interesting. It has been called "The Pink City," either because the
maharaja owns all the property on the business streets and himself sees
that every building is painted of a pink color, or because he compels
every private owner to conform to his fixed rules of construction and
decoration. At any rate, the wide streets of Jaipur are laid out like
those of the homeland, and are lined with pink structures of only one
type of architecture and only one type of ornamentation. Even Paris can
present no better illustration of the value of supervision in building.
There are no sky-scrapers. There are long rows of shops and residences,
with arcades in front of them, and with many variations in plan and
decoration, while at the same time one tone of pink, together with the
sky-line and the arcade-line is preserved without important change; the
Oriental type of building is preserved; and there is a uniform style of
architecture from one end of the street to the other. No city in the
world so well illustrates Mrs. Humphrey Ward's quotation of the poet's
words,
A rose-red city, half as old as Time.
It is not the city of Jaipur, however, which merits our chief attention,
though the maharaja's town-palace and his quaint astronomical
observatory are both of them deeply interesting. This observatory has no
tower and no telescope. It shows what can be done by sun-dials and
structures almost level with the ground to mark the movements of the
heavenly bodies, and thus demonstrates that primitive stargazers might
even thus early acquire a very considerable knowledge of astronomy. The
scientific and literary tastes of this Oriental monarch are also
indicated by a noble public library of his own foundation, which
contains a priceless collection of books and manuscripts in all the
languages of the East.
But it is Amber that constitutes the chief attraction of a visit to
Jaipur. Amber is the original metropolis and the ancient seat of
government, five miles distant from the present Jaipur, and even now the
summer residence of the maharaja, though the old city which once lay
around the rocky fortress has become a waste of ruin. The palace at
Amber is situated on a hilltop several hundred feet above the level of
the plain, and commanding magnificent views of the surrounding
country. Next to the sight of river or sea from a mountain summit, the
view of broad and level plains stretching far away is most beautiful,
and such a view the Indian ruler secured when he built his summer
residence upon this eminence.
We came expecting to find India hot, but we have found the northern part
of India very cool. So it was reviving and refreshing to take the drive
from Jaipur to Amber in an automobile, over a noble roadway with
slightly ascending grade and skirting an originally splendid palace,
once in the center of an island, but now in the bed of a dried-up lake.
When we left the motor-car at the final lofty hill, the deserted city of
Amber towered above us. How should we reach that threatening height?
Three gorgeously caparisoned elephants solicited our patronage for the
ascent. But before making that ascent, there was another ascent to make.
We had to ascend the elephants. Ladders were brought to our assistance,
and up the ladders we climbed to the howdah, or square seat on the top
of the bulky beasts. Each elephant had to carry two passengers. I, on
one side of the animal that bore me, had my weight balanced by that of
my courier, who rode on the other side. Each of us was compelled to let
his legs dangle over the edge of the howdah. All went well until the
elephant came to the narrow part of the road. There he evinced a vicious
propensity to plant his feet close to the edge of the precipice. There
was indeed a railing beneath me, but, clinging as I was somewhat
convulsively to my slippery seat, the railing was invisible. So I seemed
to myself at times to be hanging over the abyss. If I slipped from my
seat, I might fall four hundred feet. It was not a pleasing situation.
But the elephant knew his business. He trod the path in perfect
confidence. And so, in royal state, though in mind tremendously afloat,
we made the long and steep climb, until we reached the palace of the
king. The maharaja, however, was not at home that day to receive us. He
is a Hindu devotee, and at the time of our visit he was making a
pilgrimage to Benares, the sacred city. The first thing we saw, when we
entered the court of his excellency, was the spot where every morning a
bullock or a goat is sacrificed as an offering to his heathen god.
Still, "every prospect pleases." The views of mountain and plain from
this elevation among the hills are so beautiful that one can only admire
the taste of the prince who made this his chosen dwelling-place. And the
palace itself is a fascinating study in art and architecture. Long
corridors are turned into cloisters arched and shaded from the sun.
Tanks of water, with fountains playing in the center, provide refreshing
baths. Halls of public and of private audience are gorgeous with crimson
and gold. Temples for worship are added, both for daily devotion and for
great state occasions. In short, here are all the appurtenances of an
Oriental court, combined with private luxury and seclusion. While the
multitudes must toil and suffer in the plains below, the maharaja may
rest and enjoy himself in his hilltop palace. I would not, however,
imply that this particular monarch is not in many respects a
large-minded and liberal man. The many evidences of his taste and public
spirit in Jaipur rectify any wrong impressions one might gain from a
visit to Amber.
The next day we reached a station called Abu Road, four hundred miles
to the south of Delhi, and about half-way to Bombay. True to its name,
Abu Road furnished us the road to Abu Mountain. Again we proceeded by
motor-car, that great annihilator of distance in a foreign land. This
road, in its gradual ascent, is a noble piece of engineering. It is
exceedingly tortuous, for it follows the contour of the mountain in
marvelously skilful curves. All the way for two hours, and covering an
ascent of four thousand five hundred feet, there are enchanting views.
Tropical birds and trees were on every hand, together with cactus of
many varieties; green and red parrots screamed through the air; peacocks
spread themselves in the sun; and monkeys scampered across our path.
One of the spurs of Mt. Abu is called Dilwarra. It is the seat of the
chief temple in India of the Jains, that Hindu sect which claims to have
preserved the ancient religion of the Vedas, and to have kept it true to
the ancestral faith. As I have before remarked, the Jains aim to escape
the possible miseries of transmigration, and to attain the bliss of
Nirvana, even in the present life. Jainism, like every other heathen
system, is an effort to earn salvation by labors and sacrifices of
one's own. Its works of righteousness, however, are often uncalled-for
exaggerations of natural virtues, such as counting sacred all forms of
animal and vegetable life. The most devoted of the sect wear a cloth
over their mouths, lest they should destroy an insect by swallowing
it. To found hospitals for the care of parrots and monkeys is one of
the most approved works of merit. So also it is a work of merit to
build a temple or to endow it. Jain temples are full of images, and
the chief object of worship is honored by their multiplication. Buddha
is recognized as one of the divine incarnations, and in some sense
Buddha is worshiped. But it must be remembered that even in Jainism
Buddha is only a memory. He has entered into Nirvana, and has passed
out of conscious existence. Now that he has attained that state of
passivity, he has no eye to pity and no arm to save. And yet in this
Jain temple images of Buddha are worshiped, and these images are
numbered by the hundreds.
All this aberration from the truth does not prevent the temple from
being almost a miracle of art. There is a scrupulous cleanliness about
it which differences it from other heathen temples, like that of Kali.
In the Jain temples there are no animal sacrifices, for all animal
life is sacred. But there are little houses for feeding the birds;
larger houses for feeding the beasts; and tombs for departed saints
and teachers. And let it be specially borne in mind that in all the
world there are no more splendid examples of arches, domes, and
shrines, decorated with elaborate and intricate carvings, than are
found here in Dilwarra. Its arabesques of perforated white marble an
inch and a half thick are like lace-work in their delicacy and beauty.
Invention could go no farther in devising an infinite variety of
geometric traceries. We in the West have much to learn from the
artistic genius and labor of the East.
Another day's ride, or rather, another night's ride, brought us to a
city of a very different sort from Jaipur, and to a very different
environment from that of Mt. Abu. It brought us to the busy metropolis
of Ahmedabad. Here is also a city in a state under a native ruler, but a
city so prosperous that native rule is seen to be by no means slovenly
or indolent. On the way from the station I counted eighteen lofty
chimneys belonging to manufacturing establishments. There are eighty
factories in this busy center, chiefly connected with the cotton
industry. In this industrial expansion is revealed the solution of many
of India's financial problems. The population is now too exclusively
employed in agriculture, and its manufactured articles are imported. But
the rains are so uncertain that the farmer's subsistence is precarious,
and famines claim thousands of victims. Hence, next to Christianity,
India needs industrial development. This has been the view of recent
British governors. Better methods of irrigation and of cultivation have
been supplemented by the introduction of new instruments of manufacture.
Both English and American machines now do much of the work that was
formerly done by hand, and in the cities there is growing up a new
manufacturing population.
Industrial missions are a great blessing to India, and our religious
denominations have shown their practical sense by entering upon this
sort of work. When a native becomes a convert to Christianity, he is
often thrown out of caste by his family, and out of labor by his
employers. He must support himself; he must find something to do. But he
is friendless and helpless, unless he can find friendship and help in
the mission where he has been converted. It is necessary to secure
employment for him, if he is not to become an encumbrance to the
mission and to himself. Hence I welcome all gifts for industrial
missions that will teach men new methods of obtaining a livelihood.
India, as I have said, has a vast agricultural population, now scantily
subsisting and subject to occasional famines. Multitudes who are now
idle might be usefully employed. The change now going on in our Southern
States might well go on in Southern India, and I welcome the sight of
the factory chimneys of Ahmedabad.
Ahmedabad is not yet converted to Christianity. It is a celebrated
stronghold of Jainism, and here is another most splendid temple. It
was instructive to see the little houses on poles for the care of
birds, and for the feeding of lazy monkeys, while the poor and sick of
human kind in the neighborhood begged in vain for help. The Jain
temples are noted in all India for their beauty. Carving and gilding
can go no farther than they have gone in the decoration of this shrine
in Ahmedabad. But the troop of monkeys that came to us in the park to
be fed, seemed to us quite as sensitive to human needs as were the
holy men who sat about that temple of the Jains, for these latter
devotees use God's gifts not rationally, but for inferior ends, and
especially for their own interest and comfort. Ahmedabad is an
example, not of the worst, but still of a misplaced, religious zeal
that has lost its bearings because it has lost its God.
IX
BOMBAY, KEDGAON, AND MADRAS
Bombay is a great city, the second, in population, of the British Empire
in India. While Calcutta has over a million people, Bombay comes only a
few short of that number. Its commerce is immense; its public buildings
are fashioned after European models; its streets are broad and finely
paved; there is every evidence of wealth and cultivation. But Hindus
greatly outnumber Mohammedans; Parsees are strong; Christians are
active, but still comparatively few. In thought and customs, Bombay is
still essentially Oriental, while yet profoundly influenced by modern
newspapers and modern inventions. It was a memorable change for us
travelers to emerge from its Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, and then to find
ourselves, first in its Caves of Elephanta, and secondly, in its
Towers of Silence.
A word of explanation is necessary for each of these notable objects of
interest. Elephanta is a little island eight miles from Bombay, and so
named because of its general resemblance in shape to an elephant.
Elephanta Island forms a beautiful object as seen from the deck of the
little steamer that serves for a ferry, and the views from the summit of
Elephanta Hill, over the Bombay Bay, with the gleaming towers of the
green city in the distance, are very charming. The island is a great
resort, however, not so much for the views therefrom, as because it is
the seat of a rock-hewn temple excavated centuries ago in honor of Siva,
the Hindu god, whose province it is to destroy. Brahma is the Creator;
Vishnu, the Preserver; and Siva, the Destroyer. Siva was the god of
reproduction, however, as well as the god who destroys, and his worship
has been often connected with obscene and lascivious rites.
The approach to Siva's temple is through a lovely garden, in which are
many splendid specimens of tropical vegetation. At last there appears to
the visitor, in the side of the precipitous hill, a massive portico,
with four immense pillars, all hewn out of the solid rock. Then come
long rows of similar columns leading darkly like a cathedral nave into
the stony hill, and terminating at the altar, above which towers the
statue of Siva, colossal in size, with Parvati, his goddess wife, by his
side, and all the emblems of his authority, as scepter and sword, around
him. The statue seems to express the joy of sovereignty, and, though
somewhat mutilated, it is noticeably free from the immoral suggestions
which have been intimated in many descriptions of it. Entrance to the
statue is flanked by great guardian statues, and the whole chancel, so
to speak, is enclosed by a broad and lofty corridor, in the manner of
cathedral architecture. From this corridor on either side, many nooks in
the rock have been excavated, like chantry chapels, each with its
separate statue at least twenty feet in height. The whole Hindu
pantheon, seems to be represented by carved figures, but all cluster
about the god Siva. The really characteristic and indispensable feature
of these caves is, however, still to be mentioned. It is the image of
the lingam, or phallus, gigantic in size, and carven out of solid stone,
in the innermost shrine, where it is the object of hysterical or lustful
worship. Every year, on an appointed feast-day, three or four thousand
people throng to this shrine, some to pray for offspring, others to seek
license for illicit pleasure. Elephanta has become in this way the
symbol and propagator of a debasing superstition. Such worship is only a
deification of the lower instincts of human nature.
Returning to Bombay, it was natural to think of the Towers of Silence,
for these too are located on a lovely eminence, called the Malabar Hill,
and overlooking the city and the bay. These towers are enclosures in
which the Parsees, a most intelligent, wealthy, and influential sect,
dispose of the bodies of their dead, by laying the forms in the open air
where they can be devoured by vultures. The towers themselves are at
least half a dozen in number, and they vary in size. But the style of
their construction is uniform. Inside of a lofty circular wall are
concentric beds of stone, each with its groove in which a corpse can be
laid. There are three concentric circles, the outermost for men, the
next inner for women, the innermost for children. The structure has no
roof, but is open to the air. Great flocks of vultures perch upon the
top of the outermost enclosing wall, waiting in silence and expectation
for the time when they can descend upon their prey. Only a half-hour
elapses after a body is laid on its stony bed, before these ravenous
birds have torn every morsel of flesh from its bones. The skeleton is
then left to disintegrate by the action of the elements, until the rains
wash the remaining dust into a great pit at the center of the circles,
from which receptacle the refuse is conducted away by drains during the
rainy season, to mingle with the surrounding earth.
This is the Parsees' "ashes to ashes, dust to dust." They glory in this
method of disposing of their dead, and they think it far more natural
and impressive than the common Hindu method of cremation. We must grant
that all methods of disposing of the dead are painful. But faith in a
resurrection of the body is surely most in consonance with our
time-honored custom of laying our dead away in their kindred earth,
"until the day dawns, and the shadows flee away."
From Bombay to the town of Kedgaon may seem to some a descent from great
to small. Not so; it is rather an ascent from the false to the true,
from the impure to the pure, from the illusory to the real. For Kedgaon
is the home, and center of the work, of Pundita Ramabai, perhaps the
most learned, and certainly the most influential Christian woman in
India. The very name pundita is given only to those of high intellectual
attainments. A Hindu of the highest, that is the Brahman, caste, she was
many years ago converted to Christianity, and she has devoted all her
powers to the education and uplifting of her countrywomen. Her father
was a great Sanskrit scholar. He was one of the first in India to
determine that his daughter should be a learned woman. Accordingly she
was thoroughly instructed. She knew by heart the sacred scriptures of
her people long before she became a Christian. She could repeat from
memory an amount of them equal to that of our whole English Bible. It is
especially the improvement of the condition of women, and particularly
of child-widows, to which she has devoted her attention. The condition
of the child-widow in India is most pitiable. She is held responsible
for the death of her husband, no matter how young she may be. She is
subjected to indignities. Her hair is entirely shaven from her head. Her
jewels are taken from her. Her bright clothing is taken away, and she is
clad in the coarsest garments. She becomes the slave of the family;
virtually an outcast; frequently a prostitute. She can never remarry, no
matter how young she may be at the beginning of her widowhood.
It was to ameliorate this condition of affairs that Pundita Ramabai set
herself many years ago. She gathered child-widows under her protection,
surrounded them with Christian influences, and gave them a Christian
education. A time of famine threw upon her care in one year twenty-four
hundred girls, who depended upon her alone for food to keep them from
starving. That time of great distress is now past, but when we remember
that in India there are estimated to be as many as two millions of
child-widows, it will be clear that the need of a refuge for such is
still immensely great. Girls of the highest caste are in the greatest
need, for among the lower classes the reproach of child-widowhood is not
so strongly felt. It was the sorrows of girls belonging to her own
Brahman caste, married perhaps at the age of eight or ten to husbands
five times their own age, and then made practically outcasts by those
husbands' death, that most touched the heart of Ramabai. It is wonderful
what she has already accomplished. We found on her extensive premises a
great assembly-room which has sheltered at one time twenty-six hundred
auditors; schools of every grade for Hindu girls, including a school for
the blind; a large and commodious hospital; a printing office with
presses capable of turning out a high order of typography; an asylum for
lepers; a rescue-home for unfortunate girls; normal classes for teachers
and for nurses; training in sewing, embroidery, and weaving; and many
another sort of Christian service, including the work of the factory and
the farm. Every species of cooking on the premises, and all the care of
the rooms and houses, is done by the girls themselves, so that all of
them are taught how to support themselves when they leave the
institution. Three hours a day for industrial work, and three hours a
day for schooling, is the uniform rule. One can imagine the far-reaching
influence of this institution, if he remembers that out of the
twenty-four hundred scholars who were received and taught in that
dreadful time of famine, more than fifteen hundred were child-widows and
many of them of the highest caste.
Ramabai is a great scholar. She has translated and printed the whole New
Testament, in the colloquial Mahrati dialect, for the benefit of the
poor women in her district. She is now engaged upon the Psalms and the
book of Genesis, with the hope of finishing the whole Old Testament.
Numberless tracts of her composition have gone out into all parts of
India. Her graduates become not only teachers, but also evangelists. No
one can measure the extent of her present influence, as showing what a
native woman in India can do, in the way of breaking down caste,
overthrowing pernicious customs, and demonstrating to a benighted
heathen world the superior claims of Christian truth. We left Ramabai,
invoking a blessing upon her head and upon Manorama, her daughter, who
bids fair to prove her worthy successor. Ramabai, by her intellectual
gifts, her executive ability, and above all by her Christian devotion,
deserves honor from all lovers of Christ and his gospel.
As we neared Madras, the third largest city of India, the heat began to
oppress us. Up to this time India had been unexpectedly and refreshingly
cool, at night even cold. But now it was unpleasantly warm. The heat
reminded us of the conundrum: "Why is India, although so hot, the
coldest country on the globe?" Answer: "Because the hottest thing in it
is chilly" ("chili" is the peppery sauce which the natives mix with
other spices to form "curry"). We have learned to like curry. I cannot
understand it; but if seems as if the hottest countries needed the
hottest kinds of food. At any rate we had a warm welcome in Madras,
thirteen degrees in latitude above the equator. We were fortunate in
reaching this fine city during the session of all our Baptist
missionaries in the South India, or Telugu, field--that field which a
few years ago witnessed the baptism of 2,222 converts in one day. It
was a remarkable illustration of the family and tribal spirit in
India. We Baptists believe in individual conversions, and we seek
evidence, in every case, of regeneration by the Holy Spirit. But the
coherence of the family and the village is so strong in a heathen
community, that the lot of the individual Christian is often
exceedingly hard. Occasionally there is apostasy. The resistance of an
important man to the gospel makes the persistence of his dependents in
the gospel-way almost impossible.