not as a rule exceed five rupees in value. The "kahwe-wala" belongs to
three nationalities, Arab, Negro and Native Indian. If an Arab, he may be a
disabled sailor or the retired body-servant of some Arab merchant; if an
Indian, he is usually an old resident of the city, experienced in the wiles
of the urban population and sometimes perhaps a protégé of the local
police. He has a perfect acquaintance with the intricacies of Bombay galis
and back-slums; he is a creature of jovial temper, being hail-fellow-well-
met with most of his customers, and he is not a grasping creditor. His
account, which he notes down on whitewashed walls, sometimes reaches the
sum of Rs. 10 to Rs. 15 where thriftless wives are concerned. Generally the
score is paid: but if it be shirked or disputed, he never thinks of
invoking legal aid for the recovery of his money. He has an abiding faith
in the doctrine of "Live and let live."
XVIII.
THE PANDU-LENA CAVES.
A NASIK PILGRIMAGE.
Nasik! What a story the name evokes! Nasik the Lotus-city, Nasik the home
of Gods; who has borrowed her name from the nine hills which lay within the
compass of her sacred walls. For we like not, nor do we believe, that
alternative derivation of the name from "Nasika," a nose, in allusion to
the fate which here overtook the demon Shurpanakhi. It is altogether too
savage an appellation for a city whose purity was established in the "Krita
Yuga," and whose fame is coeval with that of the great protagonists of
Hindu myth and epic. The great city of religion in the West stood upon
seven hills, the holy city of the East stood upon nine; and the famous
rivers which flow past them whisper in each case of a heritage of undying
renown. Fancy hand in hand perhaps with a substratum of historical truth
has discovered traces of Rama's chequered life, of Sita's devotion in many
spots within the limits of Nasik. The Forest of Austerity (Tapovan),
Panchvati and Ramsej or Ram's seat, that strangely-shaped hill fortress to
the north of Nasik, are but three of the holy places which appeal so
forcibly to the hearts of the people as the visible legacies of divine life
on earth.
But to us the temples and the sacred pools seem nothing by comparison with
the mighty monuments of Buddhism, which local wiseacres have erroneously
named the Pandu-Lena or caves of the Pandavas. We drive out in the fresh
morning air along the trunk road, which extends southwards of the holy city
like a grey ribbon streaked by two parallel lines of lighter colour where
the wheels of the bullock-carts have ground the hard metal into dust; and
hard by the fifth milestone we come face to face with three stark hills,
standing solitary out of the plain. A congeries of Mhars' huts fringing the
roadside marks the most convenient spot for alighting, whence we strike
across the belt of level land which divides the highway from the foot of
the easternmost of the triad of hills. "Trirashmi" or Triple Sunbeam is the
name by which the hill is known in seven of the cave-inscriptions, and is
held by the learned Pundit who wrote the _Gazetter_ account to refer
to its pyramidal or triple fire-tongue shape. But is it not conceivable
that the hand which carved the earliest of those priceless inscriptions
desired to designate the triad of contiguous hills as "the tripla ray," and
not the eastern hill alone in which the caves have been hewn? Who can tell?
When we recall the almost unbroken chain of caves,--the Shivner, the
Ganesh, the Manmoda and the Tulja,--which surround Junner, we suspect that
the original intention of those primeval devotees was to carve dwellings
and chapels in all three hills, which thus would have surely formed a
triple beam of light in honour of the great Master, whom an English
missionary has characterized as "one of the grandest examples of self-
denial and love to humanity which the world has ever produced." A narrow
and devious path, worn by the feet of worshipers, leads upward to the broad
terrace which fronts the caves. Here you are sheltered from the wind, and
peace inviolate broods upon these dwellings of a vanished people; but turn
your steps round the western corner and the boisterous breeze will quickly
chase you back behind the sheltering bulwarks of the hill.
Of the twenty-four caves all except the eighteenth or chapel-cave were
originally _layanas_ or monastic dwellings and contained no images
when first their makers gazed upon their work and found it good. But long
after their earliest inmates had conquered Desire and had gained Nirvana
for their souls the followers of the Mahayana school from Northern India
took the dwellings for their own use and carved out of the austere walls of
their precursors' cells those images and idols which are now the chief
feature of the caves. Buddha seated upon the lion-throne and the figures of
his Bodhisattvas with their fly-whisks are symbols of a later and more
idolatrous form of Buddhism and are several centuries later than the days
(b. c. 110) when the great monk (Sramana) fashioned the nineteenth cave in
the reign of Krishna the Satakarni. Nor has Vandalism in the guise of the
Mahayana school been alone at work here. The tenth cave once contained a
relic-shrine or _dagoba_ similar to the relic-shrines at Karli,
Shivner and Ganesh Lena; but in its place now stands a hideous figure of
Bhairav aflame with red-lead, and nought remains to testify to the former
presence of the shrine save the Buddhist T capital, the umbrellas and the
flags which surmounted it. The eleventh cave bears traces of Jain sacrilege
in the blue figure of the Tirthankar or hierach who sits cross-legged in
the back wall and in the figure of Ambika on the right. But the most
conspicuous example of the alteration of ancient monuments to suit the
needs of late comers is the twentieth cave, where the colossal Buddha, who
muses with his attendants in the dense darkness of the inner shrine, has
been smeared with black pigment and adorned with gold tinsel and is proudly
introduced to you by the local _pujari_ as Dharmaraja, the eldest of
the five Pandavas, the surrounding Bodhisattvas being metamorphosed into
Nakula, Sahadeva, Bhima, Arjuna, Krishna and Draupadi, the joint wife of
the five! Alas for "the Perfect One" in whose honour, as the inscription
tells us, "the wife of the great war-lord Bhavagopa" commenced building the
cave in B.C. 50. He has long been forgotten and the hand which he uplifts
in token of the Four Verities, discovered after great agony and temptation
beneath the Tree of Wisdom, is now pointed out as the wrathful hand of the
demi-god of the Mahabharata. Once and once only in these later days has the
Buddha evinced his displeasure at the modernization of his ancient shrine.
About the year 1880 came hither a Bairagi, naked and wild, who walled off a
corner of the cave and raised a clay altar to his puny god. Sacrilege
intolerable! And the Buddha through the hand of an avaricious Koli smote
him unto death and hurled his naked corpse down hill. The titanic figure is
still worshipped by the Hindus: flowers and lighted lamps are daily offered
up to him by the ignorant Hindu priest; but he sits immutable,
inarticulate, content in the knowledge that to them that have understanding
his real message of humanitarianism speaks through the clouds of falsehood
which now enwrap his Presence.
Much might be written of the strange medley of creeds which are symbolised
in these caves. The Nagdevas with their serpent-canopies, which are relics
of a primordial Sun and Serpent worship totally foreign to pure Buddhism,
appear side by side with the Swastika or Life-symbol of the greater creed,
with the lotus and other symbols of a phallic cult, and as in the small
cistern near cave 14 with the female face representing the low-class Hindu
belief in the divinity of the smallpox. Jain images of a later school of
Buddhism, dating from the 5th or 6th century after Christ, have helped to
rob these homes of Buddhist mendicants of their original simplicity and
severity, and have rendered it almost impossible for any save the wise men
of the East to read their chequered history aright. In almost the last cave
we entered, where two standing figures on the right and left mount guard
over the well-known image of the Master, our footsteps roused a large
female rat and her young, which crawled up the silent seated figure and
took refuge on the very crown of its head. Sanctuary! So we turned aside to
scrutinise the strange symbolical figures of the twenty-fourth cave and the
stories of the chaste and unchaste wives which are hewn in the ornamental
gateway of the third.
From the terrace in front of the caves a fine panorama greets the eye.
Below commences the wide plain which creeps northwards to the rugged hills
comprising the weird couch-shaped summit of Ramsej and the solitary cone
of the Chambhar Hill, embosoming the great Jain caves of the 12th century.
Beyond the Chambhar cone climb heavenwards the castellated pinnacles of the
Chandor range, mist-shrouded in this monsoon season. In the nearer distance
the primeval Brahman settlement of Govardhan sleeps amid her mango-groves,
and opposite to it the modern Christian village of Sharanpur marks the
threshold of that tract of fair woodland and fairer garden which is Nasik's
pride. Here and there a red roof catches the sun's rays and shews a splash
of orange amid the green; but save for this the picture has but two tints,
the warm green of the plain country in the foreground and the grey of the
mighty mountain-range which stands sentinel behind it. Your feet rest upon
soil hallowed by the memories of two thousand years, upon ground which
bears the sign-manual of early and late Buddhist, of Jain and lastly of
Maratha, who used the hill as a muster-ground of warriors and bored holes
in the graven images for the tethering of his cattle and steeds. By some
divine decree "the imperial banditti" kept their impious hands from the
famous inscriptions which are the real glory of these caves and form the
connecting-link between ourselves and that great king whose face was "as
the sun-kissed lotus, whose army drank the waters of three oceans," Shri
Gautamiputra the Satakarni.
And so ends our morning's exploration. One last visit to the silent keepers
of these messages from dead monarchs--and we pass down to the high road,
whence we look back once more upon Trirashmi, the casket of jewels without
price, and her twin sisters gleaming in the morning light like the triple
prongs of some giant Trident set there by Nature in honour of the great
apostle of Humanity.
XIX.
FATEH MUHAMMAD.
We had wandered off the main thoroughfare, where the trams, hurtling past
the Irani's tea shop, drown from time to time the chatter of Khoda Behram's
clientele; and skirting a group of Mahomedans who nightly sit in solemn
conclave, some on the 'otlas,' others on charpoys or chairs placed well in
the fairway of traffic, we reached at length a sombre and narrow 'gali,'
seemingly untenanted save by the shadows. Here a sheeted form lay prone on
the roadside; there a flickering lamp disclosed through the half-open door
a mother crooning to her child, while her master smoked the hubble-bubble
with the clay bowl and ruminated over the events of the day,--the villainy
of the landlord who contemplated the raising of the rent and the still
greater rascality of the landlord's 'bhaya' who insisted upon his own
'dasturi' as well. Here a famished cat crouched over a pile of garbage hard
by the sweeper's 'gali'; there on the opposite side of the road a Marwadi
with the features of Mephistopheles dozed over his account book; and a
little further away a naked child was dipping her toes in a pool of sullage
water that had dripped from the broken pipe athwart the house wall.
Darkness reigned on the upper floors. At intervals a faint glimmer might be
discerned behind the sodden 'chicks' which shrouded the windows; and once
the stillness was broken by a voice humming a refrain from an Indian drama:
"Jahan jahan mukam rahe, amne jhulakiram rahe,
Safarse ghar ko to phire, Aman-chaman khuda rakhe."
Which, being interpreted, runs:--"Wheresoever thou mayst halt, may God
protect thee! When thou hast returned, may God give thee His peace!" The
singer was invisible, but around the words of her song one could conjure up
pictures of the sturdy serang asleep in the foc'sle of some westward-flying
steamer, or haply of the bearded trader afare through the passes of the
North-West Frontier, the while his wife in the small upper room waited with
prayers for his home-coming, even as the lady of Ithaca waited for the man
of many wiles.
At length we reached a small doorway which opened into a cavern black as
Erebus. For a moment we paused undecided; and then out of the darkness
crawled an aged Mahomedan bearing a tiny cocoanut-oil lamp. Lifting it
above his head he pointed silently to a rickety staircase in the far
corner, up which we groped our way with the help of a rope pendent from an
upper beam. Up and up we mounted, now round a sharp corner, now down a
narrow passage: the stairs swayed and shook; the air was heavy with a
mixture of frankincense and sullage; until at last we crawled through
a trap-door that opened as by magic, and found ourselves at our journey's
end.
[Illustration: Fateh Muhammad]
Imagine a small attic, some fifteen feet by ten, under the very eaves of
the 'chal,' filled with the smoke of frankincense so pungent that the eyes
at once commenced to water nor ceased until we were once again in the open
air. In one corner was spread a coarse sheet with a couple of pillows
against the wall, upon which the silent Mahomedan bade us by a sign
recline; in the opposite corner a 'panja', a species of altar smothered in
jasmine wreaths and surmounted by a bunch of peacock's feathers; and
immediately in front of this an earthen brazier of live charcoal. Behind
the brazier sat three persons, Fateh Muhammad, a Musalman youth with
curiously large and dreamy eyes, and two old Musalman beldames, either of
whom might have sat as a model for the witch of Endor. The three sat
unmoved, blinking into the live charcoal, save at rare intervals when the
elder of the two women cast a handful of fragrance upon the brazier and
wrapped us all in a fresh pall of smoke which billowed round the room and
lapped the interstices of the rotten tiles. Only the peacock's eyes in the
corner never lost their lustre, staring wickedly through the smoke-wreaths
like the head of Argus.
Then on a sudden the youth shivered, fell forward with his face over the
brazier, and rose again to a sitting posture with eyes closed and every
muscle in his body taut as though stricken by a sudden paralysis. "The
spirit has entered," whispered my friend, and even as he spoke I saw the
youth's throat working as if an unseen hand were kneading the muscles, and
forth from his lips echoed the words "La illaha illallah illahi laho." He
was deep in a trance, the curtains of his eyes half-dropped, looking as one
that is dead; and the voice with which he spoke was not the voice of Fateh
Muhammad, "La illaha illallah illahi laho"! and as the words died away one
that was present passed two green limes into his left hand and asked for a
sign. "I am fain to journey to Lahore, starting on Tuesday next. Will it be
well," he said; and after a pause came the answer "Set not forth on
Tuesday, for the stars be against thy journeying; but send thine agent on
Thursday and go thyself, if need be, two days later." As the message died
away, the trap-door in the floor was slowly tilted upwards and through the
opening crawled an obvious member of the Dhobi class. He slid forward
almost to the feet of the dreaming youth and, placing as before two green
limes in his hand, spoke saying "Master, my wife hath written from our
country, bidding me to go unto her nor tarry by the road. But there is work
toward here and the purse is light. Is it that I should go?" "La illaha
illallah illahi laho!" "Aye, go unto her, lest evil haply befall thee; for
much is there that is hid from thine eyes."
Thus the seance went forward. For twenty minutes or more odd waifs and
strays of humanity crawled in through the trap-door, obtained their message
of good or ill, and departed into the shadows as silently as they had come.
Among them were several women, one of whom sought a cure for her sick
child, whimpering over the symptoms of his malady. "Meningitis, I expect,"
muttered my friend the doctor; but the answer came swift and sure "Bind
thou the 'tawiz' round his brows and carry him to the shrine of Miran
Datar, whence cometh thy help." "La illaha illallah illahi laho!"
The end came suddenly. After the last visitor had vanished through the
floor there was dead silence for three minutes, while Fateh Muhammad
wrestled with the spirit within him; and then with chest heaving and hands
convulsively grasping the heavy air, he fell prone upon his face and lay
still. The two old women moved forward and commenced making passes over his
body, murmuring the while some charm, and as they waved the seven-knotted
handkerchief above his head he regained consciousness and sat slowly up,
"breathing like one that hath an evil dream" and bearing upon his features
the signs of deathly fatigue. By this time the attic was almost clear of
smoke; the guttering wick of the only oil-lamp was nearly burnt through,
and Fateh Muhammad was fain to sleep. Wherefore we thanked him for
permitting us this glance behind the curtain of his daily life, then
crawled through the trap, slid down the reeking staircase and gained the
street. One last glance, as my eyes reached the floor-level of the trap,
showed me that the room was untenanted, save by the prostrate form of the
visionary, above whom the eyes of the peacock still glinted with something
of mockery in their blue depths.
As we passed homewards down the street we heard the woman in the upper
chamber still singing her prayer, but with a note of hope in its cadence:--
"O dilruba tu gam na kho, khuda hamen baham kare"
"Janejahan bhulo nahi, karim sada karam kare."
"Grieve not, heart of my heart, for God will
order our meeting! Soul of the world,
forget not; and may the peace of God be
on us twain."
Perchance she also, like Fateh Muhammad's guests, had caught a message of
good hap from out the darkness.
And so back to the light and the noise of the City's greatest artery.
XX.
THE TILAK RIOTS.
A REMINISCENCE.
(_Written August_. 1908)
Affairs in the City may now be regarded as having resumed their normal
course, and the chance of further disorder seems for the present to have
been obviated. One of the most curious features of the disturbances was the
difference of feeling exhibited by the two classes of mill-operatives,
namely the Ghatis and the Malwanis. Of the whole mill-population one would
have assumed that the Kunbis from the Deccan, where Tilak is stated to have
so great a following, would have shown a greater disposition to riot in
consequence of his arrest and conviction than the men from Ratnagiri. And
yet so far as I could judge the Ghatis were far less interested in the
trial and were much less disposed to express their resentment than the
latter class, which comprises one or two extremely hot-headed and
uncompromising individuals. The Ghatis of Sewri indeed at the very height
of the riots, informed an Englishman with whom they are familiar, that they
would sooner die for him than do him any harm, and their words carried home
the conviction that they felt no personal sorrow at Tilak's well-deserved
fate and that they would be ready in an emergency, as they have often been
in past history, to stand staunchly by the side of any individual whom they
know and who has been kind to them. The attitude of the Ratnagiri hands
must in my opinion have been engendered by continuous and careful tuition;
and this was particularly the case in the Currey Road and Delisle Road
areas where agents, belonging to their own native district, had been
suborned by the seditionary party to stir up trouble.
No less remarkable was the quaint juxtaposition during the height of the
riots of seething disorder and the quiet prosecution of their daily
avocations by the bulk of the people. An officer of one of the regiments
quartered on the City during the trial in the High Court gave expression to
this fact in the following words:--"Warfare I understand; but this sort of
business beats me altogether. At the top of the street there is a native
'tamasha' with people singing and beating tom-toms; half-way down the
street there are stone-throwing and firing, and at the bottom of the street
there are people, Europeans and Natives, shopping!" He was struck, as I
was, by the incongruity of the whole business. At Jacob's Circle there was
a great display of military and magisterial strength. Tommy Atkins had
taken up a strong position at the corner of Clerk Road; sentries paced up
and down by day and night; machine guns gaped upon the fountain erected to
the memory of Le Grand Jacob. At intervals a squadron of cavalry dashed
into the open, halted for a space, and then as suddenly disappeared; and
they were followed by motor cars and carriages containing Commissioners,
Deputy Commissioners, Police Subordinates, Special Magistrates and
miscellaneous European sightseers. All the pomp and circumstance of Law and
Order were represented there, and there could scarcely have been a greater
display of armed force, more secret consultations, more wild dashes hither
and thither, more troubled parleying, if the entire City north of Jacob's
Circle had been in flames. And yet behind it and around it the daily life
of the people moved forward in its accustomed channel, The Bhandari's
liquor-shop at the corner had its full complement of patrons, and the
Bhandari himself might be seen pulling out handfuls of thirst-producing
parched grain for those of his customers who desired a relish with their
liquor; members of that degraded class which follows one of the immemorial
vices of the East wandered round the Marwaris' shops, begging and clapping
their hands in the manner peculiar to them; and across the diameter of the
Circle strayed a group of Barots--those strange semi-gipsy looking men from
Kathiawar who act as priests and magicians to the Bhangi population. Seeing
the military and police they halted for a moment and gave one time to have,
a word with them:--"Whither go ye?" we asked, and they replied that they
were bound to the big Bhangi settlement that lies not far from the Circle.
One of them carried a "bina," a second an ordinary school-slate covered
with crude cabalistic signs and a third a rude book, something like a
Vani's "chopda," filled with Marathi characters, which doubtless plays a
part in the fortune-telling and spirit-scaring that form the stock-in-trade
of these wandering hierophants. Hardly had they disappeared than four
Sadhus hove in sight. One of them, who was smeared with ashes from head to
foot, the lobes of whose ears had been pierced and dragged down till they
nearly touched his shoulders, and who wore an enormous rosary of Rudraksha
berries, acted as the spokesman of the party and stated that they were on
their way to Nasik. They had come from Benares, he said, and had spent a
week in the shady compound of the Mahalaksmi temple, where all the
Bairagis, Gosavis and Fakirs of the Indian continent from time to time
congregate. "Do you walk to Nasik or go by rail" we asked. "By rail"
replied the silver-man. "But surely the true Sadhu should walk, taking no
heed of horse-vehicle or fire-carriage," whereat the little fat ascetic
with the gourd smiled pleasantly and made some remark to the effect that
all methods of conveyance are permitted to the truly devout.