The Children of India. Written for the Children of England, by one of their friends

Part I

— THEIR SURROUNDINGS. CHAP. I, Theie Country 11 n. Theie Homes 17 in. Theie Religion 24 iv. Holy Places 31 v. Caste 35 vi. Losing Caste 41

PART IL

— THEMSELVES, i. When they abe Babies .46 n. Little Hindu Gibes 51 in. Little Hindu Boys . .56 iv. A Hindu "Wedding 61 v. Husbands and Wives 71 vr. Sickness and Death 80 vn. "Widows 84

Part III

— GODS AND FESTIVALS. I. The Dubjah Potah 90 n. Kali 94 HI. JUGGENNATH 100 rv. Otheb Feasts 103

Part IV

— OTHER RELIGIONS. I. The Mohammedans 108 n. A Mohammedan "Wedding 116 in. The Paksees 120 iv. The Santals 123 v. Sikhs, Fakies, and Bkahmos CONTENTS. VI

Part V

— WORK AND WORKERS CHAP. PAGE I. What is a Missionary? 1S5 n. Missionaries in India 138 in. The Mission Schools 144 rv. The Story of one of their Scholars 149 v. Mothers at School 159 vi. The Queen's Story 169 vii. What shall ave do ? 173 vni. And avhat next ? 177 rx. What Girls can do 180 Good-bye 186 Appendix 189 M£T OF IkklfgTRftTIONg. A Hindu Girls' School Frontispiece 2 The Sacred Cow of the Hindus 13 A Hindu Hut 22 Doing Pujah to Tools 26 A Hindu Idol Shop 28 Benares 33 Low Caste Women 37 Hindu Children 47 Hindu Girls 54 Hindu Wedding — A Midnight Procession 67 A Hindu Lady's Carrlage ' ....... . 72 A Hindu Gentleman's Carriage ' 73 The Goddess Kali 95 Temple of Kali ' 97 The Car of Juggennath 101 The God Ganesa 105 A Mohammedan School . . . . . ... . . 113 A Mohammedan Wedding 117 A Group of Santals 125 The Golden Temple at Amritsar 130 A Hindu Fakir 132 A Writing Lesson 146 Zenana Work 161 1 Reprinted by permission from the " King's Message."

Tip 6r?IIiD^El] OF I1]DI7L WHAT I£ IT ABOUT? little while ago I was sitting in a room where two ladies were talking together about books. One of them asked the other if she could tell her of a nice book for children about missions. Xow, the first page of this book tells you that I am a friend of children ; so as soon as I heard that these two ladies were talking about children, I began to listen. A long time passed before the answer was given. The lady did not like to say no ; but after thinking a good while, she was obliged to say that she had never heard of such a book anywhere. Then they began to talk about other books, and I put away the thoughts that had been coming into my head about the children, in a safe corner of my mind, to keep for a little while till I could find some more to put with them.

There were only three of them at first. Shall I tell you what they Avere ? 1st. There are very few books for children about missions. 2nd. There ought to be more. 3rd. Somebody must write a new one. THE CHILDREN OF INDIA. But then people say, " Three are no company ; " so these three thoughts could not get on well together till I found number four, and number four came very soon after. Why should not you be the somebody ? The four managed to get on without any quarrels, as soon as I promised I would be the somebody. Then I had to find a great many more thoughts to go with these four. The first was that the book should be all about missions and children — all sorts of missions and all sorts of children; but then, before very long, I found out that if I had to write a book about so many places, and so many people, there would have to be so many thoughts that I could never find room for them all in my head, which is not a very big one, and that even if I could, you would never find room for them in yours.

So I thought that perhaps you would like it better if I were to Avrite about only one set of missions, and one set of children, at any rate to begin with, and then, if you like this book, I may some day write you another. Then the rest of the thoughts came very fast. You will find most of them further on in the book. I need only tell you a few more now. As it is to be a book for little people, it must be a little book, full of little chapters, made up of little words, so that you will never have to say, " Please, mamma, what does this word mean ? " The only things that I hope will not be little, are the things that you will do when you have read to the end ; but I will tell you what these are in the last chapters, because if I tell you now, you may forget before you have finished. Another of my thoughts (I wonder whether you will like it) was that this book must not be a story book.

When I was a little girl, and used to read many stories, I remember, if the story was a very nice one, it used to make me so sorry to think it was not true ; and if it was a sad story, then I was glad it was not true, and forgot it as soon as I could. Now some of the things in this book are going to be very sad, and some very nice ; but everything is going to be true, because I do WHAT IS IT ABOUT 7 9 not want you to forget any of it, nor to think it does not much matter. It is going to be about things that do matter very much, and the sad things Avill nearly all be things that you can help to make less sad, even if you are only tiny boys and girls. You Avill find very few stories, and I will tell you why. I want you not only to read and remember it all, but to think about it all. I remember something else about myself when T was a little girl.

Perhaps I was a very funny little girl ; but then I should not wonder if a few of you who read this book are funny little people too. If ever I had a book that was partly stories and partly not, I used to pick out the stories, and skip all the rest. Now I do not want you to skip any of this book, and so, you see, I have not written a preface, for I fancy most little people are so funny that they do not care for the preface ; and I am going to put in so few stories, that if you skip all that is not story, you will have to skip very nearly all the book. But I hope that when you get to the end, you will say it has been as interesting as a story

Chapter I

— THEIR COUNTRY. o begin Avith, India is a very large country, I expect you think England is very big, and that it would take a Arery long time to go all over it ; but England is quite a tiny place compared with India. If you were to divide India into eighteen pieces, each piece by itself would be bigger than England, Wales, and Scotland all put together. Yet very nearly all this great country belongs to England, and is ruled over by our own Queen ; and that is one reason why English children ought to know all about it, and about the people who liAre there. You will haATe learned all about the mountains, and rivers, and capes, and bays, and gulfs in the geography, I expect, or if you have not, you will very soon ; at any rate, if you look there, you will find them all, so I will not tell you about them here.

There is one large river, which you had better find in the map before you go any further, because you will read a great deal about it in this book ; I mean the Ganges, which the Hindus think a great deal of. They say it came from the sweat of one of their gods, named SiAra, of whom you will read more by-and-by. The reason the Ganges came to be worshipped is that it makes all the country fertile through which it flows; therefore the river itself, and all the toAvns built on the banks of it, are considered very holy. I will only tell you the names of some of the towns now : Benares, the most sacred of all ; Allahabad, Juggennath, Muthra, and Hurdwar. A great many pilgrims are constantly going to these places. The water from the EiA-er Ganges is taken to all parts of India, and used to purify people who have been defiled ; it is also sprinkled on the bride and bridegroom at a wedding, and on the dead.

The goddess who is now said to live in the Ganges is not supposed to have been always there, but to haAre come from another river. The Brahmins say that, most likely, before Arery long she will move again to another place, and then Benares will no longer be so sacred. Of course, as the country is so large, there are very different people in different parts, speaking a great many different languages, and having different customs ; even when the same language is spoken, there are such varied ways of speaking it (dialects we call them), that the people cannot understand each other, so that it takes the mis sionary a long time to learn to preach to the Hindus ; sometimes even in the same toAvn there are two or three different languages spoken. The Hindu towns are, in many ways, unlike English ones.

In the large tovvns, especially Calcutta, there are a great many English people, who live in houses like those we have in England, and dress as we do at home. But the houses that the Indian people live in are so different that it will take a whole chapter to tell you all about them. In every large town there are many temples for idol worship. Some of them are very grandly carved and ornamented. In the North-West they are not so ornamental as in other parts. Then their carriages are very different too ; and instead of shops, they buy all their things at bazaars — not what Ave mean by bazaars in England ; but a place like a market, sometimes open and sometimes covered, where people go to buy whatever they want, and merchants meet each other and talk about their business, so that a bazaar is a THEIR COUNTRY. 13 very noisy, busy place.

Very often missionaries go there to preach, because if the people will not come to them, they must go to the people ; and in the bazaar there are always large crowds, and some are sure to listen. There are many animals in India that you never see in this country, unless you go to a wild beast show. On the mountains in the north of India there are wild donkeys and mules, and tiny wild horses only thirty The Sacred Cow of the Hindus. inches high. There are bears, and Avolves, and boars, jackals and hyenas, tigers and crocodiles, leopards and panthers, but no lions, except a few in Gujarat. The Bengal tiger is a very fierce creature ; it can spring a long way at a time, and so it can easily catch other animals and tear them to pieces. There are many crocodiles in the Ganges. Years ago, before India belonged to England, mothers and fathers used to take their little children and throw them into the river to please the gods, and then the crocodiles used to eat them ; but now the people are not allowed to do such things.

Many of the animals in India are looked upon as sacred. Oxen and cows are worshipped as if they were gods, especially the humped cow, Avhich is said to be so holy that its touch will take away all sin. Of course, if cows are so holy, nobody must eat them, though the Hindus believe that if a man dies in Benares, he will go to heaven even if he has eaten beef. Monkeys are sacred animals, too ; in some places there are temples full of them, where people go to worship. In the streets of all Indian towns are found quantities of cranes ; they are very useful birds, for they keep the streets clean by eating all the rubbish that can possibly be eaten, so they do the work of scaven gers. Crows are thought a great deal of, too, and no wonder, for inside them are supposed to live the souls of Hindu men and women who have died, so if a man shot a crow, he might be shooting his mother. for anything he knew.

They are allowed to fly in and out of the houses just as they like, and to help themselves to anything they want. Once a year the crows have a great feast, called ' ' Ancestors' dinner," when the people pray to their dead relatives to come and eat the good things they have got ready for them. There are a great many snakes and serpents in India, too, as there generally are in very hot countries, and many of them are so poisonous that one bite will, kill a man. One of them has a very long name, which, put into English, is the " eight-step serpent," because if one of them bites a man, he will not be able to walk eight steps before he falls down dead. The snakes creep about everyAvhere — into the ovens, into boxes, and baskets, and chests, under the pillows, between the sheets, where ever they can find a corner, so people have to look out for them very sharply ; they are all sorts of sizes, from a few inches to twenty feet in length.

Some of the Indians worship them because they are so afraid of them. I must not forget to tell you about the weather, because it THEIR COUNTRY. 15 makes such a difference to the missionaries. The year is divided into three seasons. 1. The hot season, AA'hich begins in March and lasts till June. 2. The rainy season, from June to September. 3. The temperate season, from September to February. It is only this last season that is at all healthy for people Avho have been used to live in Europe. In the hot weather it is so hot that English people cannot do anything, except ATery early in the morning, and quite late in the evening. They very often have the fever, so that there are few English gentlemen and ladies who do not get ill if they stay in India many years. There are a great many insects, as there generally are in hot countries ; the worst of all are the mosquitos, Avhich sting so dread fully that it is very difficult to go to sleep at night.

The natives smear themselves all over Avith oil to keep them off, and the English people have a particular kind of curtains to their bed, which they draw tight all round, in hopes of keeping them out ; but they generally manage to get in somehow. Another thing the English people have in their rooms in the hot weather is a very large fan, called a punkah. It is a light frame of wood covered with calico, with a short curtain fastened to it ; the frame is hung from the ceiling by ropes, another rope is passed through the wall to a servant outside, who pulls it backwards and forwards, and so makes a little air in the room. They keep on doing this all day and all night. I believe some of the men are so cleArer, that they can go to sleep and yet not stop pulling ; but sometimes they do stop, and then, even if the English people are asleep, they feel the heat directly, and wake up ; so you can fancy hoAv hot it must be.

Of course English people cannot go out of doors in the hot part of the day. All that long time from March to June there is never a cloud to be seen in the sky, nothing but scorching sunshine ; and even when the rain does come, it is very unhealthy for Europeans, so that often a missionary who has been at work in India, teaching the people and preaching to them, begins to feel very ill, and, in hopes of getting better, goes up to a house in the mountains, where it is not so hot ; then, perhaps, he gets a little better ; but when he gets back to the plains he is ill again, and then the doctor tells him he must not stay in India any longer, he must come home ; so he comes back to England. Sometimes, after he has been in England a little while, he feels so much better that he is able to go back to India ; but very often the climate has done him so much harm that he is obliged to stay at home always, and sometimes he does not get better even at home.

So you see how much a missionary must love Jesus, to be ready to go and live in India and teach the people, even if he knows it may kill him. That is like Jesus Himself, is it not ? He wanted so much to save us, that He came to live in a strange country, and to die for our sakes. Do you remember who it was that said, "I am ready to die for the name of the Lord Jesus ? " It was a missionary ; but not in India. Find out where the words come from, and who said them, and put, it in here ( ).

Chapter II

— THEIR HOMES. ndian houses are not, a bit like those you live in. In England, when a man marries, he goes away from his father's house, and gets a house of his own, and he and his wife live in that. But in India the sons liATe with their fathers, even after they are married. Sometimes a son is obliged to leave home because he gets work in another place, and sometimes one of the sons quarrels with the others, and then he goes away and starts a house of his OAvn. The wives often persuade their husbands to leave the father's house, if they do not get on well with the other ladies. I will tell you all about a rich man's house in India ; of course, the poor people do not have such large ones. Instead of being built to face the road, like our houses, or with a garden in front, there is a large square court in the middle, and the house is built all round it, with the windows looking into the court, so that the part facing the street is only bare wall.

Pound three sides of the house there are two Arerandahs — an upper and a lower, with a great many rooms opening on to them. The lower rooms are used for storehouses, coach houses, and places of that kind, and for the men servants, of whom there are a great many. The upper rooms are for the gentlemen. If you went into the up-stairs rooms, where the gentlemen live, you would find them very 17 B nicely furnished, but very dusty. Hindu rooms are always dusty and full of cobwebs, for the Hindus think it is very lucky to have plenty of spiders, and that it is a great sin to disturb them ; so the spiders have fine times, and make themselves quite at home every where, without any fear of being disturbed. But although you would find plenty of gentlemen and plenty of spiders, all enjoying themselves very much, and little boys and big boys and little girls running about playing and laughing, there is something you would not find if you went into every room up-stairs and down-stairs.' You would not be able to find one lady or one big girl ; you would begin to think that little girls always die in India, and never grow up at all — at least, rich little girls, for you would have passed plenty of poor women and girls in the street ; but no rich ones.

Why, whateArer has become of them all ? I expect, if you were there, you would go to one of the servants and say, " Please, I have seen the gentlemen, and the big boys, and the little boys, and the tiny girls ; now mayn't I see the ladies and the big girls ? " Now I cannot tell exactly what the servant would say to you. If you are a little boy, he would say something like this : '' Oh dear no ; no men or boys are ever allowed to see an Indian lady, unless she is their mother or their sister, or some very near relative ; " and howeArer much you coaxed, you would never be allowed to have even one little peep at the ladies. But suppose you are a little girl, and had your mamma with you, then perhaps the master of the house Avould, as a great favour, let you see his ladies. He would not be able to take you himself, for if he did, the ladies would hear the sound of his feet on the stairs, and they would be so frightened at the very idea of a man looking at them, that they would all run away as fast as ever they could, and hide in their bed-rooms to get out of his way.

So the gentleman would either have to tell you how to find your own way, or he would have to send a poor woman to show you. Then you would go to the fourth side of the court, for you remember you have only been told about three sides yet. THEIR HOMES. 19 On this fourth side you first come to a large room Avith the roof raised into a dome ; that is the temple or gods' house for the family, which is generally full of pictures and images of gods, and plenty of chandeliers. This is the place where all the worship is carried on. Praying and giving presents to the gods is called in India doing pujah — you will often come to that word again, so remember what it means. On one side of the temple there are more verandahs, and if you look up to the top one you will see that part of it is separated from the rest, and that it has a screen of cane -work in front of it, so that the people who sit there cannot be seen by the people in she other parts of the temple.

Look again, and you will see that there are no chandeliers there, so that whoever is behind that screen must be quite in the dark ; of course they can see into the light, but nobody in the temple could see them even through the cane-work, because it would not be light enough. You will guess before very long what this place is for, so I will not stay to tell you now, but will let you go on a little farther, and see what else you can find. This dark part of the verandah opens into a passage ; go along that, and you will come to another square building with a court in the middle, something like the one you saw when you first came to the house, only not so large and not so nice. Look into the lower rooms first ; you will see they are full of pots and pans ; and if you look all about, I expect you will find some Aregetables and some curry, and plenty of rice and sweets ; you will soon guess that this is the kitchen, and so it is.

You will be sure to find some servants there, and very likely a grand lady cooking the dinner, for all the Hindu ladies know how to cook. But we won't stay in the kitchen to-day ; we shall find out some more about the cooking by-and-by. We want to get up-stairs now, and after looking about for some time, we find a little narrow stair case — quite dark. We climb up, and find ourselves on another verandah, with a few doors and little windows with bars to them, too b high up for you to see out, opening into it ; and now at last we have got at the women and girls, hidden away up here altogether, where they can see nobody, and nobody can see them ; out of sight and, generally, out of mind. They may laugh or cry, quarrel or kiss, eat and sleep and talk, be well or ill, and sometimes even die, without anybody caring very much ; and whatever happens in the world, or in the town, or in the street, or in the gentlemen's part of the house, they know nothing about it.

There they are, shut away by themselves all the year round, from the time they are born, or a few years after, to the time they die. You will find out a great deal more about them, which will make you more and more glad you are not an Indian child, and your mother is not an Indian lady. But it was not the ladies we came to see so much as the place they live in — so we had better take another look round. You will have guessed by this time that the dark gallery in the temple is where the ladies go to do their pujah. You will find no nice furniture in the ladies' rooms, like what you saw in the gentlemen's ; no tables or chairs or sofas ; no pictures except of dreadful gods and goddesses painted on the walls themselves, and no books. Perhaps you will find a bedstead with a mat on it, and there may even be two or three hard pillows ; but most likely not.

There will be a box in one corner for the ladies' clothes, and a brass cup for them to drink out of, and generally that is all. Not quite, though, for running about under the bedstead, on the box, anywhere, you will find hens and chickens and dogs, who live there with the ladies. So you may imagine how dirty everything is ; and remember, this is not a poor man's house, but a rich man's, and these ladies, living in this dirty, close, bad-smelling place, are the wives and children of the richest men in India. The rooms where they live form what is called a zenana. So now you know what people mean when they talk about zenana missions. Now we must go doAvn into the court again ; but Ave have not quite A Hindu Hut. THEIR HOMES. 23 finished yet ; we shall find another passage down there, leading out of the court, right under the house, to a piece of ground with a high wall all round it, and in the middle there will be a pond ; the water in it comes from a spring, which stops running in the very hot dry Aveather, and then the pond gets green and muddy, and stays like that till the rain begins : this is all the Hindu ladies know of a garden.

In .a very few of these courts there are two or three trees by the side of the pond ; but there are some ladies in India, even old ones, who never saw a tree in their lives. The pond is the ladies' bath ; they go to it every day, for though their rooms are so untidy, Indian women themselves are very clean ; it is one of the laws of their religion that they must bathe every day. The very particular ones do it twice every day, and change their clothes twice, too, or else they are not thought clean enough to do anything for their husbands. Some Hindu ladies have to begin this shut-up life when they are six years old ; but in some parts they are not quite so strict, and do not shut them up till they are married. Their relatives are beginning now to let them go out more and mix with other people Avhen they get quite old.

The poor people's houses are very small and dirty, and the people who live in them are very dirty, too, and yet all of them haATe quanti ties of jewels that they wear when they want to look very fine. If you met a poor Hindu woman out of doors on a feast day, you Avould think at first she was a rich lady, and would never suppose she lived in a hut like that shown in the picture.

Chapter III

— THEIR RELIGION. think I must tell you about this next, as all the rest of the book would be very hard to understand if you did not know about the religion. It makes all the difference to a nation Avhat god they worship, and especially in India, where the religion of the people shows itself in everything — in the way the houses are built, the kind of food they eat, the clothes they wear, almost everything they do all day and every day. If you went into a house in India, you would find out, almost as soon as you got there, what was the religion of the people that lived in it, even if they did not tell you. I think those of us who haAre really given ourselves to Jesus may learn something from this. People ought to be able to see our religion, too, and to know that we love Jesus even before we tell them, by seeing that we are always trying to please Him, and giving up all the things that we know He does not like ; so if you are one of God's little boys or girls, ask Him to make you at least as true to Him as the people in India are to their false gods, so that those who know you may very soon find out that you are serving God.