yellow stick"; he further informs us that this quadruman made its
owner "deathly sick."
The following story shows the effect that a blue monkey on a gilt
spike had in a remote Indian village called Jehadpore--a very ordinary
village set out on high, unirrigated soil, beside a large irregular
tank, whence the bricks of many generations of houses had been dug;
the only peculiarity about it being a glaringly whitewashed mosque
facade, rising above the whole and flanked by a palm-tree. Merely a
facade: viewed frontwise, distinctly imposing, with minarets and domes
in orthodox numbers and positions; viewed sidewise, as distinctly
disappointing. The jerriest of London jerry builders could have done
nothing better than this one brick front elevation, of which even the
domes were but _basso-relievos_.
Still it dominated the village in every way; for it was built in the
court-yard of ex-Rissaldar-Major Azmutoollah Khan Sahib Bahadur's
house, and he with his hangers-on represented Jehadpore. It was a
Rangur village--that is to say, a village of Mohammedan Rajputs, a
race which supplies half the native cavalry of upper India with
recruits. That was the case at Jehadpore. When the district officer
came round every year to attest and write up the big village note-book
there was always something to add on this score. Either the number of
those away a-soldiering had to be increased, or an entry made that
So-and-so had returned with a "_pinson_"[5] to his wife and family. On
these occasions the district officer invariably found an escort
awaiting him at the boundary, consisting of _sowars_ on leave
from various regiments (with their horses), a contingent of
"_pinson-wallahs_" in nondescript uniform on broodmares, and Khan
Azmutoollah Khan Bahadur, C.I.E., ex-_rissaldar_, at their head. He
was a very old man, as deeply wrinkled as a young actor doing the part
of an ancient retainer. In the privacy of that court-yard, garnished
by the jerry mosque, he clothed himself scantily in limp white muslin,
and his beard was tricoloured--white at the roots, red in the middle,
purple at the ends. But on his screaming stallion, sword in hand, a
goodly row of medals on his worn tunic, Azmutoollah's beard was of the
fiercest black, and the line of moustache shaved from the hard mouth
into an arched curve under his aquiline nose, curled right up to his
eyes. His voice, too, lost its quaver of age, and before he had safely
inducted the _Huzoor_ into his tents down by the tank that irregular
troop of cavalry had been put through enough man[oe]uvres to last out
three ordinary field days. It was the old soldier's _Kriegspiel_.
---------------------
[Footnote 5: Pension.]
---------------------
When it was over, and he dozed, wearied out by the unaccustomed
effort, on the wooden bed under the _nim_-tree, the hard roly-poly
bolster tucked in to the hollow of his neck--or something else--made
his sleeping-place a Bethel, and he dreamed dreams.
Then he had to resume the old uniform once more and go over to the
tents again with a petition. Rangurs always have petitions about
wells, or water, or brood mares; for, if they make excellent troopers,
they are intolerably bad ploughmen. That was why Mool Raj, the
hereditary money-lender of Jehadpore, was able to send his son,
Hunuman Sing, to college and make a pleader of him.
The ex-_rissaldar_, with two sons and three grandsons in the old
regiment, waxed contemptuous over the "pleadery" career. But that was
his attitude in all things towards Mool Raj and the small Hindu
element the latter represented in Jehadpore. The fact that the
Mohammedan population to a man was in the usurer's debt did not affect
the position of affairs at all, or detract from the feeling of
virtuous tolerance which allowed a most modest and retiring Hindu
temple to conceal itself behind the back wall of the mosque facade. It
was a great concession, for Azmutoollah was not the only _Hadji_[6] in
Jehadpore. The place was a perfect hot-bed of fighting Mohammedanism,
which only needed opposition to grow into fanaticism.
---------------------
[Footnote 6: Pilgrim to Mecca.]
---------------------
Yet, when Mool Raj added a new story to the Hindu temple, nobody said
him nay. They were good friends with the wizened, monkey-like usurer.
"_Bismillah!_ Khan Sahib," laughed one of the group of _sowars_ round
Azmutoollah's wooden bed. "He saith it is to save his soul from sin.
God knows he needs it, for he hath charged me rascally interest on my
last debt. If we must needs have a Hindu in the place, seeing God and
his Prophet forbid the true believer to soil his hands with usury,
then, by the _Imams_, let us have a pious one!"
Even when he put a gilt spike on the top they spoke of it in
contemptuous kindness. "Whether he buries our gold or sets it on high
is all one, so long as he hath enough to lend us when we seek it. And
'tis thank-offering, he says, for his son Hunuman passing as B.A. God
knows what that may be, but the boy hath thin legs and a narrow
chest."
Azmutoollah Khan, C.I.E., looked distastefully at the extreme tip of a
gilt spike which from the farthermost corner of the court-yard showed
just over the facade.
"So far well," said the old martinet. "A Hindu may have repentance,
and he is like to ourselves in affection for his family--though, Allah
be praised, none of mine carry themselves like a '_lumpa ta heen_.'[7]
But that is an end of repentance and affection. I will have no
idolatrous spike under my eyes, and so I will tell Mool Raj. Let
Hunuman build himself a temple in Lahore out of his scholarships and
pleader's fees. We want none of his kind in Jehadpore."
---------------------
[Footnote 7: Big crane.]
---------------------
The usurer came back from his interview with his patron quite
resigned. To tell the truth, he himself was not much set on these
pious additions which cost a heap of hard-won money. Their initiator
was Hunuman's mother, who, ever since her pilgrimage to Shah Sultan
had been rewarded by the long-prayed-for son, had looked on him as
doubly dependent on the favour of the gods--his very name, Hunuman,
having been bestowed on him because she had seen a monkey when she
first regained consciousness after the curious hysterical crisis which
seizes on most women at that most famous shrine. The inference being,
of course, that the monkey god was responsible for the baby--a
presumption not in the least weakened by the fact that Shah Sultan was
a Mohammedan saint to whom monkeys and gods were an abomination.
Chand Kor, therefore, gave shrill disapproval to Azmutoollah's fiat.
In her heart of hearts she nourished the ideal of a blue monkey god
perched on the top of that golden spike; and when, two days
afterwards, Hunuman Sing, B.A., came down for his vacation, she poured
the tale of intolerance into his ear.
Now, Hunuman Sing, after the manner of his kind, did not care--well,
what the Iron Duke said cost him twopence--for his godfather, nor,
indeed, for most of the beliefs of his mother. How could he? Who could
expect it of him? The cry which goes up now and again in India when
some clever lad, educated at a mission-school, openly forsakes his
religion, is beneath contempt. There is not one orthodox Hindu father,
north or south, who, pushing his lad on for the sake of worldly
success, does not do it with his eyes open to the inevitable gulf
which must separate them in the future. This particular son was like
many another son of the sort; a good lad, on the whole, if more
interested in his own development than anything else in the world.
This, again, was inevitable. When you have to cram the evolution of
ages into two-and-twenty years, and grow from a baby named after the
monkey god into a B.A., a strict attention to business is necessary.
If he was pushing, was not that also inevitable? Jonah's gourd had to
push "some," as the Americans say. For the rest, he was like hundreds
of the amiable, clever young graduates whom one longs to have in the
desert for forty days and nights opposite the Sphinx. One by one, of
course; for if there were two of them they would form a sub-committee
and vote the Sphinx to the chair. Then the millennium would come, of
course, and that would be inconvenient for _nous autres_.
But, though Hunuman cared not at all for the blue monkey god, he
worshipped liberty--especially his own; and he preferred it, if
possible, with a flavour of law about it. What! deprive a citizen, a
subject of the Queen Empress, from due exercise of religious right?
Who was Azmutoollah Khan, to promulgate such a pernicious attempt at
intimidation?--_vide_ section so-and-so.
Little Mool Raj, who seemed to shrivel smaller as he grew older,
listened to all this with great pride but steadfast inaction. He knew
who Azmutoollah Khan was well enough. He knew the temper of the people
who had enriched him all too well. Liberty was a fine thing, but money
was better--peace and comfort best of all. This latter conviction,
however, made him give way slightly before Chand Kor's tears; and the
next evening, when the _rissaldar_--major was interviewing two new
arrivals on leave, and bringing the wisdom of a lifetime to bear on
their horses, an odd noise floated over the sham domes of the mosque.
"Tis a donkey with the strangles, Khan Sahib," remarked Rahmat Ali.
"Yea, mine is a lucky one--five curls and--" He paused.
No, it was not a donkey. What was it? A camel snoring? A cow dying?
The women servants baking bread in the corner stood up to listen. The
two boys, heads down, arms interlaced, wrestling stark naked in the
sun, paused also. Then, suddenly, as if by mistake, an inconceivable
gamut, beginning with an earthquake, passing on to a foghorn, and
ending with a pennywhistle, let itself loose.
"God and his Prophet," yelled Azmutoollah, "it is a conch!"
As they stood petrified by the audacity, the low grunting recommenced,
and then once more something let go, lost control over itself, and
went skirling up like a burst bagpipe.
"My sword!" gasped the ex-_rissaldar_. "The idolatrous defiler of the
faith--the desecrator of my fathers' graves! A conch in Jehadpore! By
the Lord who made me, 'tis the last!"
If the opponents had been better matched, there would have been
bloodshedding in the village on that calm evening; but what could a
dozen _sowars_ with drawn swords, headed by Azmutoollah, joined by
half the populace of the village, do against Hunuman Sing, who, with a
trembling in his knees but the courage of martyrs in his mind, stood
on the steps of the temple, nearly bursting himself in his efforts to
play the unwonted instrument?
A roar of laughter went up from the crowd, as, alarmed but determined,
he backed from the onslaught to the temple door, stumbled on the step,
sat down violently, and the concussion sent a perfectly supernatural
"Ker--whoo--oo--oo--oo--ph!" through the conch.
Even Azmutoollah's indignation could not withstand it.
"Go, Rahmat Ali, and take it from him ere he do himself an injury, and
seek Mool Raj, Kutb-u-din. 'Tis his blame, not the boy's."
But Hunuman was on his feet again, full of outraged importance. The
affair to him was deadly earnest.
"I am no boy, Khan Azmutoollah, but of legal age, with B.A. pass. I am
a loyal citizen of Victoria Kaiser-i-hind. Religious liberty enjoins
me to play conch if I choose, and I do choose."
The spirit was willing, but the flesh, in the hustling hands of half a
dozen troopers, was perforce weak. The Hindu is not naturally
resistant, and the fighting men around him were not slow to recognize
Hunuman's unusual show of determination.
"It is assault! it is battery! I am coerced. I claim my rights. The
law is on my side!" he gasped, between his struggles.
"Smash the blasphemous thing, and let the boy go," called Azmutoollah.
"Enough, Hunuman-ji. Seek thy law elsewhere--not here, in the house of
my fathers."
The conch lay shivered to atoms, but the young man felt himself master
of the situation. Just as the concussion of his fall had forced his
breath into the conch, so the pressure of illegal coercion made his
newly acquired love of freedom overflow into eloquence. Heart and head
were both full to inflation with the finest sentiments. As he stood on
the steps, haranguing the people, he would have done credit to the
House of Commons in a party discussion.
"By the faith, he speaks well! 'Tis a pity his shoulders are so
narrow," remarked a trooper, carelessly, as he strolled away to a
bare, beaten patch by the tank, where a number of naked boys were
standing in pairs, heads down, hands on knees, smacking their thighs,
and crying "Hull-la-la!" to give themselves courage ere closing for
the grip. Beneath the skeleton of a peepul-tree hard by, whence the
branches had been stripped for fodder, some elders were at work over
gymnastic exercises, swinging clubs, or--supported on palms and
feet--touching the dust with their foreheads, and then rising again
like a strung bow. The sunlight shone on their bronze sinews.
"Didst kill him?" asked one, breathlessly keeping the count of his own
performance.
"Kill him? Look you, Allah Baksh--there was not enough of him to
kill!"
And a chuckle ran round the assembly.
A fortnight after, when the district officer was playing whist with
the policeman, the doctor, and the young assistant, who was gradually
being taught that rules are occasionally more honoured in the breach
than the observance, Dhunput Rai, judicial assistant, sent in to ask
five minutes' leisure of the _Huzoor_. Every one laid down his cards
at once, and the doctor lit a fresh cigar, for Dhunput Rai was one of
those natives of the old school who many a time and oft have steered
the British bark safely through troubled waters, as their fathers
steered the alien armadas of the Mogul. He was a Brahman of the
highest caste, keen-witted, clear-sighted; privately a bigot, publicly
a statesman.
"_Huzoor_," he said, briefly, "young Lala Amr Nath the Extra hath this
day in a case given leave for a conch to be blown in Jehadpore. There
will be trouble. In my opinion, it is a fitting occasion for the
_Huzoor_ to act under section 518, which gives absolute power to the
district officer in emergency."
Five minutes afterwards, Dhunput Rai took his leave with an interdict
in his pocket, and a deputy inspector of police and four mounted
constables rode out with it post haste, so as to arrive before the
earliest blink of dawn made conch-blowing compatible with anything
save sheer malice aforethought. It was a great blow to Hunuman and a
small circle of select college friends who had assembled to witness
the triumph of religious freedom. They consoled themselves during the
interval of appeal by writing an article to the 'Sun of Asia,' in the
course of which they promulgated several valuable new discoveries,
such as that there was one law for the rich and another for the poor.
Azmutoollah, meanwhile, admitted grudgingly that there was some sense
left in the _sahibs_ still, in spite of their setting goldsmiths'
sons, like Amr Nath, to rule over honest folk.
"I'm dashed if I can find a precedent," remarked the district officer,
disconsolately talking over the matter with the policeman, the doctor,
and the assistant. "And in a case like this, where every thing depends
on the environment, and it's sure to be appealed again, there is no
mortal good in anything but a precedent. If I say there will be a row,
I shall only be told with great dignity that Mr. Smith is expected to
keep his district in order."
There was a pause. Finally, the doctor spoke. He hailed from Aberdeen.
"It's an ill burd that files his ain nest, but for religious
into-lerance give me Scotland. Aw'm no saying ut'll hold as a
preeceedent amongst the heathen, but it's a preeceedent in the Court
o' Session. It was _aprepaw_ of a bell."
"A bell! Heaven be praised! the very thing."
"A bell is not a conch," remarked the assistant.
"Alias, I should say," murmured the policeman. "Bell, conch, call to
prayer: that's the spirit. Fire away, old chap!--Bearer, bring the
doctor-_sahib_ another peg."
So the precedent of a far-away cathedral, whose schismatic chime
annoyed good Calvinists, was brought to bear on Hunuman and the conch,
and the latter, not being an integral part of public worship, was
proclaimed a nuisance.
The deputy commissioner himself had no doubt about its being one, as
he wiped the perspiration from his brow, and remarked to Dhunput Rai
that that ought to finish the business.
The courteous old gentleman smiled.
"_Huzoor_," he said, "I have heard my father say that Akbar's order to
his judges was, 'Write ever with the pen which has been cut by the
sword; then there is peace in the land.' The case will be appealed,
and the pen of the _Huzoors_ is cut by machine."
He was a true prophet. Hunuman, backed by the 'Sun of Asia,' not only
appealed the conch question, but raised another in the interim by
putting a small blue plaster monkey on the top of the gold spike, in
fulfilment, it was urged, of the pre-natal vow made for him by his
mother, a pious Hindu lady, whose virtuous life was crowned with
honour.
The monkey remained there exactly five-and-twenty minutes after the
first beams of the rising sun disclosed the fact that it had been put
there during the night. That it remained so long was due to three
reasons: First, that the Jehadpore troopers, if good swordsmen, were
uncommonly bad shots; second, that Azmutoollah's blunderbuss was a
flint-lock; third, that he insisted on letting it off himself until it
knocked him down.
This time the case was taken direct to the deputy commissioner, who,
urged on the one side by a remembrance of Dhunput Rai's remark, and on
the other by a sneaking fear of revision, decided that the blue
monkey, as an idolatrous image, was a distinct nuisance when displayed
unnecessarily over the top of a Mohammedan gentleman's private mosque.
On the other hand, viewed from the Hindu standpoint, the image of a
blue monkey might be an integral part of public worship. Azmutoollah
Khan Bahadur, C.I.E., ex-rissaldar, must therefore pay over to Mool
Raj and to Hunuman Sing the price of the destroyed blue monkey, as
they might wish to erect a similar one in a less conspicuous place.
Now, though Mool Raj's name was duly entered in the file as
complainant, the affair had long ago passed out of his hands and
become a real, solid, Heaven-sent grievance to a small knot of
advanced young pleaders. Indeed, the old man was so distinctly
unsatisfactory as chief victim, that they had more than once taken the
opportunity of his absence to advance matters a step. Azmutoollah
Khan, as shrewd an old soldier as could be found on either side of the
Indus, was not slow to notice this, and his blind opposition covered a
great longing to have these youngsters on the hip. After all, he and
Mool Raj had pulled along well enough for years before this B.A. was
thought of--ay, and their fathers before them. If the usurer had been
alone, the money screw could have been put on him somehow; since he
would not risk a pice for all the blue monkeys in heaven or on earth.
Azmutoollah Khan was cogitating these matters one afternoon on the
wooden bed, with his turban as usual standing like a helmet beside
him, when a party of boys rushed into the court-yard full of news and
excitement. Hunuman Sing, who, as every one knew, had come with some
friends in a bullock cart that morning, must have brought the thing
with him; but as sure as fate there was a blue monkey sitting on the
square pedestal in front of the temple which Alla Ditta, the mason,
had built in all innocence of heart last week--a blue monkey, not a
miniature marionette at the top of a gilt spike like the last, but a
life-sized affair, and, what is more, all the Hindus in the place and
many more from neighbouring villages were doing _poojah_ to it.
The fierce old Mohammedan's very lips turned pale. He never even
thought of his turban, but, bald-headed as he was, and stumbling in
his haste, was out of the court-yard into the narrow street. The next
minute a cry, that was not pleasant to hear, cut the calm sunshine
like a sword.
"_Jehad! Jehad! Futt-eh Mohammed! Jehad! Jehad! Futt-eh Mohammed!_"
shrilled the boys in refrain.
A knot of young men in patent-leather shoes, standing by the blue
monkey, heard the cry with a glow of triumph.
"Brothers and sisters," called one, in the polished, curiously
artificial tones of one accustomed to public speaking, "remember we
are peaceable citizens. There is to be no opposition. Our trust is in
truth and justice, not in violence. Our weapon is right, not might.
Stand aside and let them do their worst. 'I will repay,' saith the
law."
It was a bold paraphrase lost on all save that little knot of culture
which said, "Hear, hear!" as if to the manner born. The speech,
however, though admirable, proved somewhat superfluous. The first
sight of that mad assault coming round the corner sent the crowd,
composed for the most part of women and children, scattering hither
and thither like frightened sheep. Culture stood firm, unwisely firm,
for a minute. Then a voice rose in English:
"Gentlemen, discretion is better part of valour--nor is it permissible
to foster or excite breach of peace. We can speak with equal fluence
and freedom from roof of house." And they did.
The scene thus described sounds farcical. There was not even a grain
of comedy in it to the actors; least of all to the plaster monkey on
whose blue hide the sabres hacked fast. Above, on the roof, as on a
hustings, the new culture wielded the sword of the Spirit; below, the
older cult clinched argument by the sword of the flesh.
That night peace reigned in Jehadpore. Young India, in a body, had
gone to report wilful destruction of private property accompanied by
violence, to the deputy commissioner. Old India sat triumphant but
thoughtful on the wooden bed, while the troopers laughed and drank and
made merry over the discomfiture of the blue monkey.
"By the Prophet," cried Rahmat Ali, "I swear it had a look of old
money-bags! And why not, seeing 'tis the father of Sri Hunuman? Ha-ha!
But thou shouldst have seen the old man's face, _rissaldar-sahib_,
when he returned but half an hour gone, and I told him we were but
waiting leisure to burn his books and clear off old scores in the old
way. He wept, and said 'twas none of his doing; that he asked but
peace, as in the old days. Yea, as he sat a-begging on his haunches,
praying forgiveness, he looked more like the blue monkey than ever."
Khan Azmutoollah Khan let off a detonating _roulade_ of Arabic
anathema as a _Te Deum_.
"Fetch him here, Rahmat! I have a plan. We old folk will settle it old
ways."
The next morning the deputy commissioner, the police officer, and the
doctor rode out in hot haste to the scene of what they were told had
been a bloodthirsty riot. At the village boundary they were met,
rather to their surprise, by the usual escort. The leader of the
little band was more military than ever, but there was an odd twinkle
in his eye as he obeyed the curt order to fall behind, and the
hint--which British majesty gave in the interests of law and
order--that his presence even there was undesirable. Hunuman Sing, and
a friend who had remained to see fair play, certainly seemed to think
the troopers jingling and clashing along in close order very much in
their way. They edged their ponies here and there, only to find
themselves perpetually ridden over; especially when, at the head of
the lane leading to the temple, British majesty reined up short, the
troop behind turned to stone, the horses on their haunches steady as
rocks. Then there was a wild hustle; the two ponies shot out in front,
where their owners managed to pull up flabbergasted at the sight which
met their eyes.
"How is this?" asked the deputy commissioner, sternly. "I thought you
said the blue monkey was destroyed; and there it is, in perfect
condition!"
There it was, indubitably--bright blue, with a long tail curving over
its legs.
From behind among the troopers came gentle grunts of disapproval, that
the ears of the _Huzoor_ should be assailed with such wanton lies.
Blue monkeys indeed! What quarrel had the faithful with blue monkeys?