CHAPTER XNEW SIGHTS IN INDIA
Menand women have gone to India to tell of the King of the world, and because of that new things are coming into the lives of the children there. There isgreat excitement when a European is seen for the first time in an Indian village. One day the boys of Holapura heard that an English lady had entered the house of the headman of the place. They left their games and hurried to the hut, but ere they got there, it was crowded to the door, so they climbed on the roof and looked down through the holes in the thatch. As they looked in they saw the crowded room and the white lady. A woman was bringing out a blanket from a dark inner room, and was spreading it on a mound of earth, which did for a seat, and now the white lady sat down and the boys gazed and listened. They saw a streamlet of water trickling across the mud floor at her feet; they saw the little room packed with women and boys and babies, and in amongst them they saw the household cow, the goats, and some chickens; but these things did not astonish the boys at all; they had often seen a crowded hut before, and even when Ruthamma, an Indian Christian teacher who was with the white missionary, began to speak, they scarcely listened, for all their attention was fixed on the stranger. But they began to listen a little when she sang “What a friend we have in Jesus” in their own language. Before many lines had been sung a goat made up its mind to go out, and there was so much bustle amongst the children about his going that Ruthamma had to stop and begin her hymn over again. The boys listened eagerly, till suddenly they heard a swoop and a whiz through the air. They shrank back, for vultures are not nice birds, and this one was coming very near. Itshot past them through the hole in the thatch into the room. A dead fowl hung from the roof. The bird clutched it and flew away again. The fowl was gone; everyone rushed out and shouted to make the vulture drop it. But the bird would not, and when it had flown far far away from the village, the little group gathered again. But this had spent much time, and Ruth hurried on in spite of a lively quarrel between two wee boys, who, when their grandmother tried to catch them, vanished underneath the cow, to sit and make faces at each other there, and be quite ready to begin to fight again when the missionaries had gone.
That is how some children first hear of the King of India. But of course they understand little of what they hear for a long time. Sometimes the children catch up the tunes and the words of the new songs, so unlike their old ones, and remember them. In a town far from this village, a missionary was riding along the street one day, when he heard a sound that seemed familiar. He checked his horse and looked and listened. No one in the side street noticed him. There he saw a little Hindu boy with Hindu men and women around him. He was singing away heartily in Telugu:—
“Jesus loves me, this I know,For the Bible tells me so!”
“Jesus loves me, this I know,For the Bible tells me so!”
“Jesus loves me, this I know,
For the Bible tells me so!”
When the verse was finished a Hindu asked him:—
“Little fellow, where did you learn that song?”
“Over at the school.”
“Who is Jesus, and what is the Bible?”
“Oh, the Bible is the book sent from God, they say, to teach us how to get to heaven; and Jesus is the name of the divine Redeemer that came into the world to save us from sins: that is what the missionaries say.”
“Well, the song is a nice one anyhow; come sing us some more.”
But it is not only when words are spoken or sung that the traces of the King are seen in India. One of the most important things that happens there is the digging of a well, and here are some boys who are talking excitedly about a new well in their village. Let us hear what they are saying:—
“Yes, truly they got water—beautiful clear water, and it rushed in so fast that the men who dug had to flee for their lives.”
“And yet they did not have a Brahman to bless it?”
“No, I have told you they follow Christ. They do not obey the Brahmans.”
“Tell us what they did.”
“It was the time of heat! The river was dried up, and the new buildings of the Christians were almost finished. But as it was not fitting that this new religion should find shelter in our village, our priests had tried to prevent them from getting land. They did not succeed in that, but they forbade the Christian people to drink from the wells of the village, and behold the river was dry. The face of Raghu, the leader of the Christian folk, was sad, for what can mando without water? But he went away to consult the foreign teacher. When he returned, he was no longer sad, and it began to be said in the village that the Christians would dig a well within their own ground. Many heads were shaken, for no one thought that water could be found there. When the Christians began to dig everyone was still more amazed, for they did not dig at the lower end where water might soon be reached, if it were to be found anywhere, but high up, close to the dwellings of the low caste men. It was at the edge of their ground, and we all gathered to watch; each man had some taunt to fling at the foreigners, for they did not do anything to appease the gods; they did not consult with the wise men, nor call the priests to bless the well; they made no offerings at the temple, nor did they feast the Brahmans; and everyone was certain that no water would be found. It is true they did pray to their own God, but everyone was sure He had not given them good guidance, for a child may know that a well should not be dug near the dwellings of outcasts. But in answer to all the Christians said only, ‘We will surely get water.’ And they believed this, for they worked on day after day through the great heat until the well was so deep that they had to dig through rock—soft rock it was, it is true, but still hard enough to break the points of pickaxes. Weeks went on, and we ceased to watch the well of the foreigners, or to taunt them. It was an old story in the village, but when at any time we passed near it we could see that the digging was well and rightly done, and that if onlywater had been there, it would indeed have been a great well. But one day, as the village shops were quiet in the heat, there came a cry down the street, and the sound was of men who called, ‘We’ve got water.’ But we would not believe it till we ran to the well. There, as we bent over, we saw depths of water, beautiful clear water. The God of the foreign people had given them water! Come and see the ‘Jesus Christ well,’ and you will know that I tell the truth.”
Another boy was bitten by a deadly snake. He was much surprised when he was bitten. He had gone out with his uncle to work in the fields. All through the sugar-cane fields there are channels for water, and if anything falls into these channels to stop the water from flowing through them the sugar-cane will not grow. Timmaya Reddi was pushing along the bank of a channel, bending aside the tall cane stems to make way for himself, when he saw that the flow of the water was checked by something that he thought was a stick. He struck at it with his hook, and as he struck, the reddish-brown stick sprang up, for it was a deadly serpent. Timmaya leapt back, but not in time to save himself. The serpent bit his ankle, and then glided off into the canes. The poison was swift and powerful, and the boy fell back and remembered nothing until he awoke and opened his eyes under a tree beside the white doctor’s tent. Timmaya did not know what had happened. He had not felt his uncle lift him and run with him to his mother’s house, and lay him there as if he were dead. He had not heard the death wail rise from the village,nor had he heard the rush and clamour when a Christian shouted, “The missionary doctor! Take the boy to him. He came last night. He is in his tent now. It is only a mile away by the short cut.”
Thus the noise went on, but the boy was unconscious of it all. Strong men carried him by turns, down a steep path into a valley, up the other side through bushes and then on, over the fields, till they reached the white doctor’s tent.
But when they laid him down, it seemed to everyone there too late, and they said that he was dead already. One man alone thought there was time still. He was the doctor, who sternly bade the eager crowd be silent while he fought for the life of the boy. And he won. In half an hour Timmaya opened his eyes and asked, “Where am I,” and in two days he walked back across the valley to the village where the death wail had arisen for him.
There is another sad time at which many Hindu boys catch their first glimpses of the King and His followers. It is the time of famine. One night a little boy lay awake, gazing out at the sky through an opening in the house. He watched the heavy clouds break and scatter, and as the stars shone out, they brought sadness to him, not joy, for they meant that the clouds had broken and gone, and that one more night must pass without rain. As he lay he heard the sound of the priests chanting the prayer for rain at the temple, and every now and then the chant was broken by the clanging of bells that rang out on the still air. The boy thoughtof his father, who was spending the night there at the temple praying for rain. Then he thought of the long days of famine, and of how old his father looked; and he remembered how little that father had eaten during those days of famine, and how much he had always tried to leave to his mother and his brothers and sisters. And so the boy passed a restless night, and wondered what could come to change these awful days of famine.
Then in the early morning he heard his father’s step, and as it came to the door a wail sounded from his mother within. His brother was dead. The long misery of famine had been too much, and the eldest son in the little home had died. The next days passed in a dream to the boy. He knew that his father could no longer bear the pain of watching his children die, one by one, and he heard him say that he had made up his mind to seek the nearest relief camp. He remembered that he was lifted into a passing bullock cart along with his mother and three other children, and that his father trudged beside them. The driver of the bullock cart had been a wealthy man, but his servants were gone, and he was leading the ox to a patch of prickly pear, the only green thing that was left in the whole famine land. But the bullock was as weak as the men, and the sun was high ere they reached the patch of prickly pear. They all ate the leaves greedily, and would scarcely wait to pluck out the thorns. Then he remembered lying under the bullock cart with his mother and the other children, and watching his father and the bullockdriver disappear in the distance, and he remembered no more until he lay in the clean white shed that had been quickly built to be a hospital for the famine children. His sisters and brothers were there with him, but help had come too late to save the lives of his father and mother.
RESCUED FAMINE CHILDREN
In these and countless other ways, the new kingdom of love is seen in India, and can be judged even by those who do not own Christ as King. But there are many who do own Him, and find how much He has to give besides the healing of bodily ills. You remember Chikka, who broke the serpent idol? He was one of the first who learned to serve Christ, though he had to wait a long time before he heard of Him. Chikka’s family was poor, so he could not go to school, nor learn to read or write, and for many years he had no one to tell him of any god other than the idols he despised. He was nearly forty years old before he heard of Jesus Christ, and after he had learned about Him, he saw that He could do for him all that the gods of stone could never do. Soon he and the missionaries urged the people of his village to give up worshipping idols. The villagers had seen that no harm had come to Chikka, and they began to think that perhaps it was really true, as the missionaries said, that it was the worshippers that kept the god Runga safe in his temple, and not the idol that kept them safe. They left the god alone to see if he could take care of himself. They brought him no fresh flowers, nor did they see that there was oil in the lamp that burned before him. Very soon the garlands withered, andthe lamp went out. The temple became dirty and untidy, and worst of all, the roof fell in just over the god’s head. But though the villagers gave up the worship of the idol, that did not mean that they were willing to become Christians. At Chikka’s baptism, they took sudden fright lest drops of water should fall on them by mistake, and make them Christians against their will, and they rushed out of the church till they blocked up the door, and some of them had to climb out by the window.