AMONG THE HINDOOS.
If we go farther back into antiquity, it is India which first arrests
and longest absorbs our attention--India, fecund mother of tradition,
the source of almost all the rites, beliefs, and observances of the
ancient nations. When we visit the collections of the India House, the
British Museum, the Mission Rooms, or turn over the startling pages of
"The Hindu Pantheon" of Major Edward Moor, we are ready to exclaim, Here
_all_ is caricature! This brazen image, for example, of a partly naked
man with an elephant's head and trunk, seated upon a huge rat, and
feeding himself with his trunk from a bowl held in his hand--surely this
is caricature. By no means. It is an image of the most popular of the
Hindoo deities--Ganesa, god of prudence and policy, invoked at the
beginning of all enterprises, and over whose head is written the sacred
word _Aum_, never uttered by a Hindoo except with awe and veneration. If
a man begins to build a house, he calls on Ganesa, and sets up an image
of him near the spot. Mile-stones are fashioned in his likeness, and he
serves as the road-side god, even if the pious peasants who place him
where two roads cross can only afford the rudest resemblance to an
elephant's head daubed with oil and red ochre. Rude as it may be, a
passing traveler will occasionally hang upon it a wreath of flowers.
Major Moor gives us a hideous picture of Maha-Kala, with huge mouth and
enormous protruding tongue, squat, naked, upon the ground, and holding
up a large sword. This preposterous figure is still farther removed from
the burlesque. It is the Hindoo mode of representing _Eternity_, whose
vast insatiate maw devours men, cities, kingdoms, and will at length
swallow the universe; then all the crowd of inferior deities, and
finally _itself_, leaving only _Brahm_, the One Eternal, to inhabit the
infinite void. Hundreds of such revolting crudities meet the eye in
every extensive Indian collection.
But the element of fun and burlesque is not wanting in the Hindoo
Pantheon. Krishna is the jolly Bacchus, the Don Juan, of the Indian
deities. Behold him on his travels mounted upon an elephant, which is
formed of the bodies of the obliging damsels who accompany him!
[Illustration: The Hindoo God Krishna on his Travels.]
There is no end to the tales related of the mischievous, jovial,
irrepressible Krishna. The ladies who go with him everywhere, a
countless multitude, are so accommodating as to wreathe and twist
themselves into the form of any creature he may wish to ride; sometimes
into that of a horse, sometimes into that of a bird.
[Illustration: Krishna's Attendants assuming the Form of a Bird.]
In other pictures he appears riding in a palanquin, which is likewise
composed of girls, and the bearers are girls also. In the course of one
adventure, being in great danger from the wrath of his numerous enemies,
he created an enormous snake, in whose vast interior his flocks, his
herds, his followers, and himself found refuge. At a festival held in
his honor, which was attended by a great number of damsels, he suddenly
appeared in the midst of the company and proposed a dance; and, that
each of them might be provided with a partner, he divided himself into
as many complete and captivating Krishnas as there were ladies. One
summer, when he was passing the hot season on the sea-shore with his
retinue of ladies, his musical comrade, Nareda, hinted to him that,
since he had such a multitude of wives, it would be no great stretch of
generosity to spare one to a poor musician who had no wife at all.
"Court any one you please," said the merry god. So Nareda went wooing
from house to house, but in every house he found Krishna perfectly
domesticated, the ever-attentive husband, and the lady quite sure that
she had him all to herself. Nareda continued his quest until he had
visited precisely sixteen thousand and eight houses, in each and all of
which, at one and the same time, Krishna was the established lord. Then
he gave it up. One of the pictures which illustrate the endless
biography of this entertaining deity represents him going through the
ceremony of marriage with a bear, both squatting upon a carpet in the
prescribed attitude, the bear grinning satisfaction, two bears in
attendance standing on their hind-feet, and two priests blessing the
union. This picture is more spirited, is more like art, than any other
yet copied from Hindoo originals.
[Illustration: Krishna in his Palanquin.]
To this day, as the missionaries report, the people of India are
excessively addicted to every kind of jesting which is within their
capacity, and delight especially in all the monstrous comicalities of
their mythology. No matter how serious an impression a speaker may have
made upon a village group, let him but use a word in a manner which
suggests a ludicrous image or ridiculous pun, and the assembly at once
breaks up in laughter, not to be gathered again.
In late years, those of the inhabitants of India who read the language
of their conquerors have had an opportunity of becoming acquainted with
their humor. Wherever a hundred English officers are gathered, there is
the possibility of an illustrated comic periodical, and, accordingly, we
find one such in several of the garrisoned places held by the English in
remote parts of the world. Calcutta, as the _Athenaeum_ informs us, "has
its _Punch_, or Indian _Charivari_," which is not unworthy of its
English namesake.