A Winter in India and Malaysia among the Methodist Missions

Front matter

Mission Bungalow at Bareilly A WINTER IN' INDIA AND MALAYSIA AMONG THE METHODIST MISSIONS BY REV. M. Y. B. KNOX, Ph.D., D.D. with an introduction by BISHOP JOHN F. HURST, D.D., LL.D. NEW YORK : HUNT &° EATON CINCINNATI: CRANSTON &= STOWE iSqr Copyright, 1891, by HUNT & EATON PREFATORY NOTE. These letters are sent out with a hope that they may do some good for missions. It is also with the purpose that the fugitives may not be wholly lost that they are gathered into book-form, since gaining the facts they contain and writing them out were both pleasant and profitable to me. They were mostly written during the months of my passing through those sections of which they treat in a tour of the world, Should any income accrue from their sales it is dedi cated in advance to a certain field of mission work.

I gladly acknowledge the valuable aid of Rev. Joseph H. Gill, for several years a missionary in India, in reading and correcting these letters. Also I here express my thanks to the editors of those periodicals in which many of them were printed in allowing this use of them from their columns. M. V. B. Knox.

Introduction

. The author of A Winter in India and Malaysia is a busy pastor, and a faithful student of men and coun tries. His lines of study had reached out widely, and for years he had utilized his spare time in a careful examination into the progress, the life, and the achieve ments of the great nations of history. As his studies advanced he became keenly sensible of the need of a personal visit to distant nations yet in the darkness, or at best in the gray dawn of a new period. He saw India and Malaysia with the eye of a careful observer. He seems to have become absorbed, the farther he jour neyed, in the missionary feeling, until in time his missionary passion overpowered all else. In describing the life, architecture, and countries of India and Malay sia he never once forgot the supreme need of the Gospel, or failed to appreciate the invaluable power of his own ecclesiastical body — the Methodist Episcopal Church — in sending a strong missionary force of men and women to hasten the coming of the glad day of universal evan gelization.

Dr. Knox's A Winter in India and Malaysia is so well written, so full of life and movement, and has so sprung out of the very experience and needs of the pastor at home, that they who read will hardly cease until they

INTRODUCTION.

. reach the end. Those who are asked to make contribu tions of money for missions must know why the appeal is made. They must see the object, the true need. The author of this work aims to bring the country to us here at home, that we may better understand the absolute need of bestowing our best gifts of missionaries and gold for its redemption. I cordially recommend this work as a most valuable addition to our literature of the East. It should be cir culated throughout the country. It should have a place on the pastor's table, in the Sunday-school library, and in the Christian homes in all parts of our land. Many of its pages abound in matter entirely new to our American readers. The book, however, is mostly to be prized for its intense and beautiful loyalty to the kingdom of the Christ. John F. Huest.

Washington, D. C, September 1, 1891. CONTENTS LETTER PAGE I. Street Sights in Bqmbay 9 II. My First Evening in Bombay 16 III. Methodism in Bombay 20 IV. A Thousand Miles' Run Through India 30 V. In and About Delhi 37 VI. A Commencement Season in India 46 VII. Into the Himalayas at Naini Tal 50 VIII. At a Camp-meeting in India 57 IX. Education Work in North India Conference 68 X. In and About Muttra 75 XI. At Agra 84 XII. Nanak, the Punjab Reformer 95 XIII. A Day among India's Paupers 101 XIV. Annual Sunday-school Gala at Lucknow 105 XV. Caste 312 XVI. Religiousness of the Indian People 120 XVII. Among the Missionaries at Shahjehanpore 128 XVIII. A Day of Hunting in India 137 XIX. The Birds of India 143 XX. At the North India Conference 151 XXI. The Native Races of India 1 CONTENTS. letter page XXII.

Benares, the Holy City of the Hindus 169 XXIII. The Work of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society — Schools — Sunday-schools 180 XXIV. Woman's Work — Medical, Bible Readers, Deaconesses 189 XXV. Woman's Work — Zenana, Orphanages 198 XXVI. The Question of Clothing and Homes 208 XXVII. At the Bengal Conference 215 XXVIII. Means of Locomotion 224 XXIX. In the Matter of Servants 231 XXX. The Future of Methodism in India 239 XXXI. The Methodist Press in India 246 XXXII. At Calcutta. . 7 252 XXXIII. Methodism in Rangoon, Burmah. 262 XXXIV. The Great Buddhist Pagoda at Rangoon 268 XXXV. At Penang 280 XXXVI. Across the Track of Mrs. Leavitt's Woman's Christian Temperance Union Work in India. . 286 XXXVII. A Week with Our Missionaries at Singapore... . 292 XXXVIII. A Day Under the Equator 298 XXXIX. Qualifications for Successful Missionaries among the METHODIST MISSIONS.

Letter I. Street Sights In Bombay

One is partly prepared to see India if he has passed through Egypt and Palestine on his way here, as I did, but even then he feels that the East of India is differ ent from the East of Egypt and Syria. The Arabs are not Hindus. The former are a much finer, larger race in person, and are more filthy than the people here. The sight of hundreds of coolies on the wharves, busy unloading and loading the great ships, their bare slender legs and their brown bare arms and shoulders impress one that Bombay is Oriental and at the same time warm. The glare of the sun, even in the morn ing and the winter-time, also intimates the great heat. As I first cast a glance from the SomerhilP s deck upon England's busy traffic in Bombay, and the great, strong paraphernalia necessary for dock work, there came a sense of loneliness thinking of the great city and greater country all unknown to me.

Once on shore, the tram-cars, the roadway built and carried on by a New York syndicate, suggested that with these and railways my task of getting over the land would not be very hard after all. An admirable net-work of street-cars runs all through the city, and in tliese one finds all classes and races, Europeans, Hindus, Moham medans, Parsees, and others. Caste yields to travel. All tliese Indian cities have the old native part and the newer English part, the former dirty, squalid, the latter with wide, clean streets, ample grounds, and strong, fine buildings. It is so in Bombay. The " Fort " or southern part of the island has most of the English establishments, the Malabar Hills in the west part having the rich Parsee residences and some En glish, while the rest of the city has mostly natives.

The native portions have their poorer and their bet ter streets. Many Hindus and Mohammedans are rich, and for native houses have good ones well situated in yards and gardens. It is as impossible to call the streets, homes, and clothing of the rich character istic of the Hindu life as it is to call that characteristic alone where the coolie is stark naked save a limited breech-cloth, and who lives among squalid lanes in dirtiest houses of one room only for the whole family. It takes these extremes and all the gradations between them to show the life here. All the streets swarm with people, so numerous are they in this country. It was my fortune to be taken by the missionaries through some of these streets in the denser part of the city. Smells arising from bad drainage, from cooking native foods, from the native worship, from the natives themselves, and from unknown sources, crowded upon one's olfactory nerves.

It was well if he had learned to be around old tanneries and bleacheries. In many cases the mats or blankets that may have covered the entrance from the street to the single room occupied STREET SIGHTS IN BOMBAY. 11 by a family were removed for the day, and thus glimpses of coolie homes were obtained without hav ing to enter them. A light bamboo bedstead or two were sometimes to be seen, on which some rags lay, a copper kettle for cooking, a bit of mud fire-place in one corner, with no chimney for the escape of smoke, save into the room, an earthen floor, or one a grade higher made dry with a plastering of bullock-dung, not a chair or bench, and for dishes possibly three or four copper or brass ones of peculiar shape and many purposes. With one of the ladies in charge of the native Christian work I went into some of the homes of those reached by the beneficent ministries of the Gospel.

More cleanly homes, better clad families, and more comfortable arrangement of beds, benches or chairs, dishes and other household utensils, were to be distin guished. Christianity touches the whole life. On getting into an Oriental city one is impressed by the exceedingly varied and many-colored costumes. White is apt to predominate. Peoples in hot climates are inclined to adopt that color as a guard against the excessive heat. Here one sees persons clad all in white, from the white turban to the white pants on his legs, or the white cloth that by a peculiar folding cov ers the loins and hips, reaching to the knees. Even the breech-cloth of the coolies once was white. But this color is not absolute. The better classes often wear several colors. One will have a red or green tur ban, a purple or black jacket, and then white pants, with his feet encased in red slippers.

Women go in blue, white, or green chuddars. Bright colors, if white is not used, are apt to be assumed. With a street full of such costumes under a bright Indian sun the effect is fanciful. At any time one might think every body was out-doors, but on second thought he knows that the harem-kept women of the better classes are never seen on the street. Mingling with these moving masses of humanity are such grotesque carts and wagons that to stop and gaze at them is a Yankee's first impulse. Carts, carriages, cabs, all are strange. Now and then a tony carriage may roll by that was brought from England or even America, but nearly all are native. For eight annas, about sixteen cents, one can ride to almost any part of the city in a good four-wheeled cab, or " ghari," but al ways with a poor, miserable horse, for the Indians do not know how to take care of horses.

For two or four an nas, if you are democratic and independent enough to break your Western caste, you can have a ride a mile or two in a bullock-cart. Only remember that if some European sees you he will think you are lowering your self by riding in that way. But then for a Yankee such a ride for a trial is a fine one. I climb into one, cushioned, small, covered with white cotton-cloth, the driver perched forward on a bit of seat, as much sur prised as the European sitting near by in the street-car. But two other Yankees, both missionaries, share the odium with me. Away we go. The small, white, hump shouldered bullocks strangely yoked and harnessed to the diminutive cart, urged into a smart trot by the driver, are as sharp as horses in shunning other carts and the thronging crowds that part one way and the other at the cries of our Jehu.

If the bullocks do not go fast enough he can, from his place, easily catch one by the tail and give it a twist. Bullock-driving by voice, stick, and hand-pushing is a science. After all, if one rides quickly and safely and cheaply through a great city, why bother about the manner ? STREET SIGHTS IN BOMB A Y. 13 The shops to be seen in Bombay defy description as much as the masses of people in the streets. In the native quarters they are generally open entirely on the side toward the street, like a porch, and then in a space eight or twelve feet square are piled the goods, cloths, or food, or shoes, or chinaware, or iron, while the seller sits cross-legged or on his haunches ready to wait on you as you approach the front of his room. You do not enter, since the salesroom is three feet above the street, with no steps to go in, and there is no room for your great shoe-clad feet.

He is always barefooted. The stores in the newer parts of the city are more like those in America. In the native shops the work or trade of the occupant goes on openly, instead of being done in the back rooms, as among us. Tailoring, cooking, shoe-making, blacksmithing, and the like, progress. In front of a confectioner's I saw three native women pounding some spicery or other in a mortar. The pestles were each about four feet long and two inches in diameter, the mortar large and deep. Standing around it, they threw the pestles alternately into the mortar, by a deft rhythmic order, so one did not bother the other; and further, each woman changed hands at every throw, now the right, now the left, the whole combining to make an interesting sight. The many temples and mosques in Bombay show the In dians to be a religious race.

In addition to these, images and emblems are set up in little recesses in the walls of the streets and houses, being always strewn with red ocher and oil. In front of one small image in a temple con tiguous to the street, at which a young priest stood officiating, was a narrow tank into which the oil poured over the god ran, and this the priest, dipping out, sold again and again. Dirty, frowsy, hideous fakirs are every now and then to be met, willing to accept alms from the Western man as well as from their own peo ple. One kind of a religious beggar had a high conical hat made of peacock's feathers, and to attract to alms had a clanking instrument made of steel springs in one hand, with which he kept up a rude melody as he droned a nasal song. A mendicant bag hung over one shoulder to receive the gifts of the people.

Another had a conch-horn that he blew, which he said conveyed salvation to all who heard. I heard it! Once I saw a man who under some vow was measuring his length along the dust and dirt of the pavement. Several times I saw men going about with an instru ment on their shoulder like a rude harp with one string. They would utter some cry and twang this single tight string. Our missionaries told me it was a cotton-cleaner, and later I saw it in operation. The use of cotton in quilts, pillows, coats, pants, and caps is very extensive, and naturally it gets both dusty and hard packed. A pile of this packed or freshly washed cotton will need to be " picked," or fluffed, which the men with these instru ments do, by snapping this string most dexterously through a little of it at a time. The rhythmic hum of this tight string makes a noise heard half a block away.

I went into the Crawfurd Market, centrally located in Bombay, thus getting a glimpse of the multitudi nous productions of India. Here were oranges, sweet, delicious ones; pomegranates, apples, grapes, a few lingering mangoes, out of season and poor; pine-apples, pumalos, allied to the orange, but vastly larger; custard-apples, lemons, limes, bananas, and many other fruits. There were beautiful flowers; rich, creamy looking native sweetmeats; of vegetables, besides many STREET SIGHTS IN BOMB A Y. 15 that I did not know, were cucumbers, squashes, egg plant, potatoes, sweet-potatoes, and yams as large as pumpkins. A part of the great market was devoted to birds, where could be obtained pigeons, quails, par oquets, bulbuls, and others. One of the most interest ing kinds was the Java sparrows, hundreds of the lively little dark fellows, in a cage, brightly marked with blood-red, bronze, and other colors.

Liquor-shops, many and increasing, carry their curse more and more, in spite of Hindu and Mohammedan religious objections, into the homes and lives of these people. The blessings of Western civilization are at tended by cursings. Satan ever appears among the sons of God.

Letter II. Mt First Evening In Bombay

Having fallen into the hands of the missionaries, and telling them I wanted to learn all I could about their work here, they have already given me some fine views. First I went with A. W. Prautch to some street preaching, which is peculiarly hand-to-hand work among the natives. As we came to the corner where the agreement had been to hold the service we found that one of the native Methodist preachers was already speaking. Forty or fifty were gathered about him listening attentively to his earnest words. I noticed two tall, finely dressed Hindus listening, who wore on their foreheads the painted spot indicative of the devotee of some god or other in their pantheon. As the preacher ceased, to give way to another, the taller of the two Hindus spoke a few minutes, the import of whose words, as told me by Mr. Prautch, was that God, who made all things, as the preacher said, must have made sin, so if God was the author of sin he was not the good and holy God described.

To this challenge the next preacher, a native also, under the auspices of the Anglican Church, responded in proper arguments as interpreted to me. What surprised me was the absorbed stare of those who listened. Two or three with a peculiar kind of crooked saws on their shoulders stopped a while to hear, then passed on. Several women also stood during the whole half hour, eager listeners, while numbers of the group MY FIRST EVENING IN BOMBAY. 17 t-bout were boys from ten to fourteen, whose great dark eyes, wide open, showed that they were drinking in the truth. One man, with a big bundle of wood on his head, stood nearly all the time among the crowd. I noticed especially a group of three or four young men, sixteen or so, naked to their waists, standing eager to hear, their hands clasped over each other's brown shoulders in attitudes like some exquisitely fashioned bronze group, which, indeed, they much resembled.

It is found all through India that this street-preaching does much good. From there Mr. Prautch took me to the location of one of his schools, where a native teacher gathers for a couple of hours each day forty or more boys and girls, from six to ten years of age, to teach them to read in the native language. It was now getting dark, so I could but dimly see the people who thronged about us. Many of them were the children of the school; mothers also were there with babes resting on their hips, while a good sprinkling of men also came. The place was a narrow alley between low sheds covered with bamboo leaves and divided into sections a dozen or fifteen feet long, each section making a house for a whole family. It was a strange cluster of homes. We had scarcely arrived when we heard a man calling out loudly, and soon saw a devotee coming near us with a small square lantern, a conch-trumpet, a begging-tray, and a bag into which to put the things given him.

A con stant coming to him by one and another, mostly women out of the huts, was going on, almost all bringing some food, rice, or flour, which, as his tray was partly filled, he put into the bags hanging from each shoulder. Then, in response to these gifts and attentions, he marked the foreheads of all lie could reach with ■2 chalk. Mr. Prautch knew of these fellows, but, to enter on a talk, asked him what he marked the people for, and his answer was that he conveyed a blessing with his chalk-mark. A long discussion followed between the two men, quite a crowd gathering round, so that the falseness of such notions uncovered by Mr. Prautch was listened to by fifty or a hundred eager people. It was a wild, weird scene, under the tropical starlight, some palms and other trees growing not far away with their outlines sharp against the sky, the long, low huts swarming with human beings, the listening crowd gathered about us, the two men in eager discussion.

The devotee, hard pressed, blew a long blast on his conch, declaring that all who heard it would be saved. Finally, Mr. Prautch struck in and sang, the children whom he is having taught crowding close about him, joining heartily in singing the refrain, which was a sort of doggerel satire on this class of mendicants. The Hindu said that these people would do any thing for him, to prove which claim he said, " Give me a smoke of gongee," when a man brought him a big pipeful of that hateful drug, which he smoked with great ap parent satisfaction. Then he called for a bowl of water, which was quickly reached to him. Yet this teacher could not read a word, acknowledging this to Mr. Prautch, and also publicly confessing that he begged to get a living. As he sounded his conch and moved away Mr. Prautch preached Christ to the lingering crowds, sang a hymn with the children about Jesus, and we passed on.

Rearing some native music in a yard where Mr. Prautch was acquainted, we turned aside to find half a hundred people gathered about a miniature temple as large as a bushel-basket, in which and before it tire was kept burning. As some attended this fire a MY FIRST EVENING IN BOMBA Y. 19 man dressed as a woman danced and whirled about among the by-standers, keeping time by cries or hand clapping with the rude music made by the half dozen players. They were very demonstrative to Mr. Prautch and me, crowding about us to shake hands as we started to go away. From these manifestations of native religiousness wo went at half past seven to the ample rooms of Mr. Dyer, where a good-bye meeting was to be held among the English and Americans for Mr. Gladwin, who was about leaving for Ceylon on a mission in the interest of social purity.

Mr. Dyer and Mr. Gladwin have both been doing heroic work in this field, and there was need of it, for the Indian government drew a large resource from the licenses granted to brothels, but the revenue has been stopped by the English Parliament since the agitation begun by these two men. Mr. Gladwin was for several years in our mission work; then, leaving that, worked with the Salvation Army, but for three years has labored with Mr. Dyer in this new crusade. About forty gathered in Mr. Dyer's rooms, a psalm was read, songs of Christ were sung, prayers offered, short talks made, all in a free and hearty spirit, being most like simple, intense Methodist social meetings of any thing I have seen since leaving London. Faith, prayers, wide hopes in God's providences and help were urged and well illus trated.

Four of our missionaries were present. As we went home through the fragrance of tropical flowers and under the bright moon of an India sky I deemed the Anglo-Saxon race great and strong, partly good, noble, and grand, and partly hard, selfish, and brutal.

Letter III. Methodism In Bombay

The city is occupied by quite a net-work of stations. There are three English-speaking churches belonging to us founded by Bishop William Taylor, a Seaman's Rest, two stations of native work, and a brisk station of Woman's Foreign Missionary Society work. Yet in the hundreds of thousands here there are room and call for more work and workers. By location and common acquiescence the Grant Road Church is the center of our missions in this city. It was one of the Taylor foundation. Of this Rev. II. C. Stuntz is pastor, having come to India two years ago, and to this church last Conference. He and his family, consisting of a wife and two-year-old boy, are well and happy in their work. The church building is capable of seating four hundred and fifty hearers, was erected in 1878 by the people of Bombay, and is valued at 35,000 rupees.

Last year a parsonage was erected in the rear of the church at a cost of 8,000 rupees, not all paid yet, but borne by the local board. It is commodious and pleasant. There is a membership of sixty-five English-speaking people, with an average attendance of one hundred and fifty, a Sunday-school of seventy-five, and an English-speaking mission at Parel, a railroad suburb five miles out, where they gather every Tuesday evening. In this church are the usual social meetings of a home Methodist church. The ringing personal testimonies to present and METHODISM IN BOMBA Y. 21 full salvation heard here sounded good. Twenty have been converted since Conference. Besides their own support the three churches aid the local native work, contribute between one and two hundred rupees to our Missionary Society, and, including all missionary contri butions, give per capita about three dollars a member.

That is better than some New England churches do. The Fort Church was tlie first of the English-speaking churches organized under Bishop William Taylor, and so is sometimes called the cradle of Bombay Meth odism. It has a membership of sixty, in charge of Rev. E. F. Frease, who, with his wife and child, came to India last winter. They have worshiped in halls as they could get opportunities, but this year, having de cided to build, have leased ground of the Port Trust Company for fifty years, and have the foundations of their church, to the bottom of the lower window, now laid, built out of trap-rock furnished from the quarries close to the city. It is nicely planned, will seat three hundred and fifty people, with an ample parsonage above the church, and is located in an admirable part of the city, on the narrow neck of the island south ward.

It will cost $12,000, of which sum the Mission ary Society will pay $5,000, the remainder to be raised here. They have a membership of seventy, with an average attendance of one hundred and fifty, and a Sunday-school of sixty-five. Mr. Frease does street preaching by an interpreter; the prayer and class-meetings are well attended, and forty conversions have taken place since Conference. With a church of their own this vigorous society will prosper better than ever, and can then much better push the native work begun by Rev. W. E. Robbins, now carried on by Miss Thompson and others. The Mazagon Church is located in the south-eastern part of the city. It was organized sixteen years ago, among the English-speaking population, after William Taylor's campaign. It was expected that the population would fill in thickly close about it, but the cotton mills, soon after erected, being placed in another part of the city, these expectations were not realized ; so that it is left in rather a sparsely settled region.

Still, there is contiguous to this location a large section of the city in which no missionary work is done save by this church. A debt hung over the pretty church building for some years, which was finally paid by the Mis sionary Society to make it a chapel for native work. It will seat about one hundred and fifty. Contiguous to it the society has built a fine parsonage, recently fin ished, and into it the pastor, Rev. W. E. Robbins, has moved. The two buildings make a fine set of property. As members of the church there are only about half a dozen English-speaking people now con nected with it, and the same number of natives. The united attendants of both classes number about seventy. There are three day-schools in the vernacular, having together about seventy-five scholars, conducted by the church, and all these are organized as Sunday-schools.

One is at the church, the others away from it. There is also another Sunday-school three miles from the church, under its direction, in which there is a large at tendance; so that, all told, the church has about one hundred and fifty scholars under instruction on Sunday. Street-preaching is regularly done by native helpers in the vernacular, besides which they sell books, tracts, and gospels. A Bible woman is also kept at work doing the particular work that this class alone can accomplish. About once a month Brother Robbins goes out of the METHODISM IN BOMBA Y. 23 city to a point twenty miles away to preach to a fine gathering. The native work is in charge of Rev. W. W. Bruere and wife, with their head-quarters in the rented school building near the Grant Road Church, which latter they use for most of their services.

They have a membership, including Prautch's ingatherings, of one hun dred, counting probationers. They have quite a regular audience of about one hundred, four Sunday-schools — one in the church and three outside — with over three hundred scholars. They keep up one day-school of sixty boys, with teachers paid by our Missionary So ciety, besides a boarding-school in which they have thirty boarders with ten day-scholars. They keep up street-preaching in the vernacular at two places, besides much work done in the homes. I visited several of the Christian homes of these people and found little in them that would suit an American housekeeper. This work is very encouraging. Miss Power, a native, does much zenana work. The head teacher in the native school is a promising man from a low caste educated by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and is so eager to work for Christ that he has begged the privilege of Brother Bruere to hold meetings for the natives every night in the school-room ; so from six to eight he is there, talking, selling tracts and gospels, and is thus doing vast good.