We are told--and, being philosophers, we will amuse ourselves by
believing--that there are towns in India, somewhere between Cape Comorin
and the Himalayas, wherein everything is _butcha_,--that is, "a little
chap"; where inhabitants and inhabited are alike in the estate of
urchins; where little Brahmins extort little offerings from little dupes
at the foot of little altars, and ring little bells, and blow little
horns, and pound little gongs, and mutter little rigmaroles before
stupid little Krishnas and Sivas and Vishnus, doing their little wooden
best to look solemn, mounted on little bulls or snakes, under little
canopies; where little Brahminee bulls, in all the little insolence of
their little sacred privileges, poke their little noses into the little
rice-baskets of pious little maidens in little bazaars, and help their
little selves to their little hearts' content, without "begging your
little pardons," or "by your little leaves"; where dirty little fakirs
and yogees hold their dirty little arms above their dirty little heads,
until their dirty little muscles are shrunk to dirty little rags, and
their dirty little finger-nails grow through the backs of their dirty
little hands,--or wear little ten-penny nails thrust through their
little tongues till they acquire little chronic impediments in their
decidedly dirty little speech,--or, by means of little hooks through the
little smalls-of-their-backs, circumgyrate from little _churruck_-posts
for the edification of infatuated little crowds and the honor of horrid
little goddesses; where plucky little widows perform their little
suttees for defunct little husbands, grilling on little funeral piles;
where mangy little Pariah dogs defile the little dinners of little
high-caste folks, by stealing hungry little sniffs from sacred little
pots; where omnivorous little adjutant-birds gobble up little glass
bottles, and bones, and little dead cats, and little old slippers, and
bits of little bricks, in front of little shops in little bazaars; where
vociferous little _circars_ are driving little bargains with obese
little _banyans_, and consequential little _chowkedars_--that is,
policemen--are bullying inoffensive little poor people, and calling them
_sooa-logue_,--that is, pigs;--where--where, in fine, everything in
heathen human-nature happens _butcha_, and the very fables with which
the little story-tellers entertain the little loafers on the corners of
the little streets, are full of _little_ giants and _little_ dwarfs. Let
us pursue the little idea, and talk _butcha_ to the end of this chapter.
When, in Calcutta, you have smitten the dry rock of your lonely life
with the magic rod of connubial love, and that well-spring of pleasure,
a new baby, has leaped up in the midst of your wilderness of exile, the
demonstration, if any, with which your servants will receive the glad
tidings, will depend wholly on the "denomination of the imbecile
offspring," as our eleëmosynary widow, Mrs. Diana Theodosia Comfort
Green, would call it. If it happen to be only a girl, there will be a
trace of pity in the silent salaam with which the grim _durwan_ salutes
you as you roll into your _palkee_ at the gate to proceed to the
_godowns_ where they are weighing the saltpetre and the gunny bags.
As he touches his forehead with his joined palms, he thinks of the
difference that color makes to the babivorous crocodiles of Ganges.
Perhaps your gray-beard circar, privileged by virtue of high caste
and faithful service, will take upon himself to condole with you:
"_Khodabund_" he will say, "better luck next time; Heaven is not always
with one's paternal hopes; let us trust that my lord may live to say it
might have been worse; let us pray that the _baba's_ bridal necklace may
be as gay as rubies and as light as lilies, and that she may die before
her husband."
But if to the existing number of your _suntoshums_--the jewels that
hang on the Mem Sahib's bosom--a man-child is added, ah, then there is
merry-making in the verandas, and happy salaaming on the stairs; and in
the fulness of his Hindoo Sary-Gampness, which counts the Sahib blessed
that hath "his quiver full of sich," he says, _Ap-ki kullejee kaisa
burri ho-jaga! Khodá rukho ki beebi-ka kullejee bhee itni burri
hoga,--Gurreeb-purwan!_ "How large my lord's liver is about to grow!
God grant to the Mem Sahib, my exalted lady, a liver likewise large,--O
favored protector of the poor!" The happiness and honors which should
follow upon the birth of a male child being figuratively comprehended in
that enlargement of the liver whence comes the good digestion for which
alone life is worth the living.
Many and grievous perils do environ baby-life by the Ganges,--perils of
_dry_ nurses, perils by wolves, perils by crocodiles, perils by the Evil
Eye, perils by kidnappers, perils by cobras, perils by devils.
You are living at one of the up-country stations, where the freer air of
the jungle imparts to babes and sucklings a voracious appetite. Besides
your own _dhye_, brought from Calcutta, there is not another wet-nurse
to be had, for love or money. Immediately Dhye strikes for higher wages.
The Baba Sahib, she says, has defiled her rice; yesterday he put
his foot into her curry; to-day he washes the monkey's tail in her
consecrated lotah. What shall she do? she has lost caste; the presents
to the Brahmins, that her reinstatement will cost her, will consume all
her earnings from the beginning. _Gurreeb-purwan_, O munificent and
merciful! what shall she do? She strikes for higher wages.--But you are
hard-hearted and hard-headed; you will not pay,--by Gunga, not another
pice! by Latchtmee, not one cowry more!--Oh, then she will leave; with
a heavy heart she will turn her back on the blessed baby; she will pour
dust upon her head before the Mem Sahib, at whose door her disgrace
shall lie, and she will return to her kindred.--Not she! the durwan,
grim and incorruptible, has his orders; she cannot pass the gate. Oho!
then immediately she dries up; no "fount," and Baby famishing. You try
ass's milk; it does not agree with Baby; besides, it costs a rupee a
pint. You try a goat; she does not agree with Baby, for she butts him
treacherously, and, leaping over his prostrate body, scampers, like
Leigh Hunt's pig in Smithfield Market, up all manner of figurative
streets. Then you send for Dhye, and say, "Milk, or I shave your head!"
Milk or death! And, lo, a miracle!--the "fount" again!--Baby is saved.
What was, then, the conjuration and the mighty magic? In the folds
of her _saree_ the _dhye_ conceals leaves of _chambeli_, the Indian
jessamine, roots of _dhallapee_, the jungle radish. She chews the
_chambeli_, and hungry Baby, struggling for the "fount," is insulted
with apples of Sodom; she swallows a portion of _dhallapee_, and he is
regaled as with the melting melons of Ceylon.
* * * * *
Some fine afternoon your _ayah_ takes your little Johnny to stroll by
the river's bank,--to watch the green budgerows, as they glide, pulled
by singing _dandees_ (so the boatmen of Ganges are called) up to
Patna,--to watch the brown corpses, as they float silently down from
Benares. At night the ayah returns, wringing her hands. Where is your
merry darling? She knows not. _O Khodabund_, go ask the evil spirits! O
Sahib, go cry unto Gunga,--go accuse the greedy river, and say to the
envious waters, "Give back my boy!" She had left him sitting on a stone,
she says, counting the sailing corpses, while she went to find him a
blue-jay's nest among the rocks; when she returned to the stone,--no
Jonnee Sahib! "My golden image, who hath snatched him away? He that
skipped and hummed like a singing-top, where is he gone?"--A month after
that, your dandees capture a crocodile, and from his heathen maw recover
a familiar coral necklace with an inscription on the clasp,--"To Johnny,
on his birth-day." A pair of little silver bangles, whose jocund
jingling had once been happy household music to some poor Hindoo mother,
have kept the necklace company.
* * * * *
Over against the gate of our compound the Baboo's walks are bright with
roses, and ixoras, and the creeping nagatallis; the Baboo's park is
shady with banians, and fragrant with sandal-trees, and imposing with
tall peepuls, and cool with sparkling fountains; and Chinna Tumbe, the
Little Brother, the brown apple of the Baboo's eye, plays among the
bamboos by the tank, just within the gate, and pelts the gold-fishes
with mango-seeds. Presently comes along a pleasant peddler, all the way
from Cabool, with a pretty bushy-tailed kitten of Persia in the hollow
of his arm, and a cunning little mungooz cracking nuts on his shoulder.
A score of tiny silver bells tinkle from a silken cord around Chinna
Tumbe's loins, and the silver whistle with which he calls his cockatoos
is suspended from his neck by a chain of gold. So the pleasant peddler
all the way from Cabool greets Chinna Tumbe merrily, saying, "See my
pretty kitten, that knows a hundred tricks! and see my brave mungooz,
that can kill cobras in fair fight! My Persian kitten for your silver
bells, Chinna Tumbe, and my cunning mungooz for your golden chain!" And
Chinna Tumbe laughs, and claps his hands, and dances for delight, and
all his silver bells jingle gleefully. And the pleasant peddler all the
way from Cabool says, "Step without the gate, Little Brother, if you
would see my pretty kitten play tricks; if you would stroke my cunning
mungooz, step without the gate; for I dare not pass within, lest my
lord, the Baboo of many lacs, should be angry." So Chinna Tumbe steps
out into the road, and the pleasant peddler all the way from Cabool sets
the Persian kitten on the ground, and rattles off some strange words,
that sound very funnily to the Little Brother; and immediately the
Persian kitten begins to run round after its bushy tail, faster and
faster, faster and faster, a ring of yellow light. And Chinna Tumbe
claps his hands, and cries, _Wah, wah!_ and he dances for delight, and
all his silver bells jingle gleefully. So the pleasant peddler addresses
other strange and funny words to the ring of yellow light, and instantly
it stands still, and quivers its bushy tail, and pants. Then the peddler
speaks to the cunning mungooz, which immediately leaps to the ground,
and sitting quite erect, with its broad tail curled over its back, like
a marabout feather, holds its paws together in the quaint manner of a
squirrel, and looks attentive. More of the peddler's funny conjuration,
and up springs the mungooz into the air, like a Birman's wicker
football, and, alighting on the kitten's back, clings close and fast.
Away fly kitten and mungooz,--away from the gate,--away from the Baboo's
walks, bright with ixoras and creeping nagatallis,--away from the
Baboo's park, shady with banians, and fragrant with sandal-trees, and
imposing with tall peepuls, and cool with sparkling fountains,--away
from the Baboo's home, away from the Baboo's heart, bereft thenceforth
forever! For Chinna Tumbe follows fast, crying, _Wah, wah!_ and clapping
his hands, and jingling gleefully all his silver bells,--follows across
the road, and through the bamboo hedge, and into the darkness and the
danger of the jungle; and the pleasant peddler all the way from Cabool
goes smiling after,--but, as he goes, what is it that he draws from
the breast of his dusty _coortee_? Only a slender, smooth cord, with a
slip-knot at the end of it.
Within the twelvemonth, in a stony nullah, hard by a clump of crooked
saul-trees, a mile away from the Baboo's gate, some jackals brought to
light the bones of a little child; and the deep grave from which they
dug them with their sharp, busy claws, bore marks of the mystic pick-axe
of Thuggee. But there were no tinkling bells, no chain of gold, no
silver whistle; and the cockatoos and the goldfishes knew Chinna Tumbe
no more.
When a name was bestowed on the Little Brother, the Brahmins wrote a
score of pretty words in rice, and set over each a lamp freshly trimmed,
and the name whose light burned brightest, with happy augury, was
"Chinna Tumbe." And when they had likewise inscribed the day of his
birth, and the name of his natal star, the proud and happy Baboo cried,
with a loud voice, three times, "Chinna Tumbe," and all the Brahmins
stretched forth their hands and pronounced _Asowadam_,--benediction.
Then they performed _arati_ about the child's head, to avert the Evil
Eye, describing mystic circles with lamps of rice-paste set on copper
salvers, with many pious incantations. But, spite of all, the Evil Eye
overtook Chinna Tumbe, when the pleasant peddler came all the way from
Cabool, with his bushy-tailed kitten, and his mungooz cracking nuts.
They do say the ghost of Chinna Tumbe walks,--that always at midnight,
when the Indian nightingale fills the Baboo's banian topes with her
lugubrious song, and the weird ulus hoot from the peepul tops, a child,
girt with silver bells, and followed by a Persian kitten and a mungooz,
shakes the Baboo's gate, blows upon a silver whistle, and cries, so
piteously, "Ayah! Ayah!"
* * * * *
At Hurdwar, in the great fair, among jugglers and tumblers, horse-tamers
and snake-charmers, fakirs and pilgrims, I saw a small boy possessed
of a devil,--an authentic devil, as of yore, meet for miraculous
driving-out. In the midst of dire din, heathenish and
horrible,--dissonant jangle of zogees' bells, brain-rending blasts from
Brahmins' shells, strepent howling of opium-drunk devotees, delirious
pounding of tom-toms, brazen clangor of gongs,--a child of seven years,
that might, unpossessed, have been beautiful, sat under the shed of
a sort of curiosity-shop, among bangles and armlets, mouthpieces
for pipes, leaden idols, and Brahminical cords, and made infernal
faces,--his mouth foaming epileptically, his hair dishevelled and matted
with sudden sweat, his eyes blood-shot, his whole aspect diabolic. And
on the ground before the miserable lad were set dishes of rice mixed
with blood, carcasses of rams and cocks, handfuls of red flowers, and
ragged locks of human hair, wherewith the more miserable people sought
to appease the fell _bhuta_ that had set up his throne in that fair
soul. _Sack bat?_ It was even so. And as the possessed made spasmy fists
with his feet, clinching his toes strangely, and grinned, with his chin
between his knees, I solemnly wished for the presence of One who might
cry with the voice of authority, as erst in the land of the Gadarenes,
"Come out of the lad, thou unclean spirit!"
At the Hurdwar fair pretty little naked girls are exposed for sale, and
in their soft brown innocence appeal at once to the purity of your mind
and the tenderness of your heart. They come from Cashmere with the
shawls, or from Cabool with the kittens, or from the Punjaub with the
arms and shields.
* * * * *
Very quaint are the little Miriams, Ruths, and Hannahs of the Jewish
houses in Bombay,--with their full trousers of blue satin and gold,
their boyish Fez caps of spangled red velvet, bound round with
party-colored turbans, their chin-bands of pearls, their coin chains,
their great gold bangles, and the jingling tassels of their long plaits.
Less interesting, because formal and inanimate, even to sulkiness,
are the prim little Parsee maidens, who often wear an "exercised"
expression, of a settled sort, as though they were weary of reflecting
on the hollowness of the world, and how their dolls are stuffed with
sawdust, and that Dakhma, the Tower of Silence, is the end of all
things.
Then there are the regimental _babalogue_, the soldiers' children,
sturdiest and toughest of Anglo-Indian urchins,--affording, in their
brown cheeks and crisp muscles and boisterous ways, a consoling contrast
to the oh-call-it-pale-not-fairness, and the frailness, and premature
pensiveness of the little Civil Service.
And there is the half-caste child, the lisping chee-chee, or Eurasian,
grandiloquently so called, much given to sentimental minstrelsy,
juvenile polkas, early coquetry, and early beer, hot curries, loud
clothes, bad English, and fast pertness. I never think of them without
recalling a precocious ballad-screamer of eight years who was flourished
indispensably at every chee-chee hop in Chandernagore:
"O lay me in a little pit,
With a marvle thtone to cover it,
And keearve thereon a turkle-dove,
That the world may know I died for love!"