The fight thou art, for any moment he
May turn the tide of war; fight till the last,
And, if thou comest back victorious from
The field, I'll be the first to welcome thee,
But, if thou fallest fighting in the field,
Or if, perhaps, it chances otherwise,
Thou art left helpless and alone, here is
Our ever ready jav'lin to kill thee.
Thy body forthwith shall be nobly borne
Unto the pyre by thine own faithful men,
And I will gladly leap upon the flames.
But if thou comest routed and alive,
Then Chandra nevermore shall see thy face."
At early morn, upon th' appointed day,
The king his faithful servants summoned, and
Before them all his only brother named
To rule the kingdom and confided all
His subjects to his care; then, at the head
Of his brave troops, out of the city marched,
Amidst the royal bards recounting in
Sweet tones the glories of his kingdom's past,
His holy priests invoking Krishna's help
And chanting sacred hymns, and in the midst
Of maidens of the martial Kshatrya race,
Proceeding to the very city gates,
And singing to their fathers, brothers, and
Their husbands in shrill notes heard far and wide,
That Swarga's gates are ever ready to
Receive the faithful if they bravely fall,
The flames are ready to take their proud wives,
But burning hell gapes wide for to devour
The cowards that run routed and alive;
Their maidens' sweet embrace awaits them not.
At last, upon the plains of Tálicót,
The armies met, fierce raged the battle, and
Old Ramaraj fought nobly in the field;
And Timma too wrought dreadful havoc on
The Moslems and their ranks oft shattered, but
Alas! the ever treach'rous Bukka pounced
Sudden on his own ranks; the king was slain;
His ghastly head upon a pole was shown,
And helpless and forlorn the Hindus stood;
But, ere perfidious Bukka could run with
The Moslem foes, to capture him alive,
A faithful soldier Timma called, gave him
His Chandra's jav'lin, in his steady grip
To hold, then boldly ran his body through
And instantly fell lifeless to the ground.
A faithful few the body bore, and laid
Before the orphaned and the widowed maid
Their precious charge, and soon the pyre was raised.
Then, near the flames that brightened her bright face,
Her uncle and her people shedding tears,
Her noble husband lying cold and still,
The story of her father's cruel death
Still ringing in her ears, she took farewell.
"Dear uncle and my faithful men! grieve not:
I see a cloud, now looming yonder there,
No bigger than the hand of man, that shall
Expand and rain and water to purge all
The land of th' innocent blood shed on it,
For mother India's cup of woe is full,
And but three decades more,--there will come from
The far-off ends of this vast globe of ours,--
A little island planted in the sea,--
A handful of a noble race to trade,
And shall from thee ask for a plot of land,
And they shall prosper for their valour and
Shall be exalted for their righteousness.
They shall befriend the helpless and the poor,
And like the streams that seek the ocean broad,
The chickens that run to their mothers wings,
The maidens helpless and forlorn, that court
The succour of the chivalrous and the brave,
The orphans poor, the bounty of the kind,
All men of Ind, all races and all creeds
Shall to their banner flock, to live in peace
And amity; the tiger and the lamb
Their thirst shall quench both from the selfsame brook.
The giant brute before the weakly sage
Shall bow, and men shall fear to even gaze
Upon the maidens that go forth alone,
Adorned with naught but chastity, and from
All lands the wisest shall revere our faith.
He that desires our homes to plunder and
Sully the honour of our women, him
Punishment terrible shall sure await.
Three hundred years more and the little plot
Of land thou gavest shall grow and expand
Into an empire huge, unwritten yet
On hist'ry's page, and shall surpass the dreams
Of warriors bold in times of old, and like
The creepers that, entwined around the oak,
Luxuriant grow, safe from the storms that blow,
And flow'rs give forth to beautify the scene,
Her sons shall everlasting peace enjoy,
And blessings, hitherto unknown to man--
The grandest scene for God to ever cast
His loving eyes upon, and for the world
Of man to wonder at, and there shall be
One sway, the sway of reason and of truth;
One creed, the creed of righteousness and love;
And mercy for all living things on earth;
One brotherhood, the brotherhood of man;
One fatherhood, the fatherhood of God.
But hark! there comes a shout, and yonder runs
Exulting Bukka to seize me alive.
But these kind flames are ready to save me.
Run, uncle, run at once to far-off lands
And continue thy sway in safer climes."
So saying, she leapt on the fun'ral pyre,
And speedily to ashes were consumed
The faithful wife and her departed lord.
The monarch, who thus from the Moslem ran,
In honour of this noble maiden, reared
A princely town,[5] and here the Saxon came,
And mother India was for ever blest.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: Vijianagar is here called Vijiapore.]
[Footnote 3: Literally, the moon.]
[Footnote 4: The allusion here is to the ancient custom of _Swayamvara_
(self-choice), which is the election of a husband by a princess or a
daughter of a kshatriya at a public assembly of suitors for the
purpose.]
[Footnote 5: Chandragiri.]
_THE KORATHY'S LULLABY._
The Korathy is the tattooer of the Indian village, who offers her
services for a small fee. Hindu females are very fond of having their
bodies tattooed. The Korathy first makes a sketch of the figure of a
scorpion or a serpent on the part of the body offered to her for
tattooing, then takes a number of sharp needles, dips them in some
liquid preparation which she has ready, and pricks the flesh most
mercilessly. In a few days the whole appears green. This is considered a
mark of beauty among the Hindus. While the tattooing takes place the
Korathy sings a crude song, so as to make the person undergoing the
process forget the pain. The following is as nearly as possible a
translation of the song which I myself heard:--
Stay, darling, stay--'tis only for an hour,
And you will be the fairest of the fair.
Your lotus eyes can soothe the savage beast,
Your lips are like the newly blossomed rose,
Your teeth--they shine like pearls; but what are they
Before the beauties of my handiwork?
Stay, darling, stay--'tis only for an hour,
And you will be the fairest of the fair.
I've left my home, and all day hard I toil
So to adorn the maidens of the land
That erring husbands may return to them;
Such are the beauties of my handiwork.
Stay, darling, stay--'tis only for an hour,
And you will be the fairest of the fair;
In days of old fair Seeta laid her head
Upon the lap of one of our own clan,
When with her lord she wandered in the wilds,
And like the emerald shone her beauteous arms.
Stay, darling, stay--'tis only for an hour,
And you will be the fairest of the fair.
And often in the wilds, so it is said,
She also of the Pandus went in quest
Of one of us, but found not even one,
And sighed she was not like her sisters blest.
Stay, darling, stay--'tis only for an hour,
And you will be the fairest of the fair.
My work is done; rejoice, for you will be
The fairest of your sisters in the land.
Rejoice for evermore, among them you
Will shine as doth the moon among the stars.
TALES OF IND,
BY T. RAMAKRISHNA, B.A.
With an Introduction by the Hon. the Rev. W. MILLER, M.A., LL.D.,
C.I.E., and dedicated, by permission, to the late Lord Tennyson, Poet
Laureate.
* * * * *
OPINIONS.
They are interesting and remarkable.--_Lord Tennyson_.
It is a great pleasure to me to find that a native of South India has so
distinguished himself.--_The Right Hon. Sir M.E. Grant Duff, G.C.S.I._
It is not often that natives succeed so well as you have done in English
versification.--_H.H. Kérala Varma, C.S.I._
Krishnapore irresistibly reminds us of Auburn, the fortunes of Seeta are
in many respects not unlike those of Evangeline, and some forms of
expression seem to be coined in the mint of Tennyson.... These tales
possess peculiar interest as first-fruits in poetic literature of that
amalgamation of Eastern and Western thought that is going on before us
at the present day in this country. They are tales of India, descriptive
of Indian scenery, and marked by many traits both of custom and of
feeling that are characteristic of India.... These tales--tales of
woman's constancy and woman's heroism--are pleasing in themselves; and
the language in which they are told is simple, imaginative, and marked
by a well-sustained melody. The tales are dedicated to Lord Tennyson by
"His Lordship's ardent admirer in the Far East"; and certainly they move
in the atmosphere of the Tennysonian idyll.--_Madras Christian College
Magazine_.
Much of the versification is very pleasing, and where it is best, it
has a decided ring of Tennyson in it.... The author possesses true
poetical genius.--_Calcutta Statesman and Friend of India_.
SEETA AND RAMA:--The story is pretty, though simple. In parts, moreover,
the author, who is anonymous, displays the true spirit of poetry, which
he (or she) will do well to cultivate.... The tributes of respect for
the heroism, purity, and constancy of women which are found in Mr.
Ramakrishna's poems are in accordance with the teaching of the
Mahabarata, as well as the spirit of the Laureate's verse. Added to this
very engaging feature of his work, there is a power of description that
is very remarkable in a man to whom English is not his mother tongue.
For example, "Seeta and Rama" commences with the following
vignette:--... "All this is in excellent taste. And the same may be said
of his delineations of character. He is never wearisome or trite, and
... he succeeds in enlisting the interest and sympathy of his reader and
in proving that--as Mrs. Grant Duff lately said--there is 'an indefinite
amount of beauty and charm in everyday life' in Southern
India."--_Madras Mail_.
SEETA AND RAMA:--A very pretty and pathetic, though simple little story,
told in the true poetic vein, and possesses a deep melancholy
interest.... They are simple tales, told in English verse, which is
characterised by a purity and a simplicity that are very noteworthy in
an Indian writer, and which show considerable acquaintance of the
English language, especially of Tennyson's writings. Indeed, of them all
is true what was said of the first poem, not only according to the
_Christian College Magazine_, that some forms of expression seemed
coined in the mint of Tennyson, but, according to the _Statesman and
Friend of India_, that where the versification is best it has a ring of
Tennyson.--_Madras Times_.
The style is simple and natural, and reminds us more often of Tennyson's
"Idylls of the King" than any other English poem that we can recollect
now.... Throughout, the book is most finely written in rhyme, and the
learned author has minted at the forge of Tennyson, to whom the book is
most dutifully dedicated, the sentiments of Oliver Goldsmith, Parnell,
and Byron.--_Hindu_.
We must congratulate Mr. Ramakrishna on the success which has attended
his, no doubt, pleasing labours. He is the first Hindu graduate, so far
as we know, who has come before the public as a poet, and well does he
deserve every encouragement.--_Madras Standard_.
This little poem is an exquisitely finished, harmonious, well-written
story of a pair of Hindu lovers.... Mr. Ramakrishna is extremely
felicitous in the choice of his words, and his descriptions are so
picturesque and vivid, and his narrative so stirring, that the reader
feels as if spell-bound by the author's great skill and power.... There
can be no manner of doubt that the hand that wrote these poems is both
strong and skilful, and was directed by a true spirit of poesy of a high
order.--_People's Friend_.
TENNYSON COMMEMORATION MEETING.--At the meeting held in the Christian
College, Dr. Miller proposed that the chair should be taken by Mr. T.
Ramakrishna Pillai, an old student of the College, who, as many of our
readers know, has himself won no small success in the field of
poetry.--_Christian College Magazine_.
Mr. T. Ramakrishna Pillai is probably the only one in Madras, and
certainly the only native of India in Madras, who had come into any kind
of personal contact with Lord Tennyson.--_Speech of the Hon. the Rev.
Dr. Miller at the Tennyson Commemoration Meeting_.
LIFE IN AN INDIAN VILLAGE.
BY T. RAMAKRISHNA, B.A.
With an Introduction by the Right Hon. Sir M.E. GRANT DUFF, G.C.S.I.
(_London: T. Fisher Unwin_, 1891.)
* * * * *
OPINIONS.
The Occidentals led by Macaulay had too complete a victory for the good
of India. Much that they said and did was wise, but their system has
failed in many ways, and was, indeed, never intended to breed up men
interested in the past of their own land. Nearly all that has been
learned about it has been learned by the labour of Europeans, and yet
natives trained to European methods of research have facilities of kinds
for prosecuting research which we have not.... I had a great deal to say
on that subject, and on many other cognate ones in an address which I
delivered in my capacity of Chancellor of the University of Madras,
shortly before I left the country, but I do not know that it has had
much effect since, though an excellent little book by Mr. Ramakrishna on
the village life of South India is a step in the right direction. We
want, however, quite a small library of works of that kind before the
harvest that is ready for the sickle of intelligent native observers is
gathered in.--_The Right Hon. Sir M.E. Grant Duff, G.C.S.I., in the
Contemporary Review_.
The subject is interesting, and I do not doubt from the specimen which I
saw that you would treat it in a fresh and agreeable way. What we need
in Europe is to have the reality, the actual working of these Indian
institutions which we have so often mentioned brought home to us, and
probably such a writer as yourself may do this better than a European
could do.--_The Right Hon. James Bryce, D.C.L_.
Ramakrishna,--a literary gentleman belonging to Madras, who has written
a charming book called "Life in an Indian Village."--_Professor Eric
Robertson in Macmillan's series of Orient Readers_.
I can name more than a dozen Indian authors whose works can fairly rank
with some of the best productions of Englishmen. The well-known author
of "Maxima and Minima," viz., the late Professor Ramachundra, was
considered by no other than De Morgan, the famous mathematician, as an
original genius of a remarkable order. A celebrated Cambridge
Mathematician once told me that he set a problem for the Mathematical
Tripos, basing it upon Ramachundra's "Maxima and Minima," and with the
exception of a few that headed the list, none were able to solve the
problem. In the late Toru Dutt, a young Bengali native Christian lady,
some of the leading literary men of England found a poet of no mean
powers. Mr. Edmund Gosse writes as follows in the preface to her poems
that have been published by an English firm: "It is difficult to
estimate what we have lost in the premature death of Toru Dutt.
Literature has no honours which need have been beyond the grasp of a
girl who, at the age of twenty-one, and in languages separated from her
own by so deep a chasm, had produced so much of lasting worth.... When
the history of the literature of our country comes to be written, there
is sure to be a page in it dedicated to this fragile exotic blossom of
song." Dr. Bandarkar of Bombay is considered to be one of the best
Orientalists of the day. A number of Bengali gentlemen have earned a
lasting fame by literary productions in English, among whom I may
mention the Rev. Lal Behari Day, late Professor in the Hooghly College,
and Mr. Dutt of the Bengal Civil Service. In our own Presidency Mr.
Ramakrishna Pillai has produced a work in English--"Village Life in
India"--that has won the praise of Sir Grant Duff.--_Professor
Satthianadhan's Lecture on Intellectual Results in India_.
Mr. Ramakrishna takes a typical village in the Madras Presidency, "the
most Indian part of India," and shows us in half a dozen lucid chapters
that the wants of the villagers are all material--wells, roads, better
breeds of cattle, and so on--and that they do not, and will not for a
long time, care one cash for anything which happens, or which might be
made to happen, in the great outer world beyond their palm-groves and
rice-fields. There is nothing political in this pleasant little book, we
are pleased to say, although we have drawn this political moral from it.
It is a truthfully written account of native life in one of those 55,000
villages which dot the great district--a tract much larger than the
British Isles--the daily existence of whose peaceful, and not altogether
unhappy, population it is intended to illustrate; and it can be dipped
into, or read through, with equal satisfaction and advantage,--_Daily
Telegraph_ (London).
"Life in an Indian Village" is an amusing and clear portrayal of the
manners and customs of the inhabitants of a village in the Madras
Presidency. The author first depicts his little community, and then
proceeds to describe the avocations of all the leading personages. As
Kelambakam may be taken as a type of thousands of such villages, the
book will be found particularly interesting to those who are likely to
be brought into contact with the natives of India. Sir M.E. Grant Duff
has written an Introduction, in which he suggests how the simple
villagers can be benefited by their European neighbours.--_Morning Post_
(London).
The book itself is excellent, and gives a sketch of Indian village
society from inside. It is possible, however, that the ordinary English
reader will prefer to take his view of "the black men" from Mr. Kipling
rather than from a representative of the natives themselves. If he
wishes to have a native view of native life he will find it in this
work.--_Athenaeum_ (London).
India is always fertile in surprises for English readers. We know
something of those among its peoples which have given us trouble; but
here is a "dim population" of which many Englishmen will scarcely have
heard the name--the Dravidians of the Madras Presidency, and we learn
with something like astonishment that they number more than the
inhabitants of England. The village which Mr. Ramakrishna describes for
us is one of more than fifty thousand, averaging about five hundred
inhabitants apiece. The first thing that strikes us in his account is
its highly organised condition. It is a self-sufficing little
commonwealth, in which a quite surprising variety of professions or
occupations are represented.--_Pall Mall Gazette_ (London).
We welcome this little book as a much truer picture of Indian life than
many more ambitious works.--_St. James's Gazette_ (London).
The work is written in admirable English--even the blank verse is
perfect. The story of Harichendra alone is worth the cost of the
volume.--_Literary World_ (London).
We have read with great pleasure the book, "Life in an Indian Village,"
as it deals with an interesting and not at all unimportant subject in a
plain and unpretending way. Simplicity has a powerful charm of its own;
and we recommend the book to all whose heart can still be touched by
inartificial descriptions of idyllic, gently flowing, country life. He
who does not assume the tone of "India, what can it teach us?" but cares
to profit by teaching, will learn a great deal even from these simple
village tales.--_Asiatic Quarterly Review_ (London).
What more England can do for India is admirably and tersely set forth in
the Introduction, which, with Mr. Ramakrishna's pleasant description of
Indian village life, deserves to be widely read.--_Mr. J.B. Knight,
C.I.E., in the Indian Magazine_ (London).
Books about India by intelligent travellers have their uses, and books
by Europeans who have lived for years in the country and studied the
people are still more valuable, but it is only a native of India who can
really show us Indian life as it is. There are already several books in
English, by educated Indians, which give us valuable insight into what
was once the unknown of Indian domestic and social life. Mr. T.
Ramakrishna, whose "Life in an Indian Village" is introduced to the
notice of the British public by Sir M.E. Grant Duff, has produced a
series of very interesting sketches of the more important features of
village life in the South of India. They will be found to be very
readable, sometimes amusing, always interesting and instructive. Any
one who reads this book with intelligence and care will be able to form
for himself a very accurate picture of a Madras village, and to
understand the composition of the village community, which is the basis
of the whole framework of Indian social life.--_Scotsman_ (Edinburgh).
Mr. Ramakrishna's book is picturesque and sympathetic.--_Manchester
Guardian_.
A well-written book, and one which gives a realistic description of a
condition of life which is the outcome of centuries of
isolation,--_Leeds Mercury_.
It is not an easy thing to acquire a clear conception of a life and a
civilisation other in every respect to our own, and it may be reasonably
questioned if one Englishman in a thousand has more than a very vague
idea of what life in an Indian village is like. Here is a pleasant and
graphic little volume. He may acquire that knowledge from the sketches
of an Indian gentleman who knows the subject through and through, and
has, moreover, so much of European culture that he is able to present
the facts in a form that will not seem strange or
incredible.--_Birmingham Post_.
A volume issued by Mr. T. Fisher Unwin, "Life in an Indian Village," is
a sample of the kind of book relating to our Eastern Empire that we
should like to see multiplied. It is the production of a scholarly
native, T. Ramakrishna, B.A., who writes excellent idiomatic English
without the slightest tendency to Johnsonian eloquence.--_Christian
Leader_ (Glasgow).
The manners and customs of the people are vividly reflected in these
pages, and a picturesque account is given of a number of notabilities,
such as the physician, &c.--_Speaker_ (London).
The book cannot fail to fulfil the author's desire in exciting a deeper
interest in the people whom he so sympathetically introduces to the
British public.--_Independent_ (London).
Written with much naïveté.--_British Weekly_ (London).
The author of this book deserves our thanks and congratulations. Himself
a highly educated native of the Madras Presidency, he has drawn a series
of pictures of the village life of Southern India.... The occupations,
the recreations, the religion, the distribution of labour, the
recurrence of feast and festival, with much more, are all told in
amusing style and with such graphic power as to leave a vivid impression
upon the reader's mind.--_Bookseller_ (London).
Madras should indulge some measure of pride in having turned out a
University graduate who can write the English language better than most
Englishmen. Ramakrishna's "Life in an Indian Village" is a charming
account of Dravidian homes and customs. It is the work of a young man
who has profited by Western enlightenment, and yet feels a kindly glow
in his heart for all that belongs to the humblest folk in his native
land. His sympathy is beautiful, because it is devoid of any pretence or
forced pathos. His language is choice, yet simply constructed. There is
real literary flavour about this work, which has just been published by
Fisher Unwin. When will the Punjab give us a young man who can feel and
think and write like this?--_Civil and Military Gazette_ (Lahore).