learned pundits of the scientific bureaus of the Indian government
as to whether Everest is really the king of the mountains. Other
peaks in the group have their advocates, and over in Cashmere
are several which lift their heads nearly as high as 30,000 feet,
but few of them have been accurately measured, and the height of
none can be determined with exactness. Mount Godwin, in Cashmere,
is very near the height of Everest, and many claim that Kinchinjunga
is even higher.
Darjeeling is a sanitarium of the greatest benefit to the people
of India. The town is made up chiefly of hotels, hospitals and
summer bungalows belonging to the mercantile class of Calcutta.
Few officials except military officers ever go there. The official
society follows the viceroy to Simla, where the summer is always
gay, but those who seek health and rest only and are fond of
nature prefer Darjeeling. The hotels are good, there are plenty of
boarding houses, there are hospitals for all sorts of infirmities,
and perhaps there is no other place in the world with such an
ideal climate within a day's travel of the tropics. The hotels,
villas, boarding houses, hospitals and asylums are scattered all
over the hillside without regularity of arrangement. Wherever a
level spot has been found some kind of a house has been erected,
usually without any architectural taste, and the common use of
corrugated iron for building material has almost spoiled the
looks of the place. There is plenty of timber, and the great
mountains are built of stone, so that there is no excuse for the
atrocious structures that have been erected there.
Everybody who comes is expected to get up at half-past 3 in the
morning in order to see the sun rise. Everything is arranged
by the managers of the hotel. They have fixed the sunrise at
that hour in order to compel their guests to make the greatest
possible effort to see it because they will thus remember the
incident, and the experience will remain longer in their memory.
They give you a cup of coffee and a roll, and, if you insist
upon it, you can get an egg, although the cook is not inclined
to be obliging at that hour in the morning. They put you in a
sort of sedan chair called a "dandy," and you are carried by
four men seven miles up the mountains to a point 12,000 feet
above the sea. From there you can look upon the most impressive
spectacle that human eye has ever witnessed, the rising of the sun
over an amphitheater surrounded by the highest group of peaks on
the globe. Their snow-covered summits are illuminated gradually,
beginning at the top, as if a searchlight were slowly turned upon
them. Mount Everest stands in the center, but is so much farther
away that it does not seem so much higher than the rest.
There is little mountain climbing in India compared with the
Alps, because the distances and the difficulties are so great.
A Boston gentleman and his wife made the ascent of Mount Everest
in 1904, and it is claimed that they went higher than anyone
had ever gone before.
Darjeeling is not a large town, but it is filled with interesting
people, and on Sunday a market is held in the principal bazaar
which is declared to be the most picturesque and fascinating
in all India. Throngs of natives in quaint costumes come from
all parts of the country around, representatives of tribes which
do not often stray so far away from their homes. They come from
Nepaul, Thibet, Sikkim and the surrounding countries, and bring
articles of home manufacture to exchange for "store goods." The
features of the people are unmistakable testimony of their Mongolian
origin. They are short of stature, with broad, flat faces, high
cheek bones and bright, smiling eyes wide apart. The men grow no
beards, but have long pigtails of coarse coal-black hair. The
women are sturdy, good-natured and unembarrassed; they are adorned
with a great quantity of jewelry, chiefly of silver, but often
of gold. They wear circlets around their heads made of coral,
turquoise, amber, agate, jade or other precious stones, with five
or six necklaces and enormous girdles of the same material. Huge
ear rings, four or five inches long, pull down the lobes of their
ears. Their wrists are heavy with bracelets, their limbs with
anklets, and their fingers are half hidden with rings. The entire
fortune of a family is usually invested in personal adornments
for the women members. They find this much safer than savings
banks.
The attention of the world has recently been attracted in that
direction because of an unusual and very significant movement
of the Indian government, which, in the winter of 1904, took
advantage of the embarrassments of Russia in the farther East,
and sent a military expedition over the northern border on the
pretext of escorting a diplomatic mission. Colonel Younghusband
was sent as an envoy extraordinary--very extraordinary--for,
with 2,500 British soldiers, he was instructed to make a treaty
of commerce and good will with the Grand Lama of Thibet, and his
orders were to stay at Lhassa until the treaty was negotiated
and as much longer as was necessary to compel the Thibetans to
respect its terms and carry out its stipulations. That means the
permanent occupation of Lhassa by a British army and the opening
of an unknown and mysterious region to trade.
Thibet is the unknown, mysterious country of the world, a land
of desert and mountains inhabited by a primitive and bigoted
people, who have for many years been under the protection of
China, and paid tribute to the emperor until the late war with
Japan in 1895. After the result of that conflict became known
they seemed to lose their respect for and confidence in their
protectors and have sent no envoys or money to Peking since.
We know very little about Thibet. Foreigners are not permitted
to enter the country, and only a few venturesome explorers have
endured the hardships and faced the dangers of a visit to that
forbidden land. Indeed, it is so perilous an undertaking that
a skeptical public frequently takes the liberty to doubt the
statements of the men who have gone there. But all agree that it
is the hermit of nations, and its people are under the control of
cruel and ignorant Buddhist priests, who endeavor to prevent them
from acquiring any modern customs or ideas. One of the objects of
Colonel Younghusband's expedition is to change this situation
and persuade the ignorant and bigoted ecclesiastics who govern
Thibet to open their gates and admit foreign merchants and foreign
merchandise into that benighted country. There is considerable
commerce, however. Parties of Thibetan traders are continually
coming across the frontier into Darjeeling with all sorts of
native products and may be seen in the market that is held every
Sunday morning and during the weekdays in the bazaars of the city.
After selling their goods they buy cottons, drugs, groceries,
hardware and other European goods and take them back into their
own country; but foreigners are not allowed to pass the line,
and practically all of the trade of Thibet is monopolized by
the Chinese, who sell the natives large quantities of cotton
fabrics and other imported merchandise as well as tea, silk and
other Chinese goods. This trade is supposed to be worth many
millions of dollars, and the ability of India to furnish the
tea and of England to furnish the manufactured goods that the
inhabitants of Thibet may need is considered ample reason for
sending the Younghusband expedition into that country. But there
are other reasons quite as important.
Lying between Thibet and India is the independent state of Nepal,
or Nepaul, the home of the Gurkhas, one of the finest fighting
races in the world, and there are eighteen full regiments of
them in the Indian army. The Gurkhas are a mountain people,
industrious, temperate, hardy, brave, loyal, honest, and without
sense of fear. They are the main dependence of the Indian government
among the native troops. Nepal has its own government and the
people are proud of their independence. While they are entirely
friendly to Great Britain and have treaties with India under
which the latter extends a protectorate over the province and
enters into an offensive and defensive alliance, the Maharaja
permits no British adviser to take part in his government and
receives a representative of the viceroy only in the capacity of
envoy or minister plenipotentiary. The latter dare not interfere
with the administration of the government and never presumes
to tender his advice to the native rulers unless it is asked.
His duties are chiefly to keep the viceroy at Calcutta informed
as to what is going on in the Nepal province and to cultivate
the good will of the officials and the people.
There has never been a census of Nepal and the population has been
variously estimated from 2,000,000 to 5,000,000. It is probably
near the latter figure. The people are mostly engaged in raising
cattle, sheep and goats and growing wheat, barley and other grains
in the valleys. The principal exports, which amount to about
$8,000,000 a year, are wool, hides and grain, and the imports,
which amount to about $5,000,000, are cotton goods and other
wearing apparel, iron and steel, cutlery and other manufactured
merchandise.
The people of Nepal profess the Hindu faith and have close relations
with the Brahmins at Benares, which is the Rome, or the Mecca, of
Brahminism. They sometimes in the past have beep bold enough to
defy British authority, and, for example, protected Nana Sahib,
the leader of the mutiny of 1857, and gave him an asylum when he
fled from British vengeance. However amicable the relations between
Nepal and the British government, the latter is scrupulously careful
not to furnish any excuse for complaint or controversy, because
a collision with this powerful people would not only result in
the loss of the finest corps in the Indian army, but would make
it extremely unpleasant for the people of Assam, Bengal, Oudh
and the Punjab, which provinces lie next on the south.
One hundred years ago an army from Nepal invaded Thibet and sacked
an important town. The Thibetans appealed to China, which had not
yet lost its military vigor, and sent an army to invade Nepal.
It came within eighteen miles of Gurkha, the capital, when the
Nepals proposed a parley, paid a heavy indemnity and entered into
a treaty of permanent peace, promising never to invade Thibet
again. That was the last heroic act of the Chinese government,
and then, in compliance with the terms of the treaty, all the
passes through the Himalaya Mountains between the two countries
were permanently closed by common consent, and in many cases
were walled up with masonry, adding an artificial barrier to
the natural wall. It was also agreed that there should be no
communication across the border and that the inhabitants of both
provinces would remain upon their own sides. This prohibition
has been enforced until to-day, and has not been violated except
by Buddhist priests and monks and a few venturesome explorers.
No Englishman may even now enter Nepal or pass from Nepal into
Thibet without permission from the authorities of both governments.
Mindful of the aggressive policy of Russia, which controls Turkestan,
the country north of Thibet, the British government some years ago
sent an envoy named McCauley to Lhassa, with the permission of
the Chinese government, to open commercial relations with Thibet
and find another market for the tea of Assam and the manufactured
merchandise of India. But he was unable to do anything. He could
not induce the priests, or lamas, who control the government,
to negotiate with him. They would not respond to his advances
and gave him plainly to understand that they did not care to
improve their relations with India. Immediately after his departure
the Thibetans began to fortify the passes over the mountains,
and invaded the little province of Sikkim, which also adjoins
Thibet. The British sent up troops and forbade the continuance
of the work. The Thibetans withdrew to the interior and agreed to
make a commercial treaty and open their market to Indian goods,
promising to send a plenipotentiary to Calcutta for that purpose
within six months; but he has never appeared, and frequent reminders
from the British have passed without notice.
When Lord Curzon came to India he determined to reverse the policy
of indifference which had been pursued by Lord Elgin, his
predecessor. The opening of Thibet to Indian trade has been one
of the principal features of his administrative programme. In
1900 he sent to Lhassa an ambassador in the person of Colonel
Younghusband, a distinguished Asiatic traveler, who speaks the
language of Thibet, to talk things over and persuade the Dailai
Lama, as the chief ruler of Thibet is called, to carry out his
promise about the treaties. The Grand Lama refused to receive
Colonel Younghusband, and would have nothing whatever to do with
him, rejecting his overtures without explanation and treating
his messages with contempt.
While England was suffering the worst of the disasters of the
recent war in South Africa the Russian government sent a secret
embassy to Lhassa, carrying rich presents and large sums of money
to the Grand Lamal for the ostensible purpose of securing permission
to construct a branch from its Siberian Railway to Lhassa across
Chinese Turkestan. The Grand Lama afterward sent an embassy to
return the visit at St. Petersburg, which was received with great
honors and presented with rich gifts. The Grand Lama, in recognition
of these attentions, conferred upon the czar the title of "Lord and
Guardian of the Gifts of Faith." It is the supreme Buddhist honor,
and while the title is empty, it is particularly significant in
this case, because it implies protection. It is believed that a
secret treaty was made under which Russia promised to guarantee
the independence of Thibet and protect that government against
invasion in exchange for the privilege of constructing a railway
line through its territory. The Thibetans are supposed to have
accepted these terms because of their fear of China. Until 1895
Thibet was a province of the Chinese Empire, and paid tribute to
the emperor every year, but since the war with Japan the Grand
Lama has sent no messenger to Peking, has paid no tribute and
has ignored the Chinese representative at Lhassa. The priests
postponed negotiations on the pretext that it was necessary to
consult Peking, and promised to send a mission to Calcutta within
six months, but never have done so. In the meantime there has
been continual friction on the border; the Indian authorities
have repeatedly reminded the Grand Lama of his promise and its
postponement, but he has stubbornly refused to communicate with
them, and has even returned their communications unopened.
When the secret relations between Russia and Thibet were discovered
the Chinese authorities were naturally indignant and the Indian
authorities were alarmed. After a conference China granted permission
for England to use whatever methods it thought best to bring the
Grand Lama to terms. Thereupon Colonel Younghusband was sent to
Lhassa again. The Grand Lama again refused to see him, declined
to appoint an official to confer with him and returned his
credentials unopened, and used other means to show his indifference
and contempt for India and England.
When Younghusband returned to Calcutta and reported the failure
of his mission and the insults offered him Lord Curzon decided
that the time had come to act, and as soon as preparations could
be made Colonel Younghusband started back to Lhassa escorted
by 2,500 armed men and carrying provisions for two years. He
was instructed to avoid collisions, to make friends with the
people, to establish permanent posts on the line of march wherever
he thought necessary and to remain at Lhassa until he secured
a treaty opening the markets of Thibet to British merchants.
The treaty is made, and by its terms the Thibetans are to pay
England an indemnity of $3,750,000 to cover the cost of the
expedition. Until the indemnity is paid the Indian troops will
continue to occupy the Churubi Valley which leads to Lhassa.
Lord Curzon did not dispatch this expedition and undertake this
strategic movement without considering the present situation of
Russia. The czar took occasion to engage in negotiations not
only with Thibet, but with Afghanistan also, at the very moment
when England was suffering her most serious disasters and
embarrassments of recent history, and is getting tit for tat.
Before Colonel Younghusband's expedition was dispatched the British
ambassador at St. Petersburg was instructed to inquire if the
Russian government had any relations with Thibet or any interests
there, and was officially informed that it had not, and hence
the etiquette of the situation had been complied with and Lord
Curzon was perfectly free to act.
XXVII
BENARES, THE SACRED CITY
No one can realize what an awful religion Brahminism is until
he visits Benares, the most sacred city of India, upon the banks
of the Ganges, the most sacred river, more holy to more millions
of human souls than Mecca to the Moslem, Rome to the Catholic
or Jerusalem to the Jew. This marvelous city it so holy that
death upon its soil is equivalent to life eternal. It is the
gate to paradise, the abundant entrance to everlasting happiness,
and its blessings are comprehensive enough to include all races,
all religions and all castes. It is not necessary to be a Brahmin
or to worship Siva or Krishna or any other of the Hindu gods,
nor even to believe in them. Their grace is sufficient to carry
unbelievers to the Hindu heavens provided they die within the
area inclosed by a boulevard encircling this city.
There are in Benares 2,000 temples and innumerable shrines, 25,000
Brahmin priests, monks, fakirs and ascetics, and it is visited
annually by more than half a million pilgrims--a larger number than
may be counted at Mecca or Jerusalem, or at any other of the sacred
cities of the world. There are more than 500,000 idols established
in permanent places for worship in Benares, representing every
variety of god in the Hindu pantheon, so that all the pilgrims
who go there may find consolation and some object of worship.
There are twenty-eight sacred cows at the central temples, and
perhaps 500 more at other places of worship throughout the city;
the trees around the temple gardens swarm with sacred monkeys
and apes; there are twenty-two places where the dead are burned,
and the air of the city is always darkened during the daytime by
columns of smoke that rise from the funeral pyres. No other city,
not even London, has so many beggars, religious and otherwise;
nowhere can so many pitiful spectacles of deformity and distress be
seen; nowhere is such gross and repulsive obscenity and sensuality
practiced--and all in the name of religion; nowhere are such sordid
deceptions imposed upon superstitious believers, and nowhere
such gloomy, absurd and preposterous methods used for consoling
sinners and escaping the results of sin. Although Benares in
these respects is the most interesting city in India, and one of
the most interesting in the world, it is also the most filthy,
repulsive and forbidding. Few people care to remain there more
than a day or two, although to the ethnologist and other students,
to artists and people in search of the picturesque, it has more
to offer than can be found elsewhere in the Indian Empire.
Benares is as old as Egypt. It is one of the oldest cities in
existence. It was already famous when Rome was founded; even
when Joshua and his trumpeters were surrounding the walls of
Jericho. It is the hope of every believer in Brahminism to visit
Benares and wash away his sins in the water of the sacred Ganges;
the greatest blessing he can enjoy is to die there; hence, the
palaces, temples, and lodging-houses which line the river banks
are filled with the aged relatives and friends of their owners
and with pilgrims who have come from all parts of India to wait
with ecstatic patience the summons of the angel of death in order
to go straight to heaven.
Nothing in all their religion is so dear to devout Hindus as the
Ganges. The mysterious cavern in the Himalayas which is supposed
to be the source of the river is the most sacred place on earth.
It is the fifth head of Siva, and for 1,600 miles to its delta
every inch of the banks is haunted with gods and demons, and has
been the scene of events bearing upon the faith of two-thirds
of the people of India. The most pious act, and one that counts
more than any other to the credit of a human soul on the great
books above, is to make a pilgrimage from the source to the mouth
of the Ganges. If you have read Kipling's story of "Kim," you will
remember the anxiety of the old lama to find this holy stream, and
to follow its banks. Pilgrims to Benares and other cities upon
the Ganges secure bottles of the precious water for themselves
and send them to friends and kindred in foreign lands. No river
in all the world is so worshiped, and to die upon its sacred
banks and to have one's body burned and his ashes borne away
into oblivion upon its tawny current is the highest aspiration
of hundreds of millions of people.
The Ganges is equally sacred to the Buddhist, and Benares is
associated more closely with the career of Buddha than any other
city. Twenty-five hundred years ago Buddha preached his first
sermon there, and for ten centuries or more it was the headquarters
of Buddhism. Buddha selected it as the center of his missionary
work. He secured the support of its scholars, teachers and
philosophers, and from there sent forth missionaries to China,
Japan, Burmah, Ceylon, the Malay Peninsula, Siam, Thibet, and
other countries until half the human race accepted him as divine,
his teachings as the law of God, and Benares as the fountain
of that faith. It is a tradition that one of the wise men who
followed the Star of Bethlehem to the Child that was cradled in
a manger was a learned pundit from Benares, and it is certainly
true that the doctors of theology who have lived and taught in the
temples and monasteries there have exercised a greater influence
upon a larger number of men than those of any other city that
ever existed. But in these modern days Benares is wholly given
over to ignorance, superstition, vice, filth and idolatry. The
pure and lofty doctrines of Buddha are no longer taught. The
"Well of Knowledge" is a filthy, putrid hole filled with slime
and rotting vegetation. Buddhism has been swept out of India
altogether, and Brahminism is taught and practiced there in its
most repulsive and depraved forms.
[Illustration: A HINDU ASCETIC--BENARES]
Occasionally some reformer appears who endeavors to rebuke the
depravity and appeals to the thinking members of the Brahmin
sect to restore the ancient philosophy and morality of their
fathers. I saw such an one at Benares. He lives in a bare and
comfortless temple surrounded by a garden; is entirely dependent
upon charity; every mouthful of food that he eats is brought to
him by his disciples. He spends his entire time, day and night,
in contemplation; he sleeps when he is exhausted; he eats when
food is handed him, and if he is neglected he starves until some
thoughtful person brings him a bowl of rice or curry. He wears
nothing but a single shirt of cotton; he owns nothing in all
the world except a brass bowl, which is used for both food and
drink, and a few relics of his predecessor and teacher whom he
lived with and served and whose mantle fell upon him. To those
who come to his temple with serious minds and anxious to know
the truth, he talks freely, and his pride is gratified by having
his visitors inscribe their names in a large book which is kept
for that purpose. And contributions of money are very acceptable
because they enable his disciples to circulate his thoughts and
discourses in printed form. I noticed that most of the names in
the visitors' book were those of Americans, and it occurred to
me that his contemplations must be seriously disturbed by having
so many of them intrude upon him. But he assured me that he was
delighted to see every stranger who called; that it gratified him
to be able to explain to American travelers the true principles of
Brahminism and the correct doctrines of that sect. This was the
more important, he said, because nearly every foreigner formed
his impressions of Brahminism by what he saw and heard among
the pilgrims about the temples.