Daughters of Darkness in sunny india

Front matter

THE CINCINNATI BIBLE ~- SEMINARY LIBRARY sented by Standard Publishing te June 1965

& _ sott Library ocrmati Bible College & Seminary <?00 Glenway Avenue FP O. Box 04320 Cincinnati, Ohio 45204-3200

DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS IN amNY. ISIN DaeA,

Preface

HIS little volume is sent forth in the

| hope that the true story of some of the

sufferings of India’s daughters may ap-

peal to the sympathetic hearts of the more fa-

voured daughters of lands where Jesus, the light of the world rules and reigns.

Every fact I have related has been recorded as faithfully as possible. The fancies are few and far between, but of necessity they have had to be introduced in making an harmonious whole from incidents culled from the missionary career of the late Rev. Edwin Lewis, Mrs. Lewis and myself.

In the benign silvery haired Mr. Burton discoursing to the shepherds by the wayside, and instructing Lingappa by night, many of my readers, especially those in Australia and New Zealand, will soon recognize the late Rev. E. Lewis of Bellary. His experiences that I have woven into my story have had to be written from memory of the thrilling tales that he himself related to me during the few months that I had the privilege of living near him and Mrs. Lewis, in my early days at Bellary, South India.

I jwould fain have lingered longer with my

8 Pretace friends and gone on to relate some stirring episodes in their lives after they set out in the New Way; but it was on behalf of the dark, ignorant, superstitious, easlaved Hindu and Mohammedan women that I first took up my pea, Many of their sorrows arise from sufferings that may not be touched upon in a book of this de scription, These suflerings are the natural out come of a land where the ruling deities are the creations of the minds of evil men wholly gives over to the works of the flesh,

If, by the reading of my little story, but one heart be stirred to a life of consecration for Christ and India, I shall rejoice to Know that my labour of love has not been in vain,

Brararcs M. HAssarnd.

Contents

THE SHAKING DevIL .

Asu TALeB

Tue Famity Desr

II

[: past ages, there lived in the Brahman vilto bathe in the cold water, eat his food, take a little rest, and then enter the city.

Accordingly, he descended into the lake, and washed his face; then he bathed. Suddenly he remembered that he had no purple stock leaves with which to worship God. After looking here, there, and everywhere, for the holy plant, he at last saw one growing by itself near a Mussulman’s mosque which was by the side of the garden. The sacred water which he carried in his Chumbu,! he poured over the leaves of that plant, and the muddy water from beneath it, he poured on his own head. Going round and round the plant, he folded his hands, and then plucked the leaves by twos and threes.

In the mosque there was a Mussulman who watched all that the Brahman did, and at last he came to him and said: “O Brahman, are you a fool? What do you mean by worshipping a plant?”

The Brahman replied, “O Mussulman, this is not a mere plant, it is my god, therefore I worship it.”

Then the Mussulman saying, “O Brahman, is this thy god; what can this do? It has not sufficient power to destroy the hair of my body,” kicked the plant with the shoe on his foot, pulled it up by the roots, rubbed it over his body, pressed it in his hands, and then threw it down. As he did this, he turned again to the Brahman,

1 A drinking vessel.

and saying in a mocking tone, “ Now do you see the power of your god?” went back to the mosque.

A merchant who was going by the mosque to trade in a village near that town, seeing all that the wicked Mussulman had done with the holy Tulsai plant, determined to deceive him. For this purpose, he laid the sack that was on his back under the tree, found a prickly plant bush, and began walking round and round it worshipping it openly in full face of the Mussulman.

He, seeing this, said to himself, this man is possessed with the same madness as that Brahman, so he came to the merchant and spoke to him, saying, “O merchant, what is this folly? Why are you going round this plant and worshipping it?”

The merchant replied, “O Mussulman, this is my family god; it is a very cruel god, therefore it must be worshipped with entire devotion.”

The Mussulman answered, “ Fie, fie, you all lack wisdom, what power has this leaf?” so rebuking the merchant he proudly pulled the plant from its root, rubbed the leaves over his legs and threw them away. But immediately, in great distress caused by the pricking and burning of the prickly leaves he spoke in very humble language. “Alas: alas, O merchant, your words are very true; your god is indeed a very cruel god. Oh! the pain that is all over my body. It burns me greatly, what must I do?”

The merchant replied, “O Mussulman, what canI do? As you have done wrong to my god, confess your fault to him, and promise to lay money at his feet for an offering. This money you may give to me, and I will pray my god to cure you.”

The Mussulman, greatly desiring to be free from his pain, gave to the merchant, for a votive offering, all the money that was in his pocket. The merchant took possession of the ten pagodas thus laid at his feet and with four pie, he bought a little castor oil which he smeared all over the Mussulman’s body, rubbing it well in, until the pricking and burning sensation stopped. He then made salaam to the Mussulman and went on his way.}

Thus a dark-skinned Indian maiden poured out her story in the soft liquid tones of the Kanarese people. Her audience was composed of village children, boys and girls with nothing to occupy their time, but to lie idly in the shadows cast by the grim, ugly walls of the idol temple close at hand.

Sundari had lately developed quite a faculty for story telling, and would often hold her companions spellbound, as she narrated to them, in her own expressive way, and with sundry additions of her own inventive genius, the stories that her father now and again repeated in her hearing.

He was the village carpenter, and as such, had

1 From the Katha Sanghra, to keep the village temples in repair. This work had been done by his father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather before him. It looked as though the succession was not to be continued in his family for as yet, the gods had given him no son.

As he made his daily round of the temples, he heard many of the stories that the priests recited, and having a retentive memory he stored them up until, upon some appropriate occasion he rehearsed them for the benefit of some of his neighbours.

Sundari, his daughter, was as pretty a little specimen of Eastern childhood as could be found amongst the village folk of Southern India. She was small and might have been any age from seven to ten or eleven, but neither her father nor mother had troubled to keep count of the years that had gone by since the disappointing news had been whispered from one to another that the carpenter Lingappa’s first-born was a daughter.

Her small brown face was surmounted by a mass of soft, shining, rippling strands of hair that looked as though it only needed the loving touch of her mother’s hand to coax it into the most bewitching of little curls.

Her mouth was sweetly sensitive, with the slightest suspicion of roguishness which was enhanced when her lips unclosed, and displayed a perfect set of pearly teeth that many a Western mother would have envied for her own delicately nurtured darling. There was a decided piquancy about her nose, and her black eyes shone and sparkled like bright stars in the darkest of midnight skies.

She carried her little figure erect for she had early learned to poise the water-pot upon her head, and now she could even carry her baby sister upon her hip, and balance the water-pot upon her head with her one disengaged hand. Village custom did not demand that she should be burdened with over-much clothing, and Sundari could remember quite well when her mother first folded a piece of her own sari around her, and she did not like it at all.

Even now, she sometimes envied the freedom of limb and action, that the tiny girls of the village had in their close-fitting brown-skin dresses with only a string tied round their waist.

One day, when her father had been into the market town of Ballapura, he had brought her back a small new sari which she had been quite proud to wear but that was a very long time ago. Now it was old and thin, and even ragged; for it had been washed often and worn much. The end that went over her head was almost like a fringe with the constant pulling up that she had given it, first to try and hide the long ropes of matted hair that had taken years to grow to the desired length, and then to cover her poor little head that felt so bare and miserable after her hair had been cut off and offered to a god whose image her father and mother constantly worshipped in a near temple.

She was only just learning to walk when her parents had vowed to present her hair to their particular deity in return for the blessing of a son. From the day the vow was made until the hour she was taken to the temple to have it cut off by the priest her hair had grown longer and longer, and as neither comb nor water was allowed to touch it, it became terribly matted with filth until it hung like thick, heavy, muddy ropes from her small head.

She was glad to get rid of the dirty hair; for it was dreadfully burdensome, but for weeks she had kept closely at home, feeling only too consciously ashamed of her greatly changed appearance. Soon, her mother noted with joy the soft pretty black hair that was covering her child’s little head once more, and during the past weeks had often washed it with Sekai,! and administered sundry anointings with cocoanut oil.

Sundari had no looking-glass to keep her informed of the rate of progress that her hair was making; but by continually passing her hand over her shaven head she soon found out that the bare skin could be no longer visible, and so she had again ventured to join her village companions, and to take up her old pastime of storytelling.

1 Soap nut,

“ The story of how the wily merchant tricked the Mussulman” was a favourite with all the children. Every time it was repeated, they seemed to enjoy it more than before, and never failed to greet with peals of derisive laughter the conclusion of how the Mussulman smarted in body and in pocket for his mocking propensities. These village children had only seen one Mussulman in all their lives, and to them he was the very man who had been so reckless as to smear the prickly plant on his bare body. They shared with their elders a keen dislike of this man who every now and again appeared in their midst, wearing long baggy undergarments, and a turban which was twisted in such a ridiculous fashion that an end of it hung like a tail down his back. He carried a book in his hand from which he read to them whether they cared to listen or not.

Sundari’s funny stories were much more interesting than the Mussulman’s long dissertations on god and his holy prophet Mahomet. But still even such an unwelcome intruder as the Mussulman brought a change into the monotony of their unchildlike lives; for these children of sunny India were more like grown men and women made small than like the children of Western lands and homes.

They had never learned how to play, or to run and jump with the happy freedom of unconscious childhood. Instead of skipping and dancing through the early years of their life, they began to toddle soberly, and then to walk with the gait of one quite grown up, and burdened with the weary weight of many years.

From their earliest infancy, the girls could carry the pots of water, and help with the simple cooking preparations: they learned to winnow the grain, roll the curry stuff, pick the tamarind, smear the floor with cow dung, gather together the wood, and make the bratties that constituted such a large part of the daily fuel, and then as they grew a little older, they had to go out into the fields with their fathers and mothers, and help in the work they did there, for these children were no high born Brahman girls to be kept in retirement and idleness.

While Sundari recited her story, the children had all been too absorbed in listening to the ever fascinating tale to hear the approach of some one who had slipped off his red leather shoes in order to keep from arousing the attention of the interested group, and so that he might appear as a sudden apparition in their midst.

As Sundari finished, she lifted up her eyes to note the approval that she fully expected to see on the faces of her audience, but her love of praise was doomed to disappointment, for instead of the faces of her companions her eyes rested upon some one who caused her to utter a startled cry of, “ The Mussulman,” and to make a desperate attempt to push past all the children and to disappear within the nearest door that stood open. All the others caught the note of fear in her voice and followed her example as quickly as their lazy habits would permit of, but not before they saw the Mussulman had arrested the flying feet of Sundari by catching at the child’s dirty cloth, and holding her a fast prisoner.

“T won't say it again, let me go, let me go,” screamed the excited child.

“ You are Sundari, the daughter of Lingappa,” said the man. “ Where is your father ?”

“Oh, I don’t know, let me go,” came the answer and with a mighty effort she was free, leaving one end of her rotten old sari in her captor’s hands.

It was only the work of a second to reach a place of safety, and the baffled Mussulman turned away, calling upon God to take vengeance upon the youthful sinners.

II THE SHAKING DEVIL

HE house in which Sundari took shelter

was one of the best in the village. The

blackness of age caused the quaint carving with which the woodwork was ornamented to stand out in bold relief. On each side of the door, there was a raised platform of mud and cement, called a pial, and on this Lingappa sat, or lay to rest after his day’s work was over. Here too, he entertained his neighbours and friends. The house pial was also a favourite spot with his wife, for it was so conveniently public to bring out her curry stone, and make her preparations for the forthcoming meal while she gossipped with the village women as they passed and repassed, or noted the condition of her neighbours’ cattle, buffaloes or goats as they wandered up and down the narrow openings which were dignified by the name of streets.

The carpenter’s house boasted two rooms or compartments. The best one was in the front, and was devoted to the use of two really fine buffaloes, and a few goats. The second room led out of the first and was only divided from it by a raised floor, and some beams placed at intervals like the posts of a fence, only that they reached from floor to ceiling. In this room the family ate, drank, slept, and lived generally.

This inner living room was devoid of windows, doors or chimneys, and was quite dependent for light upon the front door, and a few chinks in the thatch of the roof.

What was lacking in furniture was not noticed by the ordinary visitor, for furniture was not fashionable amongst the village folk of Lingapura. A mat to sleep on, and a few earthern chatties with three or four brass vessels was all that these simple people needed as household requisites.

The mingled odours from the little recess at the back where the cooking was done, the smell from the animals themselves, and from the piles of their food stored in all sorts of odd corners, to say nothing of that emitted from the dirty drainage that trickled slowly through the lower room, made up an aroma that defied classification under any known name.

After getting accustomed to the gloom of the dark unfurnished room, Sundari made her way to the darkest corner, where lay what appeared to be a heap of rags. Ass her light step crossed the mud floor, the rags seemed to move, and then to be in convulsions, but no sound was heard until the child had recovered her breath sufficiently to say, “ Alas! My mother, has the cold fever come to you again?”

At the sound of her voice, the rags moved more convulsively than ever, and a woman slowly raised herself to a sitting position. Her eyes were brilliant with fever, her long black hair was dishevelled, and as she tried to open her parched lips to speak, her teeth chattered violently with the fit of ague that was upon her.

“ Yes, yes,” she grasped out at last, “ the fever has come again. The demon has me in his strong grip. If we were only rich like the sowcar who swallows up all our money, we might hire the devil dancers to drive out this evil spirit. First it burns me, and then it shakes, and shakes, and shakes; oh! oh! oh! it will shake me to pieces,” she moaned as she tried to huddle her rags closer around her.

Sundari stood mute with pity, for she dare not speak in the presence of such supernatural power. Inwardly she quaked with fear lest the shaking devil that so unmistakably possessed her mother should seize upon her also.

After a few moments, the fit of ague spent itself and once more the mother raised herself and begged for a little water as she felt the fever coursing through her veins. The silent child moved to where a brass chumbu stood, but not a drop of the precious liquid did it contain.

“ My mother, there is no water; I must go to the well, and it will take long to get the chatty filled, for the hole is nearly dry.”

Poor fever stricken daughter of darkest heathenism, not a drop of cold water to cool your parched tongue, no gentle hand and loving voice to minister to you in this your hour of need. No, you must lie there in all your misery, while the fever demon shakes and tears you because your countrymen are like unto the cruel and senseless gods enthroned in their own evil and dark imaginations, and because those, who are able to bring to your soul good tidings of great joy, and to minister to your physical needs, sit at home in ease and comfort surrounded by all the luxuries that wealth can bestow, and enjoying to the full the privileges of their Christian womanhood!

Poor little Sundari felt too frightened to venture out into the sunshine where there was any chance of the Mussulman being still about, so she lingered as long as she possibly could before taking up her water pot. Meanwhile her mother had fallen into a light sleep, but woke again with another violent fit of shivering, and with it another accession of superstitious fear seized Sundari. Finally her fear of the fever devil overcame her dread of the Mussulman, and she braced herself up to take the walk for the much needed water. Her bare brown feet tripped lightly, though quickly, over the rough, uneven, narrow streets that led from her father’s house to the outskirts of the village, and soon she was speeding along the dusty road on her way to the water hole upon which the whole of the village depended for the supply of their daily needs.

This water hole was in the centre of a broad shingle bed, which in the month of July ought to have been a wide expanse of shining, flowing water, but for two years the Monsoon had failed. Day by day heavy clouds had banked up in the sky, but the much wished for, and apparently near rain had ended in a few drops only, and then the wind had freshened from another quarter, and driven the clouds in an opposite direction, leaving an azure sky and the sun pouring forth his scorching rays until every green blade had dried up.

One by one the water holes in the bed of the river had run dry, till in this second year of drought, there was only this one hole left. Round it, all day long, sat the patient women and girls, waiting their turn to dip their half cocoanut shell into the muddy liquid, and so fill their household chatty. It was marvellous how that one water hole held out and supplied the hundreds who daily dipped into it.

With what looked very much like stolid indifference the villagers continued dipping up until scarcely a thimbleful remained as evening came on, but the next morning would be sure to find a fresh supply had percolated through the dry shingle.

When Sundari reached the hole, seven women were there before her, and so she put down her heavy pot and took up her favourite attitude upon the shingle. The child sat with her chin down on her knees, which she clasped with her hands, and watched the movements of her companions with her shining black eyes. Ever andanon more women joined the group, and as each one knelt by the hole, filled her pot and went away, another quickly took her place fearful of losing her turn. It was the idle ones who indulged in various scraps of conversation to wile away the time.

«“ My master went to the market yesterday to sell the limes; they are the last from our garden, and so small that he only got two annas for fifty. Oh! why does the rain not come so that the trees may grow, and we can sow our grain?” said a healthy looking girl of about sixteen. Her water pot lay on the shingle at her feet, and two restless children clung to her sari.

“Of course your limes won’t grow,” retorted an older woman, to whom the remark had not been addressed. “ Your master lingers in the market-place listening to the white Dhorai’s words about another Mahadeva whom we do not worship. Lingappa, the carpenter, saw him there only yesterday.”

“My master does pooja every day, and offers the best of our limes to Basavana,’ averred the first speaker. Sundari was on the alert, for she fancied the two women were on the verge of a quarrel, and her bright eyes sparkled in anticipation of what the result might be, but dropped as the next words fell upon her ears. “ Your master talks to the Mussulman, and invites him into the house to read his holy book.”

“ Your mother-in-law’s nose turns up, and her legs are crooked,” was the spiteful reply. The girl’s anger was now fully aroused and she could not keep back her most poisoned arrow. Catching up her twin boys she screamed out so that all might hear her, “ Ha, ha, I have two sons, and you, why you are that miserable creature, a childless wife. You have tried the gods all round to give you a son, and now perhaps your master is trying what the Mussulman’s god can do.” *

The women heard, as she intended they should, and they greeted her words with peals of derisive laughter at the expense of the childless woman, whom they all knew to be burning with jealousy when she looked at the fine healthy boys of her young neighbour.

The mother of the twins moved to the hole as she spoke, and soon became absorbed in her occupation, and when she had filled her chatty, Sundari took her place.

It was weary work, but she persevered until the large vessel was full, when she lifted it gracefully upon her head, and rose from her lowly attitude to carry home that which had cost her both time and labour.

Was it that the pot was unusually heavy, or did her foot trip in some of the loose shingle, or was it the sight of the Mussulman in the distance that caused her to overbalance herself and fall

‘forward spilling every drop of the precious water that she had scooped up with such infinite pains.

Meanwhile another, and yet another woman had approached the hole, and the child had to again fall into the ranks of the waiting ones, for she knew it would be useless to return home without the necessary water. Her bright eyes filled with tears as she thought of all her labour spent in vain; and then her heart beat more rapidly as she remembered that her accident had prevented her coming face to face with the very man who must have heard the story she had been telling earlier in the afternoon, at the ocbeuse of him, and his fellow caste men.

The Mohammedan emissary of the tich money lender in Ballapura went on his way all unconscious of the fear the sight of him had aroused in the mind of the small brown maiden who had attracted him, first of all by her ready flow of language, and then by her lively gestures that gave such piquancy to the narrative she was relating.

He determined to arouse the curiosity of his master, by telling him of the little village girl. He was rich, and could afford to increase the women of his harem, and to indulge his taste for pretty women and girls. Besides if his desires lay in the same direction as the holy prophet’s, why should he not indulge them even as the prophet of old did. As he communed thus with himself, he came to the conclusion that the lovely

Ayesha, upon whom Mahomet had lavished such a wealth of tender love, must have been bright and beautiful as the village owner of the sparkling eyes, and soft curling hair. He imagined that if he succeeded in introducing this new childish beauty to his master’s notice, there would probably be a good number of rupees to add to his own slowly-increasing hoard. He was ambitious to become a money-lender himself, but ‘his difficulty was to get the capital to start with. Rolling in wealth as his master was, he paid his agents only the minimum wage for the maximum amount of work. The man’s cunning eyes gleamed, as in fancy he saw himself enriched by a great stroke of diplomacy in bringing to the notice of Abu Taleb, the money-lender, the fresh young loveliness of Sundari, the daughter of Lingappa, the recognized carpenter of the village of Lingapura.

And Sundari, the little maid sitting so patiently on the shingle bed of the river was quietly allowing little pearly drops to course down her dark cheeks as a relief to the undefined fear that held her in as close a clutch as the shaking devil did her mother.

Ill

ABU TALEB r “HE great heat of the day had passed, and the loungers who crowded the bazaars from early morning until late at

night were thankful for a little respite from the burning rays of the tropical sun. Some of the bazaar vendors were even thinking of closing up for the night, and finding their way to such mysterious haunts as did duty for a home.

But Abu Taleb was not one of this number. His place of business was always open until a very late hour, for he studied the convenience of his patrons who were not customers in the ordinary sense of the word.

Almost hourly they came, for a little private audience with the exacting money-lender, and they seldom departed without bowing meekly to the great man’s terms and accepting the usurious rate of interest for the small loans he negotiated.

Sometimes he dealt in a very large way of business, and advanced to his clients some thousands of rupees, but such loans were only for those who could give him good security for his money. Landed property, and family jewels he considered his best investments.

39°

Abu Taleb 31

Now, as the shades of evening were drawing on, he reclined on the somewhat soiled white pillows that did duty for a seat and a lounge, and waited without the least sign of impatience for the next call upon his attention.

Abu’s pale complexion and raven hair were enhanced by the bewildering gorgeousness of his picturesque Eastern costume. Over his wide, embroidered white trousers he wore a snowy muslin shirt which reached to his knees. The starched cuffs were fastened with diamond links ; jewels also flashed from the breast of his outer garment which was scarcely concealed by a beautiful yellow satin waistcoat, elaborately embroidered in silver. On his head, in place of the turban of outdoor wear, was perched a jaunty little skull-cap of violet velvet literally covered with a profusion of golden embroidery.