In the tiger jungle and other stories of missionary work among the Telugus of India

Front matter

b h<\\l

Ciiap.. , Copyright No..

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Contents

PAGE

Introduction, by the Rev. F. E. Clark, D.D. . n

Preface, by the Author • i5

Introduction

I HAVE long held the opinion, and often expressed it, that the young people of our land need not patronize the dime novel or the "pennydreadful " to find stirring adventure and thrilling narrative.

There is one source which furnishes stories of intense and dramatic interest, abounding in novel situations and spiced with abundant adventure; and this source is at the same time the purest and most invigorating fountain at which our youth can drink. y

To change the figure, this is a mine hitherto largely unworked ; it contains rich nuggets of ore, which will well repay the prospector in this new field.

I know of no one better fitted to delve in this mine and bring this rich ore to the surface than the author of this book. For many years a missionary in India, the fairy-land of romance, a fascinating writer, a lover of youth, one who knows how to make even a commonplace story

12 INTRODUCTION^

interesting and an interesting story fascinating — who could better write a book of missionary adventure than Dr. Jacob Chamberlain?

Already scores of articles from his pen have appeared in our leading religious periodicals, by whose readers they are eagerly sought ; and some of them have obtained an immense circulation in leaflet form. They have stirred the imagination and quickened the missionary zeal of a multitude of people.

The very titles of these chapters engage the attention of every reader : " In the Tiger Jungle," *' Winding up a Horse," " Encounter with a Ten-foot Serpent," " The Stick-to-it Missionary," " An Audience of Monkeys," and others no less striking.

What young person could read these titles without desiring to know something more of this charming book? But the best of this volume does not lie in the taking titles of its chapters, in its fascinating style, or in the stirring adventure which it narrates ; it lies in the genuine missionary fervor, which cannot but impart itself to those who peruse it, and in the realistic and vivid pictures of missionary life, which make the countries described, and their people, and the work done for them live again in the glowing printed page.

I believe that this book will increase the host of consecrated young men and women who will

INTRODUCTION 13

be willing to devote their lives to the Master's service in far-off lands. It will kindle anew the fires of devotion in the hearts of a vastly larger multitude who must stay at home and do their missionary work in America. It will prompt the desire of many to give largely and regularly to the great cause of world-wide missions, in order that they may be at work on both sides of the globe for the one Master twenty-four hours in every day — personally in their own land, and through their representative in some land across the sea. It will face every reader with the demand that he or she must " go or send." It will make missions a real and living thing to a multitude to whom it is now a misty dream of heroic service. It is a book which may well be placed in every Sunday-school library, which should be owned by every Christian Endeavor Society and mission circle, which many Christian parents and teachers will find admirably suited for a Christmas or birthday present, and which, wherever it goes, will carry its own lesson and its own welcome.

Francis E. Clark.

Boston, July 20, 1896.

Preface

Urgent requests from many sources, some from personal friends, others from entire strangers, by letter and in person, that there might be issued in book form a collection of sketches and other articles which have appeared from my pen in a wide range of periodicals in America and other lands during the past years, have led me, on the eve of my return to India, to prepare such a collection, only to find that I had gathered far more material than should appear in one volume. I have therefore selected a small portion of the material I had prepared, and present it in this volume. My selection may not always have been wise; in fact, I have not brought in one half of the articles that have been specially asked for, lest the book be so bulky as to be forbidding. That can, however, be remedied by the issue of another series, should it be called for. I have also in preparation a more pretentious work on India and the Hindus, which, if God spare my life, I hope to be able after a time to present to those interested in the Orient.

16 PREFACE

This little volume I now send forth with the fervent prayer that God would so use these simple sketches as only to glorify His own holy name and advance His cause and kingdom at the ends of the earth.

Jacob Chamberlain.

2$ East Twenty-second Street, New York, September, 1896.

PRELIMINARY

WHO ARE THESE TELUGUS?

The Hindus of to-day are not the original inhabitants of India. In the earlier ages the peninsula of India was sparsely populated by a race whom we may consider the aborigines, who were smaller of stature and darker of color, who had no written language, and of whom we know but little.

About the time of Abraham the tribes of Central Asia began to migrate. The Dravidian tribes pushed through the mountains into India, and, pressing on southward, occupied what is now the Madras Presidency, together with parts of Bombay and the native kingdoms of Hyderabad, Mysore, and Travancore. These immigrants are spoken of in Sanskrit literature as the pancha Dravida, or the " five Dravidian tribes." They were distinct tribes, each having its own language, its own customs, and its own independent organization. They seem, however, to have been federated and working in harmony, all seeking for new homes in a more genial clime.

The Tamil tribe was in the forefront, and did not rest until its advance-guard had reached Cape Comorin, at the southern extremity of India. They occupied the country from that point northward four hundred miles to Madras, and in width from the Bay of Bengal to the Western Ghats, or mountains, which, like a backbone, reach from south to north fifty to one hundred miles distant from the shores of the Sea of Arabia.

To the west of these Western Ghats, between them and the sea, the Malayalim people located, occupying what is now the kingdom of Travancore. They are less in number than the Tamils and are closely allied to them.

North of them, on the Sea of Arabia and stretching out over the modern kingdom of Mysore, the Kanarese tribe found its abode. They number more than the MalayaHms, but less than the Tamils.

The Telugu tribe came last. They occupied the region lying on the Bay of Bengal, from Madras north to Ganjam, and westward to and including part of Mysore and the most of Hyderabad, a region more than five hundred miles long and two to three hundred miles broad, while the Marathis occupied the region westward of them all, up the coast of the Arabian Sea. Other tribes followed on and occupied all North India,

H^HO ARE THESE TELUGUS? 19

The Telugus are the most numerous of all the Dravidian peoples, numbering at the present time between eighteen and twenty millions.

Still later, in the time between Moses and David, there came another immigration into India from the higher table-lands of Asia.

The Aryans, our ancestors, were seized with the spirit of migration. One division went westward into Europe and became the progenitors of the Greeks, the Latins, the Saxons, and the English. The other division sought for more southern climes, and, pressing through the Himalayan mountain-passes, first settled in North India and then gradually spread themselves through all the country, not as conquerors, but in comity among the other peoples.

The Dravidian tribes had brought their own fairly well cultivated languages with them, and a religion, of which little is now known. The Aryans brought with them the Sanskrit language, the elder and more ornate sister of the Greek and the Latin. They brought also the Vedas, their scriptures, and the Hinduism which is inculcated in the Vedas. The Vedas taught in the main a pure monotheism, and gave essentially true ideas of God and man and sin and sacrifice.

About the time of their arrival in North India, however, there was evolved a second series of religious books, the Upanishads, or commentaries on the Vedas, the Shastras, and later the Puranas. In these appeared the first glimmerings of the Hindu triad, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, with their host of attendant minor gods; then first appeared the system of caste.

The Aryans divided themselves into three castes: the Brahmans, created, as they taught, from the brain of Brahma; the Kshatriyas, or soldier caste, created by a subsequent act of Brahma, from his shoulders; the Vaisyas, or merchant and artisan caste, from his loins. Of the Dravidians and other earlier immigrants they constituted the great fourth caste, the Sudras, whom they declared to have been created by Brahma from his thighs. They were to be the farmers, mechanics, and laborers. They are subdivided into more than forty distinct castes, who will not eat together nor intermarry. Those who remained of the still earlier inhabitants, the aborigines, became the Pariahs in South India, with similar non-caste people in the other portions of the country.

Caste is thus a religious distinction, not a social. There was a different creation of each. If their system be admitted, the Brahman may justly say to the others, " Stand by thyself ; come not near me, for I am holier than thou.'* This caste system is one of the greatest barriers to the introduction of the religion of Jesus, which

IVHO ARE THESE TELUGUS ? 21

proclaims to the proud Brahman that ** God hath made of one blood all nations of men."

The Brahmans mingled among all the other peoples of India, and from their superior education and mental power soon gained an ascendancy and succeeded in inducing all the earlier peoples to accept their religion and their caste system. They became the sacerdotal class, the priests and school-teachers of all India. They did not attempt to introduce their language, the Sanskrit, except as the language of ritual, but themselves adopted for daily use and further cultivated the languages of the Tamils, the Telugus, the Kanarese, and others of the preceding immigrants among whom they resided.

The religion which they introduced taught of the Hindu triad, Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Siva the Destroyer, and a host of other gods, theoretically inferior to the triad, but with practically much greater influence over the daily Hves and the welfare of the people. These minor gods are far more feared and far more worshiped by the people than the triad. They hold that there are three hundred and thirty millions of gods, male and female, named and unnamed, and the country is filled with shrines and temples, in which are images of multitudes of these gods, or idols, to receive the homage, the worship, the sacrifices, of the people.

The Brahmans further taught the doctrine of transmigration, which is that at death the soul simply passes on one stage in its existence to be born again in another body — in a higher order if he had done more good than evil, in a lower if the evil had exceeded the good. If, after countless transmigrations, the account of evil were canceled by the amount of good deeds performed, and sufficient merit were attained, the soul would then be absorbed into that of the Deity, and individual existence would cease. This is their doctrine of Nirvana, or final absorption, which is the highest goal to which a Hindu can attain.

To obtain the needed merit a system of duties is prescribed. It consists of the daily and strict observance of all caste rules, the performance of the prescribed acts of worship, sacrifices, ablutions, pilgrimages to holy shrines, bathing in the sacred rivers, penances, self-torture, hermit life apart from one's kind in complete isolation in a desert; and thus it is hoped that the transmigrations of the soul will be brought to a speedier end and Nirvana be attained. The mass of the people, however, are content with the daily observance of caste rules and the abundant worship of their multitudinous idols.

This very brief outline of the Hinduism of to-day would be incomplete without the further statement that vast numbers of Hindus, now

PVHO ARE THESE TEWGUS? 23

educated in Western learning, no longer at heart hold to the system of modern Hinduism as above outlined, although they still outwardly conform to the rules of caste and of ritual. There is an unrest among all the educated classes and a looking for something different. Some are seeking a revival of ancient Vedic Hinduism, an essentially pure monotheism, with no caste, no idolatry, no senseless ritual. Others are seeking an eclectic system, aiming to obtain the moraHty and uplifting influence observed in Christianity without accepting Christ. Others, in vast numbers, are veering away into blank agnosticism. All these maintain an outwardly very hostile attitude toward evangelical Christianity. There is nevertheless a quiet, unobserved undercurrent among very many toward an open acceptance of Jesus of Nazareth as the Saviour of the whole world.

This condition of unrest, of the expectancy of some change soon to come, which is freely admitted even in the native newspapers, both in English and in the vernaculars, gives a golden opportunity for pressing the claims of Christianity upon the people of India at the present juncture. It emphasizes the terrible responsibility resting on the church of Christ, lest this God-given opportunity pass by, never to be repeated.

For more than a third of a century I have been engaged in pressing this work among the Telugu people, of whom I have given some account above, and the following pages contain incidents, most of them jotted down at the time, which have occurred in connection with my missionary labors among these Telugus.

IN THE TIGER JUNGLE: DOES GOD HEAR PRAYER ?

It was in September, 1863. I was taking a long exploring, preaching, and Bible-distributing journey up through the native kingdom of Hyderabad and on into Central India, where no missionary had ever before worked. It was a journey of twelve hundred miles on horseback, of four to five months, and through a region little known and difficult to traverse, and by many regarded as exceedingly dangerous. Indeed, before starting I had received messages and letters from numbers of missionaries and laymen, warning me of the danger, and begging me not to throw away my life and end disastrously a missionary career so near its beginning.

I had surveyed the danger, measured the obstacles, and counted the cost, and considering none of them sufficient to cancel the command, " Go ye into all the world," I had covenanted for the journey with the " I will be with you always," and started on my way. I was accompanied by four native assistants, picked men from the larger number who had volunteered to be my companions. We took with us two cart-loads of Scriptures — Gospels, New Testaments, and Bibles — and tracts, chiefly in the Telugu language, but with a smaller supply in each of the five languages we would meet, and which could be used by some of our party, for each one of us could preach in two or three.

We had already been out two and a half months. My sturdy Saugur pony had carried me seven hundred miles, and we had thus far distributed, chiefly by sales, seven thousand Scriptures and books.

Of the dangers promised us we had experienced some. In one city, indeed, we had seen the mob, angry because we preached another God than theirs, swing to the iron gates, shutting us within, and tear up the paving-stones to stone us with ; but, by an artifice obtaining permission to tell them just one story before they should begin the stoning, I told the story of the cross in the graphic language that the Master Himself gave me that day, and the mob became an absorbed audience, down the cheeks of many a member of which I saw the tears trickle, as I pictured Christ upon the cross, in agony for us, that we all might be freed from sin. The stones were thrown into the gutter, and when I had done they bought and paid for many Gospels and tracts to tell them more of that wonderful God-man of whom they then first heard.

We had been washed away by a flood, my pony and I being whelmed under by a tropical torrent that rolled swiftly down a river ordinarily fordable as we were in the middle of it crossing ; but we had all succeeded in swimming to the same bank. We had been kept awake through the night more than once by the roaring of the man-eating tigers around our camp in the jungle, as we heaped wood and brush upon our camp-fires all night long, lest in the morning there should be no one left to tell the tale. We had passed through a jungle where three men had been carried off by tigers from the same cart-track in broad dayUght just a few days before ; but the " I will be with you always " had all the way forefended us from harm.

We had now, however, come to the greatest strait in our journey. We had reached our farthest northern point, up among the mountain Gonds, or Khonds, who for centuries had offered human sacrifices; and after telling them of the one and all-sufficient sacrifice for sin by Jesus Christ, we had turned to the east and south on our return journey by another route. We were to find a government steamer when we struck the Pranhita River, an affluent of the great Godavery. The government was then endeavoring to open up those rivers to navigation, and had succeeded in placing one steamer on the river above the second cataract, to run up to the third. The government officers in charge of the works, having heard months before of my proposed journey, had offered to send that steamer up to the third cataract on any date I would name if I would but take the journey and transport myself and party rapidly through that stretch of fever jungle, which was deadly at this season of the year. I had named the date and received assurances that we could depend on the steamer , being there. The heavy torrents of the monsoon had come on unexpectedly early and were unprecedentedly severe. The Godavery became three miles wide of tumultuous waters. Village after village on its shores was swept away. We watched on the banks for a week. A messenger then succeeded in getting through to tell us that the steamer, in attempting to stem that fierce current to come to us, had broken its machinery and could not get to us. We must then march through that seventy-five miles of doomed jungle to reach the next steamer, which was to meet us at the foot of the second cataract and take us down to the first, whence another would take us on.

The government commissioner of the central provinces at Sironcha (for the north bank of the Godavery is under British rule) kindly came to our relief, and, detaching thirty-six coolies from the government works, ordered them, with an armed guard to keep them from deserting, to convey our tents, baggage, medicine-chests, and remaining books down to the foot of the second cataract, and we started on.

I need not stop to recount the exciting episode of our desertion, on the north bank of the Godavery, with no human habitation anywhere near, by the whole party of coolies, armed guard and all, nor of our desperate efforts, finally successful, to cross the Godavery's three miles' flood in order that we might reach a large town of the Nizam's dominions, the headquarters of a high native official, a sort of deputy governor, of whom I hoped to obtain help.

Forcing my wiry pony through the three miles of flooded marsh that lay between the river and the town, I appeared at the door of this magnate and politely presented my appeal to him for coolies to take my party down his side of the river to the second cataract. He as politely told me it was an utter impossibility ; that at this season of the year, with the fever so deadly and the man-eating tigers so ravenous, — now that the herdsmen had taken their flocks and herds away to the healthier highlands over the fever season, so that they had no flocks to prey upon, — and the floods and back-waters from the river damming the way, no cooHes could be induced to go through.

I told him that I must in some way get down to the second cataract, that the steamer that was to come for us had broken down, and that I must have the coolies. I took from my pocket and slowly unrolled a long parchment paper document, a hookam, or firman, from the Nizam, which the British minister at that court had kindly pressed upon me as I had tarried a few days at the capital of the kingdom in passing, saying that, though I had not asked for it, he would sleep better if he knew I had it in my possession, for I knew not what I would pass through, nor how much I might need it. I had not thus far opened it.

The need had now come. In it the Nizam, at the request of the British minister, had not only authorized my journey, but ordered any of his officials, of whatever rank, to render any assistance I should call for, either in the way of protection, transportation, or supplies, at the shortest notice and under the highest penalties for nonperformance. The moment the deputy governor saw the great royal seal his whole appearance changed, and, shouting in imperious tones to his belted and armed attendants, he ordered them to run with all speed, each to one of the surrounding villages, and bring in, by force if necessary, the quota of bearers which each village was bound to furnish for a royal progress or for a journey thus authorized.

I had called for forty-four stalwart men, for I felt sure that more than my original thirty-six would be needed before we reached the next steamer. In an incredibly short time the forty-four bearers appeared ; they went at once down to the river and brought up all our goods, and with them came the native preachers. They placed the goods in front of the magnate's house.

I made a harangue to them as they stood in a row, each man by his burden, telling them I was sorry to be obliged to compel them to go through the jungle at such a time, or to go ourselves, but we must go ; that, to show them that I meant to treat them well, I should now give each one in advance as much hire as he had ever received for going through to the cataract, and that on reaching there I should pay each one twice as much more, in view of the extra risk they ran.

Asking the magistrate what the highest pay was, I placed that sum, in the Nizam's coinage, in the hands of each man, with the magistrate as witness; and when each of the forty-four had grasped it in his palm I told them that now they were sealed to accompany me through.; that any one who attempted to desert me would bring the consequences on his own head ; that I had been trifled with the day before, and deserted by those north-shore coolies, who had had no " sealing money," as they call an advance in pay; that I would not be trifled with again ; and took out my long navy revolver from my belt and examined its loading, leaving them to draw their own inferences. The magistrate also harangued them, and told them that, traveHng under such authorization as this gentleman had, they would be publicly whipped and put in prison if they appeared back at their homes without a line from me that they had taken me through.

To make still more sure, I had separated them into four squads of eleven men each, ordering each squad to march in a compact body, and placing one of the native preachers in charge of each party, to march with them and watch them and give me instant signal if any one put down his burden except at my command. The two royal guides of the region had been ordered to guide us through, and, promised a high reward, had sworn faithfulness.

We struck into the jungle. We had to go single file. Foot-paths there had been, but now choked and grown over from the long rains. The second senior native preacher went with the first eleven, the senior preacher at the rear of the last party. The pouring rain would drench us for a half-hour, and then the sun, blazing forth between the sundered clouds, would broil us. The country was flooded and reeking; the bushes were loaded and dripping. Get through we must, or the steamer at the second cataract might not wait for us, and we would then have to march through another iever stretch.

In spite of all my precautions, I felt very suspicious that an effort would be made to desert us before we came to the worst point, and was on the constant watch. Cantering by the whole line where the width of the path allowed, I would stop at the front and watch, and count every man and bundle until all had passed, and then canter on ahead, scanning each man as I went, and halt again. So we went on hour by hour, halting only an hour for lunch at midday.

About 4 P.M. I fancied I saw an uneasiness among the coolies, and rode back and forth more constantly. Three bands had passed me, the fourth was filing by. There was a sharp bend in the path ; the last two coolies had not appeared. Quick as thought, striking spur, I dashed across the hypotenuse of the triangle, and jumped my little pony over the bushes into the edge of the path again just as the two coolies had put down their burdens and were springing into the jungle. "What are you doing?" said I, with the muzzle of my pistol at one man's ear. Trembling as though I had dropped from the clouds, they seized their burdens and ran on, overtaking the others. Following, and dashing up the cavalcade to see if all was right ahead, I stopped and dismounted, and appeared to be tightening my saddle-girths, purposely to allow those two men to report to the others what had taken place.

They did report, and word was passed along the Hne to look out how they attempted to desert, for that they two had tried it when the white foreigner, the d/iora, was nowhere near, and as they sprang into the bushes the dhora dropped down from the clouds between them, horseback, with his six-eyed gun in his hand, cocked, and it was a wonder their brains were not scattered. And from the way they all looked at me as I rode by again, with my pistol in hand, I knew that superstition was now my ally. They did not know that I would not shoot a man, and my " six-eyed gun " and my mysterious appearance as reported had more terror for them just then than the as yet unseen tigers in the jungle. And on we marched.

But now a new and seemingly insurmountable difficulty confronted us. The dank jungle, the rain, the fever, the tigers, had been taken into account, but in spite of them we had determined to push through and reach the second catara( t before the Sunday. But difficulties breed. We now met two fleet-footed, daring huntsmen, who had been down to a point two miles beyond to inspect their traps, and were on the full run back to shelter for the night. Swift and sure of foot, with no impediment, they could before dark make the last village we had passed as we entered the jungle in the morning.

We halted them to inquire about the region ahead. We knew that some two miles in front was an affluent of the Godavery, which ran down from the bluffs at our right, and which we had expected to ford and pitch our camp for the night on an open knoll a little distance beyond it, where, with bright camp-fires and watchfulness, we could pass the night in comparative safety. But from these hunters we learned that the back-water of the Godavery flood, which was thirty feet higher than usual, had made these affluents absolutely unfordable.

" Was there no boat? "

" None."

" No material for a raft? "

"None whatever."

And on the hunters dashed for safety. The two royal guides and I had called them apart alone and questioned them. The guides knew the country well, but this unprecedentedly high back-water was entirely unexpected, and they seemed dazed by the news. The party kept plodding on. We were marching about a mile from the southern bank of the Godavery and parallel with it ; two miles farther south were the high bluffs, but with dense, impenetrable, thorny rattan jungle between us and them. The country between river and bluff was flat and flooded.