CHAPTER VIIIBOYS AND GIRLS
Butthe children of India have to act as men and women long before anyone here would think them old enough to do more than learn and play. Very early indeed a little Hindu child is married. Sometimes a baby is married in the cradle, but a little girl is generally nine or ten years old before she goes away to her husband’s house. That does not mean that she and the little boy to whom she is married have a cottage, and live there together. It only means that she comes in, a frightened wee girl, to a houseful of people whom she never saw before. The oldest woman in the house takes charge of everything. Often she is the grandmother of the child’s husband, and the little wife must not only do everything the old grandmother tells her, she must try to please all the other women there too, if she wishes to be happy. If she makes the others like her, and if the boy to whom she is married likes her, she may soon be ashappy there as she was at home, but if she does not get on well with the others, there is no one who can save her from misery.
One bright little girl called Runabai left her father’s house to go to her husband when she was eleven years old. Her father had been sorry when she was born, but she was so loving and happy that everyone had grown very fond of her, and she went away with beautiful Saris[5]and many flashing jewels. Her father was a wealthy man, so he sent twelve maids with his little daughter to wait on her, and keep everything about her as nice as it had been when she still stayed in his house. But her husband’s family did not like her. They took away all her beautiful clothes and jewels, and instead of letting her twelve maids wait on her, they made her work very hard herself, and do much more than she had strength for.
Then before a year had passed they began to starve her. She was only allowed to eat once a day, and then all the food she was allowed to have was rice and red peppers. One day she was cleaning the house, and she saw a little piece of bread on the table. She was hungry, and she was only twelve years old, so she picked it up and began to eat it. But before she had time to swallow a mouthful her mother-in-law caught her. She took the bread and pushed it down the little girl’s throat with a stick.
Little Runabai was sometimes allowed to go home to see her people. One time she begged them to keepher with them, and not to allow her to go back to the terrible life she had to lead. Her father was very sad. The tears were in his eyes, but he was afraid of the disgrace it would be to his family if he kept her from her husband. He knew that his caste would be broken if he did. So in spite of his sorrow he said, “Go back, and if you die it will be honourable.” She did go back, and in two months she did die, and her father and mother mourned for her, but they comforted themselves with the thought that she had died honourably!
But though a Hindu wife is often free from the pain and misery that killed this one, there is always a great fear that hangs over her, for her husband may die, and then she will be a widow. If a little wife dies, her husband may marry again, but a high caste Hindu widow must never marry a second time. Often little girls are married to full grown men; sometimes, even, they are married to old men, so it very often happens that a girl becomes a widow when she is only a child, and there are Hindu widows who are not one year old. At first the child may not know that there is any change in her life, but as she begins to grow older she finds that all the hard work is left for her, and that no one wishes to see her when a feast or a wedding is held, or when anything bright is going on. Then one day a priest comes to her village, and to the house where she lives. She is not afraid of him, for she knows no reason why he should be angry with her. But he is angry with her. He says her beautiful black hair must be cut off, and soon the barber comes and shaves her head all over. After that time sheis only allowed to eat one meal a day, and twice a month she does not even get that one meal. She has to wear a rough Sari that lets everyone know that she is a widow even if she covers up her little close-shaved head, and in some cases she only has that one dress for night wear and day wear till it is so ragged that it will scarcely hold together.
Besides all that, the friends of her husband think that they cannot be too cruel to her, because they believe that she must have done something very wrong indeed in one of the lives she lived long before, and that it is because of that, that she is a widow. They think that if their boy had married another wife he would still be well and bright.
But though girls suffer far more from the early marriages of India than boys do, the boys have to bear many unnecessary burdens because of them. They have to work hard in order to help to get food for the household, and wee boys labour for long days in the rice fields. They guide the oxen at the plough, and they carry the pots of water from rivers and canals to fill the little channels that water the fields; and sometimes, even with all these early years of toil, a young man finds that he cannot feed his family or give gifts to the gods. Then he goes to a money-lender, and if he once does that, there is little happiness for him or for his children, for the money-lender will take everything from him, his jewels, his wife’s jewels, her clothes, all but the plainest which she keeps to wear; and then perhaps his fields will have to go too, and the cruel money-lender willsend men to watch the rice, and the millet, and the wheat as they grow, for fear any of the crop should be reaped without his knowledge.
But before a Hindu boy marries he has been taught how he must worship the gods. A little Brahman boy puts on the sacred thread which marks his caste, and which he wears over his right shoulder, when he is eight or nine years old; from that time onwards he must keep all the rules of his caste. When the thread is first put on a priest whispers into the boy’s ear the sacred text or “mantra” of his family. He must remember it well, for he will have to repeat it over and over again each morning before bathing and then again each evening. He must always repeat his text and bathe before he tastes food. If he is a good boy, he will say his text over and over again very often. In some parts of India he must not stop until he has said it one hundred and eight times.
The sacred thread is not the only mark by which a boy shows his caste or the god he worships. He may have a white V marked on his forehead, or a yellow W, or a wavy line right across, with perhaps a grain of rice stuck in the centre, and if he is going to a feast he will have a bright red dot there too.
Hindu boys repeat the names of their gods as well as the sacred text of their caste. One little boy who wished to be very careful that he worshipped his gods well used to say, “Rama, Rama, Rama,” until he had said the name twelve thousand, five hundred times; and then he said, “Siva, Siva, Siva,” six thousand, two hundred and fifty times, every day.
There are special days and weeks at each shrine and temple, when there is more merit in offering gifts than at other times, and on these days people throng to lay their presents before the gods. They bring oil or camphor for the priest to burn in a censer which has a large lamp in the centre for the camphor and five small ones round it for the oil, and when the priest lights the lamps he waves the censer before the idol, and the sweet scent of the camphor fills the shrine. Others bring melted butter and rice, and others fruit and flowers. Marigolds are the favourite flowers to bring, and the temple steps are strewn with them. But with all the other offerings there must be, if possible, a little money, for the priest will look eagerly to see if there are any pice[6]in the offering.
There is no place to which larger crowds of people go to worship than Benares, and if a boy is lucky enough to be there he will see many curious sights. He might see these things in other cities too, but not so many of them all together.
The strangest people he will see are the Fakirs. They wander about from city to city and from temple to temple, and live entirely on the gifts that are given to them by the devout. Even if a Hindu does not wish to be kind and generous, he will give a gift to a Fakir, because he believes that if the Fakir curses him his rice will wither on its stem, his cattle and his children will sicken and die, and ill-luck will follow him in everything. So the very shadow of a Fakir is held sacred, and no one will crossit lest harm should come to him for his want of reverence.
The Fakir wears as little clothes as possible, but he covers his body with mud and ashes, and makes his hair stick out in all sorts of uncouth forms with gum and clay. He wears a rope or some strings of beads round his neck. Sometimes he whitewashes his face, and paints lines on it, and makes himself still more uncanny-looking than he already is with his thin body and his wild hair. He has a boy whom he calls his “Chela” with him, and a brass bowl, and nothing else. The boy goes out with the bowl at breakfast time, and begs till it is full; then he comes back to the Fakir where he rests on the temple steps, or under a cart, or by the wayside, to eat the meal with him. The Fakir himself should never beg, for the gods he worships are supposed to send him all he needs, and if he receives nothing from them, he must starve. Some Fakirs are earnest men who seek to live up to the best they know, and some are only idle loafers who wish to have an easy life, and to get as much as they can by trading on the hopes and fears of other people.
Amongst them there are many men who have wonderful powers of conjuring and of second sight. No one can explain the tricks they do, and there is a weirdness about the men that adds to the weirdness of their doings. Many an English child would run home in terror at the mere sight of a Fakir. But the sight of a Fakir is not nearly so eerie as the sight of some of the things he seems to do. One of these men willsuddenly appear to climb up into the air going hand over hand on a rope that is not there, till he vanishes into the sky. In a few minutes he will come quietly along the street as if nothing had happened. Another will take a piece of rope, whirl it round his head, and toss it into the air, where it will seem to the onlookers to stand so firm and strong that a man can climb it, though it is not fastened to anything. One of the commonest of these wonderful things is to make a plant grow while the crowd watch. The Fakir takes a mango fruit, opens it, and lifts out the seeds. He has a little tub of earth into which he drops them, and as the bystanders watch, they see a mango tree grow up, and bear fruit before them.
The chela sees these things, and gradually learns the secrets that belong to them, so that when his Fakir dies he is ready to take his place and be a Fakir himself.
The ways in which the gods are worshipped vary greatly. Some of the idols are washed and dressed and fed each morning, and bathed and put to bed each night, and there are long rites that are performed in the temples. But, there are also many wayside shrines where men and women lay their offerings as they pass, and murmur a few words of prayer.
Often a new idol is found. For the Hindus think that the spirit of a god may enter an animal or a stone or a tree as the spirit of a man may enter any one of these.
A WAYSIDE SHRINE
One day a Brahman priest lay in a temple court, drowsy and troubled. The reason of his trouble was that plague was in the city and the people fled from it,and the offerings that were brought to the temple were poor and small. The priest was full of dread alike of the plague and of the poverty that would face him, if the gifts to the temple grew less and less. Soon the drowsiness grew stronger than his anxious thoughts, and he fell asleep. As he slept he dreamt that a great goddess appeared to him, and told him that she had come to the city in a block of stone, but that she had not been worshipped, and so she was angry with the people, and had sent the plague, and that if honour were not done to her she would send fire to finish the work that plague had begun. She wished the people of the place to hold a feast, and then to carry the stone in which she lived away hundreds of miles over the country to Benares.
The priest wakened, and, as he thought of his dream, he remembered a great block of black marble that lay beside a temple that had just been built in the city. Ere the women came to gather round him that day after offering their gifts in his temple, the priest had thought out the meaning of his dream, and he told it to them, as they gazed in awe and fear. He said that the stone in which the goddess dwelt should have been polished, and set up to guard the entrance to the new temple; but the workmen had not seen that the stone was a special one, and had left it aside, and the goddess in her anger had burned up the fields. The women sighed, for this part of the story was only too true. The fields were hard and bare, because there had been no rain, and the river beds were dry. Plague had followed famine, anddeath was at the door. But the priest told of more terrible things yet, for he said that Mariamma, the angry goddess, would send fire if she were not honoured speedily.
The story of the priest was soon known throughout the city, for each one told it to another. Within a few days fire broke out in the palace of the Maharajah there. The fire as it raged and destroyed the beautiful building made everyone sure of the truth of the priest’s vision, and hurried plans were made to have the goddess in the stone carried one stage towards Benares.
The people thronged round the marble block. The new temple stood near, but all eyes were on the stone, not on the temple. Then the priests began their work. They washed the stone all over with milk lest anything might have soiled it while it lay untended. Then they brought cocoa nuts and limes to lay before it. After that it was wreathed with garlands and painted with saffron, and lamps were swung backwards and forwards which filled the night air with the scent of burning camphor.
The crowd watched eagerly, and when the great stone with its added weight of flowers was lifted on to the shoulders of eight men, their joy burst out in shouts, for did they not know that famine and plague and death would leave their city with the goddess.
Music and lights marked the great procession as it wound its way through the narrow darkened streets. Without the city gate eight men waited to carry theidol forward. Many of those who had followed it through the streets turned back, but some pressed on to see the stone pass into the hands of new bearers at the next village. There the lights, the music, and the gaily decked stone struck awe into the minds of the village-folk, and they fell in worship before the block, and hastened to find men to bear it on. So the black marble block travelled over many miles of the land. It never reached Benares, for a priest on the way dreamt another dream about it. He dreamt that Mariamma wished to rest in his village, so he had a shrine built for her; and there, amidst lamps and garlands, the unused stone received the worship of the people from the country round, and the priest grew wealthy by the gifts that were brought to the goddess in the marble. But the other priest, Ramachandra, died of the plague which he had said would leave the city with the angry goddess.
Some Hindu gods look very terrible. One of these that is commonly worshipped is called Ganesa, and he has a man’s body with an elephant’s head. Whenever a Hindu is going to begin a new piece of work, or to do something important, he makes offerings to Ganesa, for he believes that the elephant-headed god can take obstacles out of the way and give success.
There was a little boy in Madras called Ramaswami, who went to worship Ganesa for the first time. As he trotted down through the bazaar by his mother’s side he chatted gaily. He had garlands on his arms, and his hands were full of incense. He had listenedto his mother when she told him how to lay his gifts in the god’s lap, and when to bow to the god, but he was not thinking much about the god or the gifts.
The temple was a small place, as Hindu temples often are, for crowds of people do not worship in them together. One by one, or in small groups, they bring their gifts, offer them to the idol, and turn away.
The doors of this temple were wide open, and Ganesa sat in the gloom inside, right opposite the entrance. The boy saw a black figure as large as a man on the back of a great stone rat. The eyes, the tusks and the red mouth of the elephant-head gleamed out of the darkness, and the trunk was lifted up at one side, as if it would strike anyone who came near.
Ramaswami screamed with terror, and hid behind one of the pillars from the dreadful god. His mother had grown used to the appearance of the idol, and she only laughed at her wee boy for his fear. She pulled him from his hiding-place, but before she could drag him to Ganesa he had slipped from her grasp, and had run wildly down the street. When she saw that he was gone she hurried after him, and when she caught him she was breathless and cross. She pushed him back before her and said, “You little fool. Is your father’s son going to be a coward? The god will not strike you. Don’t you see he is made of stone and cannot move?” At last Ramaswami stood close before Ganesa, but his terror was still as great as ever. He threw down the garlands and the incense, but he forgot all his mother had told him of the way in which to give them, and the movements of worship to makebefore the idol, and when his hands were at length empty of the offerings he wriggled once more from his mother, and fled as if the elephant-headed god was at his heels.
But all Hindu boys are not frightened of the idols. There seem always to have been those who wished something greater to worship than a stone, and who could not believe that any good would come of senseless offerings. One of these was called Chikka. His home was in a village in Mysore, and one day a friend came to it with an image of Lakshmi, the goddess of fortune, and asked Chikka’s father to take care of the idol for him. Not long after that Chikka’s father found that he must leave the village. He did not wish to carry Lakshmi with him, so he laid her carefully in a box, and gave her to the village priest that he might take care of her. Misfortune came to the friend who had left the idol, and he began to fear that it was because he had not been worshipping the goddess, so he hurried to the village to which Chikka and his father had gone, and said to the boy, “Come along with me, and we will fetch Lakshmi here and worship her together.” Chikka was only ten years old then, but he had thought out some things for himself, and he said, “The goddess Lakshmi has left us poor, while you are rich. When she gives us good fortune we will worship her, but not till then.” His father was angry when he heard what Chikka had said, but his anger did not have any effect on the boy, for only a year later he did a far more daring thing. He and his brothers and sisters were ill, and a fortune-tellerwas called in to say what the parents should do to make them well. This man said that the reason of the illness was that no one in the house had been worshipping serpents. So two old stone serpent idols were brought out and consecrated. But though the others did honour to them Chikka would not. He watched for a time when no one was beside to interfere with him, and then he broke the stone snakes into pieces and threw the fragments away. When his father found out what had been done he was extremely angry. He was frightened too, for he thought that some terrible harm would come to them all because Chikka had insulted the idols. But in a few days the children were well again, and no other hurtful thing had happened to them, so Chikka won his parents over to his side, and they ceased to believe in the serpent god.