(perhaps meaning it) to be her last, she had summoned to her side by
some telepathic power the faithful from all parts of North India. I say
“meaning,” because I am forced to believe that the Indian woman who has
her will in training can die at will: more rarely she can live at will.
Probably the latter is the rarer because, poor thing, she has so much
more incentive to die than to live.
Well, this time my Wisest of the Wise had elected to live after all.
Her choice was not incompatible with her faith in a God who held the
keys of Life and Death. It was only that, being given free will, it was
within her power to steal the key of the House of Death.
“Has one ever stolen the key of the House of Life?” I asked.
“I know of none such,” was the cautious answer of wisdom.
Then I--“Talk to me, Mother, of Life and Death. What is Life?”
And she--“A dream in the heart of a dream.... It is as if one should
sleep, and sleeping dream that he was dead. That dream within a dream
is this, that men call Life.”
“And Death?”
“To-morrow’s dream. The next-door house. God’s tenant am I in this
house in which you find me. But agreement I have none. God will tell
me to quit, nor give me notice. Death is but the house I next inhabit.
There will be other houses after that.” Death, it would seem, is but
a change of house, we have failed to repair the present tenement, or
it is too small for us, or our neighbourhood is unsuitable, so we are
given the chance of another, and after that, perchance, yet another and
another, through all the lives appointed to us. But our personalities
remain. We can never sink those.
Once again, she talked of Death as “the Innermost Dream--but we shall
wake.” “The end of the Death dream is only sleep, that is Life: when we
wake from life, it is to Life Eternal.”
“And what is that?”
“Rest--in the perfect attainment of all truth, of all knowledge and of
all reality.”
The body, I gather, is degradation to the soul. Any “house” is in a
measure degradation and belongs to the state of progress. Some day we
shall be free of all houses. We shall lose ourselves in the Great Soul.
That is the final “Twilight”--the time of Union for each individual
soul.
“Then shall there be no more Death.”...
She ceased speaking, my Wisest of the Wise, and silence fell between us
as we looked together at the dying Sun.
Oh! the gray and silver gray on the water. Oh! the gold, limpid,
liquid, lambent gold in the sky and on the water....
“And the King of Death is but the first Sunset.”...
_P.S._--Since the above was written, my Wisest of the Wise has arrived
at her Sunset hour. Her going was very beautiful and very simple:
shortly before her time was come, she left the Town where she dwelt,
for the holy city of Death. She was no worse and no better than she
had been any day the year and more, but she knew, apparently. Then, one
morning, she said quite calmly to her disciples, after the ceremonial
bath and _pooja_, “This is the last time I shall worship in this house”
(her body); “now, waste no time in regret, let us talk the things we
should be sorry to have left unsaid.”... And all that day the faithful
gathered about her, and she expounded the scriptures with an insight
unequalled even by herself. She ate nothing--“Why prop up the house
that is tumbling?”
At night she asked to be taken down to the Sacred River--a Hindu dies
with her feet in the water; and there she sat among her friends on the
stone steps of the Ghat, claiming no support, no physical comfort,
now silent, now setting afloat some beautiful thought in words that
will always live for those who loved her ... and then just in the gray
mystery of the dawn hour, “It is right,” she said, and fell back....
They put her into a boat and took her across to the Ghat of the Soul’s
departure, and here they slipped her gently into the Stream ... for
that is all the burial service for one who is holy.
Later, her disciples came to me with faces radiant. “She has attained,”
they said. “Yes!” said the Holy Man, Truth-named, “she has attained in
that she elected not to attain;” and then they told me that, sitting
that night of stars and dark spaces by the River of Death, one had said
to her: “You are blessed; you have attained.” And she made answer:
“Nay! it was given me to attain; but I put it aside, desiring re-birth
once more for the sake of the work, to which I have put my hand, here
among you.”
“And a man’s future is even as his desires. That is true truth, Miss
Sahib!” concluded the Wise man, Truth-named.
VII
THE WISE MAN--“TRUTH-NAMED”
It was at the house of my Wise Woman that first I saw him. He wore a
straight long robe, the colour of the pilgrim flag, or of the inner
lining of the fruit of knowledge when you break through the sheath in
which it shelters from the world.
About his head were wound fold on fold of muslin of the same mystic
hue, and the way of winding, and his speech, bewrayed him of the Punjab.
But as I have said, you must never locate the holy. He walked with head
erect, straight as an arrow, nor receiving nor giving salutation to
any; and he came to me where I stood talking to my Wisest of the Wise,
and “When,” said he, “may I come to talk with the Miss Sahib of the
big-little things?” And I: “How know you that I like to talk of these
things? and what are they?”
“I know; the Miss Sahib knows. When may I come?”
So we found a convenient season; and he, the free, made of himself for
the sake of removing ignorance, a slave of time, coming punctually
Sunday after Sunday to talk the big-little things, “Life and Death,”
and “Whence we come,” and “Whither we are bound.”
With eyes screwed together in earnestness, one finger on the tip of
his nose as he meditated, he would talk hour after hour; nor did
he discourage discussion, he begged it. It was one way he said of
teaching us to know ourselves. “And how shall we know God until we know
ourselves?” “Be self-knowers. God is within, and it is the God in us
that seeks to find God.” ... “God! by what sign shall we know Him? how
conceive? Imagine a world without space or place or time or anything
created. Imagine only light and light and light, everywhere pulsing,
throbbing.... From the beginning was that, and only that, and that was
God. But with God exists the Power and Mercy of God, not separately,
but as closely allied as sweetness to sugar, as the scent of the rose
to the rose, as the colour of a flower to the flower.... Men talk
of one God as if there could be two or three. There’s just God--the
All-pervading, the Essence of Being, the heart of the heart of Beauty,
the great first Flame which lights every flame that leaps into life....
Light and light and light, brilliance at the soul of brilliance ... the
God-spark in every soul, in everything created ... only by recognizing
this shall we recognize God, there is no other way.
“... Yes! the windows of the soul get dimmed and the flame gives no
light. Is that the fault of the flame? Clean the windows of the soul;
such work is allowed to man, such only, not his to create Light, _that_
was and is from Eternity.
“One day all the several sparks of light will go back to the Great
Central Light whence they came, the soul will find God.... What need to
make haste? What need to fret? Every soul must find God at long last
... light will return to Light.”
In countries loved of the Buddha one sees by the roadside a little
shrub with white leaves among the green. The Buddha passed that way,
is the legend, and the shrub has kept memory of the passing. I have
sometimes thought that so among the leafy professions of mankind there
are some white souls that keep the memory of the passing of the Great
God. The “Truth-Named” is one such.
I remember on one occasion thanking him when he had said things which
gave food for thought.
“Huh!” he said, “Miss Sahib, that was not yet talk of God. I did
but try to make a clearing in the jungle where we might sit down
and meditate about these things.” Another day he said: “There are
three diseases in the world--_Actual Sin_” (the breaking of what
we call commandments), “this disease can be cured by good works;
_Restlessness_, to be cured by meditation; and _Joylessness_, to be
cured by making occasion to give joy to others. The mark of a true
religion is Joy.”
Referring to the first cure, I said: “Then you believe in the efficacy
of good works, oh! Truth-Named Singh.” And he said: “Good works are
fetters, fetters of gold, but still fetters.”
* * * * *
When the Datura tree hung out its burden of bells, and the pilgrim
season had begun, he came to me with as much excitement as his calm
abstraction from all emotion permitted. And, “There is a _Lat_ (Lord)
Swami,” he said, “sitting in a grove at Dum Dum. Would the Miss Sahib
like to talk with him?”
“Is he holy?” I asked.
“I know him not, but he is called a _Lat_ Swami, he should be so. He
has been teaching the people of the farther England (America) about God
and the one religion, it is said, and he has many disciples in every
country. Besides, he speaks the language of the Miss Sahib’s friend
(English), and it is a chance for the Miss Sahib’s friend to question
in her own tongue, as she cannot me.” ...
So we went, and the first time lost our way. We met strolling minstrels
and were offered seats at wedding feasts, and fighting rams for our
diversion, but no Swami sitting by his Lake of Lotuses.
Our Wise Man was distressed: “I gave my word you would come. Even by
mistake we cannot break a word, it is damage to Sainthood”--one’s own
he meant. “Make a speedy occasion to remove the disease of this error.
I myself will conduct you.”
But no! he would not arrange the train by which we were to go. “Shall
I who am free, compel any to be slaves to time? Come when you will, I
will sit at the Station all day.” It was late afternoon when we could
make the expedition but the “Truth-Named” was there. He had awaited
us since morning, meditating undisturbed by the bustle of a Railway
Station. We were soon in the suburbs among palm-trees, and rank
undergrowth, and we found the _Lat Swami_ clad in yellow-silk robes,
sitting cross-legged in a grove of mango-trees, beside a bed of white
lotuses. His face did not appeal, but that we mused, might be prejudice.
“Ask him the big-little questions,” prompted our Wise Man--himself
retiring deferentially to the level of the least of the Lat Swami’s
disciples. And we asked, only to hear in pompous English, “I refer
you to my book, which has been well-reviewed by the ‘Daily Mail.’ My
Disciple will explain.” And before our gasp of astonishment had spent
itself, came the disciple, a follower from that “farther England” who,
grovelling before the Master, produced the book.
But we were busy inventing excuse for flight. Silence, as we walked
away. Then said our Truth-Named, tolerant humour in his eyes, “So the
Miss Sahib’s Friend, and the Miss Sahib liked not that Holy Man?”
“_No!_” I said, “we did not.” Pause--then, “I am glad the Miss Sahib’s
Friend, and the Miss Sahib did not like that Holy Man. I am glad that
they gave not their discrimination a sickness by liking him.”
“But you took us!”
“How could I know? Besides, in a garden one should smell every
flower.... To me it seemeth that the foolish ones of the Farther
England have robbed him of his virtue by their admiration and praises.
It is ever so. Of virtue do women rob even the holy. Once that Swami
had excuse for knowledge.”
“What is the name of her whom he called Disciple?”
“How can I know? Foolish one--what need for other name?”
On the way back we had proof of our Wise Man’s reality of religion. He
would not travel in our carriage behind the “fire horse,” politely
went next door: but just as the train was about to move we saw him
literally kicked out by some non-Indian, masquerading as a gentleman.
The poor old “Truth-Named” found room elsewhere, and nothing could be
done till we arrived at our destination, when we waited for him to
apologize and atone for the unknown.
“Huh,” he said, “_that_, that was nothing. Forget it, Miss Sahib. It is
not. It could not hurt me, since I did not resent it.” ... “His mind
carried not fruit of ignorance,” as he said on another occasion. Even
so, in his simplicity has he often enunciated the greatest of truths.
I have talked in a book of women of Holy Men, for priests and women
are allies the world over, and in India, particularly is the influence
noticeable. A priest is often the only man with whom a Purdahnashin
may talk, before whom she may appear unveiled: and, as I have said
before, there is a secret, albeit about things religious, between wife
and priest to which even the woman’s husband may not be party. Not
backward has the Priesthood been in availing itself of its privileges.
Where his learning is not likely to attract, the man of ashes has an
inheritance of superstition to which no woman is proof, and from which
there can be no appeal.
The “Truth-Named” is fearless in denunciation of the ash-smeared and
degraded type of Priest. “In the golden age the only Priest was Prayer.
If we would only study ourselves, travel in the unknown country of our
minds and souls and personalities, we should need no Guru, save God.
Priests, of all religions, keep men’s eyes bandaged that they should
not see except through the Priest: but the written word and the book of
ourselves is open to all.”
“There is but one religion--the service of man and personal holiness
by realization of God. No need for rules of conduct, for commandments.
Realize God and even the desire to transgress is slain. But realize God
and the place even of sin in the scheme of the world will be clear.
There is nothing which is outside God. Yes--this is a hard doctrine, to
be learnt only by sitting aloof from men, sitting in a place of green
trees, in solitudes where blow the winds of God, fresh and pure.”
Perhaps one reason of the ascendency of the Priesthood was that at one
time the priests were the moneylenders of the Community. We know this
was so even as late as the eighteenth century. Say a man wished to
borrow £3: he went to the Faqir who put the sum into his hand in the
presence of witnesses, but about 15_s._ had to be returned to himself
as a present. Interest was never less than 12 per cent. and the lender
kept a watch-dog at the expense of the borrower, to see that he did
not run away! So the poor wretch seldom got more than half the sum he
borrowed, while, to compel repayment, children were often sold, and
most cruelly tortured.
It is curious to recall in this connection the old Sanskritic tale of
the learner who went to the Sage to ask what might be the best penance
for deeds of evil.
“Gifts of Cows, of land, and especially of gold to Brahmins.”
“Why specially gold?” “The purifying power of gold. Oh! Purusurama,”
was the answer, “is very great. They who bestow it, bestow the Gods.”
“How so?” said the obstinate Learner.
“Know, oh! Hero, that _Agni_ (fire) comprehends all the Gods, and gold
is of the essence of Agni.”
Women Priestesses there are; but not as a regular institution of the
Purdah. If it is right to conclude that the system of seclusion is
encouraged and italicized by the Priests in order to preserve the man’s
monopoly, the reason will be obvious.
Also it would seem as though except as a religious elect before or
from birth, or remarkable for peculiar learning, like my Holiness,
the Priestess chooses the humbler position of the service of a Guru,
leaving guidance to her male counterpart. Some act procurator in
positions not possible of relation; but there must be exceptions,
and one charming young Priestess at least have I known who owed her
attractions neither to the sacred learning nor to prophecy. She was
from the North country, and appeared suddenly one pilgrim season in the
vicinity of Nasik, in Western India. Tall and beautiful, of commanding
presence, clad in shell-pink draperies; a close-cropped head,
discoloured to a brilliant copper by the fumes of the opium fire--such
was the figure that stood, pilgrim flag in hand, by the roadside,
asking protection of a passing stranger. Remarkable to look upon she
would have been in any costume, but thus, against the glow of a low
sun-setting, she was arresting.
And her story? full of humour and pathos. She and a younger Brother,
orphaned early in life, were left to the care of an Uncle. The property
was the Brother’s with reversion to herself. The Brother died while
still a child; helped out of life, she conceived when old enough to
understand these things, and the property was hers and she bride-elect
to her cousin. She had loved her Brother passionately--Oh! you saw
that, in her eyes and in the picture she left with you of her attempts
to push Death away from the threshold. “Stroke the brindled cow,” was
the last prescription of the old Priestess, who sat in the near-by
forest: and the child brought in the old cow to the neglected bedside.
Then, in a frenzy, she ran to the old Priestess: “Cut off my hair”--she
was but ten years old--“and initiate me. It will, maybe, please
the Gods, and spare the life.” And the Priestess, alleged seller of
God-favours, initiated the child, being not unaware of her position and
prospects.
But when the beloved Brother died, and the Uncle sought to recover the
child, she refused to come, nor could she now as initiated Priestess be
bride to the cousin. So a bribe to the opium eater procured silence,
and the disciple her freedom.
It was a wandering life--now grove, now cave, now hill
camping-ground--the little Priestess sitting over the opium fire, her
head on a prayer-stick, meditating--her instructress raking in the
offerings. A prayer-stick is shaped so--T: and the head lies on the arm
stretched across the bar, while the fumes of the opium fire produce
drowsiness. But the life of prayer and meditation, in the name of her
Brother, became very real to the Baby Priestess: and as she grew, and
her Old-Woman-Guru used her to attract devotees to the Shrine, there
was many a tussle between righteousness and unrighteousness, till
policy suggested the Child’s sanctity as the more lasting bait.
She must have been about twenty when they made the pilgrimage to Nasik;
and here the old woman met her own one-time Guru, and he claimed the
prayer-stick of the beautiful grand-disciple as a talisman. Perhaps
he claimed more, we were not told; but the rupture on refusal brought
her to that wayside throwing of herself on the mercy of a stranger....
She was wonderfully adaptive to the demands of civilization, cast away
her opium pipe, and even struggled bravely with forgotten memories of
reading and writing; but she loved best to sit huddled up in the dusk
and tell stories of her wanderings. What stories they were!
“In every house a Father, in every house a Mother”--a great phrase with
her; and soon, the wander spirit proved too much for her. The road
called her, and she went--comet-like. This was many years ago; but I
still hope to come upon the copper-headed owner of the prayer-stick.
Once I thought I had found her at a place of pilgrimage in company
with a holy woman who had gained her reputation for sanctity in a way
unusual. She was an untaught Mathematician, sat at the mouth of a cave
drawing geometrical figures in the sand, and spelling out for herself
the problems which the world of books has dedicated to other names than
hers. The pilgrims thought the triangles and parabolas magic, and would
wag wise heads over the Mathematician at work; quite content if after
the cabalistic musings which had nothing to do with their goods and
ills she announced to the inquirer that there would be a good harvest,
or that his son would die and his enemy be degraded in rebirth.
But if it were indeed my Comet whose copper head hung over a
prayer-stick behind the Mathematician, I got not opportunity for speech
or sight. Yet, I am thinking that some day, when the sun is low,
that column of burnished light will wait for me once more beside the
Pilgrim’s way.
VIII
THE NASAL TEST
A STUDY OF CASTE
Caste in its origin was merely a guide to marriage, _i.e._, a man was
distinguished from his fellow-men simply in order to determine into
what families a woman might or might not marry.
Moreover, a “County” family was known by the width of its nose, caste
varying inversely as the width. For the only question with which caste
dealt in the long ago, was: Are you an Aryan or are you a Dravidian?
There were later stages, influenced, who can say, by what motives?
providing, how know we now, for what momentary need? serving, who
shall tell us, what personal spites or conveniences? and caste came
finally to denote not only a man’s place on the social ladder, but
his privileges in a spiritual kingdom and his value in a professional
market.
It is a little difficult to explain because there is, I think, no
exact parallel in the institutions of the West. It is a combination
of several determining causes of exclusiveness--the social Western
conception of the right instinct and the appropriate culture, the
interests of labour as represented by trade-guildism, and the Judaic
idea of a chosen people as something peculiarly the care of a God who
nevertheless made all the world.
And, at the present day, the social and economic distinctions are
merged in the religious, so that the feeling, as we find it, is of a
barrier placed by God, not man. Is it not exactly otherwise in the
nearest parallel afforded by the West? Your neighbour may, in Church,
I take it, assume the privileges of an equal; in the Park he may not.
The Hindu high-caste man might joke and laugh with his inferior in
the Park; but he will not go to Church with him, _i.e._, he will not
eat with him because this is a religious act, and he will not “pray”
with him in the sense of admitting him to certain mysteries of the
religion, or the performance of certain sacrifices. Again, caste
implies breeding, only relatively. Indeed, even the lowest person in
the scale of life will talk of his caste. “I am of the caste of the
sweeper,” he will say quite proudly; and he has further been known to
say: “I am of the caste of--the Outcast”; because he knows of some one
who will do what is tabooed even to him. Caste--that is--denotes a
man’s place on the ladder of life, but not of necessity his place on
any one rung rather than another. In this sense, it is a mere label.
Further, we must remember that with Caste as a rule--_nascitur non
fit_. There have been known people who used a semblance of tribal
name to climb into a caste above their own; or again, take the
“Eaters-in-relief-kitchens,” a caste in Orissa made, we are told, of
those who lost their original caste by accepting relief in famine time;
and there are at our doors others, who by persistent self-restraint and
imitation of the customs of a higher caste pass by courtesy for such;
but these do not deceive the elect into intermarriage. A man may buy
himself salvation, a higher place in the world to come by his spiritual
re-genesis. There is no bribe of whatever kind which in this world,
will put him on to even the very next rung of that ladder of Caste.
Now, is it clear that with all this machinery of exclusiveness there is
no condemnation one of another? If I am of the highest caste, in this
genesis, sitting on the top step of our socio-religious ladder, and
you, say, on the fourth, I must of necessity exclude you from “bread
and water.” That rule our religion, which is greater than either of
us, has made; but that does not mean that I will not associate myself
with you in other ways. True, I would not let my Zenana visit yours--my
women are part of my religion--but you and I might play together, buy
and sell together, work together, travel together....
And yet, again, this contamination against which I am bound to guard
myself is ceremonial not moral. It is not because you would teach me to
swear or lie or thieve that I cannot dine at your table, but because
drinking water at your hands, and eating what has been cooked at your
fire, is within the canonical “Thou shalt not.” The odd thing is that
until English education brought other ideas to the country, no one
resented his place in life. “Why kick against the inevitable?” he would
argue. “I shall come again; who knows but that in my next genesis I
might not myself be sitting on that topmost step?” All is in a man’s
own hands--he will reap hereafter, as he sows now this minute....