 |
vol. title: Vol Four of The Theosophical Society of The Arya Samaj of Arya-wart vol. period: Sept 1878 – Sept 1879 pages in vol.: 350 |
SUNDAY, AUGUST 3, 1879.
The Hierophant in India
Bombay, June 13.—It would rejoice the hearts of some of our Western Orientalists and metaphysicians to sit, unobserved, in the shade of one of our cocoa palms any pleasant evening and listen to the conversation of our guests. We are “at home” after half past six, when, the dinner over, chairs and benches are placed in the garden by our servants, Rama and Baboola—one a fool, the other as sharp as a steel trap—and visitors begin dropping in. We were so run down by the curious that, for weeks, we could scarcely snatch time for even private letter writing. Before we were out of bed of a morning they would walk into the enclosure, take their seats and wait for our appearance to assail us with the knottiest problems in Eastern and Western theology. Fancy coming out of the house rubbing one’s eyes and ready to call for breakfast, and having straightway to respond to a group of wideawake turbaned Hindoos and Parsees our views upon the nature of Prakreet, the primitive meaning of solar worship or the Sankya doctrine of Vedant! It was not in human nature to stand this forever, so we finally enforced the rule that we would see no one, on any pretext, until after dinner.
It is remarked alike by natives and Europeans that nowhere else is seen such a motley company. There may be thirty persons present and yet scarcely two of the same color or caste. I have already informed you that there is every variety of shade in Indian complexions, from black to pale olive, and there are equally marked contrasts in the size, color and shape of turbans. White, scarlet, crimson, magenta, pink, blue and red-yellow (figured) are the favorite shades; they are usually made of from forty to sixty yards of thin, sleazy cotton fabric; and wound by professional folders into the most curious shapes. Some (the Cutchees) are like an inverted bowl, with a short horn or beak projecting at the centre of the forehead; others (the Marathi Brahmins) are wound into a thick rim, which stands straight out like a hat brim all around, and have a ridge above, pointing forward like the crest of a knight’s helmet; others (the Rajpoots) are small and scant, and more like a sort of loosely wound head covering of scarlet ropes; some Parsees wear a stiff, round-crowned, drab, felt hat, with a brim turned into a tight cylindrical roll all around the head, and ornamented with stripes of cashmere figured cloth, but the majority prefer the straight, perpendicular, pasteboard, brimless hat or turban, varnished black or covered with dark spotted silk, that looks like a bishop’s mitre done in paper. The Mohammedans wear either an embroidered skull cap, or large rolled turban, with or without gold upon it, as individual taste or means may dictate. Picture to yourself a compound enclosed by a high wall; a grove of cocoa palms surrounding it, and even encroaching upon it here and there; two tile-roofed bungalows, with wide verandas and trellises, and creeping vines; and, out in the open, a gathering of Eastern people, clothed in their contrasting picturesque garments, which the luxuriant tropical verdure about, and the light of the veranda lanterns, throw into high relief; we four the only Europeans, perhaps—and you will see how the Theosophical party appear at their daily work.
Our visitors are from remote as well as neighboring localities, since the Indian press has given us so much notoriety that it would be hard to find any large district of the country where our coming here is not known. The Bengalee Baboos of Calcutta, with their hatless heads and flowing senatorial white robes, come; and the ascetics from Hurdwar and Benares, enwrapped in saffron cloths, or naked except as to the very, very scanty langhouti; and the begging Brahmin from afar, his face and arms streaked with dampened ashes, and upon his forehead, in red ochre, the caste marks of Vishnu or Siva; and the Pandit of Poonah, Baroda, or Mathura, who is filled to the eyes with Sanskrit roots and verbs; and the merchant of Cawnpore or Delhi, in town for purchases or sales, who wants to see what manner of people are these Bilati who have come to study Vedic philosophy in the motherland, and of the pandits and sannyasis; these all helping to make our daily receptions always unique, lively, and interesting.
Among the most eager of the debaters are, of course, the advocates of idol worship. This class includes some of the best minds and ripest scholars of India. The Hindoo idolater’s excuse is that an image is the tangible, visible representative of an unseen power, which, from its very attributes of divinity and boundlessness, cannot be realized by the finite mind without such help. Just as the photograph, they say, recalls the features of the absent father, so does this idol, be it ever so rough or ungainly, help the devout worshipper to picture to himself the unseen Deity whom he supplicates. That is the whole thing in a nutshell; they will wrangle with you for hours, but it is always within a circle, and it always comes back to this starting point.
The great struggle of to-day in India is not whether Christianity is superior to Vedic teaching, for I do assure you that the effects of three centuries of missionary effort are infinitesimally small, as regards conversions, but whether the Vedas do or do not sanction idolatry, child marriage, the eating outside of caste, and the exasperating subdivision of the people into fragmentary groups of the original four great social castes of the teachers, soldiers, traders, and laborers—brahmin, kschatryia, vaishya, and shudras. The reforming party within the Church, so to speak, is led by Dya Nand Saraswati; that without by the chiefs of the Brahmos, Prarthanas, and Adi Brahmos. The tendency of the whole body of educated youth, whose volume is being yearly increased by the pupils that fifty schools and colleges are pouring out, is to oppose the idolatrous conservatives. And, since Dya Nand’s movement has in it far more that is substantial than the rest, it may be prophesied that twenty years hence that will have swallowed up almost all the other reformatory agencies, and become the chief, if not sole, antagonist of priestly selfishness and popular superstition.
It is certainly true, and must be admitted by every candid Hindoo of education, that the Arya Samaj promises to lend the most powerful help of all toward the resuscitation of the now exhausted national strength by preaching everywhere the primitive Vedic rule of marriage only between adults of the proper age. One of the most eminent native surgeons of Bombay told me only yesterday that he had done his best to inculcate this doctrine among his countrymen, for he was satisfied that they would never be better than the servile flatterers and placemen they now are until they could have men and women, instead of boys and girls, for parents.
I am reminded of the famous duel of epigrams between yourself and your neighbor the World in 1877, anent the energetic and mystical Madame Blavatsky, by a paragraph copied into the Bombay Gazette of yesterday, which set us to overhauling the Theosophical Society’s scrap books. In an article entitled “A Lamasery in New York,” which appeared in your neighbor’s columns on the 26th of March, 1877, the reporter notes Madame B. as saying that within one year from that date scientific men would discover the secret of suspending at will, for a specified time, the vital action of the lower animals and restoring it again. This feat she declared she had seen performed in Thibet by shepherds who, at the approach of the winter months, subject their sheep and cattle to a process which causes them to hibernate as perfectly as any animal to whom it is natural. The process she described as the manipulation in a peculiar way of a certain artery in the neck of the beast. The Australian paragraph in question describes a series of experiments made by one Signor Rotura for a Capt. Grant, which demonstrated that he was able to instantly cause the vital functions in any animal to cease, and after the lapse of days, weeks, or months, as he chose, to restore the beast to life without the slightest difficulty. He simply injected into the neck the juice of one plant, which would bring on the apparent death, and, again, neutralized its action by the juice of another plant when he wished to bring the dead to life. The strange part of this affair is that Mme. Blavatsky should be able to prophesy to a New York reporter that this astounding discovery would be made within a specified time; and that it should actually be made at the antipodes, and within the period fixed. Fortunately, the prophecy and its fulfilment are both matters of newspaper record. Upon the merit of the discovery itself I need not enlarge, for its economical advantages speak for themselves. Men who ship live stock will not make a wry face at even a miracle that should enable them to transport hibernated beasts from Australia and South America to London or New York, and have them frisking about again almost as soon as landed. But my interest in the question is solely that of a student of psychology; and as such I must say a word or two before leaving it. We have all, in fancy, descended with Romeo into the tomb of the Capulets, and felt like thrashing him for not giving the Friar’s narcotic* (or shall we say, hibernatic?) time to spend its force, and let the fair girl revive for love and Romeo. And many of us have read, as though it were a fairy tale, Sir Claude Wade’s account of the resuscitation, after ten months, of the Hindoo ascetic at the Court of Runjeet Singh, who had been buried in the presence of Gen. Ventura. Long before leaving home I sent to one of your contemporaries, for publication, a letter from an ex-officer of the Anglo-Indian army, describing a similar inhumation of a fakir in the presence of the Maharajah of Puttiala, who had requested the officer to serve as one of a committee to superintend the ceremony. Not a man of the many I have questioned in various parts of India has expressed the least skepticism about the possibility of this vital suspension. Many say the knowledge has died out; but these are mostly your B. A.’s and M. D.’s who have lost what their forefathers knew, and got in exchange only what modern science pretends to know. At Jeypore the other day I met unimpeachable witnesses, however, who had very recently assisted at the resuscitation of an ascetic who had suffered himself to be enclosed in a sealed bag, and entombed for the space of twenty-seven days; of course without food or drink. My principal informant is Babu Mohindronauth Sen, Superintendent of the Raj Press (Government Printing Bureau). He is a man of superior education, and cousin to the famous Keshub Chunder Sen. He attended at the resuscitation by order of his Holiness, the Maharajah—himself a most enlightened sovereign, who, among other things, has established an astronomical observatory and a Weather Bureau. The Babu says that a large crowd was present, so that there is no lack of witnesses to corroborate his evidence were that necessary; and, in fact, I was myself assured by the Secretary of the Royal Council, the Head Master of the School of M…es, and the Superintendent of the Medical Hall of the verity of the narrative. Mr. Sen says that the orifices of the subject’s ears, nose, mouth, and other parts of the body had been stopped with ghee—clarified butter—and his tongue turned down his throat. This being replaced and the ghee removed by an attendant, the stark and stiff body was rubbed for some time until it became limp; and little by little the man came back to life. There was a twitching of the eyelids and nostrils, the heart fluttered, and finally the chest heaved. As it rose a second time the air seemed to rush into the lungs as though into a vacuum; for a noise was heard which the witnesses describe as like the letting of steam into a radiator. The man perfectly recovered after a few minutes, and received the homage of the bystanders with quiet composure. Of course I made immediate search throughout the city for the man, but he had gone, a fortnight before, to the great religious fair at Hurdwar. This phenomenon of voluntary suspension of life is called in Sanskrit, Samadhi, and the adept, Samadistha. I have, thus far, seen but one ascetic who is accredited with the possession of this secret. While at Cawnpore I heard that at the ruined city of Jardimow, distant five or six miles, could be seen a sannyassi, named Lukkhi Baba, who could do all sorts of wonderful things if he would—which was very doubtful since these wonder-workers are becoming more shy every day. Obtaining an elephant from the Tashasildhar of Cawnpore, our party rode to the ruined city and found the sannyassi absorbed in the study of a Sanskrit work. He was squatted, cross-legged, upon a bit of a blue cotton carpet, spread upon a clay platform, raised about eight or ten inches above the level of the floor of a hut, whose walls were of earth, and roof of palm-leaf thatch. An oval opening through the wall beside him enabled devout visitors to pay him their respects, to make their offerings of small coin, and receive his blessing. Removing our shoes—a compliment always exacted of those who visit one of these holy men—we entered his room and sat upon the floor near him. His appearance was as intellectual, grave, and dignified as that of a Royal Society President in the chair. In feature he bore a striking resemblance to the late John W. Mitchell, a well known New York lawyer. He was urbane and interesting in his conversation, but declined to show us any feats of magic—whose proper name is Yog Vidya—upon the spur of the moment, since it was too sacred a thing to be made an idle sport of. He invited us, however, to call, and gave us hopes; but we were forced to leave Cawnpore the next morning, and so missed the chance. Outside his door, upon a Hindoo cot, sat in reverie the Samadistha I spoke of. His body was lean, his eye dull and introspective. He was naked, except as to the langhouti, or little breech-clout, and his long hair and beard, matted and sun-bleached, rolled down upon his chest and shoulders. The very type and picture of a soul-seeking Oriental devotee was before us; but time pressing, we could only make our salaams, drop a gratuity into the bowl beside him, and remount our elephant for the homeward ride.
* It will be well worth the while of any one who has read a description of the effects of Signor Rotura’s vegetable narcotic, to refer to the dialogue between Friar Lawrence and Juliet in Act IV., Scene I., of the play. The coincidence is striking.
A few years ago, when in Europe, I took dinner with a relative of the famous diplomat and politician, Prince Talleyrand, who lives stylishly in one of the aristocratic quarters of Paris. After the repast, the party began telling yarns highly flavored with the supernatural. The following are some of the best of them:
My host, who was by the way a Marquis, told a very curious story of his kinsman, Prince Talleyrand. The Prince, in his youth, was enamored of a certain very beautiful Countess, who was beheaded during the Reign of Terror. One day as the Prince was out driving in the Bois de Vincennes, many years afterward, the coachman suddenly stopped, and Prince Talleyrand, looking out of the window to see what was the matter, saw two ladies standing by the side of the carriage. One of them, holding up a face between her two hands, presented the head of the dead Countess at the carriage window, and then withdrew. The Prince, in the greatest consternation, called out to the coachman to know the cause of his stopping, whereupon the latter, with a gesture, pointed to the two figures which were still visible. The Prince drove hastily home, and calling his sister apart related what he had just seen in the most terrible agitation. “My grandmother, who was this sister, told me this herself,” quietly remarked the Marquis, on finishing the narration.
“But I have a more weird story than this,” resumed the Marquis, after the conversation that his strange recital gave rise to had died out; “one in which I was a principal actor myself.” It happened during the French expedition to Mexico, while the American civil war was raging. The French army was encamped before Pueblo. One day the hostler of the Marquis’s horses—the Marquis was an officer of cavalry—came to his tent and informed him that a civilian was desirous of being presented. The Marquis left the tent and followed the hostler to one of the outposts, where was found the unknown visitor. He was dressed in black and had white hair. He informed the Marquis that there was to be a battle that afternoon. The Marquis, not a little surprised by his strange appearance and the confidence with which he predicted a battle, invited him into a tent where the fellow officers of the Marquis’s regiment were dining. The Marquis placed him by his side at the table. Pointing to a certain officer <... continues on page 8-339 >
Editor's notes