"Neither let her take thee with her eyelids."--_The Bible_.
"And making a tinkling with their feet."--_The Bible_.
The bazaars were moving in one solid mass in the direction of, but not
to, the Cow Temple.
For hours the endless streams had moved inch by inch through the narrow
streets lined with shops and gaily painted houses, towards the heart of
India's Holy City.
Young women and old, young men and old, children, fakirs and holy men
pressed patiently forward, impelled and called by some mystic summons
they could not explain.
There was no pushing nor striving, neither was there laughter nor any
kind of merry-making, although a flower garland hung around every neck,
although the multi-coloured raiment was of the best and cleanest and
brightest, and the different marks of the different religious sects
shone as though fresh painted between the eyes and upon the face and
body.
The holy cows walked slowly with the people, hung with garlands and
painted on the face and sides; holding up the traffic as, unafraid,
they snuffled their velvety muzzles in the unguarded baskets of grain,
and pushed their way unconcernedly and by holy right across the human
stream into the Cow Temple as they passed the ever-open door.
There was certainly no pushing nor striving to get one before the
other, but underneath the calm pulsated a certain restrained
excitement, to be read in the light of the thousands of eyes, and the
extraordinary spasmodic, almost uncontrolled, movements of the delicate
dusky hands.
Mothers would suddenly jerk their children up into their arms and press
their little faces against one of the thousands of tiny shrines, where
the gods sit all day and all night behind the bars through which are
thrust offerings of flowers, of food, of jewels.
Men would suddenly strip themselves of all except the loin-cloth and,
casting their clothing at the feet of some holy man, proceed calmly
upon their way. One out of a number of beautiful, fragile girls, with
cast-down painted eyes and half-veiled face, for no apparent reason
would sidle up against some man; rest for one moment against him, and
continue with him upon the road, his arm about her, crushing her body
to his; and the drums throbbed, and the horns screamed in and around
the temple of their goddess.
Yet one did strive, and, heedless of rebuke, did push her way
ruthlessly through the throngs, slipping on the greasy pavement covered
with refuse and cow-dung; sliding, ducking, squirming her way in and
out, breathless and dishevelled, with a simple brown _sari_ slipping
from about her sleek head and pock-marked face.
Her monkey eyes flashed this way and that in search of something or
someone she could not find; her withered hands beat her withered
breast; the sweat streamed down her face until at last the crowd gave
way, and looking upon her as one mentally afflicted, helped her
stumbling passage up to and through the temple gateway.
Priests stood at the entrance to the outer court of the temple. They
did not stand there, as do the ushers in the West, in order to keep the
riff-raff, those humble, poverty-stricken children of God, from
occupying the plush-covered seats in His House; but knowing the
intimate connection between religion and the senses, and the limited
space of the court of sacrifice and the temple itself, they stood there
in order to keep a finger upon the pulse of that mass of humanity's
passions.
The full moon flung her silver on to the stained worn flags of the
roofless court; hundreds, thousands even of tiny wicks in tiny
earthenware saucers flickered in the niches and on the outer edge of
the walls; hundreds of torches flung a smoky veil around the restless
figures passing in and out of the narrow entrance, and over dark heaps
which lay at the foot of the walls and in the corners.
Black heaps which, lay upon dark carpets, heaps big and small which
seemed to move, around which hung an overpowering, sickening stench of
blood.
Heaps revealed when touched by the fluttering drapery of some
worshipper to be the decapitated bodies of goats and bullocks lying in
their blood, and from which would rise the millions of ever-moving
flies which had given them a semblance of life in the torch-light.
Millions of flies, bloated offences, which settle for a second heavily
on your face or arm and fly slowly back to their feasting.
It had been a day of stupendous sacrifice, and the place ran blood.
From the inner temple came the sweet never-stopping clang of a silver
bell, as in one continuous stream the worshippers climbed slowly up the
flight of steps, passed in, struck one note by swinging the tongue of
the bell to announce their arrival to their goddess, and passed out;
while babies of both sexes, naked save for a silver bead upon their
rotund little bellies in the male, or a profusion of tiny bracelets and
a nose-ring in the female, heaped the flower offerings in masses at
Kali's feet.
Kali! Ah! formidable, terrible image graven in stone!
Pictures, highly coloured and blatant reproductions which will shock
your artistic sense, can be bought for a few annas at the native shops
which swarm outside the temple walls; but it is probable, nay, it is
certain that not a single one of the Europeans who may read this book
will ever see the original goddess in all her terror, and all that
inexplicable power with which she holds the Hindu multitudes in the
palms of her black hands.
Black, and crowned and heaped with jewels, she looks down at, or
through, or over you with her slanting fish-shaped eyes. Her small
ears, her flat nose, her arms, her pendant breasts are smothered in
priceless gems; a huge red tongue protruding through the stretched
mouth hangs far down upon the chest, ready to lick up the flames of
sacrificial fires; a magnificent tiara binds the black hair which
streams in masses behind her small distorted body; rows of pearls,
flower garlands, and a string of skulls hang about her short neck; one
hand holds a knife, the other a bleeding head, two are raised in
blessing, while behind her shines a sun of flaming tongues of fire, and
over all is spread an umbrella.
Yet it is not the horror of the repulsive physique hewn in stone which
holds you breathless before her; you know it is stone you are looking
at, just as you know that the Sphinx is stone; but as with the Sphinx
you feel the life of centuries throbbing through the carved monster;
you feel that its breath, which is about you, is the wind which has
swept across the desert places and teeming cities of the East; you feel
that the eyes which are upon you have seen all things; in fact you are
almost mesmerised by the force of ages into falling upon your knees in
worship, before you suddenly wrench yourself violently round to face
the sun outside the open door; and even as you do it involuntarily put
your hands to your neck, upon the nape of which, by the suggestion of
unconfessed fear, you have felt the stealthy, longing, jewelled fingers.
On this night the slanting fish eyes of the goddess seemed to look
through the doorway, and to linger upon the exquisite figure of a child
dancing upon the extreme edge of the terrace between the two flights of
steps.
Dancing!--hardly that, as she stood, her body swaying slightly in the
whirl of her mixed emotions, and totally unconscious of four young men
who, arms entwined, stood below, watching the beauty of her body and
her movements with half-shut eyes.
Her ankle-length, full muslin skirt swung this way and that, as she
moved slightly from her bare, over-slender waist, which accentuated the
wonder of the young bosom out of all proportion in any but an eastern
maid of ten years.
Jewels flashed in her delicate nose and ears, and on her slender
fingers and parted toes, for was she not on the eve of her marriage,
this little maid? Who, finding herself upon this unwonted night, alone
for the first time in her life, had broken purdah, with her senses
strung by days and nights of never-ceasing preparation for her
marriage; during which she had been massaged by skilful, cunning hands;
bathed and perfumed, forced to dance, forced to over-feed; until roused
to a pitch of terrible excitement by drugs and curiosity, and the
religious ecstasy of all around her, she had crept out alone, and into
the temple with the teeming multitude to dance for the glory of her
goddess.
Her little feet made patterns in the dust as she turned slightly, this
child of ten, until her snake-like arms seemed stretched in invitation
to the four pairs of burning eyes fixed upon the virgin beauty of the
little body.
Who noticed in all that crowd when four pairs of hands shot up and
seized her about the knees, lifting her gently down, or who, in the
tumult, heard the cry smothered in the muffling cloth of a white coat
in a distant shadowed corner.
And one dead body more or less in the morning, what does it signify or
matter in a place which reeks of blood?
And just as this happened, and just as a dishevelled pock-marked woman
stole swiftly up the temple steps, every face turned in one direction,
and wave after wave of indescribable excitement swept the multitude.
And yet there was nothing, no sound, no sight to account for it; only
the high priest, tall and terrible, with the face of a Roman emperor or
a Jesuit, came from behind the altar and stood at the open door,
looking first at the throngs and then at a mass of black cloud which,
as is sometimes the way in India, had suddenly spread itself towards
the east, and was slowly climbing the heavens.