the church where lie buried the remains of Schwartz, the first English
missionary to India. It must have required great gifts of mind and heart
and will to brave Hindu opposition, to win the affection and support of
a raja, and to lay the foundations of a Christian community in this
heathen land. Schwartz was a Prussian by birth, though he went out as a
missionary of a Danish society. He gave his life and his fortune to the
cause of missions, and the English work in Tanjore is even now largely
supported by the endowments which he left behind him when he died. Our
good friend Doctor Blake, the English clergyman, took us to the palace
of the princess of Tanjore, also to the raja's library of Oriental
manuscripts within the palace--a priceless collection of eighteen
thousand Sanskrit manuscripts, of which eight thousand are written on
palm-leaves. This library is unique in all India; and it shows that a
raja in Tanjore, in his love for literature, could equal the raja of
Jaipur, in his love for astronomy. The desire for learning was a passion
that survived the fall, an evidence of the presence in humanity of the
preincarnate Christ, "the Light that lighteth every man."
Madura is a hundred miles farther south than Tanjore. It is really the
center of Dravidian worship. While some features of the Tanjore temple
are more beautiful, the temple at Madura is more vast. Five great
pyramidal towers, four of them on the points of the compass, meet the
eye as one looks upon the temple from a distance. The temple is built
about two great shrines or cells, one for the god Siva and the other for
his goddess wife Minakshi, each cell surmounted by a noble dome of
plated gold. On the four sides of the temple are stone porches, arcades,
and pillared halls of great variety, filled with elaborate and grotesque
carvings and sculptures. The extent of the structure may be judged from
the simple statement that the outer walls, twenty-five feet high,
surround a space eight hundred and thirty by seven hundred and thirty
feet, and are surmounted by four lofty gate-pyramids, each of them ten
stories in height. The portico roof of Minakshi's Hall is supported upon
six rows of carved pillars, each made from a single stone. There is an
extensive "Golden Lily Tank," bordered by a granite corridor hung with
cages of parrots, and the putrid waters of the tank furnish purification
preparatory to worship at Minakshi's shrine. The very porch or entrance
pavilion of this shrine is called "The Hall of a Thousand Pillars,"
though the actual number is nine hundred and eighty-five. Here and there
among the pillars are seated learned men or pundits, who place offerings
of flowers and perfumed water before their sacred books and chant the
meaning of Sanskrit scriptures to groups of devout listeners.
The great temple, with its dimly lighted corridors, is open to the
public day and night, and there is special illumination by hundreds of
little lamps in an arch at the entrance when night comes on. Long
avenues are filled with buyers and sellers of wares, and the rent of
their stalls furnishes a large revenue for the support of the many
priests. A big elephant and a baby elephant, each with the mark of the
god upon its forehead, are paraded up and down, and are taught to pick
up with their trunks the coins thrown down by visitors. Innumerable dark
alcoves invite the crowd to rest, and many a sleeping form is seen at
the foot of the altars. Imagine a festival night with these dimly
lighted courts crowded with worshipers, the fierce and lustful images,
the glorification of the lingam, the secret places of assignation! And
this is the acme of Hindu religion!
There are better things than this to be seen in Madura. The palace of
Tirumala, a raja of the seventh century, is a magnificent specimen of
Moorish architecture with unexpected Gothic tendencies. Its entrance
hall, one hundred and thirty-five feet long, half as wide, and seventy
feet high, has a lofty roof supported by heavy stone pillars with
pointed arches of Saracenic type. It shows that the Moslem, in the
long ago, had at least a temporary hold upon South India. This palace,
which has the structural character of a Gothic building, has now been
partially restored and taken for the law-courts of the British
Government.
The same Tirumala who built the palace, built the Teppa Kulam, an
artificial reservoir outside the town, about one thousand feet on a
side, very symmetrical and the largest of its kind in South India. The
whole "tank" is surrounded with granite walls and parapets, and next the
water there is a granite walk five feet wide running round the whole
structure. Flights of steps lead down to the water, at intervals. In the
center of this small lake is an island, also walled around with granite
slabs, and on it there are five towers, a large one in the center and
one at each of the four corners. The whole effect is very graceful and
it makes a sight long to be remembered, when the "feast of lights" takes
place and the island and the parapets and the granite curbings are
illuminated with hundreds of little oil-lamps. Not far away from the
"tank" is a famous banyan-tree which covers with its shade an area sixty
yards in diameter, has a main stem seventy feet in circumference, and
has besides two hundred branches that have struck root.
But the noblest sight of Madura is its American Congregational Mission.
Beginning in 1836, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign
Missions planned and founded their most wise and successful foreign
missions. They have aimed to do one thing well: to make the Madura
station not only complete but well supported, to embrace in it all
stages of education and all sorts of evangelization; and to reduce the
whole work to a unified system. And the result has been the raising up
of a large native ministry, churches with twenty-two thousand members,
schools of every grade from the kindergarten to the college and the
theological seminary. We were most hospitably entertained by the
principal of the college, Dr. J. X. Miller, and the other missionaries;
and we met and addressed both the native church at their Sunday service,
the faculty and students of the seminary, and the annual conference of
Congregational missionaries. The Madura Mission is a light shining in a
dark place, the darkest place indeed in India. But it is a light that
cannot be hid. Like our missions to the Burmans and the Telugus, it is
showing the power of the gospel to "cast down imaginations and every
high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God," and to
make a spiritual desert "bud and blossom as the rose."
XII
TWO WEEKS IN CEYLON
Ceylon is not a part of India. It is a Crown Colony of Great Britain,
and is administered directly from London, while India has more of
independence and self-government. The relation of Ceylon to Britain is
somewhat like that of the Philippine Islands to the United States, while
the relation of Britain to India resembles that of the United States
Government to our several territories. Ceylon, however, is very
productive and prosperous. Surrounded by the sea, it is free from Indian
droughts and famines. Its people are stalwart and loyal. The English
language is fast becoming the easiest method of communication between
Cingalese and Tamils, Hindus and Malays. Colombo is really a European
city, as large as Rochester, with noble public buildings and lovely
parks. Our Galle Face Hotel, on the very edge of the sea, with a great
stretch of green lawn in front of it, is one of the finest hotels in the
East, and our week of rest here was delightful.
Buddhism has been one of the great missionary religions of the world. It
was a reform of Hinduism. But the Hindus, with their caste system, would
have none of it and drove it out. The Buddhist triumphs were in Burma,
Tibet, China, Japan, at the north; in Ceylon and Java, at the south.
Here in Ceylon is preserved a sacred tooth of Buddha; and one of his
bones, recently discovered in northern India, is to be brought next week
with great pomp and ceremony to the temple in Kandy, which already ranks
in sacredness next to the great Shwe Dagon pagoda in Rangoon. A temple
in Java is founded upon a single hair of Buddha's head. All this
superstition and imposture dates back to a couple of centuries before
Christ, and there is great reason to believe that the Roman Catholic
worship of relics is only an appropriation of this form of heathenism.
Christian schools and churches are doing much to undermine Buddhism in
Ceylon. Colombo is especially fortunate in possessing a noble college of
the Wesleyan Methodists and a strong institution of all grades with
eight hundred students. The English Baptists also have a very creditable
mission work under the charge of Messrs. Ewing and Charter; while Mr.
Woods is the able pastor of an English-speaking Baptist church. The
students of these various schools usually adopt the English dress. The
barefooted pupils first put on shoes, then the coat, finally the
trousers. In the end you can hardly distinguish them from Europeans.
These changes are more rapid in Colombo than in Madras. Indeed, British
rule is fast transforming what was first a Portuguese, and then a Dutch,
settlement into a city where English is universally known and spoken.
It was gratifying to find that the Government College, where the English
language alone is used, is opened every day with the reading of
Scripture and with prayer. But it was unpleasing to learn that, side by
side with these Christian influences, the Ananda College, a
theosophical institution, allied to Mrs. Besant of Madras, was exerting
an influence unfavorable to Christianity, not only by setting Buddha
side by side with Christ, but by urging the claim of Buddha to be the
supreme ethical teacher of the world.
Before I tell you of our visit to Buddhist temples, I must speak of the
refuge from them which we found at Nurwara Eliya, sixty-two hundred feet
above the sea. Colombo is only six degrees north of the equator. Here in
January the sun casts hardly any shadow at noon, and the middle of the
day is hot. Later in the year the heat is intense, day and night. So
British officials combine with the rich of every tongue, and even with
the missionaries, to make their summer quarters high up among the hills.
We were transported thither on a narrow-gage railway, cut into the sides
of precipices, running through tunnels, and so tortuous as to form a
hundred horseshoe loops. The road seemed almost a miracle of
engineering. But the views were beautiful beyond description. It was
Switzerland without its ruggedness. It was Italy on the southern side of
the Alps, as "Philip van Artevelde" best describes it:
Sublime, but neither bleak nor bare
Nor misty, are the mountains there;
Softly sublime, profusely fair;
Up to their summits clothed in green,
And fruitful as the vales between,
They lightly rise
And scale the skies,
And groves and gardens still abound,
For where no shoot
Can else take root,
The peaks are shelved and terraced round.
I am inclined to think that, of all the beautiful railway rides I have
ever taken, this was the finest. From the rice-fields of the plains we
passed upward through endless tea-plantations, where every inch of soil
was preserved and utilized by the construction of artificial terraces.
In the midst of these plantations, rubber trees were set at intervals.
There were many instances when we looked down from our airy perch, on
the edge of a precipice, at least a thousand feet, and saw ourselves
on the side of a veritable amphitheater of mountains towering a
thousand feet above us and covered with rows of tea-plants from the
bottom to the top. This amphitheater was often two miles across, every
foot of the ground minutely cultivated and a perfect sea of verdure.
But, as we went up, the palm gave place to the pine; cold succeeded to
heat; and to be at all comfortable at our hotel we were obliged to
order fire in our rooms.
Beautiful for situation as was Nurwara Eliya, we were glad, on account
of the January cold, to leave it. And we went to Kandy. I wonder whether
our word "candy" is derived from that sweet place. I agree with some
celebrated author, whose name I forget, in saying that "Kandy is the
loveliest city in the loveliest island in the world." Of late years
Kandy has become the resort of tourists, though the present war has
greatly diminished their number. A hotel that was accustomed to
entertain fifty guests now has only half a dozen. But the beauty of the
place abides. An artificial lake, with an island of green in its center
and winding among a forest of stately palms, is surrounded by a circlet
of hills. On the summit of one of these hills is the Missionary
Rest-house, founded and endowed by a wealthy Christian woman for the
relief of pilgrims, as was the House Beautiful of Bunyan's story. There
we were invited to afternoon-tea, and as I looked upon the fairylike
landscape I almost thought the Garden of Eden had come again.
But I could not long be deceived, for at the very foot of this hill was
the most famous Buddhist temple of Ceylon. If this is Paradise, it is
Paradise Lost. Here Buddha's tooth is worshiped, and here a newly
discovered bone of his body is to add sanctity to the temple. We
attended the evening worship, which consisted of a torchlight
procession of priests, with beating of tom-toms and frenzied dancing
of musicians, which would have done credit to the savagery of the Fiji
Islands. The temple here has no lofty pagoda. It shows what the
original pagoda really was, for this temple has a number of
bell-shaped structures resting on the ground. Next, historically, came
the elevation of the bell upon a stone platform; and, finally, the
lifting of it into the air, resplendent with gilding. Kandy
illustrates the humble beginnings of Buddhistic worship, but with
later accessories begotten by irrational devotion.
I should mention, however, the only sign of intelligence which I found
in this Buddhist temple. It was the library of Pali manuscripts
containing the sacred books and stories of Buddha's life and doctrine.
Many of these manuscripts were written on palm-leaves and were wrapped
in silken coverings. Some had been presented by Siamese and by Burmese
kings. Some were ancient. I saw no priest who could read them, and I
fancy that the sacred books are really studied only by pundits, whose
vocation is that of teaching, and whose personal beliefs may be very
different from those of orthodox Buddhism. It was pleasant to find, not
far from the Temple of the Tooth, a little church of the English
Baptists, which sends out light into all the surrounding darkness. Its
pastor is a native Christian, who preaches every Sunday morning in
Cingalese and every Sunday evening in English, while his week-days are
devoted to the work of conducting an English boys' school.
Kandy is celebrated also for its botanical gardens. Only those of Java
compare with them in completeness. The long avenues of palms of
different varieties--palmyra, talipot, sago, royal, sealing-wax--and the
specimens of bamboo, India rubber, and rain-tree, are unique and
wonderful. The rain-tree is so called because the vast spread of its
branches and the density of its foliage collect the dew to such an
extent as actually to water the ground upon which it drops. Think of
viewing in one morning of two hours' length, a score of trees we had
hitherto known only in the tales of the tropics: the traveler's tree
with its fernlike leaves, the cannon-ball tree, the deadly upas, the
nourishing breadfruit, the clove, the cinnamon, the mace or nutmeg, the
vanilla, the guava, the cork, the almond, the mulberry, the mango, the
sandalwood! There were great screw-pines, lignum-vitae, mahogany,
mimosa, magnolia trees; and the tree-fern, the giant creeper, the
panama-hat plant, the Peruvian cactus, the papyrus, the pineapple, and a
great collection of orchids. Only the sunshine and the moisture of
Ceylon could produce such a result. A tree cared for from its first
sprouting, and favored by the elements, becomes a wonder of the world.
It shows what man may become under the tutelage of God.
Anurajahpura was our last place to visit. Far to the north of Colombo,
it is the most important extant specimen of the ruined cities of Ceylon.
Before the time of Christ it was the seat of a kingdom that embraced the
whole island. Buddhism, after a life-and-death struggle, captured it and
erected in it structures for worship, which for grandeur and beauty
rivaled those of Burma. Two pagodas, or dagobas, of solid brick, each of
them more than two hundred feet high, tower up before one as he enters
the town. These structures are covered with verdure, for grasses and
shrubs have eaten their way into the mortar on the sides, until the
dagobas resemble conical natural hills. It is said that the brick of a
single one would suffice to build a wall eight feet high and a foot
thick from Edinburgh to London. One of them is being restored, and fifty
men are at work upon it, tearing away the vegetation and building anew
the outside covering of brick. The dagoba itself is not a temple, for it
is solid and has no chamber within; but at its base is a structure,
infinitesimal in size as compared with the one that towers above it, and
in this structure there is a reclining statue of Buddha seventy feet
long. Buddha must have been a giant, for his footprints are four feet
long, and his tooth is as large as the tooth of an alligator, and
surprisingly like one.
The grounds in the neighborhood of these towering dagobas are strewn
with ruins. Sixteen hundred pillars of stone, seven feet high, remain
to show the vast foundations of an ancient Buddhist monastery. There is
also a temple excavated in the solid rock of the hillside, and adorned
with curious carvings of elephants. We made the acquaintance of its high
priest under very peculiar circumstances. We met him at a funeral. It
was the cremation of one of his priests. On the outskirts of the village
a great crowd surrounded a burning pyre. Two or three cords of rough
wood had been piled up, with the body of the priest in its center and
the bier on which the body had been brought laid upon its top. The fire
was blazing upward, and a deafening beating of tom-toms gave sacredness
to the obsequies. The awe-stricken followers of Buddha stood at a little
distance around, while the flames grew fierce, and the sickening odor of
burning flesh entered their nostrils. It was no wonder that they were
willing to follow the high priest, when he came to salute me as a
minister of religion from the other side of the world. He was
eighty-eight years of age. Clothed in his saffron robe and holding with
trembling hands his rod of office, he seemed the decaying specimen of a
moribund religion. He presented me with an umbrella of yellow silk. It
had an ivory handle with the carving of a lotus bud on its end. I could
not let him make such a present without some reward, and he seemed
grateful for the few rupees which my interpreter wrapped up in his
handkerchief. He lifted up his fan and fanned me, as we parted, while he
uttered some words of blessing. I could hardly doubt his good will, or
fail to hope that some gleams of heavenly light had come to him from
Christ, the Light of the world. But Anurajahpura was, like Pagan in
Burma, the type of a vanishing religion, and its high priest was, like
the Jewish high priest of old, the type of a priesthood sure to pass
away, since Christ, the true High Priest, has come.
XIII
JAVA AND BUDDHISM
We have crossed the equator, and the Southern Cross, invisible to
northern eyes, seems still to beckon us onward. But we have reached the
most distant point of our journey, and henceforth we shall be homeward
bound, taking China and Japan as we go. Java is not so hot as we
expected. An island like Cuba, six hundred miles long and only two
hundred broad, has sea-breezes enough to keep it tolerably cool. Rain
falls almost every day, with an average of twelve feet in a year. As the
moisture is excessive, all sorts of vegetation are luxuriant. Java is a
gem of the ocean, and an emerald gem at that. Life here is as easy as
anywhere on earth, and there is a swarming population. While Ceylon,
similar in area, has only five millions of inhabitants, Java has
thirty-five millions.
Java is the jewel of the Dutch Crown, one of the most fertile and
productive islands of the world. Coffee and tea, rice and sugar, salt
and spice, tobacco and corn, coal and oil, coconut and rubber, are
exported in an aggregate of two hundred millions of our dollars every
year, while the aggregate of imports is little more than a hundred and
twenty millions. The Dutch have taken a colony whose deficits once
frightened the English into abandoning it, and by the famous "culture
system" of letting out the land upon wise conditions as to the kind and
quantity of production, have turned the whole island into a veritable
garden, and a principal source of revenue for Holland. The Dutch indeed
have drawn from Java much more than they have given. The Roman Empire
should have taught them that incorporation of a colony, and privilege
granted to it, were the only security for permanent possession. Until
ten years ago, however, the Dutch policy was one of repression rather
than one of development. While Britain has tried by her schools and
hospitals to Anglicize India, Holland, for many years, tried to keep the
Javanese apart and in subjection, discouraging their study of the Dutch
language and giving them also no share in the government. This policy
has at last been seen to be suicidal; Chinese immigration has added an
element of vigor, industry, and discontent; the modern movement in India
and in Japan has provoked new aspirations here; even the Malay has
become aware that he has rights. Dutch schools have at last begun to
educate the people; the more progressive among the students are also
learning English; and Java now bids fair to press forward to occupy a
position in the van of national and democratic progress.
I am deeply impressed with the density and vastness of this population.
Only Belgium surpasses Java in the number of inhabitants to the square
mile. We have taken a ride by rail for four hundred miles through the
center of the island. We have passed volcanoes actually smoking; for a
long range of mountains, rising sometimes to a height of twelve thousand
feet, constitutes the back-bone of Java. There are sublime and
beautiful landscapes all along the way, sublime because of their
occasionally rocky grandeur, and beautiful because of the minute
cultivation that adorns both hillside and plain. The endless
rice-fields, and the fields of sugar-cane that stretch for miles like a
billowy sea, make a railway journey by day a constant source of delight.
You ride in a perennial garden, and it is perfectly natural that the
bird of paradise should have its habitat here. Like Ceylon, Java is sure
to be the resort of innumerable tourists, for here are wonders beyond
any to be found in localities more commonly visited.
And yet it is the people that interest one even more than the land they
live in. We turned aside at different points, from the stations of the
railways, and got glimpses of the Javanese in their country homes. I am
bound to say that these homes were often primitive in the extreme, mere
shacks or huts of bamboo and thatch, often without windows and with only
a door in front and a door behind, sometimes standing in a pool of
shallow water or lifted on stilts to escape the rain. But everybody
seemed to be at work, except on market-days, when the whole population
of a district gathered in a country fair. The throng and press of these
trading-days, the strife and din, the variety of wares, and the
sharpness of competition, were something new to us and long to be
remembered. The amusements of the Javanese, their music, their
shadow-dances, all show a vigor and passion, which explain their
occasional use of the "kriss" or Malay dagger, and the difficulty of
subduing and civilizing so ardent and imaginative a people. But they are
a people _sui generis_, and sure, when roused and educated, to take
their part on the modern stage.