produce objects of high art when those which cost less labor and
money can be sold for the same prices. As long as the foreign
demand for Indian goods continues this tendency to cheapen the
product will be noticed.
By the late census it appears that there were 2,590 publications
in the native Indian languages during the year 1900, as against
2,178 during the previous year; 1,895 were books and 695 pamphlets;
1,616 of the books were original works and the remainder were
translations; 832 were in the Bengali language and the remainder
were divided among eighty-eight other languages, ninety-nine being
in Sanskrit and 103 in Persian. Included in this list were poetry,
fiction, works of travel, religious books, history, biography,
philosophy and several on political economy. Among the Persian
publications I noticed "A History of Russian Rule in Asia";
among the translations are Lord Lytton's "Last Days of Pompeii,"
several popular novels, and several of Shapespeare's plays. There
was a history of England and a series of biographies entitled
"Lives of Great Women," including those of Queen Victoria, Queen
Elizabeth, Maria Theresa, Marie Antoinette, and the mother of
Napoleon I.
Since 1902 there have been several movements among the Hindus
and Mohammedan citizens of India looking to the advancement of
their races and coreligionists. At Bombay, in December, 1903,
was held a Mohammedan educational conference, and a committee
was appointed to draw up a plan of permanent organization for the
purpose of awakening among the members of that sect an interest
in the advancement of women and the education of the masses.
Representatives were present from nearly all of the provinces
in which there is a Mohammedan population, and resolutions were
passed declaring that, in the opinion of the conference, schools
should be established throughout India to educate young women
and children of both sexes in strict conformity with the customs
and doctrines of Islam. It was asserted that such educational
facilities are absolutely necessary to keep the children out
of the public and Christian schools. The most notable feature
of the conference, which marks an entirely new departure in the
history of Islam, was the presence, unveiled and in modern dress,
of Miss Sorabjee, a highly educated and accomplished member of
that sect, who appeared daily upon the platform, participated in
the debates and made a lengthy address upon the emancipation of
women. She declared that in a population of 60,000,000 Mohammedans
only 4,000 girls are now attending school, which, she said, is
a menace to civilization, a detriment to Islam and a disgrace
to the members of that church. I was informed that this is the
first time a Mohammedan woman ever made an address before a public
assembly of Mohammedans, because the Koran does not permit women
to appear in public and custom requires them to conceal their
faces. Miss Sorabjee was, nevertheless, received with respect,
and made a decidedly favorable impression upon the assembly, which
was composed of men of culture and influence and true believers
in the teachings of the Prophet.
Another notable feature of the conference was the unanimous
recognition of the growing influence of Christianity in the Indian
Empire, and the opinion that in order to preserve their faith
the followers of Islam must imitate its example. Progressive
Mohammedans have become convinced that not only their men but
their women will insist upon having an education, and will seek
it in the Christian schools if facilities are not furnished by
members of their own religion. Aga Khan, a Mohammedan prince
who presided over the gathering, explained that the conference
was called in obedience to the spirit of progress, and as an
indication that the Mohammedan section of the community was alive
to the disadvantages under which the members of the faith were
laboring, and to the need of educated men as leaders in society
and commerce.
Mr. Tyabji, one of the judges of the Supreme Court of the Bombay
presidency, took even more advanced ground and declared that
the schools proposed by the conference must be far in advance
of those heretofore provided by Mohammedans, and teach English,
French, German and the modern sciences as well as the maxims of the
Koran. By that remark he uncovered the great defect of Mohammedan
education, which is purely religious, with the exception of a single
institution in northern India to which I refer in a previous
chapter. The conservative element of the Moslem population holds
that a knowledge of reading, writing and arithmetic is sufficient
for members of that sect; hence in most of their schools they teach
nothing except the Koran, which is the book of books, the law of
laws, and contains knowledge sufficient for all mankind under
all circumstances. Some progressive Mohammedans go a little too
far in the other direction and would ignore all Arabic literature
and leave all ecclesiastical affairs to the priests. The Arabic
and Persian languages are rich in learning, poetry and general
literature. But they are not cultivated, and are almost unknown
to the Moslem priests, who are the school teachers of that faith
to-day. They have left the revival of Arabic belles-lettres entirely
to foreigners, and confine themselves to the Koran and the
commentaries that have been prepared upon it. It is asserted
that one can learn more of Arabian and Persian literature to-day
in London, Oxford, Paris, Berlin or Zurich than is known in
Constantinople or Cairo or any other Mohammedan city, and that
Professor Max Muller of Oxford has done more to encourage its
study than all the Mohammedan priests and professors in existence.
At almost the same time, although in another place, several of
the leading thinkers and scholars of the Brahmin caste were
discussing the same subject with the same purpose and from the
same point of view. They have been endeavoring to inaugurate
what they are pleased to call "the Renaissance of the Hindus."
And there is also an active movement for a revival of Buddhism,
although thus far it is confined to Japan and Ceylon. Buddhism
is practically extinct in India. At the Hindu conference several
thoughtful people expressed the view that something must be done
to revive the vitality of that religion, because it is the faith of
nearly 200,000,000 souls in India alone, over whom it is gradually
losing its influence, because of the vigorous propaganda of the
Christians. It was not admitted that the Hindus are adopting the
Christian religion, but merely that they are losing confidence
in their own and drifting toward materialism.
It is universally recognized among educated Brahmins that India is
approaching a great religious crisis which demands the attention of
all who are interested in the welfare of the people. The movement
is slow, but quite obvious to all who are watching the development
of reforms that have been proposed for the last fifteen or twenty
years. It is based upon the fact that Brahminism, as taught at
the temples of India to-day, does not satisfy or even appeal to
educated men. At the same time it is insisted that true Hinduism
has the same ideals and the same spiritual advantages that are
offered by Christianity.
Experienced missionaries tell me there is a distinct tendency
among educated Hindus to give up the old line of defense against
the Christian religion, and, admitting the ethical purity and truth
of the teachings of Christ, to attack some particular doctrine, some
dogma over which Christians themselves have been in controversy,
to elaborate the criticisms of Ingersoll and Bradlaugh, and to
call attention to the failure of the Christians to realize their
own ideals. This is very significant, but at the same time there
is little encouragement or satisfaction in studying and tracing
the various reforms that have been started from time to time
among the Hindus. They have been many and frequent. New teachers
are constantly arising, new organizations are being formed, and
revivals of ancient precepts are occurring every year, but they
do not endure. They are confined to limited circles, and none has
yet penetrated to any extent into the dense mass of superstition,
idolatry and ignorance which lays its offerings at the altars of
cruel and obscene gods.
At one of Lady Curzon's receptions, among other notable men and
women, I met Sir Nepundra Narayan Bhuf Bahadur, Maharaja of
Cutch-Behar, and his wife, one of the few native women who dress
in modern attire and appear in public like their European sisters.
She is the daughter of one of the most famous of Indian reformers.
Early in the last century a scholar and patriot named Ramohun
Roy, becoming dissatisfied with the teachings and habits of the
Brahmins, renounced his ancestral religion and organized what was
called "The Truth Seeking Society" for the purpose of reviving pure
Hinduism. He proclaimed a theistic creed, taught the existence of
one God, and the sin of idolatry. He declared for the emancipation
of women, for charity to the poor and helpless, for the purity of
life, and, altogether, his sermons and lectures are very similar
to the teachings of the Unitarians in the United States. He was
called the Theodore Parker of India, and attracted many followers.
But before he had accomplished much he died, and his mantle fell
upon Keshab Chunder Sen, a man of great learning, talent and
worth, the son of one of the most conservative families of the
Brahmin caste, born and brought up in a fetid atmosphere of
superstition and idolatry. While attending school at Calcutta he
was thrown in with European teachers and associates and, being
of an inquisitive mind, undertook the study of religions other
than his own. It naturally came about that he heard of the "Truth
Seeking Society" and ultimately joined it, and by his force of
character and ability became one of its leaders. Early in his
career he concluded that the greatest weakness among the people
of India is their treatment of their women, and he organized what
was known as "The Indian Reform Association" for the purpose
of promoting the education of women, preventing child marriage,
relieving widows from their forlorn ostracism and securing for
the daughters of Indian families the same legal and property
rights that are enjoyed by the sons. The movement became quite
popular and he gained considerable reputation. He went to England
and Germany and delivered lectures and published several books.
His agitation accomplished some practical results, and he secured
the passage of several laws of importance establishing the civil
rights of wives, widows and daughters.
In 1884 his daughter, a very brilliant and beautiful woman, married
the Maharaja of Cutch-Behar, who was converted, joined the movement
and became an active member of the society. Like many others of
the princely families of India, he lays claim to divine origin,
the founder of his dynasty having been a god. In 1772, the ruling
rajah, having been attacked by more powerful neighbors, applied
for protection to Warren Hastings, then governor of Bengal, and
acknowledged subjection to the East Indian Company. The province
of Cutch-Behar was thus one of the first to be absorbed by the
British Empire, but it has ever since been governed by the native
prince, who nominally owns all of the land in his territory and
receives taxes in lieu of rent from his tenants, who are his
subjects. His territory has a population of 650,000, of whom
427,000 are Hindus and 174,539 are Mohammedans. He is assisted
in his government by a resident English adviser, appointed by
the viceroy, and really has very little to do. He has a personal
allowance of $150,000 for the support of himself and family, and
inherited from his ancestors one of the most rare and valuable
collections of jewels in India.
The present maharaja was born in 1863, educated in England, attained
his majority in 1883, and has two sons, one of whom is a member
of the Viceroy's Corps of Imperial Cadets, and the other acts as
his father's secretary. The maharaja is considered one of the
handsomest men in India, as he is one of the most accomplished
and progressive, and his wife is as famous for her intellectual
as for her physical attractions.
The late Jamsetjee Nusserwanji Tata of Bombay, a typical Parsee,
amassed an enormous fortune as a merchant and manufacturer, won an
enviable reputation for integrity, enterprise and public spirit,
and for several years before his lamented death in 1904, was
permitted to enjoy the gratification that men of his kind deserve
after a long career of activity and usefulness. Having provided
in a most ample manner for his own future wants, and intrusting
his enormous business responsibilities to his sons, he devoted
the rest of his life to travel and other pleasures, and a large
portion of his fortune to benevolence. I have been frequently
told that Mr. Tata in his time was the most enterprising man in
India. He spent enormous sums in experiments for the development
of the resources and industries of his country; some of which
failed, but others have been eminently successful. He developed
the cotton industry, perhaps more than any other man, and improved
the staple by importing plants and seeds from Egypt. He was largely
engaged in growing, preserving and exporting the fruits of India
in order to furnish another occupation for the country people,
and in a thorough exploration of its iron deposits, building
furnaces, smelters, and mills with the hope of being able to
supply the local markets with home made steel and iron. There
is plenty of ore, plenty of coal and labor, and Mr. Tata was
willing to pay the expense and do the work of a pioneer in order
that his fellow countrymen may enjoy the wealth that lies dormant
in their mountains.
He had cotton mills and other manufactories in various parts
of India, but the greater part of his fortune was invested in
the industries and real estate of his own province of Bombay.
His residence was one of the largest and most beautiful palaces
in that city, filled with works of art and trophies of travel. He
was the owner of several of the finest business blocks, introduced
modern apartment houses into Bombay, and built the modern hotel to
which I have several times alluded. He supported several young
Parsees in the technical schools and colleges of England, Germany
and the United States. For years no less than six such students
were selected annually to be educated at his expense, not only
because he took a personal interest in the welfare of his
co-religionists, but because he believed that young engineers,
chemists, electricians and other practical scientists were needed
to develop the resources of India.
Mr. Tata's latest act of benevolence, shortly before his death,
was to place in the hands of a board of trustees, of whom the
chancellor of the University of Bombay is chairman, real estate
and securities valued at more than 3,500,000 of rupees, which is
equivalent to about $1,250,000, the income from which, amounting
to 120,000 rupees, or about $40,000 in our money, a year, is
to be used for the establishment and perpetual maintenance of
the Indian Research University, a name selected by a conference
called together by the viceroy. This conference was composed of
four directors of public instruction for the different provinces
of India, the home secretary of the imperial government, the
surgeon general of the army and several other gentlemen eminent
in educational and public affairs. After a careful examination
of all conditions they decided to locate the institution at the
city of Bangalore, in the province of Mysore, in southern India,
where the local government, as an inducement, donated 300 acres of
land upon an eminence in a very favorable situation, and offered
a contribution of 18,000 rupees a year toward the payment of the
expenses, provided the money is used in such a way as to benefit
the people of that province. It has also offered to defray a
considerable part of the cost of erecting the necessary buildings.
XXVI
THE HIMALAYAS AND THE INVASION OF THIBET
Darjeeling is one of the most favored spots on earth, the loveliest
place in India, and the favorite resort and sanitarium of the citizen
element as distinguished from military and official circles. It
is a hard journey, both going and coming, and a traveler gets
impatient when he finds that it takes him from four o'clock in
the afternoon of one day until nearly two o'clock of the next to
make a journey of 246 miles. He leaves Calcutta with the thinnest
clothing he can buy, but when he arrives there he is glad that
he brought his overcoat and gloves, and pulls a second blanket
over himself at night. At the same time it is not so cold in
Darjeeling as one would expect from the altitude of 7,400 feet
above the sea, and the latitude, which is about 27 degrees 50
minutes. You travel from four o'clock till seven upon a railway
of ordinary gauge, cross the Ganges on a steamboat for an hour,
taking your dinner while afloat; change into a three-foot gauge
train until half-past four in the morning, when you are routed
out, given a cup of coffee and a roll, and transferred to a baby
carriage on wheels which crawls up the foothills of the Himalayas
at the rate of six miles an hour.
The track is only two feet gauge, with forty-pound rails, which
have been laid upon the ancient highway over which the caravans
between China and India have passed for thirty centuries. It
winds in and out of gorges and defiles and at several points
the engineers have had to cut a foothold for it on the edges of
tremendous precipices. It doubles on itself repeatedly, describes
the letter S and the letter Z and the figure 8, and zigzags about
so recklessly that the engineer puts his locomotive first at one
end of the train and then at the other. Englishmen who write
books on India assert that it is the grandest railway journey in
the world, but we can show them several quite as picturesque and
attractive in our own beloved Rocky Mountains. The only advantage
they have over us there is the superior height of the mountains
and the superior size of the trees. But you must remember that
our country is young yet, and India is one of the oldest nations
in the world.
The first few miles of track lie in a dense jungle, with vegetation
of truly tropical luxuriance. Cane stalks grow fifty and sixty feet
high, the grass is fifteen feet deep, beautiful bamboo trees, whose
foliage is as fine as feathers, and palms which have plumage like
a peacock and a bird of paradise, lift their proud and haughty
heads above an impenetrable growth which, the guides tell us, is
the home of tigers, rhinoceroses, panthers, bears, wild hogs,
buffaloes, deer and all sorts of beasts, and snakes as big around
as a barrel. Fern trees are lovely, and are found here in their
greatest glory, but nevertheless we have foliage at home, and
they are no more beautiful than our elms, oaks, and other trees
that I might mention.
This is a great tea country, and the mountain sides have been
cleared in many places for plantations. A tea planter in India
is a heavy swell. He may be no more brilliant or intellectual
or virtuous or handsome, but the fact that he grows tea instead
of potatoes or wheat or sugar gives him a higher standing in the
social scale. I was asking an explanation of this phenomenon
from a very wise man the other day, and, although he insisted
that his attention had never been called to it before, he was
willing to admit that it was so, and he explained it on the theory
that so many sons of dukes and earls and lords and the swagger
set in England had come to India to engage in tea growing that
they had created a caste of their own; so that whenever a man
said he was a tea planter the public immediately assumed that
his father belonged to the nobility and treated him accordingly.
The tea planters usually live in good style. They have beautiful
bungalows, gardens, lawns and groves, and although they complain
of the depression of the industry, there is no evidence that they
suffer for want of the necessities of life. In the Darjeeling
district are about two hundred large plantations, employing from
one to two thousand laborers each, and producing about 12,000,000
pounds a year. Most of the product is shipped to England.
They carry you up the mountains in tiny little cars seating six
persons and open all around so that the passengers can take in all
there is to see, and they have plenty of scenery. The trains are
not allowed to run faster than six miles an hour as a precaution
against accidents, which allows plenty of time to look about,
and they twist around so that you can see things from various
points of view. And if a passenger gets impatient or is in a
hurry he can jump out of the car and walk ahead.
There is little doubt that the views from Darjeeling include the
most majestic assemblage of mountains on the earth's surface.
For a distance of 200 miles east and west there arise a succession
of peaks not less than 22,000 feet high, and several of them
more than 25,000. In the immediate vicinity and within sight
are the highest mountains in the world. Everest, the king of
mountains, which measures 29,200 feet, is only eighty miles distant;
Kinchinjunga, which is forty-five miles distant, is 28,156 feet
high, and also, in the immediate vicinity, are the following:
Janu 25,304 Kabru 24,015
Chumalari 23,943 Pauhanri 23,186
Donkia 23,176 Baudim 22,017
Narsingh 22,146 Kanhenjhan 22,500
Chomaino 23,300
Between these mountain peaks is an almost continuous succession
of snow fields and glaciers beyond all comparison. The snow line
is 17,000 feet in midsummer, and in winter comes down to 12,000 and
15,000 feet, and when that altitude is reached snow is continuous
and impassable. This is the highest and the most extensive of
all mountain ranges. Along the northern frontier of India for
2,000 miles it stands like a vast hedge, the most formidable
natural boundary in the world, nowhere lower than 17,000 feet,
and impassable for armies the entire distance, with the exception
of two gateways: Jeylup Pass here and at the Khyber Pass of which
I told you in a previous chapter. There are passes over the snow,
but their elevation is seldom less than 16,000 feet; the average
elevation of the watershed exceeds 18,000 feet, and the great
plateau of Thibet, which lies upon the other side, is between
15,000 and 16,000 feet above the sea.
This plateau, which is sometimes called the "Roof of the World,"
is 700 miles long and 500 miles wide, and could not be crossed
by an army not only because of the winds and the cold, but also
because there is very little water, no fuel and no supplies. No
invading force could possibly enter India from the north if these
passes were defended, because the inhospitable climate of Thibet
would not sustain an army, and the enormous distance and altitude
would make the transportation of supplies for any considerable
force practically impossible. During the summer the plateau is
covered with flocks and herds, but when the cold weather comes
on the shepherds drive them into the foothills, where they find
shelter. The width of the main range of the Himalayas will average
about 500 miles between its northern and southern foot-hills; it
embraces every possible kind of climate, vegetation and natural
products, and is a vast reservoir from which four of the greatest
rivers of the world flow across the plains of India, carrying
the drainage from the melting snows, and without this reservoir
northern India would be a hopeless and dreary desert.