BOYS AND GIRLS
But the children of India have to act as men and women long before
anyone here would think them old enough to do more than learn and play.
Very early indeed a little Hindu child is married. Sometimes a baby
is married in the cradle, but a little girl is generally nine or ten
years old before she goes away to her husband’s house. That does not
mean that she and the little boy to whom she is married have a cottage,
and live there together. It only means that she comes in, a frightened
wee girl, to a houseful of people whom she never saw before. The
oldest woman in the house takes charge of everything. Often she is the
grandmother of the child’s husband, and the little wife must not only
do everything the old grandmother tells her, she must try to please all
the other women there too, if she wishes to be happy. If she makes the
others like her, and if the boy to whom she is married likes her, she
may soon be as happy there as she was at home, but if she does not get
on well with the others, there is no one who can save her from misery.
One bright little girl called Runabai left her father’s house to go to
her husband when she was eleven years old. Her father had been sorry
when she was born, but she was so loving and happy that everyone had
grown very fond of her, and she went away with beautiful Saris[5] and
many flashing jewels. Her father was a wealthy man, so he sent twelve
maids with his little daughter to wait on her, and keep everything
about her as nice as it had been when she still stayed in his house.
But her husband’s family did not like her. They took away all her
beautiful clothes and jewels, and instead of letting her twelve maids
wait on her, they made her work very hard herself, and do much more
than she had strength for.
Then before a year had passed they began to starve her. She was only
allowed to eat once a day, and then all the food she was allowed to
have was rice and red peppers. One day she was cleaning the house, and
she saw a little piece of bread on the table. She was hungry, and she
was only twelve years old, so she picked it up and began to eat it. But
before she had time to swallow a mouthful her mother-in-law caught her.
She took the bread and pushed it down the little girl’s throat with a
stick.
Little Runabai was sometimes allowed to go home to see her people. One
time she begged them to keep her with them, and not to allow her to go
back to the terrible life she had to lead. Her father was very sad. The
tears were in his eyes, but he was afraid of the disgrace it would be
to his family if he kept her from her husband. He knew that his caste
would be broken if he did. So in spite of his sorrow he said, “Go back,
and if you die it will be honourable.” She did go back, and in two
months she did die, and her father and mother mourned for her, but they
comforted themselves with the thought that she had died honourably!
But though a Hindu wife is often free from the pain and misery that
killed this one, there is always a great fear that hangs over her, for
her husband may die, and then she will be a widow. If a little wife
dies, her husband may marry again, but a high caste Hindu widow must
never marry a second time. Often little girls are married to full grown
men; sometimes, even, they are married to old men, so it very often
happens that a girl becomes a widow when she is only a child, and there
are Hindu widows who are not one year old. At first the child may not
know that there is any change in her life, but as she begins to grow
older she finds that all the hard work is left for her, and that no one
wishes to see her when a feast or a wedding is held, or when anything
bright is going on. Then one day a priest comes to her village, and
to the house where she lives. She is not afraid of him, for she knows
no reason why he should be angry with her. But he is angry with her.
He says her beautiful black hair must be cut off, and soon the barber
comes and shaves her head all over. After that time she is only
allowed to eat one meal a day, and twice a month she does not even get
that one meal. She has to wear a rough Sari that lets everyone know
that she is a widow even if she covers up her little close-shaved head,
and in some cases she only has that one dress for night wear and day
wear till it is so ragged that it will scarcely hold together.
Besides all that, the friends of her husband think that they cannot
be too cruel to her, because they believe that she must have done
something very wrong indeed in one of the lives she lived long before,
and that it is because of that, that she is a widow. They think that if
their boy had married another wife he would still be well and bright.
But though girls suffer far more from the early marriages of India
than boys do, the boys have to bear many unnecessary burdens because
of them. They have to work hard in order to help to get food for the
household, and wee boys labour for long days in the rice fields. They
guide the oxen at the plough, and they carry the pots of water from
rivers and canals to fill the little channels that water the fields;
and sometimes, even with all these early years of toil, a young man
finds that he cannot feed his family or give gifts to the gods. Then
he goes to a money-lender, and if he once does that, there is little
happiness for him or for his children, for the money-lender will take
everything from him, his jewels, his wife’s jewels, her clothes, all
but the plainest which she keeps to wear; and then perhaps his fields
will have to go too, and the cruel money-lender will send men to watch
the rice, and the millet, and the wheat as they grow, for fear any of
the crop should be reaped without his knowledge.
But before a Hindu boy marries he has been taught how he must worship
the gods. A little Brahman boy puts on the sacred thread which marks
his caste, and which he wears over his right shoulder, when he is eight
or nine years old; from that time onwards he must keep all the rules of
his caste. When the thread is first put on a priest whispers into the
boy’s ear the sacred text or “mantra” of his family. He must remember
it well, for he will have to repeat it over and over again each morning
before bathing and then again each evening. He must always repeat his
text and bathe before he tastes food. If he is a good boy, he will say
his text over and over again very often. In some parts of India he must
not stop until he has said it one hundred and eight times.
The sacred thread is not the only mark by which a boy shows his caste
or the god he worships. He may have a white V marked on his forehead,
or a yellow W, or a wavy line right across, with perhaps a grain of
rice stuck in the centre, and if he is going to a feast he will have a
bright red dot there too.
Hindu boys repeat the names of their gods as well as the sacred text
of their caste. One little boy who wished to be very careful that he
worshipped his gods well used to say, “Rama, Rama, Rama,” until he had
said the name twelve thousand, five hundred times; and then he said,
“Siva, Siva, Siva,” six thousand, two hundred and fifty times, every
day.
There are special days and weeks at each shrine and temple, when there
is more merit in offering gifts than at other times, and on these days
people throng to lay their presents before the gods. They bring oil or
camphor for the priest to burn in a censer which has a large lamp in
the centre for the camphor and five small ones round it for the oil,
and when the priest lights the lamps he waves the censer before the
idol, and the sweet scent of the camphor fills the shrine. Others bring
melted butter and rice, and others fruit and flowers. Marigolds are the
favourite flowers to bring, and the temple steps are strewn with them.
But with all the other offerings there must be, if possible, a little
money, for the priest will look eagerly to see if there are any pice[6]
in the offering.
There is no place to which larger crowds of people go to worship than
Benares, and if a boy is lucky enough to be there he will see many
curious sights. He might see these things in other cities too, but not
so many of them all together.
The strangest people he will see are the Fakirs. They wander about from
city to city and from temple to temple, and live entirely on the gifts
that are given to them by the devout. Even if a Hindu does not wish
to be kind and generous, he will give a gift to a Fakir, because he
believes that if the Fakir curses him his rice will wither on its stem,
his cattle and his children will sicken and die, and ill-luck will
follow him in everything. So the very shadow of a Fakir is held sacred,
and no one will cross it lest harm should come to him for his want of
reverence.
The Fakir wears as little clothes as possible, but he covers his body
with mud and ashes, and makes his hair stick out in all sorts of
uncouth forms with gum and clay. He wears a rope or some strings of
beads round his neck. Sometimes he whitewashes his face, and paints
lines on it, and makes himself still more uncanny-looking than he
already is with his thin body and his wild hair. He has a boy whom he
calls his “Chela” with him, and a brass bowl, and nothing else. The boy
goes out with the bowl at breakfast time, and begs till it is full;
then he comes back to the Fakir where he rests on the temple steps, or
under a cart, or by the wayside, to eat the meal with him. The Fakir
himself should never beg, for the gods he worships are supposed to send
him all he needs, and if he receives nothing from them, he must starve.
Some Fakirs are earnest men who seek to live up to the best they know,
and some are only idle loafers who wish to have an easy life, and to
get as much as they can by trading on the hopes and fears of other
people.
Amongst them there are many men who have wonderful powers of conjuring
and of second sight. No one can explain the tricks they do, and there
is a weirdness about the men that adds to the weirdness of their
doings. Many an English child would run home in terror at the mere
sight of a Fakir. But the sight of a Fakir is not nearly so eerie as
the sight of some of the things he seems to do. One of these men will
suddenly appear to climb up into the air going hand over hand on a rope
that is not there, till he vanishes into the sky. In a few minutes he
will come quietly along the street as if nothing had happened. Another
will take a piece of rope, whirl it round his head, and toss it into
the air, where it will seem to the onlookers to stand so firm and
strong that a man can climb it, though it is not fastened to anything.
One of the commonest of these wonderful things is to make a plant grow
while the crowd watch. The Fakir takes a mango fruit, opens it, and
lifts out the seeds. He has a little tub of earth into which he drops
them, and as the bystanders watch, they see a mango tree grow up, and
bear fruit before them.
The chela sees these things, and gradually learns the secrets that
belong to them, so that when his Fakir dies he is ready to take his
place and be a Fakir himself.
The ways in which the gods are worshipped vary greatly. Some of the
idols are washed and dressed and fed each morning, and bathed and put
to bed each night, and there are long rites that are performed in the
temples. But, there are also many wayside shrines where men and women
lay their offerings as they pass, and murmur a few words of prayer.
Often a new idol is found. For the Hindus think that the spirit of a
god may enter an animal or a stone or a tree as the spirit of a man may
enter any one of these.
[Illustration: A WAYSIDE SHRINE]
One day a Brahman priest lay in a temple court, drowsy and troubled.
The reason of his trouble was that plague was in the city and the
people fled from it, and the offerings that were brought to the
temple were poor and small. The priest was full of dread alike of the
plague and of the poverty that would face him, if the gifts to the
temple grew less and less. Soon the drowsiness grew stronger than his
anxious thoughts, and he fell asleep. As he slept he dreamt that a
great goddess appeared to him, and told him that she had come to the
city in a block of stone, but that she had not been worshipped, and so
she was angry with the people, and had sent the plague, and that if
honour were not done to her she would send fire to finish the work that
plague had begun. She wished the people of the place to hold a feast,
and then to carry the stone in which she lived away hundreds of miles
over the country to Benares.
The priest wakened, and, as he thought of his dream, he remembered a
great block of black marble that lay beside a temple that had just been
built in the city. Ere the women came to gather round him that day
after offering their gifts in his temple, the priest had thought out
the meaning of his dream, and he told it to them, as they gazed in awe
and fear. He said that the stone in which the goddess dwelt should have
been polished, and set up to guard the entrance to the new temple; but
the workmen had not seen that the stone was a special one, and had left
it aside, and the goddess in her anger had burned up the fields. The
women sighed, for this part of the story was only too true. The fields
were hard and bare, because there had been no rain, and the river beds
were dry. Plague had followed famine, and death was at the door. But
the priest told of more terrible things yet, for he said that Mariamma,
the angry goddess, would send fire if she were not honoured speedily.
The story of the priest was soon known throughout the city, for each
one told it to another. Within a few days fire broke out in the
palace of the Maharajah there. The fire as it raged and destroyed the
beautiful building made everyone sure of the truth of the priest’s
vision, and hurried plans were made to have the goddess in the stone
carried one stage towards Benares.
The people thronged round the marble block. The new temple stood near,
but all eyes were on the stone, not on the temple. Then the priests
began their work. They washed the stone all over with milk lest
anything might have soiled it while it lay untended. Then they brought
cocoa nuts and limes to lay before it. After that it was wreathed with
garlands and painted with saffron, and lamps were swung backwards and
forwards which filled the night air with the scent of burning camphor.
The crowd watched eagerly, and when the great stone with its added
weight of flowers was lifted on to the shoulders of eight men, their
joy burst out in shouts, for did they not know that famine and plague
and death would leave their city with the goddess.
Music and lights marked the great procession as it wound its way
through the narrow darkened streets. Without the city gate eight men
waited to carry the idol forward. Many of those who had followed it
through the streets turned back, but some pressed on to see the stone
pass into the hands of new bearers at the next village. There the
lights, the music, and the gaily decked stone struck awe into the minds
of the village-folk, and they fell in worship before the block, and
hastened to find men to bear it on. So the black marble block travelled
over many miles of the land. It never reached Benares, for a priest on
the way dreamt another dream about it. He dreamt that Mariamma wished
to rest in his village, so he had a shrine built for her; and there,
amidst lamps and garlands, the unused stone received the worship of the
people from the country round, and the priest grew wealthy by the gifts
that were brought to the goddess in the marble. But the other priest,
Ramachandra, died of the plague which he had said would leave the city
with the angry goddess.
Some Hindu gods look very terrible. One of these that is commonly
worshipped is called Ganesa, and he has a man’s body with an elephant’s
head. Whenever a Hindu is going to begin a new piece of work, or to
do something important, he makes offerings to Ganesa, for he believes
that the elephant-headed god can take obstacles out of the way and give
success.
There was a little boy in Madras called Ramaswami, who went to worship
Ganesa for the first time. As he trotted down through the bazaar by his
mother’s side he chatted gaily. He had garlands on his arms, and his
hands were full of incense. He had listened to his mother when she
told him how to lay his gifts in the god’s lap, and when to bow to the
god, but he was not thinking much about the god or the gifts.
The temple was a small place, as Hindu temples often are, for crowds of
people do not worship in them together. One by one, or in small groups,
they bring their gifts, offer them to the idol, and turn away.
The doors of this temple were wide open, and Ganesa sat in the gloom
inside, right opposite the entrance. The boy saw a black figure as
large as a man on the back of a great stone rat. The eyes, the tusks
and the red mouth of the elephant-head gleamed out of the darkness, and
the trunk was lifted up at one side, as if it would strike anyone who
came near.
Ramaswami screamed with terror, and hid behind one of the pillars from
the dreadful god. His mother had grown used to the appearance of the
idol, and she only laughed at her wee boy for his fear. She pulled him
from his hiding-place, but before she could drag him to Ganesa he had
slipped from her grasp, and had run wildly down the street. When she
saw that he was gone she hurried after him, and when she caught him she
was breathless and cross. She pushed him back before her and said, “You
little fool. Is your father’s son going to be a coward? The god will
not strike you. Don’t you see he is made of stone and cannot move?”
At last Ramaswami stood close before Ganesa, but his terror was still
as great as ever. He threw down the garlands and the incense, but he
forgot all his mother had told him of the way in which to give them,
and the movements of worship to make before the idol, and when his
hands were at length empty of the offerings he wriggled once more from
his mother, and fled as if the elephant-headed god was at his heels.
But all Hindu boys are not frightened of the idols. There seem always
to have been those who wished something greater to worship than a
stone, and who could not believe that any good would come of senseless
offerings. One of these was called Chikka. His home was in a village
in Mysore, and one day a friend came to it with an image of Lakshmi,
the goddess of fortune, and asked Chikka’s father to take care of the
idol for him. Not long after that Chikka’s father found that he must
leave the village. He did not wish to carry Lakshmi with him, so he
laid her carefully in a box, and gave her to the village priest that
he might take care of her. Misfortune came to the friend who had left
the idol, and he began to fear that it was because he had not been
worshipping the goddess, so he hurried to the village to which Chikka
and his father had gone, and said to the boy, “Come along with me, and
we will fetch Lakshmi here and worship her together.” Chikka was only
ten years old then, but he had thought out some things for himself, and
he said, “The goddess Lakshmi has left us poor, while you are rich.
When she gives us good fortune we will worship her, but not till then.”
His father was angry when he heard what Chikka had said, but his anger
did not have any effect on the boy, for only a year later he did a far
more daring thing. He and his brothers and sisters were ill, and a
fortune-teller was called in to say what the parents should do to make
them well. This man said that the reason of the illness was that no one
in the house had been worshipping serpents. So two old stone serpent
idols were brought out and consecrated. But though the others did
honour to them Chikka would not. He watched for a time when no one was
beside to interfere with him, and then he broke the stone snakes into
pieces and threw the fragments away. When his father found out what had
been done he was extremely angry. He was frightened too, for he thought
that some terrible harm would come to them all because Chikka had
insulted the idols. But in a few days the children were well again, and
no other hurtful thing had happened to them, so Chikka won his parents
over to his side, and they ceased to believe in the serpent god.