to the temple of the Jains, that mongrel sect which is partly a
reformed Hinduism, and partly a worship of Buddha. Its temple is a
model of cleanliness and of Oriental art. Its decoration consists
largely of inlaid glass of all the colors of the rainbow. Walls,
ceilings, and columns are fairly ablaze with tinted arabesques that
reflect every ray of the sun. Fountains and lawns and statues mingle
their attractions. The effect is one of splendor and beauty. Jainism
is conservative Hinduism, recurring to the ancestral worship of the
Vedas, exaggerating its doctrine of the sanctity of animal life,
repudiating its later licentious developments, and taking in Buddha,
not as the supreme and sole teacher of religion, but as only one of
its great saints and heroes.
The real glory of Calcutta is its relation to modern missions. Here is
the chapel in which William Carey preached, and in which Adoniram Judson
was baptized. Its spacious construction evinces the faith and hope of
its founders. But it is in Serampore, which, though fourteen miles away,
is almost a suburb of Calcutta, that Carey's work was done. How
wonderful that work was! "A consecrated cobbler," he mastered the
languages of the Orient, and gave the Bible to India in several of its
tongues. He received from the British Government large compensation for
his services as interpreter and translator, but he gave back all the
money he received, in order to support schools and missions. The noble
college at Serampore, with its hundreds of students, is his best
memorial. His tomb in the cemetery witnesses to his humility of spirit.
It stands at one corner of a triangle, with the tombs of Marshman and of
Ward at the two remaining corners, but the only inscription he permitted
to be engraved upon it is the two lines of the hymn,
A wretched, lost, and helpless worm,
On thy kind arms I fall.
So he left his testimony to the need, and the power, of Him who will
ultimately demolish Hindu temples and enthrone Christ in India.
From Calcutta we traveled about three hundred and seventy miles
northward to Darjeeling. We wished to see the Himalayas. A most tortuous
narrow-gage railway lifted us gradually to a height of seven thousand
feet. And there we had the unusual privilege of seeing the sunrise
tipping with rosy light the snowy peak of Kinchinjinga, twenty-eight
thousand feet high and forty-six miles away. Mt. Everest, a hundred
miles distant, is twenty-nine thousand feet high, but from Darjeeling is
invisible. Kinchinjinga is nearly twice as high as Mont Blanc, and its
glittering mass is a spectacle never to be forgotten. Curiously enough,
upon the summit of Observatory Hill, from which we gained our view,
the immigrant Tibetans had erected their shrine, and long, inscribed
paper and muslin streamers, enclosing a large quadrangle, gave to the
winds their prayers. No idol was to be seen. The worship seems to be
far more spiritual than that of the Hindus. Nature seems to have
taught that secluded race of Tibetans a more primitive religion than
modern Hinduism. It is a religion mixed with Buddhism, but preserving
the earlier view of a divinity in natural objects, which Hinduism has
almost wholly outgrown.
Our next point of investigation was Benares, "the holy city," the Mecca
and Jerusalem of the Hindus. It is a hotbed of heathen enthusiasm and of
blinded devotion. The sacred river Ganges flows by, with tier upon tier
of temples rising from its steep banks--such a congestion of religious
edifices that one might almost doubt whether they had left room for any
but priests to live. Every day, hundreds of pilgrims troop through its
streets and throng these temples, presenting their flowers and their
offerings, making their sacrifices, and listening submissively to the
instructions and threatenings of the priests. Every temple has its
sacred animals, to be sacrificed or worshiped. The "Golden Temple,"
so-named, is covered with gold-leaf from its spire to its base. The
noisy crowd in its corridors, the noisome odors of its sanctuaries,
the adjurations of its priests and their evident aim to turn religion
into financial gain, disgust the Christian traveler, while they show
him how deeply rooted in the human heart is this towering system of
idolatry and superstition.
But only the water-view of Benares presents Hinduism in its most
characteristic aspect. It is the sacred river that makes sacred the
town. This river is regarded as itself divine, for it had its source in
the mouth of Brahma. Hence it is endowed with life-giving and purifying
powers. It is bordered for a full mile by a grand succession of palaces
and temples, of bathing ghats and of burning ghats. Here the Hindu,
often after long pilgrimage, washes away his defilement and prepares
himself to die. When death actually comes, his relatives wash his body
in the holy stream. But the bathing ghat only makes ready for the
burning ghat. These burning ghats are castle-like edifices, from which
the smoke of burning flesh ascends continually. Cremation, with the
Hindu, takes the place of burial. The ashes are collected and are
preserved in a tomb. To die in Benares, and to have a temple for a tomb,
is the surest passport to happiness in a future state, since the
transmigration of souls into higher or lower forms is an essential
doctrine of modern Hinduism.
A wealthy resident of Benares courteously offered us the use of his
observation-boat to view the scene upon the river in the early morning.
This river-craft was a double-decker, propelled by oars from the lower
deck. From the upper platform, one could overlook the ceremonial
washings of hundreds of pilgrims. Stalwart men plunged themselves three
times into the stream, looked toward the sun, joined their hands, spoke
a prayer, rinsed their sacred cord, cleansed their raiment, and then,
reclad, went to the priest on his platform, to be smeared with ashes on
the forehead and marked with a little colored dot, as a certificate that
they had correctly performed their vow. Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, had
each his worshipers and his priests, to give the appropriate mark. The
"holy man" was there, either upon his bed of spikes or in an attitude
which suggested torture, and ready to receive the homage, and the money
as well, of his benighted admirers. Mothers were present, immersing not
only themselves but also their children. All the bathers must drink of
the muddy and fetid water, for purification internal is as needful as
purification external. And so, hundreds of worshipers every day, and on
special feast-days thousands, drink this water of the "sacred Ganges,"
foul with the stains of disease and reeking with the sweat of the dead.
It is no wonder that the burning ghats have no lack of business, and no
wonder that medical experts have traced epidemics of cholera, smallpox,
and plague, in Western lands, to this city of Benares, where "Satan's
seat is." The throne of the great adversary, however, seems to be built
on very insufficient foundations, for not a few of the temples which
line the steep banks of the river have toppled over, or have sunk into
the yielding sand. Their massive fragments, at the base of long
stairways of stone, show how hideous is the ruin of any system of
religion which is not founded upon Christ, the Rock.
VII
LUCKNOW, AGRA, AND DELHI
At last we are on Mohammedan ground--at least on ground where
Mohammedanism has a powerful, and perhaps a controlling, influence. This
northwest part of India was the scene of Moslem conquest in the ninth
century. Mohammedans have always proudly contemned idolatry, and they
have often been iconoclasts, as many headless Hindu images can witness.
Northwest India saw the rise and the strength of the great mutiny of
half a century ago, but it was Moslem rajas and faithful Moslem troops
who helped to put it down.
Mohammedan faith in the unity and personality of God might at first
sight seem to render its adherents more accessible than are Hindus to
the gospel of Christ. As a matter of fact, however, the very elements of
truth in their belief make them too often stout opponents of
Christianity. They are religious bigots, as the Hindus are not. The
Hindu has a pantheon to which he can, with some show of consistency,
invite Christ. The Mohammedan declares that there is but one God, and
that Mohammed is his prophet. So he denies Christ's claim to be either
God or Saviour.
Lucknow was deeply interesting, for here was exhibited one of the most
heroic and thrilling defenses ever made in history. More than two
hundred women and children spent three months of agony in the cellars
of the British residency, while husbands and fathers and friends, to the
number of seventeen hundred, were exposed to the besieging force and the
murderous fire of fifty thousand mutineers. The headquarters of the
defenders were riddled with shot and shell, and the residency is now a
ruin. But only one shot penetrated the retreat of the women and children
below, and of these only one woman lost her life. Crowded together in
the heat of the summer, tormented by flies, half famished for lack of
food, these brave women held out themselves and encouraged the
protecting garrison, though of the seventeen hundred men only seven
hundred at the end of the siege remained alive. Sir Henry Lawrence died
of a cannon-shot, exhorting his soldiers to the last man to die, rather
than to surrender. We were glad to pay reverence to his bravery, by a
visit to his tomb. Although he died, the flag of England flew over the
fortress, in spite of innumerable efforts of the enemy to bring it down.
And to-day, in memory of that fact, it is the only flag in the British
Empire that is not lowered at sunset. The joy of the defenders and of
those whom they defended may be imagined, when General Havelock appeared
in their relief, and the great mutiny was suppressed. That victory
settled the prestige of the English in India. All classes now recognize
the military strength as well as the judicial fairness of British rule.
Without it, India would be a country of warring races, for Mohammedan
and Hindu even to-day live in slumbering jealousy of each other.
This latent hostility, I am happy to say, shows some signs of wearing
away. The desire for more of home-rule is bringing these two great races
together in conventions, with a view to the discovery of some method of
cooperation between them. Parliamentary government in China and Japan
has had its effect in India, and Britain will soon be compelled to admit
her Indian populations to a larger share in municipal and provincial
administration. But democracy can be successful, only when conflicting
classes find some basis for harmony. English missionary and educational
institutions are doing much to reconcile Hindus and Mohammedans to one
another, and this may prepare the way, not simply for free government,
but also for the acceptance by both parties of a religion in which all
their elements of truth are included, while their perversions of truth
are sloughed off.
By English educational and missionary institutions I mean much more than
Church of England schools and colleges. In Lucknow we visited the
Isabella Thoburn College, under American Methodist control, and were
greatly impressed by its noble equipment in the way of buildings and
teachers. Both boys and girls have here the opportunity of securing an
education as high in grade as the sophomore years of our American
colleges, and of preparing themselves for the advanced work of a great
Indian university. All this is under Christian influences, and has its
fruit in many a conversion to Christ. Martinière College is also nobly
equipped and endowed, but it is solely for English boys, who are
generally the sons of British officials in India. I cannot speak too
highly of these means of education now furnished by all our great
denominations, in all the cities of India. I could only wish that our
Baptist people at home might see how far Christians of other names have
often surpassed them in their gifts and preparations for the future of a
country whose population is three times as large as our own.
At Lucknow we had the rare opportunity of seeing "the mango trick"
performed by an expert juggler. He first showed us a jar, filled with
innocent sand, so dry that it fell easily through his fingers as he
lifted a handful. Then he presented a dry mango seed, which he planted
in the sand and watered. The jar was placed on the stone pavement of the
hotel, not ten feet away from our eyes. He covered the jar with a little
tent not two feet in diameter. After a few passes of the hand, the tent
was lifted. The seed had already sprouted, and had become a twig with
leaves. Covering the plant once more, he called our attention to a
cobra-charmer, who played harmlessly with a hooded and venomous snake.
At last he threw the tent wholly aside, and there stood a fully
developed little mango tree, perhaps two feet high. It seemed impossible
that the folds of the tent, which had been shaken out at the beginning,
could possibly have held it. The juggler's method was simplicity itself.
If I had not previously seen in America a necromancer cut his wife's
head off, and then put it on again so slick that she seemed to have
received no injury, I might have begun to believe that this Indian
juggler had supernatural powers.
To Lucknow succeeded Agra. The great wonder and prize of Agra is, of
course, the Taj Mahal. So we made our way to it before sunrise, and saw
its exquisite columns and its white minarets in the rosy light of the
earliest morning; then again, as the sun was setting, we saw its last
rays fall upon the snow-white dome. As one looks upon the Taj from the
noble gateway through which one enters the enclosing park, he sees also
its reflection in the long lines of water that lie between, and it seems
a miracle of beauty. But when you reach the edifice itself, and perceive
that its simplicity is combined with lavish richness of decoration,
marble and precious stones being so woven together that they form one
gorgeous and splendid whole, you can only admire the affection that
planned this memorial to a beloved wife, and the art which has succeeded
in constructing an edifice which, after six centuries, is still
recognized as a wonder of the world. Yet the Moslem emperor who built it
was deposed by his son, and then imprisoned not far away, the chief
solace and recreation granted him being this, that from his prison-roof
he could look out upon the Taj Mahal.
The Pearl Mosque and the Jasmine Tower, the Courts of Public and of
Private Audience, in the palace which the Moslem emperor once occupied,
are monuments of architecture so remarkable and so beautiful, that no
description of mine can fairly represent the impression which they made
upon me. They are surrounded and protected by the Fort, an enclosure
half a mile square, whose massive wall is itself a wonder. In the days
when these structures were built, labor was cheap, for the monarch had
only to impress and to feed his laborers. But artistic genius is always
rare. The Mohammedan conquest and sovereignty of the past produced and
encouraged a flowering out of art, comparable to that of the days of
cathedral-building in England, and of the time of Pericles when
sculpture and architecture so flourished in Greece. In all the world
there is nothing more elaborate or beautiful than the perforated marble
of these Oriental screens, and the intricate carving of these Oriental
pillars. The Alhambra in Spain has its superiors in India, both for
splendor of color and for beauty of pattern. The arabesques of these
Oriental mosques exhibit powers of invention of the highest order. It
has been well said that their architects "designed like Titans, and
finished like jewelers." Both the throne of the Mogul Emperor Akbar and
his tomb in Agra are proofs that even the grain of truth in
Mohammedanism can awaken intelligence and enthusiasm in those who
receive it, and that, in the conflict with idol systems, it has power to
conquer the world.
An account of our visit to Delhi may well complete my summary of
Mohammedan influences in India. Delhi was the capital of India long
before Akbar reigned and the lofty tower of the Kutab Minar was built.
But Hindu influence has combined with Mohammedan in leading the British
to restore Delhi to its former position as the center of governmental
authority. Tradition has handed down a prediction that making Delhi its
capital marked the end of each power that asserted itself. Hence there
have been many Delhis, as there have been many ancient Romes, and this
present Delhi must be succeeded by a new Delhi which British authority
and resources will build. The new Delhi will be the ninth, as the
present Delhi is the eighth, of the long series. Ruins of the earlier
Delhis are about it on every side. Now, at last, a great tract of land
has been appropriated for the new seat of government which will rise
from the dust. Temporary buildings have been erected. The permanent ones
will soon follow. We may be sure that they will be splendid and suited
to modern tastes, while they still preserve the characteristic features
of Indian architecture.
By making this new Delhi the British capital of India, it is sought to
impress the Oriental mind with Britain's claims to be supreme, while at
the same time the old traditional prediction is evaded. Let us hope that
the device will accomplish its purpose. The prosperity of India is bound
up with the recognition by all races and parties of England's right to
rule. I would not justify all the steps by which Britain has gained her
power, nor would I ignore certain defects of her later administration.
But there is no question as to the general justice of British rule, nor
as to the fact that, without it, India's warring races and religions
would now be the ruin of all peace and progress. When we remember that
in this land of former famines the population has increased since 1858
by one hundred millions; that forty-six thousand miles of canals have
been dug for irrigation, and more than twenty-two million acres have
thereby been reclaimed; that trade has increased in the last
half-century from three hundred millions to fourteen hundred millions;
that the value of land is now larger by fifteen hundred millions than
it was fifty years ago; that there are now thirty-two thousand miles
of railway in operation and seventy-six thousand miles of telegraph;
that the Indian Post Office now handles nine hundred millions of
letters, newspapers, and other matter every year; we may well doubt
whether any conquest of history has brought about so great or so
beneficent results as have followed what we must regard as England's
commercial absorption of India.
There are doubtless seditious and anarchistic elements in the Indian
populations which need to be kept under and subdued. Let us remember
that only one-tenth part of the men, and only one-hundredth part of the
women, know how to read. There is a vast proletarian mass, ignorant and
inflammable, ready to follow leaders of better education, but less
principle, than themselves. This mass the British Government has failed
to educate, so that, while ninety per cent of the people in Japan can
read, in India only one-tenth as many can read. One of the greatest
mistakes of English administration has been its beginning of education
at the top, instead of at the bottom. It has established universities,
but not elementary schools. The excuse, of course, has been, that
differences of caste and of religion have made it impossible to put
Hindu children and Mohammedan children, Brahman children and Sudra
children, together, in the same schools. And yet, in the universities,
pupils of all these various classes sit side by side, and some plan, it
would seem, might have been devised to apply the same rule, so as to
secure universal and compulsory elementary education. The higher
education, taken alone, has its dangers; it is sought only by people of
means and intelligence; many seek it from no love of learning, but only
in order to prepare themselves for government offices. But there are not
enough offices to go round. The disappointed men will not work with
their hands; they find their avocation in the plotting of sedition. It
is the high-caste educated Brahmans who have edited the malcontent
periodicals, and have organized the revolutionary conspiracies, which
have of late bred so much trouble for the government in India. I rejoice
therefore in the rise of factories, and in the new emphasis that is
being laid on industrial education. These will do much to develop the
resources of India. But what is most needed is the spirit of peace and
justice; this is furnished by the gospel of Christ. I therefore believe
that the gospel is the only real guaranty to India of its political as
well as its religious welfare.
The Friday prayer-service in the great mosque of Delhi was a striking
spectacle. The open court in front of the mosque is four hundred and
fifty feet square, surrounded by a cloister, and paved with granite
inlaid with marble. Three or four thousand worshipers, in parallel rows,
stretched from side to side of the great enclosure. At the summons of
the mollah, or officiating priest, all these worshipers, in perfect
unison, prostrated themselves with folded hands, and repeated in a loud
voice, "God is great." Each devotee had previously purified himself, by
cleansing his mouth and hands and feet in the open tank in the center of
the great esplanade. Inasmuch as the Delhi mosque is the largest and
most splendid east of Cairo, the entire spectacle was most impressive.
If Turkey had not joined a Christian power by her alliance with Germany,
Mohammedans throughout the world might have taken Germany's side against
the Allies, and might have threatened the peace of India. That danger is
now providentially averted. The Moslem rulers have held fast to their
allegiance to the British Crown. This city of Delhi, with the schools of
the Methodists, the Anglicans, and the English Baptists, is permeated
with religious influences that attract its native populations, and these
influences are continually lessening the prospect of any future
rebellion such as the mutiny of fifty years ago.
VIII
JAIPUR, MT. ABU, AND AHMEDABAD
India, as is well known, is a part of the British Empire, and is under
the sway of the British Government. Yet, for administrative purposes, it
is divided into presidencies, provinces, and native states. The
presidencies and provinces are wholly administered by British officials.
The native states are administered by rajas and other Indian rulers,
with the presence in each capital of a resident officer who represents
the British Government and who is accessible for consultation in case of
necessity. The relations between the rajas and the residents are
friendly, and only the gravest matters are referred to the
representative of the Crown. All other affairs are cared for by the
native ruler, who is attended by a distinguished suite and who maintains
quite a royal court. This species of self-government is the reward,
granted by the British Government after the mutiny of 1857, to the
rulers of the native states, who remained faithful to British interests
and assisted in the suppression of the great rebellion. The government
of these native rulers is in general worthy of praise. Many of them are
progressive men; they have traveled abroad; they have been affected by
Western thought; they have introduced modern reforms and systems of
education, to the great benefit of their subjects. In this present hour
of crisis, the majority of them have been loyal to the British
Government, and have contributed men and means for the cause of the
Allies. It was interesting in our journey across India to traverse
several of these native states; and it was difficult to observe any
difference between these sections and the portions of the empire
officered solely by the British. We saw no British soldiers, but only
native troops. There was less of English language and custom prevalent.
The Hindu, Mohammedan, and Jain seemed to have things very much to
themselves. They, after all, are the real India, the hereditary India,
while at the same time they are feeling the influence of modern railways
and modern commerce.