Intimate glimpses of life in India; a narrative of observations, educational, social, and religious, in the winter of 1899-1900,

Front matter

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PRINCETON, N? J.

Purchased by the Hamill Missionary Fund.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Invitation and the Journey ... 11

II. Beautiful Bombay 23

Chapter I

THE winter of 1899-1900 was one of uncommon, though in several respects of extremely painful, interest to the observant traveller in India. The ravages of plague and famine were over extended areas more severe and destructive than evep'Tefore under British rule; and the Government was being hampered and even thwarted in its efforts to mitigate the distress of the multitudes, chiefly by their own gross and absurd superstitions. Many of the people believed that the plague had been brought upon the nation through the intercession with the gods of Queen Victoria in her wrath at the defilement of her statue on the maidan or public plaza of the city of Bombay. When their relatives were taken away, after their sickness had been concealed until they were in dying condition, to the segregation camps, and of course taken never to return, they credited the rumor that the British had used their blood to prepare cement for the railroad bridges. Inoculation they regarded as the crafty and cruel method of poisoning the surplus population. In the efforts to feed the starving, the usurious native rice merchants were no insignificant obstacle. For they were exporting food, or holding it at high prices for home consumption, while the Government and missionaries were urging, quite properly, that succor should be sent by the shipload from England and America.

To one with insight the political situation was also rendered intensely interesting by the fact that the restlessness and dissatisfaction of many, even of the more educated of the native classes, were being increased by a not very accurate knowledge of the way in which another Oriental people, the Japanese, had forged ahead to a place in the front rank of nations. Why should not India — they were asking themselves — in like manner show herself the equal or the superior of the Western peoples ; and so quite capable of governing herself without their assisttance, not to say interference? This inquiry seemed more timely and reasonable, and without doubt was more insistent, because just then Great Britain was showing to the world an unexpected weakness and lack of preparation in military matters in its conduct of the war with the Boers.

In educational affairs, too, there were signs of the ferment of new opinions and new demands everywhere to be detected by the watchful eye, even where they were not made more obvious by being interpreted in the form of confidential conversations. Much of the existing system, in its production of a large surplus of “half-baked” babus, who were competing and clamoring for easy government positions, was coming to be regarded as a failure in the more thoughtful native as well as foreign circles. And inasmuch as new ideas were flowing in from abroad, and numerous efforts at reform were breaking forth from the breast of Hinduism itself, and the practices of caste were succumbing to pressure from economic and material changes (for how shall different castes, or those proud of caste and the veriest outcasts, avoid contact when crowded together in a third-class railway car?), opinions and customs on matters of morals and religion were in a most interesting state of transition.

But although the writer had unusual opportunity for gathering impressions in all these fields, lying at that time, as they were, more or less exposed to the eyes of any intelligent and interested observer, the things revealed to him of this sort alone might seem to those who have travelled in India scarcely worthy of being narrated at any such length as to fill a sizeable book. Let it then be frankly — however modestly — affirmed that many of the observations and experiences about to be described are decidedly unusual, and some of them are quite unique. This quality they possess on account of the nature of the invitation which took the writer to India, and of its entirely unexpected and antecedently incalculable sequences.

The story of the invitation to spend the winter lecturing in India — its nature and how it came to be given — needs, then, briefly to be told. Most of this story was wholly unknown to me until after the invitation had been received and accepted; and, indeed, after I had been for some time in the country. The only inkling of any such thing in prospect came in the form of a request from Professor Maher, the celebrated teacher and writer on psychology and philosophy at the Jesuit College in Stonyhurst, England. His letter asked that he should be provided with some favorable notices of my books to send to a friend in India who wished to know more about them with a view to a possible use of them there. With this request my publishers were, of course, entirely willing to comply. I learned afterward that Father Bochum, professor of philosophy in St. Francis Xavier College in Bombay, had refused to teach the courses in this subject required by the Government University, on the ground, as he explained to me, that he and his colleagues came to India in behalf of Christian truth, and could not reconcile it with their mission to inoculate their pupils with what they regarded as the poisonous doctrines of Spencerian agnosticism and infidelity. But this refusal was an embarrassing thing for both the College and the University. For St. Francis Xavier was a favorite college with the Parsees of Bombay; and the Parsees, in comparison with their numbers, were much the most wealthy, well-educated, and public-spirited of the citizens of the Bombay Presidency.

Moved by this conviction, and wishing to get his College out of its embarrassing position, Father Bochum had urged in the committee on curriculum the substitution of some of my books, especially the Physiological Psychology and the Philosophy of Mind, for the works of Mr. Spencer. It should be explained in this connection that the Government Universities in India are not teaching institutions at all. The University sets the curriculum, holds the examinations, grants the degrees, and presides dt the greater functions which are held in “Convocation Hall.” The affiliated colleges do the teaching, and prepare and present the candidates for the various degi'ees. And, indeed, this is the only feasible course in India; for }7ou cannot mix Muhammadans, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and various Christian sects, not to speak of “agnostics and infidels,” in the dormitories, class-rooms and mess of a common college life.

The chairman of the committee on curriculum, who was an Englishman and an avowed disciple of the Spencerian system, did not favor Father Bochum’s proposal and demanded to know, “Who is this Professor Ladd; I never heard of him.” “So much the worse for you,” retorted the doughty churchman, and forthwith wrote a letter to his friend, Professor Maher, begging material that should be of help to his contention. In spite of all, however, my champion was beaten in the committee and his request was denied him. Not at all daunted at this, however, he took an appeal to the University Council or Senate, and there, having the active support of Chief Justice Candy, the Vice- Chancellor, and other influential members, he carried his petition by a two-thirds majority. And, then, on learning that he whose cause he had so pluckily espoused and completely won, was on his way around the world and would visit India, after having lectured in Japan with the imprimatur of the Government there, his zeal and courage carried him to unexampled lengths in the resolve to justify and confirm the wisdom of his previous action. With very little dissent in the Senate, and with the yet more active support of the Chancellor, a motion was carried to invite me to lecture in Convocation Hall, under the auspices of the University of Bombay, the first and last lectures of the course being presided over by the Chancellor in person. This action taken was something the like of which had never happened before.

To us, who think so little of established custom, in academical as in other matters, and to whom precedent is of so little account, it is difficult to conceive of the stir which these seeming trivialities made in all India, with reverberations even as far away as Great Britain. One of its principal immediate effects was to make the lecturer suspected of being a Jesuit in disguise. At any rate, I was from the first conspicuously in favor with the Roman Catholics. This, on the other hand, quite regardless of the question whether we stood together for the defence of truth or for the propagation of error, served to “queer” me with some of the Protestant missionaries. My experience, however, is not the only instance which has fallen under my ob-. servation, where these good people have seemed to prefer to take sides against those whose competition they most fear in the way of making numbers of converts, rather than with those whose help they ought to welcome in the defence and spread of the fundamental truths of morals and religion. The prestige involved, and the active and not altogether good-natured discussion to which it gave rise in some of the more extreme of the religious press on both sides, in England as well as in India, brought the unconscious and unwilling subject of it all, for the first time in a somewhat checkered life, into the full “lime-light.”

The native officials, both high and low, and all the higher native social classes in India, are prompt and eager to take their cue from the Government circles in their treatment of foreign visitors. This is not altogether due to the very natural desire “to be in the swim,” as the saying is, or to curry favor with those in positions of economic and political control. In the case of the more wealthy and intelligent of the natives, such an attitude of deference arises in acknowledgment of the conviction that, with all its mistakes and even crimes in the past, and all its present deficiencies, the security and welfare of the entire continent of India depend quite absolutely on the guidance and guardianship of the British Government in India. In spite of the fact that the vastly improved facility of intercourse between India and the “home-country” has operated to increase the number of English women who “come out” to be with their male friends and relatives, and consequently to decrease the number of illicit connections between British officials and native women, there are not a few instances of sincere respect and affection between the two races. For example, Chief Justice Candy did not hesitate to affirm that he had never sat on the bench with any one for whose legal ability and good judgment he had more respect than his native colleague, Chief Justice Ranade; and Lady Candy was mourning the death by plague of her native steward with as much sincerity as could have been bestowed upon a similar affliction in an English family. It is necessary to bear in mind such influences as these in order to understand the atmosphere by which we were surrounded during the winter spent in India.

The stay of about two months in Japan, during which I was engaged in giving lectures before the teachers under the auspices of the Imperial Educational Society, and in the Imperial University, besides numerous addresses of a more general character, was by no means without value in preparation for the more difficult work in India. Not only did it give the lecturer more familiarity with the material, since the principal course in the two countries bore the same title, but also more facility in method when addressing audiences so differently disposed toward the speaker as are those of the Orient. For the Oriental does not readily betray his real attitude, either to the person speaking or to the thing spoken. The listener “keeps his face” to the “saving of the lecturer’s face”; but, often enough, to the confusion of the latter’s judgment as to the way his words are being taken. It is not beyond possibility for the missionary or other foreign teacher to go on talking for years to an Oriental audience without really knowing how they are taking him or his teachings. A firm grasp on the subject, scanty notes but full information, and the art of quick adaptability to the special occasion or changing temper of his hearers, are indispensable for the best success with an Oriental audience.

Just as we were leaving Japan an incident occurred which threw additional light on the curious and complicated secret relations of native and foreign governments in the Orient. Our ship had stopped two days for the customary coaling at Shimonoseki, and was to sail for Hong Kong at the earliest dawn of the next morning. But late in the evening there were unmistakable signs off something quite unusual about to happen. The harbor police were alert in their watch about the ship ; the captain kept going to the ship’s side and peering curiously into the shadows below. What this was all about, he did not disclose, until we were out of Japanese waters the following morning. It then became known to us in a confidential way, that the celebrated Chinese leader in the attempt of the Chinese Emperor to institute much needed reforms, the now historically notable Kang Yu-wei, had come aboard and was booked for safe delivery to the British Government at Hong Kong. The wrathful Empress Dowager of China, the “Old Buddha,” as Li Hung Chang used to call her, after reducing to submission the young Emperor, and having executed such of Kang Yu-wei’s friends and relatives as she could lay her hands upon, had set a large price on their leader’s head. But he had fled and had taken refuge in Japan. The Government of Japan, quite reasonably, neither wished to have the reformer assassinated on their territory, nor cared to incur the displeasure of China at harboring in safety one of her political refugees. He was, therefore, quietly turned over to the British Government, which, with fewer scruples, could afford a surer protection to such a criminal patriot. Kang Yu-wei occupied the cabin just opposite to ours; and to it he stuck very close, taking all his meals there, — himself cueless in token of his advanced position in the reform movement, but closely guarded by two trusty, though “pig-tailed,” Chinamen in front of the cabin door. I contribute gladly this hitherto unpublished bit of the history of attempts at political reform in China. And to this I add my own strong conviction that China will never reform itself without being in a measure compelled and assisted by foreign influences.

The only other experiences of the voyage to Bombay which have any important bearing on the winter spent in India concern the writer’s condition of health. A slight attack of malarial fever had been very much intensified by a successful vaccination on the day before leaving Kobe. This fever had increased so that on every other day the patient was confined to his steamer-chair, without pain, to be sure, but without appetite and with diminishing strength, and much of the time not more than halfconscious of his surroundings. Certainly not a very favorable preparation for a winter’s lecturing campaign in the trying climate of India. But the Captain had ordered a special reservation of the store of chickens for his sick passenger. When the Chinese cabin-boy brought the first bowl of the shipcook’s preparation to the cabin, he said with an air of disgust: “Missy! cook no makee good chicky

bloth ; mollow I make chicky bloth for master.” Our “yellow angel,” for so wre came to call him, was better than his word. For his bowls of broth, rich and steaming, and heavy doses of quinine, and the delightful days and nights spent in the open air, on board ship when sailing in the tropics, so far revived the patient that he was able to put up a good fight against his malady, while the ship was on its way to Colombo, Ceylon. After a short visit there (a brief account of which will be given in connection with our return) three days of sailing on an old-fashioned, but for that very reason most comfortable English ship of the Australian line, with its large and airy cabin, abundance of deck-room, and wholesome fare, although it did not land him “quite fit” as the English are wont to say, did tide him over the shoals of that disaster which is so fatal to many travelers in India and the Far East.

Chapter II

T T was scarcely six of the morning in late November, 1899, when the cabin-boy of the “Chusan” woke us with the announcement that breakfast would be at a quarter before seven. When we went on deck the sun was just rising. It would have been worth a much earlier and more inconvenient arousal to see the queenly city of British India for the first time under such favorable circumstances. The low-lying island, or rather group of islands, now made into a peninsula by various fillings and causeways, above which directly in front of the harbor tower the clustered government buildings and other more scattered lofty structures, with Malabar Hill and its villas and bungalows enshrouded in gardens of palms and other tropical foliage, and all backed by the rugged hills of the mainland which rise to an altitude of from 1000 to 2000 feet, make a picture which easily rivals, if it does not surpass that seen from the harbor of Naples. In the harbor itself the ships of many nations lay anchored, just beginning to stir themselves for the day’s work.

But our Captain, who wanted to get to the docks to discharge and take on cargo, was not interested in the lovely spectacle. He was fuming in real English fashion at the nonsense of being kept waiting more than an hour in quarantine, when his ship had arrived, with clean papers from non-infected ports, in plague-infested Bombay. As soon, however, as others besides the health-officers were allowed on board, we were greeted by the messenger who had been sent to welcome us and see to the work of getting our luggage through the customs. This was promptly accomplished at a total expense of six rupees and two annas (just about two dollars) including the small camera. Being landed from the ship’s launch at the wharf, we were met by our missionary friend and host, Mr. Edward Hume, and a Catholic priest representing Father Bochum. The latter assured me that the press reports which claimed the plague to be diminishing in Bombay were not truthful. It was increasing; he had already been at the bedside of the dying, that morning.

On arrival at the missionary compound in the native quarter of Byculla, we were treated to a new variation in the ways in which your Oriental friends welcome and dismiss you as their guest. This welcome was not a la mode Japanese, but a la mode Indian. And the pupils of the school had risen en masse, as it were, to make a success of it. Across the gate was stretched the word “Welcome” cut in tissue paper and pasted on a background of white. Festoons of bits of colored paper fluttered from the trees along the driveway; and after driving between rows of children clapping hands, on alighting from the victoria, we were greeted with a song.

All through these dreadful days of famine and plague, the bright spots for as many of the sufferers as was possible — and this was at most, only a tiny percentage of the millions of the people— were in the missionary hospitals and schools. The Government was doing what it well could for the scantiest relief of these millions. But it could not furnish them comfort, and the spirit of song and flowers. As we were expressly told, however, “song and flowers accompany everything in India.” In this school, two hundred of the youngest were “famine children,” who had been taken from the arms of their mothers or picked up from the roadside where they had been abandoned to die of starvation.

It is not our intention, here or in any of the following pages, to attempt the role of cicerone, dragoman, or guide-book. But a few words will perhaps help to make more capable of “visualization” the surrounding material “atmosphere” in which the next few weeks of our winter in India were spent. As has already been indicated, the public buildings of Bombay are from the harbor conspicuously imposing. The same thing is true of them when seen from the streets or from the open public places, in which or near which they are situated. Of these the most impressive is the line of public offices and university buildings which stretches along the esplanade and faces the Back Bay. Their architecture is a mixture of Gothic and Saracenic, and the interior decorations are in teakwood, carved by a native workman in native and therefore Oriental designs. The University Library and University Hall were soon to become of most personal interest. Both of these buildings were largely built by the munificent gifts of wealthy natives ; the former by Mr. Premchand Raichand, in memory of his mother Rajabai, and called by her name; the latter by Sir Cowasjee Jehangir, and called by the name of the donor. It was in University or “Convocation” Hall that the lectures were given. But since the structure is 104 feet long and 63 feet high to the apex of the groined ceiling, with an apse separated from the hall by a grand arch, and a gallery eight feet broad around three sides, it is manifestly much better adapted for academic ceremonials than for successful lecturing. The reader, therefore, must not imagine the lecturer as shouting at the top of his voice to two thousand persons, most of them indifferent to what was being said, while a few bend painfully forward in the vain effort to catch an occasional word; but, the rather, quietly discoursing to a few hundreds of exceedingly thoughtful adults, grouped closely around him on the platform or on the rows of benches nearest to the front.

It is not, however, the magnificent buildings, the art galleries, or the museums, but the life and thought of the people, high and low, which most interest me when traveling in foreign lands. This is especially true of the Orient, where all that challenges to attention and the effort at understanding and sympathy appeals much more to the sense of mystery, and fascinates the imagination much more deeply, than anything which Europe can furnish. The street-life of the Orient must be seen to be appreciated; its variety of picturesque structures, animal and human forms, costumes, and strange customs, demand for their fullest effect to enter the mind through the eye. Nowhere else is this more true than on the native streets of Bombay, whose only rivals in these respects are the Straits Settlement cities of Singapore and Penang.

Imagine, then, narrow and tortuous lanes, lined with houses several stories high, many of which have carved fronts and projecting stories supported upon elaborately sculptured corbels, with here and there Muhammadan mosques and various kinds of Hindu temples gaudily painted. Back and forth in these streets flow endless crowds of vehicles and human beings dressed in motley costumes of all colors, or with only a not too generous breech-cloth, or even with nothing at all. They are of all climes and races “Arabs from Muscat, Persians from the Gulf, Afghans from the northern frontier, black, shaggy Beluchis, negroes of Zanzibar, islanders from the Maldives and Laccadives, Malagashes, Malays and Chinese, throng and jostle with Parsees in their sloping hats, with Jews, Lascars, fishermen, Rajpoots, Fakirs, Europeans, Sepoys and Sahibs.”

The poorer of these natives are housed, whole families of the Oriental size in single rooms, into which neither sunshine nor fresh air can ever come directly, because they are ranged on either side of a hall which runs straight through from front to rear. The only means of discharging garbage and offal is to dump it down into some receptacle from this hall’s back door. Since the lower stories of many of these buildings are used for the storage of grain, and the rats which infest this grain are the chief bearers of the plague, it need occasion no wonder that the suppression of this dreadful pestilence was no holiday task for the Government of Bombay. At our first drive through these native quarters, our attention was called to the large number of houses decorated (?) with half-circles and whole circles of red paint. The former meant “case of plague here”; the latter completed the story: “Death by plague here.” On a single house more than sixty full circles were to be discerned.

As has already been said, the favorite residence of the wealthy and official classes is Malabar Hill. The hill is terraced to its top, from which may be obtained a view that has without exaggeration been called “one of the finest in the world.” On the same ridge is the ladies’ “Gymkhana,” or meeting-place for athletic sports and games. But overtopping all the hill, and all the beautiful but then sorely stricken city, were the “Towers of Silence,” with their inaudible but impressive voice proclaiming the fateful truth that the same end comes to all alike.

Our visit to the “Towers of Silence” was interesting, among other respects, in this one peculiar to the student of the history and doctrine of religious symbolism, ceremonial and myth. We were, of course, treated to the customary sights and explanations— the five towers which, however, look more like huge gas-tanks than anything else to which we are accustomed in this country, the “everlasting fire” kept burning through the centuries by being constantly fed with small pieces of sandal-wood, the foul birds perched, expectant, upon the walls and neighboring trees, and the surrounding grove, solemn and beautiful, with its cypresses pointing, as the Parsees themselves say, heavenward. It was duly explained how the bodies were placed, quite naked, on the circular “gridiron” formed by the two walls between the outside one and the central well ; how the adult males were placed in the outer series of compartments thus formed, the women in the middle series, and the children in the compartment nearest the well; and how, when at the end of an hour or two the vultures had completed their work, the bare bones were removed by the carriers of the dead, gloved and with tongs, cast into the well, and left to bleach in sun and wind until they become perfectly dry and afterward crumble into dust. All this the professional cicerone, either out of deference to the scientific and practical mind of the Westerner, or because he was himself ignorant of the profound spiritual significance of this way of disposing of the dead, wished us to regard as simply a particularly good and safe sanitary custom. But we knew what the philosophy which underlay the ceremonial, the symbolism clothed in these repulsive facts, really signified. For, the triumph of universal purity, physical and moral, over the nastiness of physical and moral evil, was the ideal of the ancestors in Persia of the Parsees of Bombay. And where should the foulness of human flesh, when deserted by the immortal spirit, while waiting for its resurrection be deposited, that it might not defile the sacred universal elements of fire, water and earth ?

We were fortunate in being permitted to remain within the enclosure while the first funeral of the day ascended the flight of steps leading to the “Towers.” There were only six persons of the procession, in three pairs, each pair united by a scarf or shawl stretching between them. The first pair were the corpse-bearers, and one of them had, wrapped in white, the body of a child which he bore aloft. This “pairship,” too, is symbolical of brotherly union; as a matter of fact, in the well of the towers of silence all classes of the Parsees of Bombay mingle as common dust. Two other pairs of attendants followed ; and we saw them all come out of the chapel to get a handful of water for their purification, and heard them within chanting or droning their prayers.

The university lectures were “inaugurated,” as the saying is, by a reception given to us by Mr. Tata, a wealthy and benevolent Parsee. With reference to the general character of this gathering, it is enough to quote a few words from a long article in the Bombay “Times of India” for November 30th, 1899.

“The gathering was certainly one of the most interesting which has taken place for a long time in the city. First and foremost education, in the advancement of which Mr. J. N. Tata has himself worked so assiduously, was represented. Then there were representatives of all the professions and of nearly every branch of commerce. It was, too, almost an international assembly, and some of the groups which resulted were, to say the least, remarkable. The rooms were admirably adapted for use on such an occasion, and the large number present” (rather more than 1000) “testified to the immense amount of interest which it had aroused.”

Addresses of welcome were given by Vice-Chancellor Candy and Chief Justice Ranade. The former made reference to the peculiar relations existing between India and the University from which the lecturer came, through “the benefactions of Elihu Yale of London, lately Governor of the East India Company’s possessions at Madras.” Nor did he hesitate to refer to the controversy that had resulted in the Senate of the University of Bombay’s acceptance of the proposition, “so ably supported by one of its Fellows,” which had, after “due investigation of their merits,” placed “the Professor’s works among our recognized text-books.” More enlightening still to the author were the words of the native Judge of the Supreme Bench of the Bombay Presidency. “When the discussion arose,” said Justice Ranade, “in the Senate of the University, whether Psychology should or should not be made a subject of study, the objection was urged that no suitable books were available. Then when Professor Ladd’s books were named, one party objected because it was claimed that, if a physiological basis were sought for psychology, it would destroy psychology. The other party claimed that it would only give an additional scientific basis for psychology. The old Indian position is different from both these positions. I have glanced through the Professor’s Outlines of Physiological Psychology, and find that he takes a conservative position, and while seeking for a physiological basis, yet he retains a true spiritual psychology.” (It is exceedingly interesting to recall in this connection that an entirely similar dispute had been carried on in this country, though some fifteen years earlier.)