyed Buddhas, and craved
boons or chanted their gratitude for former favors in a rising and
falling monotone in which I caught, now and then, the rhythm and rhyme
of poetry.
It was late when the service ended. The boiler-factory music ceased as
suddenly as it had begun, the worshipers poured forth into the soft
night, and I was left alone with my guides and a dozen priests.
“See,” whispered the intermittent Christian. “You are honored. The head
man of the temple comes.”
An aged friar, emerging from an inner shrine, drew near slowly. In
outward appearance, he was an exact replica of the surrounding priests.
A brilliant yellow robe was his only garment. His head was shaven; his
arms, right shoulder and feet, bare.
Having joined the group, he studied me a moment in silence, then
addressed me in the native tongue.
“He is asking,” explained my interpreter, “if you are liking to see the
sacred tooth?”
I bowed my thanks. The high priest led the way to the innermost shrine
of the temple, a chamber in arrangement not unlike the holy sepulchre in
the church of that name in Jerusalem. In the center of the vault he
halted, and, imitated in every movement by the attendant priests and my
guide, fell on his knees, and, muttering a prayer each time, touched his
forehead to the pavement thrice.
Erect once more, he drew from the tabernacle before him a gold casket of
the size of a ditty-box. From it he took a second, a bit smaller, and
handed the first to one of his companions. From the second he drew a
third, from the third a fourth. The process was repeated until nearly
every subordinate priest held a coffer, some fantastically wrought, some
inlaid with precious stones. With the opening of every third box all
those not already burdened fell on their knees and repeated their first
genuflections. There appeared at last the innermost receptacle, not over
an inch each way, and set with diamonds and rubies. Its sanctity
required more than the usual number of prostrations and murmured
incantations. Carefully the superior opened it, and disclosed to view a
tooth, yellow with age, which, assuredly, never grew in any human mouth.
Each of the party admired the molar in turn, but even the high priest
took care not to touch it. The fitting together of the box of boxes
required as much mummery as its disintegration.
The ceremony was ended at last, the tabernacle locked, and we passed on
to inspect other places of interest. Among them was the temple library,
famous throughout the island. It contained four books. Two of these—and
they were thumb-worn—were in English,—recent works of Theosophists. For
the priests of Buddha, far from being the ignorant and superstitious
creatures of Western fancy, are often liberal-minded students of every
phase of the world’s religions. Printed volumes, however, did not
constitute the real library. On the shelves around the walls were
thousands of metal tablets, two feet long, a fourth as wide, and an inch
thick, covered on both sides with the hieroglyphics of Ceylon. When I
had handled several of these, and heard a priest read one in a mournful,
sing-song chant, like the falling of water at a distance, I acknowledged
myself content and turned with my guides toward the door.
[Illustration: Central Ceylon. Making roof-tiles. The sun is the only
kiln]
[Illustration: The priests of the “Temple of the Tooth” in Kandy, who
were my guides during my stay in the city]
The high priest followed us into the outer temple. During all the
evening he had addressed me only through an interpreter. As I paused to
pick up my slippers, however, he salaamed gravely and spoke once more,
this time, to my utter amazement, in faultless English.
“White men,” ran his speech, “often join the true religion. There are
many who are priests of Buddha in Burma, and some in Ceylon. They are
much honored.”
“You see,” explained the son of the innkeeper, as we wended our way
through the silent bazaars, “he did not wish that you should at first
know that he speaks English. He has done you great honor by asking you
to become a priest; for so he meant. But often come white men to the
temple and mock all that is brought to see, making, many times, very
cruel jokes, and he who is close to Buddha waited to see. You have not
done so. Therefore are you honored.”
We mounted to the second story of the inn and, stripped naked, lay down
on our _charpoys_—native beds consisting of a strip of canvas stretched
on a frame. But it was long before I fell asleep; for the youth, seeing
it his clear duty, harangued me long and ungrammatically from the
neighboring darkness on the virtues of the “true religion.”
Somehow the impression gained ground rapidly among the residents of
Kandy that the white man who had attended the Sunday evening service
contemplated joining the yellow-robed ascetics at the Temple of the
Tooth. Just where the rumor had its birth I know not. Belike the mere
fact that I had turned none of the rites to jest had won me favor. Or
was it that my garb marked me as one more likely to attain Nirvana than
the bestarched Europeans whose levity so grieved him who was “close to
Buddha”?
At any rate, the rumor grew like the cornstalk in Kansas. With the
morning sun came pious shopkeepers to fawn upon me. Before I had
breakfasted, two temple priests, their newly-shaven heads and faces
shining under their brightly-colored parasols like polished brass,
called at the inn and invited me to a stroll through the market place.
Never an excursion did I make in Kandy or its environs without at least
a pair of saffron-garbed companions. That I should find a ready welcome
in the temple a hundred natives assured me, the priests by veiled hints,
the laymen more openly. They were moved, perhaps, by a no more
altruistic motive than a desire to have on exhibition in the local
monastery a white priest. But to their credit be it said that no
suggestion of a material inducement crept into their arguments.
“Buddhism,” ran their plea, “is the true religion. The mere fact that it
has many more followers than any other religion proves that, does it
not? And the doctrine of the Enlightened One embraces every anomaly of
humanity—even white men. Only those who accept it can hope for future
happiness. Even if you are not yet convinced of its truth, why not
accept it now and run no risk of future perdition?”
Surely, the most conscientious of Christian missionaries never attempted
proselytism less underhandedly.
My escape from Kandy savored of strategy, but I reached the station
unchallenged, and, exchanging my last two rupees for a ticket to
Colombo, established myself in a third-class compartment. It was already
occupied by a native couple more gifted with offspring than attire.
Barely had I settled down to study Singhalese domestic life at close
range, however, when a mighty uproar burst out near at hand. A
half-breed in the uniform of a guard raced across the platform, and,
thrusting his head into the compartment, poured forth on my apparently
unoffending companions a torrent of incomprehensible words. Had he
denounced me as a victim of the plague? Plainly the family was greatly
frightened. The father sprang wildly to his feet and attempted to clutch
a half-dozen unwieldy bundles in a painfully inadequate number of hands.
The wife, no less terrified, raked together from floor and benches as
many naked urchins, in assorted sizes, but entangled, in her haste, the
legs of her lord and master, and sent him sprawling among his howling
descendants. With a sizzling oath, the trainman snatched open the door
and, springing inside, tumbled baggage, infants, and parents
unceremoniously out upon the platform. Still bellowing, he drove the
trembling wretches to another compartment; a party of well-dressed
natives took possession of the recently vacated benches; and we were
off.
That self-congratulatory attitude common to traveling salesmen the world
over betrayed the caste of my new companions. All of them spoke English,
and, eager to air their accomplishments, lost no time in engaging me in
conversation. Marvelous was the information and the variations of my
mother tongue that assailed me from all sides. It is with difficulty
that one refrains from “stuffing” these vainglorious, yet childish
fellows and it was evident that some other European had already yielded
to the temptation. But my astonishment at the treatment of the exiled
family had by no means subsided.
“Will some of you chaps tell me,” I interrupted, “why the guard ordered
those other natives out of here, and then let you in?”
The drummers glared at me a moment in silence, looked at each other, and
turned to stare out of the windows. Most grossly, evidently, had I
insulted them. But even an insult cannot keep an Oriental long silent.
The travelers fidgeted in their seats, nudged each other, and focused
their stare once more upon me.
“Know you, sir,” said the most portly of the group, with severe
countenance, “know you that those were base coolies, who are not allowed
to ride in the same compartment with white gentlemen. We,” and the brass
buttons of his embroidered jacket struggled to perform their office,
“are high-caste Singhalese, sir. Therefore may we ride with sahibs.”