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students at Tyndale-Bibcoe s wcliool in Kaslimir jumping into the Jhelum Eiver

THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

BY

HELEN M. ROCKEY

n

AND ,

HAROLD BJ HUNTING

MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT

OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA

NEW YORK

n^ 6 6'

copyeight, 1922, by

Missionary Education Movement

OF THE United States and Canada

Printed in the United States of America

•OCT 0 22

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I Our Indian Cousins

II A Land of Many Races

III Everyday India

IV ^^KiNG Jesus Is Come'' V Schooldays ....

VI Feeding the Hungry . VII Adventures in Healing VIII New Wonders in an Ancient Won

DERLAND ....

Word List ....

PAGE 1

15

29 45

62

84 97

112 125

ILLUSTRATIONS

Students at Tyndale-Biscoe^s school

Frontispiece

PAGE

A village courtyard ...... 5

Darjeeling 17

The Taj Malial . 23

An Indian cliarpoi 32

A worker in brass 35

A Hindu temple 41

An Indian merry-go-round .... 46

A native orchestra 48

A fakir or ^'holy man" 53

A village prayer meeting .... 59

A mosque school 64

A village mission school 65

Athletics at Lucknow Christian College . 68

Baseball in India 74

Brahman girls of South India . . . 77

Indian Girl Guides 80

^^Missionaries in feathers'' .... 88

The native plow 91

A leper congregation 99

Dr. Ida Scudder's Ford . . . . .109

FOREWOED

The stories in this book will show you that in some ways the people of India are different from us in America, and that in other ways we and they are very much alike. The differences help to make them interesting. But we hope you will agree with us that the likenesses are much more numerous and important. They are our brothers and sisters, and God is the com- mon Father of us all.

The Authors

CHAPTER ONE

Our Indian Cousins

The thatched roof of the mud house had been baking all day under the intense heat of the Indian sun.

''If the rains would only come !" sighed Sonika/ as she scoured the last brass pot with mud and grass gathered from the door-yard.

''When they come, you'll complain just as much because they keep on!" commented her brother Rama. "Let's go out and talk to Grandfather. Maybe he'll tell us about the Motherland. He always seems happy when he /s talking about India; have you noticed?"

Under the shade of the big tamarind tree sat Grandfather, enjoying the shadows and the quiet of the early evening. A dignified, high-caste Hindu was Grandfather. He knew more, the chil- dren thought, than most anyone else could know. The long hookah he had been peacefully smoking had gone out, and as the children came near, the old man was reaching out his wrinkled hand to lift with small tongs a bright coal from a brazier at hand for that purpose. He lighted the pipe and drew slowly through the long tube the smoke that was pleasantly cooled in the water through which it passed. Rama liked the cheerful hubble-

1 For pronunciation of foreign words see Word List, p. 125.

2

2 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

bubble sound it made and watched the whole pro- ceeding with as much interest as if it were not a daily, hourly occurrence.

Sonika was first to speak. ''Grandfather/' she said, ''and is it true, as the missionary Sahib said yesterday, that his ancestors and ours came from the same place? Are his children really our cousins 1 ' '

The old man smoked on without replying for several minutes, while the children, lying on the ground, dug their toes into the soft earth. They were used to long pauses, these gentle children of India.

At length the grandfather began : ' ' Many cen- turies ago the white man's ancestors and ours lived together on the plateaus of central Asia. They were called Aryans. They were shepherds and wandered from one pasture to another where- ever they could best find food and water for their flocks. As their numbers increased, there was not enough room for all; many of them gradually moved to lands where food was more plentiful. Some went west to Europe, and most of the white races and nations of Europe and America are descended from them. Others still, perhaps at about the time of Joseph and his brothers, of whom the missionary Sahib tells us, made their way into India. Singing hymns in praise of their gods, and driving their flocks and herds before them, they poured over the passes in the moun-

OUR INDIAN COUSINS 3

tains and took possession of the plains of northern India.

' ' And now tell ns about their gods ! ' ^ hroke in Sonika, as she always did just here in Grand- father's story, for she liked this part especially.

''They worshipped the 'Bright Ones' — the sun and the moon and the stars; the sky, the dawn, and the storm."

"And what was it the Sahib said about their words!" interrupted Rama.

' ' I know ! ' ' exclaimed a new voice.

The three turned quickly to see Bob, the son of the missionary Sahib, standing near with Peggy, his cousin, who had recently come to the village to visit. Peggy's father was a missionary, too, and she lived in the next district.

"I have heard Father say," Bob continued, "that they all spoke a language called Sanskrit. It was something like the Grreek and Latin I am going to study when I go to college."

"Yes," said Grandfather, "and Sanskrit was the parent of many of the languages spoken in our Motherland, India."

"The Sahib said some of his words and ours are alike," put in Rama. "He said you have a word like our ag. What is it?"

"Your a^," replied Bob, "means fire, doesn't it ? Agni was the Aryan name for the god of fire and from that we get our 'ignite,' meaning to burn."

4 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

**Ask your G-randfatlier to tell some more about India," whispered Peggy to Sonika. ''We have been listening behind the tree," she chuckled.

''Tell some more, G-randf ather, " begged the children. But at that moment there entered the courtyard where they were sitting an old, old man.

*'0h, here comes Shukboo!" shouted Eama. *'Shukboo is here! Shukboo is here!" he called, so that all the villagers who were near might hear, and they came, as fast as their occupations would let them, to gather about the old man.

"Who's Shukboo!" asked Peggy as soon as she could make Bob and Sonika stop jumping up and down with glee.

"Why Shukboo tells stories. Oh, he's great! Just you wait!" exclaimed Bob.

It is a curious fact about India that so many of her customs are centuries old. We have changed our ways of living and of doing things century by century, year by year, almost day by day, but there are, in India, ways of doing things — customs — which have remained the same for thousands of years. And now, in exactly the same fashion as in centuries gone by, a Hindu story- teller had entered a courtyard in a village in India. About him quickly gathered a group just as in years gone by — boys and girls — and men too. No women were present, because it is not con- sidered proper for a caste woman to appear out- side her home.

OUR INDIAN COUSINS 5

While tliey sat upon the ground or lounged about, there were monkeys chattering on the thatched roofs of the low mud-houses which sur- rounded the courtyard, on intimate terms — some- times too intimate — with the listeners.

Within the mud walls of this village courtyard are men and animals, beds, water jars, and, piled up in a corner, cakes of dried fuel — a combination not unusual in India.

The boys and girls played together much as boys and girls do anywhere. They were lovable children, too, with their soft, brown, wondering eyes.

The men and boys wore, for the most part, a '^one-piece'' suit called a dhoti, which is a long strip of cloth wrapped about the middle of their

6 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

bodies. But clothing is of no consequence and of little trouble to these Indian cousins of ours. Their bare brown arms and shoulders glistened in the sun. On their heads the men wore a pagri, a turban composed of eight yards of material wound around and around, its many folds pro- tecting the head from the hot Indian sun. A few of the men wore shirts too; as did some of the boys. Sprinkled thickly through the group were little naked brown babies.

Although there were no older women listening to the tale of long ago, there were many little girls to be seen, each wearing one long piece of cloth, a sari, skilfully and picturesquely wound about them from tip to toe and ingeniously and mysteriously fastened without pin, hook, or but- ton. No troublesome hooks and eyes, no buttons, no tapes bring trouble every morning to these little Indian girls as they dress. And as for shoe- strings for either boys or girls ! No knots are rudely snapped as school-time hurries forward; there are no big shoe bills for Father at the end of each month, and no darning of socks and stock- ings for Mother, for no one in India ever wears stockings, and nearly everyone goes barefoot most of the time. 8ome people were wearing sandals — made of wood or of straw — and Peggy noticed a few men in sharply pointed slippers which flip- flapped as they walked.

Peggy was fairly pop-eyed with interest, for

OUR INDIAN COUSINS 7

even though she did not live far away, some of the customs and even the clothes were slightly dif- ferent from those of the district where she lived. There was a little different twist to the pagri, a little change in the winding of the sari. Even the dialect was a trifle different, some words puzzling her. But for the most part, she could understand, and Sonika and she could talk together fairly well.

After Peggy had looked at the people for some time, she began to see and hear more familiar and homelike sights and sounds. Yonder was a cow, munching straw in the corner of the yard. Near her was a pair of goats. Under her feet a few rather scrawny chickens were scratching in the dirt.

^'Old Shukboo is going to begin in a minute,*' said Kama. So they gathered with the others around the old man. '^Shukboo is blind," said Bob to Peggy. ''That may be one reason why he remembers his stories so well, — he is not troubled with seeing everything that is going on about him." He remembered, too, hearing his father say that probably Shukboo finds comfort, as the long hours pass, repeating to himself the old tales of his native land.

Soon Shukboo motioned with his hand. Sonika, Peggy, and Eamxa stopped their chattering, and the old man began to speak.

''What is this he is telling ! Why, it is our dear old story of Cinderella," said Peggy to herself.

8 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

* ' Only, the good and lovely child has quite another name, hut it is surely the same story!'' When it was ended, Shukboo told another and another story, and, to Peggy's amazement, they sounded not at all unfamiliar. *^Can it be that stories are cousins, the same as people 1 ' ' she thought.

''Oh, this is one we love!" whispered Sonika excitedly, and thereupon Bob and Peggy listened to their own ''Chicken-Little" and "Henny- Penny" story in an Indian dress.

"Once upon a time," said old Shukboo, "a cer- tain rabbit lived beneath a palm tree. As he was sleeping, one day, some monkeys dropped a coco- nut which fell to the ground with a thud and rat- tled on a dry palm leaf. 'The solid earth is break- ing up,' thought the rabbit and, starting up, he fled without so much as looking behind him. A brother rabbit, seeing him scampering off as though frightened to death, asked, 'Why are you running!' Without looking back, the first rabbit replied, 'The solid earth is breaking up.' Where- upon the second rabbit ran after the first. They met a third rabbit, who asked why they were run- ning so fast. 'Because the solid earth is breaking up,' they replied in chorus, and he too began to run. And so one rabbit after another joined in the flight, until one hundred thousand rabbits were running together. In turn they met a deer, a boar, an elk, a buffalo, a wild ox, a rhinoceros, a tiger, and an elephant. And as each asked why the

OUR INDIAN COUSINS 9

others were running and were told that the earth was breaking up, they too took flight until it seemed as if all the animals in the world were running away.

Then the Bodhisattva^ saw them. When he noted their headlong flight, he thought to himself, ^I must save them, or they will all perish.' So, taking a lion's shape, he ran with great speed in front of them and roared like the king of beasts three times.

Instantly, the animals, the one hundred thou- sand rabbits, the deer, the boar, the elk, the buffalo, the wild ox, the rhinoceros, the tiger, and the elephant all stood still, huddled together.

'' 'Why are you running!' the Bodhisattva asked.

^' 'The elephants know,' the others replied.

'' 'Why are you running?' asked the Bodhisat- tva of the elephants.

'* 'We don't know,' replied the elephants, ^the tigers know.'

" 'Why are you running!' asked the Bodhisattva of the tigers. The tigers replied, 'We don't know, but the rhinoceroses know.' And the rhin- oceroses said, 'the wild oxen know,' and so on down to the rabbits. And when the rabbits were questioned, they pointed to one particular rabbit

1 A word used among the Buddhists to describe a being of great wisdom who has almost attained Buddahood or complete enlight- enment.

10 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

and said, 'This one told us.' So this rabbit ex- plained that he had been lying nnder a palm tree and had heard a sound like a thud and had said to himself, 'The solid earth is breaking up.'

Then the Bodhisattva took the rabbit on his back, and, with the speed of a lion, they went to the palm tree where the rabbit had been lying. As they approached, a monkey threw a coconut on the ground, and it fell with a thud, and then they knew that the noise had been only the thud of a coconut as it fell. So they came back and told the whole story to all the beasts, and the Bodhisattva bade them not to be afraid, but to go home. And having thus reassured them, the long procession started back. But verily, if it had not been for the Bodhisattva, all the beasts would have rushed into the sea and perished."

When Bob and Peggy were again at home, they found Bob's father sitting on the veranda resting after a long day's work in the intense heat.

''Father," said Bob, "why is it that there are so many different kinds of people in India?"

"Not all of the people of India are Aryans," replied his father. "Before the Aryans came, the land was inhabited by a dark-skinned people called the Dravidian aborigines. The Aryans con- quered these people, drove them southward and, in part, made them slaves. The newcomers were very proud of their race and were anxious that

OUR INDIAN COUSINS 11

their children should have very little to do with the natives, and especially that they should not marry one another. To prevent this, the older people established a strict system of classes or castes, and made it a part of their religion that each caste should keep apart from the others. At first there were four great castes : the Brahmans, or priests ; the Kshattriyas, or warriors ; the Vai- shyas, or artisans, farmers and traders, and, low- est of all, the Sudras, the non- Aryan natives. So, to this day, it is the high-caste people of India who most nearly resemble the white races of Europe and America. Their skins are- indeed brown, but not so dark brown as the low-caste folk.''

'^Are these light-skinned people like Sonika and Eama brighter than the others!" asked Bob.

''No," said his father. ''People used to think they were, but they are finding out that the boys and girls of the so-called lower non- Aryan castes are just as clever, just as reliable, and just as lovable as high-caste Sonika and Kama." He paused a moment thoughtfully before he contin- ued. ' ' They are all human beings and our broth- ers, even though some may be more closely related to us by race than others. One of the greatest wrongs, perhaps the greatest of all, of India in all its history has been race prejudice. For the caste system, as we have seen, grew out of race prejudice, and it has held back all races, high-

12 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

caste Aryan, Brahman, and low-caste Sudra alike. The system has continually grown more compli- cated and burdensome.

At first there were four castes, as I said a mo- ment ago. Now there are nearly three thou- sand. Each different trade and occupation, such as the potters, the carpenters, the black- smiths, and so on, form castes by themselves. No member of any of these must come into con- tact with, or eat any food which has been han- dled by any person belonging to another caste. No one may change his caste or climb, by hard work and study, to a higher one. If a boy's father is a weaver, he must not try to be a carpenter or a clerk when he grows up. He too must be a weaver.

And, worse still, underneath these three thou- sand regular castes, there are about fifty millions of outcastes, and they are treated like dogs. Most of these poor creatures are descended from the aborigines, but some are probably descended from members of higher castes who were so unfortunate as to break some of the caste laws, and who were therefore banished from their own people. Of course there can be little progress or prosperity for anyone, high or low, in a land where people must so strictly keep apart from each other, ex- cept within their own small groups. ''

After a few minutes Bob said, ^'Father, why is Hassan different from Sonika and Eamaf

^'Because Hassan is a Mohammedan," said

OUR INDIAN COUSINS 13

his father, ^^and Sonika and Eama are Hindus. '*

*^ What's the differenced asked Bob.

^^The Hindus,'' replied his father, ^^are those Aryans who came over the mountain passes. They brought with them the worship of the sun and moon and stars."

^^ That's what Sonika 's grandfather said," broke in Peggy.

^* Later on they began to worship idols. Some- times these idols were just a stone or a piece of wood. Sometimes they were an elaborately carved image. They kept on making gods and idols until they had them by the million. And all the time the caste idea was ever becoming a stronger part of their religion.

^'And the Mohammedans, Uncle John," inter- rupted Peggy, ^' where did they come from!"

^ ' Centuries later, a thousand years after Christ, some Afghan tribes swept down from the north just as the old Aryans had done, and inhabited the land. They brought with them a belief in one God, Allah, and in Mohammed, his prophet. The mere sight of the Hindus worshipping many gods was so hateful to them that they went about the country destroying temples and smashing idols. They even forced many Hindus at the point of the sword to become Mohammedans, and the strife over religion between the Mohammedan and the Hindu which began then is still going on. ' '

After a few minutes he added: ^'But you and

14 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

Peggy and other boys and girls like you must help our Indian cousins to undo the mistakes which those Aryans made, so long ago, in saddling upon their children through all these centuries that stupid and wicked caste system. And the best help you can give is to bring to this land of old and beautiful stories, a yet more wonderful story, and most wonderful in that it is true: the story of One who came into the world to be everybody's brother, and who, more than any other influence, has taught the world the sweetness and beauty of love."

CHAPTEE TWO

A Land of Many Races

Caste divisions and religious divisions are not the only obstacles in the way of brotherhood in India. It is a land of many races besides the Aryans and the original natives. Nearly one hun- dred and fifty different languages and dialects are spoken within its borders.

One may see many of these different races any day on the street of any Indian city. From the kind of garment a person wears, often one may tell the race to which he belongs, what his religion is, and the part of India from which he comes.

If we were to go with Bob and Peggy to Luck- now, Bob's father would tell us that that man swaggering over there with a long beard dyed red, with baggy trousers which are caught in at the ankles, with a big turban and a long shirt-like coat and a fancy vest, is from the Afghan border, a Pathan in race and a Mohammedan in religion. Near him is a fat roly-poly man with loose-flowing draperies, a fancy hat on his head, a long, colored scarf around his neck, and an umbrella in his hand, to show his importance. He is a Bengali, that is, a native of Bengal, a province which lies at the lower end of the Ganges valley. In religion he is a high-caste Hindu. The woman covered from head to foot with a long white garment with

15

16 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

only tiny holes for her eyes, is probably a Moham- medan. Stepping out of that palanquin which four men have been carrying, we catch a glimpse of another woman draped in a lovely salmon-pink silk robe. She holds her veil well forward so that it is impossible to see anything of her face. She is a very proper high-caste Hindu lady. The men who carry the palanquin are wearing very little clothing — only a long cloth knotted around the middle of their bodies.

Behind this group comes a poor old woman, wearing about as little clothing as the palanquin bearers, yet with a wisp of a veil over her head and face. Why do the passers-by draw to one side to avoid walking near her? She is dirty, but that is not the reason. They avoid her because she is one of those ''outcastes'' who are supposed to defile any good Hindu whom they may happen to touch. Next we see the motor-car of one of the English residents, carrying a party of English friends. What a strange mixture of human be- ings ! How did they all happen to be living here together!

If we glance at the map at the beginning of this book, we shall see that India is a great pear- shaped peninsula extending southward from the continent of Asia into the Indian ocean. All along its northern edge are the Himalaya Mountains. Bob hit upon a very good comparison when he said that India looks like an ice-cream cone. To

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18 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

the south is the pomt of the cone, and the moun- tains to the north are the ice-cream overflowing at the top. The Himalayas are the highest moun- tains in the world. Mount Everest, the highest peak, rising 29,000 feet above the sea level, has never been climbed, and only very recently have attempts been made to reach the top. There are other peaks almost as high. Even the passes through which run the roads from India to the north, northeast, and northwest, are covered with snow all the year round.

Now look again at the map, and you will notice that almost all of the country south of the moun- tains lies below the Tropic of Cancer. This surely indicates that India is a hot country. Only in the extreme north is there any really cold weather, and no snow, except on the mountains. Even in the months of January and February the days are hot in the central and southern parts of India, al- though the nights are cool. There is, however, much variation in climate. In the Punjab prov- ince, in the northwest, January and February are chilly and disagreeable, especially as the ordinary house is not very well heated. One sits beside the fireplace and yet shivers. In the region of Cal- cutta, on the other hand, these months are de- lightful. The air is soft and balmy like an Ameri- can day in May. But about the first of March, even in North India, the hot weather begins. As the weeks go by, the heat from the sun becomes

A LAND OF MANY RACES 19

SO intense that you could almost cook an egg on a stone doorstep. In the middle of the day, during this season, few people try to do any work or even go out of doors. The foreigners and those natives who can afford it flee for refuge to the mountains. By the first of June this burning tropical sunshine has heated the entire land like a furnace, and, as a result, a moisture-laden landward wind begins to blow all over India. This wind is called the monsoon. It strikes the icy slopes of the Him- alayas, and, circling back, it pours its floods of waters on their slopes and on the plains which lie at their feet. The rain comes down in torrents. For three months the rainy season continues all across the northern part of the country. What is said to be the wettest spot in the world is to be found in Cherrapunji, in the hills of Assam, where there is an annual rainfall of 458 inches.

Now put all these things together: the hot climate, the great snow-capped mountain wall to the north, and the enormous rainfall along its southern slopes, and you may easily infer one more fact of geography — that is, a great river, south of the Himalayas. And if you will look again at the map, you will indeed find the great Ganges Eiver flowing from west to east across northern India.

The Ganges is one of the great rivers of the world. The plain across which it flows is com- posed of soil which, during long ages, the river

20 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

has washed down from the mountains. All through the dry season its water is carried by means of irrigation canals to the farms along its banks. It is not strange that to the Hindus it is a sacred river. They worship Mother Gunga, as they call her, and bring her otf erings.

It is this great fertile river valley which ex- plains why, in India, many people of many races and languages jostle each other on the streets. Great rivers have always been magnets, drawing people to settle along their banks. And India, with her fertile Ganges valley, has been one of the most powerful of such magnets. It drew even Columbus, for it was in search of a shorter route to this land that he started on the voyage which led to the discovery of America. Sometimes men have dreamed of finding gold, silver, and precious stones in India; but the real wealth of the land has always been her broad and fertile plains.

India's history has been one long record of in- vasions. The first of these known to history was that of the Aryans. Then, in the fourth century before Christ, came the Greeks under Alexander the Great. Although not many Greeks stayed in India after Alexander's death, there are still ruins of Greek buildings to be seen in northern India, and India's mothers still frighten their children when they are naughty by saying, ^^Iskander (Alexander) will get you!"

The most important wave of invasion after

A LAND OF MANY RACES 21

Alexander began about five hundred years before Columbus discovered America. On the northwest- ern border of China there lived a wild and bar- barous people called the Mongols. In the course of time they were converted to the Mohammedan religion. By race they were related to the Turks. Driven by the same need of food as the early Aryans, they also began a series of raids to the west and south. One group of them swept into Europe, and came near overrunning the whole area. They did conquer large parts of Eastern Europe, and their descendants are living in Hun- gary and in other European countries today. Other groups of these Mongols crossed the passes of the Himalayas into India. At first they made only raids and went home with the loot which they had stolen. Then, of course, other Mongol armies set out, determined to get their share. And their Persian neighbors also made some trips to the rich land beyond the mountains.

For centuries the people of India lived in con- stant terror of these Mongol raids. At length, one Mongol army decided to stay in India, and it set- tled down on the land which it had conquered. After several generations of fighting they had be- come so powerful that one of their kings, Akbar, was able to extend his sway over almost the whole of India. He and his empire descendants are re- ferred to in history as '^Moguls,'' that is the Mon- gol emperors, but he is known as the ^' Great

22 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

Mogul." It is interesting to note that the reign of Queen Elizabeth of England and of Akbar cov- ered almost the same period of years.

Akbar, therefore, lived in the century following Columbus. He built an enormous fort at Agra, so complete that the whole city could be besieged for three years without being forced to surrender. The ruins of the fort, including the great public audience hall where every morning Akbar held court, may still be seen. Anyone who wanted jus- tice could go to this court and have his case de- cided by the Emperor. He was a lover of poetry, science, and art, and his closest friends were great scholars. He sincerely tried to help the people of India.

Another great Mogul emperor was Akbar 's grandson, Shah Jehan. Near the shores of the Jumna river, which flows into the Ganges, this ruler had erected a wonderful building, which still stands in all its loveliness, and which is consid- ered, even yet, the most beautiful example of arch- itecture in all the world. It has a real story. The emperor had a beautiful wife, Mumtaz-i-Mahal, that is, ^'the pride of the palace," to whom he was devoted. *' Promise me," she begged of him when she was dying, ^'that you will build me the most beautiful tomb in the world," and Shah Jehan promised. The plans for the tomb came to the Emperor, so the story goes, in a dream. The marble and other materials for it were brought

24 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

from all parts of India, and it took twenty thou- sand workmen twenty-one years to build it. Trav- elers from all countries visit it every year. It is constructed entirely of white marble. In places, the marble is carved into designs so like delicate lace work that visitors almost always insist on touching it before they can believe that it is made of stone. The interior is inlaid with beautiful and expensive stones, agate, lapis lazuli, and car- nelian. It is called the Taj Mahal.

Today, Mohammedans, many of them descended from the soldiers of Akbar, may be seen in all parts of India. More of them live in the north- west, however, than elsewhere. To some extent they have adopted Hindu customs ; but they do not worship idols. ^' There is only one God," they say, ^^and he is Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet."

All of the early invaders of India, down to the time of the Mongols, marched down from the north over the mountain passes. Then came the time when men had become masters of the ocean. Even before Columbus discovered America, a Portuguese sailor named Vasco de Gama had sailed around the Cape of Good Hope, the south- ern tip of Africa, in a tiny sailing vessel and, after many tiresome months, landed at Calicut, in South India, the place from which calico got its name. He brought back with him a rich cargo of spices and wonderful stories of the wealth of that

A LAND OF MANY RACES 25

far-away land. From that time on it was by way of the sea, rather than the mountains, that traders and explorers entered India in search of gold. Soon there were Dutch, French, and English set- tlements at various places on the Indian coast. It never occurred to these fortune hunters that the natives of India had any rights or that the teach- ings of Jesus should govern their relations with the people of foreign countries. Indeed, we are only beginning to learn that lesson now. The English settlers in India, however, seemed to un- derstand better than those of other European countries that it would be to their own advantage to treat the natives with a certain degree of kind- ness and justice. So when the white traders of different nationalities began to be jealous and to fight one another, the English were more success- ful than any others in gaining native support. By the year 1857 a great part of India was governed directly or indirectly by the English through a corporation called the East India Company.

In that year, however, there occurred a great mutiny, later to be known as the Sepoy Rebellion. One Sunday while the British troops at Meerut were at church, unarmed, they were fired upon by the sepoys, the native soldiers. For months after, in many parts of India, no white man's life was safe. In Delhi, Cawnpore, Lucknow and other cities, the English were besieged. Delhi and Cawnpore were captured, but Lucknow held

26 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

out. Troops from other parts of India were sent to the rescue as soon as possible, but it was many months before help came. Day after day, in the hot sun, the enemy attacked. It was difficult for the English to get to their only well, and so there was little water for the thirsty and wounded. Still they held out. One day a little Scotch girl, Jessie Campbell, cried out, ''The bagpipes! Dinna ye hear the bagpipes !'' Everyone listened, but all shook their heads. Finally, faint and clear, came the sound of bagpipes playing, ''The Campbells are coming, hurrah, hurrah!^' And they knew they were saved.

After the mutiny was quelled, the government of India was taken from the East India Company and placed directly under the British crown. While they themselves admit they have made many blunders, the British have done much for India. They have built railroads so that one may travel right through tiger jungles by train. Where formerly the people of different castes were widely separated, today in the third-class car- riages are huddled crowds of people from all parts of India, speaking many different languages. Even Brahmans and outcastes sit in the same sec- tion, and the Brahman does not stop to question if he is losing his caste. In the train, at least, caste is forgotten.

Before the British established post-office and telegraph systems India was largely cut off, not

A LAND OF MANY RACES 27

only from the rest of the world, but one section of her own country could only rarely communicate with another section. Now, however, messages are sent to the tiniest, most distant village.

Motor buses, too, now run along country roads, and there is likely to be a greater thrill riding in them than even our western bandits could provide. Not long ago one of these buses was making a trip when the driver suddenly noticed, directly in front of him and not many yards away, a tiger crouched ready to spring. He honked his horn as loud and as fiercely as he possibly could, hoping to frighten the beast, but with a spring, the tiger leaped onto the radiator of the on-coming machine and, with one stroke of his mighty paw, smashed in the glass windshield. But the driver had put on speed and, as the car sv/erved with the impact, the great animal fell off and was crushed to death under the wheels.

There are waterworks, too, due to the British, great irrigation canals, and, of course, bridges over the rivers. The Brahmans laughed when the great bridge over the Ganges at Benares was started. ' ' What ! Harness Mother Gunga ! ' ' they said. At first they only jeered and laughed, but then, incensed by what they considered sacrilege, angry mobs gathered and burned the build- ings of the bridge builders and tried to burn the bridge itself. That was in 1904. Today when a train approaches the bridge, someone cries :

28 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

^'Mother Gunga!'' The Hindus rusli to the win- dows. Some throw in money, some count their rosaries, others pray. Meanwhile, the train rushes on, leaving the river far behind, and the Hindus sit back comfortably and perhaps start to gossip about the latest street-car some ^' crazy" man says he saw in Cawnpore. ^'Arrah, a cart that goes along without any horse, or any 'puff, puff' (loco- motive) and that stops at every corner." His hearers shake their heads and smoke. "Who knows ! ' ' they say.

Such is India, today. Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian ; Aryan, Mongolian, Englishman ; all live together — yet separate. And the distinctions of caste are even more rigid and impossible than those of race, language, or religion. Can such a country ever become a land of neighbors, in the sense of the good Samaritan who had pity on the wounded man! Can it ever be ruled by the spirit of brotherhood! Only when the King of Broth- erly Love enters the land to stay.

CHAPTER THREE

Everyday India

Now tliat we have learned something of the history of India, let ns go back for another visit to the home of Sonika and Rama.

We know already, of course, that they live in a village. But do we know that India is a land of villages? There are more than 700,000 of them. All around each village are the fields which the people go out to till. Until recent times it would have been dangerous for Indian farmers to live in separate houses as in America. There were too many robbers. Even today, a Hindu farmer is afraid to live alone with his family in an iso- lated house. And even if there were no robbers, there are, in many places, dangerous wild beasts, such as man-eating tigers. But while robbers and tigers are real enemies in open places, the Indians fear them almost less than the ''demons^' which are supposed to be everywhere, even in the vil- lages. Because of their ignorance and supersti- tion about demons, the people build their houses close together.

The house where Sonika and Rama were born is made chiefly of mud, with bamboo poles for rafters, and a thatched roof. The bare ground is the floor. There are no windows, or very few, and only one door. Large granaries, built of

29

30 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

dried mud, may serve as partitions between rooms. The women of the family have one end of the house for their sleeping place. The most impor- tant room is the kitchen. It is not only the place where food is prepared, but also a kind of family chapel, for it is in the kitchen that the people keep their shrine and the image of their god, which is often only an oddly-shaped stone. This shrine is kept decorated with garlands of marigolds and near it there is always a tulsi plant, which is con- sidered sacred. The reason for this is that, ac- cording to Indian mythology, one wife of the god Krishna was such a pattern of all that a girl or woman should be that she was changed into a tulsi plant. This plant is kept in every Hindu home to remind little sister how she should behave.

Near the shrine are the family water-pots. In the Hindu religion it is water more than anything else which is supposed to be either '' defiled" or ^^pure." Dry food, such as flour, sugar or rice, a Hindu will take from anyone, no matter what his caste may be, but rice cooked in water or any moist food he will not touch if someone of a lower caste has been near it. So it is especially neces- sary to keep the water-pots safe from 'defile- ment. ' ' These big earthenware pots are kept filled by the women and girls. There is, of course, no running water in the house, not even a pump in the back-yard. There is generally only one well to a village, and this is frequently a long distance

EVERYDAY INDIA 31

away. It takes a good many trips to draw water for a large family.

Not far from ttie water-pots is a low fireplace made of bricks, where the food is cooked. In most parts of India coal or wood or charcoal are too expensive for poor people to use. So one of the main chores every day for the boys and girls is to gather every little twig and chip which they can pick up under the trees and along the sides of the road. The chief fuel is dried cow dung mixed with straw. Inasmuch as there is no chim- ney to the fireplace, whenever cooking is being done, the house is filled with smoke. Almost everything in a Hindu house smells and tastes, to a certain extent, of smoke.

There is very little furniture in a Hindu house — no chairs or tables, and only rude rope-strung beds, or charpoys. In low-caste homes even these are often missing, the people simply lying down wherever they choose, wrapped up in a rug, if one is needed. For what little light is needed after sunset, there is a saucer of oil, with a string lying over the edge for a wick. During the day this lamp is kept in a niche in the wall. Such a house would seem bare in America, but there would not be room in an Indian home for all our tables and chairs and other furniture — there are too many people.

An Indian family consists not merely of father, mother, and children; but there are also many

32 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

uncles and aunts and cousins. When a Hindu is married, instead of going house hunting, he al- ways brings his wife back to his own old home where he himself was born and brought up. If the family in time becomes too large for the

On her charpoi, this little Indian girl dreams by night as well

as plays by day.

house, additions are built on. There are some villages in India which are made up entirely of one great house inhabited by one of these large Hindu ^'families." There is no danger that the children will be lonesome, for besides all the cousins, there are the cow, the oxen, the goat, and the chickens, all of which sleep at night in the courtyard.

When mealtime comes, the children spread out their hands and into them their mother puts an

EVERYDAY INDIA 33

earthenware bowl or perhaps only a large green leaf. On this leaf she pours some kind of cereal, sometimes rice, but more often millet, which is a coarse grain, cheaper than rice and seldom grown in America. On top of this cereal the mother pours some curry, a sauce made of pepper and other hot-tasting herbs. That is the dinner, nine dinners out of ten, of a boy in a poor family in India every day, not only this year, but next year and the year after that. There are, of course, other kinds of food, especially for those who can afford to pay for them. Sometimes there are cakes made of meal and baked over the fire. For wheat-cakes, called chappattis, the mother grinds the wheat in a stone mill just like the hand-mills of Bible times. Sometimes a family has beans or peas for dinner or soup made from them. They also have milk, but Indian cows do not give very much, as compared with American cows. Poor people generally have to sell what little milk they get, or butter made from it, in order to get money for other things. Clarified butter, or gliee^ is con- sidered a great delicacy in India.

Once in a great while a child may get a taste of meat. High-caste Hindus, however, are strict vegetarians and never touch meat of any kind. But low-caste people are glad to eat most kinds of meat when they can afford it, which is very seldom.

Dinner in a Hindu home is generally in the

34 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

middle of the day. There is ordinarily no break- fast and no supper. One is lucky to get a dinner. When dinner time comes, a rather solemn religious ceremony takes place. First the members of the family wash themselves according to a certain ritual, and then they offer some of the food to the household god. Then each man and boy takes his plantain leaf, or his earthenware dish filled with rice or millet, and sits down on the floor with his back to the others and eats in silence. It would seem unsociable to us. Still more unsociable is the custom of having the women wait until all the men have finished. No Indian woman, except one here and there in a family that is giving up the old customs, ever eats with her husband. It seems very pitiful that what should be the happiest time in a family's day, that is, dinner time, should be so spoiled for them by useless and unjust religious rules.

The day's work in most Hindu families begins at dawn. During the heat of the day everybody rests. Then along toward evening there is more work to do. The children begin to help around the house very early in life. The girls must sweep the dirt floor, with a broom made of twigs. The boys must drive the cows and the goats out to the jungle. If the boy's father is a carpenter or a weaver or a blacksmith, or belongs to any special trade, he soon begins to help at that trade.

The members of each trade form a caste and

Q H. li . Feryt'f, Lahore, India Within their own dooryards, workers in brass hammer out by hand pots and kettles and most of the dishes used in an Indian household.

36 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

live together. In the towns you will find one street called the weavers' street, another called the blacksmiths' street, and so on. Or whole vil- lages may be given over to some special trade. Sometimes before one enters a village, one can tell by the smell (as in the case of the leather workers) what trade it belongs to. Most of the work in these trades is done in the homes of the people, rather than in special shops. The car- penter or the farmer has his tools, the blacksmith has his iron, the coppersmith his copper, or the potter his clay, in the same room where he sleeps. The children watch him as he works. By-and-by, when a boy is ten or eleven years old, he will begin to learn his father's trade.

The chief industry of India is farming. Many different kinds of crops are raised. Beside the grain crops, such as rice, wheat, and millet, India produces great quantities of sugar, tea, cotton, and jute. Practically all of our gunny sacks are made from jute that was raised in India. What- ever the crop may be, if the boy's father is a farmer, he will soon be doing some of the work. And farm work in India is very hard work indeed. Until recently no modern agricultural machinery was used. A farmer's tools consisted of a small wooden plow with a sharp point for a harrow, which only just scratched the surface of the soil, a sickle, a mattock, or heavy hoe, a wooden fork, and a club for pounding the hard lumps in the

EVERYDAY INDIA 37

soil. Very few farmers know anything about other tools or machinery. In some parts of the country the fields are watered by irrigating ditches during the dry season. The water is pumped from the reservoirs by oxen on treadmills. One of the most important of a small boy's chores in such districts is to keep the oxen moving and the pump working.

And how about games! How do Sonika and Eama and the others play? Indian children have a natural love of play, just like the boys and girls of America. Indeed, two famous indoor games, parchesi and chess, were invented in India. But alas, there is so much work to be done that many a Hindu child scarcely has a chance to learn to play at all.

Still, Kama knows how to fly a kite. And he probably can make his kite '^fighf another boy's. He will rub his string with a mixture of clay and sand, and then when the ^' fight" is on, he will work his kite into such a position that he can saw the other boy's string with his own, until it breaks and the other kite soars away and is lost.

The family goat is often a great pet with the children. Sonika has her mud dolls, and she also gets much pleasure from jingling her ornaments. Indian girls have many trinkets, although usually not until they are married. Even the poorest have rings and bracelets of pew- ter or brass. Of course the wealthy people have

38 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

silver and gold ornaments. Not only do the women and girls wear rings and bracelets, but anklets and toe-rings and earrings galore. Wher- ever there is a chance to hang a bit of ornament, they love to put it on.

The happiest times in India are special celebra- tions of one kind or another. One of these is the ceremony of putting on the sacred cord. If the little Hindu brother belongs to one of the upper castes, he receives from his religious teacher, some time after his fifth year, the sacred cord which he wears for the rest of his life. It consists usu- ally of three coiled strands and is worn over the left shoulder and under the right arm. Before that time he is considered as just a child and eats and sleeps with his mother. After the cord cere- mony, he is a man. If a man's cord breaks, he dares not speak or scarcely breathe until another is put on; so sacred is it considered. The exact age selected for putting on the sacred cord de- pends upon the boy's horoscope. The ceremony is continued for several days, and the occasion is made a very joyful one. There are feasts to which friends are invited. Even poor, neglected little sister receives a sweetmeat while the priest is going through the many ceremonies in honor of brother's having now become a man.

Weddings also are festive occasions. To us the marriage customs of the country seem very un-

EVERYDAY INDIA 39

reasonable and often cruel. Young people in India are not allowed to choose each other for husband and wife. The match-making is always done by the fathers with the help of the village barber, who, because of his occupation, knows everybody. The bride and groom seldom see each other until after they are married! The worst of these cus- toms is the early age of marriage, especially in the case of the girls. It is considered disgraceful for a girl not to be married by the time she is twelve. Little Hindu sister has very little reason for gladness on the dawn of her wedding day. Nevertheless, the wedding itself is made a time of as much happiness as possible. The picture of Ganesh, the Hindu god of good luck, is painted on the doorway of the groom's house. For five days or more the wedding guests are feasted. The fourth day is considered the most important. There must be at least one hundred different kinds of food for that day's feast. Different kinds of pickles, however, may count as different foods. On the day of the wedding proper there is a pro- cession to the bride's home. The bridegroom goes first, on horseback, dressed in his best clothes. After him there usually comes a band composed of banging drums and wailing flutes and some- times a bagpipe or two. After a time, they return, bringing the bride back with them to the house of the bridegroom. There are more ceremonies, and

40 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

then the guests go home. The fun is over. For many a little child-bride all that remains is a life little better than slavery.

The people in India are perhaps by nature the most religious in the world. Almost every act in their lives is connected in some way with a re- ligious belief or ceremony. The early Aryans brought with them their own system of beliefs in gods and goddesses. Among them were wise men who saw and taught that there is really only one God, whose presence is in all life. This old Hindu teaching may be found in their ancient sacred books called the Vedas. It is very influential today among the educated classes. The religion of the common people, however, is a mass of super- stitions; giving offerings to grinning, hideous idols and charms to scare away the demons. In their temples they do not have weekly religious services like those in our churches. But on holy days they go to their temples to worship. This is done mostly by the men. The women are only al- lowed to come and bring gifts to the god. Every morning the priests of the temple have to awaken the god by ringing bells or clanging cymbals. Then they are supposed to bathe him, pour melted but- ter over him, and place food before him. When a man comes to w^orship, the priest rings the bell to make sure that the god is listening. Then the worshipper makes his present and prays for what he wants. No one in India ever goes to a god

The water in front of this Hindu temple is a sacred pool in which people bathe as a part of their worship. The temple ele- phant also bathes in the sacred water.

42 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

without a present. When he has completed his worship, the priest marks his forehead with a cer- tain sign so that all the world may know that he has done his religions duty. In the evening the priests put the god to sleep again.

On the whole, it is not a very happy life that our little Hindu brother and sister lead. The great majority of boys and girls grow up under the dark shadow of a poverty worse than anything we know. It is said that millions of Hindu peas- ants seldom have enough to eat, even in years of plenty. When the famine years come, their suf- fering is pitiful.

Beside their poverty, the people of India suffer terribly from diseases. They know nothing of modern sanitation. We have seen how careful they are to keep their water-pots ceremonially clean; would that they knew the importance of keeping their water clean instead of swarming with disease germs ! During the rainy season malaria-bearing mosquitoes are all too common. The native way of warding off an epidemic from a village is to put a saucer of milk and sugar by the roadside with a few silver coins in the bottom of it. It is thought that the pestilence demon may find it and be appeased. It is not strange that the land is so frequently scourged by terrible epi- demics of cholera and the plague, and that ma- laria, smallpox, and typhoid fever are always raging somewhere in India.

EVERYDAY INDIA 43

Now and then some of India's sons have had pity on their brothers and have tried to help them. About six hundred years before Christ a young Indian prince named Gautama grew heartsick at the sight of so much misery everywhere and fled from his luxurious home in search of a way of peace for himself and others. After many wan- derings, there came to him, one day, like a light from above, the idea that the way out of unhappi- ness is to forget one's self. This new vision of truth he set himself to proclaim to men. He gath- ered disciples and taught them what he called the Eightfold Path, of which the substance was to re- nounce all selfish pleasures, to abstain from all malice, and to overcome evil with good. Thus was founded the religion which came to be known as Gautama, this religion was spread all over Indi^- _CBuddhism. Some two or three centuries after -mid carried to other countries of Asia largely through the efforts of a very good and able king named Asoka. This man is notable in history as one of the few kings or emperors who have re- fused to be a military conqueror and chose rather to rule through the power of truth. He gave large sums to Buddhist teachers and missionaries for the spreading of the new doctrine. He founded public parks, hospitals, and schools. He also caused wells to be dug and shade trees to be planted. He tried to civilize the wild tribes of central India. He should be better known by us

44 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

of the Western world, for he was really one of the great characters of history.

This new religion, however, was not popular with the rich and powerful. It made little of caste, and the proud Brahmans opposed it for that rea- son. In the course of time its teachers were driven from the country, and today there are few Buddhists in India proper. The large majority of Indian children probably never heard of Gau- tama or never saw a Buddhist priest. The old superstitions and the selfish, cruel customs came back again and, despite the advance made in the past hundred years by Christianity, they still pre- vail in large measure.

"What India needs is One greater than Gautama to lift her from her misery.

CHAPTER FOUR

' ' Kjng Jesus Is Come "

For days Rama and Sonika had been talking' about the mela. ''Of course you're going," they said to Bob and Peggy. ''Everybody goes to the melaf

Now in India melas are religious festivals. People attend them partly for fun and partly to gain favor with the gods. All over India there are sacred places where these melas are held from time to time, and to which great crowds of people come. One of the largest is held in the winter of each year at Allahabad, where the sacred river Ganges and its largest tributary, the Jumna, flow together. To bathe there at the time of the mela is to receive, so the people think, a special blessing from "Mother Gunga." Every twelfth year the mela held at this place is thought to be especially sacred, and millions from all over India attend. It is estimated that in 1918 over two million people were in or by the river at one time. They came on foot, by ox-cart, by horse, by train. A regular city is always laid out especially for these crowds, and it has to be carefully policed, for, in their eagerness to get to the river, riots are likely to take place.

Bob and Peggy could scarcely wait for the long- anticipated day to come. Everybody in the village

45

46

THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

who could possibly get away went, — some on foot, some in ox-carts.

^^Why, it's just like going to a county fair back in America!'' said Peggy's mother, who had not been in India very long and who had never at- tended a mela.

H. R. Ferger, Lahore, India The merry-go-round at an Indian mela has a cheerful squeak and creak that is as effective as music in telling boys and girls where it may be found.

The roads were crowded with people, laughing and talking. Everybody seemed to be having a good time, and yet it was a religious festival to which they were going.

The nearer they got to the village where, on the banks of the sacred river, the mela was to be held, the more Bob and Peggy felt that they were on their way to a circus. Within the village was the sacred shrine, but also what sights and sounds!

"KING JESUS IS COME" 47

There were peddlers everywhere selling sweets and toys. Here was an odd looking" merry-go- round made of rope swings which hung from an iron ring whirled by hand around the pole in the center. There was the queerest looking Ferris wheel one could imagine, made of wood and turned creakingly by hand.

There were other sights totally unlike anything to be seen in America. Again and again, they came upon '^holy men,'^ or sadhus, most of whom were torturing themselves in some strange way. Here was a man hanging head downward over a slow fire. There was another man who had held one arm above his head for so long that it had withered. In the crowd gathered around these men, Peggy spied Rama. ^'What are these men doing, Ramaf she asked, going up to him.

'^Why, they are ^holy men.' They do these things to get merit with the gods. And that is why we come to the mela,^^ he replied.

By-and-by Bob's father and mother and Peggy's father left the others. The two children and Peg- gy's mother wandered about among the crowd, watching the many sights.

Suddenly they heard the sound of music and singing, and they caught something in the words about Yisu.

''Those are the Isai-log (the Jesus people)!" exclaimed Rama, who had joined them again. ''Let's go near them."

48

THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

As they came within sight, Peggy exclaimed ex- citedly: ^^Why, there's Uncle John, and there's Daddy too!" Sure enough, there they stood in the group about a band of native musicians. There were only a few white people, but there

Indian hymns sung to Indian music played on Indian instru- ments by native Christians are doing much toward bringing the people to know and to love Christ.

were a number of the brown people of India, sing- ing Christian songs to old Hindu airs which were being played on instruments curious enough to Western eyes.

After a time the music ceased, and Bob's father began to speak. He told the people about the loving Father who cared for them all. The poor, tired, work-worn people of India heard of One who said, ^'Come unto me, all ye that labor and

"KING JESUS IS COME" 49

are heavy laden, and I will give you rest/' It is almost impossible for people in America to know liow that must sound to the people of India, who are always, always seeking rest,— and seek- ing it in vain, — not only rest for their tired bodies, but rest from the awful superstitious fears under which they live. Their entire religious life and even their social life is a quest for peace, for pro- tection from demons, from spells, and from pun- ishments which they believe their gods are send- ing upon them. Into this Hfe-long, daily fear, imagine there coming in calm, even tones, ' ^ Come unto me, and I will give you rest. ' '

Into this strange land of superstitions and dreams, of ugliness and beauty, Christianity first came many centuries ago with its message of love. The modern Christian movement in India, how- ever, may be said to have begun with the work of four great pioneers — Ziegenbalg and Pliitschau, who went to South India early in the eighteenth century, Schwartz of Tanjore, who began his work in 1750, and William Carey, who landed in Cal- cutta in 1793 and who is often called ''the father of the modern missionary enterprise.''

Carey, born in England, in 1761, was a Baptist local preacher and, while making shoes for a liv- ing, preached the gospel as the main interest of his life. After a time he felt that he must go to India as a missionary. Most of his friends scoffed at and ridiculed him. How could he possibly get

50 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

the money to go? they asked; and when he got there, how could he preach to such people as the Indians? At length, however, he was able to in- terest enough people in his plans so that he raised his passage money, and he and his wife sailed for India.

The East India Company refused to let him work in their territory, but he found shelter in the Dutch settlement at Sarampore. To support himself and his family, he worked at first as su- perintendent in an indigo factory. In the course of five years he had learned the Bengali language, had travelled through the two hundred villages of the district, had held daily religious services for the thousand workmen in the factory, and had translated the New Testament into the Bengali language. He prepared the first Bengali diction- ary; he set up the first printing press in India and prepared type for it in the Bengali alphabet ; and in the course of his life he translated the Bible into thirty-six different dialects. The Brit- ish government appointed Mr. Carey professor of Bengali, Sanskrit, and Marathi in the government college in Calcutta.

Beside his regular work of preaching and trans- lating, this great missionary pioneer helped to start almost every kind of work carried on today by the missionaries. In a time when others felt that a missionary should do nothing but preach, he wrote to his supporters at home: ^'I wish you

"KING JESUS IS COME' 51

could send me a few instruments of husbandry; that is, scythes, sickles, plows, wheels, etc., and an assortment of garden and flower seeds and seeds of fruit trees.'' In 1800 he formed the Agricul- tural and Horticultural Society of India before there was such a society in England. Whatever would help people to better lives, he considered a part of his work as a missionary.

Carey tried for years to persuade the British government to make a law forbidding the poor superstitious Hindus from throwing their children into the Ganges as religious offerings and also putting a stop to suttee, or the burning of widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. He finally succeeded in getting this law passed. The proc- lamation which forbade suttee was sent to him by the government to translate into the native lan- guage It arrived on a Sunday just as he was starting for church, where he was to preach. Throwing off his coat, he sent another man to preach and set to work on the translation. ''For," said he, ' ' the delay of an hour may mean the sac- rifice of many a widow."

The work started by Carey was followed up with great energy by others. All the great de- nominations of Great Britain and America have sent missionaries to India. Churches have been built in every part of the country. In all the lead- ing cities, such as Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, etc., there are large native churches with native Indian

52 THE WONDEKLAND OF INDIA

pastors. There are between fifteen and twenty million Protestant native Christians in India. What is more important, the spirit of the love of Jesns has indeed been like a leaven in the life of the people. Many of the most prominent native leaders today, even though not calling themselves Christians, say that they are trying to follow the teachings of Jesus.

How does a missionary go about his work of showing these people what Jesus Christ might mean to them! Like Carey, the missionaries to- day use many and various methods. It is quite easy and natural for a missionary to gather a crowd around him at a mela, for the people are used to seeing religious or ^'holy" men there. But although it is easy to gather a crowd, it is not so easy to win their attention. Very often the people talk and laugh among themselves and then wander away. But again, others really listen to the preacher's message, and sometimes their hearts are touched. Perhaps months or even years after, some new pupil will come to the missionary school or ask to join the church, and it will be found that he merely heard of Christ at a mela, and the tiny seed took root.

Back of all missionary methods, the one great instrument is kindness. People in India are like people anywhere else. They may not always un- derstand spoken words, but the meaning of loving deeds they never miss. And amid the bitter hard-

"KING JESUS IS COME"

53

ships and the cruel inherited customs of India, the lives of love and good- will which the spirit of Jesus always inspires, shine out like stars in

For nearly thirty-five years this fakir has performed acts

of religious devotion by sitting on his bed of spikes. The

mark on his forehead and on those of the men about him shows that they are worshippers of the god Shiv.

the night. People wonder at the unselfish- ness so evident in the lives of the native Chris- tians and the missionaries and are irresistibly

54 THE WONDERLAND OP INDIA

drawn to them and through them to the God of Love.

The mela was over, the children were at home, and Bob's father was resting, after his busy day. ^'Tell us a story. Father," they begged. ^^Tell us about a girl this time," added Peggy.

^^Very well," assented Uncle John, "I will tell you a true story of a girl named Sita.

^'Sita was the daughter of a court official, a Brahman. She was brought up to eat only the finest of foods, to wear beautiful silks, to do no work of any kind whatever. Then her father, whose pet she had always been, died. Her family gave her in marriage, when she was eleven or twelve years old, as the fourth wife of an impor- tant official. She was his favorite wife and, conse- quently, the other wives were jealous of her. They did everything they could to make her life miser- able. When her child was born they bribed a priest to say that if she ever saw her baby it would die, so the little boy was taken away from her im- mediately after it was born.

^^Then the older women poisoned the mind of her husband. ^What a wicked woman she must have been,' they said, 4n some previous life if, now, just looking at her boy would cause its death!' These women said so much that, after a time, Sita's husband banished her to the home of his uncle, where she was treated like a servant,

"KING JESUS IS COME" 55

beaten till she was black and blue, and subjected to many insults.

^^ At length she ran away. Her path was through dense jungles, and at night she climbed high trees to be safe from the wild animals — tigers, bears, and leopards. Eemember all this time that Sita was a girl just like any girl you know, and this happened not so very many years ago, either. At times she thought she was being pursued, but somehow she avoided people and struggled on.

^'One day she ran into a kindly man who told her to go twenty miles farther and she would find some strange Isai (Jesus) people who would care for her. Two days later she was inquiring at the village for the Isai people. She was taken to the Christian worker, whose wife took care of her for two days while she slept away her exhaustion.

^'Nobody knew what to do with Sita, but she begged hard to stay. 'Never before have I met such kindness,' she said. 'The man on the road told me that the Isai-log were always kind. I want to learn to be an Isai. I will work, I will do any- thing you say, only let me stay. '

''An elderly Bible woman^ offered to keep her, and Sita, who was now about fifteen years old, a tall, beautiful girl, started to learn how to read and write, how to sew, to knit, to cook, to clean.

1 "Bible women" are native Indian Christians who go into the homes of the people to read the Bible and teach Christian religion.

56 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

Sometimes she would get homesick and sad won- dering what had happened to her little baby boy, but she stayed on with the missionaries. Later she went to a training-school. Today she is a Bible woman, going with the missionaries on their journeys and helping to tell the story of Jesus. Yet always she is praying that some day she may go back to her own people and find her little boy and tell him and all her old friends the message of God's love."

Bob's father went on to tell the children that when Jesus was on earth his greatest success was with the poor and despised classes. ' ' The common people heard him gladly." So it is with the mis- sionaries— in India. Sita was a Brahman girl, and there are many like her, who have been won by the love of Christ, but by far the largest num- ber of the native Christians are from the out- castes, the '' untouchables," whom India has al- ways so cruelly oppressed. When the Christian missionary comes among them, they are treated for the first time in their lives like men and women and are led to see that through Jesus Christ they may even rise to undreamed-of heights. At first the story of Christ may mean lit- tle to them. They may chatter and grin while the missionary talks, and he may go home dis- couraged. But the time comes- when, perhaps, the headman of a neighboring village charges these outcastes with stealing a goat which never

"KING JESUS IS COME" 57

existed. Or perhaps the money-lender terrifies them with threats. In their fear, they tliink of the missionary and go to him with their story. Sometimes he is able to help them in one way or another. The next time he preaches, they listen.

'^Let me tell you a story about a man now," said Bob's father. ^^In a village of North India there lived a little dark man named Ditt. He was an outcaste whose business was that of buying and selling hides. He heard the gospel from a native Christian convert, was baptized, and then returned to his regular work, telling his friends of the won- derful Saviour whom he had found. His relatives jeered at him. ^One of your legs is broken al- ready,' they said, referring to his lameness, 'so may it be with the other!' But within three months, he brought to the mission his wife and daughter and two neighbors to be baptized. It was a distance of thirty miles, and, in spite of his lameness, he walked with them the entire journey. As time went on, he brought other neighbors, walk- ing with them each time. ' '

It was in just this way that there began, within recent years, among these outcastes, a wonderful mass movement to Christianity. Whole villages and districts have sent messengers to the mission- aries saying that they have decided to become Christians and that they want to be baptized. The missionary who receives such a message is likely to be perplexed, He has been praying that

58 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

these people may find the Master, and now they are sincere in their decision to become Christians. But how little they know about the Christian life ! If he baptizes them all, a whole village full of them at once, before they have received any in- struction in the Christian life, it is almost certain that later on many of them will do things that are wrong and unchristian. Then outsiders will sneer and say, ''It is a fine lot of Christians you have there ! ' ' Someone must teach them that they must give up worshipping idols, must not lie or steal, must not cheat, must be kind and just to their neighbors, must live by doing useful work from day to day, and must send their children to school and go to church every Sunday.

In the early days of this mass movement the missionaries and their native helpers were able to take care of all who came, but now such numbers are coming that there are no teachers who can be sent to them ; and still, more and more they come begging. ''Send us a teacher. Sahib, we want to become Christians. Everyone considers us worse than dogs. Only the Christ you tell us of cares for us.^' And the missionary can only say to them, "Next year there will be, perhaps, someone whom I can send." And to himself, with a sigh, "If only the people in America knew, surely they would send the help we need. ' '

Those who have been baptized from among these poor outcastes have shown wonderful faithfulness

60 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

in their Christian life. They are tempted and persecuted and bribed in all sorts of ways, for the higher-caste Hindus do not want to lose their slaves, which is, in effect, what these outcastes really are. But in the great majority of cases the new converts are steadfast. Moreover, unlike the early Christians of the New Testament, they seem fairly bubbling over with a wonderful joy even in the midst of persecution. Never before in all their lives has anyone loved them. Always they have known nothing but fear : fear of wild beasts, fear of their oppressors, fear of demons. Now they know what love is and are strangely happy. In their new found happiness they sing new songs. One of these songs of joy or hJiajans, as they are called, recently swept over India. Over- night it seemed everybody was singing it. It was composed by an eight-year-old boy, the son of one of these outcastes.

Rajah Tisu, aiyah! Rajah Yisu^ aiyah! Shaitan ho jitne he liye. Rajah Yis2i, aiyah!

King Jesus is come!

King Jesus is come!

He has come to drive away Satan.

King Jesus is come!

"KING JESUS IS COME" 61

And the last verse is the best :

King Jesus has come to give me great blessings. Everything that is good for me ; King Jesus is Come!

And the very end is a shout of triumph :

Yisu Masih M Jai! Victory to Jesus Christ!

Surely it is worth while to send missionaries if we can so transform lives of misery and selfish- ness into lives of love, happiness, and song.

CHAPTER FIVE

Schooldays

^^Want to go to school with me?" asked Bob's father one morning.

^^We'd love to!" the children exclaimed, '"be- cause we won't have to study if you are along."

They put on their big shade hats and soon were out on the smooth broad road over which a double row of splendid mango trees arched. Their thick branches gave grateful shade from the Indian sun that was beating down, hot and glaring, on the lit- tle mud-fenced fields. In these fields the yellow mustard flowers were gay amid the ripening wheat.

As they approached the village next to their own, a curious sound of high voices apparently chanting in unison caused Bob to look at Peggy, and they both laughed.

^Tearer the tiny one-room schoolhouse the sound grew louder and louder. ''That's the way I'd like to study," exclaimed Bob; "at the top of my lungs ! ' '

"Yes," said Peggy, "but not if you had to stay in one dark, stuffy room in a mud house. ' '

"Some of the schools Father visits are held on verandas, though, and some are out under a big tree. I'd like that."

"Oh, see the animals, Uncle John!" shouted

62

SCHOOLDAYS 63

Peggy, jumping up and down. '^It's just like Mary's little lamb."

They had come within sight of the door of the little schoolhouse. A goat was browsing about the yard, some chickens were scratching beside the door, and from a branch of a near-by tree swung a mischievous monkey by his tail, peering in through the door as well as he could.

Within the room Peggy noticed that there were no desks. There was a table and chair for the teacher, but Bob knew that in some village schools even these were lacking. There were only one or two schoolbooks for the entire class, a few more slates and pencils, and a small blackboard. But the children of this village were fortunate in hav- ing any school at all.

It is curious to note that while our ancestors were still ignorant barbarians, Hindu scholars were inventing the wonderfully clever and useful method of writing numbers which we now use, — the so-called Arabic system having been invented in India, — and yet even today in that country only one boy in ten can read and write and only one girl in a hundred. Although during thousands of years Brahman boys have been taught by their priests, — principally, it must be confessed, to memorize the sacred scriptures, — there were no schools of any kind in India for the common peo- ple until the early missionaries introduced them. Even in those villages where there now are pri-

64

THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

H. R. Ferger, Lahore, India

In such mosque schools as this, Mohammedan boys learn to repeat verses from the Koran. They also learn a little number-work and their alphabet.

mary schools, not every child can attend, for there are the goats to be tended and fodder for the oxen to be carried.

As Bob and Peggy entered the school with their father, a little boy came running to the door. He shouted, ''Dilawar, Dilawar, the plow is broken! You must go to the blacksmith in the next village." And Dilawar left for the day. Interruptions like this were likely to occur at any time. Under such conditions and with a teacher often poorly trained, it is no wonder that the children do not make great progress.

On the way home Bob's father told about some night-schools, started by missionaries, for men and boys who cannot attend day-school. In these

SCHOOLDAYS

65

schools a boy and his father can study together without any of the interruptions that arise during the day. In a certain village the people asked the missionary to start such a school. The mission- ary offered to pay for the land if the people would build a house. Some gave bamboo for the timbers and the roof, others gave their time building the mud walls. The mission supplied a good lantern and the books. The pupils pay from four to eight cents a month. Some fifty-five men and boys at- tend. The paths to the school lead through dark wood infested by snakes and scorpions. In self- protection the pupils come in groups, singing and clapping their hands to frighten away the snakes, while the missionary teacher takes care to have medicine on hand in case anyone should be bitten.

A little village mission school in North India.

66 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

The school opens with physical exercises because most of the pupils are tired from the day's work and need to be thoroughly awakened. Following this drill, comes the scripture lesson and then the lessons in reading and writing. By the time the school is over, it is too late to go home, so the men and boys stretch out on the floor of the school- room and sleep there until morning. These schools continue for only two months each year. A tired, sleepy boy studying nights for two months cannot learn a great deal, still, one can learn something. It is hard for us to realize how much even a few months' schooling may mean.

''How did Tika Eam lose his field?" asked a missionary in a certain Indian village.

"He put his thumb impression on the document without knowing what it contained," was the an- swer. It was a pitiful story. Tika had had two deaths in his family and needed some money. He went to the Hindu money-lender and asked for a loan of sixty rupees (about $20), which the money- lender promised, at the rate of seventy-five per cent per year. In the evening the con- tract was ready. Of course Tika could neither read the contract nor write his name; he had to take the money-lender's word for what he was signing. So he put his big right thumb first on the ink pad and then at the bottom of the writing. The money-lender signed his name and had two witnesses to sign with him. A few days later

SCHOOLDAYS 67

some Hindu men came to Tika's place and began looking it over. When Tika asked the reason, they replied, '^We have jnst purchased this land from the money-lender. '^ And it turned out that the document on which the poor farmer had put his thumb, in reality said nothing about a loan, but stated that Tika Eam sold his farm for four hun- dred rupees. The money-lender in turn had sold it again.

There are, in India, however, some very for- tunate boys, let us say one boy in a thousand. Not only is his father able to keep him in school all through the primary grades, but he is granted a high school scholarship. He will study English and history and science. In time he may even go to one of the mission colleges, or he may go to the government university. Such a fortunate boy will probably some day be found to have be- come either a lawyer or a government officer in Calcutta or Bombay, a cultivated gentleman, speaking English as well or better than many educated white people in India. There are no finer men anywhere than may be found among the college graduates of India.

Book learning, however, is only one part of edu- cation. There are other lessons that Indian boys and girls are being taught which are important, even as important as reading and writing. They are learning, for example, that the plague is caused by the bites of fleas, and that the fleas are

68

THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

carried by rats ; that malaria is caused by a certain kind of mosquito; and that the danger of cholera may be lessened by putting a little permanganate of potash in the village well. Still more import- ant is the kind of education which builds character, which trains in honesty and helpfulness.

Athletics at Lucknow Christian College are teaching the students fair play, pluck, and teamwork.

Because there are many splendid lessons which are learned better through athletic games than in any other way, the missionary teachers have in- troduced football, field hockey, and cricket into the schools of India. At first the Hindu boys re- fused to play. ''What," they said, "get all hot doing coolie work and chasing a ball around!''

SCHOOLDAYS 69

And would not the leather ball ^'defile'' them since it was made from the skin of a dead cow? Grrad- ually, however, the lads in the mission schools have got over these prejudices and have learned to play games as skilfully as any boys in the world. They have a game of their own called atia-patia, which is played on a long, narrow field like a foot- ball gridiron, except that it is only six yards wide. In such games the boys learn not to cheat, but to play fair, to be plucky in the face of defeat, and, most of all, to cooperate with each other as good team workers should.

It is the same kind of education that the scout movement has been giving for years to American boys and girls. The first troop of Boy Scouts in India was organized a little over fi^Q years ago. Today there are over twenty thousand Scouts in that country. They are trained, just as our West- ern Scouts are trained, in map-drawing, camp- cooking, first-aid, and other kinds of useful service.

Troop Number One of Dehra Dun in northern India, went on a camping trip two or three sum- mers ago. There were ten boys in the squad, to- gether with their Scoutmaster. They started out on the trip carrying their own blankets and duffel bags. Some of them were high-caste boys who, a few months before, would have considered it be- neath their dignity to carry anything. They would have called it ''coolie work." When they reached the camp, there was the same noise and fun as in

70 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

our American Scout camps. But when the time came for tlie ^'eats,'' a difference was to be no- ticed. Some of tlie boys were Hindus and some were Mohammedans, and the food for each group was cooked separately and eaten separately. The Scoutmaster wondered how long that arrangement would last. ^'Tomorrow morning there will be flap-jacks for breakfast/^ he said to himself. *' Suppose the call goes up for 'seconds on the flap- jacks, ' and there are extra plates full on one table and none on the other; what will happen f As a matter of fact, on this particular trip, before the two weeks were over all the boys were eating to- gether at one table.

A report from another Scoutmaster shows how these Indian Scouts are learning the lesson of serv- ice to all who are in need of help. This report tells what the Scouts did at two melas. ^'At both of the melas, our Scouts were out in full force with two other troops, nearly one hundred in all. We had a tent to which all lost children were brought and kept until they were claimed by their parents. This tent was gaily decorated with flags and scout signs in four languages. We also had arrange- ments for supplying water to the thirsty, the scouts drawing and carrying it themselves. On the last day of the Jhanda Mela, we were on duty at the railway station, showing people how to stand in line and helping women and old people to buy their tickets. To stand in line was a new exper-

^

SCHOOLDAYS 11

ience for all, but they soon found that they got their tickets quicker than in the old method and without the usual pushing and fighting.''

Another fine example of this kind of education is the work of a mission school in Kashmir, under the direction of Mr. Tyndale-Biscoe. The Vale of Kashmir is called the paradise of India. It is situated high among the Himalayas, and the cli- mate is delightful. On every side, in the distance, may be seen magnificent snow-capped mountain peaks. The school is located in the capital city, Srinagar, on the Jhelum Eiver.

Mr. Tyndale-Biscoe went there some thirty years ago as headmaster. As the school building was situated directly on the banks of the river, he undertook to teach the boys to row. When he se- cured his first boat, he himself rowed it down the river to the school. As he neared the building, ' ^ the windows were crowded with straining necks and turbaned heads, all grinning and chattering, won- dering what new folly the young Sahib had taken to now. ' ' When he proposed to the boys that they should learn to row, he learned to his astonish- ment that ''a Brahman must not touch an English oar because on it is a button of leather, and leather is made from a dead cow. ' ' Moreover, no Brahman must row or paddle a boat because only members of the boatman caste do that kind of work. In fact, pulling an oar might produce muscle on the arms and only boatman coolies and other low-

72 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

caste folks have muscles. That was thirty years ago. Today there is a great race on the river every summer, over a two mile course, where crews from this and nine other schools compete.

This is only a small part of the story. When Mr. Tyndale-Biscoe first came to Srinagar he found at the school some two hundred boys, ^'smelly and dirty, squatting on the floor with mouths open, and fingers messing around their faces or holding fire-pots under their long night- gown-shaped clothes. Often the only clean spot on these Brahman boys was the daub of red paint on their foreheads, put there by the priest to show that they were worshippers of the god Siva.^' With all their dirt, they would not allow their teacher to touch them for fear of defiling them and would squirm if, by chance, he patted them on the back. Not only were they dirty in body, they were deceitful, lazy, insolent, and conceited. In this new school, however, beside their lessons and books, they soon found themselves, not only rowing, but also swimming and organized in teams for cricket and other games.

The motto of the school is, ''In All Things Be Men.'' They were expected to look every day for opportunities of being helpful and kind to other people. There surely was need for helpfulness in that land. Srinagar, thirty years ago, was ''a huge, rabbit-warren sort of place, of 125,000 in- habitants. All the streets were crooked, all the

SCHOOLDAYS 73

streets were narrow, all the streets were filthy. Instead of paving stones, rocks of all shapes and sizes had been thrown down indiscriminately, so that pedestrians had to pick their way from rock to rock, avoiding, if possible, the mud that lay between. The garbage was thrown in the streets. Had dogs not been created to feed on garbage? The character of the people was what you might expect in such surroundings. The male sex pushed all women and children out of their path, but made way for cows and the pariah dogs, as the former have horns and the latter, teeth." Not very promising surroundings for a school, surely ! But this school has educated and trained boys by set- ting them to change as far as they could these wretched conditions. They have learned to be loving, by bringing love into that unloving and selfish city.

About eighteen years ago there was a severe epidemic of cholera in Kashmir. The boys from the school volunteered to clean up the city. In spite of the opposition of the priests, they took their picks and shovels, went to the city dumping ground and began to dig ditches for drains and holes for burying the filth. Day after day they worked until they turned that breeding ground of pestilence into a park with grass and flowers. Another year there was a famine, and the greedy merchants charged enormous prices for rice, which is the staple food of the people. The boys from

74 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

the school again volunteered at the call of the governor of the province and went np and down the river for many miles searching for rice which might be bought at a cheaper price and brought into the city. The spirit of Christ, as revealed in such deeds as these, has completely taken posses- sion, of the school.

Baseball at Lucknow Christian College. Until a few years ago, physical exercise was scorned among the caste people of India. Now athletic sports and games are entered into as enthusias- tically as in the West.

While these things have been done for the boys of India, what sort of chance has little sister been given?

Down to modern times a school for girls was an

SCHOOLDAYS 75

unheard of thing. ' ' What ! ' ' exclaimed one Hindu ; ''Teach my daughter to read! Teach my cow. It will learn as easily as any girl will.'' Dr. Duff, one of the early missionaries, declared, ''You may as well try to climb a wall five hundred miles high as get a Brahman to send his girls to school." Even today all the customs and ideas of India in regard to girls and women are chains to hold them back.

A little girl in India is not welcomed when she is born. When her brother came, there was a great celebration, with rattles and drums. You would have thought it was New Year's Eve in America. But no drums were beaten when his sister was born, — she was "only a girl." As she grows older, it may be that a missionary will try to persuade her father to send her to a school for girls, just as he is sending her brother. But her father will probably say, "What's the use; in a few years she will be married. Why bother!" Some day, by and by, her mother will call her into the house to try on a new dress. It will be prettier than any she has ever had before. "Oh, isn't it lovely!" she will exclaim. And there will be new bracelets of colored glass, and shining silver ban- gles. How beautiful! But then will come the bad news. Her mother will tell her that the new sari is to be her wedding dress. Her father has arranged her marriage with the help of the vil- lage barber, who has found her a husband. After

76 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

she is married, it is likely that she will have to be a drudge in the household of her husband's mother. She will never be permitted to go out on the streets, except with her face veiled; she must never speak to any men, except members of her own family; if she ever goes on a journey, she will have to travel in a heavily curtained carriage, ^'behind the purdah," as they call it. What chance will she have to see things or to meet people or to grow in mind through new exper- iences— to say nothing of going to school !

And yet, there are girls in India, today, who are getting^ an education, — a fortunate few. Their fathers are somehow persuaded to let them go for a little while to one of the rare primary schools for girls. There they learn to read and to write the queer letters of the Indian alphabet, practising them on the loose sand of the schoolroom floor. For a few months, perhaps a year or two, they may go — and those years will be so happy! And then will come the message that they must come home to be married. Most Hindu girls, even the few who are given a little education, are called home from school in this way before they are twelve.

It seems a pitiful thing to say, but, in view of the customs which the great majority of Hindu families still follow strictly, it might be that only through some great misfortune would a girl ever have an opportunity to go to any school above the

SCHOOLDAYS

77

primary grade. If a terrible famine or pestilence should leave her without relatives to care for her, some kind missionaries might take her into one of their homes and send her to high school or col- lege. Or, if her husband should die, she might be

These Brahman girls, who attend a mission school in South India, have many ways of decorating their hair.

SO ill-treated that she would run away and find refuge in some Christian widow's home or school. A great many of the girls' schools in India were first opened as orphanages that took care of little girls who had been left to die during famines and who had been picked up and brought to these ^ 'funny people who cared about girls." Other

78 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

schools have been opened just for child-widows. The life of a widow in India is perhaps the sad- dest in all the world. In their ignorance and superstition the people suppose that the death of the husband is because of his wife's sins. All her good clothes and jewelry are snatched away from her, her head is shaved, she is dressed in old, ragged clothing, and everyone curses and avoids her. Her very touch is considered defiling, as though she were an outcaste or a pariah. Many a poor little child-widow has fled for refuge to the Christian missionary.

However, all who love India rejoice that the teaching of the Christian ideals of family life is beginning to show its effect even in families where the members have not become Christians in name. Here and there are courageous Hindu gentlemen who see that such cruel treatment of widows is a great blot on Indian life and they refuse to follow the old customs any longer.

There is another way, and a wonderful way, in which an Indian girl may be given a real chance to develop into the beautiful, educated woman which she may become; her parents may be won to Christ, and all their ideas may be changed. There are more and more such Christian homes every day, and from them come hundreds of Chris- tian girls to the various schools and colleges for women which the missionaries have founded.

The oldest and most famous woman's college in

SCHOOLDAYS 79

India was established by Isabella M. Tlioburn, a brave American woman who went to India years ago to find out if it were really true that you could get no Indian girls into a schoolroom. Eight among the shops of the Lucknow bazaar she opened a little school in a tiny mud house. At first some of the Hindus tried to break it up by force, and she had to hire guards. Nevertheless, the girls continued to come, and the school grew until she had to ask for money to buy a larger building. So it came about that the school was moved to Lai Bagh, a beautiful old residence with large grounds. More and more classes were added. A high school department was started, and then even college classes. It was given the name of its founder, and Isabella Thoburn Col- lege became the first college for women in all Asia. Today, this college has been made the women's department in the great government uni- versity at Lucknow.

The students in the few colleges and schools that there are for girls in India have wonderfully good times. They have learned, for example, to play basketball. At first they could not grasp the idea. When the center was knocked down in the scrim- mage, she flew into a rage. After the game, the losing team cried like babies. But gradually they learned to take hard knocks and laugh at them and to play fair. Dramatics they find great fun too. The Hindu people seem to have a natural talent

80

THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

for acting. They love to turn Bible stories and old Hindu tales into plays and act them out. Be- side their study and their play these girls learn not to cheat, to be loyal to their school, and always to be kind.

Girl Guides of the Isabella Thoburn High School, Lucknow, are learning a new spirit of helpfulness and strength to carry back to their home villages.

A group of girls wrote this letter of apology to their teacher:

Dear Miss :

We are the Math students who made you so much trouble this morning, and we feel very sorry. We ought to have told you before, but we did not, so please excuse us for the fault we committed and realize now. Our love to you.

Fifth Form Math Girls

SCHOOLDAYS 81

It is not strange that when such girls as these go back to their own villages, they bring a new spirit into their homes. One girl wrote to her teacher during the summer vacation: "We have given our mother a month's holiday. All she needs to do is to go to the bazaar and buy supplies. My sister and I do all the rest.'' Another girl, named Jewel, begged the use of the sewing-machine in the mission bungalow and for days before Christ- mas, with her bare feet on the treadle, kept the wheels whirling, making presents for all her many little brothers and sisters.

Of all who have helped the girls and women of India to a better chance in life, none have done more or served their cause more faithfully and heroically than one of India's own daughters, the famous Pandita Eamabai, whose death on April 5, 1922, was mourned all over the world. Eama- bai's father, a Brahman, was an extraordinary man who, in the face of all the traditions of his people, believed in educating women. He took his little girl-wife away from his relatives into the forest, where he built a hut and where they lived and studied together. When their little daughter Eamabai was old enough, she also studied with her father and mother, and they were all very happy. But after a time, a terrible famine came, in which Eamabai lost both her father and her mother. She never forgot their life together, how- ever, or her father's ideas about giving women an

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equal chance. This impression was deepened by an event which she saw when she was a little girl of eight. She was playing in the courtyard of the house where her father's people lived in the town of Muttra. In the same yard a child-wife was sit- ting at her spinning-wheel. In those days nearly all the clothing in India was made of home- spun cotton. Factory-made cloth was rarely seen. Presently the little wife was called for a moment into the house and left her pile of cotton lying by the wheel. This was too great a temptation to the monkeys that were chattering on the roof of the house. One of them leaped down, snatched up the cotton, and disappeared. The loss was a mere trifle, but the mother-in-law, a hard, cruel woman, would not believe the story about the monkeys and, not only beat the child cruelly, but complained to the husband about the wasteful, deceitful crea- ture he had brought into the house. He too be- came enraged and whipped the friendless, help- less little one. Ramabai never forgot her pitiful cries.

As she grew older, Eamabai continued to study, until, in later years, the fame of her learning had so spread that she was able to support herself by lecturing. The proud Brahmans were amazed to hear her quote the ancient writings. They called her '^Pandita,'' or learned, a title no woman had been allowed to bear. As soon as possible, she tried to carry out her father's ideas. She went to

SCHOOLDAYS 83

England to study the schools there in the hope of doing something for the widows of her own coun- try. While in England, she came to believe in Christ. Eeturning to India, she opened a home for high-caste Hindu widows. Her beautiful kind- ness and love soon won their hearts.

A little later a terrible famine broke out in Cen- tral India, and Ramabai hurried to the famine dis- trict and brought back three hundred starving girls. She placed them on a little farm which she had bought and taught them, not only how to do all kinds of work, but also to read and write. This home is called MuMi, or Salvation, and over the entrance are the words in Marathi, ^'Praise the Lord.'' From it have gone out hundreds of en- lightened Christian women who are helping to make a new India. Those who marry and have families do not quickly become just ignorant old women, but wise loving mothers, like our own dear mothers in America.

How quickly India would be changed and made Christlike if only there were, not hundreds, but hundreds of thousands of such mothers, to love and comfort and train their boys and girls, and of fathers trained, in such schools as Tyndale-Bis- coe's at Srinagar, to be strong and courageous Christian gentlemen.

CHAPTER SIX

Feeding the Hungry

^' Peggy/' said Uncle John, ^'if you had ^ve cents a day to spend on food, what would you buy?''

^'Why — why — ," said Peggy, ^'I think I'd buy an apple. ' '

^'And would that satisfy you until the next day?"

'^Oh, I'd want Mother to give me some cereal for breakfast, and some bread and jam, at least, for lunch, and some meat and potatoes for dinner."

''That is what the boys and girls of India must Svant' too, but what most of them get is the equi- valent of the apple you mentioned. ' '

"They're hungry about all the time, aren't they?" asked Bob.

''Yes," was the reply, "and although the 'wealth of India' has been a proverb since long before the time of Solomon, most of the common people live, even to-day, on a mere pittance."

Bob's father then went on to tell Bob and Peggy that poverty in India grows out of a number of causes. One is, that her people are not trained in the best ways of working. For this reason mis- sionaries have started schools where their pupils can learn trades.

At Baranagar, a town five miles north of Cal-

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FEEDING THE HUNGRY 85

cutta, there were eighteen boys in an orphanage, poor waifs who had been rescued from death dur- ing one of India's famines. There was very little money to care for them, and the woman mission- ary in charge began to wonder, '^Is there no way in which the boys can work and earn money to help care for themselves !'' Then she thought of Am- rito, a clever mechanic in that town.

Amrito's father had been a clerk. Amrito was to have been a clerk also, but after his father's death, his friends grew tired of paying for his education and decided to make him an apprentice to an engraver in a gun factory. Amrito was heartbroken at first, but finally concluded to make the best of it. He became a skilled workman and stayed in the factory eleven years. By the end of that time he was earning unusually high wages for an Indian.

When Miss Evans, the missionary at the or- phanage, asked Amrito if he could not teach her boys some trade, he went home and thought and prayed over the matter. It would mean a good deal of self-sacrifice. But he saw a chance to do a great service, even greater perhaps than the missionary had dreamed.

The next day he said to Miss Evans, ** Could you trust me to begin a school for boysf I will take no pay." The result was that the school was started at once. Amrito gave up his good position in the factory and even contributed jewelry which

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was sold for what it would bring. Friends gave land and tools. The boys gradually made other tools for themselves. The buildings were so small that each time they were given a new piece of machinery, they had to build an addition in order to make room for it. All the old boxes that came in were taken by the boys and made into shelves and drawers and benches.

Little by little the school has grown, until it has made a splendid name for itself in all that part of India. The boys work at their machines and learn mechanical trades by day, and in the evening have lessons in reading, writing, and arithmetic. The articles they make are sold, and from the proceeds the boys are paid, just like other apprentices. They themselves wrote this little school song about their work :

The soldiers in Mespot have often used oil Kept in bottles of brass supplied by our toil. Many muzzle ]3rotectors and cartridge belt studs Have gone from our workshop to their fighting squads. For Assam tea gardens weVe sifters and driers; For jute mills, cop spindles and brass gills and fliers; For steamers, for trains, and for warehouses, locks; For municipal hydrants the best water-cocks. In exalted position our work may be seen, For Government House a good patron has been. Brass handles for drawer chests and casters for chairs. And eyes for the brass rods on vice-regal stairs.

After a few years the boys leave the school and go into factories in Calcutta and elsewhere, re-

FEEDING THE HUNGRY 87

ceiving good wages. The people of Baranagar no longer say, ''Only dunces go to a school where they learn to work with their hands." The boys learn, not only to do honest work, but to be square in all business dealings and to remember the school's mottoes: ''God is Almighty," and "Pray devoutly, labor stoutly." It is a great work that Amrito has accomplished in Baranagar. Other schools like his have since been started by mis- sionaries, where both boys and girls can learn trades and where they can learn to be proud of good work of any kind.

But there are comparatively few factories in India, as compared with America, where men and boys can find employment. With her rich soil and warm climate, India will always be chiefly a land of farms. It is even more important to teach her people how to be skilful farmers than to establish schools for training brass and iron workers. For years missionaries have tried to think of ways to help the farmers raise larger crops in order that not so many people would have to go to bed hungry every night.

In one district where throngs of despised out- castes, living in the deepest poverty were beg- ging the mission to receive them as Christians, the missionaries found a unique opportunity to help the people. These outcastes kept chickens — poor, weak, unprofitable fowls they were — but still the people knew something about the care of poul-

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try, and this was enough to furnish the rude be- ginnings of a new enterprise. Mr. Arthur E. Slater, one of the young missionaries who had a vision of wliat might be achieved by tliese humble folk if they were taught a respectable trade, came

Mr. Slater and his native helpers find "missionaries in feathers" good assistants in teaching the people of India how to make better livings.

to Canada and took a thorough course in poultry culture at an agricultural college. Then he went back to the little town of Etah, miles from a rail- road, and began to show the people how to breed better fowls and how to increase the production of eggs. He imported some fine American chickens, crossed them with the native breeds, and sold set- tings of eggs to the people.

FEEDING THE HUNGRY 89

Soon these wonderful chickens began to be the talk of the villages. The people could scarcely believe their eyes when they saw how many eggs were being gathered. Mr. Slater also showed them how to avoid being cheated by the tricky egg mer- chants who had been defrauding them, and he opened up a better market for the produce. Every year he receives from friends in America new shipments of these ^'missionaries in feathers," as he calls his imported chickens. Today the people of that district, who, in former years, were miser- able, filthy, and hopeless, are becoming a clean, well-fed, and happy community. They have their own schools and their own church, which they themselves largely support.

With this same purpose of helping the people to get more out of their farms, agricultural schools and experiment stations have been started by many missions. One of the most famous of these is the Allahabad Agricultural Institute which was founded as a result of the vision and energy of Mr. Sam Higginbottom.

The land that was bought for the farm on which the Institute is located was considered very poor. Mr. Higginbottom did not want people to say: *'0h, you had good land! Anybody could raise fine crops on such land!" They could never say this about the Jumna Farm. In fact, at first, the neighboring farmers said just the opposite. They laughed, ''You'll never get anywhere with that

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land." It was infested with a kind of quack grass that spreads from the roots as well as through seed. The native plows only cut through the roots of the grass, and each small fragment begins at once to send out new shoots. The result is that in the course of a few years such a field becomes so completely matted with this wiry grass that it is almost a hopeless task to try to redeem it. But Mr. Higginbottom began his work by importing some fine American plows which would turn a fur- row ten inches deep. With these he plowed his land, turning the quack grass sods completely over and exposing their roots to the sun. That very first year, as the result of the deep plowing, and in spite of a dry season, his crops were better than those raised even in favorable years in that part of the country.

Everybody marvelled. Young farmer lads came to the mission and said, ''Teach us the new ways." There was little money to care for them, and no buildings where they could live or where classes could meet. A school was started, nevertheless. In dry weather the boys slept under the trees. When it rained, they took shelter in the machinery shed. By-and-by more money came in from friends in America, buildings were erected, and the school grew. The boys are taught how to use better fertilizers, how to make betters breeds of cattle, and how to build silos for preserving green fodder for the cattle through the long dry season.

FEEDING THE HUNGRY

91

A very important tiling tliey learn is how to use labor-saving macliinery. Sometimes there are amusing difficulties. The ordinary Indian plow is only a curved piece of wood with a small iron point A man has to walk fifty miles in plowing

n li Ferrjer, Lahore, India Working over the hard-baked "liidian sod with an old-time ^ wooden plow.

an acre, and then he has only scratched the sur- face of the soil. But when Mr. Higginhottom tried to introduce our American plows, he found that Indian farmers could not use them. The trouble was that with these large plows they could not reach to twist the tails of the oxen, who are accustomed to being guided in this manner. Now, however, a new plow is being made especially tor Indian use, which, though large enough to turn a deep furrow, is small enough and short enough for the farmer to reach forward and give the tails of his oxen the proper twist.

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Giving a farmer an agricultural education is not always enough, however, to lift him out of poverty and misery. A certain farmer who lived near Jumna Mission Farm was bright enough and energetic enough to watch the methods used by Mr. Higginbottom's students and, to some extent, copy them. His crops were greatly increased, and he was very happy. But the very next year his landlord doubled the rent of his little field. Imagine the black cloud of hopelessness which set- tled down on that poor fellow's heart, and the hearts of all his neighbors! '^What is the use of working hard f ' ' they asked each other. ^ ' Of what use to us are these fine new schemes! The more rice and wheat we raise, the more we must pay to the rich landowner. We might as well give up our hopes. It is the will of the gods that we shall always live in wretchedness."

The great majority of Indian farmers rent their farms and are in bondage to these rich landowners, who take from them in rent every cent they pos- sibly can. These men are often money-lenders as well as landlords. Seventy-five per cent a year is not an uncommonly high rate of interest for them to charge. It is money wrung from the necessities of the poor. The cruel game is played in this way : A farmer finds himself in desperate need of money. Perhaps there was a famine the preced- ing year, and now the planting season has come again and he has no seed to sow in his fields ; or

FEEDING THE HUNGRY 93

perhaps his daughter is nearly twelve years old and unless she is married within a year, the fam- ily, according to their ideas, will be disgraced. And if she is married, a large sum of money, called dowry, must be paid to the husband's family. So, for one reason or another, the man is driven to the money-lender. He is given the money, but from that time on, month after month, year after year, he must shoulder the burden of those enormous interest payments. Year after year he is threat- ened, insulted, cursed, and cheated. Can anyone blame him if he sinks back into a life of laziness and dirt I

So, along with the new training in the best methods of farming, it became necessary for some- one to help these farmers of India to beat off the greedy men. Help has been brought to thousands of such people through a plan which has been worked out chiefly by the Young Men's Christian Association of India. Into a little village there will come a Y. M. C. A. Eural Secretary, who pro- poses to its leading men the organization of a co- operative credit bank. Each farmer is to deposit a rupee or two, and then, in case of need, he can borrow a small sum at a fair rate of interest, say nine and one-half to fifteen per cent, instead of seventy-five per cent. There is a Christian Cen- tral Cooperative Bank in the city of Madras, with a capital amounting to more than $25,000 from which these little village branches can borrow for

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their members. Each member, however, has a proportionate share of responsibility for the debts of his branch.

It is not easy to organize these societies. The oppressed and discouraged people have always been cheated, and they have learned to cheat in turn. They know very little of trust or trust- worthiness. Most of them cannot read or write. "Who will keep the bank's accounts? The secre- tary has to train the people in the very simplest matters. He must put the rules of the bank into the form of easily memorized verse or jingle. He must collect interest payments when they fall due, and teach the people the importance of promptness and reliability in business dealings. He must find someone sufficiently intelligent and educated to understand the rudiments of book- keeping, and, as soon as possible, make him re- sponsible for the banks' funds. All this takes time. But in spite of these difficulties, there are now more than two hundred and forty of these Cooperative Credit Societies, with a membership of more than six thousand, and a working capital of more than 150,000 rupees, or about $50,000, much of which has been subscribed in small sums by the members themselves. It is significant of the careful supervision and planning that not one penny of all the loans which have been made has been lost. Every one has been paid back at the proper time.

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A¥liat lias been accomplished is truly wonderful. Take, for example, the story of Jokhan Singh, of the village of Chittanni, in North India. This fine old gentleman was a member of the warrior caste and, although he could neither read nor write, he was keen enough of wit to catch by mental arithme- tic even a ^ve cent overcharge in an interest pay- ment. When the cooperative bank was organized in Chittanni, Jokhan Singh had been owing five hundred rupees to the money-lender for ten years. He had paid many times this amount in interest and still was not free of the burden. He no longer expected ever to be free. He fully expected that he would die in debt and pass on the burden to his children. The first thing the new bank did, was to pay off these five hundred rupees to the village lender, who did not want the matter settled so easily, and who had to be coaxed and threatened before he would consent. Within a year or two, Jokhan Singh had repaid the full amount to the cooperative bank and was a free man again. A little later, when his house burned down, he re- built with the help of a new loan, and the new house was larger and better than the old one.

Another story is told by a Y. M. C. A. secretary. ^*A poor man came to me one day, very glad and joyful. ^Do you know what has happened! All my debts have been paid. I sold one of my farm animals and got ninty rupees and cleared off all my debts. See, here is my receipt.'

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*'I read the receipt once, twice, and the third time. ' My friend, what is this ! ' I said. ^ This re- ceipt says nothing about the debt having been paid. It says you still owe the money-lender one hundred and fifty rupees.' The old man, more than sixty years old, began to weep like a baby. He could not stand the disappointment and went insane.

*'His son, who was thirty years old, showed me a dagger. ' I am going to kill that money-lender, ' he said. ^Whether we live or die, it matters not. Look at my father!' I went to the money-lender and asked the old rat to wipe off the debt. His reply was, ^He owes me one hundred and fifty rupees. If he comes to kill me, I have plenty of men to handle him.'

^'I finally got the money-lender to reduce the debt to one hundred rupees. That was the best I could do. Then we started a cooperative bank. Now the whole debt is paid, and the man is free."

Wherever these banks have been organized, similar stories are told : stories of men who have been helped to buy seed or tools, or who have been enabled to buy their own farms instead of paying extortionate rents to wealthy landowners. By such everyday helpfulness as this, the disciples of Jesus in India today are trying to carry out the spirit of his words when He said that He came to preach deliverance to captives and the opening of the prison-house to them that are bound.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Adventijkes in Healing

HOSPITAL FOR COWS. So reads a sign on a gateway in Karachi. For hundreds of years, in all parts of India, men and women, to prove them- selves pious Hindus, have built and supported hospitals for all sorts of animals. During one famine, when thousands of human beings starved to death and when only the very rich were not hungry all the time, twenty thousand rats were fed by Jain priests. These Jains are one sect of Hindus who make it their chief rule not to kill an animal or insect, however small. A Jain priest always carries a little broom with which to sweep his path before him lest he step on some living creature and kill it.

Hospitals for cows, hospitals for rats, but few hospitals where a sick man or child could be taken and cared for and made well again! And there are so many sick people in India. Sometimes it seems as if all India were sick. The deaf, the blind, the crippled, the lepers, wander everywhere. Instead of trying to do something for them, peo- ple have always shrugged their shoulders and said, '^It is the will of the gods. If the gods have made little Sita blind, what can be done!'' Yet often a very slight operation would restore Sita's sight. Most of the blindness is preventable. If

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the mothers would only keep their little babies clean and not allow flies to settle continually on their faces, there would be no ''sore eyes," of the kind which makes most of the blindness.

Do they have no doctors'? Yes, doctors of a sort. An amusing story is told ^ of a poor little wife who came to a mission hospital asking for medicine for her husband who was sick with the influenza. The directions on the bottle said, ' ^ Shake well before using. ' ' So she took the medi- cine home and shook — her poor sick husband, be- fore every dose. ''Why," she said, "I supposed that was what it meant. Our village doctors al- ways shake sick people to drive the demons out." That is a good example of their doctors' methods. If a little girl has a fever, a dreadful clatter with tin pans is prescribed to scare away the demons, and her temple is burned with a red-hot poker to let the fever demon out. Being sick in India does not mean a quiet, restful room, with a wise, skil- ful doctor, and mother watching over you and making dainty things for you to eat; it means dreadful torture.

To help these pitiful ones, the medical mission- aries have come — the first, more than a hundred years ago — with their medicines, their surgical in- struments, and their scientific knowledge. Hun- dreds of hospitals have been built, and a countless multitude of sick and despairing sufferers have

1 Told by Miss Applegarth.

ADVENTURES IN HEALING

99

been healed. And because their patients were al- wa3^s asking why the missionaries should care Y/hcn they were sick, and why they should work so hard to help the people of a foreign land, this has given the missionary doctor a chance to tell

A leper church — the men on one side and the women on the other — giving thanks for having found the God of Love.

them about the Christ who healed the sick, cured the lepers, and made the blind to see, and who still fills the hearts of his followers with compassion for all their human brothers who are in need. Many who have come to the doctor for medicine for the body have found also a wonderful medi- cine for the soul.

Many exciting stories could be told about the

100 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

lives of medical missionaries in India. For ex- ample, the story of Dr. PennelPs work for twenty years among the wild tribes on the northwestern border of India, just across from Afghanistan, sounds like an adventure story, and every word of it is true.

The Afghans, many of whom live on the Indian side of the border, claim to have been descended from the lost tribes of Israel and are fanatical Moslems. Many of them are cruel, treacherous, and dishonest. Yet they are also very hospitable and loyal to a friend. Their priests, who are called Mullahs, are usually the only people who can read and write, and they have much influence with the people. They are very bitter against Christianity, and consequently cause the mission- aries much trouble. Christians among the Af- ghans, Pathans, and the Moslem tribes are always in danger. There are men called ghazis who take a vow to kill at least one ^^ unbeliever" before they die. The Mullahs teach them that by so doing they will wipe away all their sins and go to the highest heaven in the life beyond.

Blood feuds among themselves are also very common. In British territory, of course, they are afraid of the law, and open shooting is not com- mon; but across the border, few Afghans dare to go out of their houses without their rifles ready for use. They have in their houses peep holes to shoot through rather than windows to see through.

ADVENTURES IN HEALlNa 101

Whole families are often wiped out in these feuds. In Dr. Pennell's hospital patients frequently asked to be put in wards away from the windows, for fear some enemy would fire at them. One man who had been blinded by his enemies came to Dr. Pennell begging, ' ' 0 Sahib, give me my sight long enough to go and shoot my enemy, then I shall be satisfied to be blind all the rest of my life."

To live as a Christian missionary among such vindictive, cruel people surely required much courage. Nevertheless, Dr. Pennell went quietly ahead with his plans and opened a small hospital at Bannu, which is a small town about twenty miles from the border of Afghanistan. From that hospital as a center, he traveled through all that region. He learned to speak the native language perfectly and dressed in the native costume, so that frequently he was taken for an Afghan. He was attacked many times for preaching Christ. The Mullahs ordered their people not to listen to him or even to go to him for medicine. Once a bandit boasted that he would kill the Sahib the next time he made a certain trip. When Dr. Pen- nell heard this, he made the trip alone and un- armed and slept by the roadside going and com- ing. The bandit, for some reason, did not dare to carry out his threat.

In traveling. Dr. Pennell often placed himself under the protection of the chief man of the vil- lage where he had to pass the night. Once in an

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outlaw village, the chief set a guard of six armed men around his bed. The doctor was so tired that he dropped into a sound sleep almost instantly. Some of the fanatical Moslems in the guard wanted to kill him during the night. But the others re- fused, saying, ''See, he has trusted himself en- tirely to our protection; see how soundly he is sleeping. No harm must be done to him in our village." After so many escapes, a tale began to spread that an angel was protecting the "Daktar Sahib," and that it would be useless to try to in- jure him.

The Pathans have their own medical men whom they called "hakims." Their favorite method of treating the sick is to take a piece of cloth, roll it into a hard wad about the size of a twenty-five cent piece, soak it in oil, and set it on fire on the part that hurts. On one man Dr. Pennell counted fifty scars from such treatments. In contrast with these cruel, ignorant men. Dr. Pennell must truly have seemed like the Lord Jesus, come to earth again, for he was constantly performing what seemed to the people miracles of healing.

One class of cases which were common in Dr. Pennell 's practice were as funny as they were pathetic. Among the Afghans, a favorite method of revenge is to cut off the nose of one's enemy. So the ''Daktar Sahib" was often called on to treat an amputated nose. Sometimes he was able to put on an artificial nose such as could be ob-

ADVENTURES IN HEALING 103

tained from England, and so restore the person's looks as well as heal the wound. In one case, by mistake, a white nose was sent from England in- stead of a brown one. Dr. Pennell stained it wal- nut and the man started home quite satisfied, but on the way he was caught in the rain, and in his village was greeted with howls of laughter. His new nose was streaky.

Besides all his medical work, the doctor opened a school for boys, in which he taught several classes. In this way he got in touch with the growing lads of the city and became in time the best known man in and around Bannu. During his last illness, crowds gathered around his house, waiting anxiously for news. Their grief at his death was intense. They said of him at the time, and some spxy yet, ^^He is not dead. Our Daktar Sahib could not die. lie lives."

Men doctors, however, even such men as Dr. Pennell, are able to do practically nothing to help the women and girls of India. Sometimes very little baby girls or wrinkled old women may be brought to a doctor, but most Indian women would rather die than be cared for by a man doctor. Consequently, when the first woman doctor, Miss Clara Swain, went to India, over fifty years ago, she found a country where the women had never had a doctor. At first the people were very sus- picious and skeptical. ''What could a woman J^now anyhow ! ' ' they said. But before very long

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there were so many calls for her that a hospital became necessary.

The land that Dr. Swain wanted for her hospi- tal belonged to a native prince. She called on him to ask if he would either sell or lease it to the mis- sion. To her great pleasure, she was cordially re- ceived and the land was given to her outright. Later, Dr. Swain was asked to become court phy- sician to the favorite wife of an important native prince, or Maharajah. For years she lived in this native state where, before her time, no Christians had dared to go, and she founded schools as well as hospitals for the people.

Everywhere women missionary doctors have had the same experience. At first people are suspicious of them, and sometimes it seems as though all doors would be closed to them. Usually their first opportunities are among the poorest outcastes who have nothing to lose through being touched by the strange Miss Sahibs who think they know as much as men, who go around with their faces uncovered, who touch all sorts of people, and handle sores and other ugly ailments. Then after a time they are invited into the homes of higher- caste people and are asked to treat some woman who has never stepped outside of her own home without a heavy veil which covers her from head to toe. No man doctor would ever be allowed to visit a sick woman or child inside one of these high-caste homes. The woman might die, but that

ADVENTURES IN HEALING 105

would make no difference, it is against the custom to allow any strange man to enter the home and see the ladies of the house.

A certain very wealthy prince who supported schools and had a hospital in his capital city once sent for a woman missionary doctor to treat his sick wife and his little son who was the pride of the family. The doctor was in England on her vacation. There was no other woman doctor within reach, although the prince wired desper- ately to all the nearest large cities. He finally cabled to England and the doctor took the first boat out, making the trip in three weeks. When she arrived, the baby boy, the heir to the little kingdom, had died. The mother finally recovered.

In South India there is a well-known woman doctor who comes from a very old and famous mis- sionary family. Her grandfather was the first medical missionary to India. All of his sons be- came missionaries, three of them being doctors, and in all, thirty-one of his descendents have worked in India, giving a total of eight hundred years of service to his people. Miss Ida Scud- der's father was one of these doctor sons, with a hospital and big practice in South India. This daughter of his, however, decided that she would never, never, be a medical missionary. When she had finished her college course in America, she went out to India for a short visit to her family, planning, however, to return to America. WhiL

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she was in India, her father was called out of the city, and before he returned, word came that the wife of one of the Christians was very sick, and would not the Miss Sahib, who had such a wonder- ful education, come and help! But Miss Scudder did not know how to help. Later came a message from a friendly Brahman, that his favorite daugh- ter was sick. Would not the Miss Sahib come and help 1 Again she could do nothing. Soon the sick girPs father himself came begging her to come and cure his daughter. He could not understand how it was that she, with her college education, the daughter of such a wonderful doctor, should know nothing about the medical science. He begged and pleaded, but Miss Scudder could only try to ex- plain that she never had any experience in such cases and would be worse than useless.

The next day the little Brahman girl was dead, and the Christian wife was dying. These two calls which she could not answer, these two failures to help the women of India, so weighed upon her heart that Ida Scudder changed all her plans, went back to America to study medicine, and today she is giving her life to healing the sick among the women and children of India.

Dr. Scudder has charge of a large hospital in Vellore, the city where the ^^ Scudder" name has been loved for one hundred years. Besides her work in the hospital, she has a Ford automobile which is fitted up with medical supplies, Sunday-

AiDVENTURES IN HEALING 107

school picture rolls, and Bibles. With this com-' bination traveling drug-store and Sunday-school, she, with an assistant and a native Bible woman, travels all over the surrounding region, giving out medicines to the sick and telling Bible stories.

A day with Dr. Scudder on one of these trips would be something any of us would remember all of our lives. That Ford is a miracle of careful and ingenious packing. On the step, is tied a box full of bottles of medicine packed in cotton. On top of the box is a bag of surgical instruments. Hanging on the glass windshield are more instru- ments and also small boxes containing medicines most likely to be needed. Stowed away under the seats are Bibles and Testaments, Bible picture rolls, great piles of picture post-cards, and a lunch box. They start out at about half-past eight in the morning. The doctor drives the car herself. Besides her sits Granamal, who makes up the pre- scriptions, and on the back seat sits Penina, the Bible woman. Pretty soon they come to a village and draw up under the shade of a banyan tree. Here is a little crowd waiting for them: a man with an abscess in the jaw, another man with a running ear, and other cases too numerous to de- describe. The doctor writes her prescriptions on the margins of picture post-cards which her friends send her from America. The patient takes the card around to Granamal's little drug-store on the car step and gets his bottle of medicine or his half

108 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

coconut sliell filled with ointment or a powder in a cotton bag.

While the doctor has been treating the sick, Penina, too, has been busy. The moment the car stops, out she jumps with her picture rolls and Bibles, and soon she has a little audience of pa- tients and their friends who look admiringly at the pictures and listen eagerly to the story of the loving Christ who healed the sick and cleansed the lepers.

At last, when all the sores have been dressed and all the aches and pains investigated and pre- scribed for, Penina finishes her preaching, they pack up the drug-store, and crank up the car. It is good-by for this time, and they are otf down the road to the next village. So it goes all day long. Here is a woman with a tooth to be pulled, there is a poor fellow in the last stages of consumption, here is an old man with rheumatism, and every- where there are children with sore eyes. Prob- ably the doctor has, with her syringe, saved thou- sands of children from going blind. One day, going home, she came upon a string of people across the road determined to stop the car. She pulled up and asked what was the matter. It seemed that early that morning when she passed through that village, she had treated a little girl's eyes in the usual way, and the father, amazed at the immediate relief and improvement, had spent the day telling his neighbors about it, and collect-

110 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

ing- children to be treated in the same way. Here were seventeen of them, all with sore eyes.

By-and-by the day's work; draws to a close. The doctor has treated nearly two hundred pa- tients. The car is decked with flowers — the chil- dren have been bringing them all day, in bunches, in strings, in garlands. The sun is setting now. Soon the front and tail lights are lighted and they start back to Vellore. Has it not been a wonderful day? And is it not a wonderful life which this great-souled, brilliant-minded woman is leading?

Not only is she treating thousands of patients herself; she is training other women to be her helpers and to take her place when she is gone. Once when Dr. Scudder was in this country rest- ing, her hospital had to be closed because there was no woman physician to keep the work going". In all the mission hospitals in India the same ques- tion keeps coming up, '^Who is there who could take over my work if I should be called away?'' Usually there is no one. There are hospitals in India which have to be closed for good because there are no doctors. In some places rich Indian princes have promised to build and equip hospitals if only we in America would send some doctors. But the missionary boards have been unable to find trained men or women willing to go, and so the opportunity has been lost.

To help meet this need, the missionaries are now trying to train some of the native young

ADVENTURES IN HEALING HI

people in India to become doctors. A medical school for women was opened in North India years ago, and now a new medical school has been opened by Dr. Scudder in Vellore, in South India. In years to come she will not have to leave her hospital without a doctor. Some of her own girls will be able to carry on. In this school nearly all the students are Christian girls. Very few Hindu or Mohammedan girls are allowed to study long enough to gain a medical education. And of the Christian girls who are thus studying to help their own people, the majority come from the outcastes. They have learned that they too are human beings and can help each other in the spirit of Christ.

CHAPTER EIGHT

New Wonders in an Ancient Wonderland

India lias often been called a wonderland. She has the highest mountains and some of the most glorious mountain scenery in the world. Her Taj Mahal is undoubtedly the most beautiful building in the world. The traveler from America, as he gazes at the trained elephants or the banyan trees, one of which can grow into a whole forest, or tastes the delicious tropical mangoes, or talks with some of India's learned men, such as the great poet Tagore, is almost sure to exclaim, '^What a wonderland this is ! "

But the greatest wonders of today are of the kind which we have been studying in this book: poor farmers and their hungry families lifted into lives of comfort and happiness through cooper- ative banks and better methods of farming; little girls going to school and by-and-by to college, in- stead of being married before their childhood is over ; sick people cured by such physicians as Dr. Pennell and Dr. Scudder; and whole villages and whole provinces of wretched '' untouchables'' finding new pride of manhood in the love of Christ.

Among the wonder stories of India are those of lives transformed and glorified through the spirit of God within the heart.

112

NEW WONDERS IN AN ANCIENT WONDERLAND 113

Many years ago, a boy of twelve was driving a street-sweeper's cart in the army cantonment of a certain city in India. He heard that there was a strange Memsahiba (a married woman mission- ary) who every morning said prayers on her ver- anda and read to the people from a strange and interesting book and talked to them as though she really cared for them. One morning Mangal, with a boy friend of his, came to this Memsahiha^s house and listened while she read from the book. He was greatly interested. Belonging, as he did, to the sweeper caste, one of the '^untouchables,'' he had never been able to go to school. The high- caste Hindu boys would have made him too un- happy if he had tried to go to the government school where they were taught. So he came tim- idly to the Memsahiba and asked if it would ever be possible for him to learn to read. She told him to come to her as often as he could get away from his work. In time the boy learned to read and write his native Urdu, one of the many lan- guages of India.

Not long after, an old Christian servant came to the missionary's house and said that he had a convert who wished to be baptized. It was Man- gal. In spite of the opposition of his family, who refused to have anything more to do with him, Mangal was baptized, and proved true to his faith. Some time later, when a community of sweepers asked for a worker to come and teach them, Man-

114 THE WONDERLAND OE INDIA

gal offered to go. He lived with them two or three years, teaching them what it would mean to live as Christians and studying intently whenever he could get hold of books.

So well did he study that when, a little later, he applied for admission to the missionary theologi- cal school, he was accepted, although he had never been to school a single day in all his life. All his study had been with the Memsahiba or else by himself. In spite of this lack of the usual school- ing, Mangal stayed at the seminary and graduated at the head of his class.

After graduation he took the name of Mangal Harris, in recognition of the American who fur- nished the money to help him gain his theological education. He became a great Urdu scholar famed for his learning, and a leader among the native Christian preachers. He was also famous for his lectures on Christianity, which were attended by crowds of Mohammedans and high-caste educated Hindus. A certain Hindu holy man, or sadhu, whom he converted to Christ, gave him the saffron colored robe which sadhus wear and told him to wear it as a Christian sadhu, which he did from that time on. In time he had the joy of seeing his own family, who had cast him off, won to Christ.

When he died suddenly from cholera a few years ago, the whole city where he lived mourned for him, Christians and non-Christians alike. Had it

NEW WONDERS IN AN ANCIENT WONDERLAND 115

not been for the missionaries, that boy Mangal would have spent his life in ignorance, and all those wonderful gifts of soul and mind would have remained undeveloped and unused.

About five thousand people were gathered at a mela in a little mountain villagei on the Eam Ganga, a tributary of the sacred river Ganges. The crowds bathed in the sacred waters, wor- shipped at the idol shrines, shopped at the many stalls of merchandise, and stopped now and then to listen to the preaching of two missionaries who stood among their little band of Christians. As the crowd drifted by, a woman missionary sud- denly clutched her husband's arm. '' There's a little girl from the Pauri school," she declared.

The girl she saw was easily distinguished from the rest of the crowd. Her clothes were cleaner and of a somewhat different cut, and the material her dress was made of was that used in the mis- sion school at Pauri.

By making cautious inquiries, the missionaries found that the child's name was Sita, a very com- mon name for girls in North India. Her father and mother had become Christians and had sent her to the Pauri school. Then her father and a brother had died, and the poor mother, deciding that the gods, as a curse for her turning Christian, had caused the death of her husband and the little boy, had stolen Sita from the school and gone back

116 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

to her own people. The two had walked nearly a hundred miles over the mountains, back to the mother's two brothers, who were blacksmiths. Ac- cording to Hindu law, a widow and her children are the property of either her husband's people or her own. These two brothers were poor, too poor to provide food for two more mouths, so they dressed up the mother and daughter in their best clothes and took them to the mela to be sold.

By the time the missionary happened to see them, Sita and her mother were both afraid. The mother had begun to realize that the brothers were planning to sell them, and she was wishing that she and her little Sita were safely back at Pauri with the good teachers there.

With the missionaries at the mela was a native Christian doctor who had been giving medical at- tention to many people who came to him at the missionary's tent. He was immediately informed of the little Christian girl and her mother, and when he hunted them up, he was able to persuade them to come with him. Before the blacksmith brothers knew what had happened, the two were taken to the nearest mission school, fifteen miles away. A year later the mother married the good doctor, and Sita, when she was old enough, was sent to Lai Bagh, the Isabella Thoburn School for girls.

Twenty years after, the missionary whose wife had caught sight of Sita and her mother at the

NEW WONDERS IN AN ANCIENT WONDERLAND ll?

mela was on a journey among the villages of this mountain region. Going around a turn of the road, he met a well-dressed woman. To his sur- prise she called him by name. It was Sita ! She told him proudly that she was a doctor in a wom- an's hospital in the province of the Punjab in northwestern India. At that time she was at home on a visit. She had helped her stepbrother through medical school, and he too was now a doctor.

That day's work at the mela and the years of quiet teaching which followed, have given to India two faithful servants whose whole lives are being spent in healing the sick and in scattering every- where the light of the good news of Christ.

Another remarkable story comes from Mr. Hig- ginbottom's missionary farm at Allahabad. It is the story of Harry Dutt. Harry was the son of a native Christian preacher and was spoiled and lazy and unreliable. After one term at the Jumna Farm, Mr. Higginbottom told him he had better not come back, he was wasting his time. Harry became very angry, but finally begged for another chance. He was given ^ve acres of undeveloped land to see what could be done with it. The next year a delegation of Indian princes visited the mission farm. They were greatly pleased by all they saw, but were particularly impressed by one lot of five acres. ^'Who had charge of that?"

118 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

asked one of the men. Mr. Higginbottom called to a boy: ^'Come liere, Harry Dutt, the Mahara- jah is asking about your little farm." In time Harry Dutt was offered a fine position by the Maharajah as gardener-in-chief of his own private estate. The boy refused, however, because he preferred to teach farming in a mission school at a much smaller salary. Today he is one of the best teachers with Mr. Higginbottom at the Ag- ricultural Institute, helping to train other Indian farmer boys to help India.

"Wonderful, also, is the story of the conversion of the criminal tribes of India. These are tribes who for generations have lived by stealing. Some are housebreakers, others are counterfeiters, others steal grain from fields and stacks. Our English word, ' ' thug, ' ' was the name of one of the most famous of these tribes. The Thugs were a tribe who robbed and strangled their victims. Their activities were entirely suppressed by the English Government years ago. The members of these tribes do not feel the slightest shame about their way of living. They consider it their trade, quite as respectable as farming or weaving or any of the other occupations of India. They are very religious after their fashion, each tribe worship- ping the god or goddess of their particular kind of thievery. The children, almost from babyhood, are taught clever methods of stealing and hiding.

NEW WONDERS IN AN ANCIENT WONDERLAND 119

Of course the government has tried desperately to break np this systematic stealing. Hundreds and thousands have been caught and sent to prison. But the moment such prisoners are re- leased, they go right back to their stealing again. Long prison terms do no good at all with men who have been brought up to suppose, as a matter of course, that they have a right to steal.

Of late years the Government has turned to the missionaries for help. Many of these robber tribes, a whole tribe at a time, have been turned over to the missionaries to be supervised and taught in settlements. Industrial and trade schools and agricultural schools have been started among them; and these, together with patience and kindness and the glad tidings of Christ, have worked miracles.^

The first work of this kind was undertaken by the Salvation Army. At the start, the inside of the settlement, according to Booth-Tucker, the Salvation Army leader, was '^ pandemonium let loose, — the fighting, quarrelling, drinking, and gambling are indescribable. The squalor, the rags, the wretchedness are beyond words.'' Little by little, however, trade and farm schools were started. The girls were taught to weave and sew. As the children grew up, they discovered that they really liked to earn their living instead of stealing

lAn interesting story of these tribes may be found in India on the March, (Chap. V), by Alden H. Clerk, published by the Missionary Education Movement.

120 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

it from other people. Today there are twenty- nine of these settlements under the Salvation Army alone, and each of the leading Christian de- nominations has at least one criminal tribe settle- ment under its care.

A converted member of one of these tribes has been for many years a sirdar, or steward, at a certain mission in North India. On one occasion the missionary and his wife were called away sud- denly for a week's trip and in the excitement left open a safe in which large sums were sometimes kept. The sirdar soon discovered this, while mak- ing his rounds. He did not know how to close the safe, but for the next week, until the missionaries returned, he and his wife took turns watching night and day. Yet that man's ancestors for gen- erations were all thieves !

In the early days of missionary work, and for a long time afterwards, the missionaries from the West were the leaders. More and more, however^ the Indian Christians are conducting their own churches. The missionaries are eager to have them develop in this way, and so far as possible train them for Christian work. In one cityj where a missionary college is located, groups of school boys set out every Sunday morning from the mis- sion on tours through the native sections of the town. With each group of boys is a Christian college student or professor. They carry their

NEW WONDERS IN AN ANCIENT WONDERLAND 121

hymn-books and a large Bible picture roll which was first used in some Beginner ^s Sunday-school class in America and then sent to India. When they come to the chosen street, the boys sing a few Christian hymns and hang up the picture roll upon the trunk of some tree or against a wall. Soon a large crowd of Hindu boys and girls gather around, and the older student talks to them a little while about the picture on the roll, telling them the Bible story. Then the boys distribute colored Bible picture cards — also from America — and after a closing hymn or two, return to the mission. At Christmas time many of the little folks who have attended these street classes regu- larly are invited to the mission for a party and are sent home happy with sweets of one kind or another.

Out of the classes of Christian boys who make these Sunday morning trips will come leaders who will know how to tell the good news of Christ to their own people.

One of the most famous of the native Christian leaders is Sadhu Sundar Singh, a man who comes of a wealthy and educated family of Sikhs, a sect in the Hindu religion. Like Paul of old, he was full of zeal for the religion of his fathers, and again like Paul, to a certain extent he persecuted the Christians. To show his contempt for Chris- tianity, he publicly burned a copy of the Bible.

122 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

He planned to be a '4ioly man/^ or sadliu. He learned to sit and meditate for days at a time in one or the other of the seven sacred postures. But somehow, he never found peace.

Three days after he had burned the Bible, at a quarter before six in the morning there came to him a wonderful vision. He believed, and still believes, that in this vision Jesus Christ came vis- ibly into his room. As a result of that vision, he proclaimed himself a Christian, and, instead of becoming a Hindu sadhu, he became a Christian sadhu, like Mangal Harris, and has gone all over India and into other countries, wearing a sadhu 's saffron colored robe. Not only has he preached the good news of Christianity to his own people, but he has gone into the Forbidden Lands — Tibet, Afghanistan, and Nepal. Thus he has been one of the first foreign missionaries to go out from among the native Christians of India. '^He gave me a message to take,'' says the Sadhu, ^^and I have gone. I have been put in prison and perse- cuted, but I have always been delivered."

Sundar Singh has made many trips into Tibet, that strange, lofty, desolate plateau which is some- times called '^the roof of the world." Only a few foreigners have ever seen the capital city, Lhassa. Even today it is a dangerous proceeding to enter the country.

The Sadhu has had some exciting experiences. He has been nearly frozen to death in snow-storms,

NEW WONDERS IN AN ANCIENT WONDERLAND 123

■charged by wild yak, — a kind of mountain buffalo, — and captured by bandits. On one occasion he so touched the hearts of the bandits that they re- stored his property, gave him tea, — alas, in a dirty cup, — and finally set him free. On another occa- sion he was thrown into a well forty feet deep, the top of the well was locked and the key was left in the girdle of the lama, the chief man of the vil- lage. '^I was there two days and two nights, and the third night somebody came and opened the well. I asked for help. He let down a rope and pulled me up. It was quite a dark night and I could not see him plainly. "When I was out of the well, he disappeared. I waited for him, but he did not return. Christ said, ^Lo! I am with you al- ways.' And He was with me.''

These are stories of only a few of the men and women who are helping to make India a country where boys and girls will have a chance to play and learn and be happy; a country where there will be physicians and medicine for all who are sick; a country where the people will forget the superstitions which make them fearful of every- thing; a country where there will be peace and contentment, and good-will and brotherhood, as well as beauty. There are still too few such men and women as Mangal and Sita and Sadhu Sundar Singh, They cannot do the work unaided. Mis- sionaries are still needed — our interest and help

124 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

are still needed. The better we come to know the people of India, the more we shall like them and the happier we shall be to give them what help we can and to be counted by them as their friends.

WORD LIST

As a general rule it may be said that in the Indian languages the vowels are pronounced in the Italian manner rather than the English ; i.e., like the vowels in do, re, mi, fa of the musical scale. There is a short a which is often found at the close of Indian words and sometinies elsewhere. It is pronounced like the a in aboard. Indian languages have nO flat a as in at. The u is pro- nounced like oil in soup. Many Indian words have an aspirated letter which appears as hh, dh, th, etc. This is given an explosive pronunciation like the hh in abhor. Strong accent upon one or more syllables of a word is not so common in the Indian languages as in English. Each syllable is given very nearly the same weight in speaking the word.

For common place names, a pronouncing gazetteer should be consulted. For certain words from the text, the pronunciation of which is not immediately clear, the following phonetic form of spelling is given :

Amrito (Am-ree-toe)

Asoka ( A-so-kah )

atia-patia( ah-tee-ya-pah-tee-ya )

Bannu (Bun-noo) Baranagar ( Bah-rah-nug'-ger ) Bengali (Ben-gah'-lee) Bhajan (Bhud'-jun) Bodhisattva ( Bo-dhee-sat-wah )

chappatis ( cha-pah-tee ) Chittani ( Chit-tah-nee )

Dehra Dun (Day'-ra Doon) dhoti (dhoe-tee) Dilawar ( Dih-lah'-wahr )

fakir (fa-keer')

Ganesh (Ga-naysh') Gautama (Goh-ta-ma) Ghazi ( Ga-zee ) Granamal ( Grah-na-mahl ) hookah ("oo" as in hook)

Isai-log (Ee-sah-ee log, "o" in bold)

as

125

Jhelum (Jhee'-lum)

Jokhan Singh (Joe-khun Sing)

Kshattriya (K-shut'-ree-a)

lama (lah'-ma)

Mahara j ah ( Mah-ha-rah-zhah ) Mamtaz-i-Mahal (Muum-tahz-

ee-Ma-hahl') Mangal ( Mun-gul ) Marathi (Ma-rah'-tee) mela (may'-la)

Memsahiba (maym-sah-heebba) Mukti (muuk'-tee) mullah (muul'-lah)

pagri (pug'-ree) Pandita (pun-dee-tah) Pathan (Put-tahn') Pauri (Pow'-ree) Penina { Pe-nee'-nah ) Punjab (Puun-jahb)

Rama ( Rahmma ) Ramabai { Rah-mah-bye ) rupee (roo-pee)

126 THE WONDERLAND OF INDIA

Sadhu (Sah-dhoo)

Sahib ( Sah-heeb )

sari (sah-ree)

Shukboo (Shuck-boo)

Sita (See-tah)

Siva ( See-vah )

Sonika ( Sohn'-ee-kah )

Srinagar ( Sree-nug'-ger )

Sundar Singh ( Suun-der-Sing)

Taj Mahal (Tahj Ma-hahl') Tika Ram (Tee-kah Rahm)

Vaishya (Vy'-sha)

Yisu (Yee-soo)

Verses on pages 60, 61

Rajah Yisu, aiyah (Rah-zhah Yee-soo, eye-yah).

Shaitan ko jitne ke liye (Shy-tahn koe jit-nee kay lee-ye),

Yisu, misih ki Jai (Yee-soo mus-seeh kee jye).

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