It is an early morning near the end of March. A light breeze caresses
with its velvety hand the sleepy faces of the pilgrims; and the
intoxicating perfume of tuberoses mingles with the pungent odors of the
bazaar. Crowds of barefooted Brahman women, stately and well-formed,
direct their steps, like the biblical Rachel, to the well, with brass
water pots bright as gold upon their heads. On our way lie numerous
sacred tanks, filled with stagnant water, in which Hindus of both sexes
perform their prescribed morning ablutions. Under the hedge of a garden
somebody's tame mongoose is devouring the head of a cobra. The headless
body of the snake convulsively, but harmlessly, beats against the thin
flanks of the little animal, which regards these vain efforts with an
evident delight. Side by side with this group of animals is a human
figure; a naked mali (gardener), offering betel and salt to a monstrous
stone idol of Shiva, with the view of pacifying the wrath of the
"Destroyer," excited by the death of the cobra, which is one of his
favourite servants. A few steps before reaching the railway station, we
meet a modest Catholic procession, consisting of a few newly converted
pariahs and some of the native Portuguese. Under a baldachin is a
litter, on which swings to and fro a dusky Madonna dressed after the
fashion of the native goddesses, with a ring in her nose. In her arms
she carries the holy Babe, clad in yellow pyjamas and a red Brah-manical
turban. "Hari, hari, devaki!" ("Glory to the holy Virgin!") exclaim the
converts, unconscious of any difference between the Devaki, mother of
Krishna, and the Catholic Madonna. All they know is that, excluded from
the temples by the Brahmans on account of their not belonging to any
of the Hindu castes, they are admitted sometimes into the Christian
pagodas, thanks to the "padris," a name adopted from the Portuguese
padre, and applied indiscriminately to the missionaries of every
European sect.
At last, our gharis--native two-wheeled vehicles drawn by a pair of
strong bullocks--arrived at the station. English employes open wide
their eyes at the sight of white-faced people travelling about the town
in gilded Hindu chariots. But we are true Americans, and we have come
hither to study, not Europe, but India and her products on the spot.
If the tourist casts a glance on the shore opposite to the port of
Bombay, he will see a dark blue mass rising like a wall between himself
and the horizon. This is Parbul, a flat-topped mountain 2,250 feet high.
Its right slope leans on two sharp rocks covered with woods. The highest
of them, Mataran, is the object of our trip. From Bombay to Narel, a
station situated at the foot of this mountain, we are to travel four
hours by railway, though, as the crow flies, the distance is not more
than twelve miles. The railroad wanders round the foot of the most
charming little hills, skirts hundreds of pretty lakes, and pierces with
more than twenty tunnels the very heart of the rocky ghats.
We were accompanied by three Hindu friends. Two of them once belonged to
a high caste, but were excommunicated from their pagoda for association
and friendship with us, unworthy foreigners. At the station our party
was joined by two more natives, with whom we had been in correspondence
for many a year. All were members of our Society, reformers of the Young
India school, enemies of Brahmans, castes, aid prejudices, and were to
be our fellow-travelers and visit with us the annual fair at the temple
festivities of Karli, stopping on the way at Mataran and Khanduli.
One was a Brahman from Poona, the second a moodeliar (landowner)
from Madras, the third a Singalese from Kegalla, the fourth a Bengali
Zemindar, and the fifth a gigantic Rajput, whom we had known for a long
time by the name of Gulab-Lal-Sing, and had called simply Gulab-Sing. I
shall dwell upon his personality more than on any of the others, because
the most wonderful and diverse stories were in circulation about this
strange man. It was asserted that he belonged to the sect of Raj-Yogis,
and was an initiate of the mysteries of magic, alchemy, and various
other occult sciences of India. He was rich and independent, and rumour
did not dare to suspect him of deception, the more so because, though
quite full of these sciences, he never uttered a word about them in
public, and carefully concealed his knowledge from all except a few
friends.
He was an independent Takur from Rajistan, a province the name of which
means the land of kings. Takurs are, almost without exception, descended
from the Surya (sun), and are accordingly called Suryavansa. They are
prouder than any other nation in the world. They have a proverb, "The
dirt of the earth cannot stick to the rays of the sun." They do not
despise any sect, except the Brahmans, and honor only the bards who sing
their military achievements. Of the latter Colonel Tod writes somewhat
as follows,* "The magnificence and luxury of the Rajput courts in the
early periods of history were truly wonderful, even when due allowance
is made for the poetical license of the bards. From the earliest times
Northern India was a wealthy country, and it was precisely here that
was situated the richest satrapy of Darius. At all events, this country
abounded in those most striking events which furnish history with her
richest materials. In Rajistan every small kingdom had its Thermopylae,
and every little town has produced its Leonidas. But the veil of the
centuries hides from posterity events that the pen of the historian
might have bequeathed to the everlasting admiration of the nations.
Somnath might have appeared as a rival of Delphi, the treasures of Hind
might outweigh the riches of the King of Lydia, while compared with the
army of the brothers Pandu, that of Xerxes would seem an inconsiderable
handful of men, worthy only to rank in the second place."
* In nearly every instance the passages quoted from various authorities
have been retranslated from the Russian. As the time and labor needful
for verification would he too great, the sense only of these passages is
given here. They do not pretend to be textual.--Translator
England did not disarm the Rajputs, as she did the rest of the Indian
nations, so Gulab-Sing came accompanied by vassals and shield-bearers.
Possessing an inexhaustible knowledge of legends, and being evidently
well acquainted with the antiquities of his country, Gulab-Sing proved
to be the most interesting of our companions.
"There, against the blue sky," said Gulab-Lal-Sing, "you behold the
majestic Bhao Mallin. That deserted spot was once the abode of a holy
hermit; now it is visited yearly by crowds of pilgrims. According to
popular belief the most wonderful things happen there--miracles. At the
top of the mountain, two thousand feet above the level of the sea, is
the platform of a fortress. Behind it rises another rock two hundred and
seventy feet in height, and at the very summit of this peak are to be
found the ruins of a still more ancient fortress, which for seventy-five
years served as a shelter for this hermit. Whence he obtained his food
will for ever remain a mystery. Some think he ate the roots of wild
plants, but upon this barren rock there is no vegetation. The only mode
of ascent of this perpendicular mountain consists of a rope, and holes,
just big enough to receive the toes of a man, cut out of the living
rock. One would think such a pathway accessible only to acrobats and
monkeys. Surely fanaticism must provide wings for the Hindus, for no
accident has ever happened to any of them. Unfortunately, about forty
years ago, a party of Englishmen conceived the unhappy thought of
exploring the ruins, but a strong gust of wind arose and carried them
over the precipice. After this, General Dickinson gave orders for the
destruction of all means of communication with the upper fortress, and
the lower one, once the cause of so many losses and so much bloodshed,
is now entirely deserted, and serves only as a shelter for eagles and
tigers."
Listening to these tales of olden times, I could not help comparing the
past with the present. What a difference!
"Kali-Yug!" cry old Hindus with grim despair. "Who can strive against
the Age of Darkness?"
This fatalism, the certainty that nothing good can be expected now, the
conviction that even the powerful god Shiva himself can neither appear
nor help them are all deeply rooted in the minds of the old generation.
As for the younger men, they receive their education in high schools and
universities, learn by heart Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, Darwin
and the German philosophers, and entirely lose all respect, not only for
their own religion, but for every other in the world.
The young "educated" Hindus are materialists almost without exception,
and often achieve the last limits of Atheism. They seldom hope to attain
to anything better than a situation as "chief mate of the junior clerk,"
as we say in Russia, and either become sycophants, disgusting flatterers
of their present lords, or, which is still worse, or at any rate
sillier, begin to edit a newspaper full of cheap liberalism, which
gradually develops into a revolutionary organ.
But all this is only en passant. Compared with the mysterious and
grandiose past of India, the ancient Aryavarta, her present is a
natural Indian ink background, the black shadow of a bright picture, the
inevitable evil in the cycle of every nation. India has become decrepit
and has fallen down, like a huge memorial of antiquity, prostrate and
broken to pieces. But the most insignificant of these fragments will for
ever remain a treasure for the archeologist and the artist, and, in
the course of time, may even afford a clue to the philosopher and the
psychologist. "Ancient Hindus built like giants and finished their work
like goldsmiths," says Archbishop Heber, describing his travel in India.
In his description of the Taj-Mahal of Agra, that veritable eighth
wonder of the world, he calls it "a poem in marble." He might have added
that it is difficult to find in India a ruin, in the least state of
preservation, that cannot speak, more eloquently than whole volumes, of
the past of India, her religious aspirations, her beliefs and hopes.
There is not a country of antiquity, not even excluding the Egypt of
the Pharaohs, where the development of the subjective ideal into
its demonstration by an objective symbol has been expressed more
graphically, more skillfully, and artistically, than in India. The whole
pantheism of the Vedanta is contained in the symbol of the bisexual
deity Ardhanari. It is surrounded by the double triangle, known in India
under the name of the sign of Vishnu. By his side lie a lion, a bull,
and an eagle. In his hands there rests a full moon, which is reflected
in the waters at his feet. The Vedanta has taught for thousands of years
what some of the German philosophers began to preach at the end of last
century and the beginning of this one, namely, that everything objective
in the world, as well as the world itself, is no more than an illusion,
a Maya, a phantom created by our imagination, and as unreal as the
reflection of the moon upon the surface of the waters. The phenomenal
world, as well as the subjectivity of our conception concerning our
Egos, are nothing but, as it were, a mirage. The true sage will never
submit to the temptations of illusion. He is well aware that man will
attain to self-knowledge, and become a real Ego, only after the entire
union of the personal fragment with the All, thus becoming an immutable,
infinite, universal Brahma. Accordingly, he considers the whole cycle of
birth, life, old age, and death as the sole product of imagination.
Generally speaking, Indian philosophy, split up as it is into numerous
metaphysical teachings, possesses, when united to Indian ontological
doctrines, such a well developed logic, such a wonderfully refined
psychology, that it might well take the first rank when contrasted with
the schools, ancient and modern, idealist or positivist, and eclipse
them all in turn. That positivism expounded by Lewis, that makes each
particular hair on the heads of Oxford theologians stand on end,
is ridiculous child's play compared with the atomistic school of
Vaisheshika, with its world divided, like a chessboard, into six
categories of everlasting atoms, nine substances, twenty-four qualities,
and five motions. And, however difficult, and even impossible may
seem the exact representation of all these abstract ideas, idealistic,
pantheistic, and, sometimes, purely material, in the condensed shape of
allegorical symbols, India, nevertheless, has known how to express all
these teachings more or less successfully. She has immortalized them in
her ugly, four-headed idols, in the geometrical, complicated forms of
her temples, and even in the entangled lines and spots on the foreheads
of her sectaries.
We were discussing this and other topics with our Hindu
fellow-travellers when a Catholic padre, a teacher in the Jesuit College
of St. Xavier in Bombay, entered our carriage at one of the stations.
Soon he could contain himself no longer, and joined in our conversation.
Smiling and rubbing his hands, he said that he was curious to know
on the strength of what sophistry our companions could find anything
resembling a philosophical explanation "in the fundamental idea of the
four faces of this ugly Shiva, crowned with snakes," pointing with his
finger to the idol at the entrance to a pagoda.
"It is very simple," answered the Bengali Babu. "You see that its four
faces are turned towards the four cardinal points, South, North, West,
and East--but all these faces are on one body and belong to one god."
"Would you mind explaining first the philosophical idea of the four
faces and eight hands of your Shiva," interrupted the padre.
"With great pleasure. Thinking that our great Rudra (the Vedic name
for this god) is omnipresent, we represent him with his face turned
simultaneously in all directions. Eight hands indicate his omnipotence,
and his single body serves to remind us that he is One, though he is
everywhere, and nobody can avoid his all-seeing eye, or his chastising
hand."
The padre was going to say something when the train stopped; we had
arrived at Narel.
It is hardly twenty-five years since, for the first time, a white man
ascended Mataran, a huge mass of various kinds of trap rock, for the
most part crystalline in form. Though quite near to Bombay, and only
a few miles from Khandala, the summer residence of the Europeans, the
threatening heights of this giant were long considered inaccessible. On
the north, its smooth, almost vertical face rises 2,450 feet over the
valley of the river Pen, and, further on, numberless separate rocks
and hillocks, covered with thick vegetation, and divided by valleys and
precipices, rise up to the clouds. In 1854, the railway pierced one of
the sides of Mataran, and now has reached the foot of the last mountain,
stopping at Narel, where, not long ago, there was nothing but a
precipice. From Narel to the upper plateau is but eight miles, which you
may travel on a pony, or in an open or closed palanquin, as you choose.
Considering that we arrived at Narel about six in the evening, this
course was not very tempting. Civilization has done much with inanimate
nature, but, in spite of all its despotism, it has not yet been able to
conquer tigers and snakes. Tigers, no doubt, are banished to the
more remote jungles, but all hinds of snakes, especially cobras and
coralillos, which last by preference inhabit trees, still abound in
the forests of Mataran as in days of old, and wage a regular guerilla
warfare against the invaders. Woe betide the belated pedestrian, or even
horseman, if he happens to pass under a tree which forms the ambuscade
of a coralillo snake! Cobras and other reptiles seldom attack men, and
will generally try to avoid them, unless accidentally trodden upon,
but these guerilleros of the forest, the tree serpents, lie in wait for
their victims. As soon as the head of a man comes under the branch which
shelters the coralillo, this enemy of man, coiling its tail round
the branch, dives down into space with all the length of is body, and
strikes with its fangs at the man's forehead. This curious fact was long
considered to be a mere fable, but it has now been verified, and belongs
to the natural history of India. In these cases the natives see in the
snake the envoy of Death, the fulfiller of the will of the bloodthirsty
Kali, the spouse of Shiva.
But evening, after the scorchingly hot day, was so tempting, and held
out to us from the distance such promise of delicious coolness, that we
decided upon risking our fate. In the heart of this wondrous nature one
longs to shake off earthly chains, and unite oneself with the boundless
life, so that death itself has its attractions in India.
Besides, the full moon was about to rise at eight p.m. Three hours'
ascent of the mountain, on such a moonlit, tropical night as would tax
the descriptive powers of the greatest artists, was worth any sacrifice.
Apropos, among the few artists who can fix upon canvas the subtle charm
of a moonlit night in India public opinion begins to name our own V.V.
Vereshtchagin.
Having dined hurriedly in the dak bungalow we asked for our sedan
chairs, and, drawing our roof-like topees over our eyes, we started.
Eight coolies, clad, as usual, in vine-leaves, took possession of each
chair and hurried up the mountain, uttering the shrieks and yells no
true Hindu can dispense with. Each chair was accompanied besides by a
relay of eight more porters. So we were sixty-four, without counting
the Hindus and their servants--an army sufficient to frighten any stray
leopard or jungle tiger, in fact any animal, except our fearless cousins
on the side of our great-grandfather Hanuman. As soon as we turned into
a thicket at the foot of the Mountain, several dozens of these kinsmen
joined our procession. Thanks to the achievements of Rama's ally,
monkeys are sacred in India. The Government, emulating the earlier
wisdom of the East India Company, forbids everyone to molest them, not
only when met with in the forests, which in all justice belong to them,
but even when they invade the city gardens. Leaping from one branch
to another, chattering like magpies, and making the most formidable
grimaces, they followed us all the way, like so many midnight spooks.
Sometimes they hung on the trees in full moonlight, like forest nymphs
of Russian mythology; sometimes they preceded us, awaiting our arrival
at the turns of the road as if showing us the way. They never left us.
One monkey babe alighted on my knees. In a moment the authoress of his
being, jumping without any ceremony over the coolies' shoulders, came to
his rescue, picked him up, and, after making the most ungodly grimace at
me, ran away with him.
"Bandras (monkeys) bring luck with their presence," remarked one of
the Hindus, as if to console me for the loss of my crumpled topee.
"Besides," he added, "seeing them here we may be sure that there is not
a single tiger for ten miles round."
Higher and higher we ascended by the steep winding path, and the forest
grew perceptibly thicker, darker, and more impenetrable. Some of the
thickets were as dark as graves. Passing under hundred-year-old banyans
it was impossible to distinguish one's own finger at the distance of two
inches. It seemed to me that in certain places it would not be possible
to advance without feeling our way, but our coolies never made a false
step, but hastened onwards. Not one of us uttered a word. It was as if
we had agreed to be silent at these moments. We felt as though wrapped
in the heavy veil of dark-ness, and no sound was heard but the short,
irregular breathing of the porters, and the cadence of their quick,
nervous footsteps upon the stony soil of the path. One felt sick at
heart and ashamed of belonging to that human race, one part of which
makes of the other mere beasts of burden. These poor wretches are paid
for their work four annas a day all the year round. Four annas for going
eight miles upwards and eight miles downwards not less than twice a
day; altogether thirty-two miles up and down a mountain 1,500 feet high,
carrying a burden of two hundredweight! However, India is a country
where everything is adjusted to never changing customs, and four annas a
day is the pay for unskilled labor of any kind.
Gradually open spaces and glades became more frequent and the light grew
as intense as by day. Millions of grasshoppers were shrilling in
the forest, filling the air with a metallic throbbing, and flocks of
frightened parrots rushed from tree to tree. Sometimes the thundering,
prolonged roars of tigers rose from the bottom of the precipices thickly
covered with all kinds of vegetation. Shikaris assure us that, on a
quiet night, the roaring of these beasts can be heard for many miles
around. The panorama, lit up, as if by Bengal fires, changed at every
turn. Rivers, fields, forests, and rocks, spread out at our feet over
an enormous distance, moved and trembled, iridescent, in the silvery
moonlight, like the tides of a mirage. The fantastic character of the
pictures made us hold our breath. Our heads grew giddy if, by chance, we
glanced down into the depths by the flickering moonlight. We felt that
the precipice, 2,000 feet deep, was fascinating us. One of our American
fellow travelers, who had begun the voyage on horseback, had to
dismount, afraid of being unable to resist the temptation to dive head
foremost into the abyss.
Several times we met with lonely pedestrians, men and young women,
coming down Mataran on their way home after a day's work. It often
happens that some of them never reach home. The police unconcernedly
report that the missing man has been carried off by a tiger, or killed
by a snake. All is said, and he is soon entirely forgotten. One person,
more or less, out of the two hundred and forty millions who inhabit
India does not matter much! But there exists a very strange superstition
in the Deccan about this mysterious, and only partially explored,
mountain. The natives assert that, in spite of the considerable number
of victims, there has never been found a single skeleton. The corpse,
whether intact or mangled by tigers, is immediately carried away by the
monkeys, who, in the latter case, gather the scattered bones, and bury
them skillfully in deep holes, that no traces ever remain. Englishmen
laugh at this superstition, but the police do not deny the fact of the
entire disappearance of the bodies. When the sides of the mountain were
excavated, in the course of the construction of the railway, separate
bones, with the marks of tigers' teeth upon them, broken bracelets, and
other adornments, were found at an incredible depth from the surface.
The fact of these things being broken showed clearly that they were not
buried by men, because, neither the religion of the Hindus, nor their
greed, would allow them to break and bury silver and gold. Is it
possible, then, that, as amongst men one hand washes the other, so in
the animal kingdom one species conceals the crimes of another?
Having spent the night in a Portuguese inn, woven like an eagle's nest
out of bamboos, and clinging to the almost vertical side of a rock, we
rose at daybreak, and, having visited all the points de vue famed for
their beauty, made our preparations to return to Narel. By daylight
the panorama was still more splendid than by night; volumes would not
suffice to describe it. Had it not been that on three sides the horizon
was shut out by rugged ridges of mountain, the whole of the Deccan
plateau would have appeared before our eyes. Bombay was so distinct that
it seemed quite near to us, and the channel that separates the town from
Salsetta shone like a tiny silvery streak. It winds like a snake on its
way to the port, surrounding Kanari and other islets, which look the
very image of green peas scattered on the white cloth of its bright
waters, and, finally, joins the blinding line of the Indian Ocean in the
extreme distance. On the outer side is the northern Konkan, terminated
by the Tal-Ghats, the needle-like summits of the Jano-Maoli rocks, and,
lastly, the battlemented ridge of Funell, whose bold silhouette stands
out in strong relief against the distant blue of the dim sky, like a
giant's castle in some fairy tale. Further on looms Parbul, whose flat
summit, in the days of old, was the seat of the gods, whence, according
to the legends, Vishnu spoke to mortals. And there below, where the
defile widens into a valley, all covered with huge separate rocks, each
of which is crowded with historical and mythological legends, you may
perceive the dim blue ridge of mountains, still loftier and still more
strangely shaped. That is Khandala, which is overhung by a huge stone
block, known by the name of the Duke's Nose. On the opposite side, under
the very summit of the mountain, is situated Karli, which, according
to the unanimous opinion or archeologists, is the most ancient and best
preserved of Indian cave temples.
One who has traversed the passes of the Caucasus again and again; one
who, from the top of the Cross Mountain, has beheld beneath her feet
thunderstorms and lightnings; who has visited the Alps and the Rigi;
who is well acquainted with the Andes and Cordilleras, and knows
every corner of the Catskills in America, may be allowed, I hope, the
expression of a humble opinion. The Caucasian Mountains, I do not deny,
are more majestic than Ghats of India, and their splendour cannot be
dimmed by comparison with these; but their beauty is of a type, if I may
use this expression. At their sight one experiences true delight, but
at the same time a sensation of awe. One feels like a pigmy before
these Titans of nature. But in India, the Himalayas excepted, mountains
produce quite a different impression. The highest summits of the Deccan,
as well as of the triangular ridge that fringes Northern Hindostan, and
of the Eastern Ghats, do not exceed 3,000 feet. Only in the Ghats of the
Malabar coast, from Cape Comorin to the river Surat, are there heights
of 7,000 feet above the surface of the sea. So that no comparison can
be dawn between these and the hoary headed patriarch Elbruz, or Kasbek,
which exceeds 18,000 feet. The chief and original charm of Indian
mountains wonderfully consists in their capricious shapes. Sometimes
these mountains, or, rather, separate volcanic peaks standing in a row,
form chains; but it is more common to find them scattered, to the great
perplexity of geologists, without visible cause, in places where the
formation seems quite unsuitable. Spacious valleys, surrounded by high
walls of rock, over the very ridge of which passes the railway, are
common. Look below, and it will seem to you that you are gazing upon
the studio of some whimsical Titanic sculptor, filled with half finished
groups, statues, and monuments. Here is a dream-land bird, seated upon
the head of a monster six hundred feet high, spreading its wings
and widely gaping its dragon's mouth; by its side the bust of a man,
surmounted by a helmet, battlemented like the walls of a feudal castle;
there, again, new monsters devouring each other, statues with broken
limbs, disorderly heaps of huge balls, lonely fortresses with loopholes,
ruined towers and bridges. All this scattered and intermixed with
shapes changing incessantly like the dreams of delirium. And the chief
attraction is that nothing here is the result of art, everything is the
pure sport of Nature, which, however, has occasionally been turned to
account by ancient builders. The art of man in India is to be sought
in the interior of the earth, not on its surface. Ancient Hindus seldom
built their temples otherwise than in the bosom of the earth, as
though they were ashamed of their efforts, or did not dare to rival the
sculpture of nature. Having chosen, for instance, a pyramidal rock, or
a cupola shaped hillock like Elephanta, Or Karli, they scraped away
inside, according to the Puranas, for centuries, planning on so grand a
style that no modern architecture has been able to conceive anything
to equal it. Fables (?) about the Cyclops seem truer in India than in
Egypt.
The marvellous railroad from Narel to Khandala reminds one of a similar
line from Genoa up the Apenines. One may be said to travel in the air,
not on land. The railway traverses a region 1,400 feet above Konkan,
and, in some places, while one rail is laid on the sharp edge of the
rock, the other is supported on vaults and arches. The Mali Khindi
viaduct is 163 feet high. For two hours we hastened on between sky and
earth, with abysses on both sides thickly covered with mango trees and
bananas. Truly English engineers are wonderful builders.
The pass of Bhor-Ghat is safely accomplished and we are in Khandala.
Our bungalow here is built on the very edge of a ravine, which nature
herself has carefully concealed under a cover of the most luxuriant
vegetation. Everything is in blossom, and, in this unfathomed recess,
a botanist might find sufficient material to occupy him for a lifetime.
Palms have disappeared; for the most part they grow only near the
sea. Here they are replaced by bananas, mango trees, pipals (ficus
religiosa), fig trees, and thousands of other trees and shrubs, unknown
to such outsiders as ourselves. The Indian flora is too often slandered
and misrepresented as being full of beautiful, but scentless, flowers.
At some seasons this may be true enough, but, as long as jasmines,
the various balsams, white tuberoses, and golden champa (champaka or
frangipani) are in blossom, this statement is far from being true. The
aroma of champa alone is so powerful as to make one almost giddy. For
size, it is the king of flowering trees, and hundreds of them were in
full bloom, just at this time of year, on Mataran and Khandala.
We sat on the verandah, talking and enjoying the surrounding views,
until well-nigh midnight. Everything slept around us.
Khandala is nothing but a big village, situated on the flat top of one
of the mountains of the Sahiadra range, about 2,200 feet above the sea
level. It is surrounded by isolated peaks, as strange in shape as any we
have seen.
One of them, straight before us, on the opposite side of the abyss,
looked exactly like a long, one-storied building, with a flat roof and
a battlemented parapet. The Hindus assert that, somewhere about this
hillock, there exists a secret entrance, leading into vast interior
halls, in fact to a whole subterranean palace, and that there still
exist people who possess the secret of this abode. A holy hermit, Yogi,
and Magus, who had inhabited these caves for "many centuries," imparted
this secret to Sivaji, the celebrated leader of the Mahratta armies.
Like Tanhauser, in Wagner's opera, the unconquerable Sivaji spent seven
years of his youth in this mysterious abode, and therein acquired his
extraordinary strength and valour.
Sivaji is a kind of Indian Ilia Moorometz, though his epoch is much
nearer to our times. He was the hero and the king of the Mahrattas in
the seventeenth century, and the founder of their short-lived empire. It
is to him that India owes the weakening, if not the entire destruction,
of the Mussulman yoke. No taller than an ordinary woman, and with the
hand of a child, he was, nevertheless, possessed of wonderful strength,
which, of course, his compatriots ascribed to sorcery. His sword is
still preserved in a museum, and one cannot help wondering at its size
and weight, and at the hilt, through which only a ten-year-old child
could put his hand. The basis of this hero's fame is the fact that
he, the son of a poor officer in the service of a Mogul emperor, like
another David, slew the Mussulman Goliath, the formidable Afzul Khan.
It was not, however, with a sling that he killed him, he used in this
combat the formidable Mahratti weapon, vaghnakh, consisting of five long
steel nails, as sharp as needles, and very strong. This weapon is worn
on the fingers, and wrestlers use it to tear each other's flesh like
wild animals. The Deccan is full of legends about Sivaji, and even
the English historians mention him with respect. Just as in the fable
respecting Charles V, one of the local Indian traditions asserts that
Sivaji is not dead, but lives secreted in one of the Sahiadra caves.
When the fateful hour strikes (and according to the calculations of the
astrologers the time is not far off) he will reappear, and will bring
freedom to his beloved country.
The learned and artful Brahmans, those Jesuits of India, profit by
the profound superstition of the masses to extort wealth from them,
sometimes to the last cow, the only food giver of a large family.
In the following passage I give a curious example of this. At the end
of July, 1879, this mysterious document appeared in Bombay. I translate
literally, from the Mahratti, the original having been translated into
all the dialects of India, of which there are 273.
"Shri!" (an untranslatable greeting). "Let it be known unto every one
that this epistle, traced in the original in golden letters, came down
from Indra-loka (the heaven of Indra), in the presence of holy Brahmans,
on the altar of the Vishveshvara temple, which is in the sacred town of
Benares.
"Listen and remember, O tribes of Hindustan, Rajis-tan, Punjab, etc.,
etc. On Saturday, the second day of the first half of the month Magha,
1809, of Shalivahan's era" (1887 A.D.), "the eleventh month of the
Hindus, during the Ashwini Nakshatra" (the first of the twenty-seven
constellations on the moon's path), "when the sun enters the sign
Capricorn, and the time of the day will be near the constellation
Pisces, that is to say, exactly one hour and thirty-six minutes after
sunrise, the hour of the end of the Kali-Yug will strike, and the
much desired Satya-Yug will commence" (that is to say, the end of the
Maha-Yug, the great cycle that embraces the four minor Yugas). "This
time Satya-Yug will last 1,100 years. During all this time a man's
lifetime will be 128 years. The days will become longer and will consist
of twenty hours and forty-eight minutes, and the nights of thirteen
hours and twelve minutes, that is to say, instead of twenty-four hours
we shall have exactly thirty-four hours and one minute. The first day
of Satya-Yug will be very important for us, because it is then that will
appear to us our new King with white face and golden hair, who will come
from the far North. He will become the autonomous Lord of India. The
Maya of human unbelief, with all the heresies over which it presides,
will be thrown down to Patala" (sig-nifying at once hell and the
antipodes), "and the Maya of the righteous and pious will abide with
them, and will help them to enjoy life in Mretinloka" (our earth).
"Let it also be known to everyone that, for the dissemination of this
divine document, every separate copy of it will be rewarded by the
forgiveness of as many sins as are generally forgiven when a pious man
sacrifices to a Brahman one hundred cows. As for the disbelievers and
the indifferent, they will be sent to Naraka" (hell). "Copied out and
given, by the slave of Vishnu, Malau Shriram, on Saturday, the 7th
day of the first half of Shravan" (the fifth month of the Hindu year),
"1801, of Shalivalian's era" (that is, 26th July, 1879).
The further career of this ignorant and cunning epistle is not known
to me. Probably the police put a stop to its distribution; this only
concerns the wise administrators. But it splendidly illustrates, from
one side, the credulity of the populace, drowned in superstition, and
from the other the unscrupulousness of the Brahmans.
Concerning the word Patala, which literally means the opposite side,
a recent discovery of Swami Dayanand Saraswati, whom I have already
mentioned in the preceding letters, is interesting, especially if this
discovery can be accepted by philologists, as the facts seem to promise.
Dayanand tries to show that the ancient Aryans knew, and even visited,
America, which in ancient MSS. is called Patala, and out of which
popular fancy constructed, in the course of time, something like the
Greek Hades. He supports his theory by many quotations from the oldest
MSS., especially from the legends about Krishna and his favourite
disciple Arjuna. In the history of the latter it is mentioned that
Arjuna, one of the five Pandavas, descendants of the moon dynasty,
visited Patala on his travels, and there married the widowed daughter of
King Nagual, called Illupl. Comparing the names of father and daughter
we reach the following considerations, which speak strongly in favour of
Dayanand's supposition.
(1) Nagual is the name by which the sorcerers of Mexico, Indians and
aborigines of America, are still designated. Like the Assyrian and
Chaldean Nargals, chiefs of the Magi, the Mexican Nagual unites in his
person the functions of priest and of sorcerer, being served in the
latter capacity by a demon in the shape of some animal, generally a
snake or a crocodile. These Naguals are thought to be the descendants
of Nagua, the king of the snakes. Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg devotes a
considerable amount of space to them in his book about Mexico, and says
that the Naguals are servants of the evil one, who, in his turn, renders
them but a temporary service. In Sanskrit, likewise, snake is Naga,
and the "King of the Nagas" plays an important part in the history of
Buddha; and in the Puranas there exists a tradition that it was Arjuna
who introduced snake worship into Patala. The coincidence, and the
identity of the names are so striking that our scientists really ought
to pay some attention to them.
(2) The Name of Arjuna's wife Illupl is purely old Mexican, and if we
reject the hypothesis of Swami Daya-nand it will be perfectly impossible
to explain the actual existence of this name in Sanskrit manuscripts
long before the Christian era. Of all ancient dialects and languages
it is only in those of the American aborigines that you constantly meet
with such combinations of consonants as pl, tl, etc. They are abundant
especially in the language of the Toltecs, or Nahuatl, whereas, neither
in Sanskrit nor in ancient Greek are they ever found at the end of
a word. Even the words Atlas and Atlantis seem to be foreign to the
etymology of the European languages. Wherever Plato may have found them,
it was not he who invented them. In the Toltec language we find the
root atl, which means water and war, and directly after America was
discovered Columbus found a town called Atlan, at the entrance of the
Bay of Uraga. It is now a poor fishing village called Aclo. Only
in America does one find such names as Itzcoatl, Zempoaltecatl, and
Popocatepetl. To attempt to explain such coincidences by the theory of
blind chance would be too much, consequently, as long as science does
not seek to deny Dayanand's hypothesis, which, as yet, it is unable to
do, we think it reasonable to adopt it, be it only in order to follow
out the axiom "one hypothesis is equal to another." Amongst other things
Dayanand points out that the route that led Arjuna to America five
thousand years ago was by Siberia and Behring's Straits.
It was long past midnight, but we still sat listening to this legend and
others of a similar kind. At length the innkeeper sent a servant to
warn us of the dangers that threatened us if we lingered too long on the
verandah on a moonlit night. The programme of these dangers was divided
into three sections--snakes, beasts of prey, and dacoits. Besides the
cobra and the "rock-snake," the surrounding mountains are full of a kind
of very small mountain snake, called furzen, the most dangerous of
all. Their poison kills with the swiftness of lightning. The moonlight
attracts them, and whole parties of these uninvited guests crawl up to
the verandahs of houses, in order to warm themselves. Here they are more
snug than on the wet ground. The verdant and perfumed abyss below
our verandah happened, too, to be the favorite resort of tigers and
leopards, who come thither to quench their thirst at the broad brook
which runs along the bottom, and then wander until daybreak under the
windows of the bungalow. Lastly, there were the mad dacoits, whose dens
are scattered in mountains inaccessible to the police, who often shoot
Europeans simply to afford themselves the pleasure of sending ad patres
one of the hateful bellatis (foreigners). Three days before our arrival
the wife of a Brahman disappeared, carried off by a tiger, and two
favorite dogs of the commandant were killed by snakes. We declined to
wait for further explanations, but hurried to our rooms. At daybreak we
were to start for Karli, six miles from this place.