BETWEEN THE TWILIGHTS

BETWEEN THE TWILIGHTS:
BEING STUDIES OF INDIAN
WOMEN BY ONE OF
THEMSELVES

BY
CORNELIA SORABJI

LONDON AND NEW YORK
HARPER AND BROTHERS
45, Albemarle Street, W.
1908

CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.

DEDICATED
TO
THE HOUR OF UNION

COVER AND END PAPER
DESIGNED BY
J. LOCKWOOD KIPLING

PREFACE

In the language of the Zenana there are two twilights, “when the Sun drops into the sea,” and “when he splashes up stars for spray,” ... the Union, that is, of Earth and Sun, and, again, of Light and Darkness.

And the space between is the time of times in these sun-wearied plains in which I dwell. One sees the world in a gentle haze of reminiscence—reminiscence of the best. There, across the horizon, flames the Sun’s “good-bye.” Great cave of mystery, or lake of liquid fire: anon pool of opal and amethyst, thoughts curiously adjustable to the day that is done, memory of joy or sorrow, of strength of love, or disregard of pain. Gradually the colour fades, now to a golden fleece of the softest, now to wisps of translucence, blush-pink, violet: oft-times the true ecstasy of colour is in the east, away from the Sun’s setting. Or, now again, the sky is a study in grays and blue-grays, in that peculiar heat-haze which belongs to May and September, and the pale curve of the new moon looks old and weary. Is not all Life marching towards the Silence? it seems to say.

Yes, the manner of its loitering is varied, but always, always, is it an hour of enchantment, this hour Between the Twilights: and it is my very own. I choose it, from out the day’s full sheaf, and I sit with it in the Silences on my roof-tree.

It was in this hour, through a hot summer, that the thoughts which make this little book came to me, and were written down. I had spent my days going in and out among my friends of the Zenana, and a great yearning was in my heart that others should know them as I did, in their simplicity and their wisdom.

The half is not yet told: much would not bear telling—I had no business to take strangers into the walled garden of our intimacy—and some things were too elusive for speech, but the sounds which have thridded the Silence have been echoes of reality, and I can only hope that they may convey some impression of the gently pulsing life of the Zenana.

Not by any means are the Studies meant to be exhaustive. I have left out of count the Anglicized and English-educated Indian, the capable woman who earns her own living, the cultured woman of the world or philanthropist. There was little to learn about her which a common language and the opportunity of intercourse might not teach any sojourner in India at first-hand.

But these others of whom I have written seemed to justify in a very special sense the hour of my meditation.... They float elusive in the half-light between two civilizations, sad by reason of something lost, sad by reason of the more that may come to be rejected hereafter.... And none but God knoweth when will toll for them that final Hour of Union, and whether, when it is here, we shall be able to see the stars through the blue veil of the Light that lies slain for all Eternity.

CONTENTS

[1] “Portraits of some Indian Women” is reprinted from “The Nineteenth Century and After,” by the kind permission of the late Sir J. Knowles.

GLOSSARY

Amla, officer of a household.

Bina, a musical instrument (stringed).

Brahmin, highest or priestly caste.

Didi, elder sister.

Guru, spiritual guide.

Jog, Hindu Vedantic system of meditation and of acquiring sanctity.

Kincab, gold brocade.

Khattriya, the fighter: of the fighting or second highest Caste.

Mali, gardener.

Mantras, incantations.

Munias, small speckled birds.

Namascar, the salutation to the learned: and to a superior.

Pandas, pilgrim guides at holy places.

Pooja, worship of a God.

Pujari, a Temple servant.

Purdahnashin, she who sits behind the curtain: the secluded.

Sais, groom.

Saree, a long winding-sheet, which forms the drapery worn by women.

Shastras, sacred writings.

Sudra, the server; of the fourth or Serving Class.

Takht-posh, a wooden plank on four legs used as a bedstead.

Veishya, originally of the third or agricultural, now often of the professional caste.

BETWEEN THE TWILIGHTS

I
THE STORY OF WISDOM

She comes with the Spring—a two days’ guest in an Indian household. Nor has frequency bred either carelessness or coolness of reception. Early on the morning of her arrival you will see the women hastening from the Bathing Ghat, their garments clinging about their supple limbs, their long hair drying in the wind. They bear full water-pots, for nought but Gunga-Mai to-day suffices—no slothful backsliding to nearby pump.

In the house of my friend, it was Parvati, the oldest serving-woman who undertook to make ready the guest chamber. I watched her as she crossed the courtyard—a handful of the precious liquid for Dharti-Mai the Earth Mother, and the rest—a generous swob, for the black marble veranda. Soon had she helpers, and to spare—the most practised among them made the white chalk marks of good luck—tridents, fishes, flames of fire; and the tidiest made the little inclosure—white cotton “railings,” the posts being balls of Ganges mud, in which were buried swiftly-flying arrows—threat for daring devil.

But the centre of interest was naturally the Altar. This was just a plain raised platform of wood, carrying bravely its variety of offering. Great mountains of yellow and white flowers, with fruits, chiefly the cocoanut, fruit of healing, old Sanskrit manuscripts, lettered palm-leaves, thumbed and blotted copybooks and tattered “primers”—the prayers of children—the pointed reed, and ink-horns, glass ink-pots and steel pens from the “Europe” shop across the way; a school edition of “The Vicar of Wakefield,” Ganot’s Physics, quaint combs and mirrors, powder-boxes, and perfumes, “the tears of scented grass,” or that more subtle “scent of red rose leaves.” Why not? Is she not woman, even though a Goddess and learned? The “Europe” products, I notice, carry milk in place of ink. “Sanctify to us this Western Education”—is that what it means in this country, where deepest feeling finds outlet other than through doors of speech? So her worshippers made ready, not in private chapel but here where the life of the days pulsed and languished through the years; here, where friend or passing stranger might alike turn to greet her; for Wisdom is one, though her hosts be many. Moreover, She who is called Wisdom loves the voices of little children, and nothing is hushed, or ordered otherwise for her coming. The most unregenerate rogue romps at her feet, the most thriftless housewife, the most rebellious daughter-in-law has access to her Altar, and through the day one after another will come bearing her gift; and, lingering a while, will go away softly even as she came. Sometimes, by no means generally, there will be an image of the Goddess. One such I have seen in the house of a rich merchant. It was a life-sized figure dancing on a lotus, the full bloom, pink-edged, in her hand she bore a bina for the Goddess of Wisdom is also Queen of Harmony; and the rich man’s friends had honoured her as was meet, with priceless gifts of Kincab, of gem, of trinket. Now Wisdom of necessity has yet one more aspect, she is Goddess of Perfect Speech. It is of her that the tongue-tied prays eloquence, the scholar success; and the offering to her in this capacity you will find absent from no Altar, rich or poor. To omit this would mean the curse of the dumb for ever. It is a little cake of rice and milk, this oblation for lapses from accuracy, for “benevolent falsehood.”

“Oh Guest of the hours, remember the past, the puzzling need of the tangled moments, remember—and forgive.”

A list of benevolent falsehoods must needs vary with the age. Manu includes (viii, 130) “The giver of false evidence for a pious motive, for such an one shall not lose a seat in heaven,” his lapses being called the “Speech of the Gods.”

“To save a life,” “To protect a cow,” “To counteract the thriftless ways of husbands,” have added Hindu women of my acquaintance.

Simple is the ritual of the worship of Wisdom. “With folded hands I bow before the Goddess, the Goddess who provides all wealth, and vouchsafes the power of speech.” “May the Goddess of Wisdom protect me, the Mother of the Vedas, who from the crimson lotus of her hands pours radiance on the implements of writing, and on the works produced by her power.”

“May the Goddess of Wisdom protect me—She who robed in white, sets far all ignorance. She who abides with the Creator may she abide with me ...;” and the rest of the prayers are either said by the Priest, or found in the heart of the worshipper. The battered lesson book, the oft-used pen, are these not prayers in themselves?

The last time I saw the Goddess was at the Children’s Festival. Wisdom danced on her lotus flower, in a little bower of bamboos and marigolds, out in the open courtyard. At her feet sat children, row upon row, ranging in age from three years to twelve. I watched them come so happily, tripping hand in hand with some friend or comrade. They wore their best gay little saree, gold-spangled and bordered, in their hair thread of gold, or great heavy ornament, or just some flower among the light close braidings. And, as they took their seats in the Great Cathedral roofed by God’s sky, the Priests moved among them anointing each little forehead with oil of sandal wood from off the altar of her who is named Wisdom.

Then the musicians beat their drums and rang the bell of worship, and every single forehead was on the ground before the Goddess. The worship had begun.... First be consecrate, then bring your offering—is the creed.... I heard no prayers, but there-after, one by one, the Babies passed before her, throwing at her feet sweet-scented wreaths of Jasmine. I needed not then to hear their prayers.... And that was all the Service. The play of the children at the feet of Wisdom.

Thus then the Hindu honours his Guest. And, on the second day—for even Wisdom must share at length the waters of oblivion—with music and singing with the happy laughter of children and a gay following of the faithful, her image is taken to the Ganges; and with love and much injunction as to next year’s journey from the Mounts of Blessing, is it set afloat on that sacred river whose bourne is the Eternal Sea.

Wisdom, in Sanskrit story, is Creative Power to the Great God himself, his energy—without her he is but a great incommunicable passive force.

“I make strong whom I choose—originating all things I pass even as a breeze. Above the Heavens am I, beyond the Earth, and what is the Great One, that am I. I make holy the Great God Himself. For the Great Archer it is I bend the bow; it is I who stay evil in the name of the Destroyer. Few know me, yet near to all alike am I. God is he from whom Wisdom and Speech—after reaching Him—return.”

Unravelling it all, what quaint teaching may we not piece together? That is true wisdom which puts man in touch with God—creature with Creator. And the same power of God refrains not from blessing the things that are of value to the Earth—the written, the spoken word, all arts and harmonies and science.

Then, is it not a parable that the Goddess of Speech is primarily the Goddess of all Learning? Let the ignorant keep silence.

The Tulsi spirals stirred in the hot wind, and the great white red-throated Sarus flapped his wings as he walked about the women’s courtyard. The men of the house had taken the Image to the water, and we sat by the empty altar in the hour between the Twilights. “Tell me more about Wisdom,” said I to my Wisest of the Wise, and she told me of how Vishnu gave her as wife to Brahma, and how Brahma put a slight upon the Lady of Wisdom—a slight which she never forgave.

A great sacrifice was going forward, and the Priest bade Brahma call his Lady. For is it not the wife, and she alone who must hold the sacred grass, must sprinkle the offerings. “But Saraswati is engaged in dressing,” was the answer.

Then the Priest “without a wife what blessing can come?”

So Brahma turned to Indra, and bade him find a substitute in hedge or highway.

Indra soon returned, leading by the hand a milkmaid, beautiful and happy. She bore a jar of butter on her head. “She shall become the Mother of the Vedas,” said the Priest; and that is how Gayatri, the Milkmaid, was wed to the Great God Himself.

Then came forth Saraswati all unconscious, and very gorgeous, attended by the wives of Vishnu, Rudra, and other of the Gods—a worthy train.

When she heard what had happened, she was wroth beyond power of words to tell.

Said the Great God, shamefaced, “The Priest did this thing; the Priest and Indra.”

But Saraswati said, “By the powers I have obtained, may Brahma never be worshipped in Temple or Sacred Place—except one day in each year—and since Indra, thou didst bring that Milkmaid to my Lord, thou shalt be bound in chains by all thine enemies and prisoned in a strange and distant country, thy power over the winds and thy station on high, given to others. Cursed also be ye—Priests. Henceforth shall ye perform sacrifices solely for the desire of obtaining the usual gifts, and for love of gain alone shall ye serve Temples and holy places; satisfied only shall ye be with the food of others, and dissatisfied with that of your own houses. And in quest of riches shall ye unduly perform rites and ceremonies.”...

In great wrath she called for her peacock, to leave the assembly, but the Goddess of Wealth refused to accompany her; and her also did she curse.

“May you always abide with the vile and the inconstant, the contemptible and foolish, the sinful, cruel and vulgar.”

After her departure Gayatri modifies all the curses; so neither need all Priests nor all the wealthy be base and contemptible.

When the youngest daughter-in-law in the house is listening to the story-telling my Wisest of the Wise adds a variation—Saraswati is appeased, and Brahma says he will do with the Milkmaid what the Goddess commands, while the Milkmaid herself falls at the feet of Wisdom, who, raising her, says, “Let be—let you and me both serve my Lord!”

And now for a year her Altar is empty but she is not forgotten, and in the practice and devotion of the faithful still does the third watch of the night belong to Wisdom.

“Let the home-keeping ones wake in the time sacred to Saraswati, the Goddess of Speech; let them reflect on virtue and virtuous emoluments; and on the whole meaning and essence of the words of Wisdom.”

“So desirable, and yet she may be only a two days’ Guest in a Hindu household,” I mused aloud.

“Ah, but,” answered she who worshipped Wisdom, “were Wisdom always with us, how should we live among the sons of men!”...

II
THE STORY OF DESTRUCTION

When the world was young there were two Giant Demons—Shumbo and Nishumbo, who made great discord both in heaven and upon earth: nor did victory bring harmony, for when all who opposed them lay vanquished, they fought with each other.

Then did the Gods and Godlings take counsel how they might slay them. “Go to the Destroyer,” said the Great God, and so said also the Preserver—“It is his business.” But Shiva, the Destroyer, owned to a dilemma. “I have promised them,” said he, “that no man shall prevail against them. What shall I do?” Then upon meditation—“I am resolved what to do. One shall I create in the form of a woman, that this strife might be ended.”...

And that was how Creation came near to Kali the Mother. Very beautiful was she, the strength of the strong, and the attractiveness of that which was to conquer strife: and her did Shiva name Jugatdatri—Nurse of the World. None could stand before her, and it came to pass that at last was left only one enemy—the King of Demons; and he, seeing her beauty, sought her in marriage; but she laughed saying, “I wed none but him I cannot conquer.”

And Shumbo maddened by her laughter vowed victory, and her very glory was a peril, for he seized upon her hair, and impeded her much.... Then did the Gods take counsel again together. It was the Destroyer who found help. “Let us each give her of our strength,” said he, “that evil may be smitten for ever.”

And they did all even as he suggested, and the incoming of this great strength made her so that she lost some of her comeliness. And now was she called Kali ... She that is black.

And the strength of the Gods was as wine to her, and she fought intoxicate. And behold, while all the Gods and Demons watched, they fought—those two—the Nurse of the World and the King of Evil, and Kali won.

Then was there great rejoicing on earth and in heaven, and Kali joyed no less than her creatures, and she danced in her joy, drunk with the blood of her victim.

And for the third time the Gods took counsel, for they said, “The thing we have ourselves made strong will at last destroy even us.”

And the Great God said: “She is wife to the Destroyer. This is his business.” And Shiva thought long and earnestly, for even he could not causelessly retake the strength that he had given.... And the end of the meditation was that he went forth from Heaven and lay in her path as she came down from the Snow mountains in her dance of Death. And she, mad with victory and blood, seeing nothing, danced on to his chest exultant, when looking down, she recognized her husband, and was shamed and sobered. And this final vision of Kali is the one worshipped by her children—Kali, the four-armed, the Conqueror of Demons, vanquished only by the husband who lies under her feet. In one hand beareth she the head of a victim, in another a sword, with a third she blesseth, and with the fourth she holdeth out fearlessness to all her followers. She wears a garland of skulls, and a waistlet of hands,—and no more danceth she the dance of Death. Yet to her, the Mother, come alike all who are drunk with blood, righteous or unrighteous, for she understands; and all who would have the strength of the Gods to slay the Evil in the world—for was not this the purpose of her being, in the old, old days when the world was young?...

Thus to me one of my gentle friends of “The Inside” in this land of legend and silences.

Then we turned to her of many years and long meditations, who sat by listening—“Is that how you know the story, Mother?”

“Yea, my children,” made she answer. “Even so—and when mine eyes are shut these are the thoughts that come to me—blessing and cursing, destruction and creation, death and life—are not both companions of Time?”

“But the skull and hands, Mother—read that parable.”

And she—“All is destroyed save intelligence and work—these outlast us.”

So, museful, I took my way to the Mount of Kali, which lies without the City, past many ancient tanks grown rank with vegetation, past flowering trees, and swamps of mat huts and malaria.

A bright-eyed baby played upon a log, see-sawing over a nauseous drain—Was this one measure of the dance of Death?... An avenue now of shops—the Precincts—Gods and Godlings and sacrificial vessels were for sale, with the beads of the Sacred, and water-bottles made of Ganges sand blown fine as glass.... I lingered among the women making purchase. Images of Kali seemed most popular, with bright red and yellow horses for the children, nor was the picture shop neglected—and I laughed softly to myself to see a German print of Romeo and Juliet in the balcony scene selling clamorously for “Radha Krishna,” the gay God with his favourite lady.

Seated under a pipal tree, hoary with age, was an ash-smeared Priest, at his feet a heap of yellow marigolds. No woman passed him without some offering, and sometimes he spoke, but most often kept silence, noting all things through the matted hair that veiled his slits of eyes. Of such begging Priests there was a great collection—the ascetics sat still, but were gifted for fear of curses; others ran after the women, teasing, traducing each other; and these were gifted for their importunity. One, half-mad, I think, had a few words of English and followed me cursing the Priest-guide I had chosen for a “stupid-’umbug-flatterer”—said all as one long word, which sounded a potent curse indeed.

The Image is in a small brick and stone building behind closed doors, which are opened at fixed times. In the ante-room sit the faithful, reading sacred books or preparing their offerings for the Goddess. There seemed a separate Priest for each devotee.

One man only did I see whom my heart convicted of holiness: and looking on his face I knew that it was possible even here to forget all the grossness to which the ignorant had degraded the Kali-legend.... The place of Sacrifice ran red, and already the Priests had sold the flesh of Kali’s tale of goats to eager bidders. The poorer applicants sat in a circle, a gory head on each lap.... It was a gruesome sight.

By the Bathing Ghat was a great crowd. Here were two young women in charge of a chaperone. They had come far ways measuring their length along the ground. It was in the rains, and they were all mud and slush from the exercise. The woman stood by, policing them, seeing that they abated no jot or tittle of their vows, where the head had been the feet should lie—there, and not an inch further.

“What was the vow?” I asked.

A prayer for one—that the child then on its way might live.... Oh! the pathos of it. The other woman was giving thanks for the recovery of her reason.... “The dance of Death,” “The dance of Death”—a minuet....

“If I were God, I should pity the heart of man ...”

They were travelling at the moment towards the drain behind the Image of the Goddess. Oh! the water, oh! the water!—it was black with impurities. It had washed the feet of the Goddess, and the flowers of her Temple, and the refuse of the Sacrifice; but they drank eagerly—at full length still—content.

It was a parable on the power of Faith.... And truly, the Temple of Kali opens many doors to reflection. Evil, we notice, is conquered by Time in the end. Of Love, which conquered Time, there is no Gospel in Hinduism. Inherent strength is the last vanquisher, the Great Gods themselves helping in the conquest, even parting with their own strength to the fighter. And that which God inspires may be as God. Yet, in spite of the Hindu doctrine of works, there would seem to be a caution against too great activity. Kali drunk with activity was shamed by Gods and men....

I went back to my Wise Woman of many years.... “To the ignorant,” she said, “Kali but wants a life—Kali slays and Kali makes alive. Said I not once before, blessing and cursing, death and life, these are the Soul’s eternal doors. In the house of Kali the doors are ever open.... But, for us women, the lesson to hide in the heart is this—Kali, the Great Destroyer, the Nurse of the World, the Dread-Inspirer, is vanquished only by—her husband.”

Here, then, meet ancient story and modern history, the history of every Hindu woman throughout the Land. The last stage of perfection is wifely submission.

III
THE STORY OF A WOMAN

Now Dokhio, the Father of Durga, was wroth because Shiva, to whom he had given his daughter in marriage, though he had the reputation of a God, was as poor as any beggar. And in his wrath he devised revenge. He made a great Feast, to which he bade Gods and Goddesses, Godlings and baby Godlings—all, save Shiva and his wife Durga. And Narod, the Mischief Man, was made the voice to bear the message to each guest.

So Narod went to Shiva, and “This is what your Father-in-law hath planned,” saith he, inciting.

But Shiva, “What is that to me?” “Dishonour, insult, affront—see you not?” said the Mischief Man.

And Shiva, again, “What is that to me? They who do not honour cannot hurt me.”...

Narod then went to Durga, Shiva’s wife: “A Feast of Gods and Goddesses,” saith he. “Let be,” said Durga; “What is that to me?”

“Such display of dresses and jewels, such cackling of women’s tongues. ‘Why is Shiva not there? Why not Durga?’ Surely a daughter may go to the house of her Father, by chance, on the day of the Feast, ignorant of what is forward?”...

Durga sought her husband. But he was firm. “They will make sport of you to spite me.”

“What matter? It were worse not to be seen there—things happening behind our backs.”...

But Shiva was firm.

Then did Durga use all the wiles of women—coaxing, sulking, flattering—Shiva was firm; so, finally she used the wiles of a more than human ...

She took unto herself ten forms each more awful than the last, and ten-headed she passed before Shiva, threatening and mocking. Till—“Go!” said Shiva; “Let happen what will happen.”

And Durga, a little fearfully, in that she had got at last her heart’s desire, arrayed herself in garments gorgeous and becoming, and made her way to her Mother’s house. And her Mother embraced her right gladly, so that a great contempt was in Durga’s heart for the trouble at which she had been in coming.

But the Mother said within herself: “It is well my Lord is away and busy, it is well ... else might he hurt this child of mine.”

Yet soon the question came: “And where is my Father?”

“At the Place of Sacrifice, where he makes a great feast,” said the gentle Mother. “Stay with me, my child; leave such-like things to the men-people.”

But Durga: “A Feast? Nay, then must I go and see” ... and she heeded nothing.

And Dokhio was furious, in that after all his insult would be robbed of point.

“Why art thou come hither?” he thundered. And she: “Because my Father’s daughters may not be kept from my Father’s Sacrifice.”

Then Dokhio cursed Shiva and all that belonged to him, which Durga hearing, passed out of life with grief inconsolable.

And Shiva, who had cared nothing for the slight to himself, revenged the death of his wife most mightily. He sent forth his lightning and consumed that great sacrifice ere they who were bidden had arrived to make it; and so the guests found nothing save charred wood, and a wizened old Dokhio with the head of a bearded goat.

For this was Shiva’s little joke to keep the matter for ever in the mind of Durga’s Father, Dokhio.

We sat on the great quiet roof in the cow-dust hour while the latest Mother-in-law among us told the story.

She meant it, I think, for the special benefit of Boho, the ten-year-old Bride; and she was gratified, for Boho caught her breath in great gusts at this bold coercion of a husband. Nothing did the story mean to her save that—punishment for such sacrilege.

But Kamalamoni looked up smiling from a game with the household tyrant—her Nagendra—aged four.

“It is not thus the story hath its ending,” she said.

“Then tell the rest, Kamal.” But Kamal was better occupied.

“And how calls the horse, my son? and how the dog? and the cat? and sheep? And,” roguishly—“and how the great grandmother when in anger?” Till she of many years claimed Nagendra as her fee for such impertinence and Kamala was forced to tell her tale.

“And how should story end which wails no dirge for death of wife?” said Kamala, hotly. For opinion is but experience crystallized. “When Durga’s soul left her body thus early, it wandered to the mountains of snow, and finding on the threshold of sense, the empty house of a new-born babe, it entered it.”

Uma was the name by which its parents chose to know the child; and Uma grew strong and beautiful, gentle and good, with no memory of Durga the Ten-Headed.... And, one day when she had come to her woman’s estate in our kingdom of life, and was playing with her waiting-woman among the swans beside the lotus-beds, an aged Priest-man appeared before her, and falling at her feet, said, “Durga Mother, thy Lord of Destruction fasts and prays sorrowing for thee: go and tend him.”

And Uma ran to her mother, wrathful.... “An old Priest-man fell at my feet Mother,” she said, “and said unto me words which are not fit to be heard by me before my maidens.”

So Uma’s Father went out forthwith, and finding Narod—for he it was, the Mischief Man turned Priest in old-age, he heard the wondrous God-news about his daughter.

Shiva, it seemed lived a life of prayer and fasting—close by in the Cave of the Cow’s mouth.

“Send Uma to tend him,” said Narod, “and haply he will look and love, and they be man and wife once more.”

Thus Uma was sent to Shiva, and tended him night and day; and the woman’s love for the thing that she tended, grew in her heart.

But Shiva, full of self-pity for loss of a jewel which he might better have preserved (for this was his thought), saw not that same jewel lying burnished and re-beautified in the dust at his feet. And Uma’s heart was sad, till even the Great God himself was moved to pity, and sent the little God of Love to wake Shiva the Monk from his trance of bead-telling.

Then, fearfully—for is not Shiva the Destroyer himself?—went the Godling of the arched bow, and hiding in the bracken he shot forth his arrows—not without success. And Shiva, furious, saw one upturned foot in flight, and the fire from his eye burnt up the thing he saw, so that Kama Deva comes no more among the haunts of men.

But, and when his anger was dead, he looked up, and his eyes being opened, he beheld Uma, knowing her for Durga his own possession.

And so, once more was fulfilled the destiny of a woman.

“But for three days in every year does Uma go back to her parents and her swanlets in the mountains of Snow; and this journeying of Uma is always at Durga-pooja time when we make feast for many days to worship the Ten-handed.”

In the silence which fell upon us after this story, she of many years was heard to yawn, while all the women snapped their fingers till her jaws met again.

From Shiva’s Temple gleaming white among the yellow-green of the date palms came the sound of the pooja bell—some one, a woman probably, praying for her Lord to the Lord of Killing and Cursing. Clear against the gray-blue sky stood the cross-crowned spire of the Christian Cathedral; and almost at our doors, rang out the prayer-keeper’s call to the faithful Moslem: “There is no God so great as God.”...

“There is no God so great as—my God.” It is what we are all saying; and it makes at once the strength and the tragedy of human lives. “No God so great as my God.” What different things we mean when we say that—we of the bustling outside world.

The Hindu woman means one thing only.... “No God so great as my God.” That was the lesson each was taking from the story of Durga and Uma. Did not almost every fable and legend chant that chorus? “No God so Great.”... In punishment may be sometimes, or in penitence (see the miracle of the Destroyer himself turned monk for Durga)—but most of all in graciousness....

“He knew Uma for her who went to Dokhio’s feast, and yet he forgave,” said Boho Rani, “Oh! the wonder.”...

But the Mother of Nagendra laughed, sure of her possession.... “The Godling of the arrows was not really burnt,” she said, “the flying foot belonged to Kama’s sheaf-bearer and rival, the less-than-godlet of unlawful love.”...

And the Wise Woman smiled to herself in the growing dusk. “The ignorant are incapable of receiving knowledge,” was what she said.

IV
DEVI—GODDESS!

A young unmarried girl is by some in Bengal called Kumari—Princess, and when married, Devi—Goddess.

I was musing on this, and all it told of the feeling of a Nation, and of the true beauty of that feeling at its best, when an old Prime-Minister friend of mine in a Native State came to invite me to a Ceremony.

It is known how I love all things primitive and individual, and my orthodox Hindu friends are very good to me in remembering this. “But of course I will come,” I promised. “What is it this time?”

“The worship of young girls,” said he. There was the idea again, the central idea in all Hindu thought in relation to women.... The worship of the Life-Bringer.

It was very simple, as all such Ceremonies are, and free from all manner of false shame or conventionality. There was remembrance of the Creator; for the creature—the gentle little girls, such babies all of them—there were garlands of gay flowers, feastings and anointings with perfume of rose-leaves.

There was also towards them in the manner of these kindly elders who had long looked on the face of Nature, a pretty dignity and reverence which could not fail to beautify the fact of Creation whenever it should draw nigh.

Not long after, the youngest Bride in the household—she is but ten years of age—had a joy-making on her own account. She worshipped the Aged. They came in happy groups, the same who had so lately blessed her—toothless grandmother, great-aunt, cousins’ Mother, wife of Mother-in-Law’s Spiritual Guide—each had a name of her own in the dictionary of relationships. She received them charmingly, standing at the head of the Zenana stairs—the baby-hostess! falling at the feet (parnam) of those to whom she owed this courtesy, saluting others with joined hands raised to forehead (numuscar), and each made answer “Blessings,” hand on the child’s head. Then they sat in rows on little mats along the floor, and ate sweets and vegetables off green plantain leaves, their hostess waiting on them.

This little exchange of religious obligation is all the etiquette, and makes all the social amenities known among orthodox women in India.

It is hard to convey the idea, state the fact as one may, but the Hindu woman acknowledges no claims save those of religion. No social, no communal claims. Her worship of the Gods, of her husband, her children, they are all the same, part of her religion, and they make her life.

Even the ordinary business of the day, bathing, dressing, eating, is a religious act.... To cook her husband’s food an orthodox Hindu wears a special silk garment: the only gardening she ever attempts is to water and tend the sacred basil (Tulsi). If she travels, it is on a pilgrimage to this shrine or that, to bathe in this or that sacred river. Of course she gives dinner parties as did my ten-year-old Bride, on special occasions, or on feasts of Gods and Goddesses through the year, also in memory of the dead; but there is no machinery of calls, no social entertaining for entertainment sake, no interchange of civilities to acquaint young people and make marriages. Marriages are made by the Priests and your map of stars, not by the social broker. For births and deaths you may have a house full of women, your relations or “spiritual” relations, come unbidden on a visit of congratulation or sympathy. To these you may never suggest departure, and only innate good manners in the visitor has saved from bankruptcy many a house in which the doors of Life and Death were often open.

This involuntary hospitality may become quite tiresome in practice. I remember one great Feasting. It was a ceremony for the dead. A Maharani had died, and we made her “praying-for-the-soul” budget, buying her sinlessness for 1,000 lives at a cost of Rs. 20,000. Part of the penalty was feeding Brahmins. Our budget provided for 3,000 guests: but it was not etiquette to shut the gates, and when 5,000 had been fed, my business soul did really take alarm.

“If the gates were shut by my order no ill-luck would betide the house, would it?” I asked of her of many years, who kept our abstract of right action. “Luck or ill-luck concern only the Believer” was her verdict ... so my way was clear. In the courtyard great caldrons of food were steaming. Here was one stirring the rice and ever boiling more and yet more. On the veranda sat Brahmin cooks, cutting up red pumpkins or brown-green brinjals, slicing potatoes, grinding curry stuffs, dancing red-yellow grains of pulse in the winnowing fan. Other Brahmins ran to and fro, serving the food as it was made ready: all was orderly confusion, at which the women peeped from the third floor balcony.

They were the disciples of Priests at the expense of whose appetites we were buying merit, and they sat in rows, hungry and clamorous. Scarce could they be served fast enough.

“But how long will they sit there?” I asked of my old Dewan.

“Till they are fulfilled,” was his delightful answer; and it gave me courage for the shutting of the gates.

It was but the day before that we had prayed for the soul of the Lady, at thirteen altars of holy Ganges mud. Four of these altars were arranged round a great central place of prayer, under an awning, to which were four “Gateways.” At each gateway hung a looking-glass to hold the shadow of the spirit.... Beside the awning stood a wooden image of the dead, and to this was tethered a cow. So we bought for her blessings. This was also the purpose of the final ritual—gifts to Priests—silver vessels, beds with silken hangings, jewels of gold, and precious stones;... for the apostles of the order, whole travelling-kits—neat rolls of matting, drinking-gourds, umbrellas, begging-bowls....

But, after all, it was in the Zenana that regret and longing were prettiest rendered.... In the hour of Union (as we call the Twilight in Bengal), when the glories of the West had died into silence, and earth and sky were gray and still as life at the passing of a friend—she who was now Maharani—my ten-year-old Bride, crept out on to the landing of “the Inside” to sprinkle with holy water the place where soul and body parted, and to light the death-light of welcome.

“She will come back, and know that we have not forgotten.”

It is interesting, the definite place in the scheme of life, allotted to women in a country where woman is of no account, except as hand-maid to her lord man. I am always finding illustration of this truth. No spite, no resentment can rob individuals of the right to perform certain religious acts. The death-light, for instance, was the province of Boho-Rani, the daughter-in-law, the youngest in a household including three generations, and many collaterals.... But the most passionate love for the dead never suggested any variation of etiquette. The old Mother bent with grief, sisters, daughters sat huddled in the living-room, looking with hungry eyes at Boho, who alone could relieve the tension of that quiet-coloured hour by service.

Now it is the turn of one, now of another, the women know; there is no wrangling.... But a few days past there had been the Spring games, and the Festival of the Spring. The children-wives swung to and fro under the big tree in the women’s courtyard. It was a pretty sight—the graceful little ladies in their bright draperies, clinging with their toes to the board (for they swing standing), holding to the ropes with tiny hands.... The sun peeped at them through the screen of leaves, and set on fire the rough-cut jewels at throat, at wrist, at anklet. To and fro, to and fro ... so rhythmic was the motion, I found myself thinking of a field of grass, rippling in the wind. Some brides, too small for the exercise, were gravely swinging their dolls, and here was a “religious” fondling the baby Krishna in his cradle ... but none of them played really: it was only—Oberammergau—how the god Krishna grown to manhood sported with the maidens; that was the reason given by all for the evening’s gaiety.

Another day, with laughter and shy importance, the youngest Bride and Bridegroom were led to a place of prominence. It was their first Springtime since the marriage ceremony, and they sat side by side, bound together with silken cords; while the mother and grandmother threw at them little soft cushions of red powder, the same that is used in religious sacrifices for dusting the idol; with it is made the mark on the head of the Bride: perhaps the colour is symbolical, the women do not know, “it has always been so,” they tell you. And, as to the games—why it is Springtime, children should be merry, and the shy pelting with red pellets is Zenana merriment in italics. Next year, maybe, the Bride will be a mother, and such boisterousness will not become her. Let the children play while they may, and let the old Grand-dame pillow-fight with red powder cushions. Is she not nearer to the children in spirit than that grave-eyed Madan Mohun, of three Springtides, for instance, who is having his baby feed, in greedy solemnity. For is she not the wise woman of many years? and only the years can bring true youth and wisdom. Ignorance dies after decades of convention, of pain, of mistakes, and from the dead bulb springs this wonderful flower of youth and wisdom. The ignorance, the pain, the mistakes,—they had to be. Do they not make the fragrance of our Spring plant? The pity is when the original shrub knows no decay, when in the smug satiety of its ever-greenness it journeys to no winter, and finds no aftermath of Spring.

On yet another day the youngest sister was chief lady. I found her sitting before a brass tray of glass bangles and silver ornaments. It was a first visit to her childhood’s home since marriage, and her husband would break her old bangles and refit her. The Wise Woman says it is symbolical of the fact that even in her Parents’ house she remains the possession of her husband. So he is admitted to the parental “Inside,” and the women other than his wife, peep at the bangle-play from behind doors and curtains.

“What do Indian women do with their time?” how often I have been asked the question. Custom and religion make the day’s programme—a woman’s husband, and a woman’s God, are occupation in themselves, and then there may be the children. The good Hindu will have her house of Gods, her private Chapel. Sometimes there is an image in it. I have known God-houses without any image. The name of the particular God it is right for her to worship will be whispered in her ear by the family Priest, and not even to her husband may she reveal the secret. But in her Chapel you will find most often in Bengal, an image either of the Baby God a-crawling, or of Kali, the Mother. In Krishna Chapels there will be a little crib, fashioned in these Western-Eastern days like an English bedstead, with mosquito nets: and just as in the morning the devotee bathes and anoints the baby, leaving food beside it on the little altar, so at even-tide she lights the nursery lamp and puts it to bed.... Is this Hinduism? I do not know. In practice it seems to me but the Mother-worship of the Child.

But in truth there is no one form or stage of Hinduism to be found in India, or, for the matter of that, in Bengal.... The great truths are eternal and prevail in every religion: yet all men are not capable of receiving the truth, and Hinduism recognizes this. In the actual worship of the idol are the illiterate and ignorant encouraged. “It would be sin to disclose to these the mysteries of a God not made with hands,” so says the wisest of my wise women ... “for he who has heard and hearkens not, and understands not, hath the greater sin.” Yet that even a child may be capable of instruction she proves to you. I have seen many hundreds of babies under her roof, babies ranging from three to twelve years of age doing their morning pooja. It is “the worship of the possible” that she teaches them, “the worship of the Might-be.”

At 9 o’clock they come hastening to the hour of prayer, like the birds and lizards of the Moslem legend: each little devotee, lips pursed in serious earnestness, is carrying her “basket of worship,” and sits cross-legged to unpack it—an incense-burner, the bowl for Ganges water, flowers, bits of half-eaten fruit and vegetables, the sacrificial powder, often a remnant of some favourite saree, the Ganges mud with which to make her “idol”—all this she unpacks gravely, daintily, moulding her lump of clay into a cone.... Now she will make comparison with her neighbour, a little wistfully, perhaps, perhaps exultingly: often she shares her gifts.... Anything may be given to the God; the teaching here is to give what costs something, and when the pooja is over, the Pujari carries round a food-collecting plate for the animals within the gates, and the crows on the housetops. Now she is threading garlands of the sacred white jasmine, and the Priests have come for the chaunting.

The children sit in rows facing each other, along the walls of the veranda. My Wisest of the Wise explains to me that the God who dwells within us is to be invited to inhabit that lump of mud (the clay on the potters’ wheel), for His better worshipping by the children of men. So, the opening ceremony is a movement of the hands—the invocation! Each little worshipper sits wrapt before the God in the clay.... Now the Priest takes up the Sanskrit word, and the Babies chaunt it after him.

“Oh! Great God, bless us, forgive us, remain with us.”

“Oh, Great God, I offer thee this incense, these flowers, this holy water,” etc.

And the fingers are busy with the offering while every now and again “Dhyan karo” (meditate) will be the order: and five hundred pairs of Baby eyes are puckered into concentration and five hundred pairs of arms are tightly folded.

The earnest tension of the attitude moves one to tears.... Of what are they thinking? Oh! but of what?

“The worship of the Possible?”

That is the Wise Woman’s thought, not theirs. I put it to her.

“Of what should they think,” said she, “but of the whole duty of womanhood—to be a good wife: to omit no act of ceremonial Hinduism.”

The sequence showed her wisdom. And being a good Hindu wife means fulfilling the duty of a Life-Bringer, thinking no evil of the lord who bears to you God’s message of creation, counting his most temporal want as superior to your own most spiritual craving, making a religion of his smallest wish; and when the Gods, for your sins, take him from you, holding to his memory with prayer and fasting and self-suppression.... So we end, whence we set out Devi—Goddess!

V
THE SETTER-FAR OF IGNORANCE

I have tried to indicate the women’s attitude towards the man in India. His towards her is more difficult to determine—partly because she is not his whole existence, as he is hers; she is his occasional amusement, and always his slave and the physical element in the eventual saving of his soul, that complicated machinery which necessitates a son who will pay your material and spiritual debts. Comradeship, as we have seen, there can be little between orthodox Hindu husband and wife. Love we will not deny—these things are between soul and soul; show of affection would be insult in the presence of third persons; courtesy, in the thousand little ways required in the West, is shown rather by the woman to the man than by him to her. And, indeed, the very fact that he allows all this is proof of respect. To accept service is the compliment—and he respects her after his kind. But certainly he respects her. Does he not arrange that himself shall be her chief interest in life and her chief care and memory in death? Is she not allowed to be at once his “parasite and his chalice.” But certainly he respects her. Her name may not be in the mouth of a man, even in the form of polite inquiry after her health: no strange man may see her face, and often he may not even hear her voice. Is it not her husband who guards her from contact with the outer world, from sight of God’s most beautiful creation, from knowledge of the way he lives his life, or works, or plays?

But certainly he respects her. He eats the food she cooks for him, he gives her complete control of his household, and he sees that she lives up to his ideal of her place in the scheme of life.

She, too, has her ideal—the worship and service of her husband, and if he gives her opportunity to realize this, what more will she ask? When she is the mother of a son greater respect is hers, from the other women in the Zenana, and greater love and respect no doubt from her lord. Men do not like to be connected with a failure, and she has been successful, has justified her existence. The self-respect it gives the woman herself is most marked. She still is faithful slave to her husband, but she is an entity, a person, so far as that is possible in a Hindu Zenana; she can lift her head above the woman who taunted her, her heart above the fear of a rival. I have seen her parallel in the ugly duckling of the family who suddenly develops to the recognition of the outer world an unsuspected talent. We all know how she seems mysteriously and instantly to grow taller, smarter, more dignified; how she knows her own mind and has an opinion even in the regions remote from her special subject—whereas hitherto all had been vague discontent and vacillation. Both women are saying unconsciously in their hearts—“I am of use in the world,” only I doubt whether, causes reversed, either would say it as triumphantly.

And, for a Hindu woman, “the best is yet to be.” When she arrives at the dignity of Grandmother, ruling a household of daughters-in-law, she has indeed entered upon her kingdom. The son, who as infant first added to her stature, lavishes upon her in old age respect and affection which any woman might envy. Indeed, the relation of mother and son, even of widowed mother and son in India now, when her life is near its close, is the most beautiful perhaps of all Indian family relationships. She is respected, almost worshipped, as the Life-Bringer, and when she holds her grandson in her arms she is forgiven for the widowhood which for so long has been counted against her. At last she is loved as only those women are loved who have given, and given, and given all their lives seeking nothing in return.

I remember an old gray-headed Hindu saying to me, when we were discussing Gurus, “After all the true Guru in every house is the Mother; and are there not only three important things in the world—God, the Word of God, and the Guru, he who brings the Word?” ...

Of the intellectual capacity of a woman a Hindu has a very poor opinion; but he will yield to, and even refer to, her about all matters of religion and—the kitchen.

It is the masculine attitude the world over. And sometimes he will consult her about things she cannot possibly understand, from a superstitious belief that her virtue may give her insight. She is his toss of a penny.

It has often amused me to compare the men’s and women’s versions of some old-world story. It is extraordinarily enlightening. Once, in order to get a little nearer to the man’s conception of a woman, I entrapped an orthodox friend of mine into telling me the story of the Ten-handed Durga. My friend was chewing betel-nut, which meant that he had dined, and was in genial mood, and clean white draperies. He sat cross-legged on a mat in a room all delicious cool open spaces. He leaned his elbow on a great white bolster. There were other bolsters and mats about the room, for it was his wont to sit here of an afternoon and receive visitors. It was his “Setting-far-ignorance” time, as he explained to me. One or two women sat beyond the mats; they were disciples of holy men, and allowed therefore to gather up the crumbs which fell from the table of the great philosopher. The scene pleased me. Every face in the room was worth study; some for the hall-mark of sainthood, many for the evidence of self-restraint and meditation; a few for an exactly contrary reason—the possibilities of a certain unholy strength, the best degraded to the worst.

There was a storm without, but the Setter-far of Ignorance heeded it not, even so much as to shut the windows, and the rain splashed in, and the lightning caught now one face, now another, now the pink garb of an ascetic, now the veiled form of a woman.... The thunder crashed, and ceased but to let in the noise of the street, with the tram of English civilization running under the windows.

My question about Durga set the heads wagging. It was close upon Durga Pooja time, and every Hindu would be provisioning his kitchen against guests, and adding to the house of Gods that image which presently he would carry down to the waters of forgetfulness. The question was popular.

“There are many versions of the story,” said my friend. “You will have heard what the women say; the true tale is this. Not all the Gods could prevail against the powers of evil, so they united their several wills and energies, and the union of strength produced Durga. She is energy or will—the beautiful Ten-handed—and she undertook to fight the demons.

“They came just in the form of beasts, and then of men; but both she slew. There lay at her feet the buffalo, typical of all that is coarse, and the lion, typical of all that is best in the animal world; and out of the slain beasts rose one in the likeness of a man, and him also she slew—victorious. It is in this form that the instructed worship her at Durga Pooja time.”

Then I: “Expound the parable.” And he: “See you not, the spiritual conquers the bestial and animal, thus gaining strength to conquer the human also. God conquers evil. And yes, I own it, the ultimate conquest of evil is by the agency of a woman, for the Creator so ordained it; she alone is capable of conquest for others—but they were the Gods and not the Goddesses who gave her the power to conquer. The Great God but accepted the service, the devotion in this matter of the woman, and so, has he not honoured her for all Eternity?”

“She alone is capable of conquest for others”; “To accept service and devotion of any is the highest honour you can pay her.” With that for key-note how many things are capable of understanding in the relation of Hindu man to Hindu woman!

“I see more still in your story,” said one who sat by. “Does it mean also, perhaps, that only when we have renounced our wills can they be effectual for conquest, that when we give the best of ourselves to others, they afterwards, by these very means, bring back and lay at our feet that very thing we would ourselves have conquered and mastered?”

For of course the Gods had their part in Durga’s victory. The Hindu remembers only that conquest, salvation may be bought for him by another. Suppose now the Hindu Mother to teach her son recognition of his part in that parable—that it is he who must cultivate the will and energy wherewith to gift the woman for conquest, possess himself of something worth giving—what a nation we should have!

But “Everything is in being through ignorance—when we are awake our dreams are false,” was the only remark made by my friend to these heroics: and he yawned politely, and seemed to have lost all interest in the Ten-handed.

VI
THE KING OF DEATH

It is in the villages, remote from railways that I have found the rarer God-tales, villages got at by long journeys of road and water, past lotus beds, the pink-white blossom growing waist high among leaves large as sun-hats; past groups of mat huts tottering against each other, past palm trees and green swamps of mosquitoes; past stretch of brown earth waiting patiently, face upturned, for the rain that comes not; once, past the quaintest requiem ever written in Nature.... It is a moment worth recall. A slow newly-constructed railway was making its weary way on a hot afternoon in June from mango-grove to river-bank and ferry steamer. It was the usual up-country landscape, one barely looked at it, till, suddenly a change—a great zone of sand, lying in waves, waves patterned like the ripple of water, and glistening—Earth’s diamond tiara—in the fierce white light of the Sun-God.... A hot wind smote the face like a furnace-blast; the glare was a flame-red brand across the eyes ... no relief anywhere, and yet, a strange sense of freedom in this sea of sand waves.

Under a bare tree of white thorns lay a small bundle of pink rags, a child with a shock head of hair, the only bit of life and colour anywhere it seemed at first. She lay quite still, on her back, motionless.

In the distance across the sand walked a woman, slowly, painfully; on her head was a water-pot, she walked away from the child, but every now and then she turned to look at the tree of white thorns. You knew what she sought ... would she find it? and having found would she be in time?

The train crawled on to the river, and there was the woman ever walking away and away, and ever turning to look back; and the child under the shelter of a handful of thorn-needles still, so still, and the sun smiting on the gleaming sand....

From the river in the growing dusk I saw my diamond tiara changed to moonstones.... The great zone was now but a soft white sheen, a City of Light, and the minarets of some place of Saints towered above the battlements. “A very holy man lived there,” they told me later. It is where holy men should live, it seemeth me, on the Sands of Time, their faces to that other fleeting Earth-force the River of Life....

And it was travelling by ways such as these that finally I found myself in the canvas home of the wilderness, among people who had leisure to conserve the past, to remember. I sat with them, now on some spacious roof-tree, the sky for dome, now in some little box of a room, jealously guarded from light of day, or sight of man, or I went in and out with them to their Garden-houses, to their house of Gods, to the women’s courtyard, which respect for hornets’ lives had rendered dangerous to man! We were sitting in this same courtyard, my eye on the hornets’ nest in the pipal tree, when “the slave of Kali” told me the tale of Shoshti Devi, the protector of women and children.

“It was a house-cat who first had knowledge of her,” she said. “In a King’s palace all the Queens were barren, and none could break the spell. So the cat chose her who oftenest thought upon her stomach’s need, for the whispering of a secret.”

“Go at midnight,” said she, “and tend the turnips in the potter’s field beyond the Gates.” So, the youngest Queen went as she was bidden, and in six moons she had her desire. Shoshti Devi lives in trees, a different tree for every month; and the truly religious worship her in all these several forms—but it is enough if you make an image, just a head with a long red nose, and place it under one of the four most sacred trees. And, if you tie a rag to a branch as you go away, Shoshti Devi will look at it, and remember all about you and your prayer, what time you most may need her.... That was a wise cat. People unacquainted with the Indian temperament can have no conception of the pathological value of suggestions such as these. Be a woman never so ill, she comes back heartened and therefore better as an actual and visible fact for her visit to the Shoshti tree. Think of the faith it implies. No vision of the Goddess was vouchsafed her, no Priest comforted her, no wonder of music, no beauties of chancel or cloister drugged her soul or shampooed her senses: drawn by a legend not in itself necessary to salvation she but crawled to some dust-laden tree standing, may be, by a sun-baked highway. Perhaps she found there an image of Shoshti: perhaps not, it mattered nothing: and she tied to one of the branches her little prayer of rags, that was all....

Such people should be easy to kill or to make alive. They are, and there lies the pity of it, in a world where you may die as well as live, be cursed as well as blessed. The Gods curse, but only through human agency. This is interesting since you may be blessed directly.

Knowledge on the subject of “sending devils” is the property of the Priesthood, Royal Fellows of the Society of Hellologists! but magic men and women, non-diplomaed and unlicensed also abound, and every dweller in town or village who has ever known or inherited a hate, has his own little stock of demonology for home consumption. It is my pride that on the one occasion when I was consciously operated upon, it was by the specialist. I had helped to secure protection for a child who had enemies, I was naturally therefore hated of these same. When back from her Estate, in the comparative civilization of my own little home, I got a much-thumbed message which had been thoughtfully left in my post-box.

“Twenty Priests learned in magic,” so it ran, “are sending a devil into you.” It was true. On the remote scene of thwarted vengeance, they were “making magic”—cursing a clay image made in my likeness, walking over every square inch of ground I had trod at the Palace, or in the Gardens, and—breathing curses.

My answer was a message, “To the Chief Priest among the twenty Priests most learned in magic, who sit in the Grove of Mangoes, at the Monkey Temple, in N ..., ‘keep the Devil, till I come.’”

This was treated as a ribald tempting of the demon, and a man was sent to sit at my gate and curse me so that the flesh should wither from my bones, and my house be desolate.... But my household and my dear yellow “Chow,” and my little gray mare, and my red-speckled munias, all the live things within my gates, did, with me, flourish exceedingly ... and in a fortnight my twenty Priests withdrew their man, no doubt deciding that I had already a devil bigger than any at their command!

They were, alas! more successful with my little friend. First, they threw mustard before her as she walked, and she—sneezed.... “What would you?” It was Colman’s mustard that you buy in yellow tins at the “Europe Shops.” ... But she sneezed—that meant a devil had entered, and the Priest spared not the picturesque in description of him. Then, one morning on her doorstep she found a little box—in it was a human thigh bone and three packets of powder—red, yellow, blue. This was a very potent curse, and she trembled exceedingly, so that she could not even name its meaning.[2]

[2] A knowledge of curses is a useful asset to Legal Advisers. I have known a serious family dispute composed on this wise. A. I could forgive everything but the bone under my bed, for this I will fight B. even till I am penniless. Adviser (Soothingly). Certainly, certainly—and now let’s have the bone ... which, produced, instead of being that powerful to curse, is merely a harmless leg-of-mutton bone! The way to peace is open.

But worst of all was the manner of cursing parallel to mine. There were at the moment great hopes of an heir to the Estate: the birth of a son would settle many political and domestic quarrels. The Priests chose the moment when the Mother’s mind would be most open to suggestion, and cursed the thing that was to be! and it died.

So I have known another happening. A widow of fifteen had promised her Priest, at his desire, ornaments of a certain value for the Festival of Durga Pooja. But her Trustees did not sanction the expenditure. The Priest cursed her. She had two children—the youngest girl just eighteen months in age. The Priest was explicit in his curse—the Baby would die. I found my widow in an agony of grief. The child was her boy husband’s last gift to her: and it was dying of pneumonia.... It was touch and go, but medical skill saved the little life, only the Mother’s firm belief is that not science but the reconsidered decision of the Trustees, setting free her priest gifts, worked the cure.

And here I would mention one important article of belief in the Zenana. It is that not only a man himself but that which he owns or loves or values may be affected by magic. “So-and-so has put a curse upon your cattle,” will be a message followed by mysterious deaths, not to be accounted for by poison. The form of the message varies—it may be sent in words, it may be sent like the thigh bone or the mustard, in kind—that is of small moment, the result is always the same.

My Wisest of the Wise, asked for explanation, is politely full of wonder that I should wish for explanation of such things. “Is it possible that I doubt? If these things were capable of understanding would they be worth a thought? Is not the supernatural of necessity beyond reason? Would you plough the stars with bullocks? Has anything any existence at all, except in our belief? All we are or seem is a dream. Those who doubt and argue would seek to dream waking; and they lose so all the pleasing restfulness of sleep.”

Then musingly, she turned to me with her rare smile. “Once, I also doubted. I was then of few years, and the questionings which belong to the changing part of me were many. I was in Benares, and I said to a holy man there, who is of one fellowship with me: ‘This thing—cursing—is of the evil one. Do not practise it. Besides I do not believe you can curse. I believe it is only magic, like the gypsy folk do use. And he: ‘Nay, Mother, I do it in the name of the Writings—try me.’ And I wished to test this thing, but because I had said it was wrong, I could not then consent. Yet on the third day I said: ‘Well, if you can work a curse in a good cause.... I will be witness.’

“The Gods sent the occasion. A poor man, threader of flowers for the neck of a sacred bull in a rich man’s temple, came to me the next day. He and his family were starving. The rich man had out of caprice dismissed them. My holy man turned to me.

“‘This is the occasion of your seeking, Mother,’ he said. ‘That rich man is known to me. I will hurt him—but not much—for this poor man’s sake.’”

She smiled again whimsically. “I was in the body—what would you? It was wrong: but I consented.

“So the holy man sent for a little dust from off the feet of the rich man, and with the help of this, and some earth and flour, he made an image, saying mantras the while; but the most powerful mantras said he over five nails lying in the bottom of a pot.

“‘Now,’ he said, ‘the curse is ready; but first go and see the rich man. Is he well? bring me news.’

“So I went, even as I was bid, and I sat in the courtyard and saw for mine own self that he was well, and vaunting himself in his health and riches.

“It was dusk when I returned and made my report. ‘Then here begins the magic,’ said the holy man; and taking one of the nails he had cursed, he drove it with many more curses into the knee of the image.

“‘A little curse,’ he said, ‘only a little curse in a good cause: but he shall feel it.’

“And I ran back to the great house and found all in confusion—servants running for doctors, Priests reciting prayers.... ‘The Master was sick unto death,’ they told me. We waited that night; and in the dawn hour, I, being holy myself and privileged, went to the rich man and told him as he lay in agony, that to my mind, not the doctor, but expiation would cure him.

“‘What!’ he said, startled, for his sins I think were not few, ‘must I bear penalty in this life, when I am willing to carry my burden in the next.’ ‘Oh! a small matter,’ I suggested; ‘something easy of expiation. Think—a wrong perhaps to some private or Temple servant.’ But he remembered nothing. So I, pretending I had seen the thing in a dream, told him, and instantly the threader of garlands was sent for and honoured with gifts and feastings. When the holy man heard of this he took the nail from the rich man’s knee and he recovered immediately.... Yes, I believe in curses. But they are not good, they belong to the things of the body.”

“Sitting dharna” is the Curse Coercive. I thought the practice extinct, till last year I found a half-mad thing mechanically telling his beads in a Raj courtyard of my acquaintance, as he sat beside the image of Ganesh the luck-bringer, under the pipal tree where lay the offerings of red and yellow flowers and sacred grass-tufts. It was midday and he sat bareheaded in the sun, unkempt, unshaven, blear-eyed.

So had he sat a fortnight, touching neither food nor drink. The lady of the house disputed a debt claimed by him in the name of an ancestor. She bade him sue, but he, wise man, preferred this method. At the moment he was only just alive, and his wits seemed to have preceded him to the new genesis. We called him back, with kind words and chinking of money under the trunk of the Luck-Bringer himself. It was the money I think that reached him on the Border Land. He laughed for joy and wept many salt tears into his first spare meal of rice and watery pulse; but the family borrowed more money to make a great feast because the house was saved from a Curse!

Another variety of compelling your desire is the burning of a cow or an old woman. While, for a woman, the simplest way is the time-honoured custom of sulking. Early Indian domestic architecture provides for this. There was always a sulking-room in the “Inside” (compare boudoir), and here sat the woman who insisted on her own way; and here no doubt came husband or father with gift of shawl or toe-ring to release her....

My wise ones tell me many stories as we sit on the roof in the hour between the Twilights. But the story of my Wisest one herself is one of my favourites. You must know that she is a very holy woman indeed. At her birth, so many years ago that her devotees bring you data to prove her a hundred years old, it was prophesied that she would be “a religious,” and her Father built her a Shrine, and taught her things which only Priests may know. She can perform every jog, and can read one’s thoughts in any language. Her face is the face of her who has attained, and her dignity and self-poise I have nowhere seen surpassed. She dresses oddly—the sex of the devotee must not be proclaimed—in the nether garments of a man, i.e., loose white drapery about the legs, and a long coat. Her hair is worn in coils on the top of her head, and round her neck hang sacred beads, and Kali’s necklet of skulls in gold and enamel work. To her the symbol is not gruesome. Kali, she will tell you, was the power of God, the “Energy of the Gods,” and the heads represent the Giants of wickedness whom she has slain.

She is extraordinary in her dealings with people, so quick to discern true from false; so fearless in her denunciation of hypocrisy, withal that she is never aught but courteous. I love sitting beside her when pilgrims come, pilgrims from all parts of India who fall at her feet and pass on to other shrines, or linger in the outer courtyard on the chance of a word; the meaning of a text, some family or caste difficulty, advice as to the moment’s physical or worldly need, all are brought to her; for she shuts out nothing, and is a dear shrewd Saint about business other than her own. I have known her wave off a pilgrim—“She would not insult her feet” was the reason given. She seemed to gather all that mattered about this type of person in a single glance. To one who came in curiosity pure and simple, though he pretended interest in some Sanskrit text, she said, quietly looking him in the eyes while he fumbled over his unveracities: “No! you shall not hear whence I came, nor anything about me.” But to another more sincere, though equally curious, she said—he had spoken no question—“I come from a land where women ride and men wage war.”

In 1857 she was already a famous Sanskritist, so powerful that her influence, purely religious, was mistaken for political. She was suspected of collusion with Khande Rao Peishwa, and a guard of soldiers was stationed round her cell and Temple. When the country settled down, she wandered to the different places of pilgrimage all over India, meditating and buying merit. Everywhere had she been, everywhere that is holy, and as an old woman, eyes dim with prayer, throat drawn with fasting, she has settled in Bengal and devotes herself to the religious education of her community. “I have spent a lifetime in prayer: now I am ready to work,” she explains. But the praying is not over.

From 5 to 9 of a morning, she shuts herself away in her House of Gods, and no one dare disturb her. Here in India, where shrines are many, and there is no false shame about entering and praying—doors wide—nay, where the Godling sits by the wayside, and where it is a common thing to see a woman stand on a highway, head against some outer wall of a Temple—the moment’s contact a prayer, or bowing to the Earth on some crowded pavement—it is curious that not one of her devotees or friends has any knowledge of what is within her House of Gods—whether it is empty or has the whole panthology. Yet all alike—alien in faith, disciple, or visiting devotee—have seen her face as she leaves that house after her communings with eternity; and well—is there not a story of the Mount of Transfiguration?

So, she cured herself of a serious illness during which, thinking it (perhaps meaning it) to be her last, she had summoned to her side by some telepathic power the faithful from all parts of North India. I say “meaning,” because I am forced to believe that the Indian woman who has her will in training can die at will: more rarely she can live at will. Probably the latter is the rarer because, poor thing, she has so much more incentive to die than to live.

Well, this time my Wisest of the Wise had elected to live after all. Her choice was not incompatible with her faith in a God who held the keys of Life and Death. It was only that, being given free will, it was within her power to steal the key of the House of Death.

“Has one ever stolen the key of the House of Life?” I asked.

“I know of none such,” was the cautious answer of wisdom.

Then I—“Talk to me, Mother, of Life and Death. What is Life?”

And she—“A dream in the heart of a dream.... It is as if one should sleep, and sleeping dream that he was dead. That dream within a dream is this, that men call Life.”

“And Death?”

“To-morrow’s dream. The next-door house. God’s tenant am I in this house in which you find me. But agreement I have none. God will tell me to quit, nor give me notice. Death is but the house I next inhabit. There will be other houses after that.” Death, it would seem, is but a change of house, we have failed to repair the present tenement, or it is too small for us, or our neighbourhood is unsuitable, so we are given the chance of another, and after that, perchance, yet another and another, through all the lives appointed to us. But our personalities remain. We can never sink those.

Once again, she talked of Death as “the Innermost Dream—but we shall wake.” “The end of the Death dream is only sleep, that is Life: when we wake from life, it is to Life Eternal.”

“And what is that?”

“Rest—in the perfect attainment of all truth, of all knowledge and of all reality.”

The body, I gather, is degradation to the soul. Any “house” is in a measure degradation and belongs to the state of progress. Some day we shall be free of all houses. We shall lose ourselves in the Great Soul. That is the final “Twilight”—the time of Union for each individual soul.

“Then shall there be no more Death.”...

She ceased speaking, my Wisest of the Wise, and silence fell between us as we looked together at the dying Sun.

Oh! the gray and silver gray on the water. Oh! the gold, limpid, liquid, lambent gold in the sky and on the water....

“And the King of Death is but the first Sunset.”...

P.S.—Since the above was written, my Wisest of the Wise has arrived at her Sunset hour. Her going was very beautiful and very simple: shortly before her time was come, she left the Town where she dwelt, for the holy city of Death. She was no worse and no better than she had been any day the year and more, but she knew, apparently. Then, one morning, she said quite calmly to her disciples, after the ceremonial bath and pooja, “This is the last time I shall worship in this house” (her body); “now, waste no time in regret, let us talk the things we should be sorry to have left unsaid.”... And all that day the faithful gathered about her, and she expounded the scriptures with an insight unequalled even by herself. She ate nothing—“Why prop up the house that is tumbling?”

At night she asked to be taken down to the Sacred River—a Hindu dies with her feet in the water; and there she sat among her friends on the stone steps of the Ghat, claiming no support, no physical comfort, now silent, now setting afloat some beautiful thought in words that will always live for those who loved her ... and then just in the gray mystery of the dawn hour, “It is right,” she said, and fell back.... They put her into a boat and took her across to the Ghat of the Soul’s departure, and here they slipped her gently into the Stream ... for that is all the burial service for one who is holy.

Later, her disciples came to me with faces radiant. “She has attained,” they said. “Yes!” said the Holy Man, Truth-named, “she has attained in that she elected not to attain;” and then they told me that, sitting that night of stars and dark spaces by the River of Death, one had said to her: “You are blessed; you have attained.” And she made answer: “Nay! it was given me to attain; but I put it aside, desiring re-birth once more for the sake of the work, to which I have put my hand, here among you.”

“And a man’s future is even as his desires. That is true truth, Miss Sahib!” concluded the Wise man, Truth-named.

VII
THE WISE MAN—“TRUTH-NAMED”

It was at the house of my Wise Woman that first I saw him. He wore a straight long robe, the colour of the pilgrim flag, or of the inner lining of the fruit of knowledge when you break through the sheath in which it shelters from the world.

About his head were wound fold on fold of muslin of the same mystic hue, and the way of winding, and his speech, bewrayed him of the Punjab.

But as I have said, you must never locate the holy. He walked with head erect, straight as an arrow, nor receiving nor giving salutation to any; and he came to me where I stood talking to my Wisest of the Wise, and “When,” said he, “may I come to talk with the Miss Sahib of the big-little things?” And I: “How know you that I like to talk of these things? and what are they?”

“I know; the Miss Sahib knows. When may I come?”

So we found a convenient season; and he, the free, made of himself for the sake of removing ignorance, a slave of time, coming punctually Sunday after Sunday to talk the big-little things, “Life and Death,” and “Whence we come,” and “Whither we are bound.”

With eyes screwed together in earnestness, one finger on the tip of his nose as he meditated, he would talk hour after hour; nor did he discourage discussion, he begged it. It was one way he said of teaching us to know ourselves. “And how shall we know God until we know ourselves?” “Be self-knowers. God is within, and it is the God in us that seeks to find God.” ... “God! by what sign shall we know Him? how conceive? Imagine a world without space or place or time or anything created. Imagine only light and light and light, everywhere pulsing, throbbing.... From the beginning was that, and only that, and that was God. But with God exists the Power and Mercy of God, not separately, but as closely allied as sweetness to sugar, as the scent of the rose to the rose, as the colour of a flower to the flower.... Men talk of one God as if there could be two or three. There’s just God—the All-pervading, the Essence of Being, the heart of the heart of Beauty, the great first Flame which lights every flame that leaps into life.... Light and light and light, brilliance at the soul of brilliance ... the God-spark in every soul, in everything created ... only by recognizing this shall we recognize God, there is no other way.

“... Yes! the windows of the soul get dimmed and the flame gives no light. Is that the fault of the flame? Clean the windows of the soul; such work is allowed to man, such only, not his to create Light, that was and is from Eternity.

“One day all the several sparks of light will go back to the Great Central Light whence they came, the soul will find God.... What need to make haste? What need to fret? Every soul must find God at long last ... light will return to Light.”

In countries loved of the Buddha one sees by the roadside a little shrub with white leaves among the green. The Buddha passed that way, is the legend, and the shrub has kept memory of the passing. I have sometimes thought that so among the leafy professions of mankind there are some white souls that keep the memory of the passing of the Great God. The “Truth-Named” is one such.

I remember on one occasion thanking him when he had said things which gave food for thought.

“Huh!” he said, “Miss Sahib, that was not yet talk of God. I did but try to make a clearing in the jungle where we might sit down and meditate about these things.” Another day he said: “There are three diseases in the world—Actual Sin” (the breaking of what we call commandments), “this disease can be cured by good works; Restlessness, to be cured by meditation; and Joylessness, to be cured by making occasion to give joy to others. The mark of a true religion is Joy.”

Referring to the first cure, I said: “Then you believe in the efficacy of good works, oh! Truth-Named Singh.” And he said: “Good works are fetters, fetters of gold, but still fetters.”

When the Datura tree hung out its burden of bells, and the pilgrim season had begun, he came to me with as much excitement as his calm abstraction from all emotion permitted. And, “There is a Lat (Lord) Swami,” he said, “sitting in a grove at Dum Dum. Would the Miss Sahib like to talk with him?”

“Is he holy?” I asked.

“I know him not, but he is called a Lat Swami, he should be so. He has been teaching the people of the farther England (America) about God and the one religion, it is said, and he has many disciples in every country. Besides, he speaks the language of the Miss Sahib’s friend (English), and it is a chance for the Miss Sahib’s friend to question in her own tongue, as she cannot me.” ...

So we went, and the first time lost our way. We met strolling minstrels and were offered seats at wedding feasts, and fighting rams for our diversion, but no Swami sitting by his Lake of Lotuses.

Our Wise Man was distressed: “I gave my word you would come. Even by mistake we cannot break a word, it is damage to Sainthood”—one’s own he meant. “Make a speedy occasion to remove the disease of this error. I myself will conduct you.”

But no! he would not arrange the train by which we were to go. “Shall I who am free, compel any to be slaves to time? Come when you will, I will sit at the Station all day.” It was late afternoon when we could make the expedition but the “Truth-Named” was there. He had awaited us since morning, meditating undisturbed by the bustle of a Railway Station. We were soon in the suburbs among palm-trees, and rank undergrowth, and we found the Lat Swami clad in yellow-silk robes, sitting cross-legged in a grove of mango-trees, beside a bed of white lotuses. His face did not appeal, but that we mused, might be prejudice.

“Ask him the big-little questions,” prompted our Wise Man—himself retiring deferentially to the level of the least of the Lat Swami’s disciples. And we asked, only to hear in pompous English, “I refer you to my book, which has been well-reviewed by the ‘Daily Mail.’ My Disciple will explain.” And before our gasp of astonishment had spent itself, came the disciple, a follower from that “farther England” who, grovelling before the Master, produced the book.

But we were busy inventing excuse for flight. Silence, as we walked away. Then said our Truth-Named, tolerant humour in his eyes, “So the Miss Sahib’s Friend, and the Miss Sahib liked not that Holy Man?”

“No!” I said, “we did not.” Pause—then, “I am glad the Miss Sahib’s Friend, and the Miss Sahib did not like that Holy Man. I am glad that they gave not their discrimination a sickness by liking him.”

“But you took us!”

“How could I know? Besides, in a garden one should smell every flower.... To me it seemeth that the foolish ones of the Farther England have robbed him of his virtue by their admiration and praises. It is ever so. Of virtue do women rob even the holy. Once that Swami had excuse for knowledge.”

“What is the name of her whom he called Disciple?”

“How can I know? Foolish one—what need for other name?”

On the way back we had proof of our Wise Man’s reality of religion. He would not travel in our carriage behind the “fire horse,” politely went next door: but just as the train was about to move we saw him literally kicked out by some non-Indian, masquerading as a gentleman.

The poor old “Truth-Named” found room elsewhere, and nothing could be done till we arrived at our destination, when we waited for him to apologize and atone for the unknown.

“Huh,” he said, “that, that was nothing. Forget it, Miss Sahib. It is not. It could not hurt me, since I did not resent it.” ... “His mind carried not fruit of ignorance,” as he said on another occasion. Even so, in his simplicity has he often enunciated the greatest of truths.

I have talked in a book of women of Holy Men, for priests and women are allies the world over, and in India, particularly is the influence noticeable. A priest is often the only man with whom a Purdahnashin may talk, before whom she may appear unveiled: and, as I have said before, there is a secret, albeit about things religious, between wife and priest to which even the woman’s husband may not be party. Not backward has the Priesthood been in availing itself of its privileges. Where his learning is not likely to attract, the man of ashes has an inheritance of superstition to which no woman is proof, and from which there can be no appeal.

The “Truth-Named” is fearless in denunciation of the ash-smeared and degraded type of Priest. “In the golden age the only Priest was Prayer. If we would only study ourselves, travel in the unknown country of our minds and souls and personalities, we should need no Guru, save God. Priests, of all religions, keep men’s eyes bandaged that they should not see except through the Priest: but the written word and the book of ourselves is open to all.”