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From Adam’s Peak
to Elephanta:

SKETCHES IN CEYLON AND INDIA.

WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

ENGLAND’S IDEAL, and other papers on Social Subjects. Crown 8vo, cloth 2s. 6d.; paper wrappers 1s.

CHANTS OF LABOUR: A Song Book of the People. With a frontispiece and title-page designed by Walter Crane. Music and Words. Imp. 16mo, cloth 2s.; paper wrappers 1s.

CIVILISATION, ITS CAUSE AND CURE: and other Essays. Crown 8vo, cloth 2s. 6d.

“In ‘England’s Ideal’ and ‘Civilisation’ Mr. Carpenter sets forth in prose his criticism (unsurpassed at times by Ruskin, his master in this field) of the diseases of polite society, and his faith as to their meaning and the method of their abatement.”—Daily Chronicle.

Swan Sonnenschein & Co.: London.

TOWARDS DEMOCRACY. Third Edition, 1892, with numerous added poems, pp. 367. Crown 8vo, cloth 5s.

“A remarkable work.”—Academy.

T. Fisher Unwin: London.

From
Adam’s Peak
TO
Elephanta

SKETCHES IN CEYLON AND INDIA

BY
Edward Carpenter.

London: SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO.
New York: MACMILLAN & CO.
1892.

Butler & Tanner,
The Selwood Printing Works,
Frome, and London.

PREFACE

If asked to write a book about his own country and people a man might well give up the task as hopeless—yet to do the same about a distant land in which he has only spent a few months is a thing which the average traveler quite cheerfully undertakes. I suppose this may be looked upon as another illustration of the great fact that the less one knows of a matter the easier it is to write or talk about it. But there is, it is sometimes said, a certain merit of their own in first impressions; and I trust that this may appear in the present case. Certainly though there are many things that are missed in a first glance there are some things that stand out clearer then than later.

In the following pages I have tried to keep as far as possible to the relation of things actually seen and heard, and not to be betrayed into doubtful generalisations. It is so easy in the case of a land like India, which is as large as Europe (without Russia) and at least as multifarious in its peoples, languages, creeds, customs, and manners, to make the serious mistake of supposing that what is true of one locality necessarily applies to the whole vast demesne, that I must specially warn the reader not only against falling into this error himself, but against the possibility of my having fallen into it in places.

As far as actual experience of life in Ceylon and India is concerned I have perhaps been fortunate; not only in being introduced (through the kindness of local friends) into circles of traditional teaching which are often closed against the English, and in so getting to know something of the esoteric religious lore of South India; but also in obtaining some interesting glimpses behind the scenes of the Hindu ceremonial. I have too had the good luck to find friends and familiar acquaintances among all classes of native society, down almost to the lowest; and I must say that the sectional view I have thus obtained of the mass-people in this part of the world has made me feel with renewed assurance the essential oneness of humanity everywhere, notwithstanding the very marked local and superficial differences that undoubtedly exist.

The spectacle of the social changes now taking place in India is one that is full of interest to any one who has studied and taken part in the Socialistic movement at home; and the interest of it is likely to increase. For though the movement in India is not the same as that at home, it forms a curious counterpart to the latter; and being backed by economic changes which will probably persist for years to come is not likely to die out very soon.

For the rest the book must rely on the description of scenes of nature and of ordinary human life, whose unexpected vividness forced me to portray them—though to begin with I had no intention of doing so. The illustrations are many of them taken from the excellent photographs of Messrs. Scowen of Colombo, Messrs. Bourn of Bombay, and Messrs. Frith of Reigate.

E. C.

Nov. 1892.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

CEYLON

SEASHORE NEAR COLOMBO.

(Outrigged canoe in foreground.)

FROM ADAM’S PEAK TO ELEPHANTA.

CHAPTER I.
COLOMBO.

Imagine a blue-green ribbon of water some 60 yards wide, then rough sandy dunes 10 or 20 feet high, and then beyond, the desert, burning yellow in the sun—here and there partly covered with scrub, but for the most part seeming quite bare; sometimes flat and stony, sometimes tossed and broken, sometimes in great drifts and wreaths of sand, just like snowdrifts, delicately ribbed by the wind—the whole stretching away for miles, scores of miles, not a moving form visible, till it is bounded on the horizon by a ridge of hills of the most ethereal pink under an intense blue sky. Such is the view to the east of us now, as we pass through the Suez Canal (19th October, 1890). To the west the land looks browner and grayer; some reeds mark a watercourse, and about 10 miles off appears a frowning dark range of bare hills about 2,000 feet high, an outlying spur of the hills (Jebel Attákah) that bound the Gulf of Suez.

In such a landscape one of the signal stations, with its neat tiled cottage and flagstaff, and a few date palms and perhaps a tiny bit of garden, is quite an attraction to the eye. These stations are placed at intervals of about 6 miles all along the canal. They serve to regulate the traffic, which is now enormous, and continuous night and day. The great ships nearly fill the waterway, so that one has to be drawn aside and moored in order to let another pass; and though they are not allowed to go faster than 4 miles an hour they create a considerable wave in their rear, which keeps washing down the banks. Tufts of a reedy grass have been planted in places to hold the sand together; but the silt is very great, and huge steam-dredges are constantly at work to remove it. Here and there on the bank is a native hut of dry reeds—three sides and a flat top—just a shelter from the sun; or an Arab tent, with camels tethered by the leg around it. At Kantarah the caravan track from Jerusalem—one of the great highways of the old world—crosses the canal; there are a few wood and mud huts, and it is curious to see the string of laden camels and the Arabs in their unbleached cotton burnouses coming down—just as they might be coming down from the time of Father Abraham—and crossing the path of this huge modern steamship, with its electric lights and myriad modern appliances, the Kaiser Wilhelm now going half-way round the globe.

The desert does not seem quite devoid of animal life; at any rate along the canal side you may see tracks in the sand of rabbits and hares, occasional wagtail-like birds by the water, a few crows hovering above, or a sea-gull, not to mention camels and a donkey or two, or a goat. Near Port Said they say the lagoons are sometimes white with flocks of pelicans and flamingoes, but we passed there in the night. It was fine to see the electric light, placed in the bows, throwing a clear beam and illuminating the banks for fully half a mile ahead, as we slowly steamed along. The driven sand looked like snow in the bluish light. The crescent moon and Venus were in the sky, and the red signal lights behind us of Port Said.

The canal is 90 miles long, and a large part of it follows the bed of a very ancient canal which is supposed to have connected the two seas. It appears that there is a very slight movement of the water through it from south to north.

We are now nearing Suez, and the heat is so great that it reverberates from the banks as from a furnace; of course the deck is under an awning. The remains of a little village built of clay appears, but the huts have broken down, split by the fierce sun-rays, and some light frame-houses, roofed and walled with shingles, have taken their place.

Gulf of Suez.—The town of Suez is a tumbledown little place, narrow lanes and alleys; two-storied stone houses mostly, some with carved wooden fronts, and on the upper floors lattice-work, behind which I suppose the women abide. Some nice-looking faces in the streets, but a good many ruffians; not so bad though as Port Said, where the people simply exist to shark upon the ships. In both places an insane medley of Arabs, fellahs, half-castes and Europeans, touts, guides, donkey-boys, etc., and every shade of dress and absurd hybrid costume, from extreme Oriental to correct English; ludicrous scenes of passengers going on shore, ladies clinging round the necks of swarthy boatmen; donkey-boys shouting the names of their donkeys—“Mr. Bradlaugh, sir, very fine donkey,” “Mrs. Langtry,” “Bishop of London,” etc.; fearful altercations about claimed baksheesh; parties beguiled into outlying quarters of the town and badly blackmailed; refusals of boatmen to take you back to the ship while the very gong of departure is sounding; and so forth. Suez however has a little caravan and coasting trade of its own, besides the railway which now runs thence to Cairo, and has antique claims to a respectability which its sister city at the other end of the canal cannot share.

Now that we are out in the gulf, the sea is deep blue, and very beautiful, the rocks and mountains along the shore very wild and bare, and in many parts of a strong red color. This arm of the Red Sea is about 150 miles long, and I think not more than 20 miles wide at any point; in some places it is much less. We pass jutting capes and islands quite close on the west of us—great rocky ravine-cut masses absolutely bare of vegetation. On the east—apparently about 10 miles distant, but very clear—stands an outlying range of Sinai—Jebel Sirbal by name—looks about 5,000 or 6,000 feet high, very wild and craggy, many of the peaks cloven at the summit and gaping as if with the heat; farther back some higher points are visible, one of which is probably Jebel Musa. A most extraordinary land; at some places one can discern—especially with the aid of a glass—large tracts or plains of loose sand, miles in extent, and perfectly level, except where they wash up in great drifts against the bases of the mountains. Across these plains tall dark columns can be distinguished slowly traveling—the dreaded sand-clouds borne on eddies of the wind.

Indian Ocean, Oct. 25th.—Much cooler now. In the Red Sea, with thermometer at 90° in the cabins, heat was of course the absorbing topic. Everybody mopping; punkahs in full swing. I believe the water there frequently reaches 90° F., and sometimes 95°; but here it is quite cool, probably not much over 60°, and that alone makes a great difference. It is a queer climate in the Red Sea: there seems to be always a haze, due to dust blown from the shores; at the same time the air is very damp, owing to the enormous evaporation, clothes hung up get quite wet, and there are heavy dews. When the wind is aft the oppression from the heat is sometimes so great that ships have to be turned back and steamed against the breeze; but even so casualties and deaths are not uncommon. Owing to the haze, and the breadth of the Red Sea which is as much as 200 miles in parts, little is seen of the shores. A few rocky islands are passed, and a good many awkward reefs which the passengers know nothing of. The Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb are curious. The passage between the Island of Perim and the Arabian mainland is quite narrow, only a mile or two wide; tossed wild-looking hills on the mainland, 3,000 or 4,000 feet high, with French fortifications. The island itself lower and more rounded, with English fort and lighthouse; but looking very black and bare, though owing to the moisture there is some kind of stunted heathery stuff growing on it. There are a few English here, and a native town of waggon-like tents clustered round the fort; some little fishing and sailing boats along the shores. Turning eastwards along the south coast of Arabia the same awful land meets the eye as in the Gulf of Suez. A continual cloud of dust flies along it, through which one discerns sandy plains, and high parched summits beyond. There must however be water in some parts of this region, as it is back from here in this angle of Arabia that Mocha lies and the coffee is grown.

Colombo.—I fear that the Red Sea combined with mutual boredom had a bad effect on the passengers’ tempers, for terrible dissensions broke out; and after six days of the Indian Ocean, during which the only diversions were flying-fish outside and scandal-mongering inside the ship, it was a relief to land on the palm-fringed coast of Ceylon. The slender catamarans—or more properly outrigged canoes—manned by dusky forms, which come to take you ashore, are indeed so narrow that it is impossible to sit inside them! They are made of a “dug-out” tree-trunk (see frontispiece), with parallel bulwarks fastened on only 10 inches or a foot apart; across the bulwarks a short board is placed, and on that you can sit. Two arms projecting on one side carry a float or light fish-shaped piece of wood, which rests on the water 8 feet or so from the canoe, and prevents the vessel from capsizing, which it would otherwise infallibly do. Impelled by oars, or by a sail, the boat bounds over the water at a good speed; and the mode of traveling is very pleasant. There is no necessity however to embark in these frail craft, for respectable civilised boats, and even steam-launches, abound; we are indeed in an important and busy port.

A great granite mole, built five years ago, has converted an open roadstead into a safe and capacious harbor, and there is now probably no place in the East better supplied with mails and passenger boats than Colombo. It is the calling place for the great lines of steamers en route for Australia, for China and Japan, and for Calcutta and Burmah, not to mention smaller coasting boats from the mainland of India, and so forth. The city itself has only the slightest resemblance to a European town. There is a fort certainly, and a Government House, and barracks with a regiment of infantry (part of whom however are generally up country); there are two or three streets of two or even three-storied houses, with shops, banks, mercantile offices, etc.; a few hotels and big goods stores, a lighthouse, and a large engineering works, employing some hundreds of Cinghalese and Tamil operatives; and then you have done with the English quarter. The land is flat, and round about the part just described stretch open grass-covered spaces, and tree-fringed roads, with the tiny booths or huts of the darkies on both sides of them. Here and there are knots and congeries of little streets and native markets with multifarious life going on in them. Here is a street of better built cottages or little villas belonging to Eurasians—the somewhat mixed descendants of old Dutch and Portuguese settlers—small one or seldom two-storied houses of stuccoed brick, with a verandah in front and a little open court within, clustering round an old Dutch church of the 17th century. Here is the residential quarter of the official English and of the more aspiring among the natives—the old Cinnamon Gardens, now laid out in large villa-bungalows and private grounds. Here again is a Roman Catholic church and convent, or the grotesque façade of a Hindu temple; and everywhere trees and flowering shrubs and, as one approaches the outskirts of the town, the plentiful broad leaves of coco-palms and bananas overshadowing the roads. Nor in any description of Colombo should the fresh-water lake be forgotten, which ramifying and winding in most intricate fashion through the town, and in one place coming within a hundred yards of the sea, surprises one continually with enchanting glimpses. I don’t know any more delightful view of its kind—all the more delightful because so unexpected—than that which greets the eye on entering the Fort Railway Station at Colombo. You pass through the booking-office and find yourself on a platform, which except for the line of rails between might be a terrace on the lake itself; a large expanse of water with wooded shores and islands, interspersed with villas, cottages and cabins, lies before you; white-sailed boats are going to and fro; groups of dark figures, waist-deep in water, are washing clothes; children are playing and swimming in the water; and when, as I saw it once, the evening sun is shining through the transparent green fringe of banana palms which occupies the immediate foreground, and the calm lake beyond reflects like a mirror the gorgeous hues of sky and cloud, the scene is one which for effects of color can hardly be surpassed.

Up and down these streets and roads, and by the side of this lake, and along the seashore and through the quays and docks, goes, as may be imagined, a most motley crowd. The Cinghalese and the Tamils are of course the most numerous, but besides these there are Mahomedans—usually called Moor-men here—and some Malays. The English in Ceylon may be divided into three classes: the official English, the planters, and the small trading English (including employees on railway and other works). Then there are the anglicised native gentry, Cinghalese or Tamil, some of whom occupy official positions, and who largely adopt European dress and habits; the non-anglicised ditto, who keep to their own ways and costume, and are not much seen in public; the Dutch Eurasians, many of whom become doctors or solicitors (proctors); and the Portuguese, who are frequently traders in a small way.

Specimens of all these, in their different degrees of costume and absence of costume, may be seen in Colombo, as indeed in almost any place in Ceylon which can be dignified with the name of a town.

Here for instance is a great big Moor-man with high fez of plaited grass, baggy white pants and turned-up shoes; a figured vest on his body, and red shawl thrown over one shoulder. [He is probably a well-to-do shopkeeper; not an agreeable face, but I find the Mahomedans have a good reputation for upright dealing and fidelity to their word.]

Here a ruddy-brown Cinghalese man, with hairy chest, and nothing on but a red loin-cloth, carrying by a string an earthenware pot, probably of palm-beer. [A peasant. The Cinghalese are generally of this color, whereas the Tamils tend towards black, though shading off in the higher castes to an olive tint.]

CINGHALESE MAN.

Another Cinghalese, dressed all in white, white cotton jacket and white cloth hanging to below the knees, with elegant semicircular tortoise-shell comb on his head; a morbidly sensitive face with its indrawn nose and pouting lips. [Possibly a private servant, or small official of one of the courts, or Arachchi. The comb is a great mark of the low-country Cinghalese. They draw the hair backwards over the head and put the comb on horizontally, like an incomplete crown, with its two ends sticking up above the forehead—very like horns from a front view! The hair is then fastened in a knot behind, or sometimes left hanging down the back. This is a somewhat feeble face, but as a rule one may say that the Cinghalese are very intelligent. They make excellent carpenters and mechanics. Are generally sensitive and proud.]

A JAFFNA TAMIL.

Here come two Englishmen in tweed suits and tennis shoes—their umbrellas held carefully by the middle—apparently of the planter community, young, but rather weedy looking, with an unsteady, swimmy look about the eyes which I fear is not uncommon among the planters; I have seen it already well-developed in a mere boy of eighteen.

Here a dozen or so of chetties (a Tamil commercial caste), with bare shaven and half-shaven heads, brown skins, and white muslins thrown gracefully round their full and sleek limbs; the sacred spot marked on their foreheads, red betel in their mouths, and avarice in their faces.

There a Tamil coolie or wage-worker, nearly naked except for a handkerchief tied round his head, with glossy black skin and slight yet graceful figure.

Here a pretty little girl of nine or so, with blue beads round her neck, and the usual white cotton jacket and colored petticoat or çilai of the Cinghalese women, walking with a younger brother.

Here three young Eurasian girls in light European costume and straw hats, hair loose or in pigtails down their backs, very pretty. [They are off for a walk along the Galle Face promenade by the sea, as the heat of the day is now past.]

Here also an English lady, young and carefully dressed, but looking a little bored, driving in her pony-trap to do some shopping, with a black boy standing behind and holding a sunshade over her.

A JINRICKSHAW.

(Tamil cooly, Eurasian girl.)

One of the features of Colombo are the jinrickshaws, or light two-wheeled gigs drawn by men, which abound in the streets. These Tamil fellows, in the lightest of costumes, their backs streaming under the vertical sun, bare-legged and often bare-headed, will trot with you in a miraculous way from one end of Colombo to the other, and for the smallest fee. Tommy Atkins delights to sit thus lordly behind the toiling “nigger.” At eventide you may see him and his Eurasian girl—he in one jinrickshaw and she in another—driving out to the Galle Face Hotel, or some such distant resort along the shore of the many-sounding ocean. The Tamils are mostly slight and graceful in figure, and of an active build. Down at the docks they work by hundreds, with nothing on beyond a narrow band between the thighs, loading and unloading barges and ships—a study of the human figure. Some of them of course are thick and muscular, but mostly they excel in a kind of unconscious grace and fleetness of form as of the bronze Mercury of Herculaneum, of which they often remind me. Their physiognomy corresponds with their bodily activity; the most characteristic type that I have noticed among them has level brows, and eyes deep-set (and sometimes a little close together), straight nose, and well-formed chin. They are a more enterprising pushing and industrious people than the Cinghalese, eager and thin, skins often very dark, with a concentrated, sometimes demonish, look between the eyes—will-power evidently present—but often handsome. Altogether a singular mixture of enterprise with demonic qualities; for occultism is rife among them, from the jugglery of the lower castes to the esoteric philosophy and speculativeness of the higher. The horse-keepers and stable boys in Ceylon are almost all Tamils (of a low caste), and are a charming race, dusky active affectionate demons, fond of their horses, and with unlimited capacity of running, even over newly macadamised roads. The tea-coolies are also Tamils, and the road-workers, and generally all wage-laborers; while the Cinghalese, who have been longer located in the island, keep to their own little peasant holdings and are not at all inclined to come under the thumb of a master, preferring often indeed to suffer a chronic starvation instead.

The Tamil women are, like their lords, generally of a slighter build than the Cinghalese of the same sex, some indeed are quite diminutive. Among both races some very graceful and good-looking girls are to be seen, up to the age of sixteen or so, fairly bright even in manner; especially among the Cinghalese are they distinguished for their fine eyes; but at a later age, and as wives, they lose their good looks and tend to become rather heavy and brutish.

The contrast between the Cinghalese and the Tamils is sufficiently marked throughout, and though they live on the island on amicable terms there is as a rule no love lost between them. The Cinghalese came to Ceylon, apparently from the mainland of India, somewhere in the 6th century B.C., and after pushing the aborigines up into the woods and mountains (where some of them may yet be found), occupied the whole island. It was not long however before the Tamils followed, also from India; and since then, and through a long series of conflicts, the latter have maintained their position, and now form the larger part of the population in the north of the island, while the Cinghalese are most numerous in the south. Great numbers of Tamil peasants—men, women, and children—still come over from the mainland every year, and go up-country to work in the tea-gardens, where there is a great demand for coolie labour.

CINGHALESE GIRL.

In character the Cinghalese are more like the Italians, easy-going, reasonably idle, sensitive, shrewd, and just a bit romantic. Their large eyes and tortoise-shell combs and long hair give them a very womanly aspect; and many of the boys and youths have very girlish features and expressions. They have nearly always grace and dignity of manner, the better types decidedly handsome, with their well-formed large heads, short beards, and long black hair, composed and gentle, remindful of some pictures of Christ. In inferior types you have thick-featured, morbidly sensitive, and at the same time dull-looking persons. As a rule their frames are bigger and more fleshy than those of the Tamils, and their features less cleanly cut. Captain R. Knox, in his “Nineteen Years’ Captivity in the Kingdom of Conde Uda” (1681), says of them:—“In carriage and behaviour they are very grave and stately, like unto Portuguese; in understanding quick and apprehensive; in design, subtle and crafty; in discourse, courteous, but full of flatteries; naturally inclined to temperance both in meat and drink, but not to chastity; near and provident in their families, commending good husbandry.”

The Cinghalese are nearly all Buddhists, while the Tamils are Hindus. Buddhism was introduced into Ceylon about the 4th century B.C., and has flourished here ever since; and Buddhist rock-temples are to be found all over the island. The Tamils have a quite extensive literature of considerable antiquity, mostly philosophical or philosophical poetical; and their language is very rich in vocabulary as well as in its grammatical forms and inflexions—though very terse, with scanty terms of courtesy (“thank you,” “good-morning,” and such like), and a little harsh in sound, k’s and r’s flying through the teeth at a great rate. Cinghalese is much more liquid and pleasant in sound, and has many more Aryan words in it. In fact it is supposed to be an offshoot of Sanskrit, whereas Tamil seems to have no relation to Sanskrit, except that it has borrowed a good many words. The curious thing is that, so little related as races, the Tamils should have taken their philosophy, as they have done, from the Sanskrit Vedas and Upanishads, and really expressed the ideas if anything more compactly and systematically than the Sanskrit books do. Though poor in literature I believe, yet the Cinghalese has one of the best books of chronicles which exist in any language—the Mahawanso—giving a very reliable history of the race (of course with florid adornment of stupendous miracles, which can easily be stripped off) from their landing in Ceylon down to modern times. The Mahawanso was begun by Mahanamo, a priest, who about 460 A.D. compiled the early portion comprising the period from B.C. 543 to A.D. 301, after which it was continued by successive authors right down to British times, i.e., A.D. 1758!

There are two newspapers in Colombo printed in the Cinghalese language, one of which is called The Buddhist World; there is also a paper printed in Tamil; and there are three English newspapers. In “places of entertainment” Colombo (and the same is true of the towns in India) is very wanting. There is no theatre or concert-hall. It can be readily understood that though the population is large (120,000), it is so diverse that a sufficiently large public cannot be found to support such places. The native races have each their own festivals, which provide for them all they require in that way. The British are only few—5,000 in all Ceylon, including military, out of a population of over three millions; and even if the Eurasian population—who of course go in for Western manners and ideals—were added, their combined numbers would be only scanty. An occasional circus or menagerie, or a visit from a stray theatrical company on its way to Australia, is all that takes place in that line.

For the rest there is a Salvation Army, with thriving barracks, a Theosophist Society, a branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, and various other little clubs representing different sections. Society is of course very much broken up into sections. Even the British, few as they are, are sadly divided by cliques and jealousies; the line between the official English and the “second-class” English is terribly severe (as indeed all over India); and between these again and the Eurasians. Even where Cinghalese or Tamil or Eurasian families of old standing attain important official positions, an insuperable stiffness still marks the intercourse between them and the British. “Ah!” said a planter to a young friend of mine who had just shaken hands rather cordially with a native gentleman, “Ah! my boy, you won’t do that when you’ve been here three years!” Thus a perfect social amalgamation and the sweetness of brethren dwelling together in unity are things still rather far distant in this otherwise lovely isle.

Talking about the beauty of the island, I was very much struck, even on my first landing, with its “spicy gales.” The air is heavy with an aromatic fragrance which, though it forced itself on my attention for three or four weeks before I got fairly accustomed to it, I have never been able to trace to any particular plant or shrub. It is perhaps not unlike the odor of the cinnamon leaf when bruised, but I don’t think it comes from that source. I am never tired of looking at the coco-nut palms; they grow literally by the million all along this coast to the north and south of Colombo. To the south the sea-shore road is overshadowed by them. I have been some miles along the road, and the belt of land, a hundred yards or so wide, between it and the sea, is thick with their stems right down to the water’s edge, over which they lean lovingly, for they are fond of the salt spray. On the other side of the road too they grow, and underneath them are little villas and farmsteads and tiny native cabins, with poultry and donkeys and humped cows and black pigs and brown children, in lively confusion; while groups of peasant men and women in bright-colored wraps travel slowly along, and the little bullock gigs, drawn by active little brahmin bulls with jingling bells, trot past at a pace which would do credit to an English pony—a scene which they say continues much the same the whole way to Galle (80 miles). These palms do not grow wild in Ceylon; they are all planted and cared for, whether in huge estates, or in the rood of ground which surrounds a Cinghalese cabin. The Cinghalese have a pretty saying that they cannot grow afar from the sound of the human voice. They have also a saying to the effect that a man only sees a straight coco-palm once in a lifetime. Many of the other kinds of palms grow remarkably straight, but this kind certainly does not. In a grove of them you see hundreds of the grey smooth stems shooting upwards in every fantastic curve imaginable, with an extraordinary sense of life and power, reminding one of the way in which a volley of rockets goes up into the air. Then at the height of 50 or 60 feet they break into that splendid crown of green plumes which sparkles glossy in the sun, and waves and whispers to the lightest breeze.

Along this palm-fringed and mostly low and sandy shore the waves break—with not much change of level in their tides—loudly roaring in the S.W. monsoon, or with sullen swell when the wind is in the N.E., but seldom altogether calm. A grateful breeze tempers the 90° of the thermometer. A clumsy-hulled lateen-sailed fishing boat is anchored in the shelter of a sandy spit; two or three native men and boys are fishing with rod and line, standing ankle-deep at the water’s edge. The dashing blue waves look tempting for a bathe, but the shore is comparatively deserted; not a soul is to be seen in the water, infested as it is by the all-dreaded shark. Only, 300 or 400 yards out, can be discerned the figure of a man—also fishing with a line—apparently standing up to his middle in water, but really sitting on a kind of primitive raft or boat, consisting of three or four logs of wood, slightly shaped, with upturned ends, and loosely tied together—the true catamaran (kattu maram, tied tree). The water of course washes up and around him, but that is pleasant on a hot day. He is safe from sharks; there is a slender possibility of his catching something for dinner; and there he sits, a relic of pre-Adamite times, while the train from Kalutara rushes by with a shriek to Colombo.

CHAPTER II.
KANDY AND PEASANT LIFE.

Ernst Haeckel in his book about Ceylon says that the Cinghalese, though a long civilised race, are as primitive as savages in their dress, cabins, etc.; and this remark strikes me as very true. As soon as you get off the railways and main roads you find them living in their little huts under their coco-palms in the most primitive fashion, and probably much as they did when they first came to Ceylon, 2,000 or 3,000 years ago.

On the 4th of this month (December), my friend “Ajax” landed at Colombo from England. He is on his way to Assam, in the tea-planting line, and is staying a week in the island to break the journey. He is a thorough Socialist in feeling, and a jolly fellow, always bright and good-natured, and with a great turn for music. We came up here to Kandy, and shortly after our arrival went to call on a Cinghalese peasant whose acquaintance I had lately made—Kalua by name—and found him in his little cabin, about a mile out of the town among the hills, where he lives with his brother Kirrah. Leaving Kandy by footpaths and alongside hedgerows overrun by a wild sunflower, and by that extraordinary creeper, with a verbena-like blossom, the lantana, which though said to have been introduced only about fifty years ago now runs in masses over the whole island, we came at last to a lovely little glen, with rice-lands laid out in terraces at the bottom, and tangles of scrub and jungle up the sides, among which were clumps of coco-nut and banana, indicating the presence of habitations. Under one of these groves, in a tiny little mud and thatch cabin, we found Kalua; in fact he saw us coming, and with a shout ran down to meet us. We were soon seated in the shade and talking such broken English and Tamil as we could respectively command. The brothers were very friendly, and brought us coco-nut milk and chágeri beer (made by cutting the great flower-bud off the chágeri palm, and letting the sap from the wounded stem flow into a jar, where it soon ferments; it has a musty flavor, and I cannot say that I care for it). Then their father, hearing of our arrival, came from half a mile off to have a look at us—a regular jolly old savage, with broad face and broad belly—but unfortunately, as we could not speak Cinghalese, there was no means of communicating with him, except by signs. This little valley seems to be chiefly occupied by the brothers and their kindred, forming a little tribe, so to speak. Kalua and his father both own good strips of rice-land, and are perhaps rather better off than most Cinghalese peasants, though that is not saying much. Married sisters and their children, and other relatives, also occupy portions of the glen; but Kalua and Kirrah are not married yet. It seems to be a point of honor with the Cinghalese (and indeed with most of the East Indian races) not to marry till their sisters are wedded. Like the Irish, the brothers work to provide a dowry for their sisters; and generally family feeling and helpfulness are very strong among them. To strike a father or a mother is, all over Ceylon (and India), a crime of almost unheard-of atrocity. Kalua gives a good deal of his earnings to his parents, and buys additions to the family rice-lands—which as far as I can make out are held to a considerable extent as common property.

KALUA.

There was a native king and kingdom of Kandy till about eighty years ago (1814), when the British overthrew it; and it is curious that the old Kandian law—which was recognised for some time by the British—contains very evident traces of the old group-marriage which is found among so many races in their pre-civilisation period. There were two kinds of marriage treated of in the Kandian law—the Deega marriage, in which the wife went (as with us) to the house of her husband, and became more or less his property; and the Beena marriage, in which he came to live with her among her own people, but was liable to expulsion at any time! The latter form is generally supposed to be the more primitive, and belongs to the time when heredity is traced through the woman, and when also polygamous and polyandrous practices prevail. And this is confirmed by a paragraph of the Kandian law, or custom, which forbade intermarriage between the children of two brothers, or between the children of two sisters, but allowed it between the children of a brother and a sister—the meaning of course being that two brothers might have the same wife, or two sisters the same husband, but that a brother and sister—having necessarily distinct wives and husbands—would produce children who could not be more nearly related to each other than cousins. It is also confirmed by the fact that a kind of customary group-marriage still lingers among the Cinghalese—e.g. if a man is married, his brothers not uncommonly have access to the wife—though owing to its being discountenanced by Western habits and law, this practice is gradually dying out.

Kalua has seen rather more of the world than some of his people, and has had opportunities of making a little money now and then. It appears that at the age of twelve or thirteen he took to “devil-dancing”—probably his father set him to it. He danced in the temple and got money; but now-a-days does not like the priests or believe in the temples. This devil-dancing appears to be a relic of aboriginal Kandian demon-worship: the evil spirits had to be appeased, or in cases of illness or misfortune driven away by shrieks and frantic gestures. It is a truly diabolical performance. The dancers (there are generally two of them) dress themselves up in fantastic array, and then execute the most extraordinary series of leaps, bounds, demivolts, and somersaults, in rhythmical climaxes, accompanied by clapping of hands, shrieks, and tomtomming, for about twenty minutes without stopping, by the end of which time the excitement of themselves and spectators is intense, and the patient—if there is one—is pretty sure to be either killed or cured! When the Buddhists came to the island they incorporated these older performances into their institutions. Some two or three years ago however Hagenbeck, of circus celebrity, being in Ceylon engaged a troupe of Kandians—of whom Kalua was one—to give a native performance for the benefit of the Europeans; and since that time the old peasant life has palled upon our friend, and it is evident that he lives in dreams of civilisation and the West. Kalua is remarkably well-made, and active and powerful. He is about twenty-eight, with the soft giraffe-like eyes of the Cinghalese, and the gentle somewhat diffident manner which they affect; his black hair is generally coiled in a knot behind his head, and, with an ornamental belt sustaining his colored skirt, and a shawl thrown over his shoulder, he looks quite handsome. Kirrah is thinner and weaker, both mentally and physically, with a clinging affectionateness of character which is touching. Then there are two nephews, Pinha and Punjha, whom I have seen once or twice—bright nice-looking boys, anxious to pick up phrases and words of English, and ideas about the wonderful Western world, which is beginning to dawn on their horizon—though alas! it will soon destroy their naked beauty and simplicity. To see Punjha go straight up the stem of a coco-nut tree fifty feet high is a caution! He just puts a noose of rope round his two feet to enable him to grasp the stem better with his soles, clasps his hands round the trunk, brings his knees up to his ears, and shoots up like a frog swimming!

The coco-nut palm is everything to the Cinghalese: they use the kernel of the nut for food, either as a curry along with their rice, or as a flavoring to cakes made of rice and sugar; the shell serves for drinking cups and primeval spoons; the husky fibre of course makes string, rope, and matting; the oil pressed from the nut, in creaking antique mills worked by oxen, is quite an article of commerce, and is used for anointing their hair and bodies, as well as for their little brass lamps and other purposes; the woody stems come in for the framework of cabins, and the great leaves either form an excellent thatch, or when plaited make natural screens, which in that climate often serve for the cabin-walls in place of anything more substantial. When Ajax told Kirrah that there were no coco-palms in England, the latter’s surprise was unfeigned as he exclaimed, “How do you live, then?”

PLOUGHING IN THE RICE-FIELDS, WITH BUFFALOS.

The other great staple of Cinghalese life is rice. Kalua’s family rice-fields lay below us in larger patches along the bottom of the glen, and terraced in narrow strips a little way up the hill at the head of it. The rice-lands are, for irrigation’s sake, always laid out in level patches, each surrounded by a low mud bank, one or two feet high; sometimes, where there is water at hand, they are terraced quite a good way up the hillsides, something like the vineyards in Italy. During and after the rains the water is led onto the various levels successively, which are thus well flooded. While in flood they are ploughed—with a rude plough drawn by humped cattle, or by buffalos—and sown as the water subsides. The crop soon springs up, a brilliant green, about as high as barley, but with an ear more resembling oats, and in seven or eight weeks is ready to be harvested. Boiled rice, with some curried vegetable or coco-nut, just to give it a flavor, is the staple food all over Ceylon among the natives—two meals a day, sometimes in poorer agricultural districts only one; a scanty fare, as their thin limbs too often testify. They use no bread, but a few cakes made of rice-flour and ghee and the sugar of the chágeri palm.

The brothers’ cabin is primitive enough—just a little thatched place, perhaps twelve feet by eight, divided into two—a large wicker jar or basket containing store of rice, one or two boxes, a few earthenware pots for cooking in, fire lighted on the ground, no chair or table, and little sign of civilisation except a photograph or two stuck on the wall and a low cane-seated couch for sleeping on. The latter however is quite a luxury, as the Cinghalese men as often as not sleep on the earth floor.

We stayed a little while chatting, while every now and then the great husked coco-nuts (of which you have to be careful) fell with a heavy thud from the trees; and then Kalua came on with us to Kandy, and we went to see the great Buddhist temple there, the Devala Maligawa, which contains the precious tooth-relic of Buddha.

BUDDHIST PRIEST.

(Librarian at the Temple at Kandy, with palm-leaf MS. book in lap.)

Architecturally nothing, the temple is interesting for the antique appearance of its gardens, shrines, priests’ cottages, library, fishponds, etc.; sacred fish and turtles coming to be fed by the pious; rude frescoes of the infernal torments of the wicked, not unlike our mediæval designs on similar subjects; the sacred shrine itself with ivory and silver doors; the dirty yellow-stoled priests arriving with huge keys to open it, but first washing their feet in the forecourt; the tomtoms and horns blowing; flowers scattered about; and then the interior chamber of the shrine, where behind strong bars of iron reposes a golden and bell-shaped cover, crusted with jewels—the outermost of six successive covers, within the last of which is the tooth itself (reported by Emerson Tennent to be about two inches long, and probably the fang of a crocodile!); then the little golden and crystal images of Buddha in various little shrines to themselves; and, most interesting of all, the library with its old MS. books written on strips of talipot palm leaf, beautifully done in Cinghalese, Pali, Sanskrit, etc., illuminated with elegant designs, and bound by silk cords in covers of fretted silver. The old librarian priest was a charming specimen of a Buddhist priest—gentle, intelligent, and apparently with a vein of religious feeling in his character—and spoke with interest about the various texts and manuscripts. It is a pity that so much cannot be said of the Buddhist priests generally, who are as a rule—in Ceylon at any rate—an ignorant, dirty, betel-chewing and uninviting-looking lot.

At the botanical gardens at Peradeniya—three or four miles out of Kandy—we saw a specimen of the talipot palm in full flower. This beautiful palm—unlike the coco palm—grows perfectly erect and straight; it flowers only once, and then dies. Haeckel says that it lives from fifty to eighty years, and that the blossom is sometimes thirty or forty feet long. The specimen that we saw in blossom was about forty-five feet high in the stem; and then from its handsome crown of huge leaves sprang a flower, or rather a branched spike of numerous white flowers, which I estimated at fifteen feet high (but which I afterwards saw described in the newspapers as twenty feet high). Baker says that the flower bud is often as much as four feet long, and that it opens with a smart report, when this beautiful white plume unfolds and lifts itself in the sun. The natives use the great leaf of the talipot—which is circular and sometimes eight or nine feet in diameter—as an umbrella. They fold it together along its natural corrugations, and then open it to ward off sun or rain.

GENERAL VIEW OF KANDY.

(Native street on left, Buddhist temple on right, English church in centre.)

Kandy is very beautiful. It stands nearly 2,000 feet high, by the side of an artificial lake which the old kings of Kandy made, and embosomed in hills covered by lovely woods full of tropical plants and flowers and commanding beautiful views from their slopes and summits. There is a small native town containing the usual mixed population of Cinghalese, Tamils, and Moor-men; there are one or two English hotels, a church, library and reading-room; a few residents’ houses, and a scattered population of English tea-planters on the hills for some miles round, who make Kandy their rendez-vous.

Ajax makes great friends with the native youths and boys here; he has an easy friendly way with them, and they get hold of his hand and walk alongside. Of course they are delighted to find any Mahate who will treat them a little kindly; but I fear the few English about are much shocked at our conduct. When I first came to Ceylon my Tamil friend A. chaffed me about my way of calling him and the rest of the population, whether Tamil or Mahomedan or Cinghalese, all indiscriminately natives, “as if we were so many oysters.” I told this to Ajax, and of course there was nothing for it after that but to call them all oysters!

We find the few British whom we have come across in our travels very much set against the “oysters.” There is something queer about the British and their insularity; but I suppose it is more their misfortune than their fault. Certainly they will allow that the oysters are not without merit—indeed if one keeps them to it they will often speak quite warmly of the tenderness and affectionateness of servants who have nursed them through long illnesses, etc.—but the idea of associating with them on terms of equality and friendship is somehow unspeakable and not to be entertained. It seems almost de rigueur to say something disparaging about the oyster, when that topic turns up—as a way of showing one’s own breeding, I suppose; after that has been done, however, it is allowable to grant that there are exceptions, and even to point out some kindly traits, pearls as it were, which are occasionally found in the poor bivalve. It strikes me however that the English are the chief losers by this insular habit. They look awfully bored and miserable as a rule in these up-country parts, which must almost necessarily be the case where there are only five or six residents in a station, or within accessible distances of each other, and confined entirely to each other’s society.

One day Ajax and I went up to Nuwara Ellia. The railway carriage was full of tea-planters (including one or two wives and sisters), and there were a few at the hotel. It was curious to see some English faces of the cold-mutton-commercial type, and in quite orthodox English attire, in this out-of-the-way region. The good people looked sadly bored, and it seemed a point of honor with them to act throughout as if the colored folk didn’t exist or were invisible—also as if they were deaf, to judge by the shouting. In the evening however (at the hotel) we felt touched at the way in which they cheered up when Ajax and I played a few familiar tunes on the piano. They came round, saying it reminded them of home, and entreated us to go on; so we played for about two hours, Ajax improvising as usual in the most charming way.

Nuwara Ellia is 6,000 feet above the sea—a little village with an hotel or two—a favorite resort from the sultry airs of Colombo and the lowlands. Here the Britisher finds fires in the sitting-rooms and thick mists outside, and dons his great-coat and feels quite at home. But we, having only just come from the land of fogs, did not appreciate these joys, and thought the place a little bleak and bare.

CHAPTER III.
KURUNÉGALA.

On my way here, on the coach, I fell in with Monerasingha, a Cinghalese of some education and ability, a proctor or solicitor. He is a cheerful little man, an immense talker, and very keen on politics. He was very amusing about the English; says they are very agreeable at first, “but after three months’ stay in the island a complete change comes over them—won’t speak to us or look at us—but I can give it them back.” His idea seems to be that representative institutions are wanted to restore to the people that interest in public life which has been taken from them by the destruction of their communal institutions under British rule. He seems to be a great hater of caste, and thinks the English have done much good in that matter. “I am loyal enough, because I know we are much better off than we should be under Russia. The English are stupid and incapable of understanding us, and don’t go among us to get understanding; but they mean well, according to their lights.”

This place (called Kornegalle by the English) is a little town of 2,000 or 3,000 inhabitants, fifty miles from Colombo and eleven miles (by coach) from Polgahawella, the nearest railway station. It lies just at the foot of the mountain region of Ceylon, and takes its name, Kurunégala or Elephant-rock, from a huge Gibraltar-like rock, 600 feet high, at the base of which it nestles—and whose rounded dark granite structure, wrinkled with weather and largely bare of trees or any herbage, certainly bears a remarkable resemblance, both in form and color, to a couchant elephant. Ascending its steep sides, on which the sun strikes with fierce heat during the midday, one obtains from the summit a fine view—westward over low plains, eastward over mountain ranges rising higher and higher towards the centre of the island. The prevailing impression of the landscape here, as elsewhere in Ceylon, is its uniform green. There is no change of summer or winter. (Though this is the coolest time of year, the daily temperature ranges from 85° to 90° in the shade.) The trees do not cast their leaves at any stated time, though individual trees will sleep at intervals, resting so. In every direction the same color meets the eye—tracts of green scrub, green expanses of forest, green rice-fields, and the massed green of bananas and coco-palms. A little monotonous this in the general landscape, though it is plentifully compensated on a near view by the detailed color of insect and flower life. One curious feature is that though the country is well populated, hardly a trace of habitation is to be seen from any high point such as this. Even Kurunégala, which lies at our feet, is only distinguishable by its court-house and prison and one or two other emblems of civilisation; the native cabins, and even in many cases the European houses—which are of one storey only—are entirely hidden by trees. Those clumps however of coco-palms which you see standing like oases in the general woods, or breaking the levels of the rice-fields, with occasional traces of blue smoke curling up through them, are sure indications of little native hamlets clustered beneath—often far far from any road, and accessible only by natural footpaths worn by naked feet.

NATIVE HUT.

(Among banana and coco-palms.)

From the top of the rock one gets a good view of the tank which supplies irrigation water for the town and neighborhood. It is about three-quarters of a mile long and half a mile broad, and forms a pretty little lake, over which kites hover and kingfishers skim, and in which the people daily bathe. These tanks and irrigation channels are matters of the utmost importance, to which I think Government can hardly give too much attention. Their importance was well understood in past times, as indeed the remains and ruins of immense works of this kind, over a thousand years old, in various parts of the island fully testify. A little is being done towards their renewal and restoration, but the tendency to-day is to neglect the interests of the rice-growing peasant in favor of the tea-planting Englishman. The paddy tax, which presses very hardly on the almost starving cultivator, while tea goes scot-free, is an instance of this. Tea, which is an export and a luxury, and which enriches the few, is thought to be so much more important than an article which is grown for home consumption and for the needs of the many. It is of course only an instance of the general commercial policy of all modern Governments; but one cannot the less for that think it a mistake, and an attempt to make the pyramid of social prosperity stand upon its apex. There is something curious—and indeed is it not self-contradictory?—in the fact that every country of the civilized world studies above all things the increase of its exports—is engaged, not in producing things primarily for its own use, but in trying to get other people to buy what it produces!—as if we all stood round and tried to shuffle off our bad wares on the others, in the hope that they by some accident might return us good stuff in exchange. Somehow the system does not seem as if it would work; it looks too like the case of that island where the inhabitants all earned a precarious living by taking in each other’s washing. What, one may ask, is really the cause of the enormous growth of this practice of neglecting production for use in favor of production for export and for the market? Is it not simply money and the merchant interest? Production at home by the population and for its own use is and always must be, one would think, by far the most important for the population and for its own comfort and welfare, though a margin may of course be allowed for the acquirement by exchange of some few articles which cannot be grown at home. But production such as this does not necessarily mean either money or mercantile transaction. Conceivably it may very well take place without either these or the gains which flow from their use—without profits or interest or dividends or anything of the kind. But this would never do! The money and commercial interest, which is now by far the most powerful interest in all modern states, is not such a fool as to favor a system of national economy which would be its own ruin. No; it must encourage trade in every way, at all costs. Trade, commerce, exchange, exports and imports—these are the things which bring dividends and interest, which fill the pockets of the parasites at the expense of the people; and so the nations stand round, obedient, and carry on the futile game till further orders.

As a matter of fact in these hot countries, like Ceylon and India, almost unlimited results of productiveness can be got by perfected irrigation, and as long as the peasantry in these lands are (as they are) practically starving, and the irrigation works practically neglected, the responsibility for such a state of affairs must lie with the rulers; and naturally no mere shuffling of commercial cards, or encouragement of an export trade which brings fortunes into the hands of a few tea-planters and merchants, can be expected to make things better.

It is sad to see the thin and famished mortals who come in here from the country districts round to beg. Many of them, especially the younger ones, have their limbs badly ulcerated. One day, going through the hospital, the doctor—a Eurasian—took me through a ward full of such cases. He said that they mostly soon got better with the better hospital diet; “but,” he added, “when they get back to their old conditions they are soon as bad as ever.” In fact the mass of the population in a place like Colombo looks far sleeker and better off than in these country districts; but that only affords another instance of how the modern policy encourages the shifty and crafty onhanger of commercial life at the cost of the sturdy agriculturist—and I need not say that the case is the same at home as abroad.

It is quite a pretty sight to see the bathing in the tanks. It takes place in the early morning, and indeed during most of the day. Cleanliness is a religious observance, and engrained in the habits of the people. Of course there are exceptions, but save among the lowest castes this is the rule. An orthodox Hindu is expected not only to wash himself, but his own cloth, at least once a day. The climate makes bathing a pleasure, and the people linger over it. Men and boys, women and children, together or in groups not far distant from each other, revel and splash in the cool liquid; their colored wraps are rinsed and spread to dry on the banks, their brass pots glance in the sun as they dip the water with them and pour it over their own heads, their long black hair streams down their backs. Then, leaving the water, they pluck a twig from a certain tree, and, squatting on their hams, with the frayed twig-end rub their teeth and talk over the scandal of the day. This tooth-cleaning gossiping business lasts till they are dry, and often a good deal longer, and is, I fancy, one of the most enjoyable parts of the day to the mild oyster. In unsophisticated places there is no distinction of classes in this process, and rich and poor join in the public bathing alike—in fact there is very little difference in their dress and habits anyhow, as far as regards wealth and poverty—but of course where Western ideas are penetrating, the well-to-do natives adopt our habits and conduct their bathing discreetly at home.

The people never (except it be children) go into the water quite naked, and the women always retain one of their wraps wound round the body. These wraps are very long, and the skill with which they manage to wash first one end and then the other, winding and unwinding, and remaining decorously covered all the time, is quite admirable. I am struck by the gravity and decorum of the people generally—in outer behavior or gesture—though their language (among the lower castes) is by no means always select! But there is none, or very little, of that banter between the sexes which is common among the Western populations, and even among the boys and youths you see next to no frolicking or bear-fighting. I suppose it is part of the passivity and want of animal spirits which characterise the Hindu; and of course the sentiment of the relation between the sexes is different in some degree from what it is with us. On sexual matters generally, as far as I can make out, the tendency, even among the higher castes, is to be outspoken, and there is little of that prudery which among us is only after all a modern growth.

NATIVE STREET, AND SHOPS.

The town here is a queer mixture of primitive life with modern institutions. There are two or three little streets of booths, which constitute the “bazaar.” Walking down these—where behind baskets of wares the interiors of the dwellings are often visible, and the processes of life are naïvely exposed to the eye—one may judge for one’s self how little man wants here below. Here is a fruit and vegetable shop, with huge bunches of plantains or bananas, a hundred in a bunch, and selling at five or six a penny; of a morning you may see the peasant coming in along the road carrying two such bunches—a good load—slung one at each end of a long pole, or pingo, over his shoulder—a similar figure to that which is so frequent on the Egyptian monuments of 3,000 years ago; pineapples, from 1d. up to 4d. each for the very finest; the breadfruit, and its queer relation the enormous jack-fruit, weighing often as much as 12 to 14 lbs., with its pulpy and not very palatable interior, used so much by the people, growing high up over their cabins on the handsome jack-tree, and threatening you with instant dissolution if it descend upon your head; the egg-plant, murngal, beans, potatos, and other vegetables; and plentiful ready-prepared packets of areca nut and betel leaf for chewing. Then there is a shop where they sell spices, peppers, chilis, and all such condiments for curries, not to mention baskets of dried fish (also for currying), which stink horribly and constitute one of the chief drawbacks of the bazaars; and an earthenware shop,—and I must not forget the opium shop. Besides these there are only two others—and they represent Manchester and Birmingham respectively—one where they sell shoddy and much-sized cotton goods, and the other which displays tin ware, soap, matches, paraffin lamps, dinner knives, and all sorts of damnable cutlery. I have seen these knives and scissors, or such as these (made only to deceive), being manufactured in the dens of Sheffield by boys and girls slaving in dust and dirt, breathing out their lives in foul air under the gaslights, hounded on by mean taskmasters and by the fear of imminent starvation. Dear children! if you could only come out here yourselves, instead of sending the abominable work of your hands—come out here to enjoy this glorious sunshine, and fraternise, as I know many of you would, with the despised darkie!

The opium-seller is a friend of mine. I often go and sit in his shop—on his one chair. He teaches me Tamil—for he is a Tamil—and tells me long stories, slowly, word by word. He is a thin, soft-eyed, intelligent man, about thirty, has read a fair amount of English—of a friendly riant child-nature—not without a reasonable eye to the main chance, like some of his Northern cousins. There are a few jars of opium in its various forms—for smoking, drinking, and chewing; a pair of scales to weigh it with; a brass coconut-oil lamp with two or three wicks hanging overhead; and a partition for the bed at the back,—and that is all. The shopfront is of course entirely open to the thronged street, except at night, when it is closed with shutterboards.

At the corner of the street stands a policeman, of course, else we should not know we were being civilised. But, O Lord, what a policeman! How a London street arab would chuckle all over at the sight of him! Imagine the mild and somewhat timid oyster dressed in a blue woollen serge suit (very hot for this climate), with a belt round his waist, some kind of turban on his head, a staff in his hand, and boots on his feet! A real live oyster in boots! It is too absurd. How miserable he looks; and as to running after a criminal—the thing is not to be thought of. But no doubt the boots vindicate the majesty of the British Government.

While we are gazing at this apparition, a gang of prisoners marches by—twenty lean creatures, with slouched straw hats on their heads, striped cotton jackets and pants, and bare arms and lower legs, each carrying a mattock—for they are going to work on the roads—and the whole gang followed and guarded (certainly Ceylon is a most idyllic land) by a Cinghalese youth of about twenty-one, dressed in white skirts down to his feet, with a tortoise-shell comb on his head, and holding a parasol to shade himself from the sun. Why do not the twenty men with mattocks turn and slay the boy with the parasol, and so depart in peace? I asked this question many times, and always got the same answer. “Because,” they said, “the prisoners do not particularly want to run away. They are very well off in prison,—better off, as a rule, than they are outside. Imprisonment by an alien Government, under alien laws and standards, is naturally no disgrace, at any rate to the mass of the people, and so once in prison they make themselves as happy as they can.”

I visited the gaol one day, and thought they succeeded very well in that respect. The authorities, I am glad to say, do all they can to make them comfortable. They have each a large dish of rice and curry, with meat if they wish, twice a day, and a meal of coffee and bread in the morning besides; which is certainly better fare than they would get as peasants. They do their little apology for work in public places during the day—with a chance of a chat with friends—and sleep in gangs together in the prison sheds at night, each with his mat, pillow, and night suit; so possibly on the whole they are not ill-content.

My friend A——, with whom I am staying here, is a Tamil, and an official of high standing. He became thoroughly Anglicised while studying in England, and like many of the Hindus who come to London or Cambridge or Oxford, did for the time quite outwesternise us in the tendency towards materialism and the belief in science, ‘comforts,’ representative institutions, and ‘progress’ generally. Now however he seems to be undergoing a reaction in favor of caste and the religious traditions of his own people, and I am inclined to think that other westernising Hindus will experience the same reaction.

He lives in an ordinary one-storied stone house, or bungalow, such as the English inhabit here. These houses, naturally cover a good deal of ground. The roof, which is made of heavy tiles or thatch, is pitched high in the middle, giving space for lofty sitting-rooms; the sleeping chambers flank these at a lower slope, and outside runs the verandah, almost round the house, the roof terminating beyond it at six or seven feet from the ground. This arrangement makes the interiors very dark and cool, as the windows open on the verandah, and the sun cannot penetrate to them; but I am not sure that I like the sensation of being confined under this immense carapace of tiles, with no possible outlook to the sky, in a sort of cavernous twilight all the while. The verandah forms an easy means of access from one part to another, and in this house there are no passages in the interior, but the rooms all open into one another; and plentiful windows—some mere Venetian shutters, without glass—ensure a free circulation of air.

Mosquitos are a little trying. I don’t think they are more venomous than the English gnat, but they are far ’cuter. The mosquito is the ’cutest little animal for its size that exists. I am certain from repeated observations that it watches one’s eyes. If you look at it, it flies away. It settles on the under side of your hand (say when reading a book), or on your ankles when sitting at table—on any part in fact which is remote from observation; there is nothing that it loves better than for you to sit in a cane-bottomed chair. But it never attacks your face—and that is a curious thing—except when you are asleep. How it knows I cannot tell, but I have often noticed that it is so. If you close your eyes and pretend to be asleep, it will not come; but as sure as you begin to drowse off you hear the ping of its little wing as it swoops past your ear to your cheek.

At night however the mosquito curtains keep one in safety, and I cannot say that I am much troubled during the day, except on occasions, and in certain places, as in the woods when there is no breeze. A. is a vegetarian, and I fancy diet has a good deal to do with freedom from irritation by insects and by heat. The thermometer reaches 90° in the shade almost every day here; to sit and run at the same time is a gymnastic feat which one can easily perform, and at night it is hot enough to sleep without any covering on the bed; but I enjoy the climate thoroughly, and never felt in better health. No doubt these things often affect one more after a time than at first; but there seems almost always a pleasant breeze here at this time of year, and I do not notice that languor which generally accompanies sultry weather.

A. has most lovely vegetable curries; plenty of boiled rice, with four or five little dishes of different sorts of curried vegetables. This, with fruit, forms our breakfast—at ten; and dinner at six or seven is much the same, with perhaps an added soup or side-dish. His wife sometimes joins us at dinner, which I take as an honor, as even with those Hindu women who are emancipated there is often a little reserve about eating with the foreigner. She has a very composed and gentle manner, and speaks English prettily and correctly, though slowly and with a little hesitation; approves of a good deal of the English freedom for women, but says she cannot quite reconcile herself to women walking about the streets alone, and other things she hears they do in England. However, she would like to come to England herself and see.

The children are very bright and charming. Mahéswari (three years old) is the sweetest little dot, with big black eyes and a very decided opinion about things. She comes into the room and lifts up one arm and turns up her face and prophesies something in solemn tones in Tamil, which turns out to be, “Father is very naughty to sit down to dinner before mother comes.” Then she talks Cinghalese to her nurse and English to me, which is pretty good for a beginner in life. Mahadéva and Jayanta, the two boys (seven and nine respectively), are in the bubbling-over stage, and are alternately fast friends and fighting with each other two or three times a day, much like English boys. They are dressed more after the English fashion, though they are privileged to have bare knees and feet—at any rate in the house; and Jayanta has a pony which he rides out every day.

A. sets apart a little room in this house as a “chapel.” It is quite bare, with just a five-wicked lamp on a small table in one corner, and flowers, fruit, etc., on the ground in front. I was present the other day when the Brahman priest was performing a little service there. He recited Sanskrit formulas, burned camphor, and gave us cowdung ashes and sandalwood paste to put on our foreheads, consecrated milk to drink, and a flower each. The cowdung ashes are a symbol. For as cowdung, when burnt, becomes clean and even purifying in quality, so must the body itself be consumed and purified in the flame of Siva’s presence. A. says they use a gesture identifying the light (of Siva) within the body with the light of the flame, and also with that of the sun; and always terminate their worship by going out into the open and saluting the sun. The Brahman priest, a man about forty, and the boy of fifteen who often accompanies him, are pleasant-faced folk, not apparently at all highly educated, wearing but little in the way of clothes, and not specially distinguishable from other people, except by the sacred thread worn over the shoulder, and a certain alertness of expression which is often noticeable in the Brahman—though the trouble is that it is generally alertness for gain.

The priests generally here, whether Buddhist or Hindu (and Buddhism is of course the prevailing religion in Ceylon), occupy much the same relation to the people which the priests occupy in the country districts of France or Ireland—that is, whatever spiritual power they claim, they do not arrogate to themselves any worldly supremacy, and are always poor and often quite unlettered. In fact I suppose it is only in the commercially religious, i.e. Protestant, countries that the absurd anomaly exists of a priesthood which pretends to the service of the Jesus who had not where to lay his head, and which at the same time openly claims to belong to “society” and the well-to-do classes, and would resent any imputation to the contrary. There are indeed many points of resemblance between the religions here—especially Hinduism—and Roman Catholicism: the elaborate ceremonials and services, with processions, incense, lights, ringing of bells, etc.; the many mendicant orders, the use of beads and rosaries, and begging bowls, the monasteries with their abbots, and so forth.

VEDDAHS.

(Aborigines of Ceylon.)

There is one advantage in a hot damp climate like this; namely that things—books, furniture, clothes, etc.—soon get destroyed and done with, so that there is little temptation to cumber up your house with possessions. Some English of course try to furnish and keep their rooms as if they were still living in Bayswater, but they are plentifully plagued for their folly. The floors here are of some cement or concrete material, which prevents the white ants surging up through them, as they infallibly would through boards, and which is nice and cool to the feet; carpets, cupboards, and all collections of unremoved things are discountenanced. A chest of drawers or a bookcase stands out a foot or two from the wall, so that the servants can sweep behind it every day. Little frogs, lizards, scorpions, and other fry, which come hopping and creeping in during or after heavy rain can then be gently admonished to depart, and spiders do not find it easy to establish a footing. The greatest harbor for vermin is the big roof, which is full of rats. In pursuit of these come the rat-snakes, fellows five or six feet long, but not venomous, and wild cats; and the noises at night from them, the shuffling of the snakes, and the squeals of the poor little rats, etc., I confess are trying.

We have three or four male servants about the house and garden, and there are two ayahs, who look after the children and the women’s apartments. I believe many of these Indian and Cinghalese races love to be servants (under a tolerably good master); their feminine sensitive natures, often lacking in enterprise, rather seek the shelter of dependence. And certainly they make, in many instances and when well treated, wonderfully good servants, their tact and affectionateness riveting the bond. I know of a case in which an English civilian met with an accident when 200 miles away from his station, and his “bearer,” when he heard the news, in default of other means of communication, walked the whole distance, and arrived in time to see him before he died. At the same time it is a mistake to suppose they will do anything out of a sense of duty. The word duty doesn’t occupy an important place in the Oriental vocabulary, no more than it does among the Celtic peoples of Europe. This is a fruitful source of misunderstanding between the races. The Britisher pays his Indian servant regularly, and in return expects him to do his duty, and to submit to kicks when he doesn’t. He, the Britisher, regards this as a fair contract. But the oyster doesn’t understand it in the least. He would rather receive his pay less regularly, and be treated as “a man and a brother.” Haeckel’s account of the affection of his Rodiya servant-lad for him, and of the boy’s despair when Haeckel had to leave him, is quite touching; but it is corroborated by a thousand similar stories. But if there is no attachment, what is the meaning of duty? The oyster, in keeping with his weaker, more dependent nature, is cunning and lazy—his vices lie in that direction rather than in the Western direction of brutal energy. If his attachment is not called out, he can make his master miserable in his own way. And he does so; hence endless strife and recrimination.

The Arachchi here, a kind of official servant of A.’s, is a most gentle creature, with remarkable tact, but almost too sensitive; one is afraid of wounding him by not accepting all his numerous attentions. He glides in and out of the room—as they all do—noiselessly, with bare feet; and one never knows whether one is alone or not. The horse-keeper and I are good friends, though our dialogues are limited for want of vocabulary! He is a regular dusky demon, with his look of affectionate bedevilment and way of dissolving in a grin whenever he sees one. A. says that he thinks the pariahs, or outcastes—and the horse-keepers are pariahs—are some of the most genuine and good-hearted among the people; and I see that the author of Life in an Indian Village says something of the same kind. “As a class, hardworking, honest, and truthful,” he calls them; and after describing their devotion to the interests of the families to whom they are often hereditarily attached, adds, “Such are the illiterate pariahs, a unique class, whose pure lives and noble traits of character are in every way worthy of admiration.”

It is curious, but I am constantly being struck by the resemblance between the lowest castes here and the slum-dwellers in our great cities—resemblance in physiognomy, as well as in many unconscious traits of character, often very noble; with the brutish basis well-marked, the unformed mouth, and the somewhat heavy brows, just as in Meunier’s fine statue of the ironworker (“puddleur”), but with thicker lips.

CHAPTER IV.
ADAM’S PEAK AND THE BLACK RIVER.

January 1st, 1891.—Sitting by an impromptu wood-fire in a little hut on the summit of Adam’s Peak—nearly midnight—a half-naked Caliban out of the woods squatting beside me, and Kalua and the guide sleeping on the floor. But I find it too cold to sleep, and there is no furniture in the hut.

Altogether an eventful New Year’s day. Last night I spent at Kandy with Kalua and his brother in their little cabin. They were both very friendly, and I kept being reminded of Herman Melville and his Marquesas Island experiences—so beautiful the scene, the moon rising about ten, woods and valleys all around—the primitive little hut, Kirrah cooking over a fire on the ground, etc. We were up by moon and starlight at 5 a.m., and by walking, driving, and the railway, reached Muskeliya at the foot of the peak by 2.30 p.m. There we got a guide—a very decent young Tamil—and reached here by 7.30 or 8 p.m. Our path lay at first through tea-gardens, and then leaving them, it went in nearly a direct line straight up the mountain side—perhaps 3,000 feet—through dense woods, in step-like formation, over tree-roots and up the rocks, worn and hacked into shape through successive centuries by innumerable pilgrims, but still only wide enough for one. Night came upon us on the way, and the last hour or two we had to light torches to see our route. Elephant tracks were plentiful all round us through the woods, even close to the summit. It is certainly extraordinary on what steep places and rock sides these animals will safely travel; but we were not fortunate enough to see any of them.

This is a long night trying to sleep. It is the wretchedest hut, without a door, and unceiled to the four winds! Caliban makes the fire for me as I write. He has nothing on but a cotton wrap and a thin jersey, but does not seem to feel the cold much; and the guide is even more thinly clad, and is asleep, while I am shivering, bundled in cloth coats. There is something curious about the way in which the English in this country feel the cold—when it is cold—more than the natives; though one might expect the contrary. I have often noticed it. I fancy we make a great mistake in these hot lands in not exposing our skins more to the sun and air, and so strengthening and hardening them. In the great heat, and when constantly covered with garments, the skin perspires terribly, and becomes sodden and enervated, and more sensitive than it ought to be—hence great danger of chills. I have taken several sun-baths in the woods here at different times, and found advantage from doing so.

[Since writing the above, I have discovered the existence of a little society in India—of English folk—who encourage nudity, and the abandonment as far as possible of clothes, on three distinct grounds—physical, moral, and æsthetic—of Health, Decency, and Beauty. I wish the society every success. Its chief object, as given in its rules, is to urge upon people “to be and go stark naked whenever suitable,” and it is a sine quâ non that members should appear at all its meetings without any covering Passing over the moral and æsthetic considerations—which are both of course of the utmost importance in this connection—there is still the consideration of physical health and enjoyment, which must appeal to everybody. In a place like India, where the mass of the people go with very little covering, the spectacle of their ease and enjoyment must double the discomforts of the unfortunate European who thinks it necessary to be dressed up to the eyes on every occasion when he appears in public. It is indeed surprising that men can endure, as they do, to wear cloth coats and waistcoats and starched collars and cuffs, and all the paraphernalia of propriety, in a severity of heat which really makes only the very lightest covering tolerable; nor can one be surprised at the exhaustion of the system which ensues, from the cause already mentioned. In fact the direct stimulation and strengthening of the skin by sun and air, though most important in our home climate, may be even more indispensable in a place like India, where the relaxing influences are so terribly strong. Certainly, when one considers this cause of English enervation in India, and the other due to the greatly mistaken diet of our people there, the fearful quantities of flesh consumed, and of strong liquors—both things which are injurious enough at home, but which are ruinous in a hot country—the wonder is not that the English fail to breed and colonise in India, but that they even last out their few years of individual service there.]

There is a lovely view of cloudland from the summit now the moon has risen. All the lower lands and mountains are wrapped in mist, and you look down upon a great white rolling sea, silent, remote from the world, with only the moon and stars above, and the sound of the Buddhist priests chanting away in a low tone round the fire in their own little cabin or pansela.

This is a most remarkable mountain. For at least 2,000 years, and probably for long enough before that, priests of some kind or another have kept watch over the sacred footmark on the summit; for thousands of years the sound of their chanting has been heard at night between the driven white plain of clouds below and the silent moon and stars above; and by day pilgrims have toiled up the steep sides to strew flowers, and to perform some kind of worship to their gods, on this high natural altar. The peak is 7,400 feet high, and though not quite the highest point in the island, is by far the most conspicuous. It stands like a great outpost on the south-west edge of the mountain region of Ceylon, and can be seen from far out to sea—a sugar-loaf with very precipitous sides. When the Buddhists first came to Ceylon, about the 4th century b.c., they claimed the footmark as that of Buddha. Later on some Gnostic Christian sects attributed it to the primal man; the Mahomedans, following this idea, when they got possession of the mountain, gave it the name of Adam’s Peak; the Portuguese consecrated it to S. Eusebius; and now the Buddhists are again in possession—though I believe the Mahomedans are allowed a kind of concurrent right. But whatever has been the nominal dedication of this ancient “high place,” a continuous stream of pilgrims—mainly of course the country folk of the island—has flowed to it undisturbed through the centuries; and even now they say that in the month of May the mountain side is covered by hundreds and even thousands of folk, who camp out during the night, and do poojah on the summit by day. Kalua says that his father—the jolly old savage—once ascended “Samantakuta,” and like the rest of the Cinghalese thinks a great deal of the religious merit of this performance.

Ratnapura, Jan. 3rd.—Sunrise yesterday on the peak was fine, though “sunrises” are not always a success. The great veil of clouds gradually dissolved, and a long level “rose of dawn” appeared in the eastern sky—Venus brilliant above it, the Southern Cross visible, and one or two other crosses which lie near it, and the half moon overhead; a dark, peaked and castellated rampart of lower mountains stretched around us, and far on the horizon were masses of cumulus cloud rising out of the lowland mists, and catching the early light; while the lower lands themselves remained partly hidden by irregular pools and rivers of white fog, which looked like water in the first twilight. A great fan-like crown of rays preceded the sun, very splendid, of pearly colors, with great beams reaching nearly to the zenith. We could not see the sea, owing to mists along the horizon, nor was any habitation visible, but only the great jungle-covered hills and far plains shrouded in the green of coco-nut groves.

The shadow of the peak itself, cast on the mists at sunrise, is a very conspicuous and often-noted phenomenon. Owing to the sun’s breadth, the effect is produced of an umbra and penumbra; and the umbra looks very dark and pointed—more pointed even than the peak itself. I was surprised to see how distant it looked—a shadow-mountain among the far crags. It gradually fell and disappeared as the sun rose.

There is another phenomenon which I have somewhere seen described as peculiar to Adam’s Peak; though this must be a pious fraud, or one of those cases of people only being able to see familiar things when they are in unfamiliar surroundings, since it is a phenomenon which can be witnessed any day at home. It is that if when there is dew or rain upon the grass, and the sun is not too high in the heavens, you look at the shadow of your head on the grass, you will see it surrounded by a white light, or ‘glory.’ It arises, I imagine, from the direct reflection of the sunlight on the inner surfaces of the little globules of water which lie in or near the line joining the sun and the head, and is enhanced no doubt by the fact that the light so reflected shows all the clearer from having to pass through a column of shadow to the eye. Anyhow, whatever the cause, it is quite a flattering appearance, all the more so because if you have a companion you do not see the ‘glory’ round his head, but only round your own! I once nearly turned the strong brain of a Positivist by pointing out to him this aureole round his head, and making as if I could see it. He of course, being unable to see a similar light round mine, had no alternative but to conclude that he was specially overshadowed by the Holy Ghost!

The sripada—“sacred foot”—is better than I expected: a natural depression in the rock, an inch or so deep, five feet long,[1] of an oblong shape, and distantly resembling a foot; but they have “improved” it in parts by mortaring bits of tile along the doubtful edges! There are no toes marked, though in “copies” of it that I have seen in some Buddhist shrines the toes are carefully indicated. The mark is curiously situated at the very summit of the rock—which is only a few feet square, only large enough, in fact, to give space for the foot and for a little pavilion, open to the winds, which has been erected over it; and on the natural platform just below—which (so steep is the mountain) is itself encircled by a wall to prevent accidents—are some curious bits of furniture: four old bronze standard lamps, of lotus-flower design, one at each corner of the platform, a bell, a little shrine, and the priests’ hut before mentioned. Looking into the latter after dawn, I beheld nothing resembling furniture, but a pan in the middle with logs burning, and three lean figures squatted round it, their mortal possessions tied in handkerchiefs and hanging from the roof.

[1] Captain Knox, above quoted, speaks of it as “about two feet long”; but he does not appear to have actually seen it.

The priests were horribly on the greed for money, and made it really unpleasant to stay on the top; but I delayed a little in order to watch Caliban doing poojah at the little shrine I have mentioned. He brought a hot ember from the fire, sprinkled frankincense on it, burned camphor and something that looked like saltpetre, also poured some kind of scented water on the ember, causing fragrance. Very ancient gnarled rhododendron trees, twenty or thirty feet high, rooting in clefts and hollows, were in flower (carmine red) all round the top of the rock. No snow ever falls here, they say; but there are sometimes hoar frosts, which the natives mistake for snow. I don’t suppose the temperature that night was below 50° Fahr., but it felt cold, very cold, after the heat of the lowlands.

The sun rose soon after six, and at 7.30 we started downwards, on the great pilgrim-track towards Ratnapura. The final cone, for about 1,500 feet, is certainly a steep bit of rock. I have seen it from several points of view, but the summit angle was always under 90°. Steps are cut nearly all down this part, and chains hang alongside in all places of possible difficulty—chains upon chains, things with links six inches long, all shapes and curiously wrought, centuries and centuries old—the pious gifts of successive generations of pilgrims. Here and there are long inscriptions, in Cinghalese characters, on the rock-faces; and everywhere signs of innumerable labor of successive travelers in hewing and shaping the path all the way—not to mention resting-sheds and cabins built in convenient spots lower down. These however are largely fallen to decay; and indeed the whole place gives one the impression that the sripada has come somewhat into disrepute in these modern times, and is only supported by the poorer and more ignorant among the people.

Ratnapura is only 150 feet or so above the sea; and for twenty-four miles the path to it from the summit—well-marked but single file—goes down over rocks and through vast woods, without coming to anything like a road. Nearly the whole, however, of this great descent of 7,000 feet is done in the first twelve miles to Palábaddala—a tiny hamlet at the very foot of the mountains—and I don’t know that I ever felt a descent so fatiguing as this one, partly no doubt owing to the experiences of the day and night before, and partly no doubt to the enervation produced by the climate and want of exercise; but the path itself is a caution, and the ascent of it must indeed be a pilgrimage, with its huge steps and strides from rock to rock and from tree-root to tree-root, and going, as it does, almost straight up and down the mountain side, without the long zigzags and detours by which in such cases the brunt is usually avoided. All the same it was very interesting; the upper jungle of rhododendrons, myrtles, and other evergreen foliage forming a splendid cover for elephants, and clothing the surrounding peaks and crags for miles in grey-green wrinkles and folds, with here and there open grassy spaces and glades and tumbling watercourses; then the vegetation of the lower woods, huge trees 150 or even 200 feet high, with creepers, orchids, and tree-ferns; the occasional rush of monkeys along the branches; butterflies and birds; thick undergrowth in parts of daturas, pointsettias, crotons, and other fragrant and bright-colored shrubs; down at last into coco-nut plantations and to the lovely Kaluganga, or Black river, which we forded twice; and ultimately along its banks, shadowed by bamboos and many flowering trees.

Although, curiously enough, the fig is not grown as a fruit in Ceylon, yet the ficus is one of the most important families of trees here, and many of the forest trees belong to it. There is one very handsome variety, whose massive grey stem rises unbroken to a great height before it branches, and which in order to support itself throws out great lateral wings or buttresses, reaching to a height of twelve or twenty feet from the ground, and spreading far out from the base of the trunk,—each buttress perhaps three or four inches thick, and perfectly shaped, with plane and parallel sides like a sawn plank, so as to give the utmost strength with least expenditure of material. This variety has small ovate evergreen leaves. Then there are two or three varieties, of which the banyan (ficus Indica) is one, which are parasitic in their habit. The banyan begins existence by its seed being dropped in the fork of another tree—not unfrequently a palm—from which point its rootlets make their way down the stem to the ground. With rapid growth it then encircles the victim tree, and throwing out great lateral branches sends down from these a rain of fresh rootlets which, after swinging in air for a few weeks, reach the ground and soon become sturdy pillars. I have thus seen a banyan encircling with its central trunk the stem of a palm, and clasping it so close that a knife could not be pushed between the two, while the palm, which had grown in height since this accident happened to it, was still soaring upwards, and feebly endeavoring to live. There is a very fine banyan tree at Kalutara, which spans the great high-road from Colombo to Galle, all the traffic passing beneath it and between its trunks.

Some of the figs fasten parasitically on other trees, though without throwing out the pillar-like roots which distinguish the banyan; and it is not uncommon to see one of these with roots like a cataract of snakes winding round the trunk of an acacia, or even round some non-parasitic fig, the two trees appearing to be wrestling and writhing together in a fierce embrace, while they throw out their separate branches to sun and air, as though to gain strength for the fray. The parasite generally however ends by throttling its adversary.

There is also the bo-tree, or ficus religiosa, whose leaf is of a thinner texture. One of the commonest plants in open spots all over Ceylon is the sensitive plant. Its delicately pinnate leaves form a bushy growth six inches to a foot in depth over the ground; but a shower of rain, or nightfall, or the trampling of animals through it causes it to collapse into a mere brown patch—almost as if a fire had passed over. In a few minutes however after the disturbance has ceased it regains its luxuriance. There are also some acacia trees which droop their leaves at nightfall, and at the advent of rain.

There are two sorts of monkeys common in these forests—a small brown monkey, which may be seen swinging itself from tree to tree, not unfrequently with a babe in its arms; and the larger wanderoo monkey, which skips and runs on all fours along the ground, and of which it is said that its devotion to its mate is life-long. Very common all over Ceylon is a little grey-brown squirrel, with three yellow longitudinal stripes on its back; almost every tree seems to be inhabited by a pair, which take refuge there at the approach of a stranger, and utter a sharp little whistle like the note of an angry bird. They are very tame however, and will often in inhabited places run about the streets, or even make their appearance in the houses in search of food.

The Hindus take no pleasure in killing animals—even the boys do not, as a rule, molest wild creatures—and the consequence is that birds and the smaller four-footed beasts are comparatively bold. Not that the animals are made pets of, but they are simply let alone—in keeping with the Hindu gentleness and quiescence of disposition. Even the deadly cobra—partly no doubt from religious associations—is allowed to go its way unharmed; and the people have generally a good word for it, saying it will not attack any one unless it be first injured.

On the whole the trouble about reptiles in this country seems to me to be much exaggerated. There are some places in the forests where small leeches—particularly in the wet seasons—are a great pest. Occasionally a snake is to be seen, but I have been rather disappointed at their rarity; or a millipede nine inches long. The larger scorpion is a venomous-looking creature, with its blue-black lobster-like body and claws, and slender sting-surmounted tail, five inches long in all; but it is not so venomous as generally supposed, and most of these creatures, like the larger animals—the chetah, the elk, the bear, the elephant, etc.—keep out of the way of man as well as they can. Of course native woodmen and others tramping bare-legged through the tangles occasionally tread on a snake and get bitten; but the tale of deaths through such casualties, though it may seem numerically large, taken say throughout Ceylon and India, is in proportion to the population but a slight matter—about 1 in 15,000 per annum.

There are many handsome butterflies here, especially of the swallow-tail sort—some of enormous size—and a number of queer insects. I saw a large green mantis, perhaps six inches long—a most wicked-looking creature. I confess it reminded me of a highly respectable British property owner. It sits up like a beautiful green leaf, with its two foreclaws (themselves flattened out and green to look like lesser leaves) held up as if it were praying—perfectly motionless—except that all the time it rolls its stalked eyes slowly around, till it sees a poor little insect approach, when it stealthily moves a claw, and pounces.

The birds are not so numerous as I expected. There are some bright-colored kinds and a few parrots, but the woods seem quiet on the whole. The barbet, a green bird not quite so big as a pigeon, goes on with its monotonous bell-like call—like a cuckoo that has lost its second note—on and on, the whole day long; the lizards cluck and kiss, full of omens to the natives, who call them “the crocodile’s little brothers”—and say “if you kill a little lizard the crocodile will come and kill you”; the grasshoppers give three clicks and a wheeze; the small grey squirrels chirrup; the frogs croak; and the whole air is full of continuous though subdued sound.

At Palábaddala, the tiny little hamlet at the foot of the mountains, I was dead-beat with the long jolting downhill, and if it had not been for the faithful Kalua, who held my hand in the steeper parts, I should fairly have fallen once or twice. Here we stopped two hours at a little cabin. Good people and friendly—a father and mother and two lads—the same anxious, tender mother-face that is the same all over the world. They brought out a kind of couch for me to lie on, but would not at first believe that I would eat their food. However, after a little persuasion they made some tea (for the people are beginning to use tea quite freely) and some curry and rice—quite palatable. I began to eat of course with my fingers, native fashion; but as soon as I did so, they saw that something was wrong, and raised a cry of Karandi! (spoon); and a boy was sent off, despite my protests, to the cabin of a rich neighbor half a mile off, and ultimately returned in triumph with a rather battered German-silver teaspoon!

I felt doubtful about doing another twelve miles to Ratnapura; however thought best to try, and off we went. But the rest had done little good, and I could not go more than two miles an hour. At 4 p.m., after walking about four miles, we came out into flat land—a good path, little villages with clumps of palm and banana, lovely open meadows, and tame buffalos grazing. Thence along the side of the Kaluganga, most lovely of rivers, through thickets of bamboo and tangles of shrubs, and past more hamlets and grazing grounds (though feeling so done, I thoroughly enjoyed every step of the way), till at last at a little kind of shop (kadai) we halted, about 6 p.m. Got more tea, and a few bananas, which was all I cared to eat; and then went in and lay down on a trestle and mat for an hour, after which we decided to stay the night. Kalua stretched himself near me; the men of the place lay down on the floor—the women somewhere inside; the plank shutters were built in, and lights put out. I slept fairly well, and woke finally at the sound of voices and with dawn peeping in through the holes in the roof. Had a lovely wash in a little stream, and an early breakfast of tea, bananas, and hot cakes made of rice, coco-nut, and sugar—and then walked four miles into this place (Ratnapura), where at last we came to a road and signs of civilisation.

The rest-house here is comfortable; have had another bath, and a good solid breakfast, and made arrangements for a boat to start with us this evening down the river to Kalutara (60 miles).

Sunday, Jan. 4th.—After walking round the town yesterday, and getting fruit and provisions for our voyage, we embarked about 6 p.m., and are now floating lazily down the Kaluganga. The water is rather low, and the speed not good; but the river is very beautiful, with bamboos, areca-palms, and other trees, leaning over in profusion.

Ratnapura (the city of jewels) is only a small town—hardly so big as Kurunégala—just about one long street of little booths and cabins, a post-office, court-house and cutcherry, and the usual two or three bungalows of the English agent and officials standing back in park-like grounds in a kind of feudal reserve. The town derives its name from the trade in precious stones which has been carried on here for long enough—rubies, sapphires, and others being found over a great part of the mountain district. In perhaps half the little shops of Ratnapura men and boys may be seen squatted on the floor grinding and polishing jewels. With one hand they use a bow to turn their wheels, and with the other they hold the stone in position. The jewels are also set and offered for sale—often at what seem very low prices. But the purchaser must beware; for the blessings of modern commerce are with us even here, and many of these precious stones are bits of stained glass supplied wholesale from Birmingham.

This boat, which is of a type common on the river, consists of two canoes or “dug-outs,” each twenty feet long, and set five or six feet apart from each other, with a flooring laid across them, and a little thatched cabin constructed amidships. The cabin is for cooking and sleeping—a fire and cooking pots at one end, and mats laid at the other. At the front end of the boat sit the two rowers, and the steersman stands behind. We have a skipper and four crew (an old man, Djayánis; a middle-aged man, Signápu; and two lads, Duánis and Thoránis). The name of the skipper is Pedri. About two miles below Ratnapura we drew to the shore and stopped below a temple; and Pedri and the old man went up to offer money for a favorable voyage! They washed a few coppers in the river, wrapped them in a bo-tree leaf, which had also been washed, sprinkled water on their foreheads, and then went up. They soon came back, and then we started.

RICE-BOATS ON THE KALUGANGA.

(A clump of bamboos on the right.)

Hardly any signs of habitation along the river. Now and then rude steps down to the shore, and a dark figure pouring water on its own head. The river varying, a hundred yards, more or less, wide. At about seven it got too dark and we halted against a sandbank, waiting for the moon to rise, and had dinner—rice, curried eggs, and beans, and a pineapple—very good. Then got out and sat on the sand, while the boys lighted a fire. Very fine, the gloom on the tall fringed banks, gleams from the fire, voices of children far back among the woods, playing in some village. After a time we went back on board again, and sat round teaching each other to count, and laughing at our mistakes—ekkai, dekkai, tonai, hattarai—one, two, three, four. The Cinghalese language (unlike the Tamil) is full of Aryan roots—minya, man; gáni, woman; and so on. The small boy Thoránis (12 years) learnt his “one two three” in no time; he is pretty sharp; he does the cooking, and prepares our meals, taking an oar between times. The man Pedri seemed good to the lads, and they all enjoyed themselves till they got sleepy and lay in a row and snored.

Started again at moonrise, about midnight; after which I went to sleep till six or so, then went ashore and had a bath—water quite warm. Then off again; a few slight rapids, but nothing much. We go aground every now and then; but these boats are so tough—the canoes themselves being hollowed trees—that a bump even on a rock does not seem to matter much. The lads quite enjoy the struggle getting over a sandbank, and Duánis jumps down from his perch and plunges through the water with evident pleasure. The old man Djayánis steers—a shrewd-faced calm thin fellow, almost like a North American Indian, but no beak. See a monkey or a kite occasionally; no crocodiles in this part of the river, above the rapids; some large and handsome kingfishers, and the fruit-crow, whose plumage is something like that of a pheasant.

Kalua enjoys the voyage. It suits his lazy sociable temperament, and he chats away to Pedri and the crew no end. His savage strength and insouciance are splendid. All over Adam’s Peak he walked barefoot, with no more sign of fatigue than if it had been a walk round a garden,—would lie down and sleep anywhere, or not sleep, eat or not eat, endure cold or heat with apparent indifference; yet though so complete a savage physically, it is interesting to see what an attraction for him civilisation, or the little he has seen of it, exerts. He is always asking me about Europe, and evidently dreaming about its wealth and splendor. All the modern facilities and inventions are sort of wonderful toys to this child of nature; and though I think he is attached to me, and is no doubt of an affectionate disposition, still it is partly that I am mixed up in his mind with all these things. I tried one day to find out from K. his idea of god or devil, or supreme power of any kind; but in vain. His mind wandered to things more tangible. Many of the Cinghalese however have rather a turn for speculations of this kind; and at one hotel where I was staying the chamber-servant entertained me with quite a discourse on Buddha, and ended by ridiculing the Christian idea that a man can get rid of the results of sin by merely praying to God or believing in Jesus.

We have now passed the nárraka-gála (bad rock) rapid, which is about half-way down the river, and is the only rapid which has looked awkward, the river narrowing to five or six yards between rocks, and plunging over at a decided slope. We went through with a great bump, but no damage! The sun and smells on board are getting rather trying; this dried-fish smell unfortunately haunts one wherever there are native cabins. But we shall not be long now before reaching my landing-place, a little above Kalutara.

There are a good many boats like ours on the river, some laden with rice going down, others poling upwards—sometimes whole families on the move. Quantities of ragged white lilies fringing the shore.

Jan. 6th.—Kalua and I left our friends and their boat in the afternoon, and spent Sunday night at P——’s bungalow. P. is manager of a tea plantation—a bit of a Robinson Crusoe, living all by himself—native servants of course—with two dogs, a cat, and a jackdaw (and at one time a hare!) sharing his meals. Some of these planter-fellows must find the life a little dreary I fancy, living isolated on their plantations at a considerable distance from European neighbors, with very small choice of society at the best, and prevented no doubt by their position from associating too closely with the only folk who are near them—their own employees. The more kindly-hearted among them however do a good deal for their workers in the way of physicking and nursing them when ill or disabled, advising them when in difficulties, etc.; and in these cases the natives, with their instinct of dependence, soon learn to lean like children on their employer, and the latter finds himself, after a few years, the father (so to speak) of a large family. There are 200 Tamil coolies permanently employed on this plantation, and a hundred or two besides, mostly girls and women, who come in to work when wanted from neighboring Cinghalese villages.

GROUP OF TAMIL COOLIES, OR WAGE-WORKERS.

But the system, like the commercial system wherever it is found to-day, is pretty bad and odious in itself, and is no doubt in many cases a cover for shameful abuses. The Tamil coolies—men, women, and children—come over in gangs from the mainland of India. An agent is sent out to tout for them, and to conduct them by sea and land to their destination. On their arrival on the tea-estate each one finds himself so many rupees in debt for the expenses of transit! An average wage is 6d. a day, but to keep them up to the mark in productiveness their work is “set” for them to complete a certain task in a certain time, and if they do not come up to their task they get only half pay; so that if a man is slow, or lazy, or ill, he may expect about 3d. per diem! Under these circumstances the debt, as may be imagined, goes on increasing instead of diminishing; the estate is far up country, away from town or village, and the tea company acts as agent and sells rice and the other necessaries of life to its own coolies. Poor things, they cannot buy elsewhere. “Oh, but they like to be in debt,” said a young planter to me, “and think they are not doing the best for themselves unless they owe as much as the company will allow.” He was very young, that planter, and perhaps did not realise what he was saying; but what a suggestion of despair! Certainly there may have been some truth in the remark; for when all hope of ever being out of debt is gone, the very next best thing is to be in debt, as much as ever you can. At the end of the week the coolie does not see any wage; his rice, etc., has forestalled all that, and more; only his debt is ticked down a little deeper. If he runs away to a neighboring estate he is soon sent back in irons. He is a slave, and must remain so to the end of his days. That is not very long however; for poor food and thin clothing, and the mists and cool airs of the mountains soon bring on lung diseases, of which the slight-bodied Tamil easily dies.

“I dare say 3d. a day seems a very small wage to you,” said the planter youth, “but it is really surprising how little these fellows will live on.”

“It is surprising, indeed, when you see their thin frames, that they live at all.”

“Ah, but they are much worse off at home; you should see them when they come from India.” And so the conversation ended.

And this is how our tea, which we set so much store by, is produced in Ceylon and other places. These plantations are sad-looking places. Commercialism somehow has a way of destroying all natural beauty in those regions where it dwells. Here the mountain sides are torn up, the immense and beautiful forests ravaged from base to summit, and the shaly escarpments that remain planted in geometrical lines with tea-shrubs. You may walk for miles through such weary lands, extending rapidly now all over the mountain region from the base to near the tops of the highest mountains, the blackened skeletons of half-burnt trees alone remaining to tell of the old forests, of which before long there will be but a memory left.

It is curious, when one comes to think of it, that such huge spaces of the earth are devastated, such vast amounts of human toil expended, in the production of two things—tea and wine—which to say the least are not necessaries, and which certainly in the quantities commonly consumed are actually baneful. If their production simply ceased, what a gain it might seem! Yet the commercial policies of the various nations stimulate these, and always to the neglect of the necessaries of life. They stimulate the stimulants. We need not be hypercritical, but there must be something peculiar in the temper of the modern nations that they make such tremendous sacrifices in order to act in this way.

TAMIL GIRL COOLIE, PLUCKING TEA.

On each tea-plantation there are the “lines” (rows of huts) in which the coolies live, and the “factory”—a large wooden building, with rows of windows, a steam engine, and machinery for the various processes concerned—withering, fermenting, rolling, firing, sorting, packing, etc. The tea-bushes (a variety of the camellia) are not allowed to grow more than three or four feet high. In Ceylon the plucking goes on almost all the year round. As soon as the young shoots, with five or six leaves, have had time to form since the last plucking, a gang of workers comes round—mostly girls and women for this job—each with a basket, into which they pluck the young leaves and the little rolled-up leaf-bud, most precious of all. When taken to the factory the leaves are first spread out to wither, then rolled by machinery (to look like buds), then dried or baked by artificial heat. After this they are sorted through a huge sieve, and the finest quality, consisting of the small leaf-bud, is called Flowery Pekoe; the next size, including some of the young leaf, is called Broken Pekoe; and the coarser leaves come out as Pekoe Souchong, Souchong, etc. The difficulty with tea, as with wine, is that no two yields are alike; the conditions of plucking, fermenting, firing, etc., all make a difference in the resultant flavor. Hence a dealer, say in London, who reckons to supply his customers with tea of a certain constant flavor, has simply to make such tea as best he can—namely by “blending” any teas which he can lay hold of in the market, and which will produce the desired result. The names given in these cases are of course mostly fictitious.

* * * * *

I may as well insert here one or two extracts from letters since received from our friend “Ajax,” which will perhaps help to show the condition of the coolies in the tea-gardens where he is now working. He says:—

“One gets very fond of the coolies, they are so much like children; they bring all their little grievances to one to settle. A man will come and complain that his wife refuses to cook his food for him; the most minute details of family affairs are settled by the sahib of the garden. The coolies have a hard time, and are treated little better than slaves; most willing workers they are. Still all I can say is that they have a much better time than the very poor at home, such as the factory girls, tailoresses, etc., and laborers. On this garden they have met with exceptionally hard lines; the manager being an ill-bred man has had no consideration for his men, and they have died in hundreds from exposure to weather in the garden and houses, which had all crumbled away from neglect. Many families of ten or eleven in number have dwindled away to one or two. In one case, two little fellows of eight and nine, living together on five rupees a month, are the only representatives (of a former family)....

“I was sorry to leave (the former garden), very; I had got to know the coolies, 300 of them at any rate who were under my charge, and they had got to know me. Many of them wanted to come with me here, but that is not allowed. Some said they would ‘cut their names,’ that is take their names off the garden labor-register, and go wherever I went, but of course they could not do that. I don’t know why they were so anxious to come, because I know I worked them very hard all the time I was there. I think my predecessor used to fine them and thrash them a good deal, often because he did not know what they said, and could not make them understand. I like the coolies very much, and one gets quite attached to some of them; they seem instinctively polite; and if you are ill, they tend you just like a woman—never leave one in fact. The higher and more respectable class of Baboos are just as objectionable, I think.”

CHAPTER V.
BRITISH LAW-COURTS AND BUDDHIST TEMPLES.

Kurunégala.—I have come to the conclusion that the courts and judicial proceedings out here are a kind of entertainment provided for the oysters at the expense of the British Government, and that the people really look upon these institutions very much in that light. Poor things! their ancient communal life and interests, with all the local questions and politics which belonged thereto, and even to a great extent the religious festivals, have been improved away; they have but few modern joys—no votes and elections such as would delight our friend Monerasingha—no circuses, theatres, music-halls. What is there left for them but the sensations of the police-courts? The district court here is, I find, the one great centre of interest in the town. Crowds collect in the early morning, and hang about all day in its vicinity, either watching the cases or discussing the judgments delivered, till sunset, when they disperse homeward again. Cooling drinks are sold, beggars ply their trade, the little bullock-hackeries trot up and down, and the place is as busy as a fair. There is no particular stigma in conviction by an alien authority; there is a happy uncertainty in the judgments delivered by the representatives of a race that has difficulty in understanding the popular customs and language; and the worst that can happen—namely relegation to prison life—affords a not unpleasant prospect. Besides, these institutions can be used to gratify personal spleen; cases can be, and frequently are, cooked up in the most elaborate manner. Damages can be claimed for a fictitious assault; and when an injury has really been done, the plaintiff (and this I find is a constantly recurring difficulty) will accuse not only the author of the mischief, but Tom, Dick, and Harry besides, who have had nothing whatever to do with it, but who are the objects of personal spite, in the hope of getting them too into trouble. The Cinghalese, as I have said before, are a very sensitive people. Any grievance rankles in their bosom, and in revenge they will not unfrequently use the knife. An Eurasian friend, a doctor, says that he quite thinks cases might occur in which a man who had been wounded or assaulted by another would die out of spite in order to get the other hanged!—would connive with his relations and starve himself, and not try to heal the wound. He says however that the cases of ruptured spleen—of which we so frequently hear—are genuine, as frequent fevers often cause immense enlargement of the spleen, which then bursts for a comparatively slight cause, e.g. a planter and a stick.

BULLOCK-HACKERY, COLOMBO.

The courts in this country are generally large thatched or tiled halls, sometimes with glass sides, but often open to the wind, with only a low wall running round, over which, as you sit inside, a crowd of bare arms and heads and bodies appears. At one end sits the English official, dutifully but wearily going through his task, a big punkah waving over his head and helping to dispel the slumbrous noontide heat; below him stands the mudaliar, who acts as interpreter—for the etiquette properly enough requires that the transactions of the court shall be given in both languages, even though the official be a native or an Englishman knowing the native language perfectly; at the table in the centre are seated a few reporters and proctors, and at the other end are the prisoners in the dock, and the policemen in their boots.

The cases are largely quarrels, and more or less unfounded accusations arising out of quarrels, thefts of bullocks or of coco-nuts, and so forth. The chief case when I was in court some days ago was rather amusing. A few days before, three or four men, having been accused, possibly wrongfully, of burglary, and having (on account of insufficient evidence) been acquitted, went off straight from the court to an arrack shop and got drunk. They then made it up between them that they would rob the man thoroughly that evening, even if they had not done so before, and give him a good hiding into the bargain; and taking to themselves some other congenial spirits went off on their errand. They found the man asleep in the verandah of his cabin, and tying him down gave him some blows. But—as it came out in the evidence with regard to the very slight marks on the body—before they could have hurt him much, the man, with great presence of mind, died, and left them charged with the crime of murder! An old woman—the man’s mother—with a beautiful face, but shaking with age, came forward to give evidence. She said she was nearly 100 years old, though the evidence on this point was not very clear. Anyhow, her head was remarkably clear, and she gave her testimony well; identified several of the prisoners, said they had broken into the cabin and carried off valuables, and that one, the leader, had motioned her into a corner of the cabin, saying, “Stand aside, old mother, or you’ll get hurt,” while another had come up to her and said, “I think I had better take those bangles from you, as they are no good to you now, you know.” There were nine men charged with the offence, and they were committed for trial in a higher court—very decent-looking scaramouches on the whole, just about average types of humanity.

The English officials that I have seen here and at other places strike me as remarkably good-hearted painstaking men; but one feels the gulf between them and the people—a gulf that can never be bridged. Practically all that a Government like ours does, or can do, is to make possible the establishment of our social institutions in the midst of an alien people—our railways, education, Bible missions, hospitals, law-courts, wage-slavery, and profit-grinding, and all the rest of it, in the midst of a people whose whole life springs from another root, namely religious feeling. The two will never blend, though the shock produced by the contact of two such utterly different civilisations may react on both, to the production of certain important results. Anyhow for a well-meaning official it must be depressing work; for though he may construct a valuable tank, or what not, from the highest motives according to his own lights—i.e. for the material welfare of the people and the realisation of a five per cent. profit to Government—still he never comes near touching the hearts of the millions, who would probably pay much more respect to a half-luny yogi than to him and all his percentages.

A.’s friend, Sámanáthan, comes to read English with me every day, and teaches me a little Tamil in return. He is something of a dandy, with his green silk coat and hair plaited down his back, and delicate hands and manners—a fellow over thirty, with a wife and children, and yet not earning any livelihood, but remaining on at home with his parents, and dependent on them! And what seems to us most strange, this is quite an admitted and natural thing to do—such is the familiar communism which still prevails. He is very much of a student by nature, and in his native town (in India) gives lectures, philosophical and theological, free of charge, and which are quite popular. He is reading S. Mark with me, and reads it pretty well, being evidently familiar even with the more philosophical words, though doubtful about the pronunciation of some. He is interested in the story of Jesus, and thinks Jesus was no doubt a “sage”—i.e. an adept—or at any rate versed in the arcane lore of the East. But he is much amused at the Christian doctrine of the redemption, which I suppose he has got hold of, not from Mark but the missionaries.

* * * * *

On the 10th of this month (January), F. Modder and I went off on an excursion from here to Dambulla (35 miles), and thence to Anurádhapura (42 miles). Dambulla is celebrated for its Buddhist rock-temples, and Anurádhapura is the site of a very ancient city, now in ruins amid the jungle.

Despite all sorts of reports about the length of the journey and its difficulty—the chief difficulty being that of getting any exact information—M. managed to secure a bullock-cart with springs, and two pairs of bullocks; and we made a start about 6.30 p.m. A mattress in the cart and a pillow or two made all comfortable. We sat and talked for a couple of hours, then walked, and then went to sleep. With an average speed of two miles an hour we reached the rest-house at Gokarella at midnight, changed bulls, and immediately went on. Another six hours brought us to the house of a Government medical practitioner—a Cinghalese—where we got an early breakfast, and finally we reached Dr. Devos’ house, at Dambulla, about midday.

CINGHALESE COUNTRY-CART.

(Thatched with palm-branches.)

The little bulls went patiently on during the night, the Tamil driver chirruping “Jack” and “Pitta” to them (corresponding to our carters’ “Orve” and “Gee,”) which some cheerful English traveler is said to have interpreted into the statement that the natives of Ceylon call all their cattle either Jack or Peter; the stars shone bright—the Milky Way innumerable. The road was bad, with occasional descents into dry sandy torrent beds; jungle stretched all around (with here and there, M. says, the remains of some town buried in undergrowth); but we slept—M. slept, I slept, the driver slept, and occasionally even the good little bulls slept. Once or twice we came thus to a total stoppage, all sleeping, and then woke up at the unwonted quiet.

Just the first light of dawn, and a few strange bird-calls in the bush; the great ficus trees with their mighty buttresses stretching white stems up into the yet ghostly light; ant-hills, conical and spired, all along the road-side; tangles of creepers, and then, as the sun rose, quantities of butterflies. I know nothing of butterflies, but the kinds in this country are very various and beautiful. There is one which is very common, about four inches across, black and white, with body a bright red, and underwing spotted with the same colour—very handsome; and one day, when taking a sun-bath in the woods, an immense swallow-tail hovered round me, fully ten inches across from tip to tip of wings.

Modder is a cheerful fellow, of Dutch descent probably, of about thirty years of age, a proctor or solicitor for native cases, well up in Cinghalese and Tamil, and full of antiquarian knowledge, yet can troll a comic song nicely with a sweet voice. I find he is a regular democrat, and hates the whole caste system in which he lives embedded—thinks the U.S. must be “a glorious country.” He says he has often talked to the Tamil and Cinghalese people about the folly of caste. At first they can’t understand what he means—are completely at a loss to imagine anything different, but after a time the idea seems to take hold on them.

Found Devos at Dambulla—a fine clear-faced man of about thirty-three, genuine, easy-going, carrying on a hospital in this slightly populated district—just a large native village, no more—but the mails come through this way, and a few English on their way to Anurádhapura, and other places. Gangs of Tamil coolies also, from the mainland of India, pass through Dambulla in going up country, and have to be medically examined here, for fear of cholera, etc. Living with Devos are two younger fellows, Percy Carron, who is also an Eurasian, and a Cinghalese youth, both foresters—a small easy-going bachelors’ household, and all very chummy together. Thought they also treated their Tamil “boy” John well—actually called him by his name, and did not shout at him. These fellows all talk English among themselves, in a close-lipped, rapid, rather neat way. The other two chaffed the Cinghalese a good deal, who was of the usual sensitive clinging type.

In the afternoon we went up the rock to see the temples. A great rock, 500 or 600 feet high, similar to that at Kurunégala. Half-way up stretches a broad ledge, 100 yards long, commanding a fine view over hill and dale, and between this ledge and an overhanging layer of rock above are niched five temples all in a row. No façade to speak of, mere stucco walling, but within you pass into large caverns full of rude statues. The largest of the temples is 150 feet long, 40 deep, and 23 high in front—a great dark space with perhaps fifty colossal images of Buddha sitting round in the gloom with their sickly smile of Nirvana, and one huge figure, 30 or 40 feet long, lying down in illumined sleep; all crudely done, and painted bright yellows and reds, yet rather impressive. The sides too and roof of the cavern are frescoed in the same crude manner with stories from the life of Buddha, and with figures of the Hindu gods. Withal, a fusty smell, a thousand years old, of priests none too clean, of flaring oil-lamps, of withered flowers and stale incense, oppressed us horribly, and it was the greatest relief to get out again into the open. Devos says the scene is very striking at the great festivals, when multitudinous pilgrims assemble and offer their lights and their flowers and their money, on benches each before the figure they affect. Tomtoms beat, worshipers recite their prayers, lights twinkle, and outside the light of the full moon pours down upon the rock. Monkeys native to the rock are fed on this ledge in hundreds by the priests.

Ceylon is of course mainly Buddhist, and all over the hilly part of the island rock-temples of this sort, though smaller, are scattered—some mere shrines with a single seated or recumbent image of Buddha. They are commonly built among the woods, under some overhanging brow of rock, and the story generally runs that the cavern had in earlier times been occupied by some hermit-saint, or yogi, and that the temple was built in remembrance of him. There is a little one of this kind half-way up the rock at Kurunégala, and it is tended by a boy priest of about thirteen years of age, who, barehead and barefoot, but with his yellow priest-robe wound gracefully about him, attends in a dignified manner to the service of the shrine. He is generally followed by a little attendant (every one has an attendant in the East)—a small boy of about nine—who turns out to be his khoki, or cook! This sounds luxurious, but by rule the Buddhist priests should live the most abstemious lives. They are supposed to have no money or possessions of their own, and to be entirely celibate. Each morning they go out with their begging bowls on their arm to get their daily food. They go to a house and stand near the door, asking nothing. Then presently the woman comes out and puts a little rice in the bowl, and the priest goes on to the next house. When he has got sufficient he returns, and his attendant cooks the food (if not already cooked) and he eats it. For each priest has the privilege to choose a boy or youth to be his attendant, whom he trains up to the priesthood, and who takes his place after him. This perhaps explains the presence of the small boy khoki above.

The Buddhist priests, like the Hindu priests, are drawn mostly from the comparatively uneducated masses, but there is no need in their case that they should be Brahmans. A vast tolerance, and gentleness towards all forms of life, characterises the Buddhist institutions; but in the present day in Ceylon the institutions are decadent, and the priests, with a few exceptions, are an ignorant and incapable set. The efforts of Col. Olcott however, on behalf of the Theosophical Society, and of Sumángala, the present high priest of the island, a man of great learning and gentleness, have done something in latest years to infuse a new spirit into the Buddhism of Ceylon and to rehabilitate its esoteric side.

At Kandy in one of the Buddhist temples outside the town there is a standing figure of Buddha twenty-seven feet high, carved in the face of the solid rock, and the temple built round it—rather fine—though with the usual crude red and yellow paint. It belongs to the time of the kings of Kandy, and is only about 150 years old. Many of the ordinary cave-temples are extremely old, however—as old as Buddhism in the island, 2,000 years or more—and likely were used for religious purposes even before that.

After looking at the Dambulla temples, which are said to have been constructed by the king Walagambahu about 100 B.C., we gained the summit of the rock, whence you have a view over plains towards the sea and of ranges of hills inland, not unlike that from the rock at Kurunégala; and then descended, not without difficulty, the precipitous side. Evening fell, and darkies came out with lamps to our aid.

The same night I pushed on by mail-coach to Anurádhapura, leaving Modder behind, as he unfortunately had to return to Kurunégala the next day.

CHAPTER VI.
ANURÁDHAPURA: A RUINED CITY OF THE JUNGLE.

The remains of this ancient city lie near the centre of the great plain which occupies the north end of the island of Ceylon. To reach them, even from Dambulla, the nearest outpost of civilisation, one has to spend a night in the “mail-coach,” which in this case consists of a clumsy little cart drawn at a jog-trot through the darkness by bullocks, and generally full of native passengers. Six times in the forty-two miles the little humped cattle are changed, and at last—by the time one has thoroughly convinced oneself that it is impossible to sleep in any attainable position—one finds oneself, about 6 a.m., driving through woods full of ruins.

Here, on the site of a once vast and populous town, stands now a small village. The care of Government has cleared the jungle away from the most important remains and those lying just around the present site, so that the chief feature is a beautiful park-like region of grass and scattered trees, in which stand out scores, and even hundreds, of columns, with statues, huge dágobas, fragments of palaces, and innumerable evidences of ancient building. It is a remarkable scene. The present cutcherry stands on the shore of one of the large reservoirs which used to supply the city and neighborhood, but which at present, owing to want of rain and deficiencies of channels, is nearly dry. On climbing the embankment the bed of the lake stretches before one, with hundreds of tame buffalos and other cattle grazing on its level meadows; a few half-naked darkies are fishing in a little water which remains in one corner; on either hand the lakebottom is bounded by woods, and out of these woods, and out of the woods behind one, high above the trees loom green and overgrown masses of masonry, while below and among them labyrinths of unexplored ruins are hidden in thick dark tangle. It is as if London had again become a wilderness, above which the Albert Memorial and S. Paul’s and the Tower still reared confused heaps of grassy stone and brickwork, while sheep and oxen browsed peacefully in the bed of the Thames, now diverted into another channel.

JETAWANARAMA DÁGOBA, ANURÁDHAPURA.

(Ruins of a temple in foreground.)

Here for instance still standing in a great square, on a piece of ground over an acre in extent, are sixteen hundred rough-hewn columns, solid granite, projecting about ten feet out of the ground, and arranged in parallel rows at right angles to each other. They are supposed to form the foundation storey of a building nine storeys high, no doubt built of wood, but according to the ancient chronicles of the Mahawanso gorgeously decorated, with its resplendent brass-covered roof and central hall of golden pillars and ivory throne, erected in the second century B.C., occupied by the royal folk and the priests, and called the Brazen Palace.

Close by is the glory of Buddhism and of Ceylon, the oldest historical tree in the world, the celebrated bo-tree of Anurádhapura, planted 245 years before the Christian era (from a slip, it is said, of the tree under which Buddha sat when the great illumination came to him), and now more than twenty-one centuries old. Extraordinary as the age is, yet the chronicles of this tree’s life have been so carefully kept (see Emerson Tennent’s Ceylon, where twenty-five references from the Mahawanso and other chronicles are given, covering from B.C. 288 to A.D. 1739), that there is at least fair reason for supposing that the story is correct. The bo-tree, though belonging to the fig family, has a leaf strongly resembling that of an aspen. The mid-rib of the leaf is however prolonged some two inches into a narrow point, which is sometimes curved into quite a hook. The tremulous motion of the leaf and the general appearance of the tree also resemble the aspen, though the growth is somewhat sturdier. Thousands of bo-trees are planted all over India and Ceylon in memory of Buddha (though the tree was probably an object of veneration before his time); the ground is sacred where they stand, and a good Buddhist will on no account cut one down, however inconveniently it may be growing. This particular tree, it must be confessed, is somewhat disappointing. It is small, and though obviously old, does not suggest the idea of extreme antiquity. It springs from the top of a mound some fifteen feet high, and the probability I think is that this mound has in the course of centuries been thrown up round the original trunk to support and protect it—just as has happened to Milton’s mulberry tree at Cambridge, and to others—and thus has gradually hidden a great part of the tree from view. And this idea seems, to be supported by the fact that six or seven other and lesser stems branch out from neighboring parts of the same mound, the terraces and shrines which occupy the mound helping to conceal the fact that these also are, or were at one time, really all parts of one tree. Anyhow the whole enclosure, which is about an acre in extent and is surrounded by an ancient wall, is thickly planted with bo-trees, some of really fine dimensions, so that the pious pilgrim need have no difficulty in securing a leaf, without committing the sacrilege of robbing the venerable plant.

Here, to this sacred enclosure, and to deposit flowers and offerings within it, come at certain festivals thousands of Buddhist pilgrims. Trudging in on foot or driving by bullock-cart they camp out in the park-like grounds in the immediate neighborhood of the present village, and after paying their respects to the holy tree go to visit the dágobas and other monuments which enshrine a bone or a tooth or a hair from the brow of their great teacher. For the rest of the year these places are left almost unvisited. There are no guides to importune the rare tourist or traveler, and one wanders alone through the woods for a whole day and sees no one, except it be a troop of monkeys, with tails erect, playing leap-frog over the stumps of fallen columns, as if in ridicule of the old priests, or sitting like fakirs on the tops of those still standing.

The dágobas, which are by far the most important remains here, are bell-shaped structures mostly of solid brick, originally built to enshrine some relic. They might ingeniously be mistaken for ornamental candle-extinguishers made on a vast scale, and have mostly in their time been coated with a white plaster and decorated here and there with gold or brass. Round them have been courts supported on stone columns; and generally at the four points—North, East, West, and South—have been placed little shrines with well-cut steps and ornamental balustrades leading up to them. The interiors of these dágobas—such as they may have been—have never been accessible except to the priests; sometimes, no doubt, treasures have been concealed within them, but for the most part probably they have concealed nothing except the supposed relic, and have been built to gratify the pride and add to the popularity of the monarch of the day.

The Thuparama Dágoba, which stands at the northern extremity of the park-like clearings above mentioned, is supposed by Fergusson (Handbook to Architecture, vol. i., p. 41) to be older than any monument now existing on the continent of India. It was built by King Dewanipiatissa in B.C. 307 to enshrine the right collar-bone of Buddha, and was restored some years ago by the pious, so that one gets a good idea from it of the general appearance these objects originally presented. It is white, bell-shaped, and some sixty-five feet high, with a brass pinnacle on the top; and some elegant columns about eighteen feet high stand yet in admired disorder in the court below. In the accompanying illustration the dágoba and surrounding columns appear some distance in the background, and the stone pillars and steps in the foreground are the remains of the Dalada Maligawa—a temple which was built to receive the sacred tooth of Buddha when it was first brought over to Ceylon from the mainland. Round this tooth battles raged, and in the struggle for its possession dynasties rose and fell. The enormous saurian fang, which purports to be the same tooth, is now preserved in great state in the well-known Buddhist temple at Kandy, as I have already mentioned. The little figure of a gate-keeper or dhworpal at the foot of the steps is an excellent specimen of early Buddhist sculpture, and is very graceful and tender. It is given on a larger scale in a separate illustration ([page 113]).

THUPARAMA DÁGOBA, ANURÁDHAPURA.

(With ruins of Dalada Maligawa in foreground.)

The Ruanweli (or Gold-dust) Dágoba, which rears its unshapely form close to the present village, gives one a notion of the massiveness of these ancient structures, and at the same time of the ravages which lapse of years has wrought upon them. In outline it resembles a gigantic but ill-made circular haystack, 150 feet high. All the upper part of it is covered with thick grass, except where recent lapses have exposed the close yet rather soft brickwork of which the whole is compacted. The more accessible lower parts and surrounding terraces have lately been cleaned of undergrowth; and at the foot, among some well-executed carvings, stand four or five fine statues, about eight feet high—one of King Dutugemunu who is said to have begun the building about B.C. 161, the others apparently of Buddha, and all dignified and noble in conception, if not anatomically perfect in execution.

But the dágobas which best show the gradual effacement of human handiwork by Nature are the Jetawanarama and the Abhayagiria, both of which stand some distance out in the woods, and tower above the foliage to the heights of 250 feet and 300 feet respectively. The former of these (see plate at beginning of this chapter) presents a vast cone of brickwork some 200 feet high, surmounted by a cylindrical column of the same; and the conical portion is simply overgrown by dense masses of trees, which inserting their roots into the crevices of the bricks are continually dislodging portions of this artificial mountain. Cactuses, varieties of fig, and other trees climb to the very base of the column, and here, where the brickwork is too steep to be covered with foliage, the omnipresent wanderoo monkey may be seen disporting itself on the very summit.

The Abhayagiria is of similar shape, but only covered at present with a shrub-like growth. Originally it was the largest dágoba in Ceylon, being 405 feet high—or as high as S. Paul’s—but time has reduced it to somewhere about 300 feet. A rather precipitous path leads from the base to the summit, which has recently been restored in some fashion, and from thence a fine view may be obtained.

As you roam through the woods by jungle paths, or along the two or three roads which have been made in late years to open up the ruins, you come upon innumerable smaller remains. Most frequent among these are groups of columns still standing, twenty or thirty together, sometimes only rough-hewn, sometimes elegantly shaped, with carven capitals, which either formed the foundation storeys of wooden buildings, or being themselves covered with roofs constituted porticos for the resting-places of the gods in their processions, or habitations for the use of the priests. There are very few remains of walled buildings, stone or brick, but plentiful foundation outlines of what may have been public or sacred enclosures of one kind or another—some with handsome flights of steps and balustrades leading up to them, and for the lowest step the frequent half-moon stone carved with elegant devices of the elephant, the lion, the horse, the brahman bull, the goose, and the lotus-flower. Here among the tangle is a flight of half-a-dozen steps, springing from nowhere and apparently leading nowhither. There is a gigantic stone trough, sixty-two feet long by four feet four inches wide, over which the learned are in doubt whether it was used to contain food for the royal elephants or boiled rice for the priests! Here at any rate is a cistern ten feet long by five wide, elegantly carved out of a single block of granite, which, tradition says, served for the priests’ rice-dish; and which only a few years ago was, by the subscription of a neighboring country side, filled full of food (see S. M. Burrows’ Buried Cities of Ceylon; London, Trübner & Co., 1885) for the pilgrims of the June full moon. There again is one of the numerous flat slabs which may be found, bearing an ancient inscription on its face; and in almost every direction are solid stone swimming baths or tanks, ten, twenty, or thirty yards up to (in one case) fully 100 yards in length. Two of these pókunas, so-called—the twin pókunas—stand near the northern circular road, and are still in good preservation; the one given in the illustration on [next page] is forty-four yards long, the other about thirty, and both have handsome flights of steps at each end by which to descend to the water, and step-like tiers of stonework round the sides. They were of course not covered, but open to the sun and air.

A RUINED BATHING TANK, ANURÁDHAPURA.

As you go along the road after leaving these tanks, at a turn you suddenly come upon a seated image of Buddha—by the wayside, under the trees. The figure is about seven feet high as it sits. It is of dark-colored granite, and though slightly defaced is still by far the best thing of its kind in the place. Most of the images of Buddha in the present temples of Ceylon are painfully crude productions; but this has caught something of the grace of the great Guru. The eyelids are just shut, yet so slightly as to suggest that the figure is not lost in the ordinary material sleep, but only in that luminous slumber which, while closing itself to the outward and transitory world, opens on the eternal and steadfast consciousness behind. A deep calm overspreads the face—so deep that it insensibly affects the passerby. He involuntarily stops and gazes, surrendering himself to its influence, and to that of the silent forest. His thoughts subside, like waves on water when the wind ceases. He too for a moment touches the well-spring of being—he swims into identity with the universe; the trees flicker in the evening light, the Buddha just gives the slightest nod, as much as to say, “That’s it”; and then—he is but stone again, and the road stretches beyond.

Curious that one man should so affect the world that he should leave his bo-trees and his dágobas and his images in thousands over half a continent; that he should gather vast cities round his name, and still, when they have perished and passed away, should remain the most glorious thing connected with them; yet Buddha could not have had this ascendancy had not other people in their thousands and hundreds of thousands experienced in greater or less degree the same facts that he experienced. We must forgive, after all, the dirty yellow-robed priests, with their greedy claws and stinking shrines. It was Buddha’s fault, not theirs, when he explored poor human nature so deeply as to invest even its lowest manifestations with sanctity.

Where this image now sits perhaps once it looked down upon the busy turmoil of a great street. The glories of the capital of the Cinghalese kingdom unrolled before and beneath it. Hear how the chronicler of the seventh century (quoted by Emerson Tennent) describes—with justifiable pride—the splendor of the city in his day: “The temples and palaces whose golden pinnacles glitter in the sky, the streets spanned by arches bearing flags, the ways strewn with sand, and on either side vessels containing flowers, and niches with statues holding lamps. Here are multitudes of men armed with swords and bows and arrows. Elephants, horses, carts, and myriads of people pass and repass—jugglers, dancers, and musicians of all nations, with chank shells and other instruments ornamented with gold. The distance from the principal gate to the east gate is four gows, and the same from the north to the south gate. The principal streets are Moon Street, Great King Street, Hinguruwak, and Mahawelli Street—the first containing 11,000 houses, many of them two storeys in height. The smaller streets are innumerable. The palace has large ranges of buildings, some of them two and three storeys high, and its subterranean apartments are of great extent.”

Fa Hian, the Chinese traveler, who visited Ceylon about 413 A.D., also says: “The city is the residence of many magistrates, grandees, and foreign merchants; the mansions beautiful, the public buildings richly adorned, the streets and highways straight and level, and houses for preaching built at every thoroughfare.” Nor was the civilisation of Anurádhapura merely material in its scope, for Tennent tells us that beside public gardens and baths, halls for music and dancing, rest-houses for travelers, almshouses, etc., they had hospitals in which animals as well as men were tenderly cared for. “The corn of a thousand fields was set apart by one king for their use; another put aside rice to feed the squirrels which frequented his gardens; and a third displayed his surgical skill in treating the diseases of elephants, horses, and snakes.”

Founded by Cinghalese invaders of the island somewhere in the fifth or sixth centuries B.C., the city attained its first splendor under King Dewanipiatissa, who came to the throne in B.C. 306. “It was in his reign,” says Burrows, “that the royal missionary Mahindo, son of the Indian king Dharmasoka, landed in Ceylon, and either introduced or regenerated Buddhism. The monarch and all his court, his consort and her women, became ready converts to the new tenets; the arrival of Mahindo’s sister, Sanghamitta, with a branch of the identical tree under which Gautama obtained Buddha-hood, consummated the conversion of the island; and the king devoted the rest of his reign to the erection of enormous monuments, rock-temples, and monasteries, to mark his zeal for the new faith.”

After him troubles began. The Tamils of Southern India—whose history has been for so long entangled with that of the Cinghalese—or some branch of the race, attracted probably by the wealth of the new city, landed in Ceylon about 200 B.C. And from that time forward the history of Anurádhapura is the record of continual conflict between the races. There was a second great invasion in B.C. 104, and a third about A.D. 106, in which the Tamils are said to have carried back to the mainland 12,000 Cinghalese captives, as well as great quantities of treasure. But the peaceful quiet-loving Cinghalese, whose chief talents lay in the direction of agricultural pursuits and the construction of those enormous tanks and irrigation works which still form one of the most remarkable features of the country, were no match in the arts of wars for the enterprising genius of the Tamils. The latter gradually pushed their way in more and more, dissensions between the two peoples more and more disorganised the city, till at last, for some reason not very clearly explained, in A.D. 769 the then king (Aggrabodhi IV.) evacuated his capital and established himself at Pollanarua, now also a buried city of the jungle.

From that time, it may be supposed, Anurádhapura rapidly dwindled away; the streets were no more filled with gay crowds, the slight habitations of the populace soon fell to pieces, leaving no trace behind (except a soil impregnated for miles and miles with the débris of bricks); the stone palaces and temples lapsed into decay. And now Buddha sits in the silence of the forest, folded in the ancient calm, just as he sat centuries and centuries ago in the tumult and roar of the city; night falls, and the elephant and the bear roam past him through the brushwood, the herds of spotted deer are startled for a moment by his lonely form in the moonlight.

If one ascends the Abhayagiria dágoba, from its vantage height of 300 feet he has a good bird’s-eye view of the region. Before him to the west and north stretches as far as the eye can see a level plain almost unbroken by hills. This plain is covered, except for a few reservoirs and an occasional but rare oasis of coco-nut palm, by dense woods. On all sides they stretch, like a uniform grey-green carpet over the earth; even the present village of Anurádhapura hardly makes a break,—so small is it, and interspersed with trees. Through these woods run narrow jungle paths, and among them, scattered at intervals for miles and miles, are ruins similar to those I have described. And this is all that is left to-day of the ancient city.

SMALL GUARDIAN FIGURE, OR DHWORPAL.

(At entrance to Dalada Maligawa.)

I suppose the temptation to make moral reflections on such subjects is very strong! For myself I can only say that I have walked through these and other such scenes with a sense of unfeigned gratitude that they belong to a past which is dead and done with. That Time sweeps all these efforts of mortality (and our own as well) in due course into his dustbin is a matter for which we can never be sufficiently thankful. Think, if all the monuments of human pride and folly which have been created were to endure indefinitely,—if even our own best and most useful works were to remain, cumbering up the earth with their very multitude, what a nuisance it would be! The great kings caused glorious palaces and statues and temples to be made, thinking to outvie all former and paralyse all future efforts of mankind, perpetuating their names to the end of the years. But Time, wiser, quickly removed all these things as soon as their authors were decently out of the way, leaving us just as much of them as is sufficient to convey the ideas which underlay them, and no more. As a vast dágoba, containing bricks enough to build a good-sized town of, is erected to enshrine a single hair from the head of a great man, so the glorious temples and statues and pictures and palaces of a whole epoch, all put together, do but enshrine a tiny atom of the eternal beauty. Let them deliver that, and go their way.

What a good thing even that our bodies die! How thankful we ought to be that they are duly interred and done with in course of time. Fancy if we were condemned always to go on in the same identical forms, each of us, repeating the same ancient jokes, making the same wise remarks, priding ourselves on the same superiorities over our fellows, enduring the same insults from them, wearing the same fusty garments, ever getting raggeder and raggeder through the centuries—what a fate! No; let us know there is something better than that. These swarms of idle priests who ate rice out of troughs at the public expense; these endless mumbo-jumbo books that they wrote; these mighty kings with their royal finery, their harlots, and their insane battles; these animal hospitals; these ruins of great cities lost in thickets; these Alexandrian libraries burnt to ashes; these Greek statues broken and buried in the earth—all that is really durable in them has endured and will endure, the rest is surely well out of the way.

Certainly, as one jogs through the mortal hours of the night in that said mail-cart, returning the forty-two miles from Anurádhapura to Dambulla (where one meets with the nearest horse coach), wedged in with five or six other passengers, and trying in vain to find a place for one’s feet amid the compacted mass of baggage that occupies the bottom of the cart, or to avoid the side-rails and rods that impinge upon one’s back and head—kept well awake by the continual jingling of bells and the yells and thwacks of the driver, as he urges his active little brahminy bulls through the darkness, or stopping to change team at wayside cabins where long conversations ensue, between dusky figures bearing lamps, on the state of the road and the probabilities of an encounter with the rogue-elephant who is supposed to haunt it—all those twelve long hours one has ample time to make suitable reflections of some kind or other on the transitory and ineffectual nature of our little human endeavor.

CHAPTER VII.
A NIGHT-FESTIVAL IN A HINDU TEMPLE.

The festival of Taypusam is one of the more important among the many religious festivals of the Hindus, and is celebrated with great rejoicings on the night of the first full moon in January each year. In the case of the great temples of Southern India, some of which are so vast that their enclosures are more than a mile in circumference, enormous crowds—sometimes 20,000 people or more—will congregate together to witness the ceremonials, which are elaborately gorgeous. There are a few Hindu temples of smaller size in Ceylon, and into one of these I had the good fortune to be admitted, on the occasion of this year’s festival (1891), and at the time when the proceedings were about to commence.

It was nine o’clock, the full moon was shining in the sky, and already the blaring of trumpets and horns could be heard from within as I stood at the gate seeking admittance. At first this was positively denied; but my companion, who was a person, of some authority in the temple, soon effected an entrance, and we presently stood within the precincts. It must be understood that these temples generally consist of a large oblong enclosure, more or less planted with palms and other trees, within which stands the sanctuary itself, with lesser shrines, priests’ dwellings and other buildings grouped round it. In the present case the enclosure was about one hundred yards long by sixty or seventy wide, with short grass under foot. In the centre stood the temple proper—a building without any pretensions to architectural form, a mere oblong, bounded by a wall ten or twelve feet high; unbroken by any windows, and rudely painted in vertical stripes, red and white. At the far end, under trees, were some low priests’ cottages; and farther on a tank or reservoir, not very large, with a stone balustrade around it. Coming round to the front of the temple, which was more ornamented, and where the main doorway or entrance was, we found there a considerable crowd assembled. We were in fact just in time to witness the beginning of the ceremony; for almost immediately a lot of folk came rushing out through the doorway of the temple in evident excitement; torches were lighted, consisting of long poles, some surmounted with a flaming ring of rags dipped in coco-nut oil, others with a small iron crate in which lumps of broken coco-nut burned merrily. In a few moments there was a brilliant light; the people arranged themselves in two lines from the temple door; sounds of music from within got louder; and a small procession appeared, musicians first, then four nautch girls, and lastly a small platform supported on the shoulders of men, on which was the great god Siva.

At first I could not make out what this last-named object was, but presently distinguished two rude representations of male and female figures, Siva and his consort Sakti, apparently cut out of one block, seated, and about three feet high, but so bedone with jewels and silks that it was difficult to be sure of their anatomy! Over them was held a big ornamental umbrella, and behind followed the priest. We joined the procession, and soon arrived at the edge of the reservoir which I have already mentioned, and on which was floating a strange kind of ship. It was a raft made of bamboos lashed to empty barrels, and on it a most florid and brilliant canopy, covered with cloths of different colors and surmounted by little scarlet pennants. A flight of steps down to the water occupied the whole of one side of the tank, the other three sides were surrounded by the stone balcony, and on these steps and round the balcony the crowd immediately disposed itself, while the procession went on board. When the god was properly arranged under his canopy, and the nautch girls round about him, and when room had been found for the crew, who with long poles were to propel the vessel, and for as many musicians as convenient—about a dozen souls in all—a bell rang, and the priest, a brown-bodied young Brahman with the sacred thread over his shoulders and a white cloth edged with red round his loins, made an offering of flame of camphor in a five-branched lamp. A hush fell upon the crowd, who all held their hands, palms together, as in the attitude of prayer (but also symbol of the desire to be joined together and to the god)—some with their arms high above their heads; a tray was placed on the raft, of coco-nuts and bananas which the priest opening deposited before the image; the band burst forth into renewed uproar, and the ship went gyrating over the water on her queer voyage.

TAMIL MAN.

What a scene! I had now time to look around a little. All round the little lake, thronging the steps and the sides in the great glare of the torches, were hundreds of men and boys, barebodied, barehead and barefoot, but with white loin-cloths—all in a state of great excitement—not religious so much as spectacular, as at the commencement of a theatrical performance, myself and companion about the only persons clothed,—except that in a corner and forming a pretty mass of color were a few women and girls, of the poorer class of Tamils, but brightly dressed, with nose-rings and ear-rings profusely ornamented. On the water, brilliant in scarlet and gold and blue, was floating the sacred canopy, surrounded by musicians yelling on their various horns, in the front of which—with the priest standing between them—sat two little naked boys holding small torches; while overhead through the leaves of plentiful coco-nut and banana palms overhanging the tank, in the dim blue sky among gorgeous cloud-outlines just discernible, shone the goddess of night, the cause of all this commotion.

Such a blowing up of trumpets in the full moon! For the first time I gathered some clear idea of what the ancient festivals were like. Here was a boy blowing two pipes at the same time, exactly as in the Greek bas-reliefs. There was a man droning a deep bourdon on a reed instrument, with cheeks puffed into pouches with long-sustained effort of blowing; to him was attached a shrill flageolet player—the two together giving much the effect of Highland bagpipes. Then there were the tomtoms, whose stretched skins produce quite musical and bell-like though monotonous sounds; and lastly two old men jingling cymbals and at the same time blowing their terrible chank-horns or conches. These chanks are much used in Buddhist and Hindu temples. They are large whorled sea-shells of the whelk shape, such as sometimes ornament our mantels. The apex of the spiral is cut away and a mouthpiece cemented in its place, through which the instrument can be blown like a horn. If then the fingers be used to partly cover and vary the mouth of the shell, and at the same time the shell be vibrated to and fro in the air—what with its natural convolutions and these added complications, the most ear-rending and diabolically wavy bewildering and hollow sounds can be produced, such as might surely infect the most callous worshiper with a proper faith in the supernatural.

The temper of the crowd too helped one to understand the old religious attitude. It was thoroughly whole-hearted—I cannot think of any other word. There was no piety—in our sense of the word—or very little, observable. They were just thoroughly enjoying themselves—a little excited no doubt by chanks and divine possibilities generally, but not subdued by awe; talking freely to each other in low tones, or even indulging occasionally—the younger ones—in a little bear-fighting; at the same time proud of the spectacle and the presence of the divinity, heart and soul in the ceremony, and anxious to lend hands as torch-bearers or image-bearers, or in any way, to its successful issue. It is this temper which the wise men say is encouraged and purposely cultivated by the ceremonial institutions of Hinduism. The temple services are made to cover, as far as may be, the whole ground of life, and to provide the pleasures of the theatre, the art-gallery, the music hall and the concert-room in one. People attracted by these spectacles—which are very numerous and very varied in character, according to the different feasts—presently remain to inquire into their meaning. Some like the music, others the bright colors. Many men come at first merely to witness the dancing of the nautch girls, but afterwards and insensibly are drawn into spheres of more spiritual influence. Even the children find plenty to attract them, and the temple becomes their familiar resort from early life.

The theory is that all the ceremonies have inner and mystic meanings—which meanings in due time are declared to those who are fit—and that thus the temple institutions and ceremonies constitute a great ladder by which men can rise at last to those inner truths which lie beyond all formulas and are contained in no creed. Such is the theory, but like all theories it requires large deductions before acceptance. That such theory was one of the formative influences of the Hindu ceremonial, and that the latter embodies here and there important esoteric truths descending from Vedic times, I hardly doubt; but on the other hand, time, custom and neglect, different streams of tradition blending and blurring each other, reforms and a thousand influences have—as in all such cases—produced a total concrete result which no one theory can account for or coordinate.

Such were some of my thoughts as I watched the crowd around me. They too were not uninterested in watching me. The appearance of an Englishman under such circumstances was perhaps a little unusual and scores of black eyes were turned inquiringly in my direction; but covered as I was by the authority of my companion no one seemed to resent my presence. A few I thought looked shocked, but the most seemed rather pleased, as if proud that a spectacle so brilliant and impressive should be witnessed by a stranger—besides there were two or three among the crowd whom I happened to have met before and spoken with, and whose friendly glances made me feel at home.

Meanwhile the gyrating raft had completed two or three voyages round the little piece of water. Each time it returned to the shore fresh offerings were made to the god, the bell was rung again, a moment of hushed adoration followed, and then with fresh strains of mystic music a new start for the deep took place. What the inner signification of these voyages might be I had not and have not the faintest idea; it is possible even that no one present knew. At the same time I do not doubt that the drama was originally instituted in order to commemorate some actual event or to symbolise some doctrine. On each voyage a hymn was sung or recited. On the first voyage the Brahman priest declaimed a hymn from the Vedas—a hymn that may have been written 3,000 years ago—nor was there anything in the whole scene which appeared to me discordant with the notion that the clock had been put back 3,000 years (though of course the actual new departure in the Brahmanical rites which we call Hinduism does not date back anything like so far as that). On the second voyage a Tamil hymn was sung by one of the youths trained in the temples for this purpose; and on the third voyage another Tamil hymn, with interludes of the most ecstatic caterwauling from chanks and bagpipes! The remainder of the voyages I did not witness, as my conductor now took me to visit the interior of the temple.

That is, as far as it was permissible to penetrate. For the Brahman priests who regulate these things, with far-sighted policy make it one of their most stringent rules that the laity shall not have access beyond a short distance into the temple, and heathen like myself are of course confined to the mere forecourts. Thus the people feel more awe and sanctity with regard to the holy place itself and the priests who fearlessly tread within than they do with regard to anything else connected with their religion.

Having passed the porch, we found ourselves in a kind of entrance hall with one or two rows of columns supporting a flat wooden roof—the walls adorned with the usual rude paintings of various events in Siva’s earthly career. On the right was a kind of shrine with a dancing figure of the god in relief—the perpetual dance of creation; but unlike some of the larger temples, in which there is often most elaborate and costly stonework, everything here was of the plainest, and there was hardly anything in the way of sculpture to be seen. Out of this forecourt opened a succession of chambers into which one might not enter; but the dwindling lights placed in each served to show distance after distance. In the extreme chamber farthest removed from the door, by which alone daylight enters—the rest of the interior being illumined night and day with artificial lights—is placed, surrounded by lamps, the most sacred object, the lingam. This of course was too far off to be discerned—and indeed it is, except on occasions, kept covered—but it appears that instead of being a rude image of the male organ (such as is frequently seen in the outer courts of these temples), the thing is a certain white stone, blue-veined and of an egg-shape, which is mysteriously fished up—if the gods so will it—from the depths of the river Nerbudda, and only thence. It stands in the temple in the hollow of another oval-shaped object which represents the female yoni; and the two together, embleming Siva and Sakti, stand for the sexual energy which pervades creation.

Thus the worship of sex is found to lie at the root of the present Hinduism, as it does at the root of nearly all the primitive religions of the world. Yet it would be a mistake to conclude that such worship is a mere deification of material functions. Whenever it may have been that the Vedic prophets descending from Northern lands into India first discovered within themselves that capacity of spiritual ecstasy which has made them even down to to-day one of the greatest religious forces in the world, it is certain that they found (as indeed many of the mediæval Christian seers at a later time also found) that this ecstasy had a certain similarity to the sexual rapture. In their hands therefore the rude, phallic worships, which their predecessors had with true instinct celebrated, came to have a new meaning; and sex itself, the most important of earthly functions, came to derive an even greater importance from its relation to the one supreme and heavenly fact, that of the soul’s union with God.

In the middle line of all Hindu temples, between the lingam and the door, are placed two other very sacred objects—the couchant bull Nandi and an upright ornamented pole, the Kampam, or as it is sometimes called, the flagstaff. In this case the bull was about four feet in length, carved in one block of stone, which from continual anointing by pious worshipers had become quite black and lustrous on the surface. In the great temple at Tanjore there is a bull twenty feet long cut from a single block of syenite, and similar bull-images are to be found in great numbers in these temples, and of all sizes down to a foot in length, and in any accessible situation are sure to be black and shining with oil. In Tamil the word pasu signifies both ox—i.e. the domesticated ox—and the soul. Siva is frequently represented as riding on a bull; and the animal represents the human soul which has become subject and affiliated to the god. As to the flagstaff, it was very plain, and appeared to be merely a wooden pole nine inches or so thick, slightly ornamented, and painted a dull red color. In the well-known temple at Mádura the kampam is made of teak plated with gold, and is encircled with certain rings at intervals, and at the top three horizontal arms project, with little bell-like tassels hanging from them. This curious object has, it is said, a physiological meaning, and represents a nerve which passes up the median line of the body from the genital organs to the brain (? the great sympathetic). Indeed the whole disposition of the parts in these temples is supposed (as of course also in the Christian Churches) to represent the human body, and so also the universe of which the human body is only the miniature. I do not feel myself in a position however to judge how far these correspondences are exact. The inner chambers in this particular temple were, as far as I could see, very plain and unornamented.

On coming out again into the open space in front of the porch, my attention was directed to some low buildings which formed the priests’ quarters. Two priests were attached to the temple, and a separate cottage was intended for any traveling priest or lay benefactor who might want accommodation within the precincts.

And now the second act of the sacred drama was commencing. The god, having performed a sufficient number of excursions on the tank, was being carried back with ceremony to the space in front of the porch—where for some time had been standing, on portable platforms made of poles, three strange animal figures of more than life-size—a bull, a peacock, and a black creature somewhat resembling a hog, but I do not know what it was meant for. On the back of the bull, which was evidently itself in an amatory and excited mood, Siva and Sakti were placed; on the hog-like animal was mounted another bejewelled figure—that of Ganésa, Siva’s son; and on the peacock again the figure of his other son, Soubramánya. Camphor flame was again offered, and then a lot of stalwart and enthusiastic worshipers seized the poles, and mounting the platforms on their shoulders set themselves to form a procession round the temple on the grassy space between it and the outer wall. The musicians as usual went first, then came the dancing girls, and then after an interval of twenty or thirty yards the three animals abreast of each other on their platforms, and bearing their respective gods upon their backs. At this point we mingled with the crowd and were lost among the worshipers. And now again I was reminded of representations of antique religious processions. The people, going in front or following behind, or partly filling the space in front of the gods—though leaving a lane clear in the middle—were evidently getting elated and excited. They swayed their arms, took hands or rested them on each other’s bodies, and danced rather than walked along; sometimes their shouts mixed with the music; the tall torches swayed to and fro, flaring to the sky and distilling burning drops on naked backs in a way which did not lessen the excitement; the smell of hot coco-nut oil mingling with that of humanity made the air sultry; and the great leaves of bananas and other palms leaning over and glistening with the double lights of moon and torch flames gave a weird and tropical beauty to the scene.[2] In this rampant way the procession moved for a few yards, the men wrestling and sweating under the weight of the god-images, which according to orthodox ideas are always made of an alloy of the five metals known to the ancients—an alloy called panchaloka—and are certainly immensely heavy; and then it came to a stop. The bearers rested their poles on strong crutches carried for the purpose, and while they took breath the turn of the nautch girls came.

[2] Mrs. Speir, in her Life in Ancient India, p. 374, says that we first hear of Siva worship about B.C. 300, and that it is described by Megasthenes as “celebrated in tumultuous festivals, the worshippers anointing their bodies, wearing crowns of flowers, and sounding bells and cymbals. From which,” she adds, “the Greeks conjectured that Siva worship was derived from Bacchus or Dionysos, and carried to the East in the traditionary expedition which Bacchus made in company with Hercules.”

NAUTCH GIRL.

Most people are sufficiently familiar now-a-days, through Oriental exhibitions and the like, with the dress and bearing of these Devadásis, or servants of God. “They sweep the temple,” says the author of Life in an Indian Village, “ornament the floor with quaint figures drawn in rice flour, hold the sacred light before the god, fan him, and dance and sing when required.” “In the village of Kélambakam,” he continues, “there are two dancing girls, Kanakambujam and Minakshi. K. is the concubine of a neighboring Mudelliar, and M. of Appalacharri the Brahman. But their services can be obtained by others.” I will describe the dress of one of the four present on this occasion. She had on a dark velveteen tunic with quite short gold-edged sleeves, the tunic almost concealed from view by a very handsome scarf or sari such as the Indian women wear. This sari, made of crimson silk profusely ornamented with gold thread, was passed over one shoulder, and having been wound twice or thrice round the waist was made to hang down like a petticoat to a little below the knee. Below this appeared silk leggings of an orange color; and heavy silver anklets crowned the naked feet. Handsome gold bangles were on her arms (silver being usually worn below the waist and gold above), jewels and bell-shaped pendants in her nose and ears, and on her head rose-colored flowers pinned with gold brooches and profusely inwoven with the plaited black hair that hung down her back. The others with variations in color had much the same costume.

To describe their faces is difficult. I think I seldom saw any so inanimately sad. It is part of the teaching of Indian women that they should never give way to the expression of feeling, or to any kind of excitement of manner, and this in the case of better types leads to a remarkable dignity and composure of bearing, such as is comparatively rare in the West, but in more stolid and ignorant sorts produces a most apathetic and bovine mien. In the case of these nautch women circumstances are complicated by the prostitution which seems to be the inevitable accompaniment of their profession. One might indeed think that it was distinctly a part of their profession—as women attached to the service of temples whose central idea is that of sex—but some of my Hindu friends assure me that this is not so: that they live where they like, that their dealings with the other sex are entirely their own affair, and are not regulated or recognised in any way by the temple authorities, and that it is only, so to speak, an accident that these girls enter into commercial relations with men—generally, it is admitted, with the wealthier of those who attend the services—an accident of course quite likely to occur, since they are presumably good-looking, and are early forced into publicity and out of the usual routine of domestic life. All the same, though doubtless these things are so now, I think it may fairly be supposed that the sexual services of these nautch girls were at one time a recognised part of their duty to the temple to which they were attached. Seeing indeed that so many of the religions of antiquity are known to have recognised services of this kind, seeing also that Hinduism did at least incorporate in itself primitive sexual worships, and seeing that there is no reason to suppose that such practices involved any slur in primitive times on those concerned in them—rather the reverse—I think we have at any rate a strong primâ-facie case. It is curious too that, even to-day, notwithstanding the obvious drawbacks of their life, these girls are quite recognised and accepted in Hindu families of high standing and respectability. When marriages take place they dress the bride, put on her jewels, and themselves act as bridesmaids; and generally speaking are much referred to as authorities on dress. Whatever, however, may have been the truth about the exact duties and position of the Devadásis in old times, the four figuring away there before their gods that night seemed to me to present but a melancholy and effete appearance. They were small and even stunted in size, nor could it be said that any of them were decently good-looking. The face of the eldest—it was difficult to judge their age, but she might have been twenty—was the most expressive, but it was thin and exceedingly weary; the faces of the others were the faces of children who had ceased to be children, yet to whom experience had brought no added capacity.

These four waifs of womanhood, then, when the procession stopped, wheeled round, and facing the god approached him with movements which bore the remotest resemblance to a dance. Stretching out their right hands and right feet together (in itself an ungraceful movement) they made one step forward and to the right; then doing the same with left hands and feet made a step in advance to the left. After repeating this two or three times they then, having first brought their finger points to their shoulders, extended their arms forward towards the deity, inclining themselves at the same time. This also was repeated, and then they moved back much as they had advanced. After a few similar evolutions, sometimes accompanied by chanting, they wheeled round again, and the procession moved forwards a few yards more. Thus we halted about half a dozen times before we completed the circuit of the temple, and each time had a similar performance.

On coming round to the porch what might be called the third act commenced. The platform of the bull and the god Siva was—not without struggles—lowered to the ground so as to face the porch, the other two gods being kept in the background; and then the four girls, going into the temple and bringing forth little oil-lamps, walked in single file round the image, followed by the musicians also in single file. These latter had all through the performance kept up an almost continuous blowing; and their veined knotted faces and distended cheeks bore witness to the effort, not to mention the state of our own ears! It must however in justice be said that the drone, the flageolet, and the trumpets were tuned to the same key-note, and their combined music alone would not have been bad; but a chank-shell can no more be tuned than a zebra can be tamed, and when two of these instruments together, blown by two wiry old men obdurately swaying their heads, were added to the tumult, it seemed not impossible that one might go giddy and perhaps become theopneustos, at any moment.

The show was now evidently culminating. The entry of the musicians into the temple, where their reverberations were simply appalling, was the signal for an inrush of the populace. We passed in with the crowd, and almost immediately Siva, lifted from the bull, followed borne in state under his parasol. He was placed on a stand in front of the side shrine in the forecourt already mentioned; and a curtain being drawn before him, there was a momentary hush and awe. The priest behind the curtain (whom from our standpoint we could see) now made the final offerings of fruit, flowers and sandalwood, and lighted the five-branched camphor lamp for the last time. This burning of camphor is, like other things in the service, emblematic. The five lights represent the five senses. As camphor consumes itself and leaves no residue behind, so should the five senses, being offered to God, consume themselves and disappear. When this is done, that happens in the soul which was now figured in the temple service; for as the last of the camphor burned itself away the veil was swiftly drawn aside—and there stood the image of Siva revealed in a blaze of light.

The service was now over. The priest distributed the offerings among the people; the torches were put out; and in a few minutes I was walking homeward through the streets and wondering if I was really in the modern world of the 19th century.

A VISIT TO A GÑÁNI

CHAPTER VIII.
A VISIT TO A GÑÁNI.

During my stay in Ceylon I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of one of the esoteric teachers of the ancient religious mysteries. These Gurus or Adepts are to be found scattered all over the mainland of India; but they lead a secluded existence, avoiding the currents of Western civilisation—which are obnoxious to them—and rarely come into contact with the English or appear on the surface of ordinary life. They are divided into two great schools, the Himalayan and South Indian—formed probably, even centuries back, by the gradual retirement of the adepts into the mountains and forests of their respective districts before the spread of foreign races and civilisations over the general continent. The Himalayan school has carried on the more democratic and progressive Buddhistic tradition, while the South Indian has kept more to caste, and to the ancient Brahmanical and later Hindu lines. This separation has led to divergencies in philosophy, and there are even (so strong is sectional feeling in all ranges of human activity) slight jealousies between the adherents of the two schools; but the differences are probably after all very superficial; in essence their teaching and their work may I think be said to be the same.

The teacher to whom I allude belongs to the South Indian school, and was only sojourning for a time in Ceylon. When I first made his acquaintance he was staying in the precincts of a Hindu temple. Passing through the garden and the arcade-like porch of the temple with its rude and grotesque frescoes of the gods—Siva astride the bull, Sakti, his consort, seated behind him, etc.—we found ourselves in a side-chamber, where seated on a simple couch, his bed and day-seat in one, was an elderly man (some seventy years of age, though he did not look nearly as much as that) dressed only in a white muslin wrapper wound loosely round his lithe and even active dark brown form: his head and face shaven a day or two past, very gentle and spiritual in expression, like the best type of Roman Catholic priest—a very beautiful full and finely formed mouth, straight nose and well-formed chin, dark eyes, undoubtedly the eyes of a seer, dark-rimmed eyelids, and a powerful, prophetic, and withal childlike manner. He soon lapsed into exposition which he continued for an hour or two with but few interjections from his auditors.

At a later time he moved into a little cottage where for several weeks I saw him nearly every day. Every day the same—generally sitting on his couch, with bare arms and feet, the latter often coiled under him—only requiring a question to launch off into a long discourse—fluent, and even rapt, with ready and vivid illustration and long digressions, but always returning to the point. Though unfortunately my knowledge of Tamil was so slight that I could not follow his conversation and had to take advantage of the services of a friend as interpreter, still it was easy to see what a remarkable vigor and command of language the fellow had, what power of concentration on the subject in hand, and what a wealth of reference—especially citation from ancient authorities—wherewith to illustrate his discourse.

Everything in the East is different from the West, and so are the methods of teaching. Teaching in the East is entirely authoritative and traditional. That is its strong point and also its defect. The pupil is not expected to ask questions of a sceptical nature or expressive of doubt; the teacher does not go about to “prove” his thesis to the pupil, or support it with arguments drawn from the plane of the pupil’s intelligence; he simply re-delivers to the pupil, in a certain order and sequence, the doctrines which were delivered to him in his time, which have been since verified by his own experience, and which he can illustrate by phrases and metaphors and citations drawn from the sacred books. He has of course his own way of presenting the whole, but the body of knowledge which he thus hands down is purely traditional, and may have come along for thousands of years with little or no change. Originality plays no part in the teaching of the Indian Sages. The knowledge which they have to impart is of a kind in which invention is not required. It purports to be a knowledge of the original fact of the universe itself—something behind which no man can go. The West may originate, the West may present new views of the prime fact—the East only seeks to give to a man that fact itself, the supreme consciousness, undifferentiated, the key to all that exists.

The Indian teachers therefore say there are as a rule three conditions of the attainment of Divine knowledge or gñánam:—(1) The study of the sacred books, (2) the help of a Guru, and (3) the verification of the tradition by one’s own experience. Without this last the others are of course of no use; and the chief aid of the Guru is directed to the instruction of the pupil in the methods by which he may attain to personal experience. The sacred books give the philosophy and some of the experiences of the gñáni or illuminated person, but they do not, except in scattered hints, give instruction as to how this illumination is to be obtained. The truth is, it is a question of evolution; and it would neither be right that such instruction should be given to everybody, nor indeed possible, since even in the case of those prepared for it the methods must differ, according to the idiosyncrasy and character of the pupil.

There are apparently isolated cases in which individuals attain to Gñánam through their own spontaneous development, and without instruction from a Guru, but these are rare. As a rule every man who is received into the body of Adepts receives his initiation through another Adept who himself received it from a fore-runner, and the whole constitutes a kind of church or brotherhood with genealogical branches so to speak—the line of adepts from which a man descends being imparted to him on his admission into the fraternity. I need not say that this resembles the methods of the ancient mysteries and initiations of classic times; and indeed the Indian teachers claim that the Greek and Egyptian and other Western schools of arcane lore were merely branches, more or less degenerate, of their own.

The course of preparation for Gñánam is called yogam, and the person who is going through this stage is called a yogi—from the root yog, to join—one who is seeking junction with the universal spirit. Yogis are common all over India, and exist among all classes and in various forms. Some emaciate themselves and torture their bodies, others seek only control over their minds, some retire into the jungles and mountains, others frequent the cities and exhibit themselves in the crowded fairs, others again carry on the avocations of daily life with but little change of outward habit. Some are humbugs, led on by vanity or greed of gain (for to give to a holy man is highly meritorious); others are genuine students or philosophers; some are profoundly imbued with the religious sense, others by mere distaste for the world. The majority probably take to a wandering life of the body, some become wandering in mind; a great many attain to phases of clairvoyance and abnormal power of some kind or other, and a very few become adepts of a high order.

Anyhow the matter cannot be understood unless it is realised that this sort of religious retirement is thoroughly accepted and acknowledged all over India, and excites no surprise or special remark. Only some five or six years ago the son of the late Rajah of Tanjore—a man of some forty or fifty years of age, and of course the chief native personage in that part of India—made up his mind to become a devotee. He one day told his friends he was going on a railway journey, sent off his servants and carriages from the palace to the station, saying he would follow, gave them the slip, and has never been heard of since! His friends went to the man who was known to have been acting as his Guru, who simply told them, “You will never find him.” Supposing the G.O.M. or the Prince of Wales were to retire like this—how odd it would seem!

To illustrate this subject I may tell the story of Tilleináthan Swámy, who was the teacher of the Guru whose acquaintance I am referring to in this chapter. Tilleináthan was a wealthy shipowner of high family. In 1850 he devoted himself to religious exercises, till 1855, when he became “emancipated.” After his attainment he felt sick of the world, and so he wound up his affairs, divided all his goods and money among relations and dependents, and went off stark naked into the woods. His mother and sisters were grieved and repeatedly pursued him, offering to surrender all to him if he would only return. At last he simply refused to answer their importunities, and they desisted. He appeared in Tanjore after that in ’57, ’59, ’64 and ’72, but has not been seen since. He is supposed to be living somewhere in the Western Ghauts.

In ’58 or ’59, at the close of the Indian Mutiny, when search was being made for Nana Sahib, it was reported that the Nana was hiding himself under the garb (or no garb) of an “ascetic,” and orders were issued to detain and examine all such people. Tilleináthan was taken and brought before the sub-magistrate at Tanjore, who told him the Government orders, and that he must dress himself properly. At the same time the sub-magistrate, having a friendly feeling for T. and guessing that he would refuse obedience, had brought a wealthy merchant with him, whom he had persuaded to stand bail for Tilleináthan in such emergency. When however the merchant saw Tilleináthan, he expressed his doubts about standing bail for him—whereupon T. said, “Quite right, it is no good your standing bail for me; the English Government itself could not stand bail for one who creates and destroys Governments. I will be bail for myself.” The sub-magistrate then let him go.

But on the matter being reported at head-quarters the sub. was reprimanded, and a force, consisting of an inspector and ten men (natives of course), was sent to take Tilleináthan. He at first refused and threatened them, but on the inspector pleading that he would be dismissed if he returned with empty hands T. consented to come “in order to save the inspector.” They came into full court—as it happened—before the collector (Morris), who immediately reprimanded T. for his mad costume! “It is you that are mad,” said the latter, “not to know that this is my right costume,”—and he proceeded to explain the four degrees of Hindu probation and emancipation. (These are, of course, the four stages of student, householder, yogi and gñáni. Every one who becomes a gñáni must pass through the other three stages. Each stage has its appropriate costume and rules; the yogi wears a yellow garment; the gñáni is emancipated from clothing, as well as from all other troubles.)

Finally T. again told the collector that he was a fool, and that he T. would punish him. “What will you do?” said the collector. “If you don’t do justice I will burn you,” was the reply! At this the mass of the people in court trembled, believing no doubt implicitly in T.’s power to fulfil his threat. The collector however told the inspector to read the Lunacy Act to Tilleináthan, but the inspector’s hand shook so that he could hardly see the words—till T. said, “Do not be afraid—I will explain it to you.” He then gave a somewhat detailed account of the Act, pointed out to the collector that it did not apply to his own case, and ended by telling him once more that he was a fool. The collector then let him go!

Afterwards Morris—having been blamed for letting the man go—and Beauchamp (judge), who had been rather impressed already by T.’s personality, went together and with an escort to the house in Tanjore in which Tilleináthan was then staying—with an undefined intention, apparently, of arresting him. T. then asked them if they thought he was under their Government—to which the Englishmen replied that they were not there to argue philosophy but to enforce the law. T. asked how they would enforce it. “We have cannons and men behind us,” said Morris. “And I,” said T., “can also bring cannons and forces greater than yours.” They then left him again, and he was no more troubled.

This story is a little disappointing in that no miracles come off, but I tell it as it was told to me by the Guru, and my friend A. having heard it substantially the same from other and independent witnesses at Tanjore it may be taken as giving a fairly correct idea of the kind of thing that occasionally happens. No doubt the collector would look upon Tilleináthan as a “luny”—and from other stories I have heard of him (his utter obliviousness of ordinary conventionalities and proprieties, that he would lie down to sleep in the middle of the street to the great inconvenience of traffic, that he would sometimes keep on repeating a single vacant phrase over and over again for half a day, etc.), such an opinion might, I should say, fairly be justified. Yet at the same time there is no doubt he was a very remarkable man, and the deep reverence with which our friend the Guru spoke of him was obviously not accorded merely to the abnormal powers which he seems at times to have manifested, but to the profundity and breadth of his teaching and the personal grandeur which prevailed through all his eccentricities.

It was a common and apparently instinctive practice with him to speak of the great operations of Nature, the thunder, the wind, the shining of the sun, etc., in the first person, “I”—the identification with, or non-differentiation from the universe (which is the most important of esoteric doctrines) being in his case complete. So also the democratic character of his teaching surpassed even our Western records. He would take a pariah dog—the most scorned of creatures—and place it round his neck (compare the pictures of Christ with a lamb in the same attitude), or even let it eat out of one plate with himself! One day, in Tanjore, when importuned for instruction by five or six disciples, he rose up and saying, “Follow me,” went through the streets to the edge of a brook which divided the pariah village from the town—a line which no Hindu of caste will ever cross—and stepping over the brook bade them enter the defiled ground. This ordeal however his followers could not endure, and—except one—they all left him.

Tilleináthan’s pupil, the teacher of whom I am presently speaking, is married and has a wife and children. Most of these “ascetics” think nothing of abandoning their families when the call comes to them, and of going to the woods perhaps never to be seen again. He however has not done this, but lives on quietly at home at Tanjore. Thirty or forty years ago he was a kind of confidential friend and adviser to the then reigning prince of Tanjore, and was well up in traditional state-craft and politics; and even only two or three years ago took quite an active interest in the National Indian Congress. His own name was Ramaswámy, but he acquired the name Elúkhanam, “the Grammarian,” on account of his proficiency in Tamil grammar and philosophy, on which subject he was quite an authority, even before his initiation.

Tamil is a very remarkable, and indeed complex language—rivaling the Sanskrit in the latter respect. It belongs to the Dravidian group, and has few Aryan roots in it except what have been borrowed from Sanskrit. It contains however an extraordinary number of philosophical terms, of which some are Sanskrit in their origin, but many are entirely its own; and like the people it forms a strange blend of practical qualities with the most inveterate occultism. “Tamil,” says the author of an article in the Theosophist for November, ’90, “is one of the oldest languages of India, if not of the world. Its birth and infancy are enveloped in mythology. As in the case of Sanskrit, we cannot say when Tamil became a literary language. The oldest Tamil works extant belong to a time, about 2,000 years ago, of high and cultured refinement in Tamil poetic literature. All the religious and philosophical poetry of Sanskrit has become fused into Tamil, which language contains a larger number of popular treatises in Occultism, Alchemy, etc., than even Sanskrit; and it is now the only spoken language of India that abounds in occult treatises on various subjects.” Going on to speak of the Tamil Adepts, the author of this article says: “The popular belief is that there were eighteen brotherhoods of Adepts scattered here and there, in the mountains and forests of the Tamil country, and presided over by eighteen Sadhoos; and that there was a grand secret brotherhood composed of the eighteen Sadhoos, holding its meetings in the hills of the Agasthya Kútam in the Tinnevelly district. Since the advent of the English and their mountaineering and deforestation, these occultists have retired far into the interior of the thick jungles on the mountains; and a large number have, it is believed, altogether left these parts for more congenial places in the Himalayan ranges. It is owing to their influence that the Tamil language has been inundated, as it were, with a vast number of works on esoteric philosophy. The works of Agasthya Muni alone[3] would fill a whole library. The chief and only object of these brotherhoods has been to popularise esoteric truths and bring them home to the masses. So great and so extensive is their influence that the Tamil literature is permeated with esoteric truths in all its ramifications.” In fact the object of this article is to point out the vast number of proverbs and popular songs, circulating among the Tamils to-day, which conceal under frivolous guise the most profound mystic truths. The grammar too—as I suppose was the case in Sanskrit—is linked to the occult philosophy of the people.

[3] Or those ascribed to him.

To return to the Teacher, besides state-craft and grammar he is well versed in matters of law, and not unfrequently tackles a question of this kind for the help of his friends; and has some practical knowledge of medicine, as well as of cookery, which he considers important in its relation to health (the divine health, Sukham). It will thus be seen that he is a man of good practical ability and acquaintance with the world, and not a mere dreamer, as is too often assumed by Western critics to be the case with all those who seek the hidden knowledge of the East. In fact it is one of the remarkable points of the Hindu philosophy that practical knowledge of life is expressly inculcated as a preliminary stage to initiation. A man must be a householder before he becomes a yogi; and familiarity with sexual experience instead of being reprobated, is rather encouraged, in order that having experienced one may in time pass beyond it. Indeed it is not unfrequently maintained that the early marriage of the Hindus is advantageous in this respect, since a couple married at the age of fifteen or sixteen have by the time they are forty a grown-up family launched in life, and having circled worldly experience are then free to dedicate themselves to the work of “emancipation.”

During his yoga period, which lasted about three years, his wife was very good to him and assisted him all she could. He was enjoined by his own teacher to refrain from speech and did so for about a year and a half, passing most of his time in fixed attitudes of meditation, and only clapping his hands when he wanted food, etc. Hardly anything shows more strongly the hold which these religious ideas have upon the people than the common willingness of the women to help their husbands in works of this kind, which beside the sore inconvenience of them, often deprive the family of its very means of subsistence and leave it dependent on the help of relations and others. But so it is. It is difficult for a Westerner even to begin to realise the conditions and inspirations of life in the East.

Refraint from speech is not a necessary condition of initiation, but it is enjoined in some cases. (There might be a good many cases among the Westerners where it would be very desirable—with or without initiation!) “Many practising,” said the Guru one day, “have not spoken for twelve years—so that when freed they had lost the power of speech—babbled like babies—and took some time to recover it. But for two or three years you experience no disability.” “During my initiation,” he added, “I often wandered about the woods all night, and many times saw wild beasts, but they never harmed me—as indeed they cannot harm the initiated.”