There was a man of desperate character in the village who had

been captivated by the widow's charms. She had so far refused his

advances, but now, to have her way, she told him that if he desired

to gain his end he must first dispose of her present husband. That

was no obstacle to the lover, and, with the collusion of the woman,

he enticed the man out into his cornfield one day, and there strangled

him. The murder eventually was brought home to the unscrupulous lover,

and he got penal servitude, while the foul enchantress was left free

to marry the youngest brother, Fath, whom she originally desired.

Very few of the Afghan women can read the Quran; for the rest they

are absolutely ignorant of all learning, and often when we are trying

to explain some directions for treatment in the hospital, they excuse

their denseness by saying: "We are only cattle: how can we understand?"

They know very little of their own religion beyond the prayers and

a variety of charms and superstitions.

Some time ago we had a strange case in the women's (Holtby) ward. She

was a feeble old Hindu woman who felt she had not long to live, and

who had such a horror of her body being burnt to ashes after death,

as is the custom with Hindus, that to escape from her relatives she

came into the hospital, saying, she wished to become a Muhammadan,

so that she might be buried. We began to explain to her the Gospel

of Christ, but she appeared too old to take in something so novel,

and finding we were not the Muhammadans she took us for, she sent

word to a Muhammadan anjuman to have her taken away. We assured

her that we would nurse and care for her, and not burn her body;

but no! perhaps we might only be some kind of Hindus in disguise! So

she went off with her Muhammadan friends, and in due time was buried.

Unlike this old lady, some of the cases that come into our women's

ward are tragic beyond words. Let me give one story as told us

by the poor sufferer herself, and she is only one of many who are

suffering, unknown and uncared for, in Afghanistan at the present

time. For, indeed--for the women especially--it is a country full of

the habitations of cruelty. Her name was Dur Jamala, or "Beautiful

Pearl." She and her husband were both suffering from cataract, and

lived near Kabul. They were trying to resign themselves to lives of

blindness and beggary when someone visited their village who told

them of a doctor in Bannu who cured all kinds of eye diseases. So,

getting together all they could, which only came to about eighteen

rupees, they started out on foot on their long and weary journey to

Bannu--one hundred and fifty miles of rough road, with two mountain

passes to cross on the way! They took with them their only child,

a girl of about ten, and travelled slowly, stage by stage, towards

Bannu. But before they had got far on their way, in a lonely part

of the road, some cruel brigands robbed them of all their savings,

beat her husband to death before her eyes, and tore away the weeping

child, whom they would sell for a good price into some harim.

Poor Dur Jamala was left alone and helpless, crushed with grief. From

that time it took her just ten months to get to Bannu, having been

helped first by one and then by another on the way. She reached Bannu

very worn and weary, and in rags, and was very grateful indeed to us

for a comfortable bed and a good meal. The operation was successful,

and resulted in her obtaining good sight in that eye. But meanwhile

someone had frightened her, telling her that hell would be her

punishment for listening to our teaching. She wept very much, and

refused to allow us to operate on the other eye or listen to any more

of our "wicked religion." We saw no more of her for about four months,

when she appeared one day in our out-patient department in great pain

from suppuration of the second eye. She had been to some charlatan,

who, in operating on it, had completely destroyed the vision of that

eye, and she had suffered so much that she was only too glad to put

herself again under our treatment. The second eye had to be removed,

but she is able to work, as the sight of the first is good, and she

often comes to us now and listens to the teaching, although she still

says: "Your medicine is very good, but your religion is wicked." Yet

in listening to the Gospel story she finds some solace in the great

sorrow which has so clouded the life of poor "Beautiful Pearl."

If some of our medical ladies and nurses in England saw how their

poor Afghan sisters suffered, often in silence and hopelessness,

would not some of them come out to do the work of Christ and bear His

name among them? "I was sick, and ye visited me." Though till now we

have only had a man doctor in Bannu, yet forty or fifty women attend

the out-patients' department nearly every day, and many of these have

undertaken long and wearisome journeys to reach us.

There are the Hindu women from Bannu city collected together in

one corner of the verandah, lest they should be polluted by contact

with the Muhammadan women from the villages. For the women are much

greater sticklers for the observance of all the niceties of Hindu

ceremonial than their more Westernized husbands, and would have to

undergo the trouble of a complete bath on returning home if they had

been in contact with anything ceremonially impure. One can recognize

the Hindu women at once by their clothes. They wear the same three

garments winter and summer--a skirt reaching down to their ankles;

a curious upper garment, like a waistcoat with no back to it; and

a veil, which falls over and covers their otherwise bare back, and

which they hurriedly pull over their faces when they see a man.

The Muhammadan women have indeed the veil, but the other garments

are quite different. The upper garment is a full dress, coming

down at least to the knees, and full of pleats and puckers, and

ornamented by rows of silver and brass coins across the breast,

while the nether garment is a pair of loose, baggy pyjamas of some

dark-coloured material, usually blue or red, with very remarkable

funnel-like extremities below the knees. At this point the baggy

portion is succeeded by a tightly-fitting trouser, the piece about

twice the length of the leg, and which is, therefore, crowded up above

the ankle into a number of folds, which accumulate the dust and dirt,

if nothing worse. The Povindah women--strong, robust, and rosy from the

bracing highlands of Khorasan--are dressed almost entirely in black,

the Marwat women in blue veils and red-and-blue pyjamas, the Bannuchi

women in black veils and red pyjamas, and the women of other tribes

each in their own characteristic dress.

Even the style in which the hair is plaited and worn is sufficient

not only to indicate what tribe the woman belongs to, but also whether

she is married or unmarried. The Povindah women are very fond of blue

tattoo marks over their foreheads, while all alike are proud of the

row of silver coins which is worn hanging over the forehead. The

Hindu women plaster the hair of the forehead and temples with a

vermilion paste, not merely for cosmetic reasons, but because it is

sacred to their god Vishnu. Then, the sturdy, sunburnt faces of the

Wazir women tell tales of the hard, rough outdoor life they perforce

lead, and contrast with the more delicate and gentler faces of the

Hindus. Notwithstanding the careful way in which all except the hill

women veil their faces from masculine gaze, they are very sensitive

as to what is being thought of them, and sometimes an impudent man

meets a woman who at once closely veils herself, and remarks to his

companion: "Ah! her nose has been cut off!" This imputation, not only

on her looks, but on her character, is usually too much for her,

and she indignantly unveils her face, to cover it up again at once

in shame when she finds it was only a ruse!

The hill women rarely, if ever, wash either their bodies or their

clothes, and suffer much in the hot weather from skin troubles as

a result. The Hindu women, on the other hand, who appear to aim at

doing in everything the exact opposite to their Muhammadan sisters,

bathe on the slightest pretext, summer and winter, and often women

who carefully veil their faces when passing down the street bathe in

the river and streams in a state of nudity, regardless of passers-by.

Most of the women have a great aversion to telling their own name,

because it is considered a very indelicate thing for a married woman to

mention her own name. It would be very difficult to make the necessary

entries in the register were it not that there is usually some other

woman with her, and etiquette does not prevent her friend telling

what her name is. Otherwise she will usually mention the name of her

eldest son, who may be a baby in arms, or may be a grown man--never,

of course, of a daughter: she must only be mentioned in a whisper,

and with an apology, if at all--saying: "I am the mother of Paira Lai,"

or "I am the mother of Muhammad Ismaïl."

Notwithstanding the state of servitude in which the women are kept

and their crass ignorance and superstition, they have great power in

their home circles, and mould the characters of the rising generations

more even than the fathers.

This fact was brought home very forcibly to me one day in school. A

subject had to be fixed on for the next meeting of the school debating

society. Various subjects had been proposed and negatived. I suggested:

"Who has most influence in moulding our characters--our fathers or our

mothers?" "How could we have so one-sided a debate?" responded half a

dozen boys at once. "Who could be found to argue for the fathers? Of

course, our mothers have all the influence." How important, then,

for the future of the nation that something should be done to raise,

and elevate, and purify the mothers of the nation!

CHAPTER XVI

THE STORY OF A CONVERT

A trans-frontier merchant--Left an orphan--Takes service--First

contact with Christians--Interest aroused in an unexpected

way--Assaulted--Baptism--A dangerous journey--Taken for a spy--A

mother's love--Falls among thieves--Choosing a wife--An Afghan

becomes a foreign missionary--A responsible post--Saved by a

grateful patient.

In the highlands between Kabul and Jelalabad is a secluded valley, girt

with pine-clad hills, and down which a tributary of the Kabul River

flows, fertilizing the rice crops which rise terrace above terrace on

the slopes of the hills, and meandering in sparkling rivulets through

the villages which lie nestling among orchards of peaches and apples,

interspersed with fine walnut and plane trees. This is the Valley

of Laghman, and, like the Kabulis, the men are great merchants,

and travel about between Central Asia and Hindustan. One of these

merchants took his young son, Jahan Khan, down with him to India on

one of his journeys, in order that he might serve his apprenticeship

in the trade of his father and see something of the wealthy cities

and beautiful buildings of India, the fame of which had so often

roused the boyish imaginations of the youth of Laghman, and made it

the desire of their lives to travel down once to India and see for

themselves its glories and its wealth.

Father and son travelled about for two years, buying and selling

and taking contracts for road-making, at which the Afghans are

great adepts, till one summer the father was stricken down with

dysentery. The boy took him to a mission hospital, where for the first

time he heard the story of the Gospel; but he had been always taught

to look upon the English as infidels, and he used to stop his ears,

lest any of the words spoken by the mission doctor might defile his

faith. The disease grew worse, and the father paid some men to carry

him to the shrine of a noted saint in the neighbourhood, called Sakhi

Sarwar, which was renowned for its power in healing diseases. He made

a votive offering, but still the malady grew worse, and at last one

morning Jahan Khan found himself an orphan hundreds of miles away from

home and relations, with no friends and no money to help him home. It

is the great desire of an Afghan who dies away from his country to

have his body embalmed and carried back, it may be, hundreds of miles

on a camel, to be interred in his ancestral graveyard; but how could

the poor boy, without money or friends, perform this duty? He had to

be content with burying his father near the tomb of the famous saint,

whose benign influence might be expected to serve him in good stead

on the Day of the Resurrection.

Jahan Khan then took service with some Muhammadans of the country,

and it was in this way that I first met him. Soon after my arrival in

India I wanted a body-servant who knew no language but Pashtu, in order

that I might the more easily gain proficiency in that language. The

Muhammadan gentleman to whom I applied recommended me Jahan Khan;

but Jahan Khan himself resented the idea of becoming servant to a

Feringi and an infidel, which he thought would jeopardize his faith

and his salvation. His Muhammadan patron laughed at his scruples,

and quoted the Pashtu proverb, "The Feringis in their religion, and

we in ours," saying: "So long as you say your prayers regularly,

and read the Quran, and keep the fast, and do not eat their food,

lest by any chance there should be swine's flesh in it, you have no

reason to fear."

For some time Jahan Khan served me well, but was evidently chary of

too dangerous an intimacy. I had at that time an educated Afghan

who was teaching me Pashtu, and he sometimes twitted Jahan Khan

with his inability to read. This made the boy desirous of learning,

and he persuaded the munshi to give him a lesson every day. When the

alphabet had been mastered, the munshi was looking about for some

simple book for reading-lessons, and he happened to take up a Pashtu

Gospel which had been given him and laid aside, and from this Jahan

Khan got his first reading-lessons. Before long the teaching of the

book he was reading riveted his attention. It was so different from the

old Muhammadan ideas with which he had been brought up. Instead of the

law of "Eye for eye and tooth for tooth," was the almost incredible

command to forgive your enemies. His reading-lesson became the event

of the day for him, not merely on account of the advance in learning,

but because of the new ideas which were stirring in his mind. When the

munshi observed that a change had come over him, he became alarmed,

and told Jahan Khan that he must have no more reading-lessons at all,

and that he had better give up all idea of learning to read. The

seed was, however, already sown, and despite the adjurations of the

munshi, Jahan Khan astonished me one day by coming to ask that I

should continue the reading-lessons with him.

It was a delight to notice week by week the growth of the Spirit in

the boy's heart, but with all that there were many storms to brave

and many seasons of darkness and unbelief, which threatened to crush

the young seedling before it was yet able to weather the storm. The

Afghan nature is hot-tempered and reckless, and he found it difficult

to curb his spirit under the taunts of those around him. One afternoon,

as I was sitting in my room, I heard shouts from outside--"O Daktar

Sahib! O Daktar Sahib!"--and on running out found that two Muhammadans

had seized him and were beating him, while they were trying to stifle

his cries by twisting his turban round his neck. This was only the

first of many times that the young convert was to bear the reproach

of the Cross, and he had not yet learnt to take the vindictiveness

of his Muhammadan compatriots with the forbearance which was a later

growth of the Spirit. This assault, however, resulted in a parting

of the ways, and from that time Jahan Khan publicly avowed himself a

Christian. He had many a battle yet to fight--not so much with outward

enemies as with his own Pathan nature--but the Spirit was to conquer.

Some time after his baptism Jahan Khan conceived a burning desire to

revisit his childhood's home. His widowed mother was still living

there with his brothers and cousins, and he wanted to tell them of

his new-found faith. We pointed out to him the great dangers that

attended his enterprise. In that country, to become a pervert from

Muhammadanism was a capital offence, and even the nearest relation

could not be depended on to incur the odium and danger of protecting

a relative who had brought disgrace on Islam. Jahan Khan could not,

however, be dissuaded, and at last the preparations were made. Some

copies of the Gospels in the Persian and Pashtu languages were

sewn inside his trousers, a baggy Afghan garment, lending itself

appropriately to this kind of secretion.

On reaching Jelalabad, some of the Afghan police arrested him on

suspicion of being a spy of the ex-Amir, Y'akub Khan, and he was in

imminent danger of discovery. A few rupees in the hands of the not too

conscientious officials saved the situation, and after sundry other

vicissitudes he reached his home. His mother and brothers received

him with every token of delight, and for some days there were great

rejoicings. Then came the time when he had to make known his change

of faith. At first, when the villagers missed him from the public

prayers in the mosque, they thought it was merely the weariness of

the journey; but as the days passed by, and he still did not appear,

it became necessary to give explanations. No sooner was it known that

he was a Christian than the villagers clamoured for his life. An uncle

of his, however, who was himself a Mullah, managed to appease them on

condition that he should leave the country at once; and that night

there were great weepings in his house, for his mother felt that

she was not only going to lose her newly returned son, but that he

had sold his soul to the devil and disgraced her whole family. Still,

however, mother's love conquered, and she prepared him his food for the

journey, and parted with many embraces. "O that you should have become

a Feringi! Woe is me, but still you are my son!" He left the books with

some Mullahs there, who, though they would have been afraid to accept

them openly, or let it be known that they were in the possession of

such heretical literature, were nevertheless actuated by curiosity to

hide the books away, that they might see, at some quiet opportunity,

what the teaching of the book of the Christians was.

Jahan Khan's dangers were not yet, however, over. Travellers from

Kabul to India could not venture through the passes in small parties,

but joined one of those enormous caravans which pass twice weekly

through the Khaiber Pass. In these caravans, besides the honest

trader and bona-fide traveller, there are usually some unscrupulous

robbers, who try by trickery or by force to get the property of

their fellow-travellers. A common method with them is some evening,

after the day's journey is over, to propose a convivial party. "We

have just slain a kid," they will say to the unsuspecting traveller,

"and we have cooked the most delicious soup. Will you come and share

it?" But in the soup they have mixed a quantity of a poisonous herb,

which causes insensibility, or it may be madness, in those who

partake of it. Whether they knew of Jahan Khan's secret, or whether

they thought that he might be carrying money with him, I cannot say;

but he, all unsuspectingly, joined in one of these evening feasts,

and remembered nothing more until, some days later, the caravan entered

Peshawur. With a great effort he struggled up to the mission bungalow,

but it was some days before he was able to undertake the journey to

Bannu, and still longer before he regained his previous health.

His visit to his home had not been without fruit, and about a year

later a brother and two cousins journeyed down from Laghman to Bannu,

and while there one at least was brought to ask for Christian baptism,

and is to this day working in one of our frontier medical missions. The

others placed themselves under instruction, but they could not stand

the heat of the Indian summer, and became so homesick for their

mountain village that they returned there.

Among the thousand and one duties that fall to the lot of a frontier

missionary is that of becoming a matchmaker to some of the converts. It

may be that in one station a number of young men are brought into the

Christian fold where there is no corresponding women's work, whereby

they might be enabled to set up house for themselves, while it would

be courting many dangers to expect them to live for an indefinite

period in a state of single blessedness. Thus it came about that I

undertook a journey with Jahan Khan down to India, and in one of the

zenana missions there we found a girl who was to become his helpmeet

through life. She came of one of those Afghan families which had long

been domiciled in British India, and had been brought to the Christian

faith through the devoted efforts of some lady missionary. She had also

received the training of a compounder and midwife from the lady doctor

where she had been converted, and so was able to be, not only a light

to his home, but also an efficient helper in the work of the mission.

Some time after the happy pair had made their home in Bannu, and

after on three successive occasions the arrival of a young Afghan

had brought still more happiness into their married life, a letter

came from a devoted missionary working in a difficult outpost in the

Persian Gulf. The letter set forth how the missionary had been left

almost without a helper in one of the most difficult and fanatical

fields of missionary effort among Muhammadans, and ended by an appeal

for some native worker to come out and help. It was difficult to

resist such an appeal, and though loth to lose the services of Jahan

Khan even for a time, one felt that one had no worker more eminently

suited for stepping into the breach. The Afghan makes an excellent

pioneer. His pride of race and self-reliance enable him to work in

an isolated and difficult field, where a convert from the plains of

India would quickly lose heart. So it came about, in a few weeks' time,

that we had a farewell meeting in Bannu for bidding God-speed to Jahan

Khan and family in their new sphere of missionary labour; and we felt

what a privilege it was, for not only had we seen the first-fruits of

the harvest of Afghanistan, but had also seen an Afghan convert going

out as a missionary to what was as much a foreign country for him as

India is for us. For some time he shared with the devoted American

missionaries the vicissitudes of work among the fanatical Arabs of

Bahrain, and here his eldest daughter was taken from him and laid

to rest in the little Christian cemetery. When some time later he

could be spared to return to Bannu, we put him to work in the mission

hospital, where he was not only able to influence the numerous Afghans

who every week came from over the border as patients, but was able

also to acquire great proficiency in medical and surgical practice.

Some years after this we had occasion to open fresh work in a

village--Kharrak--in the midst of the Pathan population of the Kohat

district, and when we were in need of a thoroughly reliable man to

place in this isolated outpost, we found no one better suited than

Jahan Khan. Kharrak is a chief salt mart in the Kohat districts, and

in the centre of a fertile valley, which, from the amount of grain

it produces, has been called the "Granary of the Khattaks." Hard

by are salt-quarries, which employ a good number of labourers, and

attract merchants with their caravans from distant parts. I first

visited this town in 1895, in company with Jahan Khan, and found a

rough and fanatical population, who refused to listen to our message,

and even rejected our medical aid. As years passed by many of them had

occasion to become patients in the Bannu Mission Hospital, and they

carried back good accounts to their fellow-townsmen of the benefits

they had received and the sympathy that had been displayed towards

them, with the result that before long our visits were welcomed, we

were able to preach in their bazaars, and eventually they asked us to

open permanent work there, gave us a suitable site close to the town,

and raised subscriptions to help in the building.

When first Jahan Khan and his devoted wife started work at Kharrak,

they had a great deal of prejudice and antagonism to overcome, owing

to their being converts from Muhammadanism; but, by patience and

consistency of life, by uniform kindness to all the sick and needy

who came for their aid, they gradually lived it down. I have now no

greater pleasure in my work than to visit Kharrak, and to see these two

faithful workers in their hospital, surrounded by the sick and needy,

telling them of the precious sacrifice of Christ--the very Muhammadans

who were once, in their fanaticism, thirsting for his blood, now

quietly sitting round and listening attentively while he recounts, day

by day, the story of the Cross. I will give an instance to show how

a consistent Christian life can influence even such wild, ferocious

Pathans as those of Kharrak. Some fanatical Muhammadans, irritated

at the preaching of the Gospel in their town, hired a professional

assassin to come to shoot Jahan Khan; but the man happened to be one

who had been indebted to the young doctor for recovery from a severe

illness, in which he had, by his unremitting attention, been the means

of saving his life. When he found who it was he was required to kill,

he returned the money and informed Jahan Khan, that he might be on

his guard. Jahan Khan called for the men who had hired the assassin,

expostulated with them for their ingratitude for the benefits they had

received in the hospital, and, when they expressed their contrition,

freely forgave them, and now they are his staunch partisans.

CHAPTER XVII

THE HINDU ASCETICS

The Hindu Sadhus more than two thousand years ago much

as to-day--Muhammadan faqirs much more recent--The Indian

ideal--This presents a difficulty to the missionary--Becoming

a Sadhu--An Afghan disciple--Initiation and equipment--Hardwar

the Holy--A religious settlement--Natural beauties of the

locality--Only man is vile--Individualism versus altruism--The

Water God--Wanton monkeys--Tendency to make anything unusual

an object of worship--A Brahman fellow-traveller--A night in a

temple--Waking the gods--A Hindu sacrament--A religious Bedlam--A

ward for imbeciles--Religious delusions--"All humbugs"--Yogis

and hypnotism--Voluntary maniacs--The daily meal--Feeding, flesh,

fish, and fowl.

All the travellers and tourists who have recorded their experiences

of India mention the strange, fantastic, ochre-habited ascetics

who are met with in town and village, by the roadside and at

fairs--nay, even in the modern railway-station, where they seem

strangely out of place. But few have cared to cultivate their more

intimate acquaintance; they have little in them that is attractive

to the Western eye, and often appear absolutely repulsive. Yet,

to a missionary at least, there is a fascination about them. They

embody the religious ideals of the East, and carry one back to the

hoary past, long before Alexander marched into India, when the same

enigmas of life were puzzling the mystical mind of the East, and the

same Sadhus were seeking their solution in her trackless jungles and

beside her mighty rivers. Sadhus, I say, because then there were no

faqirs. Faqirs are of comparatively recent origin, dating from the

time of the Muhammadan invasions, about the tenth century of our

era. Now the distinction is often lost sight of. The word "faqir"

is an Arabic one, and denotes a Muhammadan ascetic; while the word

"Sadhu" is Sanskrit, and is best retained for the Hindu ascetic.

The Muhammadan faqir is altogether different from the Hindu Sadhu in

his motives, his ideals, his habits, his dress--in fact, in nearly

everything; yet contact with the Hindu Sadhus has had a profound effect

upon him, and their philosophies have coloured his religious ideas. The

Hindus have, on their part too, not been unaffected by the influx of

Muhammadans, bringing their new monotheistic ideas, and some of the

Hindu orders appear to be attempts to graft the Muslim monotheism on

to the mystical Hindu pantheism. This is seen most developed in the

Kabir Panthis and the various orders originating from Guru Nanak. A

desire to propitiate and attract their Muhammadan conquerors was

probably not wanting in the moulding of these new orders; indeed,

Kabir and Guru Nanak seem to have had visions of elaborating a creed

in which Muhammadan and Hindu could unite together.

The Indian religious ideal has always been ascetic and despondent:

ascetic, perhaps, because life seemed sad and hopeless. On the other

hand, the Western ideal is an altruistic and optimistic one.

The young missionary, who very likely appeared to his sympathetic

friends in England to be making great sacrifices in order to go

"to preach the Gospel to the heathen," sometimes ignorantly imagines

that the people round him in India will recognize what he has denied

himself in order to come among them, and will respect him in due

proportion. Poor deluded man! The modern Christian in England has not

even learnt the alphabet of austerities and self-denials practised

in the name of religion, of which the Indians are past masters. He

appears to them as one of the ruling race, surrounded by the comforts

and luxuries of a house, many servants, books, flowers, photographs,

pictures, and the various little creations of civilization, which

custom has made the Western no longer to look on as superfluous

articles of luxury! Their ideal has been nearer that of the Swami,

who had so overcome the bonds of the flesh that he required neither

clothes nor viands, but sat nude and impassive, maintaining his

vitality on an occasional banana or mango!

Should the missionary try to accommodate himself to the Eastern

ideal, and forego many things that are lawful to him in order to

gain more influence with the people for his message? Every Indian

missionary has probably asked himself this question at some period

of his career. At one time such questionings forced themselves on

me with great importunity. There seemed such a gulf between myself,

in my comfortable house, surrounded by so many conveniences, and the

poor people, around me. The multitudinous administrative duties of

the missionary in charge of a station seemed to leave so little time

for spiritual dealings with inquirers, and at the end of a long day

weariness made it difficult to maintain that very essential equipment

of every missionary--"a heart at leisure from itself to soothe and

sympathize."

Then I had a desire to learn more about these men, who might be

supposed to represent the embodiment of the religious ideals of the

East. The best way seemed to be to adopt their dress and habits, and

travel about among them for a time. A young Afghan, who was a pupil

of mine and a Muhammadan student in the school, begged to be allowed

to accompany me as a chela, or disciple. As the time at my disposal

was limited, it would not have been possible to visit many of the

places where Sadhus most do congregate had we confined ourselves to

the more orthodox method of progression on foot, so we decided to

ride our bicycles. This did not seem to affect the reception we met

with from the fraternity--in fact, it is not at all uncommon to see

Sadhus riding; often pious Hindus seek to gain merit for themselves

by providing them with the means for doing so.

When we left Bannu, we took no money with us; but we seldom were in

want, as we received ungrudging hospitality from Hindus, Muhammadans,

and Christians alike. The ochre-coloured garments are sufficient

passport all over India, and people give alms and offer hospitality

without requiring further evidence of the genuineness of the claims

of the applicant on their charity. In fact, unless the Sadhu is of

known bad character, the Hindu would gain his end--that of acquiring

merit by almsgiving--as much by giving to one as another; and he

would be very unhappy were he not afforded these opportunities of

keeping up the credit side of his account, all the more if his gains

are ill-gotten, or he is conscious of some underhand dealings which

require corresponding acts of merit to balance them.

One of the most interesting places we visited was Hardwar, the holy

bathing-place on the Ganges, which is visited by tens of thousands

of Hindu pilgrims from every part of India every year, and the

neighbouring Sadhu colony of Rishikes. The latter is a village

inhabited only by the Sanzasis and other Sadhus, who have built

themselves grass huts in a very picturesque spot, where the Ganges

River emerges from the Himalaya Mountains, and commences its long

course through the densely-populated plains of India. It is at Hardwar

that the great Ganges Canal, one of the great engineering feats of the

British rule, has been taken from the river to vivify thousands of

acres of good land in the United Provinces to the south, and supply

their teeming populations with bread. A little above the town of

Rurki a massive aqueduct carries the whole volume of the canal high

above a river flowing beneath, and yet higher up two river-beds are

conducted over the canal, which passes beneath them. The uniqueness

of this piece of engineering is dependent on two other factors--the

crystalline limpidity of the blue water and the glorious scenery

which forms a setting to all.

I no longer needed to inquire why the common consent of countless

generations of Hindus had made this neighbourhood their Holy Land;

the appropriateness of it flashed on my mind the moment the glorious

vista opened before me. There beyond me were the majestic Himalayas,

the higher ranges clothed in the purest dazzling white, emblem of the

Great Eternal Purity, looking down impassive on all the vicissitudes

of puny man, enacting his drama of life with a selfish meanness so

sordid in contrast with that spotless purity; and yet not unmoved,

for is there not a stream of life-giving water ever issuing from those

silent solitudes, without which the very springs of man's existence

would dry up and wither? And then, in the nearer distance, the lower

ranges clothed in the richest verdure of the primeval forest, vast

tracts not yet subdued by the plough of man, where the religious

devotee can strive to rise from Nature to Nature's God, amid those

solitudes and recesses where no handiwork of man distracts the soul

from the contemplation of the illimitable and mysterious First Cause.

While looking down from the elevation of the canal, there was

spread out at our feet a bucolic scene of peace and plenty, where

villages and hamlets, surrounded by green fields and cultivation, lay

scattered among sylvan glades, drinking in vivifying streams which

had journeyed down by chasm and defile, through valley and meadow,

from those distant solitudes.

How natural it seemed that in those early Vedic ages, when the

reverence for the forces of Nature was still unsullied by the

man-worship engendered by the development of his inventive genius,

this vast cathedral of God's own architecture should have been made

the chosen place of worship of the race, where the more devout spirits

strove not only to worship and adore, but to shake off the trammels of

a mere mundane corporal existence, till the spirit was as free as the

birds in the air around, as clear from earthly dross as the limpid

waters below, and as integral a part of the great eternal whole as

Nature around, so diverse in its manifestations, yet knitted together

in one congruous whole by a pervading and uniform natural law. But

facilis descensus Averni! How often the most glorious inspirations

are dragged down and down till they subserve the basest instincts

of man! So here a little farther on--at Hardwar--we were to have the

spiritual elation engendered by the natural scene cruelly shattered by

a sight of the vileness and sordidness of the most repulsive aspects

of humanity, and by realizing how the most Divine conceptions can be

dragged down and abased to pander to all that is brutal and evil in

man. Not, of course, that all the Sadhus at Hardwar and Rishikes have

debased their holy profession. Many among them, as I shall shortly

describe, are as earnest seekers after Divine illumination as could

be met with in any country; but, by one of those strange paradoxes so

common in the East, they live side by side with the basest charlatans

and the most immoral caricatures of their own ideals without evincing

any consciousness of the impropriety of it, or resentment at their

profession being thus debased before the public eye.

The individualistic idea eclipses that of the public weal, and each is

so intent on perfecting his own salvation, and drawing himself nearer,

step by step, to his goal of absorption in the Eternal Spirit, that

he has come to forget that man has a duty to those around him from

which he cannot absolve himself. St. Paul tells us, "No man liveth to

himself, and no man dieth to himself." The Sadhu says each unit is

only concerned in building up its own karma, or balance of good and

evil actions, whereby it must work out its own destiny regardless of

the weal and woe of those around. The Hindu idea connects the soul

with those other souls before and behind it in a long concatenation

of births; the Christian idea connects the soul with the other souls

around it, contemporaneous with its own corporeal existence, and linked

with it by the good and evil vibrations of its own vitality. Thus the

vista of the Sadhu is always introspective, even to a vesting of the

natural vital functions of the body with spiritual significations,

which require the most laborious practisings and purifications to

make them all subserve his great ideal of absolute subjection of

the body to the spirit. The vista of the Christian missionary and

philanthropist is extraspective, seeking to make his own life a means

for elevating spiritually and materially the lives of those around him,

and disciplining his own body and soul rather, that he may thereby

more effectually further this end. "For their sakes I sanctify myself,

that they also may be sanctified."

A constant stream of pilgrims is ever passing through the bazaar of

Hardwar to and from that particular part of the river, the water of

which is supposed to possess a superlative sanctity. Here they bring

the calcined bones and ashes of their dead relations, and there is ever

a stream of pious Hindus bringing these doleful relics for consignment

to the sacred stream. As I looked down into the crystal waters I could

see the fragments of white bones lying about on the pebbles beneath,

with the fish playing in and out among them. Strange commingling of

life and death! And this has been going on at this spot for three

thousand years, for woe to the Hindu who has no son to perform his

funeral rites, no relative to bring his ashes to the cleansing waters

of the mighty Ganges! His soul will wander about restlessly, and the

sequence of its reincarnations leading to its ultimate absorption in

the Eternal Spirit, will be hampered and retarded! There they fill the

glass bottles of all sizes, which they have brought for the purpose,

and then place them in wicker baskets on the two ends of a bamboo pole,

which is balanced over the shoulder, and with which they will often

travel hundreds of miles on foot till they reach their destination. If

the Hindu for whom the water is being obtained is well-to-do, he

will have the water fetched with great pomp and ceremony, ringing

of bells, playing of instruments, and chanting of mantras, while the

baskets containing the water are gorgeously decorated, and a servant

is deputed to fan the aqueous god as he is borne along. Probably the

Hindu would grudge a tenth part of the cost to purify or amplify the

water-supply of his own village!

Naturally the town drives a thriving trade in the bamboo rods, baskets,

bottles, and all appurtenances of the mighty pilgrimage. The bazaar

is crowded with monkeys, the feeding of which affords boundless

opportunities to pious Hindus for accumulating merit. These favours

the monkeys repay by surreptitiously snatching sweetmeats and fruits

from the open shop-fronts and darting off with the booty to the roofs

of the shops opposite, where they devour them in quiet with sly winks

and leers at the luckless shopkeeper. Though inwardly wrathful, he

cannot retaliate on the sacred animals, lest he be dubbed a heretic

and his trade depart. Here, too, we see everywhere exemplified the

irrepressible faculty of the Hindu for worshipping anything which

can possibly be made into an object of veneration.

Probably all the world through, no race is to be found so bent on

turning all the events and circumstances of life into religious

acts of worship. If anything or anyone is pre-eminently good or

pre-eminently bad, or has any particular quality, good or evil,

developed to excess, or is a monstrosity in any way, then he or it is

sure to become an object of worship. A Hindu addicted to wine-bibbing

will sometimes turn his drinking orgy into an act of religious worship,

in which the wine-bottle is set up on a pedestal and duly garlanded,

apostrophized, and adored. A Sadhu may be a notoriously bad man, but

if his vices have given him a preeminence over his fellow-men, he will

find multitudes of Hindus, men and women, who will regard them only

as so many proofs of his divinity, and worship him accordingly. It is

not that the Hindu does not recognize or reprobate vice--he does both;

but, then, he holds the idea that spirit is eternally pure and good,

and matter eternally gross and evil, and that if a Sadhu attains the

stage where spirit has triumphed over body, his actions become divorced

from ethics, and are no longer to be judged as though his spirit was

capable of contamination from the acts of its earthly tabernacle.

Hence it is that the stories of the Hindu divinities, which seem to

us distinctly immoral, do not strike the pantheistic Hindu mind as

such, for ethics have ceased to be a concern to one whose austerities

have won for him union with the Divine Essence. Here in Hardwar was a

weird collection of bovine monstrosities--cows with three horns, one

eye, or a hideous tumour; calves with two heads or two bodies. These

were paraded forth by their fortunate possessors, who reaped a good

harvest of coins from the devout visitors, who worshipped them as

illustrations of the vagaries of divinity, and hoped, by offering

them alms, to propitiate their destinies.

Rishikes, the city of the Sadhus, is eighteen miles higher up the

river from Hardwar, and the road lies through a dense forest. The

road is only a rough track, but pious Hindus have erected temples

and rest-houses at short intervals, where travellers can spend the

night and get refreshment. After proceeding some distance through the

forest I met a Brahman journeying the same way with a heavily-laden

pony. The pony was obstreperous, and the luggage kept falling off,

so the Brahman gladly accepted the offer of my assistance, and after

repacking the luggage in a securer manner we got along very well. The

Brahman beguiled the time by telling me histories of the past glories

of the Rishis of the Himalayas, and how the spread of infidelity and

cow-killing was undermining the fabric of Hinduism. False Sadhus and

Sanyasis from the lower non-Brahman castes were crowding into their

ranks for the sake of an easier living, till it was almost impossible

to distinguish the true from the false, and a bad name was brought

upon all.

Any Hindu of the three upper castes may become a Sadhu, and should,

according to Manu's code, become a Sanyasi in his later years. But

he does not thereby attain to the sanctity of a Brahman, and the

Brahmans have many stories to relate to show how many have undergone

extreme austerities and bodily afflictions in order to obtain spiritual

power, and have thereby gained great gifts from the gods, but without

attaining the coveted sanctity of the born Brahman.

The sun had already set, and the forest path was becoming difficult

to follow in the gathering gloom when we reached a clearing with a

temple and a few cottages built round it, so we decided to spend the

night there. Through the kind offices of the Brahman, I was given a

small room adjoining the temple, on the stone floor of which I spread

my blanket, and prepared to make myself comfortable for the night. I

had consumed my supper of bread and pulse, and given the remnants to

the temple cow, and settled myself to sleep, when I was roused by a

fearful din. The temple in which I had found refuge was dedicated to

Vishnu and Lakshmi, and their full-size images, dressed up in gaudy

tinsel, were within. The time for their evening meal had arrived,

but the gods were asleep, and the violent tomtoming and clashing of

cymbals which awoke me so suddenly was really intended to make the

drowsy gods bestir themselves to partake of the supper which their

worshippers had reverently brought them.

When the gods were thoroughly roused, and the dainty food had

been set before them, the priest proceeded to fan them with some

peacocks' feathers while the meal might be imagined to be in course

of consumption, and meanwhile the worshippers bowed themselves on the

floor before them, prostrating themselves with arms and legs extended

on the stones and foreheads in the dust, the more zealous continuing

their prostrations as long as the meal lasted. In these prostrations

eight parts of the body have to touch the ground--the forehead, breast,

hands, knees, and insteps--and I have seen pilgrims travelling towards

a holy place some hundreds of miles distant by continuous prostrations

of this kind, the feet being brought up to where the hands were, and

the prostration repeated, and thus the whole distance measured out by

interminable prostrations. This formidable austerity may take years,

but will gain the performer great sanctity and power with the gods

whose shrine he thus visits.

The meal over, the worshippers knelt reverently in line, and received

a few drops each of the water left over, and a few grains of corn that

had been sanctified by being part of the meal of the gods, taking them

from the priest in their open palm, and drinking the water and eating

the corn with raptures of pleasure and renewed prostrations. One could

not but be forcibly reminded of a somewhat ceremonious celebration

of the Christian Eucharist. This over, the worshippers departed, the

gods were gently fanned to sleep, the priest and the most substantial

part of the dinner were left alone, and I became oblivious.

The next morning the Brahman and I were up betimes, and girded

ourselves for the accomplishment of the nine miles of forest which

still lay between us and our destination, before reaching which we

had to ford several small rivers. However, the rays of the sun had

scarcely become pleasantly warm when we found ourselves elbowing our

way through the Sadhus and pilgrims who were crowding the small but

striking bazaar of Rishikes. This place has so little in common with

the world in general, is so diverse from all one's preconceived notions

and ideas, its mental atmosphere departs so far from the ordinary

human standard, that it is hard to know whether to describe it in

the ordinary terms of human experience, or whether to look on it as

a weird dream of the bygone ages of another world. As for myself,

I had not been wandering among its ochre-habited devotees for a

quarter of an hour before my mind involuntarily reverted to a time,

many years past, when I was a student of mental disease in Bethlem

Hospital, and to a dream I had had at that time, when I imagined I

found myself an inmate, no longer as a psychological student, but with

the indescribably uncanny feeling, "I am one of them myself. Now these

madmen around me are only counterparts of myself." So now, as some

of these forms of voluntary self-torture and eccentricity, nudity,

or ash-besmeared bodies, aroused feelings of abhorrence, I had to

check myself with the thought: "But you yourself are one of them too:

these weird Sadhus are your accepted brothers in uniform." And so the

illusion continued so long as I moved among them, and when finally

I left Rishikes behind me, it was like waking from some nightmare.

Accompany me round the imaginary wards, and we will first visit that

for imbeciles. We find most of them sitting out in the jungle under

trees or mats, avoiding the proximity of their fellow-creatures,

recoiling from any intrusion on their privacy, preserving a vacuous

expression and an unbroken silence, resenting any effort to draw

them into conversation or to break into the impassivity of their

abstraction. They do not look up as you approach; they offer you no

sign of recognition; whether you seat yourself or remain standing,

they show no consciousness of your presence. Flies may alight on their

faces, but still their eyes remain fixed on the tip of their noses,

and their hands remain clasping their crossed legs. They have sought

to obtain fusion with the Eternal Spirit by cultivating an ecstatic

vacuity of mind, and have fallen into the error of imagining that the

material part of their nature can be etherealized by merely ignoring

it, until the process of atrophy from disuse often proceeds so far that

there is no mind left to be etherealized at all, and there is little

left to distinguish them from one of those demented unfortunates who

have been deprived by disease of that highest ornament of humanity.

Leaving these, let us proceed to the ward set apart for delusional

insanity. The first Sadhu tells you that he is possessed by a spirit

which forbids him to eat except every third day. Another avers that

he is in reality a cow in human form, and therefore must eat nothing

but grass and roots. A third I found sitting in nudity and arrogance

on his grass mat, and repeating sententiously time after time: "I

am God, I am God!" I remember a patient at Bethlem whose delusion

was that he was himself the superintendent of the asylum, the one

sane man among all the mad, and he went round the ward pointing out

to me each patient with the remark: "He is mad--quite mad. He, too,

he also is mad," and so on. But I was much surprised to meet the

same gentleman here. He was in the form of a Bengali Babu, a B.A. of

the Calcutta University, and had held high posts under Government;

but now, in later life, in dissatisfaction with the world at large,

had thrown it all up and sought in the garb of a Sanyasi recluse at

Rishikes for that peace which an office and Babudom can never afford.

Recognizing me as a novice, he took me by the arm, saying in

English (which in itself seemed strange and out of place amid these

surroundings): "Come along; I explain to you jolly well all the

show." We strolled in and out among the various groups of Sadhus,

and at each new form of Sadhuism he would deliver himself after

this manner: "See this man--he is a humbug, pure humbug. See that

man lying on all the sharp stones--he is a humbug. Look at these

here--humbugs! There, that man, reciting the mantras--he pure

humbug. All these humbugs!" and so on.

Here is the section for the study and practice of hypnotism. These

yogis maintain that by a knowledge of the spiritual states engendered

by various samadhs or contorted positions of the body and legs,

and by elaborate breathing exercises, they are able to subdue the

unruly and material currents of the bodily senses and the brain,

and tap that inner source of spiritual knowledge and divinity which

makes them ipso facto masters of all knowledge, able to commune at

will with the Deity Himself.

The contortions into which they are able to thrust their limbs, and the

length of time that they are able to sit impassive and imperturbable in

what appear to be the most painfully constrained postures, show that

years of practice, commenced when the joints and sinews are supple,

must be required for the attainment of this ecstatic state. There

can be no doubt, I think, that masters do exercise the power of

hypnotism on their chelas, and are thereby able to perform painful

operations on them (such as piercing various parts of their anatomy

with iron skewers) without their wincing or showing visible signs

of pain. Other practices which these yogis have been carrying on

for centuries in their haunts in the Himalayas remind one forcibly

of the modus operandi of the Western hypnotist, and no doubt both

attain success through a knowledge, empirical though it may be,

of the same psycho-physiological laws.

Leaving these, let us examine some of the cases of mania--a few

of them acute, others more or less chronic, or passing on into a

drivelling dementia. Here is a man quite naked, except for the white

ashes rubbed over his dusky body, who, with long dishevelled locks and

wild expression, hurries up and down the bazaar barking like a dog,

and making it his boast never to use intelligible language. Another,

after painting his naked body partly white and partly black, has tied

all the little bits of rag he has picked up in the road to various

parts of his person. A third has adorned his filthy, mud-covered

body with wild-flowers, whose varying beauty, now withering in the

noonday sun, seems a picture of how his mind and conscience, once

the glory of his manhood, have now faded into a shadow. Another is

lying by choice in the mud by the roadside, to be fouled by the dust

of the passers-by, and almost trampled on by the cows, hoping by this

abject affectation of humility to be thought the greater saint. For,

by a curious paradox, it is often those who make the greatest display

of humility and subjection of the passions who show the greatest

sensitiveness to public opinion of their sanctity, and quite fail

in concealing their jealousy when some other Sadhu outdoes them,

and gains the greater meed of public admiration.

There is another man to be seen wandering aimlessly about and picking

up bits of filth and ordure, and putting them in his mouth and chewing

them. But to give a further account of these caricatures of humanity

would be loathsome to the reader, as their contemplation became to

me--the more so as the thought kept recurring to my mind, "And you

are one of them, too, now"; and who knows to what point the imitative

faculty of man, that contagion of the mind, may not raise or lower him?

By this time, however, the long fast and the fresh, keen air from the

Ganges made me begin to wonder how I was going to satisfy a call from

within. It was now close on midday, and I saw the Sadhus collecting

round certain houses with bowls, gourds, and other receptacles. These

were the kitchens established by pious Hindus of various parts of

India with the object of acquiring sufficient merit to counterpoise

their demerits--the bribery, chicanery, and lying of their offices,

or the more covert sins of their private life. A rich Hindu may

establish a kitchen in his own name alone, but more often a number

unite together to form a guild to keep the kitchen going, and the

merit is portioned out like the dividends of a joint-stock company

to its shareholders. There were some twenty or more of such kitchens

here, in each of which three chapattis and a modicum of dal, potatoes,

greens, or some other vegetable were given; and there was nothing to

debar a Sadhu from going to as many kitchens as he desired--in fact,

he knew he was conferring a benefit on the shareholders by consuming

their victuals and supplying them thereby with merit.

The gnawing pangs of hunger made me mingle with the shoving, jostling

throng, and hurry from kitchen to kitchen till I had accumulated

nine chapattis, and vegetables in proportion. Modesty then made me

withdraw, but not so most of my companions. One of these who rejoined

me a little later had been to eight kitchens, and brought a supply of

twenty-four chapattis, and a large bowl of dal, potatoes, and other

vegetables. The custom of the place then required me to descend to

the margin of the Ganges, and, squatting on a stone which was lapped

by its pellucid waters, to consume my portion with draughts of the

holy water. But not without a preliminary ceremony, for while the

Sadhus had been collecting round the kitchens, the cows and bulls

had been collecting on the banks of the river, and it was de rigueur

first to set aside three portions, and give one to these holy animals,

a second portion to the birds in the air, and a third to the fish in

the river, after which the remainder, whether one chapatti or twenty,

might be consumed with an easy conscience and a courageous digestion.

CHAPTER XVIII

SADHUS AND FAQIRS

Buried gold--Power of sympathy--A neglected field--A Sadhu

converted to Christianity--His experiences--Causes of the

development of the ascetic idea in India--More unworthy motives

common at the present time--The Prime Minister of a State becomes a

recluse--A cavalry officer Sadhu--Dedicated from birth--Experiences

of a young Sadhu--An unpleasant bed-fellow--Honest toil--Orders of

Muhammadan ascetics--Their characteristics--A faqir's curse--Women

and faqirs--Muhammadan faqirs usually unorthodox--Sufistic

tendencies--Habits of inebriation--The sanctity and powers of a

faqir's grave.

There were, however, some bright spots even in Rishikes, gems

among the rubble, lumps of gold concealed among the mass of baser

metals--minds earnestly seeking a higher spiritual life, losing

themselves, wearying themselves in the quest after truth, intensely

conscious of the vanity of this world and its pursuits and pleasures,

and striving to obtain in a contemplation of the One only Pure,

the only Unchangeable, the only True, that peace of mind which they

instinctively felt and experimentally found was not to be realized

in the pursuit of material objects. The painful mistake which made

their quest so hopeless was the endeavour to divest themselves of the

bonds of their bodily material tabernacle, which, if subjugated to

the spirit, forms the basis on which that spirit can work healthily

and naturally to its divinest development, but which, if altogether

ignored and contemned, reduces that same spirit to a morbid fantasy.

With regard to the learning of many of the Sanyasis there is not a

shadow of doubt. There are men there fit to be Sanskrit professors

in the Universities, and who are deep in the lore of the ancient and

voluminous literature of Hinduism. Yet who benefits by all their

learning? They may transmit it to a few disciples, or it may live

and die with them; they make no attempt to methodize it, to draw

conclusions, to contrast the old order with the new, to summarize or

to classify, but cultivate it purely as a mental exercise or religious

duty, without apparently even the desire to benefit the world at large

thereby. This self-centred individualism, each mind self-satisfied,

self-contained, with the springs of sympathy and altruism hard frozen,

ever revolving on itself, and evolving a maze of mysticism, at length

becomes so entangled in its own introspection that other minds and

the world outside cease to have any practical existence for it. This

is at once the most salient and the saddest feature of the learned

and meditative Sadhu.

But there they are--men who might have shone academically, who might

have enriched the world with thought, research, and criticism, but

who have chosen to live for and within themselves, careless whether

others live or die, are instructed or remain ignorant. Though they

have categorically rejected altruism, and denied that they have a duty

towards their neighbour, and done their best to shut up the doors

of sympathy, yet even with them human nature refuses to be utterly

crushed, and will assert itself. One can often discern a suppressed,

yet insuppressible, hunger after sympathy, and one has no doubt but

that the sympathy which finds its highest expression in the love of

Christ, whether acted or recounted, will penetrate their hearts, and

find a response. Unused, any organ will atrophy, and so their capacity

for sympathy may be latent and not easily roused. Let someone, however,

go to them as a fellow-creature, full of love and sympathy--not to

despise and to fault-find, but to take hand in hand and bring soul

to soul--and he will find that the Sadhus of Rishikes are human,

very human, with the same spiritual hungerings and thirstings, and

able to realize and rejoice in the same salvation.

It is a pity that more missionaries have not devoted themselves

to working among these people. They would need to be men of great

devotion and self-abnegation, but there have been many such in other

spheres. They would be repelled and disappointed by the callousness and

fraud of the majority, but there are the gems to be sought out, and

how much hard granite is the miner willing laboriously to crush when

he is sure of finding nuggets of gold here and there! And among these

Sadhus are men who, converted to Christianity, would be apostolic in

their zeal and devotion, and might, by travelling up and down India,

not now in the vain accumulation of merit, but as heralds of the

Gospel of goodwill, become the Wesleys and Whitefields of a mighty

mass movement of the people towards Christ.

As an example of such a one and the way in which he was converted from

the life of a Sadhu to that of a Christian preacher, I will quote here

the account that Rev. B. B. Roy gives of his conversion. It shows how

strong a hold the ascetic Sadhu idea has on a religiously-minded Hindu,

and how spontaneously his heart seeks in austerity and retirement for

the peace which a growing sense of sin and of the evil of the world has

taken away. At the same time it shows that, as in the case of Buddha,

asceticism fails to afford any lasting comfort or peace to the weary

storm-tossed soul. He says: "Constant starvation and exposure to all

sorts of weather reduced my body to a living skeleton.

"After a few months' travel I came to Hardwar, and then proceeded to

a place called Rishikes, celebrated for its Sadhus and Sanyasis. My

intention was to stay there and practise yoga [a kind of meditative

asceticism], to attain to final beatitude; but a strange event took

place, which entirely changed my purpose. The rainy season had already

set in; the jungle path was muddy, and at places full of water, so when

I reached Rishikes I was almost covered with mud. Leaving my things in

a dharmsala, I was going to bring water from the Ganges when I smelt

a very bad odour. As I turned round I saw a dead body in the street,

rotting in the mud. Around the corpse were the huts of the Sanyasis,

who were performing tap-jap almost the whole day; but none of them had

even enough of compassion to dispose of the body of the poor man who

had died helpless on the street. I thought that if this was religion,

then what was irreligion? My spirit revolted against these Sadhus.

"I perceived in my heart of hearts that yog-sadhan cannot create that

love in man which makes a man feel for a fellow-man. Where there is

no such love there can be no religion from God."

And then he goes on to relate how, leaving Rishikes, he fell in with a

Christian preacher, and eventually found in Christ that peace which all

his voluntary hardship had failed to afford, and how he had been led on

and on in his pilgrim walk, till he had now the blessed and responsible

work of teaching others of his fellow-countrymen how best to bring

the good news of the eternal love to all the hungry and thirsty souls

around. (He was then Principal of a theological seminary.)

There have already been many such cases of Sadhus and faqirs converted

to Christianity, and these men and women have, as might be expected,

exerted an immense influence on their fellow-countrymen. They have

presented them with a Christianity in an Eastern dress which they

can recognize as congenial to the sentiments of their country, and

exemplified in their own self-denying lives, full of the spirit of

that austerity which the Indian has long believed to be inseparable

from religious zeal.

Devotion, austerity, and asceticism in the cause of religion have

been characteristic of India as far back as history records. Life

has always been precarious for the majority of the population in

the East, and plagues, famines and wars have familiarized them with

the tragic spectacles of multitudes of young and old being suddenly

carried off in the midst of business or enjoyment. Consequently,

their sages dwelt much on the uncertainty of life, and developed

the doctrine that the world and its gay shows were only an illusion

of the senses, and the goal of the spirit was to divest itself of

this illusion and rise superior to the limitations of matter. By

the practice of austerities, the grossness of the flesh, the demands

of the body, and the storms of the passions, would be subdued, and

the spirit gain freedom from the endless round of reincarnation,

and ultimately join the illimitable sea whence it came, as the drop

on the lotus-leaf falls back into the water and is lost therein.

Then, it is universally believed that by these austerities the ascetic

gains power with the gods, and can bring down blessings from above

for himself and his votaries. He can, in fact, extort favours from

the unwilling gods if he only carry his self-torture and privations

to the requisite extreme.

We find much the same idea in the ascetic saints of the early Christian

era. Thus Tennyson, in his poem "St. Simeon Stylites," puts the

following words into the mouth of the saint. He is addressing a crowd

of people who have come to worship him, and who believe that, owing

to his great austerities, he has the power of granting their requests.

"Speak! is there any of you halt or maim'd?

I think you know I have some power with Heaven

From my long penance; let him speak his wish."

The idea of merit is ever present to the Hindu. By practising austerity

himself, or by paying another to practise it for him, he can accumulate

merit, which will render each succeeding birth more propitious, and

bring him nearer his ideal of bliss, when his soul will be finally

freed from the endless chain of reincarnations. It must, sad to say,

be admitted that with the great majority of the Sadhus of the present

day the motives which actuate them are much more mundane and sordid

than what I have described above. Lazy good-for-nothings, too indolent

to work, find that in the garb of a Sadhu they can be assured of a

living which, though it may not be a luxurious one, is yet one free

from anxiety and toil. Fraudulent scamps enrich themselves on the

credulity of the people by counterfeiting austerities and miraculous

powers, which successfully deceive the simple-minded, who, without

even a desire to examine their claims and reputed performances too

critically, freely bestow gifts of money and kind on them, in the

hopes of gaining their favour for the attainment of some benefit or

cure, or other object.

Then, there are the political faqirs, who use their position to

disseminate political propaganda, usually of a seditious nature. From

their habit of travelling all over the country they have special

opportunities of becoming the channels for the transmission of news,

and before the days of telegraph and post-office the people would

get most of their news of the rest of the country through these

pilgrims and ascetics; and even at the present day they are able

to disseminate secret intelligence and transmit the orders of the

organizing authorities in such a way as to be very difficult of

detection. When I travelled as a faqir I was frequently shadowed by

the police, and sometimes a talkative and inquisitive companion would

join me who eventually proved to be a detective in his disguise.

As examples of the superior Sadhu--the man who from high aspirations

has voluntarily given up position, honour, and wealth in the world

for the life of a recluse--I will give the two following instances.

I met a man at Rishikes who had been the Prime Minister of a Native

State. While in that capacity he had to deal with bands of robbers

who infested the highways, and had committed some cold-blooded

murders for the sake of the money and goods of the travellers. When

a number of these men had been caught and participation in murders

proved against them, he found it his duty to condemn them to death

by hanging. The sentence was duly executed, but from that day he got

no rest at nights. Visions of the culprits would rise before him as

soon as he lay down on his couch, and they would appear to be pointing

their fingers at him as the cause of their death. This so unnerved him

that he could not get a night's rest, and dreaded going to sleep. Want

of rest and nervous perturbation prevented him from duly carrying on

the work of the State, and he asked for leave, nominally to attend

the funeral of his mother, but really to expiate his sin, and gain

repose of mind by a pilgrimage to a noted holy place. But he failed

to get ease of mind there, and had it impressed on him that only by

leaving the world and spending the rest of his days in seclusion,

meditating on God, would he find rest from the blood-guiltiness that

was tormenting him. He forthwith resigned his position in the State,

divided his property amongst his family, put on the garb of a Sanyasi,

and was spending the rest of his days in contemplation and religious

exercises.

The other case I met in a village on the Pir Pangal Range, where

he had built himself a cottage with a garden, in which he spent his

days in religious studies and contemplation, and receiving the many

people who used to come to him for advice, or to derive advantage

from contact with his superior sanctity and wisdom. He had been

Risaldar-Major in one of the regiments of Bengal Cavalry, and had

fought under the British flag in several campaigns, and won wounds

and medals. On retirement he forsook his home and relations and all

worldly pursuits, and spent his time in the contemplation of the

Deity and such works of charity as came in his way.

Both these men were truly devout, unostentatious spirits, who had

found that the delights of Divine communion exceeded the pleasures

of this transitory world.

Some Sadhus are set aside from birth for this life by their parents,

and as a good example of such a one I will tell the story of a man

who joined company with me on the road near Ludhiana. I will relate

it in his own words:

"My father is a small Hindu farmer in the State of Patiala, and

when three sons had been born to him, he made a vow that he would

consecrate the fourth to the service of God. When I was born he

allowed me to stop with my mother only till I was four years old,

and then he took me to a certain large city, where there is a famous

shrine, and a very holy man who is renowned for his piety and deep

learning. At first I wept much at being taken away from my brothers

and sisters, but the Swami treated me kindly and gave me sweetmeats,

and I used to fetch his mat and books and put oil in his lamp and do

other little services for him. Then, as I got older, he taught me to

read, first in Bhasha and then in Sanskrit, and he taught me all the

laws of worship and guides to bhagti (devotion). When I became a lusty

young man, he told me to make pilgrimages to various sacred places

and to visit other sages and holy men, and I went forth on my first

journey, taking with me only a staff, a gourd for drinking-water,

a blanket, and a couple of shasters (holy books).

"I had never been out in the world before, and at first I was very

timid of asking people for food in new places that I had never hitherto

seen; but people were nearly always kind to me and gave me food to

eat and shelter at night, and so I got bolder, and I would recite

to them verses out of the holy books in return for their kindness,

for I had no money or anything else to give them. In this way I have

travelled many hundreds of miles on foot, and seen many sacred places

and holy men. After each journey I return to my preceptor, and tell

him my experiences, receive fresh counsel and instruction from him,

and now I am just starting on a fresh journey to Dwarka."

Looking down at my bicycle, I felt quite a luxurious traveller

compared with this brave fellow, starting off with no hesitation and

no misgivings on a journey of hundreds of miles, with not a pice in

his wallet, and a kit even more slender than my own.

He had little idea as to where Dwarka was, but was content to ask

his way day by day, and trust to God and the hospitality of his

co-religionists on the way for sustenance.

"Yes," he said, "sometimes I do want to see my family. My brothers are

all gryasthas (married householders) now, and I sometimes take a few

days' leave from my master to visit them and my parents. I am quite

happy in this life, and do not desire money or service or children;

for when my heart is lonely I read in my copy of the Bhagvad Gita and

get consolation, and I like that better than any other book because it

makes my heart glad. No, I have never met anyone who has spoken to me

of Christ, and I do not know anything about Him; but I am quite happy

because I am sure that if I continue a life of penury and celibacy

and pilgrimage I shall attain salvation."

To resume my own experiences at Rishikes. When night came on I was

given shelter in one of the monasteries, and though the floor was

stone, and a chill wind blew through the cloisters, I should have slept

soundly had not my next bed-fellow--or rather floor-fellow, for there

were no beds--thought it incumbent on him to spend the night shouting

out in varying cadence, "Ram, Ram, Jai Sita Ram, Ram, Ram!" I suggested

that keeping a weary fellow-pilgrim awake all night would detract from

the merit he was acquiring, but only received the consolation that if

he kept me awake I was thereby sharing, though in a minor degree, in

that merit; so it perforce went on till, in the early morning hours,

my ears grew duller to the "Ram, Ram," and my mind gradually shaped

itself into an uneasy dream of ash-covered faqirs, chapattis, cows,

and squatting Sadhus. Next day, in the forest road near Rishikes,

I came across a string of hillmen bowed down under heavy loads of

firewood, which they had been cutting in the hills near to sell for

a few pice in the bazaar. This was their daily lot, earning just

sufficient by continuous hard labour to find for themselves and their

families sufficient coarse food for a meagre sustenance. The question

rose in my mind, Who approached nearer the ideal?--the idle Sadhu,

who makes religion an excuse for living in greasy plenty on the

hard-won earnings of others, while doing next to nothing himself,

or these woodmen of the forest, and all the dusty toilers in the

ranks of honest labour? And an answer came, clear and sure:

"Honest toil is holy service; faithful work is praise and prayer.

They who tread the path of labour follow where My feet have trod;

They that work without complaining do the holy will of God.

Where the many toil together, there am I among My own;

Where the tired labourer sleepeth, there am I with him alone."

The ascetics of Afghanistan are almost all Muhammadans, and I shall

therefore speak of them as faqirs, that being the counterpart of

the Hindu Sadhu. These faqirs have started from an entirely different

religious standpoint, and travelled along a very different experimental

road to those of their Hindu brethren; but the ultimate result is

strikingly similar in many salient features, and Hindu asceticism

and pantheistic thought have deeply coloured their ideas and habits.

There are endless different orders of Muhammadan faqirs, most of

which had their origin in Central Asia, Bukhara and Baghdad having

contributed perhaps the largest share. Each of these orders has its

own method of initiation, its own habit of dress, set phrases and

formulæ, and other characteristics.

Except in a few cases in India, none of these orders of faqirs

or dervishes adopt the ochre garments of the Sadhus. The most

characteristic garment of the faqir is known as the dilaq, which is

a patchwork, particoloured cloak. The owner goes on adding patches

of pieces of coloured cloth which take his fancy, but I have never

seen him washing it, and as it gets old he stitches and patches it

till very little of the original is left. The older and more patched

it is, the greater is the pride he takes in it, and he would not part

with it for love or money.

The order which is most commonly seen in Afghanistan is that known

as Malang, or wandering dervish. These men have a dilaq, a staff,

and a begging-bowl, and travel all about the country begging. They

are nearly all illiterate, and their knowledge of their own religion

does not usually extend beyond certain chapters from the Quran and

stock formulæ. But they have a wonderful vocabulary of words of

abuse and curses, and the people are in great fear of being visited

by some calamity if they offend one of them and incur his wrath,

as they believe in their being able to blast the life of a child

or the offspring of a pregnant woman, or to bring other calamities

down from heaven on the heads of those with whom they are wroth. Once

while I was stopping in a village on the border one of these gentlemen

came to say his prayers in the mosque, and had left his shoes at the

entrance, as is the custom. After he had said his prayers with great

sanctimoniousness he went to resume his foot-gear, but found, to his

dismay, that some thief had gone off with them. Then followed a torrent

of curses on whoever the thief might be, in which all imaginable

calamities and diseases were invoked on him and his relations,

accompanied by every epithet of abuse in the Pashtu vocabulary, and

that is pretty rich in them! The very volubility and eloquence of his

anathemas would have dismayed any ordinary thief had he been within

earshot, but whether he ever got back his shoes or not I cannot say.

Women who are childless will visit various faqirs, whose prayers have

a reputation for being efficacious for the removal of sterility. They

write charms, and dictate elaborate instructions for the behaviour

of the woman till her wish be fulfilled, and they take the gifts

which the suppliant has brought with her. Were this nothing more

than a fraud dictated by avarice, it would be reprehensible, but

worse things happen; and when a child is born after due time, the

husband of the woman cannot always claim paternity. It is a strange

thing that in a country where husbands so jealously guard their women

from strangers they allow them so much freedom in their dealings with

faqirs, whom they know to be morally corrupt. It recalls the Hindu

Sadhu and divinity, who is popularly supposed to have attained an

elevation where ethics are no longer taken account of.

In a religion such as Islam it is scarcely possible for an order

of dervishes to be orthodox, and, as a matter of fact, most of them

are extremely unorthodox, and there is often considerable disputing

between them and the priesthood on this account. But the faqirs have

such a hold over the people at large, and in many ways are so useful

to the propagation of Islam, that the Mullah find it more politic to

overlook their heresies and use them in the promotion of religious

zeal and fanaticism.

It will be found that the underlying current of religious thought in

nearly all these orders is that of Sufism, and Sufism is the product

of the aspiration of the Mussalman soul, wearied with the endless

repetition of forms and ceremonies, after something more spiritual;

and in its search after this spirituality it has drawn most on the

pantheistic philosophies of Hinduism.

Pantheism is, of course, the antithesis of the Judaic theocracy of

Islam, and we read of a faqir who went about calling out, "Ana hu,

ana el haqq" ("I am He, I am the Truth"), being put to death for

blasphemy; but all the same, these Muhammadans, who feel most the

aspirations of the soul for Divine communion, find it in a greater

or less assimilation of pantheistic doctrine.

Most of the faqirs one meets with in Afghanistan are lazy fellows, who

abhor hard work, and find they can make an easy living by begging, and

acquire at the same time, what is so dear to many natures, the homage

and respect of the credulous and superstitious. When one does meet

with one who is willing and able to converse on spiritual topics, one

usually finds that he is a disciple of Hafiz, the great Sufi poet of

the Persians. Like the Hindu Sadhus, they are much addicted to the use

of intoxicants (though rarely alcohol), and charras and bhang (Indian

hemp) are constantly smoked with tobacco in their chilams. When thus

intoxicated they are known as mast, and are believed by the populace

to be possessed by divinity, and to have miraculous powers of gaining

favours from heaven for those who propitiate them.

When such a faqir dies he is buried in some prominent place, often at

the crossing of roads, and his tomb has even greater efficacy than he

himself had when living; and those who wish to obtain his intercession

with the Almighty for themselves bring little earthen cups full of oil,

with little cotton wicks, which they burn at his grave, as a Roman

Catholic burns candles at the shrine of a saint. The most propitious

time for doing this is on Thursday night, and at such times one can see

the tombs of most renowned sanctity a veritable illumination with the

numbers of little lamps burning far into the night. At the same time

offerings are given to the custodian of the shrine, who is himself

a faqir, by preference a disciple of the one whose grave he tends.

In one such shrine that I visited there were the remains of what

must once have been a fine sycamore-tree, but which was then, with

the exception of one branch, a mere withered shell, which had to be

propped up to prevent its falling to the ground. The one green branch

was said to be miraculously kept alive by the shadow of the tomb

falling on it; and if any childless pilgrim would take home a few

leaves and give a decoction of them to his wife, he would assuredly

before long be the happy father of a son; while for the relief of the

other ills to which flesh is heir there was a masonry tank outside,

in which the sick, the halt, and the blind bathed, and were said

to receive the healing they came for. Many of our hospital patients

have already been to this and similar faith-healing establishments,

so they are not always efficacious.

CHAPTER XIX

MY LIFE AS A MENDICANT

Dependent on the charitable--An incident on the bridge

over the Jhelum River--A rebuff on the feast-day--An Indian

railway-station--A churlish Muhammadan--Helped by a soldier--A

partner in the concern--A friendly native Christian--The prophet

of Qadian--A new Muhammadan development--Crossing the Beas

River--Reception in a Sikh village--Recognized by His Highness

Yakub Khan, late Amir--Allahabad--Encounter with a Brahman at

Bombay--Landing at Karachi--Value of native dress--Relation to

natives--Need of sympathy--The effect of clothes--Disabilities

in railway travelling--English manners--Reception of visitors.

In this chapter I shall recount a few of the more interesting incidents

that befell me and my disciple when on our pilgrimage as Sadhus. As

we were travelling without money, we were dependent on the offerings

of the charitable not only for our daily food, but for such little

items as the toll required for crossing the bridges over the five

great rivers of the Panjab. The first river we came to was the Indus,

and there being no bridge over that part of the river, it is crossed

in ferry-boats. We had no difficulty here, for we were known; and

one of my pupils was on duty at the ferry and assisted us over. It

was not so easy, however, at the Jhelum River. When we reached the

western end of the bridge, the toll-keeper stopped us for payment. I

told him that I was a Christian Sadhu journeying to Hindustan, and

that we had no money of any kind with us. He may have believed us,

he may not; but from the way he eyed the bicycles, probably he did

not. Anyway, he told us plainly--no pice, no path; and no setting

forth of the peculiar privileges of a Sadhu could make him budge from

the practical financial view of the question, so we had nothing for

it but to sit quietly down by the roadside and await events.

Shortly afterwards a party of Hindus, on their way to their morning

ablutions in the river, sauntered up, and stopped to gaze at the novel

combination of bicycles and Sadhus. This soon led to conversation,

in the course of which we told them the object of our journey and the

cause of our detention. They then tried with no little earnestness to

get us to relinquish the preaching of the Gospel for the promulgation

of the Vedas, and even offered to pay the two annas required for our

toll if we would accede to their plan. This gave me an opportunity

for pointing out the attraction of Christ, which made it impossible

for one who had once tasted the sweets of following in His footsteps

to desert Him for another master.

They clothed their contempt for the message of the Cross in their

compassion for our hopeless predicament, as they considered it;

"for," they said, "there are no Christians here to help you over,

and it is not likely that Hindus or Mussulmans would help you on such

a mission." I replied that I was content to wait by the roadside till

help came, and that I felt sure we should not have long to wait. "Go

back into the town--there are Christian missionaries there who will

help you; but no one will be coming this way if you wait all day." I

replied that if it was the will of Allah that we should cross,

He could send to us there the means requisite, as much as in the

city. I had scarcely spoken when we saw an officer, attended by a

sowar, riding up in the direction of the bridge. When he reached us

we recognized an officer from the frontier, who had, as we learnt,

just then been sent down to Jhelum on special duty. He recognized me,

and appeared amused and surprised at meeting me under such peculiar

circumstances. When he learnt what was the cause of our detention,

naturally the toll-keeper had not long to wait for his two annas,

and I was able to point out to my Hindu friends that it had not taken

long for God to send us help from even so far as Peshawur, and we

went on with light and thankful hearts. Truly, two annas is worth

much more in some circumstances than one hundred rupees in others!

We then wheeled comfortably along the interesting Grand Trunk Road,

now to the north and now to the south of the railway-line. The crisp

morning air of a Panjab winter has an exhilarating effect on the

appetite, and we were only exceptional in that we had the appetite

but no wherewithal in our wallets to satisfy the same. To tantalize us

the more, it was the feast-day succeeding the great Muhammadan fast,

and in all the villages the men were feasting, and the children, gaily

dressed in their gala clothes, were amusing themselves on numerous

swings, hung up on the trees round the villages, or in playing about

on the roads. My Afghan companion, who had been having the fast

without the feast, finally went up to a party of merrymakers, and,

after saluting them with the customary "Salaam alaikum," said that he

was very hungry, and would be glad of a share of the 'Id cakes. The

man addressed surveyed us in a leisurely fashion from head to foot,

and said: "You! you call yourselves faqirs, ride bicycles, and beg

your bread! Phew!" and turned his back on us. My companion turned to me

with a very un-Sadhu-like expression on his face, saying: "We Afghans

used always to say that Panjabi Muhammadans are only half Mussulmans;

but now I see we were wrong: they are not a quarter. In our country

we call in every stranger and traveller to share our feast." The

latter part of his statement was certainly true; as to the former,

I must leave those who know them best to judge.

Shortly after midday we reached Lala Musa, and, visiting the station,

found the train had just come in. We mingled with the bustling crowd,

and watched the native sweetmeat and refreshment vendors going from

carriage to carriage, calling out: "Garm chapati! garm chapati awe

dal!" (Hot rolls! hot rolls and pulse!); "Ghi ki pakorian!" (Vegetable

fritters fried in butter!); "Garm dudh!" (Hot milk!), and various

other delicacies; and we watched the fortunate possessors of pice

selecting some tempting sweetmeat or panake. Then we passed on to

the refreshment-rooms, where the European passengers were taking a

hurried meal, and I remembered many occasions when I had been into

that same refreshment-room without being a tithe as hungry, and now,

how could I venture inside? Should I not be greeted with: "Now then,

out of this; no faqirs wanted here!" So I wandered back among the

third-class passengers. A Sikh native officer spoke kindly to me and

offered me some cardamoms, and then the whistle blew. The passengers

hurried to their seats, and we were left alone.

A railway porter entered into conversation, and, finding who we

were, directed us to go to the village, where there was a Christian

preacher. We went to the caravanserai, where there were some Afghan

traders sitting on a bed. They seemed surprised at getting a greeting

in Pashtu, but returned it heartily. Then I saw a well-dressed man

walking off towards the bazaar, and something in his face and a book

in his hand seemed to indicate him as the Christian preacher, and,

on introducing ourselves, we found we were not mistaken. He asked us

into his house to rest, and informed us that he was an agent of the

Scotch mission at Gujrat. After the rebuff of the morning we were

loth to say that, though the sun was now declining towards the west,

we were still awaiting our breakfast; so after a time I rose to go,

when, to our no small satisfaction, the kind man asked us to stop

till tea was ready.

It was my custom at most of the towns to preach in the bazaar, and

usually, during or after the preaching, someone in the audience would

offer us hospitality. When we reached Pind Dadan Khan, however, it

was too late for this, darkness having set in; and after wandering

about the bazaar for a time, and talking to a few people, none of

whom offered us hospitality, we went to the public serai, or inn,

known as "Victoria Ghar," where travellers can rest without payment,

and spent the night there. Someone had given us two pice, and with

this we bought a pice chapati and a pice of sugarcane, and dined

off this. Being thirsty, I asked a respectable Muhammadan who was

dining on a bed hard by for a glass of water. He gave it; but when

I raised the glass to my lips, he said: "I would like to know first

what your religion is." I replied: "I am a Christian." Hearing this,

the gentleman took the glass from me, saying: "I do not wish to sully

my glass with your touch." This was a bigotry which I am glad to say

I rarely met with, and is certainly not justified by the teaching of

the Quran, which permits commensality with Christians and Jews.

After this rebuff we did not care to ask any other inhabitant of

the place for water. The next day we travelled on to Khewra, and,

on passing through the bazaar, saw the Government doctor, a Hindu

assistant-surgeon, sitting outside the dispensary seeing patients. He

knew us, and in place of water brought us milk, and then got us a

breakfast. Welcome as this was, his kind greeting cheered us even more.

The next river we had to cross was the Chenab. On arriving at the

bridge, I found a detachment of English soldiers on the march, and one

of these gave the two annas required for our toll. About two years

later, when visiting Lahore, a missionary friend there said to me:

"I met a friend of yours the other day."

"Indeed! Who was that?"

"I was travelling up to Peshawur by rail, when some English soldiers

got into the carriage, and one of them, looking at me, asked me if

I was a Padre. On my answering his question in the affirmative,

he then said he was glad of that, because he took an interest in

missions. I asked him why he did so. 'You see,' he said, 'some time

ago we were on the march to Lahore, and at the Chenab bridge there

was a missionary chap who hadn't the money for crossing the bridge,

and so I paid it for him. I became a kind of partner in the concern;

that is why I take an interest in missions.' This was your friend, was

it not?" I, of course, recalled the incident at the Chenab bridge, and

hope my friend has continued his practical interest in mission work.

The last day of the year 1903 found us at Narowal, a village famed

in the missionary annals of the Panjab. Leaving that, we soon reached

the Ravi River, which lower down flows by the walls of the capital of

the Panjab. Here it was running clear and cold below a sandy cliff

on its western bank. It had evidently been encroaching on the lands

of the farmers, and engulfing many a fertile acre, and the houses of

the village, too, the ruins of the latter showing some way along the

bank. The east bank was a low, wide expanse of sand, which had long

been left dry by the receding stream. Seeing no other way of crossing,

we were preparing to doff our clothes and ford, when a good soul of

a zamindar came up.

"Peace be with you."

"And on you be peace."

"Whither are you going, O Sadhu-log, and what is your order and sect?"

"We are Christian Sadhus travelling from Afghanistan to India, and

are seeking means to cross this river."

"Then you are my teacher," said the zamindar, brightening into a smile,

"and I will get a boat and take you across."

Although the good fellow had been brought to the brink of ruin by the

destruction of his lands and house by the rapacious river, he went and

procured a boat and rowed us across, knowing that it was not in our

power to give him any reward, except to pray for him that he might

recover his lost land, and to give him some spiritual comfort.

After the pleasure of meeting with this brother so opportunely, we

went on encouraged, and soon reached Dera Baba Nanak, the residence

of the descendants of the famous Guru and the seat of a darbar (Sikh

temple), the gilded dome of which we saw glittering in the sun. Passing

over our stay here and at other intervening places, I might mention

our visit to Gadian, rendered famous by being the headquarters of the

Muhammadan reformer Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who died in 1908. This man had

collected round him a band of zealous followers, but, unfortunately,

the good he might have done was nullified by his impious claim to be

the returned Messiah, in accordance with which he professed miraculous

powers, and demanded a correspondingly abject obedience.

Heavy rain-clouds were overcasting the sky when we set out, and we had

scarcely covered the eleven miles of unmade road that connects Batala

with Gadian when the downpour commenced, and continued throughout

the day. Moulvi Muhammad Sadiq, the head-master of the Mirza's High

School, received us with the greatest courtesy, and gave us one of the

schoolrooms to rest in, and shortly afterwards, as the Mirza himself

was indisposed and unable to see us, we were taken into the presence

of his lieutenant, Moulvi Moha-ud-din. This Moulvi is very learned,

probably the most learned in Gadian; he comes from the town of Bhera,

in the Panjab, but has travelled a good deal. He was teaching theology

to a large class of youths and men in Eastern fashion, reclining

on a simple mat and cushion himself, while his pupils sat on the

ground round him. Tea was brought in for us and him while he went

on teaching. The Hadis from which the pupils were reading was on the

subject of prayer, and the Moulvi explained the passages with great

force and perspicuity as the pupils read them out turn by turn. After

some dissertation on the correct intonation of prayers, he took up

(probably for our benefit) a comparison of the texts of the Quran and

the Bible, showing how the custom of committing the former to memory

had resulted in its verbal correctness. Following the same line,

Muhammad Sadiq compared with this the recent criticisms on the Bible

by the Christian expositors; and the "Encyclopædia Biblica," which

he seemed to have studied minutely, afforded him an inexhaustible

store of argument.

After this the midday meal was brought in, and then we were sent for

by a relation of the Nawab of Maler-Kotla, who had become a disciple

of the Mirza, and had devoted himself and his resources to his

service, and was living in the village in a simple, almost Spartan,

manner. After conversation with him and others, I was shown the high

school, college classes, and boarding-house. Though the buildings

for the latter were second-rate, yet the management seemed good, and

the inmates orderly and well trained. In particular I noticed that,

though the next morning was chilly and drizzly, yet all were up at the

first streak of dawn, and turned methodically out of their warm beds

into the cold yard, and proceeded to the mosque, where all united

in morning prayers, after which most of them devoted themselves to

reading the Quran for half an hour to one hour. Many of the masters,

too, seemed very earnest in their work, and had given up much higher

emoluments to work for quite normal salaries in the cause to which

they had devoted themselves.

We were fairly tired out with a long day of talking and interviewing,

and slept soundly. We were disappointed, too, in receiving a message

that the Mirza was still too unwell to see us, but would do so in the

morning. However, when morning dawned we heard with much regret that

he had passed a bad night and was still unable to see anyone. As his

attendants were unable to hold out any prospect of a speedy interview,

and as, indeed, we felt doubtful whether the interview was desired,

we prepared for an early start. We had been kindly and hospitably

received, and there was something inspiriting in seeing a number

of educated men thoroughly zealous and keen in the active pursuit

of religion, though the strong spirit of antagonism to Christianity

was saddening. Moreover, one could not but feel that, as in similar

cases in England and America, here was a man of great ability who had

effectually deceived himself, and had then been the means of deceiving

a multitude of others into believing his false claims. As we read in

Matthew xxiv. 11, "False prophets shall arise and shall deceive many."

The next river we came to was the Beas, and when approaching it

from the direction of Gurdaspur, on a bright winter's morning,

we were struck by the beauty of the landscape. On our left was a

glorious panorama of the Himalaya Mountains, range surmounting range

of glistening snow, a vision of dazzling white. All was set off by

the varying greens and browns of the rich Panjab Plain to the east

and south, the forests and fields of which lay mapped out before us,

and the River Beas a gleaming streak of silver meandering through

its fertile tracts. Reaching the river, we found that the toll-keeper

was on the farther side and the river itself unfordable. Asking the

boatmen whether we could cross without paying toll, as we had no means

of doing so, they said the only way was for one of us to cross over

and ask. We thought on our part that it would be better for both of

us to cross over and ask, and as the boatmen saw no objection to this,

we heaved our machines on board one of the boats and crossed over with

a number of camels and bullocks. Safely arrived on the other side,

we went to the toll-office and did what most Easterns do when they

are in a quandary--sat down and waited to see what would turn up. The

official in a leisurely way took the toll of all the passengers,

quadruped and biped alike, eyed us narrowly without speaking, and

then, in still more leisurely fashion, began to smoke his hookah. As

time passed we both became contemplative, he on the wreathing columns

of smoke from his pipe, I on the bucolic landscape around me. His

patience was the first to waver, and he broke the silence with:

"Now, Sadhu-ji, your pice."

"Indeed, I carry no such mundane articles."

"Then what right had you to cross the Sarkar's river in the Sarkar's

boat?"

"Indeed, our purpose was to crave a favour of your worthy self."

"What do you desire of me, O Sadhu-ji?"

"Merely that, as we are on a pilgrimage to India and have no money,

you would allow us to cross without paying toll; and as you were on

this side and we were on that, and nobody would take our message,

there was nothing for it but to come in person to ask the favour."

"Very well, Sadhu-ji, your request is granted, and may you remember

me."

As an instance of the reception we got in a Hindu village, I may

cite the case of one which we reached in the late afternoon in the

Sirhind district. Most of the men must have been working out in the

fields when we arrived, for we scarcely saw anyone as we wended our

way to what seemed the principal house in the village, and, sitting

down outside it, my companion began to sing a popular Indian hymn:

"Zara tak soch ai ghafil kih kya dam ka thikana nai" (Think a little,

O careless one, how little certainty there is of this life.) First

some children and then some men collected, chief among the latter

being a venerable and stately old Sikh, the owner of the house and

the religious guru or sodhi of the place.

The song ended, he inquired who we were, and what were our object

and destination; and when he had been satisfied on all these points,

he informed us that, though he had never entertained Christian

Sadhus before, yet if we were ready to be treated like other Sadhus,

he would be very glad to offer us the hospitality of his house. We

thankfully accepted his offer, and he prepared a room for us, and

later on brought us a supper of rice and milk in his own vessels,

which to us, after a long and tiring day, seemed quite a royal repast.

It was not often that I was recognized as a European, until I had

declared myself, but the following occasion was a notable exception. I

was sitting in the little jungle station of Raval, and a party of

gentlemen in semi-Indian costume arrived from a hunting expedition. The

chief was an elderly thick-set man with an iron-grey beard, dark

piercing eyes and gold spectacles. He eyed me narrowly a short time,

and then said to one of those with him in the Persian language:

"That man is an Englishman." I replied, "I recognize you gentlemen

as Afghans." He assented, and I entered into conversation with one of

the Afghans with him, who told me that it was His Highness Yakub Khan,

ex-Amir of Afghanistan, who had thus recognized me.

On the other hand, at Allahabad I was going on my bicycle along a

road which was slippery from a recent shower of rain. In turning a

corner the machine skidded and I fell, and as I was picking myself up,

an English girl who was passing, called out: "O Sadhu! you must have

stolen that bicycle, and that is why you do not know how to ride."

Finally we made our way to Bombay, having been helped the last part

of our journey by a friend who bought us our railway-tickets. Here

we desired to return homewards by taking the steamer to Karachi. We

then had no money, but I was asked to give a lecture on my travels,

and after the lecture several of the audience gave me sums amounting

altogether to eleven rupees. When, however, we went down to the docks

to take passage, we found that our steerage fare cost ten rupees, and

five rupees was demanded for each of the bicycles too! We purchased

our tickets and stood on the quay awaiting developments. Among the

crowd was a Brahman holy man, who was sprinkling the passengers with

holy water and receiving a harvest of coppers in return. He came

to sprinkle us, but we declined the honour. He then asked why we

were waiting instead of going aboard with the other passengers. I

told him that we were waiting because we could not pay the fare of

our bicycles. He retorted that unless we invoked his blessing (for

a remuneration) we should assuredly never start, but that, having

done so, everything would turn out well. When we still declined,

he went away prophesying that all sorts of misfortunes would befall us.

The last of the passengers had gone aboard, the appointed time for

starting had arrived, but no friend had appeared to help us out of the

difficulty. The Brahman came back and taunted us with our position,

and what it might have been had we but accepted his offer. All I could

say was, "Wait and see." Just as the steamer was about to start a

ship's officer called to us and said that the captain was willing to

take our bicycles free of charge. With a friendly nod to the Brahman,

we crossed the drawbridge and in a minute more were under way.

We had now one rupee left for food, but still we were not left in want,

for when that was finished the Goanese cooks came and inquired about

us and gave us a share of their own dinner. At Karachi the steamers

anchor out in the harbour a considerable distance from the landing

wharves, and passengers are taken ashore in native boats, a number of

which crowd alongside the moment the ship is moored. But these boatmen

naturally require remuneration, and we had none to give, so that it now

seemed as though we should have greater difficulty in getting off the

steamer than we had in getting on. Just then a launch came alongside

for the mails, and a ship's officer came up and asked if we would like

to go ashore on it. Of course we accepted the offer with alacrity,

had our machines on board in a trice, and were safely on terra firma

again before the native boats had got away from the steamer.

This pilgrimage gave me many opportunities for philosophizing

on the rôle that a man's clothes play in gaining him a reception

or a rejection. My missionary brethren took various views on the

subject. Most exhibited incredulity as to the expediency of donning

native garb, while showing some sympathetic interest; few were

antagonistic on principle, though one missionary brother, indeed,

weighed the matter a long time before admitting us into his house. He

thought that the gulf between East and West was a priori unbridgeable;

therefore no attempt should be made to bridge it, and that the relation

between a missionary and his native associates should be sympathetic

(patronizing?), but not familiar. To go about with an Indian brother,

sharing the same plate and same lodging, seemed to him the height

of unwisdom, even to shake hands being to go beyond the bounds of

propriety; while as for an Englishman donning native clothes, he was

dimming the glamour of the British name in India, which in his eyes

was next door to undermining the British rule itself. My mind had

been made up on this subject before I had been very long in India,

and on no occasion did circumstances tend to weaken my own opinion

that the gulf is by no means unbridgeable, and that the sooner and

the more heartily we set about bridging it, the better it will be

for the promotion of the kingdom of Christ in this land.

Sympathy cannot be wholly made to order: it is largely dependent on

extraneous and adventitious circumstances, and I believe that the

adoption of native dress increases that sympathy on both sides--on

the side of the missionary, because it enables him to realize more

vividly what treatment is often meted out to our native brethren and

how they feel under it, and on the part of the Indians because the

restraint which they usually feel--at least, in country districts--in

approaching a Sahib is removed.

No doubt one reason why Indian Christians are so largely adopting

Western dress is that they receive much more courtesy, conspicuously

so when travelling on the railway. I had occasion to make some

inquiries in Batala Station office. I might have drummed my heels on

the threshold till I was tired had I not been fortunate in meeting an

Indian brother wearing English dress, who walked in without diffidence,

though when I attempted to follow him, I was met with a push and a

"Nikal jao!" (Get out!). On another occasion, travelling by the night

mail from Lahore, I was anxious to get some sleep, and I saw that

the native compartment was crowded, while in the European compartment

there was only a single English soldier. He barred my entrance with a

"Can't you see this is only for Europeans?" I humbly suggested that I

belonged to that category, but his prompt "Don't tell me any blooming

lies!" made me think it better to seek my night's rest in another

compartment. While at Lucknow I essayed to visit the European cemetery

at the old Residency, but the custodian would not hear of admitting

me, utterly discrediting my statement that I was a European. Surely

this unnecessary and most offensive restriction might be removed. I

can readily judge from my own feelings at the time how naturally and

greatly self-respecting Indians would resent this piece of racial

antipathy, which permits a common gate-keeper to subject any Indian

to indignity.

One naturally associates with those who give the heartiest welcome,

and when in native garb the attraction is to those for the sake of

whom we have come out to this land, while, on the other hand, there is

danger that, when dressed for the drawing-room or the tennis-courts,

we may spend too much of our time on that side of the gulf. If we

English realized how much pain we often cause our Indian brethren,

not so much by what we say or do as by the way we say or do it and

the way we act towards them, a great cause of racial misunderstanding

and ill-feeling would be removed.

Suppose a Sahib is seated in his study, and the bearer announces "A

Sahib has come to call," the answer is given at once: "Ask him into

the drawing-room." A moment after an Indian gentleman arrives, and the

bearer is told to give him a chair in the verandah, or he may be even

left standing in the sun, as happened to me more than once, till the

Sahib had finished eating his lunch or writing his letters. At more

than one bungalow, whether it belonged to a missionary or an official,

the bearer would not even report my presence till he had catechized me

as to who I was and what I wanted. I have had to wait as long as two

hours before the Sahib found leisure to see me, being left meanwhile

without a seat except God's good earth, in the wind and cold, or in

the heat and sun, as the case might be. A missionary, of all people,

should not have a room set apart and tacitly understood to be "for

English visitors only," or make a habit of receiving the two kinds of

visitors in altogether different style, or allow his menial servants

to hustle and hector the already diffident and nervous native visitor.

When I was on my pilgrimage with my disciple, how our hearts opened to

those true friends who received both of us alike, and did not chill

us at the outset with the suggestion, "I suppose your friend would

like to be taken to the house of the catechist." Why, forsooth? Many

a time we were both the guests of the humblest of our Indian brothers,

and perfectly happy in unrestrained communion with them; others, too,

of stations high above our own received us both with an unreserved

hospitality, in which nothing was allowed to show that any difference

was made between English and Indian, and we honoured and loved them

for it. Why, then, should others be at pains to show that they

had one treatment for the Englishman and another for the Indian,

or perhaps conceal that feeling so poorly that we were never able to

feel at ease with them? Which, I ask, is more likely to remove racial

antipathy and unrest, and to make our Indian brethren feel that the

Christianity which we preach is really genuine and means what it says?

CHAPTER XX

A FRONTIER EPISODE

A merchant caravan in the Tochi Pass--Manak Khan--A sudden

onslaught--First aid--Native remedies--A desperate case--A last

resort--The Feringi doctor--Setting out on the journey--Arrival

at Bannu--Refuses amputation--Returns to Afghanistan--His wife

and children frightened away.

It is evening, and a party of Lohani merchants are slowly defiling

with their camels through the Tochi Pass, one of the mountain gorges

which connect our Indian Empire with Afghanistan, and its last beams

are shining in the faces of a dozen stalwart men now returning to their

homes near Ghuzni, with the proceeds of their winter's trading on the

plains of India. The men and some five or six women are on foot, while

their children and two or three more women are mounted on some of the

camels, which would otherwise be returning unladen, their loads having

been sold in Multan. The women, veiled as usual, show little more to

the passer-by than one eye and a small triangular piece of cheek;

while the men are either holding the nose-strings of the camels,

or walking beside them with their guns over their shoulders, and a

pistol and long knife or sword peeping out from their open cloak;

for the weather is getting hot now with approaching summer, and they

are passing through the hostile country of the Wazirs, that wild

border mountain tribe who think it their ancestral right to harass

and plunder the merchant caravans passing through their district as

much as opportunity allows.

Among the merchants we are struck by one fine, tall, broad-shouldered

fellow, stalking along by the side of the foremost of his three camels,

his gun and sword ready for use, but, in the absence of any sign of

an enemy, walking at ease, humming quietly to himself a native ditty,

in expectation of speedily seeing his home again, and rejoining his

wife and three children, who have not accompanied him on this journey.

These three camels form his wealth and the centre of his hopes

and prospects, for by means of them does he yearly take down his

merchandise of skins and fruit to the markets of India, and return

in early summer--it is now the month of May--with the proceeds to

his home.

Manak Khan--for that is his name--has been down many a winter

now with his three camels to the Derajat, or that part of India

nearest Afghanistan, and has had more than one scuffle with the

Wazirs, while passing through their land, in defence of his little

stock-in-trade. His fellow-travellers evidently consider him one of

their boldest and best men, for it requires no little knowledge of the

country, and courage, too, to lead a party composed largely of women

and children, and encumbered by a lot of baggage, through mountain

passes, where they are daily and nightly exposed to the attacks of

the mountaineers hiding behind the rocks, or crowning the heights on

either side, and thirsting for their small possessions.

The sun has now disappeared behind the hill before them, and, like

good Muhammadans, they make a brief halt for the evening prayers. The

men cleanse their hands and feet with sand--for there is no water to

be had here--and, selecting a smooth piece of ground, spread their

shawl and, facing the Holy City, perform the requisite number of

genuflections and calls on God.