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ENCHANTED INDIA
[Illustration BOJIDAR KARAGEORGEVITCH: and signature]
ENCHANTED INDIA
BY
PRINCE BOJIDAR KARAGEORGEVITCH
[Illustration: Logo]
HARPER & BROTHERS
PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
1899
*** _"Enchanted India," which was written in French by
Prince Bojidar Karageorgevitch, and translated by Clara Bell, is
now published in advance of the edition in the original language._
TO MY FRIEND
M. H. SPIELMANN
CONTENTS
PAGE
AT SEA 1, 305
BOMBAY 3, 91, 302
ELLORA 36
NANDGAUN 46
BARODA 50
AHMEDABAD 55
PALITANA 64
BHAWNAGAR 84
HYDERABAD 92
TRICHINOPOLY 107
MADURA 114
TUTICORIN 123
COLOMBO 123
KANDY 125
MADRAS 133
CALCUTTA 139
DARJEELING 145
BENARES 154
ALLAHABAD 181
LUCKNOW 185
CAWNPORE 189
GWALIOR 199
AGRA 204
JEYPOOR 213
DELHI 216, 299
AMRITSUR 233
LAHORE 235
RAWAL PINDI 238
PESHAWUR 241
MURREE 253
GARHI 254
SRINAGAR 256
RAMPOOR 266
DOMEL 269
DERWAL 271
KOHAT 273, 287
BUNNOO 274
DEHRA DOON 289
HARDWAR 296
ENCHANTED INDIA
AT SEA
The air is heavy with indefinable perfume. We are already coasting the
Indian shore, but it remains invisible, and gives no sign but by these
gusts of warmer air laden with that inscrutable aroma of musk and
pepper. A lighthouse to port, which we have for some time taken for a
star, vanishes in the light mist that hangs over the coast, and then
again there is nothing but the immensity of waters under the clear
night, blue with moonlight.
All the day long a quantity of medusæ have surrounded the ship: white,
as large as an ostrich's egg, with a pink or lilac heart, like a flower;
others of enormous size, of a paler blue than the sea, fringed with
intense and luminous green--a splash of light on the dusk of the deep.
Others, again, white, blossoming with every shade of rose and violet.
Then, towards evening, myriads of very small ones, thickening the water,
give it a yellowish tinge, clinging to the ship's side, rolling in the
furrow of its wake, a compact swarm, for hours constantly renewed; but
they have at last disappeared, leaving the sea clear, transparent,
twinkling with large flecks of phosphorescence that rise slowly from the
depths, flash on the surface, and die out at once under the light of the
sky.
Before daybreak, in the doubtful light of waning night, dim masses are
visible--grey and purple mountains--mountains shaped like temples, of
which two indeed seem to be crowned with low squat towers as if
unfinished.
The morning mist shrouds everything; the scene insensibly passes through
a series of pale tints, to reappear ere long in the clear rosy light,
which sheds a powdering of glowing gold on the broad roadstead of
Bombay.
But the enchantment of this rose-tinted land, vibrating in the sunshine,
is evanescent. The city comes into view in huge white masses--docks,
and factories with tall chimneys; and coco-palms, in long lines of
monotonous growth, overshadow square houses devoid of style.
As we go nearer, gothic towers are distinguishable among the
buildings--faint reminiscences of Chester, clumsily revived under the
burning light of white Asia.
BOMBAY
In the spacious harbour, where a whole fleet of steamships lies at
anchor, a swarm of decked boats are moving about, sober in colour, with
the bows raised very high in a long peak, and immense narrow sails
crossed like a pair of scissors, and resembling a seagull's wings.
The noise in the dock is maddening. The Customs, the police, the
health-officers, all mob the voyager with undreamed-of formalities, such
as a paper to be signed declaring that he has but one watch and one
scarf-pin, and that their value is in proportion to the wearer's
fortune. Then, again, the dispersal of the luggage, which must be fished
out at another spot amid the yelling horde of coolies who rush at the
trunks and use the portmanteaus as missiles, till at last we are in the
street.
Under the blinding sunshine reflected from the whitewashed houses, an
incredibly mixed crowd, squeezed against the railings of the
custom-house wharf, stands staring at the new arrivals. Natives, naked
but for a narrow loin-cloth rolled about their hips; Parsees in long
white tunics, tight white trousers, and on their heads hideous low
square caps of dark wax-cloth, pursuing the stranger with offers of
money-changing; Hindoos, clad in thin bright silk, and rolls of
light-hued muslin on their head; English soldiers, in white helmets, two
of whom stare at me fixedly, and exclaim that, "By Jo', Eddy has missed
this steamer!"
There are closed carriages, victorias, vehicles with a red canopy drawn
by oxen, the shafts set at an angle. The drivers bawl, shout to the
porters, fight for the fare with their whips, while, overhead, kites and
hawks wheel incessantly, uttering a plaintive cry.
Along the roads of beaten earth, between tall plastered houses, a
tramway runs. In the shopfronts the motley display suggests a curiosity
shop, and the goods have a look of antiquity under the thick layer of
dust that lies on everything. It is only in the heart of the city, in
the "Fort," that the shops and houses have a European stamp.
Opposite the hotel, beyond the tennis club, is a sort of no-man's-land,
where carriages are housed under tents. Natives dust and wash and wipe
down the carriages in the sun, which is already very hot; and the work
done, and the carriages under cover, out come swarms of little darkies,
like ants, who squall and run about among the tents till sunset.
Further off, under the banyan trees, is the sepoys' camp; they have been
turned out of barracks on account of the plague; and flashing here and
there among the dark, heavy verdure there lies the steely level of
motionless ocean.
In the English quarter of Bombay the houses are European: Government
House, the post office, the municipal buildings--perfect palaces
surrounded by gardens; and close by, straw sheds sheltering buffaloes,
or tents squatted down on common land; and beyond the paved walks are
beaten earth and huge heaps of filth, over which hover the birds of prey
and the crows.
A large building of red and white stone, with spacious arcades and a
central dome, as vast as a cathedral, stands at the angle of two
avenues--the railway terminus; and a great market of iron and
glass--Crawford Market. Here are mountains of fruit, greenery, and
vegetables of every colour and every shade of lustre; and a flower
garden divides the various market sheds, where little bronze coolies, in
white, scarcely clad, sell oranges and limes.
At the end of the garden are the bird sellers, their little cages packed
full of parrots, minahs, and bulbuls; and tiny finches, scarcely larger
than butterflies, hang on the boughs of ebony trees and daturas in
bloom.
In the native town the houses are lower and closer together, without
gardens between. Down the narrow streets, between booths and shops, with
here and there a white mosque where gay-coloured figures are
worshipping, or polychrome temples where bonzes are drumming on
deafening gongs, run tramways, teams of oxen, whose drivers shriek and
shout, and hackney cabs, jingling and rattling. Among the vehicles there
moves a compact crowd of every race and every colour: tall Afghans, in
dingy white garments, leading Persian horses by the bridle for sale, and
crying out the price; bustling Parsees; naked Somalis, their heads
shaven and their oiled black skins reeking of a sickening mixture of
lotus and pepper; fakirs, with wild, unkempt hair, their faces and
bodies bedaubed with saffron and the thread of the "second birth" across
their bare breast; Burmese, with yellow skins and long eyes, dressed in
silks of the brightest pink; Mongolians, in dark-hued satin tunics
embroidered with showy colours and gold thread.
There are women, too, in the throng of men, but fewer in number. Parsee
ladies, draped in light sarees of pale-hued muslin bordered with black,
which shroud them entirely, being drawn closely over the narrow skirt,
crossed several times over the bosom, and thrown over the right shoulder
to cover the head and fall lightly on the left shoulder. Hindoo women,
scarcely clothed in red stuff, faded in places to a strong pink; a very
skimpy bodice, the _chol_, embroidered with silk and spangles, covers
the bust, leaving the arms and bosom free; a piece of thin cotton stuff,
drawn round the legs and twisted about the waist, covers the shoulders
and head, like a shawl. On their wrists and ankles are silver bangles;
they have rings on their fingers and toes, broad necklaces with
pendants, earrings, and a sort of stud of gold or copper, with coloured
stones, through the left nostril. They go barefoot, pliant forms
avoiding the jostling of the crowd, and carrying on their head a pile of
copper pots one above another, shining like gold, and scarcely held by
one slender arm with its bangles glittering in the sun. The tinkle of
the _nanparas_ on their ankles keeps time with their swinging and
infinitely graceful gait, and a scent of jasmine and sandal-wood is
wafted from their light raiment. Moslem women, wrapped from head to foot
in sacks of thick white calico, with a muslin blind over their eyes,
toddle awkwardly one behind the other, generally two or three together.
Native children beg, pursuing the passenger under the very feet of the
horses; their sharp voices louder than the hubbub of shouts, bells, and
gongs, which exhausts and stultifies, and finally intoxicates the brain.
Everything seems fused in a haze under the sun, as it grows hotter and
hotter, and in that quivering atmosphere looks like a mass in which red
and white predominate, with the persistent harmony of motion of the
swaying, barefooted crowd.
The air is redolent of musk, sandal-wood, jasmine, and the acrid smell
of the hookahs smoked by placid old men sitting in the shadow of their
doors.
The ground here and there is stained with large pink patches of a
disinfectant, smelling of chlorine, strewn in front of the house where
anyone lies dead. And this of itself is enough to recall to mind the
spectre of the plague that is decimating Bombay; in this excitement,
this turmoil of colour and noise, we had forgotten it.
Shops of the same trade are found in rows; carpenters joining their
blocks, and workmen carving ornaments with very simple tools--clumsy
tools--which they use with little, timid, persistent taps. Further on,
coppersmiths are hammering the little pots which are to be seen in
everybody's hands; under the shade of an awning stretched over the tiny
booth, the finished vessels, piled up to the roof, shed a glory over the
half-naked toilers who bend over their anvils, perpetually making jars
of a traditional pattern, used for ablutions. There are two men at work
in each shop, three at most, and sometimes an old man who sits smoking
with half-closed eyes.
In a very quiet little alley, fragrant of sandal-wood, men may be seen
in open stalls printing patterns with primitive wooden stamps, always
the same, on very thin silk, which shrinks into a twisted cord reduced
to nothing when it is stretched out to dry.
Here are carvers of painted wooden toys--red and green dolls, wooden
balls, nests of little boxes in varied and vivid colours.
Far away, at the end of the bazaar, in a street where no one passes, are
the shoemakers' booths littered with leather parings; old cases or
petroleum tins serve as seats. Among the workmen swarm children in rags,
pelting each other with slippers.
And, quite unexpectedly, as we turned a corner beyond the coppersmiths'
alley, we came on a row of tea-shops, displaying huge and burly china
jars. Chinamen, in black or blue, sat at the shop doors in wide, stiff
armchairs, their fine, plaited pigtail hanging over the back, while they
awaited a customer with a good-humoured expression of dull indifference.
After breakfast a party of jugglers appeared in front of the hotel; they
performed on a little carpet spread under the shade of a banyan tree.
Acrobatic tricks first, human ladders, feats of strength; then nutmegs
were made to vanish and reappear; and finally they conjured away each
other in turn, in little square hampers that they stabbed with knives to
prove that there was nobody inside; and to divert the spectators'
attention at critical moments they beat a tom-tom and played a shrill
sort of bagpipe.
The jugglers being gone, a boy, to gain alms, opened a round basket he
was carrying, and up rose a serpent, its hood raised in anger, and
hissing with its tongue out.
After him came another little Hindoo, dragging a mongoose, very like a
large weasel with a fox's tail. He took a snake out of a bag, and a
battle began between the two brutes, each biting with all its might; the
sharp teeth of the mongoose tried to seize the snake's head, and the
reptile curled round the mongoose's body to bite under the fur. At last
the mongoose crushed the serpent's head with a fierce nip, and instantly
a hawk flew down from a tree and snatched away the victim.
By noon, under the torrid blaze which takes the colour out of
everything, exhaustion overpowers the city. Vehicles are rare; a few
foot-passengers try to find a narrow line of shade close to the houses,
and silence weighs on everything, broken only by the buzzing of flies,
the strident croak of birds of prey.
Along Back Bay lies the Malabar Hill, a promontory where the
fashionable world resides in bungalows built in the midst of gardens.
Palm trees spread their crowns above the road, and on the rocks which
overhang the path ferns of many kinds are grown by constant watering.
The bungalows, square houses of only one storey, surrounded by wide
verandahs, and covered in with a high, pointed roof, which allows the
air to circulate above the ceilings, stand amid clumps of bougainvillea
and flowering jasmine, and the columnar trunks of coco-palms, date
trees, baobabs and areca palms, which refresh them with shade.
The gardens are overgrown with exuberant tropical vegetation: orchids,
daturas hung with their scented purple bells, gardenias and creepers;
and yet what the brother of a London friend, on whom I am calling, shows
me with the greatest pride, are a few precious geraniums, two real
violets, and a tiny patch of thickly-grown lawn of emerald hue.
Colaba is the port; the docks, with tall houses between the enormous
warehouses. The silence is appalling; windows, doors--all are closed.
Only a few coolies hurry by in the white sunshine, with handkerchiefs
over their mouths to protect them against the infection in these
streets, whence came the plague which stole at first through the
suburbs, nearer and nearer to the heart of the city, driving the
maddened populace before it.
One morning a quantity of dead rats were found lying on the ground; next
some pigeons and fowls. Then a man died of a strange malady--an unknown
disease, and then others, before it was known that they were even ill. A
little fever, a little swelling under the arm, or in the throat, or on
the groin--and in forty-eight hours the patient was dead. The mysterious
disease spread and increased; every day the victims were more and more
numerous; an occult and treacherous evil, come none knew whence. At
first it was attributed to some dates imported from Syria, to some corn
brought from up-country; the dates were destroyed, the corn thrown into
the sea, but the scourge went on and increased, heralded by terror and
woe.
At Mazagoon, one of the suburbs of Bombay, behold a Parsee wedding.
The bridegroom sits awaiting his guests, in his garden all decorated
with arches and arbours, and starred with white lanterns. An orchestra
is playing, hidden in a shrubbery.
Presently all the company is assembled, robed in long white tunics. The
bridegroom, likewise dressed in white, has a chain of flowers round his
neck; orchids, lilies, and jasmine, falling to his waist. In one hand he
holds a bouquet of white flowers, in the other a coco-nut. A shawl,
neatly folded, hangs over one arm.
Over the gate and the door of the house light garlands, made of single
flowers threaded like beads, swing in the breeze and scent the air.
Servants carrying large trays offer the company certain strange little
green parcels: a betel-leaf screwed into a cone and fastened with a
clove, containing a mixture of spices and lime, to be chewed after
dinner to digest the mass of food you may see spread out in the tables
in the dining-room.
Then follow more trays with tufts of jasmine stuck into the heart of a
pink rose; and as the guest takes one of these bouquets the servant
sprinkles first the flowers and then him with rose-water.
Shortly before sunset the _dastour_ arrives--the high priest--in white,
with a white muslin turban instead of the wax-cloth cap worn by other
Parsees.
The crimson sky seen above the tall coco-palms turns to pink, to pale,
vaporous blue, to a warm grey that rapidly dies away, and almost
suddenly it is night.
Then an elder of the family deliberately lights the first fire--a lamp
hanging in the vestibule; and as soon as they see the flame the High
Dastour and all those present bow in adoration with clasped hands. The
bridegroom and the priest go into the house and have their hands and
faces washed; then, preceded by the band and followed by all the guests,
they proceed to the home of the bride.
There, again, they all sit down in the garden. The same little packets
of betel, only wrapped in gold leaf, are offered to the company, and
bunches of chrysanthemum sprinkled with scent.
Then, two and two, carrying on their shoulders heavy trays piled with
presents, women mount the steps of the house, the bridegroom standing at
the bottom. The bride's mother comes forth to meet them in a dress of
pale-coloured China crape covered with a fine white saree. She waves her
closed hand three times over the gifts, and then, opening it, throws
rice on the ground. This action she repeats with sugar and sweetmeats,
and finally with a coco-nut. And each time she empties her hand a naked
boy appears from heaven knows where, gathers up what she flings on the
ground, and vanishes again, lost at once in the shadows of the garden.
At last the bridegroom goes up the steps. The mother-in-law repeats the
circular wave of welcome over the young man's head with rice and sugar
and an egg and a coco-nut; then she takes the garland, already somewhat
faded, from his neck, and replaces it by another twined of gold thread
and jasmine flowers, with roses at regular intervals. She also changes
his bouquet, and receives the coco-nut her son-in-law has carried in his
hand.
In the midst of a large room crowded with women in light-hued sarees,
the bridegroom takes his seat between two tables, on which are large
trays of rice. Facing him is a chair, and one is occupied by the bride,
who is brought in by a party of girls. She is scarcely fourteen, all in
white; on her head is a veil of invisibly fine muslin ten folds thick;
it enfolds her in innocence, and is crowned with sprays of myrtle
blossom.
The ceremony now begins. The dastour chants his prayers, throwing
handfuls of rice all the time over the young couple. A sheet is held up
between the two, and a priest twines a thread about the chair. At the
seventh turn the sheet is snatched away, and the bride and bridegroom,
with a burst of laughter, fling a handful of rice at each other.
All the guests press forward, ceasing their conversation, which has
sometimes drowned the voice of the dastour, to ask which of the two
threw the rice first--a very important question it would seem.
The two chairs are now placed side by side, and the priest goes on
chanting his prayers to a slow measure, in a nasal voice that is soon
lost again in the chatter of the bystanders. Rice is once more shed over
the couple, and incense is burnt in a large bronze vessel, the perfume
mingling with that of the jasmine wreaths on the walls.
Then the procession, with music, makes its way back to the bridegroom's
house. On the threshold the priest says one more short prayer over the
bowed heads of the newly-married couple, and at last the whole party go
into the room, where the guests take their places at the long tables.
Under each plate, a large square cut out of a banana leaf serves as a
finger-napkin. Innumerable are the dishes of sweetmeats made with _ghee_
(clarified butter), the scented ices, the highly-coloured bonbons;
while the young couple walk round the rooms, and hang garlands of
flowers about the necks of the feasters.
Outside the night is moonless, deep blue. Venus seems quite close to us,
shining with intense brightness, and the jasmines scent the air, softly
lighted by the lanterns which burn out one by one.
In the evening, at the railway terminus, there was a crush of coolies
packed close up to the ticket-office of the third-class, and holding out
their money. Never tired of trying to push to the front, they all
shouted at once, raising their hands high in the air and holding in
their finger-tips one or two shining silver rupees. Those who at last
succeeded in getting tickets slipped out of the crowd, and sang and
danced; others who had found it absolutely impossible to get anything
retired into corners, and groaned aloud.
In the middle of the station groups of women and children squatted on
the flagstones, their little bundles about them of red and white rags,
and copper pots looking like gold; a huddled heap of misery, in this
enormous hall of palatial proportions, handsomely decorated with
sculptured marble.
They were all flying from the plague, which was spreading, and emptying
the bazaars and workshops. The Exchange being closed, trade was at a
standstill, and the poor creatures who were spared by the pestilence
were in danger of dying of hunger.
When the gate to the platform was opened there was a stampede, a fearful
rush to the train; then the cars, once filled, were immediately shut on
the noisy glee of those who were going.
At the last moment some porters, preceded by two sowars in uniform and
holding pikes, bore a large palankin, hermetically closed, to the door
of a first-class carriage, and softly set it down. The carriage was
opened for a moment: I could see within a party of women-servants,
shrouded in white muslin, who were preparing a couch. An old negress
handed out to the porters a large sheet, which they held over the
palankin, supporting it in such a way as to make a covered passage
screening the carriage door. There was a little bustle under the
sheet--the end was drawn in, and the sheet fell over the closed door.
The last train gone, all round the station there was quite a camp of
luckless natives lying on the ground, wrapped in white cotton, and
sleeping under the stars, so as to be nearer to-morrow to the train
which, perhaps, might carry them away from the plague-stricken city.
In a long narrow bark, with a pointed white sail--a bunder-boat--we
crossed the roads to Elephanta, the isle of sacred temples. Naked men,
with no garment but the _langouti_, or loin-cloth, navigated the boat.
They climbed to the top of the mast, clinging to the shrouds with their
toes, if the least end of rope was out of gear, hauled the sail up and
down for no reason at all, and toiled ridiculously, with a vain
expenditure of cries and action, under the glaring sky that poured down
on us like hot lead.
After an hour's passage we reached the island, which is thickly planted
with fine large trees.
A flight of regular steps, hewn in the rock, under the shade of banyans
and bamboos, all tangled with flowering creepers, leads straight up to
the temple. It is a vast hall, dug out of granite and supported by
massive columns, with capitals of a half-flattened spheroidal
shape--columns which, seen near, seem far too slender to support the
immense mass of the mountain that rises sheer above the cave under a
curtain of hanging creepers. The temple opens to the north, and a very
subdued light--like the light from a painted window--filtering through
the _ficus_ branches, lends solemnity and enhanced beauty to this
titanic architecture.
The walls are covered with bas-reliefs carved in the rock, the roof
adorned with architraves of stone in infinite repetition of the same
designs. The stone is grey, varied here and there with broad, black
stains, and in other spots yellowish, with pale gold lights. Some of the
sculpture remains still intact. The marriage of Siva and Parvati; the
bride very timid, very fragile, leaning on the arm of the gigantic god,
whose great height is crowned with a monumental tiara. Trimurti, a
divinity with three faces, calm, smiling, and fierce--the symbol of
Siva, the creator, the god of mercy, and of wrath. In a shadowed corner
an elephant's head stands out--Ganesa, the god of wisdom, in the midst
of a circle of graceful, slender, life-like figures of women. Quite at
the end of the hall, two caryatides, tall and elegant, suggest lilies
turned to women. In the inner sanctuary, a small edifice, with thick
stone walls pierced with tiny windows that admit but a dim light, stands
the lingam, a cylinder of stone crowned with scarlet flowers that look
like flames in the doubtful light; and in deeper darkness, under a
stone canopy, another such idol, hardly visible. The Brahman priests are
constantly engaged in daubing all the statues of these divinities with
fresh crimson paint, and the votaries of Siva have a spot of the same
colour in the middle of the forehead. Two lions, rigid in a hieratic
attitude, keep guard over the entrance to a second temple, a good deal
smaller and open to the air, beyond a courtyard, and screened with an
awning of creepers.
In the atmosphere floated a pale blue smoke, rising from a heap of weeds
that some children were burning, a weird sort of incense, acrid and
aromatic, fading against the too-blue sky.
As we went down to the shore a whole swarm of little dark boys wanted to
sell scarabs, rattans, birds' nests shaped like pockets, and
dream-flowers, gathered from the creepers on the temples; large
almond-scented lilies, and hanging bunches of the ebony-tree flowers, so
fragile in texture and already faded in the sun, but exhaling till
evening a faint perfume of verbena and lemon.
As we returned the wind had fallen, and the men rowed. The moon rose
pale gold, and in the distance, in the violet haze, the lights of Bombay
mingled with the stars. The boatmen's chant was very vague, a rocking
measure on ascending intervals.
Afternoon, in the bazaar, in the warm glow of the sinking sun,
wonderfully quiet. No sound but that of some workmen's tools; no
passers-by, no shouting of voices, no bargaining. A few poor people
stand by the stalls and examine the goods, but the seller does not seem
to care. Invisible _guzlas_ vibrate in the air, and the piping
invitation of a moollah falls from the top of a minaret.
Then, suddenly, there was a clatter of tom-toms, and rattling of
castanets, a Hindoo funeral passing by. The dead lay stretched on a
bier, his face painted and horrible, a livid grin between the dreadful
scarlet cheeks, covered with wreaths of jasmine and roses. A man walking
before the corpse carried a jar of burning charcoal to light the funeral
pile. Friends followed the bier, each bringing a log of wood, to add to
the pyre as a last homage to the dead.
A Mohammedan funeral now. The body was in a coffin, covered with red
stuff, sparkling with gold thread. The bearers and mourners chanted an
almost cheerful measure, as they marched very slowly to the
burial-ground by the seaside, where the dead rest under spreading
banyans and flowering jasmine.
Then a Parsee woman stopped my servant to ask him if I were a doctor.
"A doctor? I cannot say," replied Abibulla, "but the sahib knows many
things." The woman's eyes entreated me. Would I not come? it would
comfort the sick man, and help him, perhaps, to die easily if the gods
would not spare him.
At the door of the house the sick man's wife was washing a white robe,
in which he would be dressed for the grave on the morrow. The nearest
relation of the dying must always wash his garment, and the woman,
knowing that her husband had the plague and was doomed, as she was
required by ritual to prepare for the burial while her husband was yet
living, wore a look of mute and tearless resignation that terrified me.
The plague-stricken man lay on a low bed struggling with anguish; large
drops of sweat stood on his face, his throat was wrapped in wet
bandages, and he spoke with difficulty, as in a dream.
"Pané, sahib!"--"Water, sir!"
Then he closed his eyes and fell asleep at once, and so would he sleep
till the end.
Out of doors, meanwhile, one funeral procession almost trod on the
heels of the last; at the latest gleam of day, and out towards the west,
above the Field of Burning, a broad red cloud filled all one quarter of
the sky.
In the heart of Girgaum, one of the suburbs of Bombay, at the end of a
street, under a large areca palm an old man was selling grain and rice
in open baskets. A whole flight of bickering sparrows settled on his
merchandise, and he looked at them with happy good humour without
scaring them away.
In the town a zebu cow was trotting along with an air of business. To
avoid a vehicle she jumped on to the footpath and went her way along the
flagstones, and every Hindoo that she passed patted her buttock and then
touched his forehead with the same hand with great reverence.
Outside Bombay, at the end of an avenue of tamarind trees, between
hedges starred with lilac and pink, we came to Pinjerapoor, the hospital
for animals. Here, in a sanded garden dotted with shrubs and flowers,
stand sheds in which sick cows, horses and buffaloes are treated and
cared for. In another part, in a little building divided into
compartments by wire bars, poor crippled dogs whined to me as I passed
to take them away. Hens wandered about on wooden legs; and an ancient
parrot, in the greatest excitement, yelled with all his might; he was
undergoing treatment to make his lost feathers grow again, his hideous
little black body being quite naked, with its large head and beak. In an
open box, overhung with flowering jasmine, an Arab horse was suspended
to the beams of the roof; two keepers by his side waved long white
horsehair fans to keep away the flies. A perfect crowd of servants is
employed in the care of the animals, and the litter is sweet and clean.
At Byculla in the evening we went to Grant Road, the haunt of the street
beauties, where the gambling-houses are. At the open windows under the
lighted lamps were coarsely-painted women dressed in gaudy finery. In
the entries were more of such women, sitting motionless in the attitude
of idols; some of them real marvels--thin, slender bronze limbs scarcely
veiled in dark, transparent gauze, gold rings round their neck and arms,
and heavy nanparas on their ankles.
One of them was standing against a curtain of black satin embroidered
with gold; muslin that might have been a spider's web hardly cast a mist
over her sheenless skin, pale, almost white against the glistening satin
and gold, all brightly lighted up. With a large hibiscus flower in her
hand she stood in a simple attitude, like an Egyptian painting, then
moved a little, raising or lowering an arm, apparently not seeing the
passers-by who gazed at her--lost in a dream that brought a strange
green gleam to her dark eyes.
Japanese girls, too, in every possible hue, with piles of tinsel and
flowers above their little flat faces all covered with saffron and white
paint; little fidgeting parrakeets flitting from window to window, and
calling to the people in the street in shrill, nasal tones.
In booths between these houses, the gamblers, standing round a board
with numbered holes, were watching the ball as it slowly spun round, hit
the edge, seemed to hesitate, and at last fell into one of the cups.
Four-anna pieces, ten-rupee notes--anything will serve as a stake for
the Hindoo ruffian in a starched shirt-front, low waistcoat and white
tie, above the dhouti that hangs over his bare legs; or for the
half-tipsy soldier and sailor, the cautious Parsee who rarely puts down
a stake, or the ragged coolie who has come to tempt fortune with his
last silver bit.
All alike were fevered from the deafening music of harmoniums and
tom-toms performing at the back of each gambling-booth--a din that
drowned shouts of glee and quarrelling.
Turning out of this high street blazing with lamps, were dens of
prostitution, and dark, cut-throat alleys.
Then a quiet little street. Our guide paused in front of a whitewashed
house. An old woman came out, and with many salaams and speeches of
welcome led us into a large, low room.
Here, one by one, in came the nautch-girls, dancers. Robed in stiff
sarees, their legs encumbered with very full trousers, they stood
extravagantly upright, their arms away from their sides and their hands
hanging loosely. At the first sound of the tambourines, beaten by men
who squatted close to the wall, they began to dance; jumping forward on
both feet, then backward, striking their ankles together to make their
nanparas ring, very heavy anklets weighing on their feet, bare with
silver toe-rings. One of them spun on and on for a long time, while the
others held a high, shrill note--higher, shriller still; then suddenly
everything stopped, the music first, then the dancing--in the air, as it
were--and the nautch-girls, huddled together like sheep in a corner of
the room, tried to move us with the only three English words they knew,
the old woman repeating them; and as finally we positively would not
understand, the jumping and idiotic spinning and shouts began again in
the heated air of the room.
"Nautch-girls for tourists, like Europeans," said my Indian servant
Abibulla. "Can-can dancing-girls," he added, with an air of triumph at
having shown me a wonder.
At the top of Malabar Hill, in a garden with freshly raked walks and
clumps of flowers edged with pearl-shells, stand five limewashed towers,
crowned with a living battlement of vultures: the great Dokma, the
Towers of Silence, where the Parsees are laid after death, "as naked as
when they came into the world and as they must return to nothingness,"
to feed the birds of prey, which by the end of a few hours leave nothing
of the body but the bones, to bleach in the sun and be scorched to dust
that is soon carried down to the sea by the first rains of the monsoon.
One of these towers, smaller than the others, and standing apart at the
end of the garden, is used for those who have committed suicide. The
bearers of the dead dwell in a large yellow house roofed with zinc.
There they live, apart from the world, never going down to Bombay but to
fetch a corpse and bring it up to the vultures, nor daring to mingle
with the living till after nine days of purification.
In another building is the hall where the dastours say the last prayers
over the dead in the presence of the relations; the body is then
stripped in a consecrated chamber and abandoned to the mysteries of the
tower.
On the great banyan trees in the garden, and on every palm, torpid
vultures sit in the sun, awaiting the meal that will come with the next
funeral procession.
Far away a murmur is heard, a long-drawn chant, suddenly arousing the
birds; they flap their wings, stretch themselves clumsily, and then fly
towards one of the towers.
We could see the procession coming straight up a hollow ravine from the
valley to the Dokma, a path that none but Parsees are allowed to tread;
eight bearers in white, the bier also covered with white, and, far
behind, the relations and friends of the dead, all robed in white, two
and two, each pair holding between them a square of white stuff in sign
of union. They came very slowly up the steps of the steep ascent with a
measured chant, in muffled tones, on long-drawn vowels. And from the
surrounding trees, from far and near, with a great flutter of wings, the
vultures flew to meet the corpse, darkening the sky for a moment.
In the evening, as I again went past the Towers of Silence, the palm
trees were once more crowded with sleeping birds gorged with all the
food sent them by the plague. On the other side of Back Bay, above the
Field of Burning, a thick column of smoke rose up, red in the last beams
of the crimson sun.
In the silence of a moonless night nine o'clock struck from the great
tower of the Law Courts--a pretty set of chimes, reminding me of Bruges
or Antwerp; and when the peal had died away a bugle in the sepoys'
quarters took up the strain of the chimes, only infinitely softer,
saddened to a minor key and to a slower measure; while in the distance
an English trumpet, loud and clear, sounded the recall in counterpart.
Outside the town the carriage went on for a long time through a
poverty-stricken quarter, and past plots of ground dug out for the
erection of factories. Fragile flowers, rose and lilac, bloomed in the
shade of banyans and palm trees. Hedges of jasmine and bougainvillea,
alternating with rose trees, scented the air. Then we came to Parel, a
suburb where, in a spacious enclosure, stands the hospital for
infectious diseases. It is a lofty structure of iron, the roof and walls
of matting, which is burnt when infected with microbes, and which allows
the free passage of the air. In spite of the heat outside it was almost
cool in these shady halls.
All the sick were _sudras_, Hindoos of the lowest caste. All the rest,
Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaisiyas, would rather die at home, uncared for,
than endure the promiscuous mixture of caste at the hospital, and
contact with their inferiors. Even the sudras are but few. There is an
all-pervading dread of a hospital, fostered by Indian bone-setters and
sorcerers, stronger even than the fear of the pestilence; the people
hide themselves to die, like wounded animals, and their relations will
not speak of an illness for fear of seeing anybody belonging to them
taken to the hospital.
All the sufferers lay on thin mattresses spread on low camp beds; they
were all quiet, torpid in the sleep of fever. The doctor showed them to
me, one after another; there was nothing distressing to be seen in their
naked bodies lying under a sheet. Some, indeed, had dressings under the
arm, or on the groin. One, who had just been brought in, had a large
swelling above the hip, a gland which was lanced to inject serum.
This, then, is the malady of the appalling name--the Plague--hardened
glands in the throat or under the arm; the disease that gives its victim
fever, sends him to sleep, exhausts, and infallibly kills him.
In the ward we had just passed through there were none but convalescents
or favourable cases. At the further end of the room a boy, fearfully
emaciated, so thin that his body, lying in the hollow of the mattress,
was hardly visible under the covering, was asleep as we approached. He
had come from one of the famine districts, and in escaping from one
scourge had come to where the other had clutched him. The doctor touched
him on the shoulder, and he opened his great splendid eyes. The
awakening brought him gladness, or perhaps it was the end of his dream,
for he had the happy look of a contented child, shook his shaven head
waggishly, and the single corkscrew lock at the top, and was asleep
again instantly.
In the further room were four sufferers past all hope: one in the
anguish of delirium that made him cry out the same words again and
again, in a hoarse voice that was growing fainter. He was held by two
attendants. Another lay with chattering teeth; a third was struggling
violently, hidden under his coverlet; the fourth seemed unconscious,
apathetic.
Not far from the great hospital, in huts of bamboo and matting, some
Hindoos were isolated, who refused to be attended by any but native
doctors, or to take anything but simples. An old man lay there who had a
sort of stiff white paste applied to the swellings under his arms. He,
too, was delirious, and watched us go by with a vague, stupefied
glare--eyes that were already dead.
In another hut was a woman, brought hither yesterday with her husband,
who had died that morning. She had an exquisite, long, pale face and
blue-black hair. On her arms were many bangles, and gold earrings
glittered in her ears. For a moment she opened her large gazelle-like
eyes, and then with a very sad little sigh turned to the wall, making
her trinkets rattle. She was still dressed in her blue choli. A striped
coverlet had been thrown over her; by her bed she had a whole set of
burnished copper pans and canisters. Charmingly pretty, and not yet
exhausted by the disease, which only declared itself yesterday, she was
sleeping quietly, more like a being in a storybook than a
plague-stricken creature, who must infallibly die on the morrow under
the incapable treatment of the Hindoo "bone-setter."
And then we came away from this hospital, where no sister of charity, no
woman even, had brought some little consolation or the kindliness of a
smile to these dying creatures, whose wandering or frantic black eyes
haunted me.
ELLORA
THE SACRED HILL
At sunrise we reached Nandgaun, whence I went on towards Ellora in a
tonga, the Indian post-chaise, with two wheels and a wide awning so low
and so far forward that the traveller must stoop to look out at the
landscape. A rosy haze still hung over the country, rent in places and
revealing transparent blue hills beyond the fields of crude green barley
and rice. The road was hedged with mimosa, cassia, and a flowering
thorny shrub, looking like a sort of honeysuckle with yellow blossoms,
and smelling strongly of ginger.
We met a strange caravan; a small party of men surrounding more than a
hundred women wrapped in dark robes, and bearing on their veiled heads
heavy bales sewn up in matting, and large copper pots. A little blind
boy led the way, singing a monotonous chant of three high notes. He came
up to my tonga, and to thank me for the small coin I gave him he said,
"Salaam, Sahib," and then repeated the same words again and again to
his tune, dancing a little step of his own invention till the whole
caravan was hidden from me in a cloud of dust.
In a copse, women, surrounded by naked children, were breaking stones,
which men carried to the road. The women screamed, hitting the hard
pebbles with a too small pick, the children fought, the men squabbled
and scolded, and amid all this hubbub three Parsees, sitting at a table
under the shade of a tamarind tree, were adding up lines of figures on
papers fluttering in the wind. There was not a dwelling in sight, no
sign of an encampment, nothing but these labouring folk and the
bureaucracy out in the open air, under the beating sun.
Next came a long file of carts, conveying cases of goods "made in
Manchester," or loaded, in unstable equilibrium, with dry yellow fodder
like couch grass, eaten by the horses here; and they struggled along the
road which, crossing the limitless plain, appeared to lead nowhere.
When we stopped to change horses, two or three mud-huts under the shade
of a few palm trees would emit an escort of little native boys, who
followed the fresh team, staring at the carriage and the "Inglis Sahib"
with a gaze of rapturous stupefaction.
Flocks of almost tame partridges and wood-pigeons occupying the road
did not fly till they were almost under the horses' feet, and all the
way as we went, we saw, scampering from tree to tree, the scared little
squirrels, grey with black stripes and straight-up bushy tails.
At the frontier of the Nizam's territory, a man-at-arms, draped in
white, and mounted on a horse that looked like silver in the sunshine,
sat with a lance in rest against his stirrup. He gazed passively at the
distance, not appearing to see us, not even bowing.
Towards evening Ellora came in sight, the sacred hill crowned with
temples, in a blaze of glory at first from the crimson sunset, and then
vaguely blue, wiped out, vanishing in the opalescent mist.
At Roza, the plateau above the Hindoo sanctuaries, above a dozen of
Moslem mausoleums are to be seen under the spreading banyans that
shelter them beneath their shade, and sometimes hide them completely;
the white objects are in a whimsical style of architecture, hewn into
strange shapes, which in the doubtful starlight might be taken for
ruins.
One of these mausoleums served us for a bungalow. The distance was
visible from the window openings, which were fringed with cuscus blinds
that would be pulled down at night: the spreading dark plain, broken by
gleaming pools, and dotted with the lamps in the temples to Vishnu, of
which the cones were visible in silhouette, cutting the clear horizon.
The almost imperceptible hum of a bagpipe came up from below; in a white
mosque of open colonnades enclosing a paved court, and in front of the
little lamps that burned above the holy of holies sheltering the Koran,
figures in light garments were prostrate in prayer; their murmurs came
up to us in sighs, mingling with the slow and tender notes of the music.
Rising from the highest point of the hill the huge tomb of Aurungzeeb
the Great--more huge in the darkness--stood out clearly, a black mass,
its bulbous dome against the sky. Flocks of goats and sheep came
clambering along the ridge to shelter for the night in the recesses of
its walls. Then, one by one, the lights died out. Infinite calm brooded
over the scene; a very subtle fragrance, as of rose and verbena, seemed
to rise from the ground and scent the still air; and over the motionless
earth swept enormous black bats in silent flight, with slow,
regularly-beating wings.
At the first ray of sunrise I went down to the temples, hewn out of the
side of the hill and extending for above a mile and a quarter. Gigantic
stairs are cut in the rock, and lead to caves enshrining immense altars,
on which Buddha or other idols of enormous size are enthroned. Hall
after hall is upheld by carved pillars. Bas-reliefs on the walls
represent the beatitudes of Krishna surrounded by women, or the
vengeance of Vishnu the terrible, or the marriage of Siva and Parvati;
while on the flat roof, on the panels and architraves--all part of the
solid rock--there is an endless procession of Krishnas and Vishnus, on a
rather smaller scale, producing utter weariness of their unvaried
attitudes and beatific or infuriated grimacing.
One temple to Buddha only, on an elongated plan, ends in a vault forming
a bulb-shaped cupola supported on massive columns, quite Byzantine in
character and wholly unexpected. The dim light, coming in only through a
low door and two small windows filled in with pierced carving, enhances
the impression of being in some ancient European fane, and the Buddha on
the high altar has a look of suffering and emaciation that suggests a
work of the fourteenth century.
More temples, each more stupendous than the last, and more halls hewn
in the rifts of the hills, and over them monks' cells perched on little
columns, which at such a height look no thicker than threads.
And there, under the open sky, stands the crowning marvel of Ellora, the
temple or Kailas, enclosed within a wall thirty metres high, pierced
with panels, balconies, and covered arcades, and resting on lions and
elephants of titanic proportions. This temple is hewn out of a single
rock, isolated from the hill, and is divided into halls ornamented in
high relief. Covered verandahs run all round the irregular mass in two
storeys, reminding us, in their elaborate design, of the Chinese balls
of carved ivory with other balls inside them. Nothing has been added or
built on. The complicated architecture--all in one piece, without cement
or the smallest applied ornament--makes one dizzy at the thought of such
a miracle of perseverance and patience.