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decorous but uncomfortable fashion of public bathing. The sari, with a very short jacket coming a little way below the shoulders, constitutes the ordinary costume of a southern woman, the sari being wrapped round the legs, and also drawn over the head and shoulders. In the north she generally wears a petticoat and a shorter sari or chuddar worn more like a mantilla. Not only human beings but elephants and buffaloes may at times be seen enjoying a morning bath. The elephants will lie right down in the water, while their attendants scrub them with cocoa-nuts.

The rivers have very wide beds which are covered during the rains by rushing streams; after these subside great expanses are left bare on which pumpkins and water-melons are plentifully grown. From the river one can return to the town and watch the further domestic arrange ments of the population. A great deal of hair-dressing goes on, all in the street; many men have their heads shaved bare with the exception of one little tuft on the crown or a strip on either side above the ears; but the style of wearing the hair varies almost as much as the way of tying the turban or the shape of the Hindu cap. Here a man, extended on a bedstead of rope laced backward and forward on a wooden frame, is being rubbed with sandal-wood oil, there a woman is adorning the space in front of her door by sticking little yellow flowers into the earth; here again are girls coming from the well bearing on their heads polished brass lotas, or carthenware chatties; there are the bheesties carrying the water in skins tucked under their arms, or in vessels piled one above the other in nets suspended from the long poles which they carry over the shoulder. Every where are little brown babies whose sole costume is a piece of string tied round their waists, and possibly bracelets or anklets. Now pass flocks of goats to the milking, or little humped bullocks drawing rough wooden carts or carrying burdens; perhaps a line of camels fastened together with total disregard of their comfort by means of a string tied to the tail of one and passed through the nostrils of his companion immediately following. Here comes a merchant borne in a palki or a great man reclining in a carriage driven by a gayly but untidily clad coachman and preceded by mounted sowars carrying little flags on lances.

Turning into the bazaar, the scene is even more animated. On either side of the narrow street are little open shops, like platforms raised about a couple of feet from the ground, sheltered by projecting awnings of bamboo, thatch, or tiles. The side-posts and lintels are sometimes, as at Muttra, curiously carved; sometimes, as at Baroda, gaudily painted red, green, and yellow. On the platform the master of the establishment often spreads his charpoy and bolster, such a bed as the healed paralytic would have carried away with him, and waits placidly for the bargaining customers. Even the pie, about a third of a farthing, is not minute enough for native transactions, and a pile of cowrie shells by his side represents yet smaller change. Here you see every kind of petty ware in process of manufacture or displayed for sale-grain of all kinds, pink and yellow flowers to offer in the temple or to hang round the neck of an honored guest, tempting gold and silver braid, colored cloths folded as they arrived from Manchester, or held out to dry as they are drawn fresh from the dyeing vat. Boys squat with strings tied to their toes which they are twisting ready for bead necklaces; men are concocting from sugar, milk, cocoa, and gram, the endless variety of sweetmeats dear to the native palate; women are grinding corn with circular stones, or spinning cotton with rudelyfashioned handwheels. Heavy silver ornaments and glittering native jewelry with imitation stones attract the young wives -nose-rings, earrings, anklets, and particularly the lac bracelets which have to be squeezed over the hand without breaking previous to payment, at the expense of a crushing of bones which brings tears to the eyes. Native women, moreover, often have their arms elaborately tattooed, but this custom does not obtain among the men. Cheap purchases are made standing in the street, but if you wish to indulge in more costly wares you are invited inside, and perhaps to an upper room. Then a lengthy process of weighing silver goods or gold-worked cloth in scales against rupees, and of wearisome bargainings, has to be gone through. It begins with the unvarying protest that the vendor does not tell lies and asks the price he means to take, and ends with his acceptance of such a deduction as you are strongminded enough to insist upon.

As the day wears on, wedding parties perambulate the streets, women come bearing on their heads baskets of bridal gifts, and if the marriage is a tolerably rich one the bridegroom approaches mounted on an elephant and preceded by nautch girls. Evening falls suddenly. One minute you have clear daylight, the next a gorgeous western sky, and before you have gazed your fill at its beauty comes darkness with with twinkling stars. The natives will not retire yet awhile to their closely packed houses. They light little fires out of doors and, squatted around them, gossip far into the night. If you drive through the town at midnight, you may see figures wrapped in blankets or quilts lying everywhere, under verandas, on the ledges of shops, on bedsteads in the road. It almost looks like a city where the plague has stricken down the inhabitants, but it only indicates that the wise Hindu has chosen the open air of heaven for his bed as well as for his dress ing-room.

Many who rent little shops in the town live in surrounding villages, and certainly their cottages do not strike one as attractive abodes. A mud-hovel roofed with tiles, the light let in through the door and a few holes in the walls, was the dwellingplace of a Brahmin and his family, seven persons in all, in a village near Benares. Two rooms opened into each other, and the inner one into a little court with a kind of cooking shed beyond. The sole contents appeared to be two bedsteads, one or two brass vessels, a couple of small idols, and a few ragged articles of clothing. On account of his sacred caste the Brahmin was allowed to live rent-free, and he possessed two acres of land and two cows. He supplemented the income derived from these by begging in a neighboring temple, a fact which he announced with much satisfaction.

The middle-class Hindus are beginning to furnish their houses with considerable comfort. We saw the bedroom of one at Madras provided with punkah and mosquito curtains, and adorned with highly colored pictures of the gods, and with colored prints of events in their lives got up in Religious Tract Society style.

Apart from their beautiful embroideries and their hereditary skill in inlaying, in carving patterns in wood and stone, and in working in brass, the Hindus of to-day

have little idea of art in the European, sense of the word. English ears find native music and singing somewhat shrill and monotonous. Painting and sculpture reached their Indian acme in the days of the Moghuls, and the limitations of the Mahommedan religion prevented any attempts at representation of the human form. The great Akbar, indeed, liberal in this as in all other ways, thought that the study of the divine handiwork tended to greater reverence for the Deity, but even he could not reverse the bigotry of his creed. Nevertheless masterpieces of paintings executed in India in his day still exist, though almost entirely as illustrations in books. A Persian translation of the Ramayana in the possession of Colonel Hanna at Delhi, and of the Mahabharata belonging to the Maharajah of Jeypore, contain numerous full-page illustrations which, for richness of color, delicacy of outline, and beauty of execution, vie with any French or Italian missal of the Middle Ages.

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It is needless to dwell on the marble dreams of Delhi and Agra. Every curve of every flower, the pomegranates dropping from the arches, the gossamer tracery of the screens, the jewelled glory of the mosaics will never pass from the memory of those who have seen them, and cannot be shown by pen or pencil to those who have not. The Taj, that fairy palace of a love stronger than death, sprung from sunset clouds and silvered by the moon, has but one fault-it is too perfect. Nothing is left to the imagination. no mysterious arches, no unfinished columns, nothing is there that seems to speak of human longing and unfulfilled aspiration; you feel that a conqueror has made Art his slave, and the work is complete ; you can demand nothing more exquisite in this world. Nevertheless something is lacking to the original design. The lady of the Taj had desired that Shah Jehan should be buried in another and identical mausoleum, only of black marble, on the opposite side of the Jumna, united with hers by a golden bridge. Aurengzebe, however, said, "My parents are not like those birds which must sleep the male on this side of the river, the female on that," and he showed his respect of their conjugal affection, as also his economy, by burying Shah Jehan by Arjumund.

The splendid Jain temples offer the

finest specimens of Hindu design. The skill and intricacy of the workmanship are beyond belief; every inch of wall, columns, and ceiling being carved with figures and patterns of great beauty. No one but a Hindu could have had the patience to accomplish such a labor. The Buddhist remains show traces of the Greek influence left by Alexander's invasion. Some of the Brahmin temples, more especially in the south, are imposing and magnificent, but probably their sculp. tors were checked in their advance in statuary, not only by their natural conservative adherence to conventional forms, and the veto which caste places on visits to other lands where they might study from higher models, but also by their distorted conception of the deities whom they wished to represent. How could sculpture make much progress in reproducing physical beauty when the chief objects of adoration were a god with numerous arms or an elephant's head, and a goddess with bloodthirsty tendencies and

a necklace of skulls ?

And as it was, so, to a great extent, it still is. It is the fashion to speak of Hinduism as a decaying religion. The wish that induces such a remark must indeed be father to the thought. Some say that Islam is making progress in India. Of this there is not the slightest symptom, nor is it in any way likely. On the contrary, the antipathy between the votaries of Islamism and of Hinduism appears to be on the increase. Education has advanced much more rapidly among the latter than the former, with the result that the Hindu would be rather disposed to despise the Mahommedan for his ignorance than to accept him as his teacher. On the other hand, the Mahommedan, feeling his mental inferiority, falls back on his physical superiority and former imperial position, and poses as the ally of the British against the attempt of the Bengali baboo to snatch at representative government, knowing that Islam is stronger with the sword than with either tongue or pen. These are hardly the sentiments of disciple and teacher.

What are the chances of the Christian missionary! Canon Isaac Taylor has shown of late by striking statistical evidence how very few converts English missionaries gather in for the money expended. Probably personal observation

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in India would induce him to write still more strongly than he has done. It must be said, however, that here, as elsewhere, statistics prove too much and too little. Hundreds of converts were made during the famine years, who have since relapsed, but whose names go to swell the list of "native Christians;" hundreds, if not thousands, are put down as "under instruction,' who, every one knows, come to the mission schools for the sake of the secular instruction given, but whom no one in his wildest moments expects ever to become converts. In the Madras Presidency, where there are far more Christians than in any other part of India, only ten per cent. of the pupils in the Protestant Christian schools are Christians, and a single conversion in twenty-five years suffices to throw a whole school into uproar. Still, since the young men and children attending these schools imbibe a higher and, indeed, Christian standard of morals, the missionaries must in justice be credited with an influence for good which cannot be expressed in figures. The living force and growth of Hinduism are evident in every part of India. The immense temple of Madura, for instance, with its stately halls and cloisters, its thousand columns, and its colossal monolithic deities and dragons, is not only thronged with worshippers, but is daily adding both to its structure and to its treasures. It has an annual income of 70,000 rupees, and the Nattukottai Chetties, a caste of native money-lenders, are said to have lately spent 40,000l. on the fabric. This temple illustrates the adaptive faculty of the Brahmins. Originally dedicated to Minakshi, the fish-goddess of the aboriginal Dravidian races, it was appropriated by the Brahmins, who overcame all theological difficulties by identifying Minakshi with Parvati, the wife of Shiva, and adopting her into their Pantheon. She is the presiding goddess at Madura, but she shares the homage of her worshippers with many gods, rishis or saints, and demons. Among the last-named is a former English collector, Mr. Rous Peter. paid due respect to the goddess in his lifetime, and now a doorway in the temple is dedicated to his memory and periodically lighted up in his honor. In the north of India, the neighborhood of that holy land where Krishna spent his youth, is another scene of Hindu religious liberality. A

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Guru or teacher from Madras converted the Seths, the Hindu Rothschilds, from Jainism to a form of Vishnu worship called Sri Sampradaya. The family thereupon expended some 450,000l. in the erection of a great temple at Brindoban, near Muttra, besides building a temple in the town of Muttra itself. They annually expend vast sums in the maintenance of priests and Brahmins, the instruction of boys in the Shastras or holy writings, and in feeding the poor. Instances might be multiplied indefinitely, were such needed. Pilgrimages are more rife than ever, being greatly facilitated by the spread of railways. On some of the festivals at Brindoban, where there are many temples besides that of the Seths, it is calculated that a million of people are present. Not only English and Scotch, but German, and numerous American missionaries are at work. But why are they apparently powerless to cope with Hinduism? Doubtless many a missionary is sent out who is mentally unequal to a post of so much. difficulty, and unprepared for the selfdenial which it entails. Further, as a native Christian pastor's wife said the other day, "The people say, 'Yours is a very dull religion; there is not enough tamasha (i.e. show or function) about it. The Roman Catholic priests and the Salvation Army appear to satisfy the require

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ments of self-denial and tamasha better than the Anglican and Protestant missionaries.

Taking, again, those who have met with some outward success in sweeping numbers into the fold, they have, with few exceptions, only secured the lowest and most ignorant people-outcasts with much to gain and nothing to lose by joining their ranks. Of course, it may be said that one soul is as valuable as another; but if the object is increase of numbers, a decoy-duck is more precious than a scarecrow. A Brahmin or high-caste man who is improved by conversion will lead others in his wake; low-caste and semi-educated Christians form a community which repels rather than attracts. A Brahmin is not necessarily a priest, but priests are generally Brahmins, and the whole caste, throughout its many subdivisions, is respected as holy, and as intellectually and socially superior to all others. Though their claims are doubtless exaggerated, it is probable that for some three thousand

years the majority of Brahmins have preserved their unsullied descent and hereditary education, and it would be difficult for any other race on the face of the globe (except, perhaps, some Jewish families) to say as much. The unpublished testimony of a young Brahmin of to-day, well educated, of good orthodox family, and who has had every opportunity of forming a fair judgment of missionary effort and prospects in Southern India, may not be devoid of interest. It must not be forgotten that in Southern India only have missionaries produced any impression worth mentioning.

Little (writes Mr. T. Varadha Row) has been effected by missionaries in Southern India in the way of proselytism. Some of these agencies have established colleges and schools parted at trifling cost. I admit that Western where education of a very high order is imknowledge has shaken the belief of our young men to the foundation, and that some of them are drifting toward indifference for the traditional observances of Hindu society. But this same awakening does not lead them any nearer to Christianity. It will tend, I have no doubt, toward a strict examination of Hindu doctrines, errors, and practices, and a consequent removal of anomalies and absurdities. The conciliatory and accommodating nature of Hinduism will permit the reception into its fold of the advanced ideas of its most zealous reformers. Higher education will not help to advance Christianity in India. The effects of but encouraging. I do not wish to give conversion on a high-caste Hindu are anything

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names, but among my acquaintance and within my knowledge I can name half a dozen cases where a steady deterioration has followed in the wake of conversion. But among the lower classes missionary efforts have been eminently successful. In Tinnevelly whole Shanars' (toddy-drawers) villages have been taken into the Christian fold. These wonderful results occurred at a most inopportune time. South Indian famine of three years raged with mission bodies were entrusted with the organunspeakable severity from 1876 to 1878, and ization of relief operations. The success of the missionary efforts in the relief of souls was as marvellous as in the relief of distress. Over 16,000 men were admitted into the relig. ion of Christ in less than a year. Of course men are likely to cavil at such curious coincidences.

The Shanars are now, I know, a very thriv. ing and industrious community. Neat little churches and hospitals appear in the midst of clean and well laid-out villages which were until recently the abode of squalor and dirt.

The influence of Christianity on high and low class Hindus is almost opposite in effect. The causes are not far to seek. The Shanars,

who are Dravidians by race, were Dravidians in religion and in worship. The worship of demons, of the powers of evil and of malig

nant and fatal diseases under the name of Mari or Kali Amma, is the chief feature in the Dravidian religion, if religion it is to be called. The softer, purer, and infinitely superior creed, the creed of Christ, was offered to them. These children, who were scared by the loud thunder and the forked lightning, gladly gave up their hideous practices and their barbarous gods to be taken into the universal protection of Him whose love is all-absorbing. But to the bigher-caste Hindu (provided he know anything about Hinduism) Christianity offers no solution to his doubts and to his fears. The doctrines of the Upanishads (the philosophical speculations of the Vedas) satisfy the utmost longings of the mind. The acute logic of the ancient Rishis has raised a bulwark of arguments to support the huge fabric of Hindu thought. The doctrine of Karma offers the simplest and most reasonable answer to the obvious inequalities and striking contrasts in this visible world of happiness and suffering. The ferment and unrest of the soul in the search of knowledge is soothed and laid at rest when the object of contemplation is reduced to a figure-head and finally a point in space. This contemplation of a point in space results in a self-absorbing delight which knows no end and which places the soul high above all carnal wants and aspirations. This is the goal of Hindu philosophy. Christianity has nothing to offer to those who are dissatisfied

with Hinduism.

The faith of the enlightened Brahmin is on a very different level from that of the common people. If you ask concerning his own belief, he will tell you that he believes in One God-according to his particular school he believes that God is everything, or that He unites with matter to become everything. All proceed from Him and all effort should be directed to reabsorption into Him. Good acts tend to this result by the gradual purification in successive incarnations of Karma, or the residuum of unconquered passions and unexpiated sins after death. Bad acts debase men more and more. "What happens to devil-worshippers and other such out-caste races ?" asked a friend of mine. "They go to hell" was the prompt reply. Observing my look of astonishment at the sweeping condemnation, the Brahmin with whom we were talking took it to indicate a doubt of the accommodation, and hastened to add, "Oh, we have twenty, thirty, plenty of hells.' Shiva, Vishnu, and the other gods and goddesses are regarded as embodiments of the various divine attributes, or incarnations to reveal the divine will and to deliver men from evil. Many Brahmins would have no particular objection to acknowledge Christ in

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some such way as this. As one said to me, "I do not know his history as well as I know my own sacred books, but if what is told of him is true, I believe that he must have been a saint if not a Divine Incarnation." Another thought that each race had its own revelation. "We," he said, "have Krishna, you have Christ. You say that your Christ was crucifiedour Krishna was shot."

It may be said that such men as these are not far from Christianity. On the contrary, the Vice-Chancellor of the Calcutta University aptly compared a contest with them to the encounter of Cœur de Lion and Saladin in the Talisman. The

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sharp sword of the crusader is unavailing to sever a silken cushion which adapts itself to every stroke. You ask why, if their own faith is so elevated, they leave the masses to idol-worship. "Ignorant people and females," you are told, caunot at once comprehend the universal presence. We teach them first that God is in the image so He is, for He is everywhere-and from that we go on to explain that He pervades the Universe." It is doubtful if the "ignorant people and females" ever get beyond the first stage. One Hindu ascetic, with an extraordinary love of quotation and devotion to Thomas. à Kempis, cited not only Roman Catholic arguments, but also Tyndall's Theory of Atoms in defence of idol-worship. He demonstrated thereby that nothing, not even the leg of a table, was unchangeable, that, therefore, the Divine effluence animated all things, and that the perfectly enlightened mind could see and worship the Omnipresent as well in that piece of wood as in any other object visible or invisible.

The present condition of Hinduism has something in common with the Western Reformation. Educated Hindus confess that they never knew the details and signification of their own religion till they learned them from Western sources. Many have sought inspiration in the old Vedas, where they find nothing about Shiva and Vishnu, but the worship of One God revealed in the forces of Nature. Everywhere there is a tendency on the part of Brahmin pundits to set their house in order, and to try and prove, like the Arya-Somaj and the Theosophists, that the true Hindu religion is as pure as Christianity and more philosophical.

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