CHAPTER XIII.MADRAS AND CALCUTTA.
Indiabeggars description—the interminable races, languages, creeds, colors, manners, costumes.
The streets of Madras (Blacktown) are a blaze of color—predominant white, but red, orange, brilliant green and even blue cloths and turbans meet the eye in every direction. Blacktown reminds one of Pompeii—as it may have been in its time—mostly one-storied buildings, stuccoed brick with little colonnades or lean-to thatches in front, cool dark stone interiors with little or no furniture—a bit of a court somewhere inside, with a gleam of the relentless sun—a few mango leaves over the door in honor of the Pongal festival (now going on), and saffron smeared on doorposts; a woman standing half lost in shadow, men squatting idling in a verandah, a brahman cow with a bright brass necklace lying down just in the street—(sometimes in the verandah itself); a Hindu temple with its queer creepy images fronting on the street, and a Juggernath car under a tall thatch, waiting for its festival; or a white arabesqued and gimp-arched mosque with tall minarets pinnacled with gold spiring up into the blue; absurd little stalls with men squatted among their baskets and piled grainsand fruits; and always this wonderful crowd going up and down between.
I should think half the people have religious marks on their foreheads—black, white, or red spots on the frontal sinus—horizontal lines (Saivite), vertical lines (Vaishnavite)—sometimes two vertical white marks joined at the base with a red mark between, sometimes a streak of color all down the ridge of the nose—and so forth. It is as if every little sect or schism of the Christian Church declared itself by a symbol on the brow.
How different from Ceylon! There is a certainseverityabout India, both climate and people. The dry soil, the burning sun (for though so much farther north the sun has a morewickedquality about it here), are matched by a certain aridity and tension in the people. Ceylon is idyllic, romantic—the plentiful foliage and shade everywhere, the easy-going nature of the Cinghalese themselves, the absence of caste—even the English are softened towards such willing subjects. But here, such barriers, such anoli-me-tangereatmosphere!—the latent feud between Hindu and Mussulman everywhere,theircombined detestation of the English springing out upon you from faces passing; rigid orthodoxies and superiorities; the Mahomedans (often big and moderately well-conditioned men) looking down with some contempt upon the lean Hindu; the Hindus equally satisfied in their own superiority, comforting themselves with quotations fromShastrasandPuranas.
As to the boatmen and drivers and guides and servants generally, they torment one like gadflies;not swindling one in a nice openriantway like the Italians of the same ilk, but with smothered dodges and obsequious craft. The last hotel I was at here was odious—a lying Indian manager, lying and cringing servants, and an idiotic old man who acted as my “boy” and tormented my life out of me, fiddling around with my slippers on pretence of doing something, or holding the towel in readiness for me while I was washing my face. On my leaving, the manager—as he presented his bill with utmost dignity and grace—asked for a tip; so did the head-waiter, and all the servants down to the bath-man; then there were coolies to carry my luggage from the hotel steps (where the servants of course left it) to the cab, and then when I had started, the proprietor of the cab ran after it, stopped it, and demanded a larger fare than I had agreed to! On one occasion (in taking a boat) I counted eleven people who put in a claim forbakshish. Small change cannot last for ever, and even one’s vocabulary of oaths is liable to be exhausted in time!
It requires a little tact to glide through all this without exposing oneself to the enemy. Good old John Bull pays through the nose for being ruler of this country. He overwhelms the people by force, but they turn upon him—as the weaker is prone to do—through craft; and truly they have their revenge. Half believing in the idea that assahiband ruler of the country he must live in such and such style, have so many servants, etc., or he would lose his prestige, he acquiesces in a system of impositions; he is pestered to death, and hates it all, but he must submit. And the worst is one is conscious all thetime of being laughed at for one’s pains. But British visitors must not commit the mistake—so commonly made by people in a foreign country—of supposing that the classes created in India by our presence, and who in some sense are the reflection of our own sins, are or represent the normal population—even though we naturally see more of them than we do of the latter.
There are however in the great cities of India little hotels kept and frequented by English folk where one is comparatively safe from importunities; and if you are willing to be altogether a second-rate person, and go to these places, travel second class by train, ride in bullock-hackeries, and “undermine the empire” generally by doing other such undignified things, you may travel with both peace of mind and security of pocket.
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Madras generally is a most straggling, dull, and (at night) ill-lighted place. Blacktown, already described, and which lies near the harbor, is the chief centre of native life; but the city generally, including other native centres, plexuses of commercial life, knots of European hotels and shops, barracks, hospitals, suburban villas and bungalows, stretches away with great intervals of dreary roads between for miles and miles, over a dead flat on whose shore the surf beats monotonously. Adyar, where the Theosophists have their headquarters—and which is still only a suburb of Madras—is seven miles distant from the harbor. The city however, though shorn of its former importance as far as the British are concerned, and slumbering on its memoriesof a hundred years ago, is a great centre of native activity, literary and political; the National Indian Congress receives some of its strongest support from it; many influential oysters reside here; papers like theHindu, both in English and vernacular, are published here, and a great number of books printed, in Tamil and other South Indian languages.
At Adyar I saw Bertram Keightley and one or two others, and had some pleasant chats with them. Col. Olcott was absent just at the time. The Theosophist villa, with roomy lecture-hall and library, stands pleasantly among woods on the bank of a river and within half a mile of the sea. Passing from the library through sandalwood doors into an inner sanctum I was shown a variety of curios connected with Madame Blavatsky, among which were a portrait, apparently done in a somewhat dashing style—just the head of a man, surrounded with clouds and filaments—in blue pigment on a piece of white silk, which was “precipitated” by Madame Blavatsky in Col. Olcott’s presence—she simply placing her two hands on the white silk for a moment. Keightley told me that Col. Olcott tested a small portion of the silk so colored, but found the pigment so fast in the fibre that it could not by any means be washed out. There were also two oil portraits—heads, well framed and reverently guarded behind a curtain—of the now celebrated Kout Houmi, Madame Blavatsky’s Guru, and of another, Col. Olcott’s Guru—both fine-looking men, apparently between forty and fifty years of age, with shortish beards and (as far as I could see, for the daylightwas beginning to fail) dark brown hair; and both with large eyes and what might be called a spiritual glow in their faces. Madame Blavatsky knew Col. Olcott’s Guru as well as her own, and the history of these two portraits (as told me by Keightley) is that they were done by a German artist whom she met in the course of her travels. Considering him competent for the work—and he being willing to undertake it—she projected the images of the two Gurus into his mind, and he painted from the mental pictures—she placing her hand on his head during the operation. The German artist medium accounted for the decidedly mawkish expression of both faces, as well as for the considerable likeness to each other—which considering that Kout Houmi dates from Cashmere, and the other (I think) from Thibet, might not have been expected. All the same they are fine faces, and it is not impossible that they may be, as I believe Madame Blavatsky and Col. Olcott considered them, good likenesses. Keightley was evidently much impressed by the “old lady’s” clairvoyant power, saying that sometimes in her letters from England she displayed a knowledge of what was going on at Adyar, which he could not account for. Altogether I had an interesting conversation with him.
Among other places in Madras I visited one of the little Pompeiian houses in Blacktown, which I have already described—where a Hindu acquaintance, a small contractor, is living: a little office, then a big room divided in two by a curtain—parlor in front and domestic room behind—all cool and dark and devoid of furniture, and little back premisesinto which I did not come. He is an active-minded man, and very keen about the Indian Congress to which he was delegate last year, sends hundreds of copies of theHinduand other “incendiary” publications about the country each week, and like thousands and hundreds of thousands of his fellow-countrymen to-day, has learnt the lessons taught him by the British Government so well that the one thing he lives for is to see electoral and representative institutions embedded into the life of the Indian peoples, and the images of Vishnu and Siva supplanted in the temples by those of John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer.
While I was there two elderly gentlemen of quite the old school called—innocent enough of Herbert Spencer and of cloth coats and trousers—with their white muslins round their bodies, and red shawls over their shoulders, and grey-haired keen narrow faces and bare shins and horny feet, which they tucked up onto their chairs as they sat; but with good composed unhurried manners, as all Easterns of the old school seem to have. This habit of the mild Hindu, of tucking his feet under him, is his ever-present refuge in time of trouble or weariness; at the railway station or in any public place you may see him sitting on a seat, and beneath him, in the place where his feet ought to be, are his red slippers; but of visible connection between them and his body there is none—as if he had already severed connection with the earth and was on the way toward heaven.
Calcutta.—Arrived 6th Feb., about 4 p.m.—steaming all day since dawn up the Hooghly, 130miles from the light-boat at its mouth to Calcutta—a dismal river, with dismal flat shores, sandy and dry in places and only grown with scrub, in others apparently damp, to judge by the clumps of bamboo; landscape often like Lincolnshire, trees of similar shape, stacks of rice-straw looking just like our stacks, mud and thatch villages; in other places the palmyra and coco-nut palm; and doubtless in parts wild tangles and jungles haunted by tigers; aboriginal boats going up and down; and the Hooghly narrowing at last from four or five miles near its mouth to half a mile at the Howrah bridge of boats.
Nearing Calcutta brick-kilns and the smoky tall chimneys of civilisation appear along the banks, and soon we find ourselves among docks and wharfs, and a forest of shipping alongside of a modern-looking city (that part of it).
Calcutta is built on a dead flat. There is a considerable European quarter of five-storied buildings, offices, warehouses, law-courts, hotels, shops, residences, wide streets and open spaces, gardens, etc.; after which the city breaks away into long straggling lines of native dwellings—small flat-roofed tenements and shops, crowded bazaars and tram-lines—embedding almost aboriginal quarters, narrow lanes with mere mud and tile cabins—labyrinths where a European is stared at.
The white dome of the Post Office, like a small St. Paul’s, dominates the whole riverside city with its crowded shipping and animated quays—fit symbol of modern influences. Round no temple or mosque or minster does the civilising Englishman group his city, but round the G.P.O. It wouldalmost seem, here in Calcutta, as if the mere rush of commercial interests had smashed up the native sanctions of race and religion. The orderly rigor of caste, which is evident in Madras, is not seen; dress is untidy and unclean, the religious marks if put on at all are put on carelessly; faces are low in type, lazy, cunning, bent on mere lucre. The Bengali is however by nature a versatile flexile creature, sadly wanting in backbone, and probably has succumbed easily to the new disorganising forces. Then the mere mixture of populations here may have a good deal to do with it. A huge turmoil throngs the bazaars, not only Bengalis, but Hindustanis, Mahomedans, Chinese, and seedy-looking Eurasians—in whom one can discern no organising element or seed-form of patriotism, religion, or culture (with the exception perhaps of the Chinese). It seems to be a case of a dirty Western commercialism in the place of the old pharisaism of caste and religion, and it is hard to say which may be the worst.
Sunday (the 8th) was a great day for bathing in the river. I did not know that the Hooghly was for such purposes considered to be a part of the Ganges, but it appears that it is; and owing to an important and rare astronomical conjunction, announced in the almanacs, bathing on that day was specially purificatory. In the morning the waterside was thronged with people, and groups of pilgrims from a distance could be seen coming in along the roads. Wherever the banks shelved down to the water, or the quays and river-walls allowed, huge crowds (here mostly dressed in unbleachedcotton, with little color) could be seen preparing to bathe, or renewing themselves afterwards—beggars at all the approaches spreading their cloths on the ground to catch the scanty handfuls of rice thrown to them; everywhere squatted, small vendors of flowers for offerings, or of oil, or sandalwood paste for smearing the body with after the bath, or of colored pigments for painting sect-marks on the forehead; strings of peasants followed by their wives and children; old infirm people piloted by sons and daughters; here a little old woman, small like a child, drawn in a clumsy wooden barrow to the waterside; there a horrible blind man with matted hair, squatted, yelling texts from the holy books; here family groups and relatives chatting together, or cliques and clubs of young men coming up out of the water—brass pots glancing, and long hair uncurled in the wind. If you imagine all this taking place on a fine summer’s day somewhere a little below London Bridge, the scene would hardly be more incongruous than it is here by the handsome wharfs of Calcutta Strand, under the very noses of the great black-hulled steamships which to-day perhaps or to-morrow are sailing for the West.
The evening before the festival I went with Panna Lall B. to a European circus which happened to be in the place—same absurd incongruity—dense masses of “oysters” perched or sitting cross-legged on their benches—their wraps drawn round them, for the night was really cold—watching under the electric light the lovely and decidedly well-developed Miss Alexandra in tights performing on the trapeze, or little “Minnie” jumping through rings of flame.Considering that, except among the poorest classes (peasants, etc.), the Bengalis keep their women closely shut up, and that it is a rare thing to see a female (unless it be a child or old woman) in the streets of Calcutta—a scene of this kind at the circus must cause a sufficient sensation; and indeed the smile which curled the lips of some of these rather Mephistophelean spectators was something which I shall not easily forget.
But the mass of the people of India must be wretchedly poor. These half-starved peasants from the surrounding country wandering about—their thin thin wives and daughters trailing after them, holding on to the man’s unbleached and scanty cotton cloth—over themaidan, through the Asiatic Museum, through the streets, by the riverside—with gaping yet listless faces—are a sad and touching sight; yet it only corroborates what I have seen in other parts. “Wide and deepening poverty all over the land, such as the world has never before seen on so vast a scale,” says Digby; and with some testimony to show that the people in the native states are in a better condition than those under our organisation. Even if the poverty is not increasing (and this is a matter on which it is most difficult to form a definite opinion), there seems to be no evidence to show that it is decreasing. The famines go on with at least undiminished severity, and the widespread agricultural paralysis is by no means really compensated by a fallacious commercial prosperity, which in the larger centres is enriching the few at the expense of the many.
After watching these pathetic crowds on Sunday,I went the next day to a meeting of the Countess of Dufferin’s Fund for the Medical Education of Indian Women—a well-meant movement, which after being launched with all advantages andéclathas only met with moderate success. A very varied spectacle of dress and nationality. Rajahs and native chiefs of all sorts of hues and costumes; yellow silk tunics figured with flowers, flowing purple robes, dainty little turbans over dark mustachioed faces, sprays and feathers of diamonds; English ladies in the pink of fashion, military uniforms, and the Viceroy and Lady Lansdowne in the centre in quiet morning costume. The English speakers belauded the native chiefs present, and the native chiefs complimented the English ladies; but after the spectacle of the day before the general congratulations fell rather flat upon me, nor did they appear to be justified by the rather melancholy and inefficient appearance of the bevy of native women students and nurses present. Sir Chas. Elliott, the Lieut.-Governor, made a kindly speech, which left on one the unpleasant impression that one sometimes gets from those big-brained doctrinaire persons whose amiability is all the more hard and narrow-minded because it is so well-intentioned. Lord Lansdowne underneath an exterior (physical and mental) of decadent aristocracy seems to have just a spark of the old English high-caste ruling quality about him—which was certainly good in its time, but will be of little use I fear to the half-starved peasants of to-day.
I fancy, with all respect to the genuine good intention shown in these zenana missions, medicaleducation funds, etc., there must be something rather comical to the natives themselves in philanthropic efforts of this kind, made by a people who understand the country so little as the English do; just as there is something rather comical to the masses at home in the toy “charities” and missions of the lady and gentleman here, and suggestive of an old parable about a mote and a beam. In a lecture given by the Maharajah of Benares, in July, 1888, he chaffed these philanthropists somewhat—recounting how one such lady “actually regretted that the peasant cultivators could not provide themselves with boots! while another had a long conversation with a Rani on the ill effects of infant marriage, and was surprised to hear that the Rani had been married at the age of seven, and had sons and grandsons, all of whom were happy and contented. The Rani then turned to the lady, and observing that her hair was turning grey, inquired whether no one had ever offered her proposals of marriage, and suggested that theEnglishlaws required some modification to insure ladies against remaining so long in a state of single blessedness.”
But the most interesting people, to me, whom I have met here, are a littlecôterieof Bengalis who live quite away in the native part of the city. Chundi Churn B. is a schoolmaster, and keeps a small school of thirty or forty boys, which lies back in a tangle of narrow lanes and alleys, but is quite a civilised little place with benches and desks just like an English school—except that like all the schools in this part of the world it is quite open to the street (with trellised sides in this case), so thatpassers-by can quite easily see and be seen. Chundi Churn told me that he started the school on purely native lines, but had poor success until he introduced the English curriculum—English history, science, Euclid, Algebra, etc.—when he soon got as many boys as he wanted. As in all the Indian schools they work what appear to us frightfully long hours, 7–9 a.m.; then an hour for breakfast; 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and then an hour for dinner; and again from 3 till 6. I fancy they must take it fairly easy; and then it is certain that the native boys—though they have active little brains—are much more quiescent than the English, are content to sit still, and the master has little trouble in keeping order.
CHUNDI CHURN B.
CHUNDI CHURN B.
I have been round several evenings after schoolhours and chatted with Chundi Churn and his brother and various friends that dropped in—an intelligent little community. Two of them are Brahman fellows of about thirty, with the eager tense look that the Brahmans mostly have, but good imaginative faces. We discuss the Indian Congress, English and Indian customs, the child-marriage question (which is raging just now), and the great question of Caste. They insist on my eating various sweet cakes of native preparation, but will not eat with me; and they smoke hubble-bubble pipes, which they pass round—but the Brahmans must have a hubble-bubble to themselves! At the same time they are careful to explain that “no one believes in all this now”; but as they are at home, and only trellis-work between us and the lane, it would not do to violate the rules. And this, I believe, is largely the state of affairs. The anglicising population, for the sake of parents’ feelings (and they are tender on this point), or respectability, or commercial connection, keep up a show of caste rules which they have ceased or are ceasing to believe in; and it is an open secret that Brahman gentlemen of high standing in their caste, not unfrequently when traveling, or in places where they are not known, resort to British hotels and have a high feed of beefsteaks and champagne!
One of the Brahmans is clerk in a mercantile establishment in the English part of Calcutta, and some of the others are students at the Metropolitan College. Western education is going on at a tremendous rate—so much so that there will soon be an educated proletariat (what Grant Duff calls “the worstof evils”) in the great cities of India. Two or three of the party are very quick at mathematics—which seems to be a subject in which the Bengalis excel—and readily picked up the key to one or two little problems which I presented to them. They all seem to be much impressed with the greatness of Western civilisation—for the present at any rate, but will react probably before so very long. Finding I knew something of astronomy they pelted me with questions about the stars, and insisted on going out at night and trying to hunt up the ecliptic among the constellations! Then after a time they would relapse into tale-telling and music. The fellows still show a truly Oriental love of long stories, and would listen with rapt attention to one of their party relating some ancient yarn about the child of a king who was exposed in the woods and ultimately came back after many convolutions of adventure and claimed his kingdom—just as if they had not heard it before; or about the chaste Draupatha (in the Mahabhárata) who—when Duriyodhana, desiring to insult her before a large assembly, gave orders that she should be stripped of her cloth—thought of Vishnu, and her cloth went on lengthening and unwinding indefinitely—their stories lengthening and unwinding like Draupatha’s cloth, in a way that would have delighted the heart of William Morris.
PANNA LALL B.
PANNA LALL B.
Panna Lall, Chundi Churn’s brother, is a bright-mannered youth of about twenty, of a modest affectionate disposition, and with a certain grace and dignity of bearing. He doesn’t care about books, but has a good ear and plays one or two musical instruments in an easy unstudied way; lives in quiteprimitive style with his father down in one of these back lanes—but has a tiny little room of his own where he takes me to sit and chat with friends. There isnofurniture, but you squat cross-legged on the floor—so there is plenty of room for quite a party. There may be a box or two in a corner, and on the walls some shelves and a few prints. Indeed it gives one a curious sensation to see crude colored woodcuts, framed under glass and exactly resembling the pictures of the Virgin or of Christ common in Catholic countries, and then on nearer approach to find that they represent Siva or Parvati, or among the Bengalis Chaitanya, or some other incarnation of the divinity, standing or seated on a lotus flowerand with benign head encircled by an aureole. These pictures are printed in Calcutta.
Panna Lall is quite an athlete, and interested in anything in that line. He took me one day to a little bit of ground where he and some friends have their horizontal bars, etc.; they did some good tumbling and tight-rope walking, and with their golden-brown skins and muscular bodies looked well when stripped. The Bengali Babu is often of a lightish-brown colour. The people generally wear more clothing than in South India, and at this time of year throw a brown woollen shawl over their shoulders,togafashion; their heads are almost always bare, but they have taken a great fancy lately in Calcutta to wearing narrow-toed patent-leather shoes, which look sufficiently absurd and must be fearfully uncomfortable on their well-developed broad feet. Only it is a mark of distinction and civilisation! Panna Lall every now and then, when walking, entreats me to stop and rest under a tree, and then takes off his shoes and waggles his toes about to soothe and refresh them! I am never tired of admiring the foot in its native state. It is so broad and free and full and muscular, with a good concave curve on the inner line, and the toes standing well apart from each other—so different from the ill-nourished unsightly thing we are accustomed to. I sometimes think we can never attain to a broad free and full life on our present understandings in the West.
Another absurd custom of the young Babus here (I am speaking of the mass of the people) is that of putting on a Manchester cotton shirt, pure andsimple, when they wish to appear in full dress! As they do not wear trousers, the effect (combined with the patent-leather shoes) is very naïve and touching.
On the whole Calcutta does not impress me very favorably. There is the official society, and the trading and commercial ditto, and the educational and legal sections, and a considerable racing population, including a great number of jockeys and horse-trainers who come over with their girls from Australia for the season; there-is a fine zoological garden and a botanic garden, and the Asiatic Museum, and various public buildings, and two or three colleges, including a college for native women; but all these interests seem to serve chiefly in the direction ofdisorganizingthe mass of the people and the primitive sanctions of their life. Taking it at its worst the general population is dirty, lazy and rapacious. As in our slums, a kind of listlessness and despair marks the people in the poorest quarters—who, instead of congregating as with us round a beershop, may be seen perching about on doorsteps and even on the tops of walls, sitting on their heels with knees drawn up to the chin, and a draggled garment about them—looking painfully like vultures, and generally chewing betel, that common resource against hunger. One notes however, even here, a few fine faces, and a good many very pathetic ones, of old people.
Chundi Churn plays a little on thesítar—the original of ourguitarI suppose—an instrument with a long neck and small belly made of a pumpkin shell, and four or five wires (originally three wires,fromsi, three, andtar, string). The frets are movable, so that keeping the same key-note you can play in major, minor, or other modes. I am beginning to understand the Indian music better now, after having heard a little in different places; but have not very much systematic knowledge about it. It appears that they divide the octave into twenty-two exactly equal parts, calledsruti—each part having its own special name. An interval of foursrutismay then be said to constitute a major tone, threesrutisa minor tone, and two a semitone—though this is notquiteexact; and out of these three intervals, major tone, minor tone, and semitone, a seven-step scale is constituted very nearly similar to ours, and having the semitones in the same places. The key-note of this scale is calledSaorAnsa, and corresponds to ourDo, and though not exactly a key-note in the modern sense of the word, it is the most accentuated note and “rules the others.” By adopting any of the other six notes as key-note scales are got very nearly corresponding to the seven Gregorian scales of the old church music; and one very commonly in use, if I am not mistaken, corresponds to the Phrygian mode—i.e.that which we produce on the piano by using E as tonic and playing all the white keys.
These seven scales constituted the first system of Hindu music; but they had a second system in which the notes, though preserving their names, could be, any of them, raised or dropped by asruti; and a third system in which one or two notes being omitted, five or six-step scales were produced.
Out of the hundreds (or thousands) of possiblescales thus producible, the Oriental mind, unable to find the scientific root of the whole business, made a fantastic selection. There were six sons of Brahma and Saráswati called Rágas—the genii of the passions. Six principal scales were named after these genii and calledRags, and then each of these had five feminine sub-scales orRaginasattached to it; and so forth. Then the numbers five, six and seven became typical of divisions of the year, days of the week, the number of planets, etc., and very soon a most fanciful system was elaborated—the remains only of which have lingered to the present day. The old notation appears to have died out; but a vast number of time-honored melodies, or rather phrases, in the different modes and scales, have been preserved by tradition—and are now calledragsandraginas, though these names were formerly applicable to the scales only. Theseragsandraginasare not what we should call tunes, but are brief or extended phrases, which have been classified as suitable for various occasions, emotions, festivals, times of day, seasons of the year, and the like; and these the musician uses and combines, within limits, to his taste; and in the hands of a skilful person they are very effective, but become abominably insipid and conventional if treated in a mechanical way.
Besides the regular notes belonging to any given scale, the Hindus use the quarter tones, orsrutis, a good deal in the little turns and twanks of which they are so fond; and sometimes by slurring they pass through every intermediate gradation of tone. The slur, which is congenial to the mystic vague melody of the East, and so foreign to the distinctarticulation of Western music, is often used in singing; and on thesítara slight slurring rise of tone is produced by drawing the string sideways along the fret—a device which recalls the clavichord of which Sebastian Bach was so fond, in which instrument the hammer which struck the string was also the bridge which defined its length, so that an increased pressure by the finger on the key after the first striking of the note raised the bridge a little, tightened the string, and so produced a plaintive rise of tone.
WOMAN PLAYING SÍTAR.
WOMAN PLAYING SÍTAR.
All this gives the idea of a complicated system of music; and it will be seen that in the range of mere melody the Hindu music has really a greater capacityof subtle expression than ours. But in harmony it is deficient—the ground idea of their harmony being the use of a drone bass—which bass, though it may change not unfrequently, always seems to preserve the drone character. And of course the deficiency in harmony reacts on and limits the play of melody.
The general character of the music, like that of much of the Indian life, reminds one of our own mediæval times. The monkish plain-song and the early minstrel music of Europe were probably very similar to this. There was the same tendency to work from a droning bass rather than from a key-note in our sense of the word, the same tendency to subordinate the music to the words, causing vague and not always balanced flights of intricate melody, the same love of ornamental kinks, and the same want of absolute definition in the matter of time.
The instruments most commonly used, besides theSítarand its relative theVina, are theManda, a horizontal harp somewhat resembling the Tyrolesezither; theSigara, a small clarinet; a bamboo flageolet, which has a very sweet and mellow tone; theTabala, a small kettledrum; and theTaus, a four-stringed fiddle played with a bow. This last is a very curious instrument. Beneath the four main strings are stretched a number of other fine wires, which by their vibration lightly reinforce and sustain the notes played. The effect when not played too fast is very graceful and clinging, with subtle harmonics; and I have heard some most bewitching phrasing on this instrument—a dialogue one might say between it and the voice—with accompanimentof the little Tabala. The Tabala itself is very charming, with its gurgling and bell-like sounds and sudden explosions and chattering accompaniments, executed by the fingers and the butt end of the hand on two drums simultaneously. The great effect of the sítar, whose tone on the whole is thin, is undoubtedly the side tension of the strings, which gives much expression to it.
At its best the Indian music seems to me to produce a powerful impression—though generally either plaintive or frenzied. On the deep background of the drone are wrought these (Wagnerian) phrases, which are perfectly fluent and variable according to the subject conveyed, which are extraordinarily subtle in expression, and which generally rise in intensity and complexity as the piece progresses, till the hearers are worked into a state of cumulated excitement. When there are several instruments and voices thus figuring together over the same bass, the effect is fine. The little tambours with their gurgling notes record the time in a kind of unconscious way and keep the musicians together. The big drums and the lower strings of thevinagive the required basses, thetausandsítarsand voices fly up and down in delightful intricacy, quarter notes touched here and there create a plaintive discord, and even the slur judiciously used adds a weird effect as of the wind in the forest.
When not at its very best however it is certainly (to me) damnably rambling, monotonous and wearisome—notwithstanding chromatic effects of admitted elegance and occasional passages of great tenderness. What the music most seems to want isdistinct form and contrast, and the ruder rockier elements—nor is their time-system sufficiently developed to allow change of accent in successive bars, etc. They all say however that the art is not cultivated to-day, and indeed is greatly decadent and to some extent actually lost. Like all branches of learning in India, and the caste-system itself, it has been subject to intense pedantry and formalism, and has become nearly stifled amid the otiose rules which cumber it. On the other hand it is interesting to find that the Hindus call our music not only monotonous (as we call theirs, and which may be accounted for by mere unfamiliarity—as a town-bred man thinks all sheep alike), but also coarse and rude—by which I fancy they mean that our intervals are all very obvious and commonplace, and the time-system rigid—while probably our sequences of harmony are lost upon them. Panna Lall, I find, picks up our tunes quite easily; and seems to like them fairly, but always adds a lot of little kinks and twanks of his own.
After all, though the vaguely-floating subtle recitative style of the Indian music has its drawbacks and makes one crave for a little more definition and articulateness, it presses upon one as possible thatourmusic might gain something by the adoption and incorporation of some of these more subtle Eastern elements—if only at times, and as an enhancement of our range of expression by contrast with our own generic style.