MADRAS AND CALCUTTA.
India beggars description--the interminable races, languages, creeds,
colors, manners, costumes.
The streets of Madras (Blacktown) are a blaze of color--predominant
white, but red, orange, brilliant green and even blue cloths and
turbans meet the eye in every direction. Blacktown reminds one of
Pompeii--as it may have been in its time--mostly one-storied buildings,
stuccoed brick with little colonnades or lean-to thatches in front,
cool dark stone interiors with little or no furniture--a bit of a
court somewhere inside, with a gleam of the relentless sun--a few
mango leaves over the door in honor of the Pongal festival (now going
on), and saffron smeared on doorposts; a woman standing half lost
in shadow, men squatting idling in a verandah, a brahman cow with a
bright brass necklace lying down just in the street--(sometimes in the
verandah itself); a Hindu temple with its queer creepy images fronting
on the street, and a Juggernath car under a tall thatch, waiting for
its festival; or a white arabesqued and gimp-arched mosque with tall
minarets pinnacled with gold spiring up into the blue; absurd little
stalls with men squatted among their baskets and piled grains and
fruits; and always this wonderful crowd going up and down between.
I should think half the people have religious marks on their
foreheads--black, white, or red spots on the frontal sinus--horizontal
lines (Saivite), vertical lines (Vaishnavite)--sometimes two vertical
white marks joined at the base with a red mark between, sometimes a
streak of color all down the ridge of the nose--and so forth. It is as
if every little sect or schism of the Christian Church declared itself
by a symbol on the brow.
How different from Ceylon! There is a certain _severity_ about India,
both climate and people. The dry soil, the burning sun (for though so
much farther north the sun has a more _wicked_ quality about it here),
are matched by a certain aridity and tension in the people. Ceylon
is idyllic, romantic--the plentiful foliage and shade everywhere,
the easy-going nature of the Cinghalese themselves, the absence of
caste--even the English are softened towards such willing subjects.
But here, such barriers, such a _noli-me-tangere_ atmosphere!--the
latent feud between Hindu and Mussulman everywhere, _their_ combined
detestation of the English springing out upon you from faces passing;
rigid orthodoxies and superiorities; the Mahomedans (often big and
moderately well-conditioned men) looking down with some contempt upon
the lean Hindu; the Hindus equally satisfied in their own superiority,
comforting themselves with quotations from _Shastras_ and _Puranas_.
As to the boatmen and drivers and guides and servants generally, they
torment one like gadflies; not swindling one in a nice open _riant_
way like the Italians of the same ilk, but with smothered dodges and
obsequious craft. The last hotel I was at here was odious--a lying
Indian manager, lying and cringing servants, and an idiotic old man
who acted as my “boy” and tormented my life out of me, fiddling around
with my slippers on pretence of doing something, or holding the towel
in readiness for me while I was washing my face. On my leaving, the
manager--as he presented his bill with utmost dignity and grace--asked
for a tip; so did the head-waiter, and all the servants down to the
bath-man; then there were coolies to carry my luggage from the hotel
steps (where the servants of course left it) to the cab, and then when
I had started, the proprietor of the cab ran after it, stopped it, and
demanded a larger fare than I had agreed to! On one occasion (in taking
a boat) I counted eleven people who put in a claim for _bakshish_.
Small change cannot last for ever, and even one’s vocabulary of oaths
is liable to be exhausted in time!
It requires a little tact to glide through all this without exposing
oneself to the enemy. Good old John Bull pays through the nose for
being ruler of this country. He overwhelms the people by force, but
they turn upon him--as the weaker is prone to do--through craft;
and truly they have their revenge. Half believing in the idea that
as _sahib_ and ruler of the country he must live in such and such
style, have so many servants, etc., or he would lose his prestige, he
acquiesces in a system of impositions; he is pestered to death, and
hates it all, but he must submit. And the worst is one is conscious
all the time of being laughed at for one’s pains. But British
visitors must not commit the mistake--so commonly made by people in a
foreign country--of supposing that the classes created in India by our
presence, and who in some sense are the reflection of our own sins, are
or represent the normal population--even though we naturally see more
of them than we do of the latter.
There are however in the great cities of India little hotels kept
and frequented by English folk where one is comparatively safe from
importunities; and if you are willing to be altogether a second-rate
person, and go to these places, travel second class by train, ride in
bullock-hackeries, and “undermine the empire” generally by doing other
such undignified things, you may travel with both peace of mind and
security of pocket.
* * * * *
Madras generally is a most straggling, dull, and (at night) ill-lighted
place. Blacktown, already described, and which lies near the harbor,
is the chief centre of native life; but the city generally, including
other native centres, plexuses of commercial life, knots of European
hotels and shops, barracks, hospitals, suburban villas and bungalows,
stretches away with great intervals of dreary roads between for miles
and miles, over a dead flat on whose shore the surf beats monotonously.
Adyar, where the Theosophists have their headquarters--and which
is still only a suburb of Madras--is seven miles distant from the
harbor. The city however, though shorn of its former importance as
far as the British are concerned, and slumbering on its memories of
a hundred years ago, is a great centre of native activity, literary
and political; the National Indian Congress receives some of its
strongest support from it; many influential oysters reside here; papers
like the _Hindu_, both in English and vernacular, are published here,
and a great number of books printed, in Tamil and other South Indian
languages.
At Adyar I saw Bertram Keightley and one or two others, and had some
pleasant chats with them. Col. Olcott was absent just at the time.
The Theosophist villa, with roomy lecture-hall and library, stands
pleasantly among woods on the bank of a river and within half a mile
of the sea. Passing from the library through sandalwood doors into
an inner sanctum I was shown a variety of curios connected with
Madame Blavatsky, among which were a portrait, apparently done in a
somewhat dashing style--just the head of a man, surrounded with clouds
and filaments--in blue pigment on a piece of white silk, which was
“precipitated” by Madame Blavatsky in Col. Olcott’s presence--she
simply placing her two hands on the white silk for a moment. Keightley
told me that Col. Olcott tested a small portion of the silk so colored,
but found the pigment so fast in the fibre that it could not by any
means be washed out. There were also two oil portraits--heads, well
framed and reverently guarded behind a curtain--of the now celebrated
Kout Houmi, Madame Blavatsky’s Guru, and of another, Col. Olcott’s
Guru--both fine-looking men, apparently between forty and fifty
years of age, with shortish beards and (as far as I could see, for
the daylight was beginning to fail) dark brown hair; and both with
large eyes and what might be called a spiritual glow in their faces.
Madame Blavatsky knew Col. Olcott’s Guru as well as her own, and the
history of these two portraits (as told me by Keightley) is that
they were done by a German artist whom she met in the course of her
travels. Considering him competent for the work--and he being willing
to undertake it--she projected the images of the two Gurus into his
mind, and he painted from the mental pictures--she placing her hand
on his head during the operation. The German artist medium accounted
for the decidedly mawkish expression of both faces, as well as for the
considerable likeness to each other--which considering that Kout Houmi
dates from Cashmere, and the other (I think) from Thibet, might not
have been expected. All the same they are fine faces, and it is not
impossible that they may be, as I believe Madame Blavatsky and Col.
Olcott considered them, good likenesses. Keightley was evidently much
impressed by the “old lady’s” clairvoyant power, saying that sometimes
in her letters from England she displayed a knowledge of what was
going on at Adyar, which he could not account for. Altogether I had an
interesting conversation with him.
Among other places in Madras I visited one of the little Pompeiian
houses in Blacktown, which I have already described--where a Hindu
acquaintance, a small contractor, is living: a little office, then a
big room divided in two by a curtain--parlor in front and domestic
room behind--all cool and dark and devoid of furniture, and little
back premises into which I did not come. He is an active-minded man,
and very keen about the Indian Congress to which he was delegate last
year, sends hundreds of copies of the _Hindu_ and other “incendiary”
publications about the country each week, and like thousands and
hundreds of thousands of his fellow-countrymen to-day, has learnt the
lessons taught him by the British Government so well that the one
thing he lives for is to see electoral and representative institutions
embedded into the life of the Indian peoples, and the images of Vishnu
and Siva supplanted in the temples by those of John Stuart Mill and
Herbert Spencer.
While I was there two elderly gentlemen of quite the old school
called--innocent enough of Herbert Spencer and of cloth coats and
trousers--with their white muslins round their bodies, and red shawls
over their shoulders, and grey-haired keen narrow faces and bare shins
and horny feet, which they tucked up onto their chairs as they sat; but
with good composed unhurried manners, as all Easterns of the old school
seem to have. This habit of the mild Hindu, of tucking his feet under
him, is his ever-present refuge in time of trouble or weariness; at the
railway station or in any public place you may see him sitting on a
seat, and beneath him, in the place where his feet ought to be, are his
red slippers; but of visible connection between them and his body there
is none--as if he had already severed connection with the earth and was
on the way toward heaven.
_Calcutta._--Arrived 6th Feb., about 4 p.m.--steaming all day since
dawn up the Hooghly, 130 miles from the light-boat at its mouth to
Calcutta--a dismal river, with dismal flat shores, sandy and dry in
places and only grown with scrub, in others apparently damp, to judge
by the clumps of bamboo; landscape often like Lincolnshire, trees of
similar shape, stacks of rice-straw looking just like our stacks, mud
and thatch villages; in other places the palmyra and coco-nut palm;
and doubtless in parts wild tangles and jungles haunted by tigers;
aboriginal boats going up and down; and the Hooghly narrowing at last
from four or five miles near its mouth to half a mile at the Howrah
bridge of boats.
Nearing Calcutta brick-kilns and the smoky tall chimneys of
civilisation appear along the banks, and soon we find ourselves
among docks and wharfs, and a forest of shipping alongside of a
modern-looking city (that part of it).
Calcutta is built on a dead flat. There is a considerable European
quarter of five-storied buildings, offices, warehouses, law-courts,
hotels, shops, residences, wide streets and open spaces, gardens, etc.;
after which the city breaks away into long straggling lines of native
dwellings--small flat-roofed tenements and shops, crowded bazaars and
tram-lines--embedding almost aboriginal quarters, narrow lanes with
mere mud and tile cabins--labyrinths where a European is stared at.
The white dome of the Post Office, like a small St. Paul’s, dominates
the whole riverside city with its crowded shipping and animated
quays--fit symbol of modern influences. Round no temple or mosque or
minster does the civilising Englishman group his city, but round the
G.P.O. It would almost seem, here in Calcutta, as if the mere rush of
commercial interests had smashed up the native sanctions of race and
religion. The orderly rigor of caste, which is evident in Madras, is
not seen; dress is untidy and unclean, the religious marks if put on at
all are put on carelessly; faces are low in type, lazy, cunning, bent
on mere lucre. The Bengali is however by nature a versatile flexile
creature, sadly wanting in backbone, and probably has succumbed easily
to the new disorganising forces. Then the mere mixture of populations
here may have a good deal to do with it. A huge turmoil throngs the
bazaars, not only Bengalis, but Hindustanis, Mahomedans, Chinese, and
seedy-looking Eurasians--in whom one can discern no organising element
or seed-form of patriotism, religion, or culture (with the exception
perhaps of the Chinese). It seems to be a case of a dirty Western
commercialism in the place of the old pharisaism of caste and religion,
and it is hard to say which may be the worst.
Sunday (the 8th) was a great day for bathing in the river. I did not
know that the Hooghly was for such purposes considered to be a part
of the Ganges, but it appears that it is; and owing to an important
and rare astronomical conjunction, announced in the almanacs, bathing
on that day was specially purificatory. In the morning the waterside
was thronged with people, and groups of pilgrims from a distance could
be seen coming in along the roads. Wherever the banks shelved down to
the water, or the quays and river-walls allowed, huge crowds (here
mostly dressed in unbleached cotton, with little color) could be seen
preparing to bathe, or renewing themselves afterwards--beggars at all
the approaches spreading their cloths on the ground to catch the scanty
handfuls of rice thrown to them; everywhere squatted, small vendors
of flowers for offerings, or of oil, or sandalwood paste for smearing
the body with after the bath, or of colored pigments for painting
sect-marks on the forehead; strings of peasants followed by their
wives and children; old infirm people piloted by sons and daughters;
here a little old woman, small like a child, drawn in a clumsy wooden
barrow to the waterside; there a horrible blind man with matted hair,
squatted, yelling texts from the holy books; here family groups and
relatives chatting together, or cliques and clubs of young men coming
up out of the water--brass pots glancing, and long hair uncurled in
the wind. If you imagine all this taking place on a fine summer’s day
somewhere a little below London Bridge, the scene would hardly be more
incongruous than it is here by the handsome wharfs of Calcutta Strand,
under the very noses of the great black-hulled steamships which to-day
perhaps or to-morrow are sailing for the West.
The evening before the festival I went with Panna Lall B. to a
European circus which happened to be in the place--same absurd
incongruity--dense masses of “oysters” perched or sitting cross-legged
on their benches--their wraps drawn round them, for the night was
really cold--watching under the electric light the lovely and decidedly
well-developed Miss Alexandra in tights performing on the trapeze, or
little “Minnie” jumping through rings of flame. Considering that,
except among the poorest classes (peasants, etc.), the Bengalis
keep their women closely shut up, and that it is a rare thing to
see a female (unless it be a child or old woman) in the streets of
Calcutta--a scene of this kind at the circus must cause a sufficient
sensation; and indeed the smile which curled the lips of some of these
rather Mephistophelean spectators was something which I shall not
easily forget.
But the mass of the people of India must be wretchedly poor. These
half-starved peasants from the surrounding country wandering
about--their thin thin wives and daughters trailing after them, holding
on to the man’s unbleached and scanty cotton cloth--over the _maidan_,
through the Asiatic Museum, through the streets, by the riverside--with
gaping yet listless faces--are a sad and touching sight; yet it only
corroborates what I have seen in other parts. “Wide and deepening
poverty all over the land, such as the world has never before seen on
so vast a scale,” says Digby; and with some testimony to show that the
people in the native states are in a better condition than those under
our organisation. Even if the poverty is not increasing (and this is a
matter on which it is most difficult to form a definite opinion), there
seems to be no evidence to show that it is decreasing. The famines go
on with at least undiminished severity, and the widespread agricultural
paralysis is by no means really compensated by a fallacious commercial
prosperity, which in the larger centres is enriching the few at the
expense of the many.
After watching these pathetic crowds on Sunday, I went the next
day to a meeting of the Countess of Dufferin’s Fund for the Medical
Education of Indian Women--a well-meant movement, which after being
launched with all advantages and _éclat_ has only met with moderate
success. A very varied spectacle of dress and nationality. Rajahs and
native chiefs of all sorts of hues and costumes; yellow silk tunics
figured with flowers, flowing purple robes, dainty little turbans
over dark mustachioed faces, sprays and feathers of diamonds; English
ladies in the pink of fashion, military uniforms, and the Viceroy and
Lady Lansdowne in the centre in quiet morning costume. The English
speakers belauded the native chiefs present, and the native chiefs
complimented the English ladies; but after the spectacle of the day
before the general congratulations fell rather flat upon me, nor did
they appear to be justified by the rather melancholy and inefficient
appearance of the bevy of native women students and nurses present. Sir
Chas. Elliott, the Lieut.-Governor, made a kindly speech, which left
on one the unpleasant impression that one sometimes gets from those
big-brained doctrinaire persons whose amiability is all the more hard
and narrow-minded because it is so well-intentioned. Lord Lansdowne
underneath an exterior (physical and mental) of decadent aristocracy
seems to have just a spark of the old English high-caste ruling quality
about him--which was certainly good in its time, but will be of little
use I fear to the half-starved peasants of to-day.
I fancy, with all respect to the genuine good intention shown in
these zenana missions, medical education funds, etc., there must be
something rather comical to the natives themselves in philanthropic
efforts of this kind, made by a people who understand the country so
little as the English do; just as there is something rather comical
to the masses at home in the toy “charities” and missions of the lady
and gentleman here, and suggestive of an old parable about a mote
and a beam. In a lecture given by the Maharajah of Benares, in July,
1888, he chaffed these philanthropists somewhat--recounting how one
such lady “actually regretted that the peasant cultivators could not
provide themselves with boots! while another had a long conversation
with a Rani on the ill effects of infant marriage, and was surprised
to hear that the Rani had been married at the age of seven, and had
sons and grandsons, all of whom were happy and contented. The Rani
then turned to the lady, and observing that her hair was turning grey,
inquired whether no one had ever offered her proposals of marriage, and
suggested that the _English_ laws required some modification to insure
ladies against remaining so long in a state of single blessedness.”
But the most interesting people, to me, whom I have met here, are a
little _côterie_ of Bengalis who live quite away in the native part of
the city. Chundi Churn B. is a schoolmaster, and keeps a small school
of thirty or forty boys, which lies back in a tangle of narrow lanes
and alleys, but is quite a civilised little place with benches and
desks just like an English school--except that like all the schools in
this part of the world it is quite open to the street (with trellised
sides in this case), so that passers-by can quite easily see and
be seen. Chundi Churn told me that he started the school on purely
native lines, but had poor success until he introduced the English
curriculum--English history, science, Euclid, Algebra, etc.--when he
soon got as many boys as he wanted. As in all the Indian schools they
work what appear to us frightfully long hours, 7–9 a.m.; then an hour
for breakfast; 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and then an hour for dinner; and
again from 3 till 6. I fancy they must take it fairly easy; and then
it is certain that the native boys--though they have active little
brains--are much more quiescent than the English, are content to sit
still, and the master has little trouble in keeping order.
[Illustration: CHUNDI CHURN B.]
I have been round several evenings after school hours and chatted with
Chundi Churn and his brother and various friends that dropped in--an
intelligent little community. Two of them are Brahman fellows of about
thirty, with the eager tense look that the Brahmans mostly have, but
good imaginative faces. We discuss the Indian Congress, English and
Indian customs, the child-marriage question (which is raging just now),
and the great question of Caste. They insist on my eating various sweet
cakes of native preparation, but will not eat with me; and they smoke
hubble-bubble pipes, which they pass round--but the Brahmans must have
a hubble-bubble to themselves! At the same time they are careful to
explain that “no one believes in all this now”; but as they are at
home, and only trellis-work between us and the lane, it would not do
to violate the rules. And this, I believe, is largely the state of
affairs. The anglicising population, for the sake of parents’ feelings
(and they are tender on this point), or respectability, or commercial
connection, keep up a show of caste rules which they have ceased or are
ceasing to believe in; and it is an open secret that Brahman gentlemen
of high standing in their caste, not unfrequently when traveling, or in
places where they are not known, resort to British hotels and have a
high feed of beefsteaks and champagne!
One of the Brahmans is clerk in a mercantile establishment in the
English part of Calcutta, and some of the others are students at the
Metropolitan College. Western education is going on at a tremendous
rate--so much so that there will soon be an educated proletariat (what
Grant Duff calls “the worst of evils”) in the great cities of India.
Two or three of the party are very quick at mathematics--which seems to
be a subject in which the Bengalis excel--and readily picked up the key
to one or two little problems which I presented to them. They all seem
to be much impressed with the greatness of Western civilisation--for
the present at any rate, but will react probably before so very long.
Finding I knew something of astronomy they pelted me with questions
about the stars, and insisted on going out at night and trying to
hunt up the ecliptic among the constellations! Then after a time they
would relapse into tale-telling and music. The fellows still show
a truly Oriental love of long stories, and would listen with rapt
attention to one of their party relating some ancient yarn about the
child of a king who was exposed in the woods and ultimately came back
after many convolutions of adventure and claimed his kingdom--just
as if they had not heard it before; or about the chaste Draupatha
(in the Mahabhárata) who--when Duriyodhana, desiring to insult her
before a large assembly, gave orders that she should be stripped of
her cloth--thought of Vishnu, and her cloth went on lengthening and
unwinding indefinitely--their stories lengthening and unwinding like
Draupatha’s cloth, in a way that would have delighted the heart of
William Morris.
[Illustration: PANNA LALL B.]
Panna Lall, Chundi Churn’s brother, is a bright-mannered youth of about
twenty, of a modest affectionate disposition, and with a certain grace
and dignity of bearing. He doesn’t care about books, but has a good
ear and plays one or two musical instruments in an easy unstudied way;
lives in quite primitive style with his father down in one of these
back lanes--but has a tiny little room of his own where he takes me
to sit and chat with friends. There is _no_ furniture, but you squat
cross-legged on the floor--so there is plenty of room for quite a
party. There may be a box or two in a corner, and on the walls some
shelves and a few prints. Indeed it gives one a curious sensation to
see crude colored woodcuts, framed under glass and exactly resembling
the pictures of the Virgin or of Christ common in Catholic countries,
and then on nearer approach to find that they represent Siva or
Parvati, or among the Bengalis Chaitanya, or some other incarnation of
the divinity, standing or seated on a lotus flower and with benign
head encircled by an aureole. These pictures are printed in Calcutta.
Panna Lall is quite an athlete, and interested in anything in that
line. He took me one day to a little bit of ground where he and some
friends have their horizontal bars, etc.; they did some good tumbling
and tight-rope walking, and with their golden-brown skins and muscular
bodies looked well when stripped. The Bengali Babu is often of a
lightish-brown colour. The people generally wear more clothing than
in South India, and at this time of year throw a brown woollen shawl
over their shoulders, _toga_ fashion; their heads are almost always
bare, but they have taken a great fancy lately in Calcutta to wearing
narrow-toed patent-leather shoes, which look sufficiently absurd and
must be fearfully uncomfortable on their well-developed broad feet.
Only it is a mark of distinction and civilisation! Panna Lall every
now and then, when walking, entreats me to stop and rest under a tree,
and then takes off his shoes and waggles his toes about to soothe and
refresh them! I am never tired of admiring the foot in its native
state. It is so broad and free and full and muscular, with a good
concave curve on the inner line, and the toes standing well apart from
each other--so different from the ill-nourished unsightly thing we are
accustomed to. I sometimes think we can never attain to a broad free
and full life on our present understandings in the West.
Another absurd custom of the young Babus here (I am speaking of the
mass of the people) is that of putting on a Manchester cotton shirt,
pure and simple, when they wish to appear in full dress! As they do
not wear trousers, the effect (combined with the patent-leather shoes)
is very naïve and touching.
On the whole Calcutta does not impress me very favorably. There is
the official society, and the trading and commercial ditto, and the
educational and legal sections, and a considerable racing population,
including a great number of jockeys and horse-trainers who come over
with their girls from Australia for the season; there-is a fine
zoological garden and a botanic garden, and the Asiatic Museum, and
various public buildings, and two or three colleges, including a
college for native women; but all these interests seem to serve chiefly
in the direction of _disorganizing_ the mass of the people and the
primitive sanctions of their life. Taking it at its worst the general
population is dirty, lazy and rapacious. As in our slums, a kind of
listlessness and despair marks the people in the poorest quarters--who,
instead of congregating as with us round a beershop, may be seen
perching about on doorsteps and even on the tops of walls, sitting on
their heels with knees drawn up to the chin, and a draggled garment
about them--looking painfully like vultures, and generally chewing
betel, that common resource against hunger. One notes however, even
here, a few fine faces, and a good many very pathetic ones, of old
people.
Chundi Churn plays a little on the _sítar_--the original of our
_guitar_ I suppose--an instrument with a long neck and small belly
made of a pumpkin shell, and four or five wires (originally three
wires, from _si_, three, and _tar_, string). The frets are movable,
so that keeping the same key-note you can play in major, minor, or
other modes. I am beginning to understand the Indian music better now,
after having heard a little in different places; but have not very
much systematic knowledge about it. It appears that they divide the
octave into twenty-two exactly equal parts, called _sruti_--each part
having its own special name. An interval of four _srutis_ may then be
said to constitute a major tone, three _srutis_ a minor tone, and two
a semitone--though this is not _quite_ exact; and out of these three
intervals, major tone, minor tone, and semitone, a seven-step scale is
constituted very nearly similar to ours, and having the semitones in
the same places. The key-note of this scale is called _Sa_ or _Ansa_,
and corresponds to our _Do_, and though not exactly a key-note in the
modern sense of the word, it is the most accentuated note and “rules
the others.” By adopting any of the other six notes as key-note scales
are got very nearly corresponding to the seven Gregorian scales of the
old church music; and one very commonly in use, if I am not mistaken,
corresponds to the Phrygian mode--_i.e._ that which we produce on the
piano by using E as tonic and playing all the white keys.
These seven scales constituted the first system of Hindu music; but
they had a second system in which the notes, though preserving their
names, could be, any of them, raised or dropped by a _sruti_; and a
third system in which one or two notes being omitted, five or six-step
scales were produced.
Out of the hundreds (or thousands) of possible scales thus producible,
the Oriental mind, unable to find the scientific root of the whole
business, made a fantastic selection. There were six sons of Brahma
and Saráswati called Rágas--the genii of the passions. Six principal
scales were named after these genii and called _Rags_, and then each of
these had five feminine sub-scales or _Raginas_ attached to it; and so
forth. Then the numbers five, six and seven became typical of divisions
of the year, days of the week, the number of planets, etc., and very
soon a most fanciful system was elaborated--the remains only of which
have lingered to the present day. The old notation appears to have died
out; but a vast number of time-honored melodies, or rather phrases, in
the different modes and scales, have been preserved by tradition--and
are now called _rags_ and _raginas_, though these names were formerly
applicable to the scales only. These _rags_ and _raginas_ are not what
we should call tunes, but are brief or extended phrases, which have
been classified as suitable for various occasions, emotions, festivals,
times of day, seasons of the year, and the like; and these the musician
uses and combines, within limits, to his taste; and in the hands of a
skilful person they are very effective, but become abominably insipid
and conventional if treated in a mechanical way.
Besides the regular notes belonging to any given scale, the Hindus
use the quarter tones, or _srutis_, a good deal in the little turns
and twanks of which they are so fond; and sometimes by slurring they
pass through every intermediate gradation of tone. The slur, which is
congenial to the mystic vague melody of the East, and so foreign to
the distinct articulation of Western music, is often used in singing;
and on the _sítar_ a slight slurring rise of tone is produced by
drawing the string sideways along the fret--a device which recalls the
clavichord of which Sebastian Bach was so fond, in which instrument the
hammer which struck the string was also the bridge which defined its
length, so that an increased pressure by the finger on the key after
the first striking of the note raised the bridge a little, tightened
the string, and so produced a plaintive rise of tone.
[Illustration: WOMAN PLAYING SÍTAR.]
All this gives the idea of a complicated system of music; and it will
be seen that in the range of mere melody the Hindu music has really
a greater capacity of subtle expression than ours. But in harmony
it is deficient--the ground idea of their harmony being the use of a
drone bass--which bass, though it may change not unfrequently, always
seems to preserve the drone character. And of course the deficiency in
harmony reacts on and limits the play of melody.
The general character of the music, like that of much of the Indian
life, reminds one of our own mediæval times. The monkish plain-song
and the early minstrel music of Europe were probably very similar to
this. There was the same tendency to work from a droning bass rather
than from a key-note in our sense of the word, the same tendency to
subordinate the music to the words, causing vague and not always
balanced flights of intricate melody, the same love of ornamental
kinks, and the same want of absolute definition in the matter of time.
The instruments most commonly used, besides the _Sítar_ and its
relative the _Vina_, are the _Manda_, a horizontal harp somewhat
resembling the Tyrolese _zither_; the _Sigara_, a small clarinet; a
bamboo flageolet, which has a very sweet and mellow tone; the _Tabala_,
a small kettledrum; and the _Taus_, a four-stringed fiddle played with
a bow. This last is a very curious instrument. Beneath the four main
strings are stretched a number of other fine wires, which by their
vibration lightly reinforce and sustain the notes played. The effect
when not played too fast is very graceful and clinging, with subtle
harmonics; and I have heard some most bewitching phrasing on this
instrument--a dialogue one might say between it and the voice--with
accompaniment of the little Tabala. The Tabala itself is very
charming, with its gurgling and bell-like sounds and sudden explosions
and chattering accompaniments, executed by the fingers and the butt end
of the hand on two drums simultaneously. The great effect of the sítar,
whose tone on the whole is thin, is undoubtedly the side tension of the
strings, which gives much expression to it.
At its best the Indian music seems to me to produce a powerful
impression--though generally either plaintive or frenzied. On the deep
background of the drone are wrought these (Wagnerian) phrases, which
are perfectly fluent and variable according to the subject conveyed,
which are extraordinarily subtle in expression, and which generally
rise in intensity and complexity as the piece progresses, till the
hearers are worked into a state of cumulated excitement. When there are
several instruments and voices thus figuring together over the same
bass, the effect is fine. The little tambours with their gurgling notes
record the time in a kind of unconscious way and keep the musicians
together. The big drums and the lower strings of the _vina_ give the
required basses, the _taus_ and _sítars_ and voices fly up and down
in delightful intricacy, quarter notes touched here and there create
a plaintive discord, and even the slur judiciously used adds a weird
effect as of the wind in the forest.
When not at its very best however it is certainly (to me) damnably
rambling, monotonous and wearisome--notwithstanding chromatic effects
of admitted elegance and occasional passages of great tenderness. What
the music most seems to want is distinct form and contrast, and the
ruder rockier elements--nor is their time-system sufficiently developed
to allow change of accent in successive bars, etc. They all say however
that the art is not cultivated to-day, and indeed is greatly decadent
and to some extent actually lost. Like all branches of learning in
India, and the caste-system itself, it has been subject to intense
pedantry and formalism, and has become nearly stifled amid the otiose
rules which cumber it. On the other hand it is interesting to find that
the Hindus call our music not only monotonous (as we call theirs, and
which may be accounted for by mere unfamiliarity--as a town-bred man
thinks all sheep alike), but also coarse and rude--by which I fancy
they mean that our intervals are all very obvious and commonplace, and
the time-system rigid--while probably our sequences of harmony are lost
upon them. Panna Lall, I find, picks up our tunes quite easily; and
seems to like them fairly, but always adds a lot of little kinks and
twanks of his own.
After all, though the vaguely-floating subtle recitative style of the
Indian music has its drawbacks and makes one crave for a little more
definition and articulateness, it presses upon one as possible that
_our_ music might gain something by the adoption and incorporation of
some of these more subtle Eastern elements--if only at times, and as an
enhancement of our range of expression by contrast with our own generic
style.