if he gives her opportunity to realize this, what more will she ask?
When she is the mother of a son greater respect is hers, from the other
women in the Zenana, and greater love and respect no doubt from her
lord. Men do not like to be connected with a failure, and she has been
successful, has justified her existence. The self-respect it gives
the woman herself is most marked. She still is faithful slave to her
husband, but she is an entity, a person, so far as that is possible in
a Hindu Zenana; she can lift her head above the woman who taunted her,
her heart above the fear of a rival. I have seen her parallel in the
ugly duckling of the family who suddenly develops to the recognition
of the outer world an unsuspected talent. We all know how she seems
mysteriously and instantly to grow taller, smarter, more dignified;
how she knows her own mind and has an opinion even in the regions
remote from her special subject--whereas hitherto all had been vague
discontent and vacillation. Both women are saying unconsciously in
their hearts--“I am of use in the world,” only I doubt whether, causes
reversed, either would say it as triumphantly.
And, for a Hindu woman, “the best is yet to be.” When she arrives at
the dignity of Grandmother, ruling a household of daughters-in-law,
she has indeed entered upon her kingdom. The son, who as infant
first added to her stature, lavishes upon her in old age respect
and affection which any woman might envy. Indeed, the relation of
mother and son, even of widowed mother and son in India now, when
her life is near its close, is the most beautiful perhaps of all
Indian family relationships. She is respected, almost worshipped, as
the Life-Bringer, and when she holds her grandson in her arms she is
forgiven for the widowhood which for so long has been counted against
her. At last she is loved as only those women are loved who have given,
and given, and given all their lives seeking nothing in return.
I remember an old gray-headed Hindu saying to me, when we were
discussing _Gurus_, “After all the true Guru in every house is
the Mother; and are there not only three important things in the
world--God, the Word of God, and the Guru, he who brings the Word?” ...
Of the intellectual capacity of a woman a Hindu has a very poor
opinion; but he will yield to, and even refer to, her about all matters
of religion and--the kitchen.
It is the masculine attitude the world over. And sometimes he will
consult her about things she cannot possibly understand, from a
superstitious belief that her virtue may give her insight. She is his
toss of a penny.
It has often amused me to compare the men’s and women’s versions of
some old-world story. It is extraordinarily enlightening. Once, in
order to get a little nearer to the man’s conception of a woman, I
entrapped an orthodox friend of mine into telling me the story of the
Ten-handed Durga. My friend was chewing betel-nut, which meant that
he had dined, and was in genial mood, and clean white draperies. He
sat cross-legged on a mat in a room all delicious cool open spaces.
He leaned his elbow on a great white bolster. There were other
bolsters and mats about the room, for it was his wont to sit here of
an afternoon and receive visitors. It was his “Setting-far-ignorance”
time, as he explained to me. One or two women sat beyond the mats;
they were disciples of holy men, and allowed therefore to gather up
the crumbs which fell from the table of the great philosopher. The
scene pleased me. Every face in the room was worth study; some for the
hall-mark of sainthood, many for the evidence of self-restraint and
meditation; a few for an exactly contrary reason--the possibilities of
a certain unholy strength, the best degraded to the worst.
There was a storm without, but the Setter-far of Ignorance heeded it
not, even so much as to shut the windows, and the rain splashed in, and
the lightning caught now one face, now another, now the pink garb of an
ascetic, now the veiled form of a woman.... The thunder crashed, and
ceased but to let in the noise of the street, with the tram of English
civilization running under the windows.
My question about Durga set the heads wagging. It was close upon Durga
Pooja time, and every Hindu would be provisioning his kitchen against
guests, and adding to the house of Gods that image which presently
he would carry down to the waters of forgetfulness. The question was
popular.
“There are many versions of the story,” said my friend. “You will have
heard what the women say; the true tale is this. Not all the Gods could
prevail against the powers of evil, so they united their several wills
and energies, and the union of strength produced _Durga_. She is
energy or will--the beautiful Ten-handed--and she undertook to fight
the demons.
“They came just in the form of beasts, and then of men; but both she
slew. There lay at her feet the buffalo, typical of all that is coarse,
and the lion, typical of all that is best in the animal world; and out
of the slain beasts rose one in the likeness of a man, and him also she
slew--victorious. It is in this form that the instructed worship her at
Durga Pooja time.”
Then I: “Expound the parable.” And he: “See you not, the spiritual
conquers the bestial and animal, thus gaining strength to conquer the
human also. God conquers evil. And yes, I own it, the ultimate conquest
of evil is by the agency of a woman, for the Creator so ordained it;
she alone is capable of conquest _for others_--but they were the Gods
and not the Goddesses who gave her the power to conquer. The Great God
but accepted the service, the devotion in this matter of the woman, and
so, has he not honoured her for all Eternity?”
“She alone is capable of conquest for others”; “To accept service and
devotion of any is the highest honour you can pay her.” With that for
key-note how many things are capable of understanding in the relation
of Hindu man to Hindu woman!
“I see more still in your story,” said one who sat by. “Does it mean
also, perhaps, that only when we have renounced our wills can they be
effectual for conquest, that when we give the best of ourselves to
others, they afterwards, by these very means, bring back and lay at our
feet that very thing we would ourselves have conquered and mastered?”
For of course the Gods had their part in Durga’s victory. The Hindu
remembers only that conquest, salvation may be bought for him by
another. Suppose now the Hindu Mother to teach her son recognition of
his part in that parable--that it is he who must cultivate the will and
energy wherewith to gift the woman for conquest, possess himself of
something worth giving--what a nation we should have!
But “Everything is in being through ignorance--when we are awake our
dreams are false,” was the only remark made by my friend to these
heroics: and he yawned politely, and seemed to have lost all interest
in the Ten-handed.
VI
THE KING OF DEATH
It is in the villages, remote from railways that I have found the rarer
God-tales, villages got at by long journeys of road and water, past
lotus beds, the pink-white blossom growing waist high among leaves
large as sun-hats; past groups of mat huts tottering against each
other, past palm trees and green swamps of mosquitoes; past stretch of
brown earth waiting patiently, face upturned, for the rain that comes
not; once, past the quaintest requiem ever written in Nature.... It is
a moment worth recall. A slow newly-constructed railway was making its
weary way on a hot afternoon in June from mango-grove to river-bank and
ferry steamer. It was the usual up-country landscape, one barely looked
at it, till, suddenly a change--a great zone of sand, lying in _waves_,
waves patterned like the ripple of water, and glistening--Earth’s
diamond tiara--in the fierce white light of the Sun-God.... A hot wind
smote the face like a furnace-blast; the glare was a flame-red brand
across the eyes ... no relief anywhere, and yet, a strange sense of
freedom in this sea of sand waves.
Under a bare tree of white thorns lay a small bundle of pink rags,
a child with a shock head of hair, the only bit of life and colour
anywhere it seemed at first. She lay quite still, on her back,
motionless.
In the distance across the sand walked a woman, slowly, painfully; on
her head was a water-pot, she walked away from the child, but every now
and then she turned to look at the tree of white thorns. You knew what
she sought ... would she find it? and having found would she be in time?
The train crawled on to the river, and there was the woman ever walking
away and away, and ever turning to look back; and the child under the
shelter of a handful of thorn-needles still, so still, and the sun
smiting on the gleaming sand....
From the river in the growing dusk I saw my diamond tiara changed to
moonstones.... The great zone was now but a soft white sheen, a City
of Light, and the minarets of some place of Saints towered above the
battlements. “A very holy man lived there,” they told me later. It is
where holy men should live, it seemeth me, on the Sands of Time, their
faces to that other fleeting Earth-force the River of Life....
And it was travelling by ways such as these that finally I found
myself in the canvas home of the wilderness, among people who had
leisure to conserve the past, to remember. I sat with them, now on
some spacious roof-tree, the sky for dome, now in some little box of a
room, jealously guarded from light of day, or sight of man, or I went
in and out with them to their Garden-houses, to their house of Gods, to
the women’s courtyard, which respect for hornets’ lives had rendered
dangerous to man! We were sitting in this same courtyard, my eye on the
hornets’ nest in the pipal tree, when “the slave of Kali” told me the
tale of _Shoshti Devi_, the protector of women and children.
“It was a house-cat who first had knowledge of her,” she said. “In
a King’s palace all the Queens were barren, and none could break the
spell. So the cat chose her who oftenest thought upon her stomach’s
need, for the whispering of a secret.”
“Go at midnight,” said she, “and tend the turnips in the potter’s field
beyond the Gates.” So, the youngest Queen went as she was bidden,
and in six moons she had her desire. Shoshti Devi lives in trees, a
different tree for every month; and the truly religious worship her in
all these several forms--but it is enough if you make an image, just
a head with a long red nose, and place it under one of the four most
sacred trees. And, if you tie a rag to a branch as you go away, Shoshti
Devi will look at it, and remember all about you and your prayer, what
time you most may need her.... That was a wise cat. People unacquainted
with the Indian temperament can have no conception of the pathological
value of suggestions such as these. Be a woman never so ill, she comes
back heartened and therefore better as an actual and visible fact
for her visit to the Shoshti tree. Think of the faith it implies. No
vision of the Goddess was vouchsafed her, no Priest comforted her, no
wonder of music, no beauties of chancel or cloister drugged her soul
or shampooed her senses: drawn by a legend not in itself necessary to
salvation she but crawled to some dust-laden tree standing, may be, by
a sun-baked highway. Perhaps she found there an image of _Shoshti_:
perhaps not, it mattered nothing: and she tied to one of the branches
her little prayer of rags, that was all....
Such people should be easy to kill or to make alive. They are, and
there lies the pity of it, in a world where you may die as well as
live, be cursed as well as blessed. The Gods curse, but only through
human agency. This is interesting since you may be blessed directly.
Knowledge on the subject of “sending devils” is the property of the
Priesthood, Royal Fellows of the Society of Hellologists! but magic men
and women, non-diplomaed and unlicensed also abound, and every dweller
in town or village who has ever known or inherited a hate, has his own
little stock of demonology for home consumption. It is my pride that
on the one occasion when I was consciously operated upon, it was by
the specialist. I had helped to secure protection for a child who had
enemies, I was naturally therefore hated of these same. When back from
her Estate, in the comparative civilization of my own little home,
I got a much-thumbed message which had been thoughtfully left in my
post-box.
“Twenty Priests learned in magic,” so it ran, “are sending a devil into
you.” It was true. On the remote scene of thwarted vengeance, they
were “making magic”--cursing a clay image made in my likeness, walking
over every square inch of ground I had trod at the Palace, or in the
Gardens, and--breathing curses.
My answer was a message, “To the Chief Priest among the twenty Priests
most learned in magic, who sit in the Grove of Mangoes, at the Monkey
Temple, in N ..., ‘keep the Devil, till I come.’”
This was treated as a ribald tempting of the demon, and a man was sent
to sit at my gate and curse me so that the flesh should wither from my
bones, and my house be desolate.... But my household and my dear yellow
“Chow,” and my little gray mare, and my red-speckled _munias_, all the
live things within my gates, did, with me, flourish exceedingly ... and
in a fortnight my twenty Priests withdrew their man, no doubt deciding
that I had already a devil bigger than any at their command!
They were, alas! more successful with my little friend. First, they
threw mustard before her as she walked, and she--sneezed.... “What
would you?” It was Colman’s mustard that you buy in yellow tins at the
“Europe Shops.” ... But she sneezed--that meant a devil had entered,
and the Priest spared not the picturesque in description of him. Then,
one morning on her doorstep she found a little box--in it was a human
thigh bone and three packets of powder--red, yellow, blue. This was a
very potent curse, and she trembled exceedingly, so that she could not
even name its meaning.[2]
[Footnote 2: A knowledge of curses is a useful asset to Legal Advisers.
I have known a serious family dispute composed on this wise. _A._ I
could forgive everything but the bone under my bed, for this I will
fight _B._ even till I am penniless. _Adviser_ (Soothingly). Certainly,
certainly--and now let’s have the bone ... which, produced, instead of
being that powerful to curse, is merely a harmless leg-of-mutton bone!
The way to peace is open.]
But worst of all was the manner of cursing parallel to mine. There were
at the moment great hopes of an heir to the Estate: the birth of a son
would settle many political and domestic quarrels. The Priests chose
the moment when the Mother’s mind would be most open to suggestion, and
cursed the thing that was to be! and it died.
So I have known another happening. A widow of fifteen had promised her
Priest, at his desire, ornaments of a certain value for the Festival
of Durga Pooja. But her Trustees did not sanction the expenditure.
The Priest cursed her. She had two children--the youngest girl just
eighteen months in age. The Priest was explicit in his curse--the Baby
would die. I found my widow in an agony of grief. The child was her
boy husband’s last gift to her: and it was dying of pneumonia.... It
was touch and go, but medical skill saved the little life, only the
Mother’s firm belief is that not science but the reconsidered decision
of the Trustees, setting free her priest gifts, worked the cure.
And here I would mention one important article of belief in the Zenana.
It is that not only a man himself but that which he owns or loves or
values may be affected by magic. “So-and-so has put a curse upon your
cattle,” will be a message followed by mysterious deaths, not to be
accounted for by poison. The form of the message varies--it may be
sent in words, it may be sent like the thigh bone or the mustard, in
kind--that is of small moment, the result is always the same.
My Wisest of the Wise, asked for explanation, is politely full of
wonder that I should wish for explanation of such things. “Is it
possible that I doubt? If these things were capable of understanding
would they be worth a thought? Is not the supernatural of necessity
beyond reason? Would you plough the stars with bullocks? Has anything
any existence at all, except in our belief? All we are or seem is a
dream. Those who doubt and argue would seek to dream waking; and they
lose so all the pleasing restfulness of sleep.”
Then musingly, she turned to me with her rare smile. “Once, I also
doubted. I was then of few years, and the questionings which belong
to the changing part of me were many. I was in Benares, and I said
to a holy man there, who is of one fellowship with me: ‘This
thing--cursing--is of the evil one. Do not practise it. Besides I
do not believe you can curse. I believe it is only magic, like the
gypsy folk do use. And he: ‘Nay, Mother, I do it in the name of the
Writings--try me.’ And I wished to test this thing, but because I had
said it was wrong, I could not then consent. Yet on the third day I
said: ‘Well, if you can work a curse in a good cause.... I will be
witness.’
“The Gods sent the occasion. A poor man, threader of flowers for the
neck of a sacred bull in a rich man’s temple, came to me the next
day. He and his family were starving. The rich man had out of caprice
dismissed them. My holy man turned to me.
“‘This is the occasion of your seeking, Mother,’ he said. ‘That rich
man is known to me. I will hurt him--but not much--for this poor man’s
sake.’”
She smiled again whimsically. “I was in the body--what would you? It
was wrong: but I consented.
“So the holy man sent for a little dust from off the feet of the rich
man, and with the help of this, and some earth and flour, he made an
image, saying _mantras_ the while; but the most powerful mantras said
he over five nails lying in the bottom of a pot.
“‘Now,’ he said, ‘the curse is ready; but first go and see the rich
man. Is he well? bring me news.’
“So I went, even as I was bid, and I sat in the courtyard and saw for
mine own self that he was well, and vaunting himself in his health and
riches.
“It was dusk when I returned and made my report. ‘Then here begins the
magic,’ said the holy man; and taking one of the nails he had cursed,
he drove it with many more curses into the knee of the image.
“‘A little curse,’ he said, ‘only a little curse in a good cause: but
he shall feel it.’
“And I ran back to the great house and found all in confusion--servants
running for doctors, Priests reciting prayers.... ‘The Master was sick
unto death,’ they told me. We waited that night; and in the dawn hour,
I, being holy myself and privileged, went to the rich man and told him
as he lay in agony, that to my mind, not the doctor, but expiation
would cure him.
“‘What!’ he said, startled, for his sins I think were not few, ‘must I
bear penalty in this life, when I am willing to carry my burden in the
next.’ ‘Oh! a small matter,’ I suggested; ‘something easy of expiation.
Think--a wrong perhaps to some private or Temple servant.’ But he
remembered nothing. So I, pretending I had seen the thing in a dream,
told him, and instantly the threader of garlands was sent for and
honoured with gifts and feastings. When the holy man heard of this he
took the nail from the rich man’s knee and he recovered immediately....
Yes, I believe in curses. But they are not good, they belong to the
things of the body.”
“_Sitting dharna_” is the Curse Coercive. I thought the practice
extinct, till last year I found a half-mad thing mechanically telling
his beads in a Raj courtyard of my acquaintance, as he sat beside the
image of Ganesh the luck-bringer, under the pipal tree where lay the
offerings of red and yellow flowers and sacred grass-tufts. It was
midday and he sat bareheaded in the sun, unkempt, unshaven, blear-eyed.
So had he sat a fortnight, touching neither food nor drink. The lady
of the house disputed a debt claimed by him in the name of an ancestor.
She bade him sue, but he, wise man, preferred this method. At the
moment he was only just alive, and his wits seemed to have preceded him
to the new genesis. We called him back, with kind words and chinking of
money under the trunk of the Luck-Bringer himself. It was the money I
think that reached him on the Border Land. He laughed for joy and wept
many salt tears into his first spare meal of rice and watery pulse; but
the family borrowed more money to make a great feast because the house
was saved from a Curse!
Another variety of compelling your desire is the burning of a cow or an
old woman. While, for a woman, the simplest way is the time-honoured
custom of sulking. Early Indian domestic architecture provides for
this. There was always a sulking-room in the “Inside” (compare
_boudoir_), and here sat the woman who insisted on her own way; and
here no doubt came husband or father with gift of shawl or toe-ring to
release her....
My wise ones tell me many stories as we sit on the roof in the hour
between the Twilights. But the story of my Wisest one herself is one
of my favourites. You must know that she is a very holy woman indeed.
At her birth, so many years ago that her devotees bring you data to
prove her a hundred years old, it was prophesied that she would be “a
religious,” and her Father built her a Shrine, and taught her things
which only Priests may know. She can perform every _jog_, and can read
one’s thoughts in any language. Her face is the face of her who has
attained, and her dignity and self-poise I have nowhere seen surpassed.
She dresses oddly--the sex of the devotee must not be proclaimed--in
the nether garments of a man, _i.e._, loose white drapery about the
legs, and a long coat. Her hair is worn in coils on the top of her
head, and round her neck hang sacred beads, and Kali’s necklet of
skulls in gold and enamel work. To her the symbol is not gruesome.
Kali, she will tell you, was the power of God, the “Energy of the
Gods,” and the heads represent the Giants of wickedness whom she has
slain.
She is extraordinary in her dealings with people, so quick to discern
true from false; so fearless in her denunciation of hypocrisy, withal
that she is never aught but courteous. I love sitting beside her
when pilgrims come, pilgrims from all parts of India who fall at her
feet and pass on to other shrines, or linger in the outer courtyard
on the chance of a word; the meaning of a text, some family or caste
difficulty, advice as to the moment’s physical or worldly need, all
are brought to her; for she shuts out nothing, and is a dear _shrewd_
Saint about business other than her own. I have known her wave off a
pilgrim--“She would not insult her feet” was the reason given. She
seemed to gather all that mattered about this type of person in a
single glance. To one who came in curiosity pure and simple, though he
pretended interest in some Sanskrit text, she said, quietly looking
him in the eyes while he fumbled over his unveracities: “No! you
shall not hear whence I came, nor anything about me.” But to another
more sincere, though equally curious, she said--he had spoken no
question--“I come from a land where women ride and men wage war.”
In 1857 she was already a famous Sanskritist, so powerful that her
influence, purely religious, was mistaken for political. She was
suspected of collusion with Khande Rao Peishwa, and a guard of soldiers
was stationed round her cell and Temple. When the country settled down,
she wandered to the different places of pilgrimage all over India,
meditating and buying merit. Everywhere had she been, everywhere that
is holy, and as an old woman, eyes dim with prayer, throat drawn with
fasting, she has settled in Bengal and devotes herself to the religious
education of her community. “I have spent a lifetime in prayer: now I
am ready to work,” she explains. But the praying is not over.
From 5 to 9 of a morning, she shuts herself away in her House of Gods,
and no one dare disturb her. Here in India, where shrines are many, and
there is no false shame about entering and praying--doors wide--nay,
where the Godling sits by the wayside, and where it is a common thing
to see a woman stand on a highway, head against some outer wall of a
Temple--the moment’s contact a prayer, or bowing to the Earth on some
crowded pavement--it is curious that not one of her devotees or friends
has any knowledge of what is within her House of Gods--whether it is
empty or has the whole panthology. Yet all alike--alien in faith,
disciple, or visiting devotee--have seen her face as she leaves that
house after her communings with eternity; and well--is there not a
story of the Mount of Transfiguration?