VIII. ELEPHANTS
God’s Acre—Major Rogers’ grave—Elephants—Export of elephants—Leopards— Sambur deer or elk—Red deer—Moose deer—Spotted deer.
There is one spot at Nuwara Eliya which to me has a very pathetic interest—namely, the neglected old burial-ground where sleep so many of the early pioneers. Brackens and other ferns, tall spikes of lobelia, and trails of bramble, veil many a nameless grave and long-neglected monument, overshadowed by kindly trees.
It is a sweet sunny spot, and I came on it by chance while seeking for the best point from which to sketch the Governor’s cottage, with the grand blue cone of Kiklomani as a background, and to the right the dark wooded range at the base of Pidura-tala-galla.
The monuments are in the solid brick-and-mortar and stone style, which certainly lack beauty till the softening touch of time has clothed them with mosses and lichens. But one[68] has a very peculiar interest, having been riven asunder by lightning, which, strange to say, was also the cause of the death of him whose body rests here—namely, Major Rogers of the Ceylon Rifles, of whom the stone records that he was ‘Stricken to death in the Happootalle Pass on the 7th of June, 1845, aged forty-one years.’ He was long commandant of the little fort at Badulla, in the heart of the country, which in those days was so overrun by all manner of destructive wild animals that the sportsman who could best thin their ranks, and especially those of the crop-devouring and all-destroying herds of wild elephants, was the truest benefactor of mankind—a fact which it is essential to bear in mind in view of the amazing number of about 1,600 elephants which fell to Major Rogers’ own rifle. He kept count of each up to 1,300, and after that gave up reckoning, but the extra 300 is considered well within the mark. Up to about 1840 it was by no means uncommon for a man to have killed a hundred elephants to his own gun.
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Footnote 68:
The monuments next to this bear the names of Ebenezer Gordon Munro, Sir William Rough, Colonel Peddie, and Edward Septimus Hodges of Dorchester.
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In these days when sportsmen have to pay ten rupees—equal to about 15_s._—for a special licence for each separate elephant they shoot, those who cannot realise the totally changed conditions of these forest districts in the last fifty years are very apt to talk about ‘wholesale massacre’ and ‘useless cruelty.’ If those who blame the pioneers so readily could have spent a few years with my brother at Batticaloa, and seen something of the ever-recurring heart-breaking devastation of his cocoa-nut plantations by the elephant legions, they might understand why it was that in those days Government offered a reward of 10_s._ for the destruction of each of the great hungry creatures, whose carcasses helped to manure the crops they sought to devour.
Of course it is pitiful to think of the many poor beasts which merely serve as targets for unskilful shots, and are left to die in slow torture in Eastern forests or British coverts, but certainly in that respect Major Rogers was peculiarly happy, for his aim was so unerring that comparatively few creatures which received his first bullet survived to suffer long.
Elephant-shooting in Ceylon is, however, a very different matter from what it is in Africa—the Asiatic elephant being so much smaller, and so rarely possessed of tusks. Out of the legion slain by Major Rogers only about sixty were tuskers, and of these, few had ivory equal to average African tusks—the large majority being only provided with small tushes like those of the females, rarely exceeding six inches in length, and projecting with downward curve. These are frequently broken or worn down, but are still useful to the animal in barking trees or otherwise amusing itself.
In India, as in Ceylon, the female elephant never has tusks, but a much larger proportion of males in the forests of the mainland are thus endowed. In Africa both male and female have good ivory, a tuskless elephant being comparatively rare. My brother Roualeyn, when in South Africa, secured one tusk 10 feet 8 inches in length, and which weighed 173 lbs. In India a tusk five feet in length and weighing 36 lb. is considered exceptionally fine, though there is a tradition of a tusk weighing 90 lb., and eight feet in length.
The Asiatic elephant differs in many respects from its great African kinsman. The latter has a projecting forehead and high skull; its enormous ears actually meet over the shoulders: whereas the forehead of the Indian elephant is actually sunken, and its skull is so depressed on the summit that it forms two distinct humps. The ears are very much smaller than those of the African, and less useful as fly-flaps. But the animal is altogether smaller, and its legs are shorter in proportion to its size.
A singular difference between the elephant of Ceylon and that of the mainland is that the former (like that of Sumatra), though distinctly smaller than the Indian elephant, is nevertheless provided with an extra pair of ribs and dorsal vertebræ, the Indian having nineteen of each and the Ceylon elephant having twenty.
With regard to height, it is somewhat disillusioning to ascertain how much smaller elephants in general are than they are represented in most picture-books. Colonel Forbes-Leslie says that during eleven years, during which he had charge of an establishment in Ceylon for the capture of elephants, he found that out of several hundred, only three exceeded nine feet in height.
Even in India, Mr. Sanderson, a very great authority, states that out of hundreds of elephants he has measured, the largest has never exceeded 10 feet 7-1/2 inches. He says he has often heard of enormous elephants, but has invariably found that, when subjected to the measuring-tape, they (with the single exception above noticed) never exceeded ten feet in height. He inserted a request for information on the subject in Indian newspapers, and offered an order on any gunmaker for the best double-barrelled rifle, to any one who could produce evidence of an elephant even eleven feet high. Accounts of giants poured in, but none stood the test of inquiry.
The African elephant slightly exceeds this average. A new-born baby elephant stands about three feet in height. They are dark-brown hairy creatures, but they soon rub off their hair, and become lighter in colour.
There are records of elephantine ‘Changs’—giants which are said to have attained to a height of twenty feet. The inaccuracy of over-estimation may, however, account for these figures as well as for more recent errors. But in the museum at St. Petersburg there is a skeleton, sixteen and a half feet high, of an elephant sent to the Czar Peter by the King of Persia.
Fossil remains also have been found at Jubbulpore of elephants which must have measured fully fifteen feet to the shoulder.
In our own Oxford Museum are the vertebræ and thigh-bone of one which must have stood at least sixteen feet. It was found at Abingdon, together with bones of the rhinoceros and various species of deer. At Hoxton, too, a skull was dug up with tusks of enormous length, and most of the large teeth perfect. Similar fossil remains of elephantine skeletons and teeth have been dug up in the very streets of London, Oxford, and various other parts of England.
Of the multitude of elephants which overran Ceylon even in the middle of this century, some idea may be formed from the fact, referred to by Sir Samuel Baker, of three first-rate shots having in three days bagged 104 elephants.
The really distressing part of such slaughter is the waste of so much good meat, as it never seems to occur to the hungriest Singhalese to eat elephant steak or stew. Of course all good Buddhists are by way of being vegetarians, but the rule on that point is so elastic, that it is reduced to refraining from killing or giving the order of death for any animal. If other people choose to incur the sin of taking life, the best Buddhist may without sin eat of the meat provided,[69] and any sort of venison (or any meat which, when smoked and dried, can be passed off as venison) is most acceptable, but not elephant. (Buddha himself is said to have eaten freely of the flesh of wild pig.)
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Footnote 69:
Buddhism is a nice school for casuists. The Buddhist, who would on no account kill cockroaches, turns in his chickens to eat them. Fishers will not kill fishes, but lay them on the shore to die; they say they are not to blame for the fishes’ peculiarities of breathing. So with regard to serpents, they will not kill them, but cradle them in baskets or spathes of palm-blossom and float them down the river, hoping that they may be drowned.
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In Africa, on the other hand, the death of an elephant means a feast for hungry tribes, and every morsel of the carcass is consumed. There, however, such is the havoc by ivory hunters, that the country south of the Zambesi is already well-nigh cleared, and no wonder, when we consider that the twenty-five tons of ivory annually required by one English firm (Messrs. Rodgers & Sons, of Sheffield) involves the death of eight hundred tusk elephants! How rarely people investing in nice ivory-handled knives think of such antecedents!
Wonderful to relate, in all his prolonged warfare with the lords of the forest, Major Rogers only came to grief once; that was on December 29, 1841, when exploring a new forest track near Hambantota. He had done a good deal of execution all the morning, and was following a herd of elephants, and had fired twice at one of them, when it turned, and in a moment caught him in its trunk and flourished him about as if he had been an infant. It carried him towards a stream, but dropped him on the sloping ground, and again and again attempted to crush him with its great head, while emitting the most awful roars.
Happily the sloping ground frustrated its efforts, and each time Major Rogers slipped from under it, till both reached the bed of the stream. Then the elephant tried to lift him by his clothes, which happily were very old, and gave way in every direction, so that he was nearly stripped. Then the great creature played ball with him, kicking him from its fore to its hind legs, and back again. Just then the elephant suddenly jerked up its head and got entangled in some jungle ropes (vines), which evidently alarmed it, awakening suspicions of a trap. Major Rogers lay perfectly still, feigning death, and when the elephant got disengaged from the vines it moved off as if satisfied, avoiding treading on its victim, but flourishing his torn garments, and trumpeting hideously.
The result of this encounter was that the left shoulder was dislocated, the left arm broken in two places and otherwise severely contused, two serious hurts on the right side, and a general all-overish consciousness of having been severely battered. He was fifty miles from home, with an intervening mountain 4,000 feet high to be crossed. However, his men rallied round him, and carried him safely back to Badulla, where he continued his work as a most efficient assistant Government Agent till the fatal day when, as he was crossing the Haputale Pass, a most appalling thunderstorm came on, and he took refuge in a rest-house which then stood on the edge of the forest. (The forest is now the Sherwood estate, and the rest-house was accidentally burnt.)
There he found friends who were also detained by the heavy downpour of rain, and Major Rogers stepped on to the verandah to see if there were any symptom of the storm passing away. As he turned to re-enter the house, a blinding flash of lightning was followed by a deafening thunder-crash—the central pole of the triumphal arch (pandal) before the house was riven, the horses and coolies in the back verandah and out-houses were all struck down, not seriously injured however, but poor Rogers fell forward with his face to the door, dead. It was evident that the electric fluid had been attracted by his brass military spurs, for one heel was discoloured.[70]
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Footnote 70:
In a country so subject to the awful majesty of tropical thunderstorms, these are responsible for many casualties. In June 1884 a thunderbolt fell right upon a drinking and gambling den, concealed in the heart of the jungle at Kanduboda. Of the ten men present one was killed, three were on the following day reported to be dying, and all the others more or less injured. A very ghastly case occurred in May 1891. Three men had gone out fishing in a canoe, when a storm set in and the canoe was stricken by lightning. All three lost consciousness; and when at length one man revived, he found one of his companions dead, and the other unconscious and badly singed. With great difficulty he contrived to bring the canoe back to Colombo with its sad freight.
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Instead of carrying him back to lay him at Badulla, where he had so long ruled wisely and well, his body was carried to Nuwara Eliya, there to be laid in the peaceful God’s Acre, just 4,000 feet nearer heaven than at Badulla, but there by a most strange coincidence his tomb was no sooner finished than it likewise was stricken by ‘fire from heaven’; and we can scarcely wonder that a people who (theoretically) hold all life sacred (though they had never hesitated to petition Major Rogers to be their benefactor by slaying as many as possible of the elephants which devastated their fields and gardens) believed that these fiery flashes were in very deed the ministers of heaven’s righteous retribution on one who had dealt such destruction to the brute creation.
Yet so truly did they appreciate his justice and ability, and so greatly was he personally loved that, at the suggestion of a Kandyan Buddhist chief, these very people subscribed for and erected to his memory a pretty little Christian church in the town of Badulla: for they said, ‘We Buddhists build a Vihara to the memory of an eminent Buddhist, therefore it is fitting that Major Rogers, a Christian, should have his memory perpetuated by a church of his faith.’
So Badulla owes her church to this ‘the most active official, the most prominent planting pioneer, and the most famous sportsman Ceylon ever saw.’ Of him Major Skinner wrote that ‘At the time of his death he was performing, to the entire satisfaction of the Government and the public, the offices of Government Agent for the district of Uva, District Judge, Commandant of the district, and Assistant in charge of the roads of the province—duties which, after his death, required four men to perform, with far less efficiency, promptitude, and punctuality than when they were administered by him alone.’
Speaking of elephants, Major Skinner remarked that the largest wild elephants captured were invariably the most docile, but also most sensitive. He also noted that at kraals the Singhalese invariably selected the smallest elephants to decoy the big ones, who never showed any violence or ill-will to these little traitors. The finest he ever saw fed from his hand the very evening he was captured, and proved most docile to his training till the first day he was put in harness to draw a waggon. This indignity was more than the great lord of the forest could endure. He dropped in the shafts, and died then and there of a broken heart. So said the natives, and so Major Skinner firmly believed, having seen the selfsame thing occur in several other cases.
But those which are captured young are truly valuable allies, combining as they do such marked intelligence with mighty strength. For dragging heavy machinery or clearing new ground they are invaluable—vide Sir Samuel Baker’s account of his elephants at work on his farm at Nuwara Eliya. He had brought out a ‘cultivator’ large enough to anchor twenty of the small native bullocks; but a splendid elephant worked it as though it had been a toy, cutting through the coarse roots of rank turf as a knife peels an apple.
Then a long wooden plough drawn by eight bullocks did its work, and finally, when the seed was sown, the original elephant reappeared on the scene, simultaneously dragging a pair of heavy harrows, attached to which and following behind were a pair of light harrows, and after these came a roller. Thus were time and labour economised.
When not required for farm work, this useful creature was employed in building a dam across a stream. The newly felled forest was distant only about fifty yards, and the rough stems of trees furnished suitable logs about fifteen feet long and eighteen inches in diameter. Under the direction of her driver, she lifted these one at a time in her mouth, after testing the point at which she secured an exact balance, and then, steadying it with her trunk, she carried each to the stream, and laid them in exactly parallel rows. The larger logs she rolled gently over with her head and foot, guiding each with her trunk till she had arranged it exactly to her own satisfaction and that of her driver.
Of course, however sagacious the creature may be, such practical usefulness as this is only attained by a long course of most patient training; but it is well worth the trouble of teaching an animal which lives about a hundred years. The average term of life is eighty years, but there have been authentic cases of elephants known to have worked in the Indian Commissariat stables for a hundred and fifty years.[71]
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Footnote 71:
The elephantine development is altogether leisurely. The female does not attain maturity for fifteen years, so as the mother carries her calf twenty-two months, she is probably about seventeen years old when the first calf is born. She has only one at a birth, and suckles it for two years. (She has only two teats, which are situated between the fore-legs. The baby sucks with its mouth, not with the trunk.)
The male does not attain maturity till it is about twenty years of age, and when in captivity is not full grown till about twenty-five. In freedom it goes on growing till it is about thirty years old, and continues in its prime till it is about sixty.
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Most of the tame elephants in Ceylon are employed in connection with felling jungle, dragging timber, and making roads. They are also valuable assistant masons, and I have often watched with the greatest interest the tame elephants’ share in building stone bridges, and the wonderful sagacity and skill with which they contrive to place very heavy stones, and then with their heads shove them into exact position. When one sees an elephant’s skull with its massive frontal, about eight inches thick of bone and muscles, one can understand something of the secret of the enormous force he can exert. The well-protected brain of this sagacious beast is singularly small, only occupying about one-eighth of the skull, and it needs an expert marksman to hit it with fatal precision.
Gorgeous as is a procession of richly caparisoned elephants, it must be allowed that the fine feathers go a long way, for nothing can be more grotesquely ugly than the huge ungainly creature, with his grey leathery skin hanging loose in wrinkled folds as he stands ceaselessly fidgeting, swaying his great body from side to side, shaking his head, flapping his great ears to keep off the flies, swinging his legs and tail, or twisting his snake-like proboscis (sensitive as the antennæ of an insect). Therewith he lightly passes over a fruit-tree, seeking for ripe fruit, and having found one he gathers it with the tip of his trunk as neatly as a girl could lift a cherry with her lips, and then the great trunk curls up and carefully deposits the dainty in its hideous red mouth. It drinks in the same way.
You almost wonder that so large a creature can condescend to toy with small fruit, but then you should see him at work in real earnest at dinner-time. Indeed it can be no trifle to satisfy the appetite of a stableful of these huge herbivorous creatures, each of which daily consumes, if he can get it, about 80 lb. weight of green fodder and 18 lb. of grain. The females are expected to be satisfied with less, as are also the Government elephants, whose rations, I am told, are limited to about 50 lb. weight, so that the poor beasts can never know the satisfaction of repletion (like that hungry street-Arab who was asked if he had ever known what it was to eat till he was satisfied, and whose face lighted up at the pleasant memory as he answered, ‘Yes, once!’)
Even on this reduced scale, an elephant’s ‘daily bread’ costs about five shillings.[72] First, each gets a pile of enormous chupatties, or, as we should call them in Scotland, bannocks—coarse cakes about a foot in diameter; then a heap of green meat and grain of some sort, and if sugar-cane is available, a great bundle of sugar-cane, otherwise balls of native sugar and ghee (rancid butter), for they love all sweatmeats, and will take the smallest bonbon or fruit from one’s hand, as gently as a child.
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Footnote 72:
I am told that the daily rations of each elephant in the Zoological Gardens in London consists of 10 lb. of sea-biscuit, 42 lb. of Swedish turnips, a truss and a half of hay, and a mash composed of 1 bushel of chaff, 1 bushel of bran, and 3 lb. of rice.
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The patient politeness and obedience of a group of educated elephants is most remarkable—however hungry, never touching the most tempting food till permission has been given, or till their turn comes, when each uplifts its mighty trunk, while its attendant places a huge ball of rice in its open mouth. Sometimes, at the bidding of the mahout, an elephant will abstain from swallowing any specially dainty morsel, hiding it in the corner of its mouth till afterwards, when it will give up the treasure and go shares!
The restlessness of the trunk is a very remarkable characteristic. I have often thought that some intelligent elephant must have instructed his fellows in the secret of perpetual motion, for it is incessant, and the concentrated essence of unrest lies in the trunk, which is never still for a moment.
If it is amusing to watch the great creatures feed, it is also interesting to watch their daily toilet as they stand in the water, while their keepers scrub them with natural scouring brushes—i.e. half of the thick fibrous husk which enfolds the cocoa-nut. Occasionally a rough stone is substituted, and acts as sandpaper. Every elephant answers to its own name. ‘The Pearl,’ ‘The Rosebud,’ ‘The Ethereal Fairy,’ are among the playful titles to which these ponderous creatures obediently respond.
Strange as it may seem, like most other big creatures these grandly powerful animals are really very delicate, and require good care, their feet being very liable to sores and their skin to abrasion. Their eyes, too, are subject to inflammation; and long journeys in the sun are distasteful to a creature that loves to stand in the cool shade waving branches in his trunk to keep off the flies, and fanning himself as assiduously as any Spanish beauty. When in good health an elephant can travel about forty miles in a day, at a slow, steady pace. But if over-driven and hurried, as has sometimes been done by too impetuous foreigners, the willing beast has been known to drop down dead.
Speaking of the tenderness of the elephantine foot, I may mention a curious detail concerning a tame elephant at Bristol. Quite unaccountably it fell into bad health, and became lame. Mr. Bartlett, Superintendent of the London Zoological Gardens, was requested to inspect it; and after minute examination of its feet, he remarked, ‘You have rats here.’ ‘Oh yes,’ was the answer; ‘there are plenty of rats here!’ the elephant-house being a very old building. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘they are eating the elephant; you can see the marks of their teeth on the soft part of the soles of the feet. When the elephant lies down to sleep the rats come and gnaw through the thick leathery pad till they reach the quick; and next morning when the poor beast goes out to walk on the gravelled paths little bits of sharp flint lodge in the bitten places, and so it becomes lame.’
On Mr. Bartlett’s recommendation good rat-hunting terriers were thenceforward kept with the elephant until a new house could be built, and the big creature rapidly recovered.[73]
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Footnote 73:
Concerning tame elephants as a profitable speculation, it is interesting to learn that those at the London ‘Zoo’ earn about 800_l._ a-year, besides conferring indescribable enjoyment to thousands, by giving rides at 2_d._ a head. Many as are the riders packed on those long-suffering broad backs, it is startling to be told that on the Bank Holiday in 1890 no less than 24,000 twopences were taken, a number slightly in excess of the whole number of visitors, so that many extravagant visitors probably indulged in several such rides.
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What becomes of elephants which die in the forest is an unsolved mystery, as it is exceedingly rare to find one which has died a natural death. The Singhalese say that in the deep forests to the east of Adam’s Peak lies a mysterious valley, only to be reached by a narrow pass between deep rock walls, and that therein is a quiet lake, beside which all elephants desire to lie down and die in peace. So when sorely wounded, or very old, they seek to reach this happy valley, and there leave their bones. But no one now living has ever been able to find this bourne whence no elephant returns.
Sir Samuel Baker says that in the course of many years’ hunting in Asia and Africa he has occasionally, but very rarely, seen a dead elephant. Most of those recorded bore the mark of a bullet. One found on the Agra patenas in Ceylon was a fine tusk elephant, which had evidently been killed in a furious duel with another tusker, his body being literally bored in many places by the enemy’s tusks. The ground all round was trodden down with the heavy trampling of the great warriors. But Sir Samuel says he has never seen a wild elephant sick. When wounded they salve the sore with wet mud, or else by blowing dry dust over it, to protect the surface from flies, which would lay eggs and breed maggots.
There is a horrible fly in Ceylon which lays live maggots; these instantly commence burrowing into the flesh, and within twenty-four hours grow large, and make loathsome sores. The treatment for such is a teaspoonful of calomel rubbed in.
My brother’s letters used to tell of the great herds which ranged through the eastern forests, and how he used to watch them at night coming to bathe in the great neglected tanks (like swampy lakes), and in the daytime browsing peacefully or sleeping, some fanning themselves with green branches—the young ones, so innocently playful miniatures of their parents, but having a good deal of shaggy hair, which wears off by friction as they rub against one another, or force their way through the jungle.
When a young one is captured, perhaps six months old, it at first refuses food, but after a day or two it will drink a bucketful of buffalo’s milk; presently it is promoted to rice and then to bananas and succulent young grass.
It is satisfactory to know that since the imposition in 1870 of the ten-rupee tax on each elephant slain (in the form of a licence paid in advance), the herds, which were previously in danger of being exterminated as effectually as have been the buffaloes of the American prairies, have now recovered to such an extent that in the North Central Province, in the Batticaloa district of the Eastern Province, and in the least cultivated districts lying between Hambantota on the south-east coast, as far north as the Kumbukkan river, they are now probably as numerous as ever. In the months from January to March, which are the driest and healthiest for sportsmen, the elephants are so worried by the large buffalo-flies which infest the dense forests along the base of the mountains that they betake themselves to the comparatively open country near the sea-coast of Uva.
It is pretty to see the way in which, on any alarm, the young ones are protected by their parents, being placed in the centre of the herd, while the mothers gather round so closely as effectually to hide them. The wonder is, that the little ones are not crushed and trampled under foot when the closely packed mass rush off in headlong fear, perhaps, as sometimes happens, down steep slippery ground, where they stumble and fall. Sometimes an old mother is seen hurrying along, her baby following with its little trunk twisted round the end of its mother’s tail to enable it to keep up.
The Singhalese have a method peculiar to themselves of capturing full-grown elephants by erecting a strong stockade in the jungle, so artfully contrived that wild elephants may enter it without perceiving that they are being trapped. A great army of beaters, numbering perhaps 4,000 or 5,000, are posted round a large tract of jungle where herds are known to be; many of the beaters are armed with guns, simply to frighten the animals; gradually they close in day after day for perhaps a fortnight, till at length the ever-retreating herd find themselves at the entrance of the kraal, and, once inside, their capture is comparatively easy, and is effected by the treachery of tame elephants, who play the part of Delilah to perfection, coaxing and soothing the captives, and so covering the approach of men who contrive to creep up and slip strong rope-nooses round their legs, and then haul them to big trees, where they are held prisoner, while the tame ones help the captors to secure them, after which a short spell of hunger and unfailing gentleness commences the work of their education.
When the English first occupied Ceylon, the herds were so numerous that on grand field-days as many as 150 were sometimes captured in one kraal, and of these a considerable number used to be exported to India. For some years this trade almost perished in consequence of the imposition in 1873 (one account says 1870) of an export duty of £20 on each animal: it revived in a measure when in 1882 the royalty was reduced to £10, and Ceylon elephants were again in demand for European menageries and for the use of Rajahs in Southern India.
Mr. Ferguson gives the following statistics of the number of elephants shipped during twenty years, furnished partly by the south-eastern forests, and partly by those of the extreme north of the Isle:—
No. Exported 1863 173 1864 194 1865 271 1866 203 1867 148 1868 167 1869 199 1870 38 1871 74 1872 53 1873 83 1874 77 1875 7 1876 3 1877 1 1878 1 1879 1 1880 12 1881 8 1882 25 1883 86 1884 51
And so on down to 1890, when 42 were exported.
When captured young, an elephant can be trained, like an affectionate dog, to follow its master everywhere. One known as ‘Kurunegalla Jack,’ belonging to a medical officer, used to go round the hospital wards with his master, who taught him to be generally useful, and even to administer pills! A Malay soldier one day dropped his pill, whereupon ‘Jack’ picked it up and dropped it into the man’s open mouth, with a puff which blew the pill safely down!
‘Jack’ learnt to go out shooting with his master, combining the work of stalking-horse and retriever, for he would discern game afar, and wander towards it in the most casual manner, acting as cover for his master, and when the latter fired, he would scamper off quite delighted, and return with the jungle fowl or peacock in his trunk.
Valuable as is the friendly elephant, there are certain individuals very much to be avoided, namely, the ‘rogues,’ which are solitary males, either mad with pain from some chronic suffering, too often the result of an old bullet wound, or else subject to an attack of periodical madness known as must, which is a form of temporary insanity to which the male elephant is occasionally subject, and which, during a period varying from five weeks to five months, makes him a very dangerous neighbour to man and beast.
A curious detail concerning Indian elephants is the fact that the natives recognise three distinct castes, differing in appearance as greatly as do our breeds of domestic cattle. The highest caste, or thorough-bred, are called Koomeriah: they are finely modelled animals, and march at a slow and stately pace. The clumsily built low-caste elephants are called Meerga: they are untidy-looking, extra-wrinkled animals, but comparatively light and swift. The intermediate caste are called Dwasala.
A very remarkable characteristic of these great creatures is that they are the best swimmers of any land animal. Of course this talent is more valuable in a land of broad rivers, such as India, than in Ceylon. Mr. Sanderson, of Mysore, mentions that he once had occasion to send a troop of seventy-nine elephants from Dacca to Barrackpore near Calcutta, which involved crossing not only the main stream of the Ganges, but also several of its large tidal branches. For six hours his elephants swam without once touching ground; then, having rested awhile on a sand-bank, they again took to the water and swam for three hours more! Not one was lost. He states that this was by no means a unique swim.
It is said that elephants have an extraordinary aversion to dogs, and always retreat from them. It would be well indeed if leopards shared in this aversion! They unfortunately are only too partial to a feast of poor bow-wow, and are ever on the prowl, where such are kept, watching for an opportunity to devour them, snatching them from verandahs when peacefully asleep, or even from the side of their masters. They are unpleasantly stealthy foes, never rushing boldly to meet their prey, but creeping up stealthily or climbing a tree, so as to be able to drop suddenly upon it. They climb as well as our household cat, and can even catch monkeys. They constantly sleep among the branches of trees.
A good deal of confusion has been caused by the habit prevalent, in Ceylon, of calling all these creatures chetahs, by which is generally understood the hunting leopard of India,[74] which is here unknown, and whose habits are altogether different. It captures its prey by fleetness of foot like a dog, whereas the leopard works by stealth like a true cat. Ceylon has two distinct varieties of leopard, of which the so-called chetah is much the smaller, rarely exceeding seven feet from the tip of the tail to the nose: he is beautifully marked all over with small round black spots.
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Footnote 74:
Felis jubata.
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The panther, which is the other member of the leopard family found in the Isle, is marked with black rings having a tawny centre. His average length is nine feet, and his weight nearly double that of the chetah. But naturalists and sportsmen differ greatly in their statements about these creatures, some maintaining that Ceylon has really only leopards, and that all the varieties are due to age and climate, those inhabiting the hot lowlands being generally short-haired, and, when old, of a very pale-yellow colour, while the mountain leopards have thick fur of a rich tawny colour, approaching brown.
Leopards rarely attack human beings except in self-defence. A remarkable exception to this rule occurred last year in the North Central Province, when a male and female chetah entered a house at dawn. The female ‘sat down in a corner,’ while the male attacked a sleeping man, sole inmate of the house. His son, who was asleep close by, ran to his father’s assistance and was severely mauled. On the villagers coming to the rescue the chetahs made off, and the victims were carried to the Vavuniya hospital, where both died of blood-poisoning.
An almost identical case occurred fifteen years ago in the same province, when two leopards entered a house, and the male killed one of the inmates.
They are not dainty feeders, and have been known to dig up a corpse and feast on it. Their habit of eating half-putrid dead beasts makes a wound from a leopard’s claws very dangerous, as they are so liable to have been stuck into flesh, poisonous because decayed; therefore such wounds should be syringed with a very weak solution of carbolic acid in cold water, in the proportion of 1 to 35.
Leopards are grievously destructive to cattle, which stampede in terror at the smell of one, or even of ground on which one has lain. Certainly it would be no loss to the Isle if these could be exterminated!
Ceylon must, however, be congratulated on her immunity from tigers, which is remarkable, as they abound in the jungles of the nearest mainland in Southern India. But for the narrow Paumben Passage, which is only about half a mile in width, Ceylon would be a peninsula instead of an island. As it is, the tiger is so good a swimmer that half a mile would nowise trouble him. Happily, however, for Ceylon, the barren sand-spit, which so nearly connects the two lands, has no tempting shade nor any water to induce tigers to forsake their accustomed haunts and explore new ground.
Leopards have of late years become scarce about Nuwara Eliya; but abundant sport is to be obtained in the pursuit of the sambur deer (which is invariably miscalled elk, though it really bears no resemblance whatever to that somewhat ungainly creature, with the large palmated antlers), and also of the small so-called ‘red-deer,’ which furnishes excellent venison.
The name of red-deer is as misleading as that of elk, as the animal in nowise resembles the red-deer of our Highlands. In the first place, though very numerous, they never go in herds; neither do they rush straight away from a foe, but run to and fro like a hare. They only measure about twenty-five inches to the shoulders, and their little antlers, rarely exceeding eight inches in length, have only two points, and no brow antler. But the most marked peculiarity is that they have sharp tusks in the upper jaw, about an inch and a half in length, like those of a wild boar, except that they curve downwards, as weapons of defence instead of offence.
Another creature similarly furnished with sharp tusks is the tiny mouse deer,[75] which only measures about twelve inches to the shoulder—a pretty graceful little creature, grey, with dark spots. It is commonly called the moose, also the musk-deer, probably because it has no sort of likeness to a moose (elk), neither is it provided with any musk-bag. It makes a very pretty pet, though apt to use its tusks rather sharply.
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Footnote 75:
Moschus meminna.
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But the sambur is the joy of sportsmen. He is very much like a British red-deer, with the same character of antler, and rough, coarse, dark-brown hair. He is really much larger than the Scotch red-deer, but has inferior horns. He is a solitary animal, wonderfully sure-footed on the most dangerous rock-ledges, and runs clean away from his pursuer, if possible bolting straight up-hill, so he affords good sport to his foes, who hunt him with a pack of hounds and kill him with the hunting-knife. The hounds are large powerful animals, those preferred being a cross between blood-hound and fox-hound, having the heavy bay of the former, so as to make themselves heard when they have followed their quarry far into the jungle. Pure fox-hounds are found to be too keen in pursuit, and so they get lost and devoured in the beast-haunted forest, their chief danger being from the cat-like spring of the leopard. It is only in these cool mountain districts that hounds can live in any comfort, so, in the eyes of a sportsman, their presence here is another feature of the mountain paradise.
All day long the great sambur lies close in the deep forest, and all night he roams about feeding on the nicest young crops, and developing new tastes, as new products are introduced. One would suppose that quinine in any form was an acquired taste, but the foliage of young cinchona plantations proved specially enticing, and I believe that of cacao is still more so.
So the knowledge that the hunt is in the interest of the planters gives it extra zest—not that that can ever be lacking in a country so beautiful and so rugged, where there is no knowing into what difficulties the chase may not lead ere the day is done, up and down well-nigh inaccessible gorges, clothed with dense forest—such as also crowns the summit of steep grass-covered mountains—or marshy bits of the patenas—perhaps (to the bewilderment of the hounds) suddenly to end on the brink of some frightful precipice over which the monarch of the glen has leaped, in his despair, to the misty ravine far below, possibly to fall into some rushing cataract, whence his mangled remains may be rescued by a tribe of hungry villagers to whom such chances are a true stroke of good luck. For the flesh of the deer is the very ideal of luxury to these poor folk.
He who follows hart and hounds in these mountain districts has need to be in good training, for nowhere will he find grander or more difficult country than much of that between Nuwara Eliya and the lowlands where the rugged grassy hills of Uva are seamed by mountain torrents dashing over huge boulders and masses of fallen rock, or overleaping perpendicular cliffs. One of these, the Fort M’Donald river, is a succession of falls and foaming cataracts, ending in a sheer fall of three hundred feet, over the mighty rock rampart which bounds the middle zone of these mountain terraces.
In its impetuous course this river, so justly dreaded by huntsmen, forms very dangerous pools enclosed in deep rock basins, whence the water in some cases disappears into subterranean caverns, thence reappearing in rushing rapids, till with a thunderous roar that echoes far through the mountains, it takes its last headlong leap and is lost to sight in a veil of dazzling spray, far, far below.
Throughout its course the river is exceedingly difficult of access, and as the hunted sambur (invariably called elk in Ceylon) generally tries to make for the water, a day’s hunting in this neighbourhood is liable to try the strongest nerves and all capacities. In the annals of real sport I know no chapter more thrilling than Sir Samuel Baker’s account of following a majestic stag up and down this frightful ravine, till in his last despair the magnificent creature bounded right over an awful precipice into the abyss far below, whence, with infinite toil, his splendid antlers were rescued. When the villagers heard of this, they toiled to the spot to secure the venison, but found that two fine leopards had been beforehand with them. However, they retrieved enough to reward them for their toil.[76]
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Footnote 76:
‘Eight Years in Ceylon,’ Chap. VII. Longmans, Green & Co.
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Besides these large animals, the mountains shelter hares and herds of wild pigs; while of creatures which cannot be classed as game, there are wanderoo monkeys, black and grey squirrels, porcupines, rats, jackals, otters, mongooses, and civet cats.
One very attractive deer abounds on the plains, but is such a lover of heat that it never roams higher than 3,000 feet above the sea-level. This is the axis or spotted deer, the only gregarious deer in Ceylon. It is a very pretty creature, in size and colour like our own fallow deer, but having slender horns, not palmated. The female has none. They are of a rich fawn colour, very dark on the back, and spotted with white, and they roam about in herds of from twenty to a hundred in the open park country between the hills and the sea.
For the home-sick Briton, one special charm of these grassy downs is the melodious song of many skylarks, soaring and singing in the bright sunlight of this far land, as joyously as when rising from the fields and downs of the old country.
IX. KANDY
Tombs of the queens—Court dress—Titles—Kandyan ladies—A chief’s jungle feast—Pandals—Masks—Musical instruments—Leeches—How to avoid them— Peradeniya Botanical Gardens—India-rubber trees—Palms—Talipot palm— Bamboo—Other gardens—Flying foxes—Various nests.
After a happy peaceful week at the Bishop’s little bungalow at Pallagolla, during which we saw many friends, all on their way down from Nuwara Eliya to lower levels, we also followed, halting at Rambodda (between the red and white waterfalls), where there was quite a gathering of the planting community to attend a christening in the neat little church. Thence by coach to Gampola, whence the railway carried us through lovely country and across the wide Maha-velli-ganga, the ‘Great Sandy River,’ to Kandy, a beautifully situated little town clustering round an artificial tank, and surrounded on every side by beautiful hills. Here the vegetation of the hills meets that of the plains, and all the lovely varieties of foliage peculiar to each mingle in rank luxuriance.
It was the home of the latest Singhalese kings, and the last place to fall into the hands of foreigners. Now it is one of the three seats of the English Government. Being only 1,680 feet above the sea, with a warm moist climate, it forms a half-way house between Colombo, on the sea-level, and Nuwara Eliya, which has an elevation of 6,240 feet. Comfortable bungalows, each in a pleasant shady garden, surround the lake, and are dotted all over the green hills overlooking the valley.
Of course people who live on the level of the lake are practically at the bottom of a deep cup, and are apt to find the steamy heat oppressive; but the homes on the upper roads not only enjoy fresher air, but far more extensive views, for beyond the red-tiled monasteries, temples, and churches, which are reflected in the blue mirror far below, rise the steep slopes of the verdant valley, where luxuriant foliage blends with vividly green expanses of lemon and guinea grass, and far beyond the green goblet stretch beautiful mountain-ranges—the lovely Matale Hills and Hunasgeriya Peak; the latter, which is nearly 5,000 feet in height, often towering above clouds.
Such a view as this, generally seen through a fairy-like frame of feathery bamboos and palms, is a perpetual joy, whether in the clear early morning, under the bright blue sky of noonday, or when bathed in the soft golden light of evening. I thought the finest point of view of any was that selected many years ago by a friend of my childhood, Simon Keir, who was one of the earliest European settlers here.
Kandy is indebted for its lake to Sri Wikrema Raja Singha, the last of the Kandyan kings, who, for the embellishment of his capital, flooded the paddy-fields in this, as also in a lower valley. The latter has been restored to its original use, but the lake at Kandy happily remains as a thing of beauty round which the inhabitants take their daily three-mile drive with most monotonous regularity. It is surrounded by a very ornamental low stone wall, with niches to contain small lamps for illumination on certain festivals, especially at a feast of lanterns in November.
A small island in the lake was reserved for the special enjoyment of the ladies of the royal zenana. When the British took possession, this was utilised as a powder-magazine, but now is restored to more than its primitive beauty, being a miniature paradise of flowering shrubs.
Though this lakelet is the making of Kandy, its creation in the beginning of the present century is said to have been an occasion of grievous hardship to the people, having been entirely made by compulsory labour—the Raja-karia, which was always enforced by the native kings, and by means of which the gigantic tanks for irrigation and other great works were produced. In this case, however, the bloodthirsty cruelty of the king made work done for him peculiarly oppressive, and rich and poor, priests and soldiers, are said to have all rejoiced when in 1815 their hateful tyrant was deposed by British arms.
He was captured in a mountain-cave, and was deported to the Fort of Vellore, near Madras, where, solaced by the company of his four queens, he was retained until his death, seventeen years later. He was the last of a series of a hundred and sixty-five kings, whose reigns extended over a period of 2,358 years.
Judging from an official report made by Major Johnston in 1804, the condition of the people cannot have been luxurious. Even rice, which, although the mainstay of Eastern races, we deem such very simple fare, was then throughout Ceylon, but especially in the Kandyan province, reserved for the higher classes, and, he says, ‘is a luxury of which the lowest order of the people seldom partake, their chief food being a sort of grain that grows on the hills, with little cultivation, and without watering. This, together with a root dug from the bottom of the tanks, and a decoction of the bark of a tree found in abundance in the forests, constitute their principal means of support.’
In those days, whatever was deemed a luxury was reserved for the king and the priests. It is said that even windows, tiled roofs, and white walls were prohibited for the use of subjects; so that, with the exception of the king’s palace and the Buddhist temples and monasteries, the old town of Kandy consisted chiefly of thatched mud hovels. Even in 1844, Hoffmeister speaks of ‘the filthy streets of this poverty-stricken city.’ It now numbers about 20,000 inhabitants, of whom about 250 are British; and their comfortable homes and the spires and towers of Christian churches of various denominations are pleasant features in the scene.
But the really characteristic buildings are the Buddhist monasteries and colleges; an octagonal building, in which are stored treasures of Oriental literature; the palace of the old kings, now the residence of the Government Agent; and the ancient Hall of Audience, which is now used as the District Court of Kandy, and which is a very striking hall supported by many richly carved wooden pillars. Close to this hall is the Maligawa, the far-famed Temple of the Dalada or Tooth, which, though a mere piece of ivory half the size of my first finger, is supposed to have been a veritable tooth of Gautama Buddha, and is reverenced accordingly by all the millions who profess to be his followers.
Naturally, in this stronghold of Buddhism, the chief characteristic of the human element is the large proportion of the brethren of the yellow robe of all ages and sizes—from reverend old men down to quite small boys—all alike with shaven head, and drapery in flowing lines like a Roman toga. At Kandy almost all are members of the Siamese sect which wears the robe with one end thrown over the left shoulder, but the right shoulder and arm always bare—thus producing a fine harmony in brown and yellow. A yellow palm-leaf fan completes the picture, and is carried in order that the holy brother may veil his eyes as he passes anything so distracting or so evil as a woman. I cannot say that I have ever observed the fan used for this purpose!
It is whispered that some of these priests have taken the yellow robe as the simplest method of getting a divorce from an unloved wife. They are at liberty at any moment to throw off their robes and return to the position of ordinary mortals—beginning life anew with a new wife. But while they wear the robe they are bound to be very strict; and I must plead guilty to having occasionally, for malicious fun, cordially shaken hands with friendly brethren, wondering what terrible penance they would feel bound to perform in consequence!
At Kandy I was most hospitably received and lionised by Mr. and Mrs. Philip Templer, and with their kind aid and that of other friends who sympathised in my wish to see everything of interest, I think there were few, even of the most out-of-the-way corners, left unvisited or unsketched.
Amongst those somewhat off the beaten track are the tombs of the Kandyan queens—not beautiful in themselves, and somewhat ruinous, but, as is invariably the case in Ceylon, glorified by the surrounding foliage. The red-tiled double roof, shaded by luxuriant palms loaded with nuts and blossom, each crown a study in green and gold and brown; gnarled old temple-trees filling the air with fragrance; and yellow-robed priests laying offerings of yellow flowers before small dome-shaped relic-shrines, beneath huge bo-trees with spiritual-looking white stems and light foliage, which, like that of our own aspen, quivers ceaselessly even when there is scarcely a perceptible breath of air.
As regards the Kandyan kings, their funeral rites were invested with a strange veil of mystery and awe. As ‘children of the Sun’ the royal race were entitled to supreme reverence from a people who worshipped the heavenly host. In order to deepen this veneration, many ceremonies were observed. The funeral pyre was so great, and was so constantly renewed, that it burnt for ten days, when it was extinguished, and the ashes of the pyre were collected in an earthen urn.
A masked figure in dark robes then appeared and, taking the urn, mounted an elephant, and, heading a solemn funereal procession, led the way to the Maha-velli-ganga. On reaching the brink of the river he descended from his high seat, and, carrying in one hand the urn, in the other a drawn sword, he silently took his place in a dark canoe, which was covered with cocoa-nut blossoms and green leaves. The canoe was then towed to the middle of the stream, when the dark figure rose and, holding up the urn in presence of the multitude, cut it in two by one blow of his sword, thus consigning to the sacred waters the precious dust of the royal race of the Sun. Then, diving beneath the surface, the dark-robed mask disappeared; and the frail canoe drifted down the stream, with its cargo of flowers.
The men who had collected the ashes were conveyed to the other side of the river, and certain death was supposed to await them should they ever return. The elephant that had borne the sacred urn was thenceforth himself sacred. He, too, was sent to the opposite shore, there to end his days in idleness. Thus was the royal dust disposed of; and straightway a new child of the Sun was ready to shine on the darkness of his people, for just so long as his next of kin were content to await their little hour,—the rapidity of succession in these Singhalese annals being strikingly suggestive of Oriental impatience in that respect.
We made expeditions to various Buddhist temples, which are invariably nestled into some very picturesque corner, and the drive or ride to them was always through lovely scenery. In one of these—a white temple beside a dark rock, and which has the peculiarity of being three storeys high— we were interested by the wall frescoes, all in the crudest primitive colours, depicting scenes in Buddhist mythology, and the penalties of divers sins. Bright blue devils with red-hot tongs are shown pulling out the teeth of one wretched victim, while the reward of cruelty is exemplified by a hunter being torn into fragments by blue dogs.
In a side chapel lay a reclining image of Buddha fifty-seven feet long, and in the inner shrine worshippers were laying graceful offerings of rosy lotus-blossoms and pale yellow roses. In the upper storey treasures of gold and silver work, small figures of Buddha, and bo-trees finely wrought in metal, are stored within a fine bronze dagoba, and all were courteously exhibited by their yellow-robed guardians.
To me all the rock temples have a special attraction: they are always picturesquely niched, and involve something of a scramble. We drove from Kandy to see one at Hindo Galla—ascending by steep rock steps to a red-tiled, white-pillared temple, nestling beneath a huge boulder of chocolate-coloured rock with yellow and grey on the under side, and a group of yellow-robed monks supplying a perfect touch of colour, with surroundings of dark rocks, kitool palms, and a temple-tree loaded with fragrant blossom. Also a fine large bo-tree, surrounded by several terraces of masonry all lined with triangular niches for lamps, and glowing with yellow marigolds—sacred on account of their colour.
All through this month of May I find in my journal perpetually recurring entries of rain, rain, rain—including some magnificent thunderstorms. However, no one seemed to mind the weather, except the luckless natives who are not provided with waterproofs, and who here, as in India, are exceedingly sensitive to the smallest fall of temperature—especially dreading the delicious coolness of early dawn.
On two days there were races at Peradeniya, which were attended by every one, notwithstanding the rain. Happily the intervening day was glorious. I might say, of course it was, as it was the day chosen for the Queen’s birthday levee, and a very pretty and curious sight it was. It was held in the audience-hall of the old palace of the Kandyan kings, a low dark hall supported by a double row of handsome wooden pillars. Their capitals are richly carved, and both on these and on the walls are shown flights of the geese sacred to Buddha.
The distinctive feature of the scene was, as it ever must be, the very handsome and very extraordinary court-dress of the Kandyan chiefs; and I may remark once for all, that, as compared with a grand Indian durbar, this is the one only phase of gorgeousness quite peculiar to Ceylon, and in which no invidious comparison is possible. To give an idea of the dress by mere description is almost impossible.
In the first place, though the Kandyan chiefs are naturally a fine handsome set of men, their object seems to be to make themselves appear very much bigger; therefore, to begin with, instead of wearing a single piece of cloth as a comboy or long kilt, they wear seven pieces of very fine silk or muslin, probably embroidered in gold, and heavily fringed, each nine yards in length. These sixty-three yards are wound round and round the waist, caught up so as to form a divided skirt over tight white trousers, which end in a neat frill above the bare brown feet. I was assured that some of the very great swells literally contrive to wind on 150 yards! The folding is so contrived that the figure gradually tapers from the ankle up to the waist, round which (of course, many inches wider than the real waist) is fastened a broad gold-embroidered velvet belt. The shape of the man thus adorned is that of a peg-top!
Over a shirt or vest fastened with splendid studs is worn a short jacket with very large gigot sleeves to above the elbow. These jackets are of the brightest coloured brocaded silks or velvet, all gold-embroidered, as are also the very peculiar and gorgeous velvet hats, of which you never see two alike, though in shape all are like very large rather flat pincushions, and surmounted with an eccentric ornament like a miniature Christmas-tree of gold and jewels. The gold embroidery makes these head-dresses exceedingly heavy. The long black hair is parted on the forehead like a woman’s, and is fastened at the back in the usual kondé or knot. An enormous ring worn on the third or fourth finger, completes a costume whose gaudiness is effectually harmonised by the rich brown colour of the dark-eyed chief, and a group of fifty or sixty of these very fine birds in their very fine feathers is a sight well worth seeing. Some wear a full-plaited muslin tippet over the jacket.
Only think how inconvenient this wonderful official dress must have been in the reign of the Kandyan kings, in whose presence the highest chiefs were bound to crouch in lowly humility, and if obliged to pass in front of him, even at a considerable distance, they were compelled to stoop so low as apparently to be creeping! Happily under British rule all men may walk upright, and the common-wear costume of these gorgeous Ratemahatmayas is the semi-European dress adopted in the colleges,—the comboy or waist-cloth, the kondé or knot of long back-hair, and the tortoiseshell comb being the only distinctive features, all other articles of dress being British.
The court dress of the minor head-men is marked by a simplicity by no means unbecoming. Their only distinctive feature is the saucer-shaped hat, but theirs is of plain white material. Their only other garment is the simple long loin-cloth, and a cloth or belt wrapped round the waist. Thence upwards they are clad in nature’s own suit of silky brown.
Besides these there was a great display of distinctive dresses, the variety of turbans and other head-dresses alone forming quite a study. Prominent in the crowd are the Mudaliyars, Singhalese officials in their quaint, half native, half Dutch dress. Their jet-black hair is rolled up at the back in the usual kondé, into which is stuck the very high tortoiseshell comb, while the usual semicircular comb is worn round the back of the head, with the ends above each ear. Instead of trousers they retain the long comboy worn to the feet, but these are encased in white stockings and patent-leather shoes; the upper man is clothed in a long Dutch-looking official coat of dark-blue cloth with large gold buttons, a white waistcoat displaying gorgeous buttons and large gold chain, and high shirt-collar and silk neck-tie; and a gold belt, with a small curved sword, complete this hybrid but eminently respectable costume. The little sword is often studded with gold and gems.
The Mudaliyars are officials of the low country, and are of three ranks; the lowest are chief revenue officers of large districts. About twenty are called Mudaliyars of the Governor’s Gate, and are described as equivalent in standing to our ‘captain and aide-de-camp.’ The Maha (or Great) Mudaliyar is the Governor’s chief interpreter. Below all these rank the Muhandirams and Arachchis.
Many of these gentlemen are burdened with such stupendous names as may well make them envy simple Tom Brown or John Smith. Here is one name, ‘Solomon Dia-Abayawikrama Jayatilaka Senawiratna Raja Kumararesan Kadakorala Bandaranayaka.’ Another is, ‘Peter Abraham Dias Abayawikrama Jayatilaka Bandaranavaka.’ And yet another, ‘Mahawasala Kurana Liyana Mudianslage Don Abraham Karunatilika Abavaratna.’ These are taken almost at random from the official list.[77]
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Footnote 77:
I recently received an account of the funeral in January 1888 of Mr. Rajapakse, a greatly respected Mudaliyar of the Governor’s Gate. The funeral procession, which was upwards of a mile in length, was preceded by the pipers of the 1st Battalion of Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders playing coronachs. Then followed eighty-three Buddhist priests of both the Amarapura and the Siam sects, led by three high priests. The hearse, which was drawn by four black horses, was followed by upwards of two hundred carriages (native and European); then came nearly three hundred servants and dependants from the principal estates of the deceased, and seven hundred mourners from other districts, also a file of fifty of the Lascorien Guard, in full official dress, and a band of piping musicians in strange ancient costume. To the music of the latter were added the efforts of forty-five tom-tom-beaters, who played the Dead March in real Oriental fashion.
At the grave the Buddhist priests chanted stanzas, a high priest delivered a funeral oration, and jasmine flowers were thrown into the grave.
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Other titles of the low country are: Ralahami, Mahatmaya, Nilame, and Appuhami, which respectively describe a headman, a gentleman, a high-officer, or a man of middle-class. A Disawa governs a province subject, of course, to the British Government agent, while the gorgeous Kandyan officials, whose court dress I have just described, are Ratemahatmayas. The chief of a district is an Adigar. A village chief is a Gamarala, the chief officer of a village is the Arachchila, and his subordinate is a Vidana. These are but a few out of many.
The ladies are distinguished by titles as varied as those of their lords. The wife of a chief is Kumarihami, other ladies of high birth are Walawwe-mahatmayo, of which title, Mahatmayo simply means madam, and is applicable to any lady. The wife of a minor chief is Menikê, and Etani and Lamahami mark the feminine of other grades.
I was present one evening at a grand reception of Kandyan ladies at the Pavilion (as the Government House at Kandy is called—a pleasant house, two storeys high, with broad cool verandahs and delicious gardens, with shrubberies extending far up the hill). The ladies, who do not aim at increasing their apparent bulk, looked strangely diminutive in proportion to their magnificent lords. Their plain modest dress consisted of the simple comboy—i.e. skirt of fine white muslin, with a gold stripe running through it, and neat little gold-spangled jacket; their long black hair caught in a loose knot behind, and fastened with gold pins—never any covering on the head; and though their fine old family jewels will repay close inspection, the mode of cutting and setting is such, that they have none of the brilliancy which we prize in gems.
Whatever other title she may own, a Singhalese lady is generally described as Menikê, i.e. ‘The Jewel’—a pleasant suggestion of honour, well carried out by the fact that the enforced seclusion of zenana life is unknown in Ceylon, where women enjoy freedom as absolute as that of their Western sisters.
Most of the chiefs who attended the reception could talk more or less English, but the ladies were as deficient therein as we were in Kandyan, so the evening was decidedly stiff.
Speaking of official titles, I must not omit those connected with the Buddhist temples. The principal lay officer in charge of the Temple of the Tooth is the Diyawadana (or Dewa) Nilame, and the lay incumbent of the temple is the Basnayaka Nilame. All these official titles were formerly conferred annually, but I believe that now each is bestowed for life. The chief high priest is styled Maha Nayaka Annanse, and the second chief high priest is Anunayaka. Priests and deacons are Terunnanse and Ganinnanse. A Kapuwa is the officiating priest in what is called a Devil Temple, which is a form of Hindooism even more debased than the original; a Yaka-dura is a devil-dancer, and a Wedarale is a native doctor, whose science of healing is generally much on a level with that of the aforesaid devil-dancers.
I fear this page will prove as dull reading as a chapter of genealogy, but to any one travelling in the Isle it is interesting to understand the titles which so often meet the ear.
The Queen’s birthday was also celebrated by a pretty ball at the Pavilion, followed by a club ball, at both of which the planting community mustered strong, with that hearty enjoyment of a good dance, and of life in general, which is so very characteristic of society in Ceylon.
Of various pleasant dinner-parties, the most interesting was one to the Government agents of the Central, Northern, North-Western, Western, Southern, and Eastern Provinces. I believe that in the days of native rule, seven kings reigned over seven little kingdoms, but under English rule Ceylon was divided into six Provinces until 1873, when a seventh was created, namely, the North-Central, of which Mr. Dickson[78] was appointed first Government agent. A few years later the great neglected district of Uva, in the south-east of the Isle, was created a separate province; and finally, in January 1889, the district of Sabaragamua, lying between the Central and Southern Provinces, was also created a province, thus making a total of nine.
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Footnote 78:
Now Sir John F. Dickson.
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Specially interesting to me was a grand breakfast in the real old Kandyan style, given in honour of the Governor by the Dewa Nilame and another gorgeously apparelled native official. The occasion was that of inspecting the land near the river, in view of proposed measures for irrigation. It was a beautiful drive through lovely scenery, and as we approached the scene of action, the road was thronged with gaily dressed natives, and fifteen elephants with grotesque housings. There is a much larger muster of elephants at some of the Temple festivities, but even fifteen suffice to stir up a good deal of dust on a hot day.
If India excels in ‘barbaric pomp,’ there is one detail in which Ceylon has the field quite to herself—namely, in the erection of pandals, which are a peculiarly graceful style of triumphal arch. In no other country have I seen anything like these structures, which are generally very light, and always in good taste.
This was my first introduction to these arches of welcome, so they had the additional fascination of novelty. Their construction is generally very simple, but always effective and very varied, and the rapidity with which they are run up, to do honour to any guest of mark, is surprising, as is also the lavish destruction of fruit-bearing palms and palm-blossoms, which are used for the perpetually recurring decorations— often on a very extensive scale. Indeed it is whispered that their creation is by no means an unmixed joy to those most closely concerned— namely, the villagers, whose head-men require them to find the bamboos, arecas, and other materials, to say nothing of days and days of unpaid work,[79] all for the honour and glory of welcoming a stranger.
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Footnote 79:
Where land is held on the condition of performing all such services when required.
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In the first instance the skeleton framework, though sometimes composed of tall bamboos, is often made of the perfectly upright stems of the areca palm. These are frequently thickly entwined with long trails of the exquisitely graceful and delicate climbing ferns, or with a very rich species of stag’s-horn moss, which grows luxuriantly in many places. (Its native name is badal-wanassa, which I believe means ‘The Goldsmith’s Curse,’ so called because a luckless jeweller is said to have been driven mad in the effort to reproduce it in gold at the bidding of the king.) To this groundwork are perhaps affixed the white young leaves of the cocoa palm or leaves of the so-called sago palm, or graceful fronds of the Kitool or jaggery palm, which are so like gigantic leaves of maiden-hair fern. Several kinds of fern are freely used, varying of course with the district. Sometimes a light trellis-work is all covered with lovely mosses such as we cherish in hothouses and stoves, relieved here and there with bright blossoms, or with the white leaves and blossoms of the candle-nut.
On some of the most effective pandals, only three or four varieties of foliage are employed, in others almost every type of fruit and flower is represented; pine-apples and screw-pines, green and gold oranges, clusters of the large rich golden-brown nuts of the palmyra palm, clusters of the small areca-nut, or of cocoa-nuts of all ages from ivory-like infants to full-grown green or yellow nuts, long trailing bunches of the grape-like berries of the Kitool, large yellow shaddocks— in short, whatever fruit is available, but always so put together as to produce an effect of fairy-like lightness, with the almost invariable finishing touch of several plumes of cocoa or areca palm blossom, which is quite unique in its pure beauty.
Of course, in British lands, even these materials might be so massed as to look heavy, but a Singhalese pandal is always elegant. Latterly, however, the occasional use of bunting, numerous small flags, and strips of scarlet and white calico marks a departure from the primitive artistic simplicity. I must not omit to mention the spires and pinnacles of deftly-woven palm-leaves, nor the singularly light effect produced by a fringe of large yellow banana-leaves torn into ribbons, which is sometimes suspended all along either side of the road where the honoured guest is to pass.
There was a full attendance of the Kandyan chiefs in court dress, each carried in the old style in a hot stuffy palanquin. These were preceded by a company of musicians and devil-dancers in most fantastic attire, each wearing a large breastplate, and a sort of harness of shells and beads. Also a very curious silver head-dress like a crown, combined with a tall hat with a peak whence flows a long streamer. Others wore extraordinary and most hideously grotesque masks. One of the strangest, with horrid teeth and large tusks, had a cobra with distended hood over the forehead, and one above each glaring eye; while on either side, two dancing figures projected like ears.
There is a considerable variety of these monstrosities, all of which are strictly reproduced from very ancient patterns. They are made of plaster gaudily coloured, and are manufactured at Bentota, half-way between Colombo and Galle. These alarming ugly masks are worn by the professional exorcists, who are called in, in cases of grievous illness, to scare the malignant devils to whose influence all suffering is attributed. They continue their noisy incantations the live-long night beside the miserable patients: no wonder that these so often die of the would-be remedy. Less repulsive masks are borne by the actors in village comedies, which, of course, are intended to be funny.
As to the musicians, I fear that Oriental music can never be other than torture to Western ears, and the musical instruments of Ceylon consist of shrill ivory horns, drums, and ‘tom-toms,’ which are a sort of tambourine made of well-cured sheepskin tightly stretched over a wooden frame. This is struck with the fingers, and men, women, and children seem never to weary of it, as the accompaniment to interminable songs. In all the temples huge chank shells are blown as trumpets, and produce ear-splitting blasts, with which the priests delight to murder the sleep of their neighbours all through the night. Happily, when Europeans live near a temple, a hint from the local authorities places some limit on the hours of these dreadful ‘services of praise.’
Only think how terrible must have been the effect when, as recorded in old Pali chronicles, the military band of the Singhalese King Dutuagaimunu was composed of sixty-four kinds of drums, which produced a roar as of thunder, while the shrieks of numberless great chanks rent the heavens. Assuredly if, as we are credibly informed, a whole English army ran away at the blast of a hundred Scotch pipers, the foes of the Singhalese army might well fly at the blast of even a score of temple chanks. That was 300 B.C., and happily most of those drums have ceased to exist. We voted the survivors quite bad enough, as the dancers and musicians danced and played for our benefit till all our heads ached. One of the dances was very funny. A man on stilts represented a giant towering above all his fellows. This was to illustrate the dignity of royalty or its representative as compared with ordinary mortals.
On reaching our destination we found a most imposing group of temporary bungalows of bamboo and palm-leaves run up for the day, a large central bungalow in which was spread an excellent breakfast, and a series of beautiful dressing-rooms for all the different sets of guests, those for the most honoured guests being hung with white calico, with delicate ferns pinned on in graceful tracery. White, being the royal colour, denotes special respect—a royal gift is wrapped in white and carried on the head; white cloths are spread over the seats prepared for great folk, and in ancient days over their pathway also. The rooms for lesser folk were hung with strips of bright calico or other material. Among the hangings of the breakfast hall was a large Cumming tartan shawl, which, of course, was said to be specially in my honour! From the fact of its being so very bright (emerald green and scarlet, with black and white stripes), this, my clan tartan, finds special favour with Oriental races, so that I have frequently seen it in most unexpected and remote places, occasionally worn as a turban.
Happily this day the weather proved perfect, which was more than we could always say, for England itself could scarcely have given us a more uncertain climate than our experience of Kandy in May. However, we walked or drove in every direction, sketching temples and foliage, river, lake, and distant mountains, and returning with our dresses so embroidered with the sharp spikes of Spanish grass that it was a good half-hour’s work every evening to pick them out. Moreover, there were few days when, if we ventured to leave the beaten tracks, we did not bring home some land-leeches! They are little brown creatures, about half or a quarter of an inch in length; but they can stretch themselves till they are a couple of inches long and thin as a thread. They literally swarm in the moist grass and foliage. I suppose that in a general way they contrive to exist on water (on the principle ‘Quand on n’a pas ce que l’on aime, il faut aimer ce que l’on a!’); but certainly they lose no chance of securing a good drink at the expense of any animal, human or otherwise, which they can possibly attack.
Strange to say, they totally disappear in dry weather, and what becomes of them no one knows; but no sooner does rain fall, even a single heavy shower, than they are again swarming, and you see them sitting up on end (the thickest end), with the thread-like point, which is the head, furnished with five pairs of eyes, waving in every direction watching for their prey. (I have already referred to these pests, but verbal repetition may help to suggest their too frequent presence in real life!)
Should you incautiously venture to sit down on the cool inviting grass in pleasant green shade, it is as though you issued a general invitation to the thirsting legions, for straightway you see them approach from every side, advancing by a succession of jerks. They fix their head on the ground, the body forming an arch, then bring up the tail, and again dart the head forward; and while you are flicking them off in one direction others are stealthily approaching, and making their way through the meshes of your stockings, whence they travel all over you, and feast unnoticed till your attention is attracted by little streams of blood. Probably you never discover them till you get home again, and then woe betide you if you pull them off: in that case the bite is very likely to fester, especially in the case of any one who is out of health; whereas if you let them drink their little fill they will fall off, and the application of a drop of sweet oil secures a speedy and clean healing. But if you object to being treated as the leeches’ wine-vat, and have a little salt, lime-juice, or brandy at hand, a touch of either of these will cause them to relax their hold. Indeed, a preliminary application of lime-juice generally wards off their attack.
On some of our marches through the dense jungle, where the narrow footpath only allowed us to travel single file, or when, after rain, we crossed plains clothed with rank grass, it seemed as though the advance of the riders sounded a call to the approaching feast, so that the horsekeepers following on foot were severely attacked, their bare legs sometimes streaming with blood at the end of a march. The horses also suffered considerably.
But to horses, cattle, dogs, and other animals, a much more serious foe is the cattle-leech, which abounds in the rank vegetation around the neglected tanks and other stagnant pools, and which attaches itself to the muzzle or nostrils of creatures coming to drink, often passing thence into the throat, and causing great suffering and sometimes death.
The familiar leech formerly so largely used in medicine (well do I remember the large glass jar in which our old nurse used to keep about a dozen of these ugly creatures, and how on one occasion they escaped, and kept us in a state of terror for several days, till the housemaids retrieved the full tale of corpses in the course of carpet-sweeping!)— these useful allies of the two-legged leech are found in the swampy rice-fields, but are about twice the size of their European cousins, and are thirsty in proportion.
I had gained some experience of leeches when camping in the Himalayas, where the water-leeches proved peculiarly trying to dogs, and where the small land-leeches infest the lower spurs of that great mountain-range. Europeans try to defend themselves against these vexatious little foes by wearing leech-gaiters; but as the wily creatures generally contrive to wriggle their way inside, we concluded that these really tended to their feasting in peace, so we generally preferred to dispense with them.
The land-leeches in Ceylon are very local. Thus, while they swarm all about Kandy and Matelé, at Nalande, which is only distant about fifteen miles, we saw none, and were assured that the place was free from them.
In case of alarming timid travellers, I ought to state that people who are content to stick to beaten tracks may leave the Isle without even seeing one of these pests; but I speak from an artist’s experience, ever on the look-out for the best possible point of view, even if to reach it involved climbing through stiff jungle or tall grass (which is fairly safe if you always rattle a stick in front of your feet, to give lurking serpents time to get out of your way, as they are delighted to do when possible).
In Ceylon, however, I found that many of the loveliest sketching-grounds were absolutely untenable to a defenceless artist; so necessity, as usual, proved the mother of invention. I always carried a large waterproof rug, and had also a large waterproof sack, which secured my bedding from rain or dust, as the case might be. So, whenever the desirable sketching ground was likely to prove very leechy, I commenced operations by spreading the waterproof rug on the ground, with the sack in the very middle, and my paint-box and sketching-block in position. Then, divesting myself of muddy boots, I stepped into the sack, which I then tied securely under my arms, and thus prepared, set to work, at the same time keeping a watchful eye on the rug, so as to flick off all adventurous assailants—and many they always were.
By this means I was enabled to secure many sketches which would otherwise have been quite impossible, especially one in the beautiful botanical gardens at Peradeniya, four miles from Kandy, of a glade where the exquisite Thunbergia, starred with myriads of blue-grey blossoms, climbs from a carpet of the freshest, richest grass to the very summit of a large group of trees, thence drooping in graceful festoons, and linking them all together into one fairy-like sanctuary, haunted by dainty birds and radiant butterflies. I always remember the sunlight falling through that exquisite veil of delicate green and lavender as an ideal of tropical perfection. Like many other flowers which now grow so luxuriantly in Ceylon, the Thunbergia is not indigenous, having been imported from Burmah.
My anti-leech panoply also enabled me to secure a large and careful study of the magnificent avenue of old india-rubber trees just outside of Peradeniya Gardens. Surely no other botanical gardens in the world have so stately and unique an approach. One of these grand trees might well be the pride of any garden, and here we have a double row of giants, interlacing their great boughs so as to form a complete canopy of glossy dark-green foliage, while the smooth silvery grey stems are buttressed by a labyrinth of huge snake-like roots, overspreading the whole ground for about a hundred feet round each tree, and of course all coiled and intertwined like a nightmare of writhing pythons! But when you look closer, you see that these roots are all flattened, so that they really form a maze of low walls.
Of course this noble avenue of Ficus elastica is prized for its beauty. But now that Ceylon so fully recognises the necessity of the greatest possible variety in her products, attention has been turned to the cultivation of various species of trees, which, when wounded, weep the large solid tears which trickle down the stem, and harden into the india-rubber of commerce. These tears are really the milk of the tree, totally distinct from the sap, and flowing in separate channels: being of the nature of an excretion, and the tree being nowise dependent on it for nourishment, its removal does the plant no injury.
It is obtained by bleeding the young trees with a pricker, which can be done daily for a considerable part of the year (as many as 240 days are spoken of as possible), the instrument used being either a small double wheel like a spur with sharp points, or else one shaped like a =𝗩=, with sharp cutting edges, which stabs right through the outer bark. Coolies engaged in stabbing the trees and scraping off the tears shed on the previous day, can collect about half a pound in the course of a day’s work.
This quantity, however, varies greatly, the yield of the Ficus elastica being only about ten per cent. of pure milk, whereas the Para rubber (Hevea brasiliensis) which is the most valued in commerce, yields about thirty per cent. The Ceara rubber also yields much milk of excellent quality, and would grow well at no cost of cultivation beyond that of planting on thousands of acres now abandoned to weeds or thickets of lantana and guava. But the trees are slow-growing, and it is as yet a question whether the crop can be made to pay the expense of collecting it.
This cultivation is therefore experimental, as is also that of the various gutta-percha yielding trees of Malacca and the Malayan Archipelago—trees whose thick white milk, lying between the bark and the wood, is collected in the Malayan forests by cutting down the whole tree, and even then only extracting a very small proportion of the milk, not more than 1/38th it is said! though it is believed that, by pounding and boiling the bark, the whole might be obtained. No wonder that Sir Joseph Hooker has said that ‘the time cannot be far distant when the natural sources of gutta-percha will be definitely used up.’
Seeing how very large and ever-increasing is the demand for both caoutchouc and gutta-percha, it would certainly be satisfactory if their cultivation in a British colony can be made to pay.
I returned again and again to the stately India-rubber Avenue, and became a familiar visitor in the cool shady gardens, for which it would be impossible to imagine a more perfect situation than this beautiful semi-tropical basin, secure alike from the parching heat of Colombo, and from the sharp frosts of Nuwara Eliya. Here the heat is tempered by the heavy rainfall attracted by the surrounding mountains, producing a warm steaming atmosphere, in the highest degree favourable to luxuriant growth.
The garden is so called by courtesy, for it rather resembles a combination of park and shrubbery: the late Director, Dr. Thwaites, who for so many years was the presiding genius here, deemed flowers of very small account, his affections being all absorbed by trees and foliage. But viewed as a park, it is beautiful. There is none of the stiffness of a botanical garden; nursery grounds are kept well out of sight; and all manner of ornamental shrubs and clumps of noble trees, with here and there some gigantic specimen of the sacred banyan or other member of the great fig family, are picturesquely sprinkled over well-kept verdant lawns.
Several magnificent groups of foreign palms are especially attractive. The king-palm of Havannah, the oil-palm of Guinea, all the most remarkable members of the great palm family to be found in India, China, Africa, and South America; palms from Seychelles and from Brazil, with huge fan-shaped leaves, or gigantic feathery fronds—all meet here as on a neutral ground, where they unite to form one beautiful combination, a most admirable family gathering! Nor are the indigenous palms lacking: all are here assembled in one noble group, including the strange Katu-kittul, ‘the thorny palm,’ the stem of which grows to a height of about eight feet from the ground, and is thickly coated with long sharp thorns—a most unpleasant tree to crush against in a thick jungle.[80] There is also a species of dwarf date-palm, only four or five feet high, which is indigenous in the hottest parts of Ceylon, but its fruit is almost worthless; and there is a sago-palm which, however, the natives do not take the trouble to cultivate for the sake of the pith, though they do prepare a beautifully white flour from the nuts, which grow in clusters like those of the areca. This also is a dwarf palm, rarely exceeding fifteen feet in height, and peculiar to the hot dry districts. Its foliage is very light and feathery. The flour prepared from the nuts makes excellent cakes, which, with wild bees’ honey, have sometimes proved precious to sportsmen in remote jungle villages.
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Footnote 80:
This used to be called the Caryota horrida, but I believe modern botanists class it as a thorny species of areca palm.
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The Seychelles contribute a fine specimen of their own particular palm, the coco-de-mer, which was so long known only by the great double-nuts (shaped like a kidney when cut open) which tidal currents floated far out on the Indian Ocean and to the shores of the Maldive Islands, where they were occasionally picked up by sailors and brought home to puzzle botanists. It was not till last century that the parent palm was discovered in the Seychelles, and it was found that the palm, with a fruit like twin cocoa-nuts, bears a crown of huge fan-shaped leaves, akin to those of the Palmyra palm, crowning a stem a hundred feet high.
The garden covers about a hundred and fifty acres—a most fertile peninsula of rich alluvial soil, encircled on three sides by the Mahavelli-ganga.
Among the lovely things which grow wild in rank profusion on the banks of that beautiful river, and which in all that part of the country is so abundant as to be considered rather a troublesome weed, is the delicate sensitive plant,[81] with its dainty blossoms like balls of pink floss silk, and the fragile jointed leaves like fairy branches, each edged with tiny leaflets, of which we treasure such poor little specimens in our English greenhouses, and, as children, watch with ever new pleasure to see how, at the gentlest breath, or the accidental touch of a fly, all the little branches droop, and the leaflets fold themselves closely together.
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Footnote 81:
Mimosa sensitiva.
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Here you watch a lizard or a squirrel run down a tree and brush the nearest leaves, and as they instantly shrink and fall, all the others take alarm, and you see them closing their leaflets as though an electric thrill has passed from one to the other.
Do you remember how Longfellow refers to these sensitive leaves when speaking of Evangeline’s strange forebodings of ill?—
‘As at the tramp of a horse’s hoof on the turf of the prairies, Far in advance are closed the leaves of the shrinking mimosa, So, at the hoof-beats of fate, with sad forebodings of evil, Shrinks and closes the heart, ere the stroke of doom has attained it.’
The unconscious action of these leaves always seems to me a perfect illustration of that sense of dull aching anxiety which is so nearly akin to physical suffering, and which is so expressively described as serrement du cœur—a phrase for which we have no English equivalent.
Splendid clumps of bamboo, imported from Java and Malacca, are mirrored in the broad glassy stream, and truly in the whole vegetable world I know nothing more beautiful than these monarchs of the grass kingdom, with their jointed stems, like polished green or yellow marble, and exquisite plumes of feathery foliage, growing in clumps upwards of a hundred feet in height, and curving gracefully like branches of gigantic ostrich feathers.
It is scarcely possible to realise that such stately growth can all be the work of one season, but so it is, for, though some species are about thirty years before they flower at all, yet, in common with the humblest grasses of the field, the bamboo flowers but once and then dies, to renew its glory in the following year. On an average, each clump numbers about sixty stems, all springing from one hidden root, which creeps beneath the ground, throwing up stems here and there. These peep above ground during the rains, about July, and shoot up at the rate of twelve inches in twenty-four hours.[82] The Malacca bamboo, which is the largest known species, continues growing till it attains a height sometimes considerably above a hundred feet, with an average diameter of nine inches. The common bamboo indigenous to Ceylon is a very much smaller plant with a yellow stem.
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Footnote 82:
Hence one form of the diabolic Eastern methods of execution by impaling. The victim was firmly secured in a sitting posture over a vigorous young bamboo, and was there left to perish by its growth.
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Strange to say, some species of bamboo flower gregariously, all those in one district coming to maturity in the same year, after which no flowers of that species will blossom till a new generation has come to full age.
The male and female plants are distinct: the latter are by far the most numerous, and yield the light hollow stems, jointed at regular intervals by thick wood forming distinct partitions, so that each bamboo is in so many water-tight compartments, ready to be divided into so many buckets or boxes. In the gardens a section of the large green stem is sometimes used as a secure packing-case wherein to send cut-flowers to a distance. Joints of bamboo form the handy flower-pots in which baby plants are reared, and tough palm-leaves supply the tickets on which their names are inscribed.[83]
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Footnote 83:
I have already described many of the innumerable uses of the bamboo as food and drink, salve and physic, instruments of music and of war, domestic and agricultural, in ‘In the Himalayas,’ pp. 505-507. Published by Chatto & Windus.
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The stems of the male plant are all solid, and, though very light, form a strong prop. They are used in administering corporal punishment—that bamboo backsheish with the promise of which some Europeans in Eastern lands are wont so pleasantly to encourage their servants!
(In some countries forest fires have, apparently with good reason, been attributed to the friction of dead clumps of bamboo, ceaselessly rubbing against one another during a strong breeze. Of course the tiniest spark thus kindled would find the most inflammable of fuel in the mass of dry dead leaves, and a single clump would form such a magnificent bonfire as might well start a fearful conflagration.)
Had these gardens done nothing but naturalise these and many other ornamental trees and shrubs, they would have done good service to the colony. They render more practical benefit, however, by supplying seeds, plants, and cuttings for gardens in all parts of the Isle, and by the experimental culture of all products likely to prove remunerative in the hands of planters in the various districts, highland or maritime.
In order to carry out this mission more practically, Government gardens have been established at various altitudes. One here; a second, as we have seen, within the influence of frosts, on the flanks of Hak-galla beyond Nuwara Eliya; a third at Henaratgoda; a fourth in the north-west, in the very dry heat of Anuradhapura, where its existence has only become possible since the restoration of the ancient tanks; and a fifth at Badulla, in the south-east. These embrace climates so varied that there are few desirable plants which cannot be successfully cultivated in one or the other, and thereafter multiplied for the use of all desirous of varying their investments.
One charm of these gardens is that all manner of beautiful climbing-plants, trails of the glossy betel-vine, orchids, and pitcher-plants have been encouraged to establish themselves, and so to clothe and veil many of the trees as to do away with all the stiffness one is wont to associate with a botanic garden. Moreover, all harmless living creatures are here protected; so birds are numerous, especially the flights of bright green parrakeets with scarlet bills, and, alas! most unmelodious voices.
Some trees find special favour with the flying-foxes—woulla, as the natives call them—and a whole colony, numbering perhaps from fifty to a hundred, of these strange bird-beasts hang themselves up to the boughs by their hind claws, and there sleep all day, swaying gently in the breeze, and resembling some odd, large, dark-brown fruit. At sunset they awaken, unfold themselves, spread their heavy wings, flap them, raise their heads, finally unhook their hind claws, and fly off on their nocturnal foraging expeditions in search of fruit, fluttering about the fruit-bearing trees in the twilight, to make sure of finding just what they like best for their nocturnal feast. They are endowed with very sharp teeth. They really are hideous large bats, with leathery skin and wings coated with reddish hair, and measuring about four feet from tip to tip of wings. Though always interesting to watch, they are certainly not agreeable to the sense of smell, and the corners habitually haunted by these creatures are decidedly unpleasant.
Very different is the fascinating flying squirrel, which is found chiefly in this neighbourhood, from Rambodda to Matelé, a soft furry pet. Though larger and softer, it considerably resembles our own as it springs from tree to tree; but suddenly, when leaping from some high bough, it expands its four legs, which are connected by a fur-covered membrane, and it appears transformed into a flat square of fur, silently floating at will, without any apparent exertion beyond that of a slight depression of the long bushy tail, which acts as a rudder—apparently a delightfully easy mode of travelling. When the creature alights on grass or trees, it folds up the wing-like membrane which lies along either side, and it resumes its appearance as a squirrel.
As to other squirrels, they are allowed to scamper in peace all over the place, so I suppose they are not so destructive to timber as we find them in Scotland. Active little lizards of various sorts dart in and out of their hiding-places, or bask in the sun; and sometimes we saw strange creatures of the mantis family, leaf-insects and stick-insects, which we could scarcely believe to be anything but brown or bright-green leaves, or else leafless twigs. Some of these are vegetarians; but I am sorry to say that the very devout-looking ‘praying mantis,’ which uplifts its arms so reverently, as if in prayer, is a very ferocious cannibal, and those arms really act as swords with which to help its strong jaws in cutting off the heads of its weaker relations.
Sometimes you may find what look like little seeds, with five or eight sides, adhering to a leaf. These are the eggs of certain of this family, and I suppose they hatch some sort of caterpillar which spins the rough white cocoon from which the mantis eventually comes forth.
Another curious thing which you may have the luck to find hanging from some branch is a little bundle of sticks, from four to six inches long, all laid lengthways like a tiny bundle of firewood. On examination you will find this to be lined with fine spun silk, and you will learn that it is the nest of a moth,[84] which the Singhalese believe to have once been a human being guilty of stealing wood, and therefore, in the natural course of nature, reborn in this humiliating form, and condemned thus to keep its sin ever in remembrance. In like manner the pretty black bird, with the tuft of white at the end of its long tail feathers, now known as the cotton-thief, is said to have really so sinned in a previous existence.
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Footnote 84:
Of the family Eumenidæ.
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Indeed, there is nothing animate or inanimate which may not at some time have been a human being, doomed for divers sins to pass through endless transmigrations, so that if you kill a scorpion or a centipede you may possibly be murdering your own grandfather! The comparative degrees thus represented are certainly not flattering to woman,—for a man to be reborn as a woman is a far deeper humiliation than to become a plant or a serpent!
But of all forms of transmigration, that most dreaded is to be born again as a dog or a crow, both being addicted to carrion, and therefore abhorred. This objection, however, applies to pigs, leopards, buffaloes, and many other animals.
Among the creatures in whom one would rather not recognise an ancestor are the millepedes, which we constantly saw crawling about in dry places, or lying curled up like a watch-spring. At first sight one is apt to mistake them for some sort of snake, as they are nearly a foot long and as thick as a man’s thumb. Happily, however, they are quite harmless, and only bite vegetables. They are of a glossy jet black, one kind being distinguished by a scarlet stripe down the back, but all alike have upwards of a hundred very short bright yellow legs. After a while one learns to look on them without repulsion, which is more than I can say of any of the myriapods, though that family includes not only all manner of hateful centipedes, but also some very useful long-legged creatures[85] which devour woodlice and cockroaches.
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Footnote 85:
Cermatia.
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Another most innocent creature, which to a new-comer is somewhat startling, is a gigantic earth or rain-worm, thicker than a man’s finger, and often upwards of five feet in length. It is of a bluish-grey colour, and as you meet it wriggling along, it naturally inspires something of the instinctive shrinking one feels towards a serpent. But after a while you become interested in this useful fellow-creature, which works so busily turning up the soil and throwing up large mounds of fine mould. It only comes out after rain.
I fear these allusions may give you a somewhat creepy impression of the beautiful gardens (and indeed in this Eden you must never forget the possible presence of the serpent), so I must just refer to one more attraction, namely, the security in which all manner of birds here build their nests. The daintiest of all is that of the tiny honey-sucker, which is built of moss and wool on the very tip of a branch, where it is rocked by every breath of wind. The opening is covered by a neat diminutive porch, so that the little mother is well protected from any sudden attack.
Another wise builder is the tailor-bird, which, having built a nest neatly lined with moss and hair, proceeds to make a waterproof cover; so, using its own slender bill as a needle, it selects a strip of strong bark fibre (when near human homes it sometimes finds a piece of thread or coloured wool!), and therewith stitches together the leaves of the shrub, laying one over the other, as a slater overlaps his slates. This bird lays very peculiar dark-reddish eggs, like polished mahogany. It is, moreover, musical, and has a pleasant song.
But perhaps the most ingenious of all nest-builders is the weaver-bird or grossbeak, which weaves a nest of fine grass about two feet in length, and shaped like a chemist’s glass retort, with the funnel end downwards. By this long passage the bird enters the pear-shaped nest, wherein the young birds are reared safe from the attacks of snakes and other foes. These delicate structures are suspended from the extreme tip of a branch, so that no enemy can glide up to them, and of course they sway with every breath of air.
These pretty little birds are as gregarious as rooks; so if one selects a suitable tree as its home, so many will colonise beside it that the nests might be mistaken for some strange fruit. Thirty or forty nests together form quite a moderate colony, hundreds of nests having sometimes been counted on one tree.
It is said that the weaver-bird loves to make her home attractive by an illumination of fairy lanterns, which are living fireflies; and lest they should wander, she fastens them with adhesive clay to the light twigs from which her nest hangs suspended by deftly woven cords. Her mate finds a perch near her, and is said likewise to provide himself with a goodly supply of living candles, on which he doubtless breakfasts when he awakes.
X. THE WORSHIPFUL TOOTH
Blended faiths—Planet and spirit worship—Hindoo gods and Buddha—The Temple of the Tooth—Oriental library—Tooth on show—Perahara— Originally a Hindoo festival—3 and 9—Days of the week—Other teeth— Christian relics.
Few things appear to me more remarkable—and surely none would more surprise the European admirers of Buddhism—than the very strange manner in which, in most countries where it is practised, it is so amalgamated with the Hindoo mythology which Buddha sought to obliterate, that the practical result of his teaching has been to add one more god—himself— and innumerable objects of worship to those already so numerous.
In China,[86] in Siam, and in Ceylon this is specially conspicuous, but in the latter the Hindoo images are sometimes excluded from the interior of the vihara, as Buddha’s sanctuary is called. But in any case, they almost invariably occupy a dewale or house of gods in the outer enclosure, where there is also a hall for the kapuas or devil-dancers— a very singular compromise between creeds which theoretically are so antagonistic.
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Footnote 86:
See ‘Wanderings in China,’ vol. ii. p. 38. By C. F. Gordon Cumming. William Blackwood & Sons.
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Thus these forms of worship are so curiously blended that the religion of the majority of the Singhalese, though nominally Buddhist, is largely coloured by Hindooism, and still more, whether avowed or only practised in secret, by demon-worship, pure and simple. The extent to which the latter prevails is extraordinary. There is not a village in the most purely Buddhist districts which has not its kattadia or devil-priest, whose office it is to propitiate the innumerable malignant demons which are supposed to be accountable for all the evils of every sort which afflict poor human beings. As a minor precaution every small child wears a charm of some sort—very often it wears nothing else!—and many grown-up folk are similarly guarded.
A people naturally superstitious find demons and spirits requiring propitiation in every tree and well, in dark river and raging pestilence, in malarious swamp or neglected burial-grounds. Planets also claim worship. The Bali, or planet-worship, is curiously blended with demon-worship, and astrologers are consulted on every event of life.
At the birth of every Singhalese baby its horoscope is cast by one of those, and so highly is the document esteemed, that even in the hour of death more reliance is placed upon it than on the symptoms of the patient![87] Again, the astrologer is called in to preside at baby’s ‘rice-feast,’ when some grains of rice are first placed in its mouth. He selects for the little one a name which is compounded from the name of the ruling planet of that moment. This name he tells only to the father, who whispers it low in baby’s ear—no one else must know it, and, like the Chinese ‘infantile name,’ this ‘rice-name’ is never used lest sorcerers should hear it and be able to work malignant spells.
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Footnote 87:
In the case of the recent deeply lamented death from hydrophobia of an eminent citizen, it was assumed to the last that the illness could not prove fatal because his horoscope indicated a different cause for death.
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Thenceforth at every step in life the counsel of the astrologer is sought. He must decide the auspicious moment for the first shaving of baby’s head, or in advancing years for the first shaving of the young man’s beard; for starting on a journey, for commencing to build a house. At the Singhalese festival of the New Year, which is in April, the astrologer is ready to give each individual who will pay for them directions how to secure luck for the incoming year. In case of illness he carries far more weight than the doctor. The horoscope of the sufferer is submitted to one of these gentry, who consults his astrolabe, calculates the probable influence of certain planets, and then prescribes the ceremonies or bali to be observed, which include incantations over a clay image representing the planet under which the patient was born.
The astrologers are of all castes, from the lowest tom-tom beaters to the highest agricultural aristocracy, and even include many Buddhist priests, although this practice of divination was condemned by Buddha, and is entirely borrowed from the Hindoos. The priests are, however, wise in their generation, and like to reserve so important a hold on the superstitions of their flock.
As to the Kattadias, they continue to make a very good profit on other men’s labours, for the people do not venture to sow their fields till the village priest has fixed a lucky day, when, having made their offerings at the shrine of Buddha, they tie bunches of wild flowers and cocoa-nut leaflets on sticks, placed at the corners of each field, to scare away evil spirits. At harvest, too, the priest must choose a lucky day for beginning work, in return for which he receives offerings of the first-fruits. Sometimes in a corner of the field you may see a small bower decorated with fragrant flowers; within this is placed a sheaf of grain, together with a palm-leaf, on which the Kattadia has inscribed mystic characters dedicating the sheaf to the guardian spirit of the field.
An exceedingly singular superstition is prevalent in districts so far apart as Tangalla in the far south and Jaffna in the far north—the former being Singhalese and the latter Tamil—namely, the use of a very peculiar patois, adopted by the villagers only during the most important periods of the paddy cultivation, while sowing, weeding, reaping, and threshing, the object being to deceive the malignant spirits, which are supposed only to understand the language in ordinary use. At the same time, they must be treated with a show of excessive politeness.
The same custom prevails amongst the numerous agricultural moormen in the eastern province. I quote the following interesting passage from an account of these villagers within twenty years ago, by Mr. Somanader and Mr. A. de Zylva, two of the local Mudaliyars:—
‘For threshing, Thursdays are considered the best days to commence, and certain charms and ceremonies are performed to keep off putams, or devils, from carrying away the fruits of their labour. The charm is called arrakku, which consisted of the following stuffs shut up in a box—viz., silver, copper, iron, coral, pearl, chanks, valampuri (a fruit), chadaimudi (a vegetable), and some arrack in a vial—and buried in the centre of the threshing-floor with margosa-leaves, &c., over which the sheaves are heaped, and the cattle turned on them for threshing.
‘In addition to these charms and ceremonies to keep off the devil from stealing the paddy, they begin to use a peculiar slang to keep the devils ignorant of what is spoken. For instance, the threshing cattle, instead of being termed madu, as usual, go by the name varikkalan, the meaning of which is ‘productive-legged’; the marakkal, or the measure, is termed ‘accountant’; the baskets are called peruvayan, or broad-mouthed, and every implement has a different name in the threshing-floor. All expressions that have meanings suggestive of decrease or other ill-omened significations are avoided, and the word ‘multiply’ is always substituted. For instance, the expression
Drive the bullocks is rendered, Multiply the varikkalan. Sweep the corn ” Multiply the poli. Bring the marakkal ” Multiply the ‘accountant.’ Fill the basket ” Multiply the ‘broad-mouth.’ Bring some water ” Multiply some flood. Go home for rice is rendered, Multiply home for white. Call him to take this } ” { Multiply him to multiply and deliver it at home } { this and to multiply at home. &c., &c., &c.
‘In threshing, cattle are driven with a song, the purport of which is to invoke the deities to give them a good produce.’
Just as it was in the early days of Christian teaching in Britain, so in Ceylon missionaries may work with comparative success against Buddhist or even Tamil worship, but it seems scarcely possible to eradicate the superstitious dread of demons, and so in the weakness of illness many so far yield to the persuasions of heathen relations as to consult astrologers or admit devil-dancers. Of course in many cases the luckless patient has no voice in the matter.
But whatever be the illness or calamity in a Singhalese or Tamil home, the devil-priests are sure to be called in, and come escorted by a company of devil-dancers with wild dishevelled hair which is never cut or combed, and wearing hideous masks to represent the devils who are supposed to have done the mischief. They dance till they are in a state of frenzy, while the Kattadia feigns to be inspired and talks oracularly. An altar is erected, on which are piled flowers and rice, and in some cases of illness a living red cock[88] is brought in, to be touched by the patient and then sacrificed, or perhaps merely dedicated to the demon, and given to his priest.
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Footnote 88:
For various instances of the identical sacrifice in Scotland in the present half-century, see ‘In the Hebrides,’ by C. F. Gordon Cumming, pp. 251, 252. Chatto & Windus.
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Among the old customs which still find favour with the natives, notwithstanding the teaching of grave Buddhist priests, are certain ‘devil-dances,’ much practised about the New Year. They answer to our Yule mummers; but their masquerading is of the simplest sort, as it consists in a total absence of raiment, for which paint is the sole substitute. The naked brown dancers are grotesquely painted from head to foot, generally in stripes. Sometimes they adorn themselves with the horns and tail of some wild beast, and go about in companies, dancing wildly in every village, with an accompaniment of tom-toms and other instruments of torture to the ear. Such severe exertion entails much drinking of palm toddy; and when, at sunset, the devil-dancers and their followers retire to the palm groves to spend the night leaping and dancing round their blazing bonfires, the scene is as demoniacal as can well be imagined.
A very elaborate festival in honour of evil spirits is sometimes held in a district which has been ravaged by cholera or other infectious disease. A temporary building of boughs is erected and draped with white cloth and flowers; an altar is erected, on which offerings are laid, and priests, who have been duly purified and are fasting, sprinkle the worshippers with water tinged with saffron. Then follow incantations, dances and all manner of games, representing the capture of elephants and buffaloes, mat-weaving, &c. These continue through the night, with an accompaniment of tom-tom beating and blazing of resin to symbolise thunder and lightning. Finally, an earthenware vessel is carried to the nearest stream, where it is broken to atoms, and its fragments are thrown into the water.
The Singhalese especially dread one Yakka (i.e., devil) which is supposed to haunt running water, and to cause much sickness. All those malarial fevers which are so common in the damp jungles, more especially near rivers, are attributed to him. Therefore they strive to propitiate this water-fiend, or river-king, as they call him, by offerings of tiny double-canoes, laden with flowers, rice, and betel, shaded by a canopy of cocoa-palm leaves. After sundry ceremonies, these little barks are launched on the stream; and in times of general sickness, such offerings are so common that sometimes a small flotilla may be seen floating down from beneath the cocoa shade, or stranded on some sandbank in midstream.
In cases of small-pox the goddess Patiné must be propitiated. She is identified with the Hindoo goddess Doorga, by no means a pleasant character. In her honour the Kandians play a game commonly known to the British schoolboy as the tug of war. From among the tough twisted lianas of the forest they cut two tough, strong, crooked pieces, shaped like natural hooks. These they link together, and, having attached to each a long stout cable of rattan cane, also from the jungle, they form themselves into two companies, and, each holding on by the cable, tug with might and main till one of the hooks breaks, when the victors place the conquering hook in a palanquin, and carry it round the village with shouts of triumph.
It is very necessary for anyone interested in the various ceremonies he may chance to see in Ceylon, to bear in mind this curious blending of faiths supposed to be so entirely antagonistic one to another. Especially is this clue requisite to understand the greatest annual festival of Kandy, known as the Perahara, or Procession, which is generally assumed to be a great Buddhist ceremonial, whereas it is really all in honour of several Hindoo gods and goddesses, the Buddhist’s part being simply the nominal loan of a relic—in truth, the loan of an empty shrine!
But seeing that the relic in question claims to be no less a treasure than a veritable tooth of Gautama Buddha, and is the object of unbounded reverence to all the many millions (somewhere about 400,000,000) who worship him, and a relic for the possession of which bloody wars have been fought, and incredible sums of money offered, it is perhaps not to be wondered at that the priests take good care to lock it up securely, before allowing its shrine to join in the procession of relics of the Hindoo gods!
It is said that Kandy owes its very existence as the mountain capital to the fact of this precious bit of bone having in the course of its wanderings been brought here for safety in the sixteenth century; for in those days Kandy was a well-nigh inaccessible village, known as Sengada-gala Nuwara—so named from a great rock which stands in the jungle just above the Old Palace. But when such a treasure as the great dalada came to take up its abode here, its royal guardian was bound to beautify the place so honoured; and the Dalada Maligawa, the Temple of the Tooth, was year by year enriched by the offerings of the countless throng of pilgrims who braved all the toil and difficulties of the pilgrimage to this mountain fastness in order to do homage to a relic of such inestimable sanctity, and to offer their gifts of gold and silver ornaments, coins, jewels, vestments for the priests, fruit and flowers.
The latter are at all times a graceful feature in this worship, for as none care to appear empty-handed before the altar of Buddha, to whom even such simple offerings as these are acceptable, there are few in all the throng of worshippers who have not some flowers to offer—often white, pink, blue or yellow lotus, or the graceful grain-like sprays of cocoa or areca palm blossom, almost as large as the little child who often carries it. Many women and children make a living by providing baskets of flowers for sale to those who have come unprovided.[89]
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Footnote 89:
See p. 61, note.
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(Among the very legendary acts of devotion recorded of the Ninety Kings of the Lion race—for such is the meaning of the word Singhalese—we are told of one ‘who is said to have offered six millions of blossoms in one day to this rapacious tooth. Another daily offered one hundred thousand blossoms all of one sort, and a different flower each day! After all, it is not incredible that the kings who built the stupendous relic-shrines at Anuradhapura, all by compulsory labour, may by the same means have collected blossoms even by the millions if they so willed.)
Externally this famous temple is not conspicuous, being within the precincts of the Old Palace, and partly concealed by the Audience Hall and the Pattipuwa, an octagonal building which is now the Oriental Library, but the whole is enclosed by a moat, with the same very ornamental stone wall which surrounds the lake; and there are always picturesque groups of people passing to and fro, whether of the laity or brethren of the yellow robe.
Though the latter are happily not so numerous as in the palmy days of Buddhism, when Ceylon supported sixty thousand priests, Kandy is very fully supplied, having two ecclesiastical colleges, the Malwatta and Asgiriya Viharas, both of the Siamese sect—the sect which incorporates so much Hindooism, but whose distinguishing characteristic to the casual observer is that of always wearing the yellow robe so as to leave one shoulder bare.[90] From an artistic point of view, I am bound to say that these stately brown beings draped in saffron colour, and sometimes escorted by an attendant bearing a yellow silk umbrella, or a large palm-leaf fan, form very harmonious bits of colour wherever one meets them.
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Footnote 90:
See p. 59.
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(The symbolic honour implied by the umbrella used to be very real in Ceylon, when the Buddhist priests shared with the monarch alone the privilege of having an unfolded Talipot palm-leaf held over them, with the broad end forward. Ordinary mortals must carry the narrow stalk end foremost, and in presence of a superior must even turn that aside, so as to expose their head to the sun! Priests were further honoured by having their seats covered with white cloth. Sometimes a white or yellow canopy is borne by four men, so as to overshadow the priest. Amongst the gifts sent by the King of Cambodia in 1884 to the Buddhist College of Maligakanda, in Colombo, were a brush made of his own hair, to be used in sweeping the place where the image of Buddha is kept, and also an umbrella ornamented with precious stones. Silver umbrellas figure conspicuously within the Temple of the Tooth.)
To return thither. The architecture is not easy to describe. The chief characteristics are the low square-cut pillars, the lavish display of grotesque carving and mythological frescoes painted on the walls. At the lower portal we stepped over a beautifully sculptured semi-circular stone, and then passing between two wonderful stone beasts and four really splendid elephants’ tusks (of a size very rare in Ceylon), we entered the outer temple, where there are various objects of interest,— gaudily painted images of Buddha, gigantic drums and tom-toms, rich draperies, curious great honorific sunshades, &c. Thanks to an influential friend, we were shown many strange jewels and costly offerings sent to the Tooth by many Buddhist kings; but as to the Tooth itself, we were told there was no possibility of our being allowed to see it, as the dagoba containing it could only be taken from its inner shrine once a year, at the time of the great Perahara, and even then the Tooth was not visible, such a privilege as an actual sight of it being reserved for very special occasions, such as might not occur for years.
When Major Forbes-Leslie had the good fortune to witness an exhibition of the Tooth in May 1828 (when it was exhibited by order of Sir Edward Barnes), fifty-three years had elapsed since it had been openly displayed by King Kirti Sri, and of course comparatively few people had ever since beheld this object of deepest veneration.
After it was captured by the British it was, as a matter of political expediency, retained for many years in custody of the Government, and the people firmly believed that its possession conferred the right of sovereignty.
The exhibition of 1828, which was accompanied with all possible ceremonial, was freely criticised, as it was obvious to all that the Buddhist relic was being used as the political tool of a Christian Government, and it was stated that many forced worshippers were drawn to its shrine by worldly interest, rather than by any superstitious reverence for the relic.
All writers on Ceylon in the first half of the century agree in saying, that so low had Buddhism fallen in the estimation of the people, that it was in a fair way to die out altogether. Of course, therefore, the priests clung to this State protection, and were bitterly opposed to its withdrawal, when, in 1853, the relic was finally made over to their care, and all outward union of ‘Tooth and State’ ceased. Naturally they do their best, with jealous care, to foster the mystery and reverence with which it is guarded.
Now, to be at Kandy and not to see the famous Tooth was inexpressibly trying; and though kind friends strove to comfort me by showing me many treasures, including exceedingly valuable ancient books in the Oriental Library, I was inconsolable.
Those, however, were really of very great interest, some being quite unique manuscripts of very great antiquity, and all written, or rather scratched, with styles on long narrow strips of carefully prepared palm-leaf, generally about two and a half inches wide, and sometimes twenty inches long. Each leaf, when written, was smeared with dark oil, coloured with charred gum, which blackened the indented letters and has preserved the leaves (olas is the right word) from attacks of insects. All the leaves, forming a book, are placed between two neat wooden boards, some of which are elaborately painted, others embossed with precious metal, and even gems: the whole are pierced with two holes, and strung together by cords.
These ancient books are written in Pali and Sanskrit, classic sisters alike descended from a long-forgotten Aryan mother-tongue, and which respectively enshrine the most widespread Oriental faiths. The study of these dead tongues, especially Pali, is in Ceylon confined almost entirely to the priests, who are supposed to master them before their ordination; but it is said that, as a matter of fact, few do so—and no wonder! Pali, which is exceedingly difficult, is par excellence the sacred tongue of Buddhism, being that in which Gautama Buddha preached. Even Elu, or High Singhalese, which is the language of literature, differs so greatly from the colloquial, that it is quite a study in itself, just as, in China, mandarin Chinese differs from that of the provinces.
The great historical record of Ceylon, the Maha-wanso, to which one hears such frequent reference, is in Pali.
European students of Oriental learning are specially indebted to two Wesleyan missionaries for first unlocking these stores of long sealed-up knowledge, and their translations of Buddhist sacred books have proved precious to a multitude of less erudite writers, including some whose sole object is the exaltation of that system against which these scholars toiled so earnestly. These honoured workers were the Rev. J. Gogerly and the Rev. Richard Spence Hardy.
They were led to undertake this task owing to the fact that so soon as the priests of Buddha realised that the new preachers of Christianity were no longer satisfied with a merely nominal profession of the foreign creed in order to obtain Government employment, but insisted on a radical conversion, they roused themselves to resist their progress by violently antagonistic preaching from village to village.
To meet these opponents on their own ground, it was necessary for the missionaries to acquire as intimate a knowledge as possible of the very voluminous sacred books. During forty-four years of mission life, Mr. Gogerly toiled at this labour of love, producing his first book on the subject in 1848, and persevering till his death in 1862. His friend Mr. Spence Hardy tells how year after year found him with some learned priest by his side poring over these strips of ancient palm-leaf, and puzzling his companion by the subtle questions he asked, and the doubts he raised relative to points which had never before been disputed.
When he first propounded his discoveries as to the real doctrines of primitive Buddhism, he was assailed by nearly every Pali scholar in the island, and his conclusions totally denied. But he calmly defended his position, and by numerous quotations from their most authoritative writings, this solitary Western student was able to lead these, the most profound expositors of Buddhism, into its deepest mysteries, and prove that they were utterly wrong in their estimate of its most essential principles.
So wrote Mr. Spence Hardy, who carried on his share of the same work till, in 1865, he returned to England, not only leaving behind him a reputation for profound scholarly learning, but having awakened the more thoughtful Buddhists to perceive their manifold departures from the very law for which they profess such reverence. His works on ‘Eastern Monachism,’ and his ‘Manual of Buddhism,’ published in 1850 and 1853, were among the first to awaken the interest of English readers in the faith of 470,000,000 of their fellow-men.
Some notion of the literary labour represented by those books may be formed from his list of authorities, consisting of 467 works, of which 237 are in Pali, 80 in Sanskrit, and 150 in Elu (i.e., written Singhalese), all of which were collected by himself in Buddhist monasteries; some of the latter are so voluminous, that one alone fills two thousand palm-leaves, each twenty-nine inches long, and inscribed with nine lines of verse. As to the sacred writings in Pali, one of the most celebrated contains 592,000 stanzas, and another (which is known to be thirteen hundred years old) contains 361,550 more, so that the study of these brittle palm-leaf pages—-dimly inscribed with such intricate characters—must indeed have proved a toilsome task, suggestive of strained and aching eyes.
Well it is for students that Buddhistic literature in Ceylon was so effectually thinned by ruthless Malabar conquerors in their various raids,—by none so resolutely as by Rajah Singha, who about A.D. 1590 became a convert to Brahmanism, and in his zeal for that religion, sought to destroy all Buddhist books, and delighted in collecting heaps as high as a cocoa-palm and burning them.
Besides the sacred and historical writings, the monastic libraries contain a multitude of works on astronomy, physics and mathematics; a curious detail being the extraordinary number of grammars, almost all of which are written in rhyme.
After all, fortune favoured me in my ecclesiastical sight-seeing, for on my return to Kandy in the month of February, after a pilgrimage to the Holy Footprint on the summit of Adam’s Peak, I found to my unbounded satisfaction that the authorities of the great temple had resolved to raise money for its repair by a real exhibition of the Holy Tooth, instead of merely lending its dagoba to be carried in procession. So it had been disentombed from its guarded shrine, and was actually on show! The town was swarming with pilgrims in their gayest holiday attire, assembling from every corner of the country to gaze on the precious relic, and pay their offerings into its treasury.
Within the temple the scene was striking in the extreme, both as regarded its human interest and as an artistic study of rich colouring. For crowds of most reverent worshippers, men, women, and children, almost all bringing flowers as well as more enduring gifts of jewels, money, and pieces of silk, were all pressing towards the farther end of the temple, which was now arranged as a sort of chancel, hung with rich draperies and curtains which could be drawn at will, and there, on a slightly raised platform, were grouped a phalanx of brown-shouldered yellow-robed priests of all sizes and ages, from those who might have been grey-headed had they not been so closely shaven, down to quite small boys. With them stood the great laymen associated with them in the charge of the temple and its property, all in the rich dresses of Kandyan nobles, with the large-sleeved jacket and jewelled hat. The greatest of them was dressed in the same style, but his clothes were white and gold.
All these were grouped around a temporary altar—really a silver table supposed to represent a lake on which the golden lotus floats. Thereon stood an octagonal cupola of solid silver and gold, supported by slender pillars. In front of this were three miniature crystal dagobas or bell-shaped relic shrines, each resting on a square base, and two golden candlesticks with lighted candles. In the small dagobas on either side were displayed priceless jewelled objects—royal gifts.
But all eyes were riveted on the central shrine, of purest crystal, within which lay a large golden lotus-blossom, from the heart of which, upheld by a twist of gold wire, was upraised the worshipful piece of yellow ivory which, to the unquestioning eye of faith, actually passes for a human tooth!
I can only say that it is well in keeping with the gigantic footprint on the summit of Adam’s Peak, being nearly two inches long and as thick as my first finger. On previous page is an exact portrait of it, which I secured by returning in the stream of pilgrims day after day, and making a pencil sketch the next moment on a scrap of paper in the palm of my hand, to be corrected again and again till it was perfectly accurate. For to be caught attempting to make a picture of it would be the direst offence in the eyes of the priests. Not many years before, the Emperor of Siam had sent large offerings to this temple, and his ambassadors were accompanied by a Chinese artist, whose sole mission was to procure such a drawing as this that his Majesty, though debarred from making pilgrimage in person to the shrine, might at least be able to realise the exact appearance of the priceless relic. This request was refused with the utmost scorn. Only think what a valuable letter of introduction my sketch might have proved had I chanced to visit Siam!
I always found the priests and people alike interested in the progress of all my pictures, but their jealous terror lest I should draw this was extreme; and when, a few days later, I expressed a wish to sketch the general scene of the interior of the temple during the adoration of the Tooth, their fear lest I should include the relic knew no bounds. Being accompanied by several influential men, and having obtained the consent of the Dewa Nilami, who stood beside me, I was rash enough to begin work quite undisguisedly, sitting on a raised daïs in the middle of the temple, and, worst of all, produced my opera-glasses (the never-failing companions of all my wanderings, and source of endless wonder and delight to many a simple soul in remote regions of the earth).
This proved too much for the priestly mind. In a moment there was a hubbub of alarm, the curtains were drawn in front of the relic, and a procession of yellow-robed brethren headed by the high priest swept down upon me. The latter deliberately put on his old spectacles, and demanded a sight of my work. He rubbed his nose over it in vain. Luckily I had not there drawn the actual tooth; in fact, from where I sat I could not possibly see it, as we all strove to prove to him. But then he maintained that the magic glasses had doubtless revealed it, and he must look through them, which he accordingly did, holding them the wrong way, however, to the quiet amusement of the more enlightened bystanders. Naturally he did not see much.
Eventually he was in a measure pacified, and allowed himself to be drawn into a conversation (of course through an interpreter) concerning our mutual pilgrimages to many holy shrines, of which I had happily visited a very great number, in all parts of the island—a fact conferring on me a load of sanctity which, albeit involuntary, made me an object of envy to many of the younger priests.
They, and even the old priest, were greatly mollified by my promising to show them drawings of several of these, which I accordingly brought with me on the following day. But from that time I was conscious of a strong terror of my presence within the temple, more especially on the last day of the festival, when, the exhibition of the relic being over, I was happily included in a select party of Europeans, who by special favour were permitted to be present in the innermost shrine upstairs to witness the restoration of the Tooth to its secure prison, which really is an ornamental ‘safe,’ only about twelve feet square, an upper chamber protected by massive doors of richly wrought brass and silver, which are always locked. Over each door is suspended a large silver lotus-blossom, and the room is draped with white and gold brocade and priceless Indian shawls.
The whole was artificially lighted, and very hot, as well it might be, seeing how many eager spectators as well as guardian priests crowded into that tiny sanctuary, the atmosphere being moreover heavy with the scent of temple flowers. Many ceremonies had to be observed ere the Tooth was safely housed. First it was laid in a case resembling a richly jewelled thimble-case, but, as no human hand might touch the sacred ivory, it received the honours of the white cloth; in other words, it was tilted off its perch above the golden lotus on to a fair linen cloth, from which it was dexterously slipped into its case. (I have already mentioned that in Ceylon, as throughout the East, all favoured guests receive ‘the honours of the white cloth’; that is to say, a linen covering is thrown over the seat prepared for them, and a strip of linen—probably the spare garments of some of the bystanders—is laid on the ground, that they may walk over it on first entering a house.)
The tiny jewelled case was next enclosed in a golden dagoba, encrusted with gems, which was formally locked by one of the chief priests, who retained possession of the key. This was enclosed in a similar relic shrine one size larger, and locked by another priest, who retained that key. Then it was deposited within a third reliquary, and was locked by the Dewa Nilame, the great lay authority of the temple. I regret to say that he who held this office at that time was an apostate from the Christian faith, which he had professed until this honourable (some say lucrative) position devolved upon him, and, Judas-like, he found the care of the bag too much for his principles.
The several locks being, as we have seen, in the charge of three distinct persons—two priests and a layman—it follows that each must of necessity be present when the relic is displayed, for the greater safety thereof. Thus secured, the triple shrine (together with various priceless offerings, the gifts of divers kings, including many strings of the finest garnets, a tree covered with gold and silver roses, a jewelled bird and crocodile, an image of Buddha carved out of one gigantic emerald about three inches long by two deep, and chains and ornaments without number) was deposited in the Karandua, which is a large dagoba of silver-gilt, five feet in height, and about three feet six inches in diameter—beside which were placed the crystal relic-shrine in which the Tooth appears when on show, and one or two others. I have seen it stated that the inner casket is enclosed in a nest of nine golden dagobas. These may have been added, but I certainly saw only three, as described the following morning in my journal, and also in a letter now beside me.
All these relic-shrines (like the gigantic dagobas which are scattered all over the island, each containing some saintly fragment) are made in the form of a bell (consequently circular), resting on a square base. Tradition declares that the first ever built was designed to resemble a bubble floating on water. That which contains the Tooth is overshadowed by the sacred umbrella of gold or silver, symbol of sovereignty, while above it hang gold and silver lotus-blossoms and costly silk brocades.
Finally, the strong iron cage with open bars was locked and sealed with much ceremony by the three great authorities, each with his own signet. Then the metal doors of the inner sanctuary were locked by one of them, and the down-stairs door by some one else (I think each has two locks!), so all was once more safe, and we adjourned to the balcony of the Octagon Library, thence to witness the start of the great annual Perahara, or procession of elephants, bearing relics from the four principal Hindoo temples, and also from the Delada Maligawa, which contributes its entire stud of elephants to grace a festival of prehistoric origin, but supposed to have been instituted in very ancient days in honour of the birth of Vishnu, in his character of Krishna, the Sun-god.
Certain it is that this festival was celebrated annually for many centuries before the Buddhists recognised it in any way; and it was not till the year 1775 that it was deemed expedient to incorporate it as a Buddhist festival, and King Kirti Sri assigned the place of honour in the Hindoo procession to the Holy Tooth.
This innovation was quite a sudden thought. The king had invited certain Siamese priests to Ceylon to restore the highest order of the Buddhist priesthood—the Upasampadawa—and these hearing the noisy preparations for the Perahara, and learning that it was a festival solely in honour of Hindoo gods, took umbrage thereat, whereupon the king commanded that that very evening the shrine should be carried at the head of the procession in his own howdah, and that thus the ceremony would be in honour of Buddha as well as of the gods.
This amalgamation was no novelty—for so early as A.D. 413, when Fa Hian, the Chinese traveller, visited the kingdom of Khotan, he there saw a procession in which the image of Buddha was carried in company with those of the Hindoo gods Indra[91] and Brahma, and of the Toegri of the Moguls and the Lha of the Thibetans. These images were set in a great four-wheeled car with silken curtains, forming a pavilion eighteen feet in height. This was drawn round the city, all the streets having been swept and watered, and the houses decorated with tapestry and banners in token of rejoicing.
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Footnote 91:
Buddha ought surely to be on the best of terms with Indra; for it is recorded in the Jātaka, No. 316, that in one of his many transmigrations Buddha had been born as a hare, which, beholding a starving Brahman, tried to roast itself, that the Brahman might eat and live. But the Brahman really was the great god Indra, who, to reward the wise hare, promised that its good deed should be made known through all ages. He, therefore, squeezed the Himalayas, and with their essence he drew on the face of the moon the figure of a hare, whence, in Hindoo works, the moon is often described as being hare-marked.
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Again, in Central India, he witnessed a great night festival, when the city was illuminated, and there were theatrical representations and wrestling-matches in honour of Buddha and the other worshipful gods and heroes, whose images were placed on no less than twenty highly decorated cars. That was a Perahara on a very grand scale.
So now the supposed relic of Buddha shares the homage which previously was bestowed only on the (equally authentic) bows and arrows of the gods, whom he did his best to discredit, and his priests salve their consciences by taking no part in the procession, beyond lending the temple elephants and the shrine purporting to contain the Tooth, together with its octagonal canopy of silver-gilt.
These we saw placed with great ceremony on the back of the largest and most richly caparisoned elephant, the whole being overshadowed by a rich canopy raised on high poles, carried by six men on foot. The great elephant was escorted by two lesser elephants, one on each side of him. On these were mounted several headmen clothed in white, and bearing baskets of flowers, which from time to time they threw towards the empty shrine. Behind them sat attendants holding gold and silver umbrellas of state.
Other headmen in gorgeous dresses followed on foot, and the people bowed down in lowly reverence. Their attitude of worship is to bend the body forward at right angles from the waist, the arms being thrown forward and slightly raised and the tips of the fingers touching. All shout Saadu! which is the equivalent of All hail! the multitude of voices blending in a deep solemn wave of sound.
To us who had just witnessed the scene in the inner sanctuary, this procession was of course a supreme farce; nevertheless it was picturesque and barbaric, as we witnessed it in the moonlight, amid glare of torches, beating of tom-toms, the clanging of brass cymbals, the shriek of shrill pipes, blowing of chank-shells, and contortions of masked devil-dancers, posturing and dancing frantically to the noise of these ear-torturing instruments—truly devil music!—and escorted by a crowd of people fantastically dressed up. Were it not for the dreadful music, there is something very eerie in the silent march of such a procession, owing to the singularly noiseless tread of the elephants and the barefooted crowds.
As to the surprising get-up of the devil-dancers in their truly hideous masks, words fail to convey any idea of it, and a group of elephants in full-dress is always impressive. Like the very stout lady whom Dickens describes as affording such a magnificent expanse for the display of costly jewels, these majestic beasts do offer a large field for decoration, of which the Oriental mind fully avails itself in the use of gorgeous trappings and howdahs, richly embroidered cloths quite covering the huge body and head, and partly covering the trunk. On the face-cloth of the three elephants specially devoted to the Tooth is embroidered an image of Buddha enthroned. The whole is resplendent with gold, and silver, and jewels, the tusks of the principal elephants being also decorated.
After the elephants belonging to the Delada—i.e. the Tooth—followed those of the Hindoo temples, also in trios, each elephant bearing a sacred relic being escorted by two attendant elephants. Other elephants, forming a double line from the temple gate, knelt down, that the procession might pass between them, ere starting to make the round of the city.
Of course every such scene includes a multitude of details to attract the eye, which it would only be wearisome to describe,—suffice it to say that, though the Perahara of the present day is said to be a far less imposing show than it was a hundred years ago, it is still very well worth seeing. Of course, however, its chief interest lies in its antiquity.
It can be traced as far back as the second century of the Christian era, when Gajabahu returned from a campaign in Southern India, bringing with him a multitude of rescued Singhalese and Tamil captives who had been carried off from Ceylon by the Malabars in a previous invasion of the Isle. He also recovered the sacred vessels of four dewales (temples), and the refection dish of Buddha, which had been carried away about 90 B.C. To celebrate the return of these treasures, on which the heathen used to swear in the Courts of Justice, a great Perahara was held, and, except during certain times of war and anarchy, it has been held annually ever since. But it is probable that it really represents a midsummer festival of far more remote origin.
It is, however, a very movable feast, Forbes-Leslie having witnessed it in 1828 in the month of May, and the Rev. R. S. Hardy in 1834 saw it in August, in which month it was celebrated in 1888 and 1891, while June or July is more frequent. It begins on the day of the new moon in the month of æsala, but from the imperfection of native astronomy this date may vary exceedingly.
Probably the earliest record by an eyewitness which we have of this festival is that given by Knox, who during his twenty years as a captive at large in Kandy, from A.D. 1659 to 1680, had ample opportunities of observing all native customs and ceremonies. He speaks of it as relating solely to ‘the gods that govern the earth,’ ‘the Buddou’ having no part in it. The streets were decorated with upright poles from which floated flags and pennons, and between these poles hung fringes of cocoa-palm leaves; and there were lighted lamps all along both sides of the street both by day and night. These very primitive lamps consisted of cocoa-nut shells filled with their own oil, and a wick floating in it. These were stuck on low posts—frequently banana stems—all along the road.
The procession was headed by forty or fifty elephants, with brass bells hanging on each side of them, which tinkled as they marched. Next followed men dressed up like giants, and after them a great multitude of drummers, trumpeters, and pipers: each chief brought his own company of awful musicians, and picturesque attendants bearing great palm-leaf fans and flat-topped state umbrellas. Then several companies of the women engaged in the service of the temple as washerwomen, and potters, and other trades, walking three and three in a row, holding one another by the hand. Between each company went dancers and musicians. Then followed the men of the washer caste carrying painted sticks, and those of the potter caste carrying cocoa-nut blossoms in earthen vessels. Next came three elephants, on each of which were mounted two priests, one to represent the god of one of the three chief temples, and the second holding his honorific sunshade. The central elephant marched slightly in advance of the other two, and was covered with white cloth, his rider a priest representing the Creator of Heaven and Earth, bearing a painted stick partly wrapped in silk brocade, and from which hung strings of flowers, supposed to be the wonder-working rod that was carried by the conqueror Gajabahu. Before this stick the people bowed down and worshipped, and so great was its sanctity, that a cloth was tied round the mouth of the priest lest he should breathe upon it, and so defile it.
After these gods and their attendants followed several thousands of the highest ladies in the land, walking hand in hand, three in a row, and dressed ‘in the bravest manner that their ability can afford.’
Finally came a military escort sent by the king, and in this manner they daily marched round about the city once by day and once by night, from the new moon until the full moon either in June or July, every year.
‘Two or three days before the full moon, each of these gods hath a palanquin carried after them, ... in the which there are several pieces of their superstitious relics, and a silver pot, which, just at the hour of full moon, they ride out into a river and dip full of water, which is carried back with them into the temple, where it is kept till the year after, and then flung away, and so the ceremony is ended for that year.
‘The greatest solemnity is performed in the city of Kandy, but, at the same time, the like festival or perahar is observed in divers other cities and towns of the land.’
An exceedingly interesting report was drawn up for Sir Robert Brownrigg, who was the Governor of Ceylon in 1817, by the Dessawe of Wellasse, in which he says that Perahara is a very ancient ceremony in commemoration of the birth of the god Vishnu, or, as it is stated in some sacred books, in remembrance of his victory over the Assureyas or enemies of the gods.
The mystic ceremonies begin as soon as the new moon is visible, either in the morning or evening, but on no account at mid-day. The Kapuralas or priests of the four principal dewales in Kandy—namely, the Maha or great temple of Vishnu, and those of Nata, Kataragama, and Pattini—have previously secured four logs of sacred wood from the stem of a young jak-tree not yet in fruit, and not more than three spans in circumference. They first clear the ground round the tree, and consecrate it by fumigating it with the smoke of burning resin, smearing it with a preparation of sandal-wood made for the purpose, and further by an offering of a lighted lamp with nine wicks (which is put at the foot of the tree), and of nine betel-leaves, and nine different kinds of flowers arranged on a chair.
This being done the wood-cutter of the Maha dewale, dressed in a clean cloth, and purified by washing and rubbing himself with lemon-juice, fells the tree at its root with an axe, and cuts the trunk transversely into four pieces of equal length, to be divided among the four dewales, the lowest piece being the property of the Nata dewale, the next of Maha dewale, the next of the Kataragama dewale, and the top piece that of the Pattini dewale. Each log is carried (under a white canopy) to its respective dewale, accompanied with beating of tom-toms.
On the day of the new moon each piece is fixed into the ground in a particular spot in each of the dewales. A roof is erected over it, and it is covered with cloth to keep it concealed, and decorated all round with white olas, fruits and flowers. Thus prepared and fixed the logs are called kap (which signifies pillars), and till the fourth day, from that on which these are fixed, the Kapuralas every morning and evening carry round the kap the bow and arrows of the gods to whom the temples are consecrated. Carrying the bow and arrows is called carrying the god, and this procession is confined to the precincts of the temple. On the fifth day of Perahara, the Kapurale of each temple brings forth the bow and arrow which are the visible symbol of his god, and places them in the Ranhiligay (? howdah) on the back of an elephant. The four elephants thus honoured, each escorted by two attendant elephants with umbrella-bearers, are led to the Adahana Maluwa, a consecrated place near the tombs of the ancient kings.
(Forbes says the Maluwa was a kind of sanctuary: it was encircled by stones, within which, it is said, the kings had no jurisdiction.)
Thence, after making the circuit of the Nata dewale, the procession proceeded to the Delada Maligawa, the Temple of the Tooth, to the gate of which the Buddhist priests bring forth the shrine purporting to contain the Tooth, which is also placed in the Ranhiligay on the back of an elephant, and takes its place in the evening procession. But in the nocturnal procession at the seventh hour of the night it is not permitted to appear, except on the night of the full moon.
During these five days the five temples represented take precedence by turns.
The report then goes on to tell how on the sixth day a new feature was introduced. From each temple was brought forth a randoelie or palanquin containing a golden pitcher and a sword, each dedicated to a different goddess. For the next five evenings these were carried after the bows and arrows, and in every nocturnal procession they took the lead. All the women attended as of old, and the young wives and daughters of the chiefs accompanied each randoelie by turns.
On the fifteenth night, which was that of the full moon, at the close of the procession, the shrine of the Tooth was deposited for the night in charge of the Buddhist priests at the Gedige—i.e., Asgiriya Vihara. But the priests and all the properties of the four dewales returned to their several temples, where curry and rice were offered to the gods, and doubtless enjoyed by the hungry human beings, who, thus refreshed, started again in procession with their bows and arrows, swords and golden water-vessels, and journeyed to the banks of the Maha-velli river near Peradeniya.
There they found a richly decorated boat, in which embarked the four priests bearing the four swords of the goddesses, attended by four assistants bearing the golden water-vessels containing the water drawn just a year before. They rowed some distance up the river, and taking up a position in mid-stream, they there awaited the first streak of dawn, when suddenly the four Kapuralas struck the water with their swords, describing a magic circle in honour of the sun, and at the same instant their assistants emptied the water-vessels, and refilled them from within the circle where the swords had cut the waters.[92]
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Footnote 92:
Could there be any connection between the Goddess of the Nata Dewale, whose sword cut the bright waters, and the Celtic Goddess of Waters, Nait or Annait, whose worship can still be traced in our Northern Isles? See ‘In the Hebrides,’ by C. F. Gordon Cumming, p. 205. Published by Chatto & Windus.
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Returning to land, and having replaced the swords and water-vessels in the palanquins, they marched back to the city (being met on the road by any chiefs who had been unable to attend in the night), and went straight to the Asgiriya Vihara, where the shrine of the Tooth again joined the procession, which then returned to the Adahana Maluwa, whence it had started. It then dispersed, each party returning to its own temple. On that day four bundles of fine cloth, four pieces of sandal-wood, together with gold and silver coins, were given to the four dewales from the king’s treasury.
During the next seven days the Wali-yakon was danced in the four dewales by people belonging to the caste of tom-tom beaters. The dancers wore hideous masks, and they danced to the sound of tom-toms. The dancers of each dewale have certain distinctive characteristics; some jump and leap and turn somersaults, and twirl round till the spectators are giddy. Some wear strings of little jingling bells and bangles on neck, wrists, and arms; others beat cymbals and hollow metal rings.
Then for seven days more, people of the Balibat caste danced round heaps of boiled rice, curries, cakes, and fruits, which they subsequently consumed; and when these fourteen days of religious dancing were over, the four pillars of jak-wood which had been fixed in the four dewales were removed, and, amid much beating of tom-toms and waving of flags, were carried to the river and thrown therein.
Then once more the shrine of the Tooth, and the bows and arrows of the gods, were brought forth for a final procession; and thus, on the morning of the thirty-first day, this prolonged and noisy festival was brought to a close.
(Surely to the people accustomed to such services there must be peculiar force in the Singhalese translation of our Lord’s saying that ‘The kingdom of heaven cometh not with observation,’—‘not with Perahara,’ says the Singhalese version.)
All the main features of this festival are still annually observed, such as the kap hitawima—i.e., the division of the young jak-tree into the four logs—and the cutting of the waters, but the various companies of women have ceased to appear in the processions. Some new features have, however, been introduced, such as the appearance of young men in the attire of dancing-girls, their arms and legs covered with little bells. Vast crowds from the surrounding country flock to Kandy to witness the various processions, especially that returning from the river after the cutting of the waters, and the scene is very striking as seen in the bright morning sun, beneath a clear, blue sky, with so many thousand picturesque people dressed either in white or in gay colours, many carrying umbrellas of all hues, forming a brilliant foreground to the richly wooded hills which embosom the city.
To students of world-wide superstitions,[93] several of these details are suggestive, such as the recurrence of the numbers 3 and 9—the women three abreast, the temple elephants likewise, each elephant bearing a relic being escorted by one on either side. Then 3 times 3 comes in with the lamp having 9 wicks, and the offering of 9 betel-leaves and 9 kinds of flowers.
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Footnote 93:
In Scotland, where the ancient worship of sun, moon, and planets was once as prevalent as in Ceylon, it may still be traced in modern witchcraft, in the reverence for tides, sunwise circles, and these mystic numbers. I have given various examples of these in ‘In the Hebrides.’ On p. 257 will be found a modern charm to secure abundant milk. A certain flower must be gathered during the flow of the tide, waved thrice in a sunwise circle above the milk-pail, beneath which it is then placed, while chanting an incantation to secure the nine blessings.
Amongst the trials for witchcraft in 1607, I find Bartie Paterson, teacher in Newbattle, accused of having cured a man by visiting him on 3 nights, and each night asking his health thrice 9 times of all living wichts, in the name of Jesus. He also gave him a charm composed of 9 pickles of wheat and 9 pieces of rowan-tree, to be worn continually.
He was also charged with having cured his ain bairn by washing it thrice at every corner of the Dow Loch beside Drumlanrig, and further with administering water from this loch to a sick man, causing him to lift the water-stoup thrice 9 times in the name of the Most Holy Trinity.
For these offences he was sentenced to be strangled at the stake, his body to be burnt, and his goods and gear escheat to the king.
In 1623, Isobel Haldane, suspect of witchcraft, being summoned before the Presbytery of Perth, confessed to having made 3 large circular cakes, each composed of 9 handfuls of meal gotten from 9 married maidens, and had healed sick children by passing them 3 times through the circular cakes to women who were on the other side of the cakes, who then put the children 3 times backward through the cakes, each time invoking the name of the Holy Trinity.
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Knowing what a hold Bali or planet-worship still has over the Ceylonese, whether Buddhist or Tamils, who naturally worship the Hindoo gods, it is interesting to know that the amulet most highly valued by all is one composed of 9 precious stones,—one to represent each of the seven planets, while the moon has two extra to symbolise its changes.
The amulet as worn by the Buddhists of Ceylon and Burmah is as follows; A sapphire represents Saturn; a topaz, Jupiter; coral, Mars; a diamond, Venus; an emerald, Mercury; a moonstone, the waxing Moon; a pearl, the full Moon; a cat’s eye, the waning Moon. These are set round a central ruby, which symbolises the Sun.
In India the stones composing the amulet of the Nava Ratna, or 9 years, vary in different provinces.
A very remarkable instance of the reverence for the mystic 9 was the magnificent Brazen Temple of Anuradhapura, which was nine storeys high.
As regards planet-worship, it has been pointed out as a strange coincidence that, in the division of the week, the Singhalese should not only have retained the seven days, but should actually have named each after the same planet as owned that same day, both amongst the Chaldeans and Egyptians, and also in the Western world.
In English, four of the days were filched from the planets in honour of the Scandinavian gods Tyr, Wodan, Thor, and Freya, but across the Channel our French neighbours retain the planetary names Mardi, Mercredi, Jeudi, Vendredi.
DAYS OF THE WEEK IN SINGHALESE.
Day. Planet. Planet. Day. Irida, from Iru, the Sun, and } dawasa, a day } = Sunday, Handuda, ” Chanduya, the Moon, = Monday. Angaharuwada, ” Angaharuwa, Mars, = Tuesday. Badadada, ” Buda, Mercury, = Wednesday. Brahaspatinda, ” Brahaspati, Jupiter, = Thursday. Sicurada, ” Sikura, Venus, = Friday. Senasarada, ” Senasura, Saturn, = Saturday.[94]
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Footnote 94:
I am indebted for the above to G. W. Mercer, Esq., of Glen Tulchan, long resident in Ceylon.
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To return to the illustrious Tooth. Its history enters so largely into that of Ceylon that it is worth a few moments’ consideration on that score, to say nothing of its exceeding sanctity in the eyes of so many millions of our fellow-creatures. Its adventures were early recorded in the Deladawanso, a work still extant, written in Elu, and translated into Pali, A.D. 1196. From this, it is said, the story was quoted in the Maha-wanso.
The original article is supposed to have been one of Buddha’s four eye-teeth, rescued from his funeral pyre when he was cremated, B.C. 543, at Kusinaga, about a hundred miles to the north of Benares. Of these four teeth, one is said to have been translated to the Heaven of Indra; the other three were secured by the king of Kalinga, the king of Gandhara, now Peshawur, and the Naga kings. The two last may perhaps be the ancestors of various other holy teeth which are treasured in various countries, but the second is supposed to be that which is now at Kandy.
Immediately after Buddha’s cremation, it was carried off to the kingdom of Kalinga, south-west of Calcutta, where its sanctity was at once recognised, and it received devout worship. Thenceforward the capital was called Danta-poora, the city of the Tooth, and a great festival was annually celebrated in its honour, almost identical with that which is still observed in the same district by the worshippers of Juggernaut. (Kalinga is supposed to be the ancient name for Orissa, and Danta-poora is the modern Puri.)
All went on peacefully, till at length one of these Buddhist kings (determined to establish uniformity of faith throughout his dominions) banished all the remaining Brahmins from the land. These fled to the court of a greater king, who dwelt in the north, to whom the kings of Kalinga owed homage. Straightway an army was despatched, with orders to conquer the Buddhist king, and carry off the relic.
It seems, however, that the invading princes were at once converted on beholding the sacred Tooth. They escorted it with all reverence to the Imperial Court, where the wrathful Emperor commanded its immediate destruction. But vain were all the efforts of the Brahmins to annihilate that precious fragment of ivory. They cast it into the fire, but it re-appeared from amid the flames safely folded within the leaves of an exquisite lotus-flower; they tried to grind it to powder on an anvil, but the most crushing blows left it safely embedded in the hard iron. Then they made elephants trample upon it, that it might sink into the earth, but once more it rose from its burial, enthroned in the heart of a lotus-blossom, the petals of which were of fine gold, and its heart of silver.
Still the Brahmins would not acknowledge themselves defeated. They took the wondrous tooth and cast it into the foul sewers of the city. Straightway the sewers disappeared, and in their place there appeared a clear and beautiful lake, whereon floated lilies of many hues, whose fragrance attracted clouds of murmurous bees. This time the Brahmins were silenced, and the Emperor and all his people embraced the faith of Buddha, and paid their adoration to the wonder-working and indestructible relic.
The Emperor appears to have restored the precious treasure to the safe keeping of the kings of Kalinga, for long afterwards, when the reigning king found himself sorely beset by his foes, he bade his daughter, the Princess of Kalinga, conceal this treasure in the coils of her thick long hair, and make her way to Ceylon.
This she did A.D. 311, where King Kirti Sri Megahawarna received it with all possible honour, and built for it a splendid temple at Anuradhapura. It remained in Ceylon till about A.D. 1303, being carried from place to place, as successive kings changed their royal residence; but wherever it was taken, a splendid temple was erected to its honour. Amongst the places thus distinguished were Pollonarua, Hastiselapura, Kataragama, Delgamoa, Kotmalie, Beligala, Dambadeniya, Yapahame, Kurunegala, Kotte, Sitawaka, Delgamuwa, Nilambe, Hanguranketa, Kondesahe, and lastly Kandy. At some of these places ruins of the temples still exist, and I visited several in different parts of the island.
At length the Malabar conquerors captured this bone of contention and carried it off to Southern India. Thither in 1319 the King of Ceylon, Prakrama Bahu III., went in person to negotiate its surrender, and ransomed it for a price beyond telling. Then with much pomp and ceremony he carried it back to the Isle, and all the people rejoiced greatly, and exalted it to double honours.
Thus it continued to receive the adoration of multitudes until the coming of the Portuguese, who in A.D. 1560 captured it among the spoils of the principal temple at Jaffna, where it was said to have been sent for security. They took it to Goa, and thither the King of Pegu (who, being a devout man of exceeding wealth, had annually sent embassies to do it homage) despatched an ambassador craving permission to ransom it at whatever price might be named—offering a very large sum of money in addition to great political advantages.
Such an offer was exceedingly tempting, as it was justly urged that the heathen would only manufacture a new tooth were this idol destroyed; but the influence of the clergy was exerted so powerfully, that even the temptation of gold was withstood, and the ugly little Tooth in its golden setting was brought forth by the clergy in solemn state and placed in a mortar, where, with his own hand, the Archbishop, Don Caspar, bruised it to powder in presence of the Viceroy, and of a great assemblage of clergy and laity. The powder was then burnt in a brazier which stood ready, and the charcoal, with this minute atom of ash, was cast into the river in presence of all the multitude.
But true believers declare that the Holy Tooth was miraculously re-formed in the heart of a lotus blossom, and I suppose they consider its increase of bulk to be part of the miracle, for thousands of pilgrims have continued year by year to flock to Ceylon to adore the lump of ivory which the priests substituted for the lost treasure. (The marvel is, that they should not have replaced it by a human tooth. Surely such an offering would have been truly acceptable to Buddha! and they might have cast lots to know which of them might have the privilege of sacrificing one of his own!)
The Portuguese declare the tooth which they captured to have undoubtedly been that of an ape (possibly shed by Hoonooman, the Monkey-god, himself, and slyly substituted by some Brahmin!)
Certainly it does seem strange that so precious a treasure should have been sent to a place so remote as Jaffna, in the extreme north of the Isle, whose inhabitants are mostly Tamils and Brahmins. The Singhalese themselves maintain that the real tooth had been sent for safety to Saffragam. However, the tooth captured by the Portuguese had all the credit of being genuine, and the piece of ivory now held in such reverence was not heard of for many a day, and in the meantime the idea suggested by the Viceroy of Goa, that the destruction of the relic would only lead to the manufacture of another, proved literally true, for in a very short time two spurious teeth appeared in the market!
The story of their manufacture was minutely recorded by Diego De Couto, who was intimately acquainted with several witnesses of the various scenes. He tells how in A.D. 1564, Brama, King of Pegu, sent ambassadors to Don Juan, King of Cotta, asking his daughter in marriage (the astrologers having predicted at his birth that he was to marry a princess of Ceylon). It so happened that the King of Cotta had no daughter, but the shipload of rich gifts was irresistible, and as he had brought up in the palace a daughter of his great chamberlain, who was of the blood royal, the king agreed with his kinsman that he should pass her off as his own, and send her to be the king’s bride.
They further agreed to have a facsimile of the ape’s tooth made of a bit of stag’s horn: this was mounted in gold, enclosed in a costly shrine, and conveyed to the house of the chamberlain, who then in strictest confidence disclosed to the ambassadors and their Buddhist priests that the tooth captured by the Portuguese was a fraud, and that the true tooth was concealed in his house.
Of course they besought permission to see it, which he granted with apparent reluctance, and finally led them disguised by night to a room where the tooth lay on an altar amid incense and lights. There they spent the night prostrate in devout adoration, and afterwards offered an immense sum of money and other costly gifts (including the annual gift of a ship laden with rice), if only this inestimable tooth might be sent to the King of Pegu, together with his bride.
The wily chamberlain decided that two such treasures should go separately; so the princess was despatched first, and was received with the utmost magnificence, all the people being required to swear allegiance to her as their queen. Ere long the fact that she was really only the daughter of the chamberlain reached the ears of the king, but the damsel had found so great favour in his sight that he ignored the matter, especially as his ambassadors and the priests then took occasion to tell him about the precious tooth, and of their negotiations to obtain possession of it.
‘This,’ said De Couto, ‘excited the desire of King Brama, who reverenced that tooth above everything in life, even as we esteem the tooth of St. Apollonia (though I shall not say much of the tooth of that sainted lady) more highly than the nail which fastened our Saviour to the Cross.’
Accordingly he at once despatched the priests and ambassadors to Colombo in a vessel laden with costly gifts, to negotiate secretly with the Singhalese king, who with the greatest solemnity and secrecy made over to them this newest fraud in its costly shrine. On its arrival on the shores of Pegu a multitude of priests and people assembled to adore it, and the King Brama despatched all his nobles in magnificently decorated barges to receive it with due honour, and bring it up the river in state to his royal capital of Rangoon, he himself going two days’ journey in a boat richly decorated with gilding and brocaded silks, to meet the splendid procession.
‘On coming in sight of it,’ says De Couto, ‘he bathed, sprinkled himself with perfumes, assumed his most costly dress, and on touching the raft which bore the tooth, he prostrated himself before it with all the gestures of profound adoration, and on his knees approaching the altar on which rested the shrine, he received the tooth from those who had charge of it, and raising it aloft, placed it on his head many times with adjurations of awe; then restoring it to its place, he accompanied it on its way to the city.
‘As it passed along, the river was perfumed with the odours which ascended from the barges, and when they reached the city, the priests and nobles of the king, and all the chief men, advancing into the water, took the shrine upon their shoulders and bore it to the palace, accompanied by an innumerable multitude of spectators. The grandees, taking off their costly robes, spread them on the way, in order that those who carried that abominable relic might walk upon them.
‘The tooth was at last deposited in the centre of the courtyard of the palace, under a costly tabernacle, upon which the monarch and all his grandees presented their offerings, declaring their lineage, all which was recorded by scribes nominated for that duty. Here it remained two months, till the Vihare which they set about erecting could be constructed, and on which such expenditure was lavished as to cause an insurrection in the kingdom.’
In the following year details of all these transactions reached the ears of Wikrama Bahu, King of Kandy, who was filled with jealousy that his kinsman, the King of Cotta, should have secured so much treasure. He therefore despatched an envoy to the King of Pegu to tell him the whole truth, of how the wife and the tooth he had secured were alike frauds, the genuine tooth being in the safe keeping of the Kandyan monarch himself, who now offered his own royal daughter in marriage to the King of Pegu.
Apparently he also hinted at being open to a bid for the tooth, for King Brama, after due reflection, resolved to hush up the story of the frauds, and therefore merely replied that he was duly sensible of the honour designed for him by the proffered alliance, and likewise by the offer of the tooth, and that as a mark of consideration for the King of Kandy he would send back by his ambassadors a shipload of presents.
Thereupon he prepared two vessels, each freighted with rice and rich cloths, one for the King of Cotta, the other for the jealous King of Kandy. On board of the former he sent all the Portuguese subjects who had been held captive in Pegu, and from the lips of one of these De Couto wrote his narrative.[95] The vessel for the King of Kandy had her cables maliciously cut, and was wrecked in Colombo harbour.
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Footnote 95:
Translated from the Portuguese by Sir James Emerson Tennant.
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Sir James Tennant, commenting on this story, observes that ‘the Singhalese never seem to have been scrupulous about multiplying Buddha’s teeth, for Marco Polo says the great Khan Khubla sent to demand one in the year 1281, and obtained from the King of Ceylon two large back teeth, together with some of his hair.’
Long before the days of King Brama of Pegu, another Burmese monarch, Anarapta, who reigned in the eleventh century, sent a mission to Ceylon to treat for the purchase of the tooth, of which ‘a miraculous emanation’ was delivered to his ambassadors. It must have been a solid fact, for the temple in which it was lodged is still shown, attached to the palace of Amarapura.
Sir Henry Yule tells how yet another Burmese monarch, King Nauratha Men-zan, went with a large army into China to invite a tooth of Buddha to come to Burmah. The tusk, as it is called, declined to come, but a duplicate was miraculously produced, and was enshrined in the Shwé-Zeegoong Pagoda, one of the most celebrated temples in Burmah.[96]
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Footnote 96:
Mission to the Court of Ava.
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The Burmese, however, do not seem to have been satisfied with these duplicate teeth, for when in 1815 the present piece of ivory was captured by the British, the King of Burmah, Minderagu Praio, sent two embassies to Calcutta to treat for its purchase.
The British soon afterwards received a practical lesson in the necessity of guarding this coveted object, for in the insurrection of 1818 the priests in charge of it carried it off to lend its influence to the insurgents. By a happy accident the British recaptured it, whereupon the Kandyans laid down their arms, saying, ‘As the English possessed the tooth, they had the right to govern.’
It was then committed to the care of the Government agent, who kept the key of its shrine, and the temple was guarded by sentries till 1847, when objections being raised to such official recognition of idolatry, the relic was returned to the care of the Buddhist priests. Shortly afterwards, however, another insurrection broke out, and but for the timely action of the Government agent in securing the Delada, it would again have been carried off to inspirit the rebels. When all danger seemed past, it was restored to the priests, who have had it in charge for the last forty years.
Of the other teeth supposed to have been rescued from Gautama Buddha’s funeral pyre, I was shown one in the Monastery of Kushan, on the sacred mount overlooking the city of Foochoow. It is kept in a dull casket within a securely locked shrine. Before it lies an elephant’s tooth—an appropriate offering.[97] It is supposed to have been brought to China in A.D. 530 by an embassy from Persia to the Chinese Emperor. The Buddhists in China are said to have several similar relics.
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Footnote 97:
‘Wanderings in China,’ pp. 261-267. By C. F. Gordon Cumming. William Blackwood & Sons.
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Fa Hian, the Chinese traveller who in the fourth century visited so very many shrines, tells of a tooth which was preserved by the priests at Ladak, and in honour of which a tower had been erected. He mentions another which was treasured by the King of Nakia in Afghanistan.
Mr. William Simpson, of the ‘Illustrated London News,’ has just sent me what he calls ‘a complete set of teeth!’ most of which are mentioned by another Chinese traveller—namely, Hiouen Thsang, who lived in the first half of the seventh century. He records that teeth of the Tatagata were to be found all over India, and as far as Balkh, where he saw a back tooth very much like the Delada at Kandy—namely, about an inch in length, and of a yellowish-white colour. He says it continually gave forth a lustre of happy augury. He saw another (which is described as a milk-tooth), answering to exactly the same description, in the north-west of Cabul, and one rather larger in Cashmere.
He was told of another enclosed in a stupa or dagoba at Nagarahara, the former capital of the Jellalabad valley.
At Bamian he found quite a collection of teeth. There was a back tooth of Gautama Buddha, and also one of a T’o-Khio Pratyeka Buddha, who lived at the beginning of the present kalpa. The latter was five inches in length, and rather less than four in circumference! A third tooth was that of a king who had turned the wheel of gold (Souvarna tchakra radja). This was three inches long and two in circumference.
At Nalanda, the great monastery near Buddha-gaya, he saw a tooth of Buddha an inch and a half long, and yellowish-white. He also tells of a mountain in Gandhara which was called Danta-loka, or Heaven of the Tooth.
Dr. Edkins says that in the monasteries of Northern China there are various teeth and other relics of Sakya-muni—alias Buddha. He describes a tooth which he saw at the temple called Teu-shwai-sï, which was two inches and a half thick and ten by thirteen in width![98]—a miraculous tooth indeed, and yet insignificant compared with one, likewise attributed to Buddha, which weighs about twenty pounds, and is enshrined in one of the numerous temples which cluster round Mount O-mei, a mighty mountain 10,000 feet high in Central Ssu-ch’un, the great place of pilgrimage for the Buddhists of Western China. Only think how terribly poor Buddha must have suffered before he cut such a wisdom-tooth as that!
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Footnote 98:
‘Chinese Buddhism,’ p. 250.
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Apparently some special virtue attaches to teeth, whatever be their origin. In his ‘River of Golden Sand,’ Captain Gill describes an object held in reverence by the people of Ch’êng-Tu, in Northern China—namely, a stone called ‘The Tooth of Heaven.’ ‘It was merely a bit of sandstone in the shape of a tooth. There was a little house built over the entrance to it, but the roof did not cover the stone itself, for they say that if the stone were covered, the God of Thunder would commit some fearful devastation on the town.’
In India a few years ago a small tope was opened by Dr. Bird, near the Kankeri caves in the Isle of Salsette, and therein was found a copper-plate recording that a canine tooth of Sakya had once been deposited there. But it had departed.
Another vanished tooth is that of St. Patrick—at least there is an allusion in the ‘Archæological Journal’ (vol. xvi., 1859, p. 150) to the Fiocail Phadraig, or Shrine of St. Patrick’s Tooth.
Apart from things held sacred, the prices obtained for kindred treasures, even in modern England, are sometimes startling. Imagine Sir Isaac Newton’s tooth having been sold in 1816 for £730! The purchaser had it set as a ring, and wore it till the day of his death. ‘Wanted. A fool and his money.’ Would not that be the right heading for an auctioneer’s advertisement of such goods?
To return to the veritable Delada at Kandy. About twenty years ago the Siamese sent an embassy to Ceylon, offering a sum of £50,000 for permission to remove the Tooth to their own capital. The offer was rejected with scorn. They then begged that the Tooth should be dipped in oil, which they might carry back to their king.
But the ambassadors were not even allowed to look at the precious and greatly coveted object. They appealed to the British authorities, and appointed an agent to plead their cause. At his request the priests were commanded to produce the Tooth, that he might the better explain their exact wishes. No sooner was the jealously guarded treasure revealed than he produced a small piece of rag, and observing, ‘This is all my clients want,’ he rapidly rubbed it over the holy relic as if merely illustrating their wishes, and quickly dropped the rag into a small phial of oil. Thus the oil was consecrated, and endued with sufficient virtue to consecrate tons of oil wherewith to sanctify the whole kingdom of Siam. Of course the priests were furious, and vowed that the tooth had been desecrated; but the mischief was irreparable, and the ambassadors returned to their own land with their money in hand and a holy oil that was nearly as efficacious as the possession of the Tooth itself.
The account of the Siamese ambassadors and their little phial of consecrated oil reminds me of some very similar use of relics in our own land. Thus Dr Rock[99] mentions that in olden days, ‘when any widespreading disease befell this land and took off men or beasts of the field, our bishops would send forth orders that the relics in every church should be steeped in holy water, which was afterwards to be sprinkled on the sick or given them to be drunk as a medicine.’
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Footnote 99:
‘Church of our Fathers.’
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Hence arose the fame of the Durham water, wherein had been washed the dead body of St. Cuthbert, and the still more famous relic-water of Canterbury, wherein was mixed some well-diluted portion of the blood of the murdered Thomas à Becket (scraped up with the dust off the pavement), a relic which, being carried round the neck of ‘y^e pilgrime,’ was a sure safeguard against all ill.
We of the nineteenth century would fain believe that English common-sense had driven out all such folly. Yet it is only a few years since the daily papers were discussing the curious homage paid annually by hundreds of our countrymen in ire’ to the poor shrivelled hand of a certain Father Arrowsmith, which is kept in a white silk bag at Garswood, in charge of the Roman Catholic priests; and the sick and afflicted flock thither in hopes that they may be cured of their diseases by a touch of the holy hand. We heard of one poor woman who had travelled many miles to have this healing touch applied to a paralysed side, a curious revelation indeed of superstition in England in our own day.
As we ponder on the strange relic-worship of heathen lands, a stranger vision yet rises before us of the relics still held priceless by Christian people of the Roman and Greek Churches, and of many more, once precious objects of adoration, now lost to the faithful, such as a Tooth of Our Lord, whereby the monks of S. Medard de Soissons pretended in olden days to work miracles. Or that arm of St. Augustine, which our own Canute commissioned his ambassadors at Rome to purchase for the sum of one hundred talents of silver and one of gold!
We are inclined to smile at the superstition of the Kandyans who carried the Tooth to battle to ensure victory, but we forget that King Robert Bruce so greatly revered the arm of St. Fillan that he caused it to be carried by the Abbot of Inchaffray to grace the battle of Bannockburn, and doubtless gave the relic its full share of credit for his glorious victory.
About fifty years earlier, King Henry III. had summoned all his nobles and wise men to meet in London. Multitudes assembled, marvelling for what purpose their presence was required. The king then solemnly announced that the Grand Master of the Knights Templars had sent him a phial containing a few drops of that Most Precious Blood shed upon the Cross, and attested to be genuine by the seals of the patriarch of Jerusalem, and others! He commanded that on the following day a great procession should be formed, to conduct this inestimable relic to Westminster Abbey; and it has been recorded that though the roads between St. Paul’s and Westminster were deep and miry, the king never took his eyes off the sacred phial till he had safely deposited it in the Abbey, dedicating it to God and St. Edward. ‘Thus,’ says the old historian, ‘was all England made to shine with glory!’
Doubtless many remember the fresco in the Grand Master’s Palace at Malta, showing the Earl of Cornwall receiving a Reliquary ‘full of the Blood of Christ.’ And among the relics at Città Vecchia in Malta are a piece of the True Cross, a fragment of St. Paul’s arm, and some milk of the Blessed Virgin! Verily Christianity can ill afford to jeer at Buddhist relic worship. If, as seems probable (indeed, wellnigh certain), this practice was borrowed by the Christians from the followers of Buddha, the pupils have surely surpassed their teacher in their multitude of strange objects of veneration.
As to the fragments of the True Cross, treasured by all the Churches, it has been computed that, were they all collected, they might suffice to build a ship of the line! This was openly acknowledged by the priests, who rather glorified in the fact: St. Cyril, after declaring that the whole earth was filled with this sacred wood, went so far as to compare its amazingly diffusive powers to the miracle of the loaves and fishes!
The tears of our Saviour, and those of the Virgin and of St. Peter, were also bought freely by pilgrims to the Holy Land, and brought home in jewelled caskets, while the hair and toe-nails of divers saints have ever been treasured as priceless relics. Of St. Peter’s nails it was estimated that enough existed to have filled a large sack, so prolific were the sacred toes of that great apostle. Some of these are still preserved at Aix-la-Chapelle, and the faithful make pilgrimages from afar to gaze upon them!
To such an extent was the veneration for Christian relics carried, that in the days of Constantine it was solemnly decreed in Council that all altars beneath which none were found should be demolished, as a church without relics could not be consecrated; and so, even in the present day, the Church of Rome requires that some holy tooth, hair, or nail shall, on the consecration of every new church, be carried in solemn procession by the priests to the altar, and therein deposited by the Bishop (who stands mitreless to receive that precious reliquary, hoping perhaps that his own bones may some day receive similar honour). Having duly offered incense, he anoints the covering-stone with holy oil, and so seals the relic tomb, while solemn anthems rise, and prayers are duly said.
We can only account for such strange excrescences of Christianity (professedly the worship solely of One Living Lord) by the assumption that even among ourselves the widespread instinct of ancestor-worship survives to an extent we dare not admit.
How else can we account for the craving for saintly relics even in this wise nineteenth century? In Italy, not many years ago, it led to a scene that would disgrace savages—namely, a free fight over the dead body of a saintly Bishop, which resulted in the populace tearing off every fragment of his episcopal robes as most precious relics; so that at length the military had to come in and rescue the poor naked corpse, which the civic authorities were unable to defend.[100]
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Footnote 100:
This scandalous scene, which occurred at Torre del Greco in August 1872, was thus reported by the Daily News :—
‘Last Monday, Torre del Greco was in a state of indescribable tumult. The Bishop of Ischia, Monsignor Romano, who was a native of the place, had died, and on that day was to be buried in the public cemetery. Some time before his death popular feeling had declared the dying Bishop to be a saint. When he died his body was first laid out in the church, and thence, on Monday, the 5th, followed by an immense crowd, was conveyed to the cemetery.
‘But it was not destined to reach on that day its earthly resting-place, for before entering the gate messengers came hastening from the town to announce that the dead Bishop was working miracles— that one lame man of Sorrento had suddenly been able to walk; that another who for years could only crawl on crutches had thrown them away and attained the use of his limbs; that a young waiter in a café, known for years to be dumb, had received the use of his speech; with other marvels of the like kind. “A miracle! a miracle! a miracle!” cry the excited crowd.
‘The bearers of the corpse were prevented from entering the cemetery. The funeral procession turned back; and as the coffin was brought again to the church of Torre del Greco, cries of “Bring out the sick!” “Bring out the fever patients!” “Bring out the paralytic!” rang out all along the road, the crowd telling the inmates of the houses before which they passed to carry into the street the sick, that they might participate in the miraculous cures which the dead Bishop was effecting.
‘At length the corpse was brought to the church; the large crucifix on the altar was torn down, and the dead body of the wonder-working Bishop put in its place. The deceased had been arrayed in episcopal garments, but these soon disappeared. The populace, in the belief that the powers of the dead saint would attach to every shred of his clothes which they might secure, made a rush—each ignorant fanatic energetically tearing and struggling to seize and carry off a precious relic. So effectually was the corpse stripped that there remained at last only the naked form of the poor Bishop.
‘The parish priest in whose church the scene took place, after having vainly attempted to dissuade the populace, seems to have thought that his own safety would be best secured by flight. Meanwhile the local magistrate and the mayor, with a party of Carbineers, hastened to the spot for the purpose of restoring order. The mob would not listen to their exhortations. “He is working miracles!” “He is working miracles!” was again the universal cry.
At this stage of the proceedings the steward, or manager of the church funds, mounted the pulpit and told the people that the age of miracles had passed away. He might have paid dearly for this untimely announcement had not a sudden and violent ringing of the church bells diverted the attention of the people, and brought them out into the street to ascertain the cause. This diversion was dexterously taken advantage of by the mayor and the other authorities. The doors of the church were shut and barred, the naked corpse was left undisturbed, and before long the arrival of a sufficient military force proved the best preventive against a renewal of such outrages.’
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In France thousands annually wend their way to the Puy de Dôme, there to do homage to the ‘Sainte Ceinture’—the Holy Girdle supposed to have been worn by the Mother of our Lord—and which was conveyed to the mountains of Auvergne by a crusading Count of Poitou six or seven centuries ago.
Multitudes more make devout pilgrimage to a shrine near Samur, in the Alps of Dauphiny, to purchase holy water from a well said to have sprung from the Madonna’s tears, and which, consequently, is an infallible cure for sore eyes.
A leading article in the ‘Times,’ September 2, 1872, after speaking of the so-called miraculous apparition of Nôtre Dâme de la Salette in 1846, and reminding its readers how the case was tried in a court of law and proved to be a glaring imposture—a poor half-crazed lady having been convicted of acting the part, with the connivance of sundry other people—added, ‘Yet in spite of this, our Lady of La Salette is now greater than she ever was; a temple of enormous dimensions has risen in her honour; the pilgrims, who, till lately, did not exceed 40,000 to 60,000, are mustering this year more than the average; and the sale of the water from the Holy Well, said to have sprung from the Virgin’s tears, realised more than £12,000.’
Twenty years have elapsed since that leader was penned, and still the popularity of this Well of Tears shows no symptom of waning.
Thousands more betake them to the Holy Well at Lourdes in the Pyrenees, which was also sanctified by the miraculous appearance of the Virgin, and which also works wondrous cures on all threatened with blindness, provided they thrice pray, and thrice bathe their eyes with the healing waters. One devout pilgrim was so well satisfied with the benefit he there received, that he published a detailed account of his cure. The book rapidly passed through upwards of forty editions, and while bringing a considerable annual income to the author, has encouraged thousands of fresh pilgrims to press onwards to the same goal.
But we need not go beyond Ireland for cases in point, as every one knows who has visited Our Lady’s Well at Knock, in County Mayo, in the middle of August, when deaf, dumb, blind, paralytic, and insane persons may be cured by spending a whole night alone in the adjoining churchyard! Should anyone, however, touch or speak to them, the charm would be broken. A wall, near which the blessed Virgin was said to have appeared, had to be taken down, but the mortar was carried to the priest’s house, and has ever since been sold in fragments to give virtue to the foundation of new houses. All rain that falls on the chapel is so holy that it is carried home in bottles by the pilgrims. The first fire in a new house must be kindled by a blessed candle bought at this shrine; and if ever a turf fire goes out (which is unlucky), it must be rekindled by the same means.
To bring these strange subjects quite up to date, I must just refer to the exhibition of the Holy Coat, which has drawn such crowds to Trèves (or, as we must now call it, Trier) in the autumn of 1891. As every one now knows, the garment which has been invested with such sacred interest is supposed to be the very coat without seam worn by our LORD on the day of His Crucifixion, and for which the soldiers cast lots.
Where it lay for the next three hundred years, even ecclesiastical legend does not state, but about A.D. 311 a seamless garment of brownish material was brought from Palestine by the Empress Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine the Great, on that memorable pilgrimage when she was supposed to have also discovered the True Cross.
She deposited the Holy Coat in the Cathedral at Trèves, where, in the ninth century, it was concealed from the ravaging Normans in the crypt, and was not rediscovered till 1196, when it was solemnly deposited by the Archbishop within the newly consecrated high altar of the Cathedral, enclosed in a beautiful chest of wood and ivory. Thence, three hundred years later, it was brought forth for exhibition at Easter 1512, when absolution was promised to all who came to do it homage. It continued on show for twenty-three days, during which the Emperor Maximilian held a Reichstag in the town, which brought thither representatives of the kings of England, France, and Navarre, besides numerous princes, dukes, bishops, nobles, and 100,000 pilgrims of lower degree.
Such was the enthusiasm awakened, that Pope Leo X. commanded that it should thenceforth be exhibited once in seven years. The progress of the Reformation, however, rendered this impossible or undesirable. In 1640, during the Thirty Years’ War, it was carried for safety to Cologne, thence to Ehrenbreitstein, Würzburg, Bamburg, and Augsburg, where it remained till 1810, when it was restored to Trèves, and welcomed with the wildest enthusiasm.
It was brought back in a waggon all garlanded with flowers, and every town and village through which it passed held festival. As it entered Trèves itself, all business was at a standstill, altars with burning tapers lined the road, streets were decorated, paths strewn with flowers, men and women wept for joy. At that time it was computed that at least 227,000 persons came to gaze upon it. Again, in 1844, it was displayed to still larger crowds, the total number of pilgrims exceeding a million of human beings, whose adoration evoked such response in the sacred vestment that it commenced working miracles, upwards of a score of miraculous cures of diverse diseases being circumstantially recorded.
And now in 1891, funds being required for the restoration of the Cathedral, it was decided to exhibit the Holy Coat for fifty days, from August 18 till October 6, so as to allow ample time for a multitude of pilgrims to bring their offerings. Large barracks were erected for the accommodation of pilgrims, tanneries and storehouses were fitted up with bedding consisting of sacks of straw, almost every dwelling-house arranged to let the largest possible number of beds at the highest possible price.
The one thought of all the inhabitants seems to have been how to reap the largest pecuniary harvest from the pilgrims. It is said that, with a keen eye to business, no less than four hundred persons applied for licences to open hotels and restaurants. But, besides the provision of necessary board and lodging, there was much ingenuity in devising a strangely varied assortment of objects for sale, such as medallions, rosaries, images, cigarettes, pocket-handkerchiefs, boxes of sweetmeats, even match-boxes, all bearing the picture of the sacred tunic, which was also embossed on the bowls of clay pipes! Near the railway stations there were whole villages of refreshment booths, and for the sale of these catch-pennies. A single firm ordered 1,500 dozens of one picture of the garment.
The city was gay with countless flags; the Bishop’s flag, bearing a great red cross on a white ground, floated from the Cathedral. Day after day endless processions of picturesque pilgrims with sacred banners poured into the city, wearing the distinctive costumes of their several provinces, and marched about the livelong day chanting Ave Marias and the Litany of the Sacred Coat. Dancing, concerts, and all secular amusements, were prohibited during the fifty days. As some consolation, however, there was granted a general dispensation from all fasting during that period.
The account of the disentombment of the sacred tunic from within the high altar is even more strange than are the details of the enshrinement of Buddha’s Tooth in its various cases. The provost of the Cathedral having read the protocol of the last locking up of the relic in the previous year, three officials opened the high altar, thence breaking out large masses of stone with heavy crowbars. A box about two mètres long was then lifted out and opened, and a long document and a smaller box covered with leather were taken out; within the latter lay another document and a third box of metal, fastened with six seals.
The Bishop threw a red cloth over this metal box, and with the aid of the provost carried it to the treasure chamber, where the seals were carefully examined, and found to be intact, after which the box was opened, and the Bishop took thence a parcel wrapped in blue silk, within which was a wrapping of red silk, and within that of white silk, enfolding the vestment, which he then spread out on the table. No one else was privileged to touch it.
It was found to be in so tattered a condition that it could not be exhibited. Various experts were consulted, and finally a venerable nun was called in, who proposed that the fragments should be gummed together, the material being too much worn to stand the strain of needle and thread. It seems to have been previously mounted in a similar manner, as a microscopic examination proved it to be a triple garment, the brown linen lying between a coating of purple silk and one of greenish silk, all of very ancient manufacture.
The garment thus renovated was placed full length in an oaken shrine, open in front and lined with white silk, and this was suspended above the altar, beneath a great golden cross, with a background of rich crimson velvet drapery. The Cathedral was all decorated with garlands of flowers and evergreens, and a thousand citizens of Trèves declared their willingness to take it by turns to watch day and night beside the precious relic.
On the day of the unveiling, a guard of honour of Knights of Malta in scarlet uniform (all members of ancient Catholic nobility) stood with drawn swords on either side of the shrine, and as the light streamed through stained glass windows on these, and on the very large white-robed choir, and a body of upwards of a hundred clergy in richest vestments, and on a vast company of worshippers, the scene was striking in the extreme.
Thenceforth every day, and all day long, a ceaseless throng passed in a continuous stream up the great marble stairs on either side of the altar, so as to pass in front of the relic. Thousands came by special train, thousands more by steamboat, and large waggons from the country— men and women of every degree, from highest nobles and ecclesiastics to poorest peasants, but the admission of children under ten years of age was discouraged, on account of danger in so great a crowd. It was found impossible to arrange for the admission of more than 45,000 persons daily, so multitudes had to wait their turn from day to day. In truth, they had need of patience, for not only had the various bands to wait for many hours in the streets, but from the moment of entering the Cathedral till he passed out again each pilgrim took about three hours, progressing at a foot’s pace, only a moment’s halt for adoration or veneration being possible when he actually reached the Holy Coat. Almost all carried with them some article—a handkerchief, a crucifix, rosary, image, or photograph, which, at the moment of passing, they handed to an attendant priest, that he might therewith touch the coat, and thus sanctify it for ever.
Day by day, at half-past four in the morning, the Cathedral opened, and crowds poured in from the darkness towards the blaze of light, where the Bishop and clergy ministered at the high altar. The pilgrims included many aged and infirm persons—cripples, blind, deaf, dumb, and many suffering from divers diseases deemed incurable, who had come from distant parts of Europe and America hoping to be healed. Those provided with medical and good-conduct certificates were permitted to touch the garment; and pitiful was the intense earnestness with which they awaited the eagerly desired miracle!
Nothing was more remarkable than the quiet and orderly conduct of these vast crowds of poor devout peasants. There was no drunkenness, and the publicans who had laid in incredible stores of beer and wine in expectation of much conviviality, were grievously disappointed at the small consumption thereof.
At the close of the fifty days’ exhibition, it was found that no less than 1,925,130 persons had visited the Cathedral, and many tardy pilgrims were subsequently admitted to the treasure-chamber in which the Coat was then temporarily enshrined. The united offerings realised an immense sum.
When so-called Christian relics are turned to such profitable use, we can scarcely wonder that the revered bit of ivory at Kandy should in like manner be exhibited as a secure method of raising funds for temple repairs.
In the case of all objects of veneration, it appears inevitable that many claimants for the honour should exist, and so it was found to be in this case, for no sooner was this exhibition of the Trèves relic announced, than various other cities were found to be in possession of a garment supposed to be that which was worn on Calvary. The most determined of these rivals was the Coat of Argenteuil, which was likewise subjected to microscopic investigation, and pronounced by the Pope to have been a genuine garment worn by our Lord, but in earlier years than that of Trèves; so Argenteuil had to bow to this decree, and accept a lower place in the scale of relic-owners.
But perhaps the most singular relics thus brought from sacred seclusion into sudden publicity are ‘the holy Trousers of Saint Joseph,’ enshrined in the treasure-chamber of the great church of Maria-Zell in Styria, the recovery of which is likewise ascribed to the Empress Helena on her memorable visit to Palestine. (I was not aware that such garments were worn in Judea in the first century, but here is proof positive!) They are preserved in a glass case behind a screen, in a corner of what is said to be probably the largest collection in Europe of curious relics of this sort. They are said to be much worn—in fact, to have been darned and patched. Women are not allowed to gaze upon these garments, which, however, are said to have wrought remarkable miracles for some lords of the creation, as is testified in a certain document bearing large official seals, and illustrated by a picture of a happy Croatian couple on their knees, followed by a troop of kneeling children, whose existence is ascribed to the miraculous influence of these remarkable nether garments! A small vignette also shows the happy father with his money-bags, kneeling at the feet of a group of bishops, one of whom is holding up these venerable trousers.
First and last, relic-worship is a singular subject, and the habit occasionally brings honour to most unexpected objects. Thus the author of ‘Erewhon’ relates that he once passed an Italian woman kneeling in devout worship before a dentist’s show-case in the Hampstead Road, evidently believing the teeth to be worshipful and saintly relics! Doubtless they answered her purpose quite as well as any more highly authenticated fragments of humanity.