Between the twilights being studies of Indian women by one of themselves

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

Ex Lihris

SIR MICHAEL SADLER

ACQUIRED 1948

WITH THE HELP OF ALUMNI OF THE

SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

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BETWEEN THE TWILIGHTS

Digitized by tlie Internet Arcliive

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IVIicrosoft Corporation

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BETWEEN THE TWILIGHTS:

BEING STUDIES OF INDIAN

WOMEN BY ONE OF

THEMSELVES

BY

CORNELIA SORABJI

LONDON AND NEW YORK

HARPER AND BROTHERS

45, Albemarle Street, W.

1908

CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM ANI> CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY IJ^NE, IX>NDON.

Ha

DEDICATED

TO

THE HOUR OF UNION

GGiJWO

COVER AND END PAPER

DESIGNED BY

J. LOCKWOOD KIPLING

PREFACE

IN the language of the Zenana there are
two twilights, "when the Sun drops into
the sea," and '* when he splashes up stars for
spray," . . . the Union^ that is, of Earth and
Sun J and^ agT^in, of Light and Darkness.

And the space between is the time of times
in these sun-wearied plains in which I dwell.
One sees the world in a gentle haze of remin-
iscence— reminiscence of the best. There,
across the horizon, flames the Sun's *' good-
bye." Great cave of mystery, or lake of liquid
fire : anon pool of opal and amethyst, thoughts
curiously adjustable to the day that is done,
memory of joy or sorrow, of strength of love,
or disregard of pain. Gradually the colour
fades, now to a golden fleece of the softest,
now to wisps of translucence, blush-pink,
violet: oft-times the true ecstasy of colour is
in the east, away from the Sun's setting. Or,
now again, the sky is a study in grays and

viii Preface

blue-grays, in that peculiar heat-haze which
belongs to May and September, and the pale
curve of the new moon looks old and weary.
Is not all Life marching towards the Silence?
it seems to say.

Yes, the manner of its loitering is varied,
but always, always, is it an hour of enchant-
ment, this hour Between the Twilights: and
it is my very own. I choose it, from out the
day's full sheaf, and I sit with it in the Silences
on my roof-tree.

It was in this hour, through a hot summer,
that the thoughts which make this little book
came to me, and were written down. I had
spent my days going in and out among my
friends of the Zenana, and a great yearning
was in my heart that others should know
them as I did, in their simplicity and their
wisdom.

The half is not yet told : much would not
bear telling — I had no business to take
strangers into the walled garden of our in-
timacy— and some things were too elusive for
speech, but the sounds which have thridded
the Silence have been echoes oi reality, and I
can only hope that they may convey some

Preface ix

impression of the gently pulsing life of the
Zenana.

Not by any means are the Studies meant to
be exhaustive. I have left out of count the
Anglicized and English-educated Indian, the
capable woman who earns her own living, the
cultured woman of the world or philanthropist.
There was little to learn about her which a
common language and the opportunity of
intercourse might not teach any sojourner in
India at first-hand.

But these others of whom I have written
seemed to justify in a very special sense the
hour of my meditation. . . . They float elusive
in the half-light between two civilizations,
sad by reason of something lost, sad by reason
of the more that may come to be rejected here-
after. . . . And none but God knoweth when
will toll for them that final Hour of Union,
and whether, when it is here, we shall be able
to see the stars through the blue veil of the
Light that lies slain for all Eternity.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Preface vii

I

12
21

30
44
53

I. The Story of Wisdom . .
II. The Story of Destruction

III. The Story of a Woman .

IV. Devi — Goddess! ....
V. The Setter- Far of Ignorance

VI. The King of Death . . .
VII. The Wise Man, ''Truth- Named" 74
VIII. The Nasal Test — A Study of

Caste 89

IX. The Mothers of Fighters . . 106

X. The Queen Who Stood Erect . 115

'^XI. Portraits OF SOME Indian Women 128

XII. Garden Fancies 150

XIII. A Child or Two 156

XIV. The Tie that Binds .... 176

* "Portraits of some Indian Women" is reprinted
from ** The Nineteenth Century and After," by the kind
permission of the late Sir J. Knowles.

GLOSSARY

Atnla, officer of a household.

Biruiy a musical instrument (stringfed).

Brahmin^ highest or priestly caste.

Didi, elder sister.

Guru^ spiritual guide.

Jogy Hindu Vedantic system of meditation and of acquir-
ing san6lity.

Kincab, gold brocade.

Khattriya, the fighter : of the fighting or second highest
Caste.

Mali, gardener.

Mantras, incantations.

Munias, small speckled birds.

Namascar, the salutation to the learned: and to a
superior.

Pandas, pilgrim guides at holy places.

Pooja, worship of a God.

Puj'ari, a Temple servant.

Purdahnashin, she who sits behind the curtain : the se-
cluded.

Sais, groom.

Saree, a long winding-sheet, which forms the drapery
worn by women.

Shastras, sacred writings.

Sudra, the server ; of the fourth or Serving Class.

Takht-posh, a. wooden plank on four legs used as a bed-
stead.

Veishya, originally of the third or agricultural, now often
of the professional caste.
xiii

BETWEEN THE TWILIGHTS

THE STORY OF WISDOM

SHE comes with the Spring — a two days'
guest in an Indian household. Nor has
frequency bred either carelessness or coolness
of reception. Early on the morning of her
arrival you will see the women hastening from
the Bathing Ghat, their garments clinging
about their supple limbs, their long hair dry-
ing in the wind. They bear full water-pots,
for nought but Gunga-Mai to-day suffices —
no slothful backsliding to near-by pump.

In the house of my friend, it was Parvati,
the oldest serving-woman who undertook to
make ready the guest chamber. I watched her
as she crossed the courtyard — a handful of
the precious liquid for Dharti-Mai the Earth
Mother, and the rest — a generous swob, for
the black marble veranda. Soon had she
helpers, and to spare — the most pra6tised

2 Between the Twilights

among them made the white chalk marks of
good luck — tridents, fishes, flames of fire; and
the tidiest made the little inclosure — white
cotton "railings," the posts being balls of
Ganges mud, in which were buried swiftly-
flying arrows — threat for daring devil.

But the centre of interest was naturally the
Altar. This was just a plain raised platform
of wood, carrying bravely its variety of offer-
ing. Great mountains of yellow and white
flowers, with fruits, chiefly the cocoanut, fruit
of healing, old Sanskrit manuscripts, lettered
palm-leaves, thumbed and blotted copybooks
and tattered '* primers " — the prayers of child-
ren— the pointed reed, and ink-horns, glass ink-
pots and steel pens from the ** Europe" shop
across the way; a school edition of "The Vicar
of Wakefield," Ganot's Physics, quaint combs
and mirrors, powder-boxes, and perfumes,
"the tears of scented grass," or that more
subtle "scent of red rose leaves." Why not?
Is she not woman, even though a Goddess and
learned? The "Europe" produ6ls, I notice,
carry milk in place of ink. " San6lify to us this
Western Education " — is that what it means
in this country, where deepest feeling finds

The Story of IVisdom 3

outlet other than through doors of speech?
So her worshippers made ready, not in private
chapel but here where the life of the days
pulsed and languished through the years;
here, where friend or passing stranger might
alike turn to greet her; for Wisdom is one,
though her hosts be many. Moreover, She
who is called Wisdom loves the voices of little
children, and nothing is hushed, or ordered
otherwise for her coming. The most unre-
generate rogue romps at her feet, the most
thriftless housewife, the most rebellious daugh-
ter-in-law has access to her Altar, and through
the day one after another will come bearing
her gift; and, lingering a while, will ^o away
softly even as she came. Sometimes, by no
means generally, there will be an image of
the Goddess. One such I have seen in the
house of a rich merchant. It was a life-sized
figure dancing on a lotus, the full bloom,
pink-edged, in her hand she bore a bina^ for
the Goddess of Wisdom is also Queen oi Har-
mony; and the rich man's friends had honoured
her as was meet, with priceless gifts oi Kincab,
of gem, of trinket. Now Wisdom of necessity
has yet one more aspe6l, she is Goddess of

4 Between the Twilights

Perfe6l Speech. It is of her that the tongue-
tied prays eloquence, the scholar success; and
the offering to her in this capacity you will
find absent from no Altar, rich or poor. To
omit this would mean the curse of the dumb
for ever. It is a little cake of rice and milk,
this oblation for lapses from accuracy, for
*^ benevolent falsehood."

"Oh Guest of the hours, remember the
past, the puzzling need of the tangled moments,
remember — and forgive."

A list of benevolent falsehoods must needs
vary with the age. Manu includes (viii, 130)
*'The giver of false evidence for a pious
motive, for such an one shall not lose a seat
in heaven, "his lapses being called the **Speech
of the Gods."

** To save a life," ** To proteft a cow," ** To
countera6t the thriftless ways of husbands,"
have added Hindu women of my acquaint-
ance.

Simple is the ritual of the worship of Wis-
dom. **With folded hands I bow before the
Goddess, the Goddess who provides all wealth,
and vouchsafes the power of speech." " May
the Goddess of Wisdom prote6l me, the Mother

The Story of Wisdom 5

of the Vedas, who from the crimson lotus of
her hands pours radiance on the implements
of writing, and on the works produced by her
power."

** May the Goddess of Wisdom prote6lme —
She who robed in white, sets far all ignorance.
She who abides with the Creator may she
abide with me . . . ; " and the rest of the
prayers are either said by the Priest, or found
in the heart of the worshipper. The battered
lesson book, the oft-used pen, are these not
prayers in themselves?

The last time I saw the Goddess was at the
Children's Festival. Wisdom danced on her
lotus flower, in a little bower of bamboos and
marigolds, out in the open courtyard. At her
feet sat children, row upon row, ranging in
age from three years to twelve. I watched
them come so happily, tripping hand in hand
with some friend or comrade. They wore their
best gay little saree, gold-spangled and bor-
dered, in their hair thread of gold, or great
heavy ornament, or just some flower among
the light close braidings. And, as they took
their seats in the Great Cathedral roofed by
God's sky, the Priests moved among them

6 Between the Twilights

anointing each little forehead with oil of sandal
wood from off the altar of her who is named
Wisdom.

Then the musicians beat their drums and
rang the bell of worship, and every single
forehead was on the ground before the God-
dess. The worship had begun. . . . First be
consecrate, then bring your offering — is the
creed. ... I heard no prayers, but there-
after, one by one, the Babies passed before
her, throwing at her feet sweet-scented wreaths
of Jasmine. I needed not then to hear their
prayers. . . . And that was all the Service.
The play of the children at the feet of
Wisdom.

Thus then the Hindu honours his Guest.
And, on the second day — for even Wisdom
must share at length the waters of oblivion
— with music and singing with the happy
laughter of children and a gay following of the
faithful, her image is taken to the Ganges ;
and with love and much injunction as to
next year's journey from the Mounts of Bless-
ing, is it set afloat on that sacred river whose
bourne is the Eternal Sea.

Wisdom, in Sanskrit story, is Creative

The Story of IVisdom 7

Power to the Great God himself, his energy
— without her he is but a great incommunic-
able passive force.

" I make strong whom I choose — originat-
ing all things I pass even as a breeze. Above
the Heavens am I, beyond the Earth, and
what is the Great One, that am I. I make
holy the Great God Himself. For the Great
Archer it is I bend the bow; it is I who stay
evil in the name of the Destroyer. Few know
me, yet near to all alike am I. God is he
from whom Wisdom and Speech — after reach-
ing Him — return."

Unravelling it all, what quaint teaching
may we not piece together? That is true wis-
dom which puts man in touch with God —
creature with Creator. And the same power
of God refrains not from blessing the things
that are of value to the Earth — the written,
the spoken word, all arts and harmonies and
science.

Then, is it not a parable that the Goddess
of Speech is primarily the Goddess of all Learn-
ing? Let the ignorant keep silence.

The Tulsi spirals stirred in the hot wind,
and the great white red-throated Sarus flapped

8 Between the Twilights

his wings as he walked about the women's
courtyard. The men of the house had taken
the Image to the water, and we sat by the
empty altar in the hour between the Twilights.
*' Tell me more about Wisdom," said I to my
Wisest of the Wise, and she told me of how
Vishnu gave her as wife to Brahma, and how
Brahma put a slight upon the Lady of Wis-
dom— a slight which she never forgave.

A great sacrifice was going forward, and
the Priest bade Brahma call his Lady. For is
it not the wife, and she alone who must hold
the sacred grass, must sprinkle the offerings.
" But Saraswati is engaged in dressing," was
the answer.

Then the Priest '* without a wife what bless-
ing can come?"

So Brahma turned to Indra, and bade him
find a substitute in hedge or highway.

Indra soon returned, leading by the hand a
milkmaid, beautiful and happy. She bore a
jar of butter on her head. *' She shall become
the Mother of the Vedas," said the Priest;
and that is how Gayatri, the Milkmaid, was
wed to the Great God Himself.

Then came forth Saraswati all unconscious.

The Story of Wisdom 9

and very gorgeous, attended by the wives of
Vishnu, Rudra, and other of the Gods — a
worthy train.

When she heard what had happened, she
was wroth beyond power of words to tell.

Said the Great God, shamefaced, "The
Priest did this thing; the Priest and Indra."

But Saraswati said, " By the powers I have
obtained, may Brahma never be worshipped
in Temple or Sacred Place — except one day in
each year — and since Indra, thou didst bring
that Milkmaid to my Lord, thou shalt be
bound in chains by all thine enemies and pris-
oned in a strange and distant country, thy
power over the winds and thy station on high,
given to others. Cursed also be ye — Priests.
Henceforth shall ye perform sacrifices solely
for the desire of obtaining the usual gifts, and
for love of gain alone shall ye serve Temples
and holy places; satisfied only shall ye be
with the food of others, and dissatisfied with
that of your own houses. And in quest of
riches shall ye unduly perform rites and cere-
monies." . . .

In great wrath she called for her peacock, to
leave the assembly, but the Goddess of Wealth

10 Between the Twilights

refused to accompany her; and her also did
she curse.

** May you always abide with the vile and
the inconstant, the contemptible and foolish,
the sinful, cruel and vulgar."

After her departure Gayatri modifies all the
curses; so neither need all Priests nor all the
wealthy be base and contemptible.

When the youngest daughter-in-law in the
house is listening to the story-telling my
Wisest of the Wise adds a variation — Saras-
wati is appeased, and Brahma says he will do
with the Milkmaid what the Goddess com-
mands, while the Milkmaid herself falls at the
feet of Wisdom, who, raising her, says, " Let
be — let you and me both serve my Lord! "
*****

And now for a year her Altar is empty but
she is not forgotten, and in the pra6lice and
devotion of the faithful still does the third
watch of the night belong to Wisdom.

'* Let the home-keeping ones wake in the
time sacred to Saras wati, the Goddess of
Speech ; let them refle6l on virtue and virtuous
emoluments; and on the whole meaning and
essence of the words of Wisdom."

The Story of JVisdom 1 1

'* So desirable, and yet she may be only a
two days' Guest in a Hindu household," I
mused aloud.

"Ah, but," answered she who worshipped
Wisdom, '*were Wisdom always with us,
how should we live among the sons of
men!" . . .

II

THE STORY OF DESTRUCTION

WHEN the world was young there were
two Giant Demons — Shumbo and Ni-
shumbo, who made great discord both in
heaven and upon earth: nor did vi6lory
bring harmony, for when all who opposed
them lay vanquished, they fought with each
other.

Then did the Gods and Godlings take coun-
sel how they might slay them. **Go to the ]
Destroyer," said the Great God, and so said ]
also the Preserver — "It is his business." But
Shiva, the Destroyer, owned to a dilemma.
*M have promised them," said he, "that no
man shall prevail against them. What shall I I
do?" Then upon meditation — **I am resolved
what to do. One shall I create in the form of
a woman, that this strife might be ended." . . .

And that was how Creation came near to

The Story of Destru6lion 1 3

Kali the. Mother. Very beautiful was she, the
strength of the strong*, and the attra6tiveness
of that which was to conquer strife: and her
did Shiva name Jugatdatri — Nurse of the
World. None could stand before her, and it
came to pass that at last was left only one
enemy — the King of Demons ; and he, seeing
her beauty, sought her in marriage; but she
laughed saying, *' I wed none but him I can-
not conquer."

And Shumbo maddened by her laughter
vowed vi6lory, and her very glory was a peril,
for he seized upon her hair, and impeded her
much. . . . Then did the Gods take counsel
again together. It was the Destroyer who
found help.. '* Let us each give her of our
strength," said he, **that evil may be smit-
ten for ever."

And they did all even as he suggested, and
the incoming of this great strength made her
so that she lost some of her comeliness. And
now was she called Kali . . . She that is
black.

And the strength of the Gods was as wine to
her, and she fought intoxicate. And behold,
while all the Gods and Demons watched, they

14 Between the Twilights

fought — those two — the Nurse of the World
and the King of Evil, and Kali won.

Then was there great rejoicing on earth
and in heaven, and Kali joyed no less than
her creatures, and she danced in her joy,
drunk with the blood of her vi6Hm.

And for the third time the Gods took coun-
sel, for they said, **The thing we have our-
selves made strong will at last destroy even
us."

And the Great God said: *'She is wife to
the Destroyer. This is his business." And
Shiva thought long and earnestly, for even he
could not causelessly retake the strength that
he had given. . . . And the end of the medita-
tion was that he went forth from Heaven and
lay in her path as she came down from the
Snow mountains in her dance of Death.
And she, mad with vi6lory and blood, seeing i
nothing, danced on to his chest exultant, when
looking down, she recognized her husband, and
was shamed and sobered. And this final vision
of Kali is the one worshipped by her children
— Kali, the four-armed, the Conqueror of
Demons, vanquished only by the husband
who lies under her feet. In one hand beareth

The Story of Destru^lion 15

she the head of a vi6lim, in another a sword,
with a third she blesseth, and with the fourth
she holdeth out fearlessness to all her fol-
lowers. She wears a garland of skulls, and a
waistlet of hands, — and no more danceth she
the dance of Death. Yet to her, the Mother,
come alike all who are drunk with blood,
righteous or unrighteous, for she understands;
and all who would have the strength of the
Gods to slay the Evil in the world — for was
not this the purpose of her being, in the old,
old days when the world was young? . . .

Thus to me one of my gentle friends of
"The Inside" in this land of legend and
silences.

Then we turned to her of many years and
long meditations, who sat by listening — *' Is
that how you know the story. Mother?"

"Yea, my children," made she answer.
"Even so — and when mine eyes are shut
these are the thoughts that come to me —
blessing and cursing, destru6lion and creation,
death and life — are not both companions of
Time?"

"But the skull and hands, Mother — read
that parable."

1 6 Rehveen the Twilights

And she — ** All is destroyed save intelli-
gence and work — these outlast us."

So, museful, I took my way to the Mount
of Kali, which lies without the City, past
many ancient tanks grown rank with vegeta-
tion, past flowering trees, and swamps of mat
huts and malaria.

A bright-eyed baby played upon a log, see-
sawing over a nauseous drain — Was this one
measure of the dance of Death? . . . An
avenue now of shops — the Precin6ls— Gods
and Codlings and sacrificial vessels were for
sale, with the beads of the Sacred, and water-
bottles made o{ Ganges sand blown fine as
glass. ... I lingered among the women
making purchase. Images of Kali seemed
most popular, with bright red and yellow
horses for the children, nor was the pi6lure
shop negle61;ed — and I laughed softly to my-
self to see a German print of Romeo and Juliet
in the balcony scene selling clamorously for
** Radha Krishna," the gay God with his
favourite lady.

Seated under a pipal tree, hoary with age,
was an ash-smeared Priest, at his feet a heap
of yellow marigolds. No woman passed him

The Story of DestrudUon 1 7

without some offering, and sometimes he
spoke, but most often kept silence, noting all
things through the matted hair that veiled his
slits of eyes. Of such begging Priests there
was a great colle6lion — the ascetics sat still,
but were gifted for fear of curses; others ran
after the women, teasing, traducing each
other; and these were gifted for their impor-
tunity. One, half-mad, I think, had a few
words of English and followed me cursing
the Priest-guide I had chosen for a * * stupid-
'umbug-flatterer " — said all as one long word,
which sounded a potent curse indeed.

The Image is in a small brick and stone
building behind closed doors, which are opened
at fixed times. In the ante-room sit the faith-
ful, reading sacred books or preparing their
offerings for the Goddess. There seemed a
separate Priest for each devotee.

One man only did I see whom my heart
convi6led of holiness : and looking on his face
I knew that it was possible even here to for-
get all the grossness to which the ignorant
had degraded the Kali-legend. . . . The
place of Sacrifice ran red, and already the
Priests had sold the flesh of Kali's tale of

1 8 Between the Twilights

goats to eager bidders. The poorer applicants
sat in a. circle, a gory head on each lap. . . .
It was a gruesome sight.

By the Bathing Ghat was a great crowd.
Here were two young women in charge of a
chaperone. They had come far ways measur-
ing their length along the ground. It was in
the rains, and they were all mud and slush
from the exercise. The woman stood by,
policing them, seeing that they abated no jot
or tittle of their vows, where the head had
been the feet should lie — there, and not an
inch further.

** What was the vow?" I asked.

A prayer for one — that the child then on its
way might live. . . . Oh! the pathos of it.
The other woman was giving thanks for the
recovery of her reason. ..." The dance
of Death," "The dance of Death " — a
minuet. . . .

" If I were God, I should pity the heart ot
man . . ."

They were travelling at the moment towards
the drain behind the Image of the Goddess.
Oh! the water, oh ! the water! — it was black
with impurities. It had washed the feet of the

The Story of Destru6lion 19

Goddess, and the flowers of her Temple, and
the refuse of the Sacrifice; but they drank
eagerly — at full length still — content.

It was a parable on the power of Faith. . . .
And truly, the Temple of Kali opens many
doors to refle6lion. Evil, we notice, is con-
quered by Time in the end. Of Love, which
conquered Time, there is no Gospel in Hindu-
ism. Inherent strength is the last vanquisher,
the Great Gods themselves helping in the con-
quest, even parting with their own strength to
the fighter. And that which God inspires may
be as God. Yet, in spite of the Hindu doc-
trine of works, there would seem to be a
caution against too great a6livity. Kali drunk
with a6tivity was shamed by Gods and men. . . .

I went back to my Wise Woman of many
years. . . . *'To the ignorant," she said,
"Kali but wants a life — Kali slays and Kali
makes alive. Said I not once before, blessing
and cursing, death and life, these are the
Soul's eternal doors. In the house of Kali
the doors are ever open. . . . But, for us
women, the lesson to hide in the heart is this
— Kali, the Great Destroyer, the Nurse of the

20 Between the Twilights

World, the Dread-Inspirer, is vanquished only
by — her husband."

» » « « «

Here, then, meet ancient story and modern
history, the history of every Hindu woman
throughout the Land. The last stage of per-
fe6lion is wifely submission.

Ill

THE STORY OF A WOMAN

NOW Dokhio, the Father of Durga, was
wroth because Shiva, to whom he had
given his daughter in marriage, though he
had the reputation of a God, was as poor as
any beggar. And in his wrath he devised
revenge. He made a great Feast, to which
he bade Gods and Goddesses, Godlings and
baby Godlings — all, save Shiva and his wife
Durga. And Narod, the Mischief Man, was
made the voice to bear the message to each
guest.

So Narod went to Shiva, and *'This is
what your Father-in-law hath planned," saith
he, inciting.

But Shiva, *' What is that to me? " " Dis-
honour, insult, affront — see you not?" said
the Mischief Man.

And Shiva, again, **What is that to me?
They who do not honour cannot hurt me." . .

22 Between t/te Twilights

Narod then went to Durga, Shiva's wife:
"A Feast of Gods and Goddesses," saitK he. S
** Let be," said Durga; ** What is that to me?" j

"Such display of dresses and jewels, such '
cackling of women's tongues. ' Why is Shiva 1
not there? Why not Durga?' Surely a j
daughter may go to the house of her Father, '
by chance, on the day o{ the Feast, ignorant \
of what is forward ? " . . .

Durga sought her husband. But he was \
firm. "They will make sport oi you to spite ^
me.

"What matter? It were worse not to be
seen there — things happening behind our
backs." ... I

But Shiva was firm.

Then did Durga use all the wiles of women
— coaxing, sulking, flattering — Shiva was ■
firm ; so, finally she used the wiles of a more
than human ...

She took unto herself ten forms each more
awful than the last, and ten-headed she passed
before Shiva, threatening and mocking. Till
— "Go!" said Shiva; "Let happen what

will happen."

]

And Durga, a little fearfully, in that she

The Story of a Woman 23

had got at last her heart's desire, arrayed her-
self in garments gorgeous and becoming, and
made her way to her Mother's house. And
her Mother embraced her right gladly, so that
a great contempt was in Durga's heart for the
trouble at which she had been in coming.

But the Mother said within herself: "It is
well my Lord is away and busy, it is well . . .
else might he hurt this child of mine."

Yet soon the question came: *' And where
is my Father?"

'' At the Place of Sacrifice, where he makes
a great feast," said the gentle Mother.
"Stay with me, my child; leave such-like
things to the men-people."

But Durga: "A Feast? Nay, then must I
go and see "... and she heeded nothing.

And Dokhio was furious, in that after all
his insult would be robbed of point.

"Why art thou come hither?" he thun-
dered. And she: "Because my Father's
daughter/ may not be kept from my Father's
Sacrifice."

Then Dokhio cursed Shiva and all that be-
longed to him, which Durga hearing, passed
out of life with grief inconsolable.

24 Between tlte Twilights

And Shiva, who had cared nothing for the
slight to himself, revenged the death of his
wife most mightily. He sent forth his light-
ning and consumed that great sacrifice ere
they who were bidden had arrived to make
it; and so the guests found nothing save
charred wood, and a wizened old Dokhio with
the head of a bearded goat.

For this was Shiva's little joke to keep the
matter for ever in the mind of Durga's Father,
Dokhio.

# # # # *

We sat on the great quiet roof in the cow-
dust hourwhile the latest Mother-in-law among
us told the story.

She meant it, I think, for the special benefit
of Boho, the ten-year-old Bride; and she was
gratified, for Boho caught her breath in great
gusts at this bold coercion of a husband. No-
thing did the story mean to her save that —
punishment for such sacrilege.

But Kamalamoni looked up smiling from a
game with the household tyrant — her Nagen-
dra — aged four.

** It is not thus the story hath its ending,"
she said.

The Story of a Wo^nait 25

"Then tell the rest, Kamal." But Kama]
was better occupied.

"And how calls the horse, my son? and
how the dog? and the cat? and sheep? And,"
roguishly — "and how the great grandmother
when in anger?" Till she of many years
claimed Nagendra as her fee for such imper-
tinence and Kamala was forced to tell her
tale.

" And how should story end which wails no
dirge for death of wife?" said Kamala, hotly.
For opinion is but experience crystallized.
" When Durga's soul left her body thus early,
it wandered to the mountains of snow, and
finding on the threshold of sense, the empty
house of a new-born babe, it entered it."

Uma was the name by which its parents
chose to know the child; and Uma grew
strong and beautiful, gentle and good, with
no memory of Durga the Ten-Headed. . . .
And, one day when she had come to her
woman's estate in our kingdom of life, and
was playing with her waiting-woman among
the swans beside the lotus-beds, an aged
Priest-man appeared before her, and falling at
her feet, said, " Durga Mother, thy Lord of

26 Behueen the Twilights

Destruction fasts and prays sorrowing for
thee: go and tend him."

And Uma ran to her mother, wrathful.
. . . *'An old Priest-man fell at my feet
Mother," she said, **and said unto me words
which are not fit to be heard by me before my
maidens."

So Uma's Father went out forthwith, and
finding Narod — for he it was, the Mischief
Man turned Priest in old-age, he heard the
wondrous God-news about his daughter.

Shiva, it seemed lived a life of prayer and fast-
ing— close by in the Cave of the Cow's mouth.

**Send Uma to tend him," said Narod,
**and haply he will look and love, and they
be man and wife once more."

Thus Uma was sent to Shiva, and tended
him night and day; and the woman's love for
the thing that she tended, grew in her heart.

But Shiva, full of self-pity for loss of a
jewel which he might better have preserved
(for this was his thought), saw not that same
jewel lying burnished and re-beautified in the
dust at his feet. And Uma's heart was sad,
till even the Great God himself was moved to
pity, and sent the little God of Love to wake

The Story of a Woman tT]

Shiva the Monk from his trance o{ bead-
telling'.

Then, fearfully — for is not Shiva the De-
stroyer himself? — went the Godling of the
arched bow, and hiding in the bracken he shot
forth his arrows — not without success. And
Shiva, furious, saw one upturned foot in flight,
and the fire from his eye burnt up the thing he
saw, so that Kama Deva comes no more
among the haunts of men.

But, and when his anger was dead, he
looked up, and his eyes being- opened, he be-
held Uma, knowing her for Durga his own
possession.

And so, once more was fulfilled the destiny
of a woman.

'* But for three days in every year does Uma
^o back to her parents and her swanlets in the
mountains of Snow; and this journeying of
Uma is always at Durga-pooja time when we
make feast for many days to worship the Ten-
handed."

In the silence which fell upon us after this
story, she of many years was heard to yawn,
while all the women snapped their fingers till
her jaws met again.

28 Between the Twilights

From Shiva'sTemple gleaming white among
the yellow-green of the date palms came the
sound of the pooja bell — some one, a woman
probably, praying for her Lord to the Lord of
Killing and Cursing. Clear against the gray-
blue sky stood the cross-crowned spire of the
Christian Cathedral ; and almost at our doors,
rang out the prayer-keeper's call to the faith-
ful Moslem: ** There is no God so great as
God." . . .

"There is no God so great as — my God."
It is what we are all saying; and it makes at
once the strength and the tragedy of human
lives. *' No God so great as my God." What
different things we mean when we say that —
we of the bustling outside world.

The Hindu woman means one thing only.
. . . *' No God so great as my God. ' That
was the lesson each was taking from the story
of Durga and Uma. Did not almost every
fable and legend chant that chorus? " No
God so Great." ... In punishment may be
sometimes, or in penitence (see the miracle o{
the Destroyer himself turned monk for Durga)
— but most of all in graciousness. . . .

** He knew Uma for her who went to

The Story of a IVoman 29

Dokhio's feast, and yet he forgave," said Boho
Rani, "Oh! the wonder." . . .

But the Mother of Nagendra laughed, sure
of her possession. . . . " The Godling of the
arrows was not really burnt," she said, "the
flying foot belonged to Kama's sheaf-bearer
and rival, the less-than-godlet of unlawful
love." . . .

And the Wise Woman smiled to herself in
the growing dusk. "The ignorant are in-
capable of receiving knowledge," was what
she said.

IV
Z^iE'F/— GODDESS!

A YOUNG unmarried girl is by some in
Bengal called Kumari — Princess, and
when married, Devi — Goddess.

I was musing on this, and all it told of the
feeling of a Nation, and of the true beauty oi
that feeling at its best, when an old Prime-
Minister friend of mine in a Native State came
to invite me to a Ceremony.

It is known how I love all things primitive
and individual, and my orthodox Hindu
friends are very good to me in remembering
this. '* But of course I will come," I promised.
** What is it this time?"

**The worship of young girls," said he.
There was the idea again, the central idea in
all Hindu thought in relation to women. . . .
The worship oi the Life- B ringer.

It was very simple, as all such Ceremonies

Devi — Goddess I 31

are, and free from all manner of false shame
or conventionality. There was remembrance
of the Creator; for the creature — the gentle
little girls, such babies all of them — there
were garlands of gay flowers, feastings and
anointings with perfume of rose-leaves.

There was also towards them in the manner
of these kindly elders who had long looked on
the face of Nature, a pretty dignity and rever-
ence which could not fail to beautify the fa6l
of Creation whenever it should draw nigh.

Not long after, the youngest Bride in the
household — she is but ten years of age — had
a joy-making on her own account. She wor-
shipped the Aged. They came in happy groups,
the same who had so lately blessed her — tooth-
less grandmother, great-aunt, cousins' Mother,
wife of Mother-in-Law's Spiritual Guide — each
had a name of her own in the di6lionary of
relationships. She received them charmingly,
standing at the head of the Zenana stairs —
the baby-hostess ! falling at the feet {parnam)
of those to whom she owed this courtesy,
saluting others with joined hands raised to
forehead (numuscar), and each made answer
" Blessings," hand on the child's head. Then

32 Between the Twilights

they sat in rows on little mats along the floor,
and ate sweets and vegetables off green plan-
tain leaves, their hostess waiting on them.

This little exchange of religious obligation
is all the etiquette, and makes all the social
amenities known among orthodox women in
India.

It is hard to convey the idea, state the fa6t
as one may, but the Hindu woman acknow-
ledges no claims save those of religion. No
social, no communal claims. Her worship of
the Gods, of her husband, her children, they
are all the same, part of her religion, and they
make her life.

Even the ordinary business of the day, bath-
ing, dressing, eating, is a religious a6l. . . .
To cook her husband's food an orthodox
Hindu wears a special silk garment: the only
gardening she ever attempts is to water and
tend the sacred basil {Tulsi). If she travels,
it is on a pilgrimage to this shrine or that, to
bathe in this or that sacred river. Of course
she gives dinner parties as did my ten-year-old
Bride, on special occasions, or on feasts of
Gods and Goddesses through the year, also in
memory of the dead ; but there is no machinery

Devi — Goddess! 33

of calls, nosocial entertaining for entertainment
sake, no interchange of civilities to acquaint
young people and make marriages. Marriages
are made by the Priests and your map of stars,
not by the social broker. For births and deaths
you may have a house full of women, your rela-
tions or *' spiritual" relations, come unbidden
on a visit of congratulation or sympathy. To
these you may never suggest departure, and
only innate good manners in the visitor has
saved from bankruptcy many a house in which
the doors of Life and Death were often open.

This involuntary hospitality may become
quite tiresome in pra6tice. I remember one
great Feasting. It was a ceremony for the
dead. A Maharani had died, and we made
her " praying-for-the-soul " budget, buying
her sinlessness for 1,000 lives at a cost of
Rs. 20,000. Part of the penalty was feeding
Brahmins. Our budget provided for 3,000
guests: but it was not etiquette to shut the
gates, and when 5,000 had been fed, my busi-
ness soul did really take alarm.

"If the gates were shut by my order no
ill-luck would betide the house, would it?" I
asked of her of many years, who kept our abs-

D

34 Between the Twilights

tra6l of right a6lion. '* Luck or ill-luck con-
cern only the Believer" was her verdi6t . . .
so my way was clear. In the courtyard great
caldrons of food were steaming. Here was
one stirring the rice and ever boiling more
and yet more. On the veranda sat Brahmin
cooks, cutting up red pumpkins or browa-
green brinjals^ slicing potatoes, grinding curry
stuffs, dancing red-yellow grains of pulse in
the winnowing fan. Other Brahmins ran to
and fro, serving the food as it was made
ready : all was orderly confusion, at which the
women peeped from the third floor balcony.

They were the disciples of Priests at the
expense of whose appetites we were buying
merit, and they sat in rows, hungry and
clamorous. Scarce could they be served fast
enough.

**But how long will they sit there?" I
asked of my old Dewan.

"Till they are fulfilled," was his delightful
answer; and it gave me courage for the shut-
ting of the gates.

It was but the day before that we had prayed
for the soul of the Lady, at thirteen altars of
holy Ganges mud. Four o{ these altars were

Devi — Goddess! 35

arranged round a great central place of prayer,
under an awning, to which were four ** Gate-
ways. " At each gateway hung a looking-glass
to hold the shadow of the spirit. . . . Beside
the awning stood a wooden image of the dead,
and to this was tethered a cow. So we bought
fof^her blessings. This was also the purpose of
the final ritual — gifts to Priests — silver vessels,
beds with silken hangings, jewels of gold, and
precious stones; . . . for the apostles of the
order, whole travelling-kits — neat rolls of mat-
ting, drinking-gourds, umbrellas, begging-
bowls. . . .

But, after all, it was in the Zenana that
regret and longing were prettiest rendered.
... In the hour of Union (as we call the
Twilight in Bengal), when the glories of the
West had died into silence, and earth and sky
were gray and still as life at the passing of a
friend — she who was now Maharani — my ten-
year-old Bride, crept out on to the landing of
"the Inside" to sprinkle with holy water the
place where soul and body parted, and to light
the death-light of welcome.

**She will come back, and know that we
have not forgotten."

36 Between the Twilights

It is interesting, the definite place in the
scheme of life, allotted to women in a country
where woman is of no account, except as hand-
maid to her lord man. I am always finding
illustration of this truth. No spite, no resent-
ment can rob individuals of the right to per-
form certain religious a6ls. The death-light,
for instance, was the province of Boho-Rani,
the daughter-in-law, the youngest in a house-
hold including three generations, and many
collaterals. . . . But the most passionate love
for the dead never suggested any variation of
etiquette. The old Mother bent with grief,
sisters, daughters sat huddled in the living-
room, looking with hungry eyes at Boho,
who alone could relieve the tension of that
quiet-coloured hour by service.

Now it is the turn of one, now of another,
the women know; there is no wrangling. . . .
But a few days past there had been the Spring
games, and the Festival of the Spring. The
children-wives swung to and fro under the big
tree in the women's courtyard. It was a pretty
sight — the graceful little ladies in their bright
draperies, clinging with their toes to the board
(for they swing standing), holding to the

Devi — Goddess! 37

ropes with tiny hands. . . . The sun peeped
at them through the screen of leaves, and set
on fire the rough-cut jewels at throat, at wrist,
at anklet. To and fro, to and fro . . . so
rhythmic was the motion, I found myself think-
ing of a field of grass, rippling in the wind.
Some brides, too small for the exercise, were
gravely swinging their dolls, and here was a
"religious" fondling the baby Krishna in
his cradle . . . but none of them played
really : it was only — Oberammergau — how the
god Krishna grown to manhood sported with
the maidens ; that was the reason given by all
for the evening's gaiety.

Another day, with laughter and shy import-
ance, the youngest Bride and Bridegroom
were led to a place of prominence. It was their
first Springtime since the marriage ceremony,
and they sat side by side, bound together with
silken cords; while the mother and grand-
mother threw at them little soft cushions of red
powder, the same that is used in religious
sacrifices for dusting the idol ; with it is made
the mark on the head of the Bride: perhaps
the colour is symbolical, the women do not
know, " it has always been so," they tell you.

38 Between the Twilights

And, as to the games — why it is Springtime,
children should be merry, and the shy pelting
with red pellets is Zenana merriment in italics.
Next year, maybe, the Bride will be a mother,
and such boisterousness will not become her.
Let the children play while they may, and let
the old Grand-dame pillow-fight with red
powder cushions. Is she not nearer to the
children in spirit than that grave-eyed Madan
Mohun, of three Springtides, for instance, who
is having his baby feed, in greedy solemnity.
For is she not the wise woman of many years?
and only the years can bring true youth and
wisdom. Ignorance dies after decades of con-
vention, of pain, of mistakes, and from the
dead bulb springs this wonderful flower of
youth and wisdom. The ignorance, the pain,
the mistakes, — they had to be. Do they not
make the fragrance of our Spring plant? The
pity is when the original shrub knows no
decay, when in the smug satiety of its ever-
greenness it journeys to no winter, and finds
no aftermath of Spring.

On yet another day the youngest sister was
chief lady. I found her sitting before a brass
tray of glass bangles and silver ornaments. It

Devi — Goddess! 39

was a first visit to her childhood's home since
marriage, and her husband would break her
old bangles and refit her. The Wise Woman
says it is symbolical of the fa6t that even in
her Parents' house she remains the possession
of her husband. So he is admitted to the
parental *' Inside," and the women other than
his wife, peep at the bangle-play from behind
doors and curtains.

**What do Indian women do with their
time?" how often I have been asked the ques-
tion. Custom and religion make the day's
programme — a woman's husband, and a wo-
man's God, are occupation in themselves, and
then there may be the children. The good
Hindu will have her house of Gods, her private
Chapel. Sometimes there is an image in it. I
have known God-houses without any image.
The name" of the particular God it is right for
her to worship will be whispered in her ear by
the family Priest, and not even to her husband
may she reveal the secret. But in her Chapel
you will find most often in Bengal, an image
either of the Baby God a-crawling, or of Kali,
the Mother. In Krishna Chapels there will
be a little crib, fashioned in these Western-

40 Between the Twilights

Eastern days like an English bedstead, with
mosquito nets: and just as in the morning the
devotee bathes and anoints the baby, leaving
food beside it on the little altar, so at even-
tide she lights the nursery lamp and puts it to
bed. ... Is this Hinduism? I do not know.
In pra6lice it seems to me but the Mother-
worship of the Child.

But in truth there is no one form or stage of
Hinduism to be found in India, or, for the
matter of that, in Bengal. . . . The great
truths are eternal and prevail in every religion :
yet all men are not capable of receiving the
truth, and Hinduism recognizes this. In the
a6lual worship of the idol are the illiterate and
ignorant encouraged. '* It would be sin to
disclose to these the mysteries of a God not
made with hands," so says the wisest of my
wise women ..." for he who has heard and
hearkens not, and understands not, hath the
greater sin." Yet that even a child may be
capable of instru6lion she proves to you. I
have seen many hundreds o{ babies under her
roof, babies ranging from three to twelve
years of age doing their vaoxmn^ pooja. It
is *'the worship oi the possible ' that she

Devi — Goddess ! 41

teaches them, *' the worship of the Might-
be."

At 9 o'clock they come hastening to the
hour of prayer, like the birds and lizards of
the Moslem legend: each little devotee, lips
pursed in serious earnestness, is carrying her
"basket of worship," and sits cross-legged to
unpack it — an incense-burner, the bowl for
Ganges water, flowers, bits of half-eaten fruit
and vegetables, the sacrificial powder, often a
remnant of some favourite saree, the Ganges
mud with which to make her " idol " — all this
she unpacks gravely, daintily, moulding her
lump of clay into a cone. . . . Now she will
make comparison with her neighbour, a little
wistfully, perhaps, perhaps exultingly: often
she shares her gifts. . . . Anything may be
given to the God ; the teaching here is to give
what costs something, and when the pooja is
over, the Pujari carries round a food-collect-
ing plate for the animals within the gates,
and the crows on the housetops. Now she
is threading garlands of the sacred white
jasmine, and the Priests have come for the
chaunting.

The children sit in rows facing each other,

42 Between the Twilights

along the walls of the veranda. My Wisest
of the Wise explains to me that the God who
dwells within us is to be invited to inhabit that
lump of mud (the clay on the potters' wheel),
for His better worshipping by the children of
men. So, the opening ceremony is a movement
of the hands — the invocation ! Each little wor-
shipper sits wrapt before the God in the clay.
. . . Now the Priest takes up the Sanskrit
word, and the Babies chaunt it after him.

"Oh! Great God, bless us, forgive us, re-
main with us."

"Oh, Great God, I offer thee this incense,
these flowers, this holy water," etc.

And the fingers are busy with the offering
while every now and again *-^ Dhyan karo''
(meditate) will be the order: and five hundred
pairs of Baby eyes are puckered into concen-
tration and five hundred pairs of arms are
tightly folded.

The earnest tension of the attitude moves
one to tears. . . . Of what are they thinking?
Oh! but of what?

"The worship of the Possible?"

Tiiat is the Wise Woman's thought, not
theirs. I put it to her.

Devi — Goddess! 43

'*Of what should they think," said she,
*' but of the whole duty of womanhood — to be
a good wife: to omit no act of ceremonial
Hinduism."

The sequence showed her wisdom. And
being" a good Hindu wife means fulfilling
the duty of a Life-Bringer, thinking no evil
of the lord who bears to you God's message
of creation, counting his most temporal want
as superior to your own most spiritual craving,
making a religion of his smallest wish; and
when the Gods, for your sins, take him from
you, holding to his memory with prayer and
fasting and self-suppression. ... So we end,
whence we set out Devi — Goddess!

V

THE SETTER-FAR OF IGNORANCE

I HAVE tried to indicate the women's atti-
tude towards the man in India. His to-
wards her is more difficult to determine — partly
because she is not his whole existence, as he
is hers; she is his occasional amusement, and
always his slave and the physical element in
the eventual saving of his soul, that compli-
cated machinery which necessitates a son who
will pay your material and spiritual debts.
Comradeship, as we have seen, there can be
little between orthodox Hindu husband and
wife. Love we will not deny — these things are
between soul and soul; show of affe6lion
would be insult in the presence of third per-
sons; courtesy, in the thousand little ways
required in the West, is shown rather by the
woman to the man than by him to her. And,
indeed, the very fatt that he allows all this is

The Setter-Far of Ignorance 45

proof of respe6l. To accept service is the com-
pliment— and he respe6ls her after his kind.
But certainly he respe6ls her. Does he not
arrange that himself shall be her chief interest
in life and her chief care and memory in death?
Is she not allowed to be at once his *' parasite
and his chalice." But certainly he respe6ls
her. Her name may not be in the mouth of a
man, even in the form of polite inquiry after
her health : no strange man may see her face,
and often he may not even hear her voice. Is
it not her husband who guards her from con-
ta6l with the outer world, from sight of God's
most beautiful creation, from knowledge of
the way he lives his life, or works, or plays?

But certainly he respe6ls her. He eats the
food she cooks for him, he gives her complete
control of his household, and he sees that she
lives up to his ideal of her place in the scheme
of life.

She, too, has her ideal — the worship and
service of her husband, and if he gives her
opportunity to realize this, what more will she
ask? When she is the mother of a son greater
respe6l is hers, from the other women in the
Zenana, and greater love and respe6l no

46 Between the Twilights

doubt from her lord. Men do not like to be
conne6led with a failure, and she has been
successful, has justified her existence. The
self-respe6l it gives the woman herself is most
marked. She still is faithful slave to her hus-
band, but she is an entity, a person, so far as
that is possible in a Hindu Zenana; she can
lift her head above the woman who taunted
her, her heart above the fear of a rival. I have
seen her parallel in the ugly duckling of the
family who suddenly develops to the recogni-
tion of the outer world an unsuspected talent.
We all know how she seems mysteriously and
instantly to grow taller, smarter, more digni-
fied; how she knows her own mind and has
an opinion even in the regions remote from
her special subje6l — whereas hitherto all had
been vague discontent and vacillation. Both
women are saying unconsciously in their hearts
— *' I am of use in the world," only I doubt
whether, causes reversed, either would say it
as triumphantly.

And, for a Hindu woman, **the best is yet
to be." When she arrives at the dignity of
Grandmother, ruling a household of daughters-
in-law, she has indeed entered upon her king-

The Setter-Far of Ignorance 47

dom. The son, who as infant first added to
her stature, lavishes upon her in old age re-
spect and afFeftion which any woman might
envy. Indeed, the relation of mother and son,
even of widowed mother and son in India now,
when her life is near its close, is the most
beautiful perhaps of all Indian family rela-
tionships. She is respe6led, almost wor-
shipped, as the Life-Bringer, and when she
holds her grandson in her arms she is for-
given for the widowhood which for so long
has been counted against her. At last she is
loved as only those women are loved who
have given, and given, and given all their
lives seeking nothing in return.

I remember an old gray-headed Hindu say-
ing to me, when we were discussing Gurus,
'* After all the true Guru in every house is the
Mother; and are there not only three important
things in the world — God, the Word of God,
and the Guru, he who brings the Word? "...

Of the intelle6tual capacity of a woman a
Hindu has a very poor opinion; but he will
yield to, and even refer to, her about all matters
of religion and — the kitchen.

It is the masculine attitude the world over.

48 Between the Twilights

And sometimes he will consult her about
things she cannot possibly understand, from
a superstitious belief that her virtue may give
her insight. She is his toss of a penny.

It has often amused me to compare the
men's and women's versions of some old-world
story. It isextraordinarilyenlightening. Once,
in order to get a little nearer to the man's con-
ception of a woman, I entrapped an orthodox
friend of mine into telling me the story of the
Ten-handed Durga. My friend was chewing
betel-nut, which meant that he had dined, and
was in genial mood, and clean white draperies.
He sat cross-legged on a mat in a room all
delicious cool open spaces. He leaned his
elbow on a great white bolster. There were
other bolsters and mats about the room, for
it was his wont to sit here of an afternoon and
receive visitors. It was his ** Setting-far-
ignorance" time, as he explained to me. One
or two women sat beyond the mats; they
were disciples of holy men, and allowed there-
fore to gather up the crumbs which fell from
the table of the great philosopher. The scene
pleased me. Every face in the room was worth
study; some for the hall-mark of sainthood.

The Setter- Far of Ignorance 49

many for the evidence of self-restraint and
meditation; a few for an exa6tly contrary
reason — the possibilities of a certain unholy
strength, the best degraded to the worst.

There was a storm without, but the Setter-
far of Ignorance heeded it not, even so much
as to shut the windows, and the rain splashed
in, and the lightning caught now one face,
now another, now the pink garb of an ascetic,
now the veiled form of a woman. . . . The
thunder crashed, and ceased but to let in the
noise of the street, with the tram of English
civilization running under the windows.

My question about Durga set the heads
wagging. It was close upon Durga Pooja
time, and every Hindu would be provisioning
his kitchen against guests, and adding to the
house of Gods that image which presently he
would carry down to the waters of forgetful-
ness. The question was popular.

"There are many versions of the story,"
said my friend. "You will have heard what
the women say; the true tale is this. Not all
the Gods could prevail against the powers of
evil, so they united their several wills and
energies, and the union of strength produced

50 Between the Twilights

Durga. She is energy or will — the beautiful
Ten-handed — and she undertook to fight the
demons.

'* They came just in the form o^ beasts, and
then of men; but both she slew. There lay
at her feet the buffalo, typical of all that is
coarse, and the lion, typical of all that is best in
the animal world ; and out of the slain beasts
rose one in the likeness of a man, and him
also she slew — victorious. It is in this form
that the instructed worship her at Durga Pooja
time."

Then I : *' Expound the parable." And he:
"See you not, the spiritual conquers the bestial
and animal, thus gaining strength to con-
quer the human also. God conquers evil.
And yes, I own it, the ultimate conquest of
evil is by the agency of a woman, for the
Creator so ordained it; she alone is capable
of conquest /<?r others — but they were the Gods
and not the Goddesses who gave her the power
to conquer. The Great God but accepted the
service, the devotion in this matter of the
woman, and so, has he not honoured her for
all Eternity?"

"She alone is capable of conquest for

The Setter-Far of Ignorance 51

others"; *'To accept service and devotion of
any is the highest honour you can pay her."
With that for key-note how many things are
capable of understanding in the relation of
Hindu man to Hindu woman!

*' I see more still in your story," said one
who sat by. *'Does it mean also, perhaps,
that only when we have renounced our
wills can they be effe6lual for conquest, that
when we give the best of ourselves to others,
they afterwards, by these very means, bring
back and lay at our feet that very thing we
would ourselves have conquered and mas-
tered?"

For of course the Gods had their part in
Durga's vi6lory. The Hindu remembers only
that conquest, salvation may be bought for
him by another. Suppose now the Hindu
Mother to teach her son recognition of his
part in that parable — that it is he who must
cultivate the will and energy wherewith to gift
the woman for conquest, possess himself of
something worth giving — what a nation we
should have!

But " Everything is In being through ig-
norance— when we are awake our dreams are

52 Between the Twilights

false," was the only remark made by my
friend to these heroics : and he yawned politely,
and seemed to have lost all interest in the
Ten-handed.

VI
THE KING OF DEATH

IT is in the villages, remote from railways
that I have found the rarer God-tales,
villages got at by long journeys of road and
water, past lotus beds, the pink-white blossom
growing waist high among leaves large as
sun-hats; past groups of mat huts tottering
against each other, past palm trees and green
swamps of mosquitoes ; past stretch of brown
earth waiting patiently, face upturned, for the
rain that comes not; once, past the quaintest
requiem ever written in Nature. ... It is
a moment worth recall. A slow newly-con-
stru6led railway was making its weary way
on a hot afternoon in June from mango-grove
to river-bank and ferry steamer. It was the
usual up-country landscape, one barely looked
at it, till, suddenly a change — a great zone of
sand, lying in waves, waves patterned like the

54 Between the Twilights

ripple of water, and g^listening — Earth's dia-
mond tiara — in the fierce white light oi the
Sun-God. ... A hot wind smote the face
like a furnace-blast; the glare was a flame-red
brand across the eyes ... no relief any-
where, and yet, a strange sense of freedom in
this sea of sand waves.

Under a bare tree of white thorns lay a
small bundle of pink rags, a child with a
shock head of hair, the only bit of life and
colour anywhere it seemed at first. She lay
quite still, on her back, motionless.

In the distance across the sand walked a
woman, slowly, painfully; on her head was a
water-pot, she walked away from the child,
but every now and then she turned to look at
the tree of white thorns. You knew what she
sought . . . would she find it? and having
found would she be in time?

The train crawled on to the river, and there
was the woman ever walking away and away,
and ever turning to look back; and the child
under the shelter of a handful of thorn-needles
still, so still, and the sun smiting on the
gleaming sand. . . .

From the river in the growing dusk I saw

The King of Death 55

my diamond tiara changed to moonstones. . . .
The great zone was now but a soft white
sheen, a City of Light, and the minarets of
some place of Saints towered above the battle-
ments. '* A very holy man lived there," they
told me later. It is where holy men should
live, it seemeth me, on the Sands of Time,
their faces to that other fleeting Earth-force
the River of Life. . . .

And it was travelling by ways such as these
that finally I found myself in the canvas home
of the wilderness, among people who had
leisure to conserve the past, to remember. I
sat with them, now on some spacious roof-
tree, the sky for dome, now in some little box
of a room, jealously guarded from light of
day, or sight of man, or I went in and out
with them to their Garden-houses, to their
house of Gods, to the women's courtyard,
which respecl for hornets' lives had rendered
dangerous to man ! We were sitting in this
same courtyard, my eye on the hornets' nest
in the pipal tree, when "the slave of Kali"
told me the tale of Shoshti Devi^ the prote6lor
of women and children.

** It was a house-cat who first had know-

56 Between the Twilights

ledge of her, " she said. *' In a King's palace
all the Oueens were barren, and none could
break the spell. So the cat chose her who
oftenest thought upon her stomach's need, for
the whispering of a secret."

"Go at midnight," said she, "and tend the
turnips in the potter's field beyond the Gates."
So, the youngest Queen went as she was bid-
den, and in six moons she had her desire."
Shoshti Devi lives in trees, a different tree for
every month; and the truly religious worship
her in all these several forms — but it is enough
if you make an image, just a head with a long
red nose, and place it under one of the four
most sacred trees. And, if you tie a rag to a
branch as you go away, Shoshti Devi will
look at it, and remember all about you and
your prayer, what time you most may need
her. . . . That was a wise cat. People un-
acquainted with the Indian temperament can
have no conception of the pathological value
of suggestions such as these. Be a woman
never so ill, she comes back heartened and
therefore better as an a6lual and visible fa6l
for her visit to the Shoshti tree. Think of the
faith it implies. No vision of the Goddess was

The King of Death 57

vouchsafed her, no Priest comforted her, no
wonder of music, no beauties of chancel or
cloister drugged her soul or shampooed her
senses: drawn by a legend not in itself neces-
sary to salvation she but crawled to some
dust-laden tree standing, may be, by a sun-
baked highway. Perhaps she found there an
image of Shoshti: perhaps not, it mattered
nothing: and she tied to one of the branches
her little prayer of rags, that was all. . . .

Such people should be easy to kill or to
make alive. They are, and there lies the pity
of it, in a world where you may die as well as
live, be cursed as well as blessed. The Gods
curse, but only through human agency. This
is interesting since you may be blessed di-
re6lly.

Knowledge on the subje61: of "sending
devils " is the property of the Priesthood,
Royal Fellows of the Society of Hellologists !
but magic men and women, non-diplomaed and
unlicensed also abound, and every dweller in
town or village who has ever known or inherited
a hate, has his own little stock of demonology
for home consumption. It is my pride that on
the one occasion when I was consciously

58 Between the Twilights

operated upon, it was by the specialist. I had
helped to secure prote6lion for a child who had
enemies, I was naturally therefore hated of
these same. When back from her Estate, in
the comparative civilization of my own little
home, I got a much-thumbed message which
had been thoughtfully left in my post-box.

** Twenty Priests learned in magic," so it
ran, *'are sending a devil into you." It was
true. On the remote scene of thwarted venge-
ance, they were *' making magic " — cursing a
clay image made in my likeness, walking over
every square inch of ground I had trod at the
Palace, or in the Gardens, and — breathing
curses.

My answer was a message, "To the Chief
Priest among the twenty Priests most learned
in magic, who sit in the Grove of Mangoes, at
the Monkey Temple, in N . . . ., 'keep the
Devil, till I come.' "

This was treated as a ribald tempting oi the
demon, and a man was sent to sit at my gate
and curse me so that the flesh should wither
from my bones, and my house be desolate. . . .
But my household and my dear yellow
"Chow," and my little gray mare, and my

The King of Death 59

red-speckled munias^ all the live things within
my gates, did, with me, flourish exceedingly
. . . and in a fortnight my twenty Priests
withdrew their man, no doubt deciding that I
had already a devil bigger than any at their
command !

They were, alas! more successful with my
little friend. First, they threw mustard before
her as she walked, and she — sneezed. . . . *'What
would you?" It was Colman's mustard that
you buy in yellow tins at the '* Europe Shops."
. . . But she sneezed — that meant a devil had
entered, and the Priest spared not the pi6lur-
esque in description of him. Then, one morn-
ing on her doorstep she found a little box — in
it was a human thigh bone and three packets
of powder — red, yellow, blue. This was a very
potent curse, and she trembled exceedingly, so
that she could not even name its meaning.^

^ A knowledge of curses is a useful asset to Leg^al
Advisers. I have known a serious family dispute com-
posed on this wise, A. I could forgive everything but
the bone under my bed, for this I will fight B. even till
I am penniless. Adviser (Soothingly). Certainly, cer-
tainly— and now let 's have the bone . . . which, produced,
instead of being that powerful to curse, is merely a
harmless leg-of-mutton bone! The way to peace is open.

6o Between the Twilif^hts

But worst of all was the manner of cursing
parallel to mine. There were at the moment
great hopes of an heir to the Estate : the birth
of a son would settle many political and
domestic quarrels. The Priests chose the
moment when the Mother's mind would be
most open to suggestion, and cursed the thing
that was to be! and it died.

So I have known another happening. A
widow of fifteen had promised her Priest, at his
desire, ornaments of a certain value for the
Festival of Durga Pooja. But her Trustees
did not sanation the expenditure. The Priest
cursed her. She had two children — the young-
est girl just eighteen months in age. The
Priest was explicit in his curse — the Baby
would die. I found my widow in an agony of
grief. The child was her boy husband's last
gift to her: and it was dying of pneumonia.
... It was touch and go, but medical skill
saved the little life, only the Mother's firm be-
lief is that not science but the reconsidered
decision of the Trustees, setting free her priest
gifts, worked the cure.

And here I would mention one important
article of belief in the Zenana. It is that not

The King of Death 6i

only a man himself but that which he owns or
loves or values may be affected by magic. ' * So-
and-so has put a curse upon your cattle," will
be a message followed by mysterious deaths,
not to be accounted for by poison. The form
of the message varies — it may be sent in words,
it may be sent like the thigh bone or the mus-
tard, in kind — that is of small moment, the
result is always the same.

My Wisest of the Wise, asked for explana-
tion, is politely full of wonder that I should
wish for explanation of such things. "Is it
possible that I doubt? If these things were
capable of understanding would they be worth
a thought? Is not the supernatural of neces-
sity beyond reason? Would you plough the
stars with bullocks? Has anything any exist-
ence at all, except in our belief? All we are
or seem is a dream. Those who doubt and
argue would seek to dream waking; and they
lose so all the pleasing restfulness of sleep."

Then musingly, she turned to me with her
rare smile. *'Once, I also doubted. I was
then of few years, and the questionings which
belong to the changing part of me were many.
I was in Benares, and I said to a holy man

62 Between the Twilights

there, who is of one fellowship with me:
* This thing — cursing — is of the evil one. Do
not practise it. Besides I do not believe you
can curse. I believe it is only magic, like the
gypsy folk do use. And he : * Nay, Mother,
I do it in the name of the Writings — try me.'
And I wished to test this thing, but because I
had said it was wrong, I could not then con-
sent. Yet on the third day I said : * Well, if
you can work a curse in a good cause ... I
will be witness.'

'* The Gods sent the occasion. A poor man,
threader of flowers for the neck of a sacred
bull in a rich man's temple, came to me the
next day. He and his family were starving.
The rich man had out of caprice dism.issed
them. My holy man turned to me.

*'*This is the occasion of your seeking.
Mother,' he said. 'That rich man is known
to me. I will hurt him — but not much — for
this poor man's sake.' "

She smiled again whimsically. *' I was in
the body — what would you? It was wrong:
but I consented.

** So the holy man sent for a little dust from
off the feet of the rich man, and with the help

The King of Death 63

of this, and some earth and flour, he made an
image, saying mantras the while; but the
most powerful mantras said he over five nails
lying in the bottom of a pot.

" ' Now,' he said, * the curse is ready; but
first go and see the rich man. Is he well?
bring me news.'

" So I went, even as I was bid, and I sat in
the courtyard and saw for mine own self that he
was well, and vaunting himself in his health
and riches.

" It was dusk when I returned and made my
report. 'Then here begins the magic,' said
the holy man; and taking one of the nails he
had cursed, he drove it with many more curses
into the knee of the image.

" ' A little curse,' he said, ' only a little curse
in a good cause: but he shall feel it.'

"And I ran back to thegreat house and found
all in confusion — servants running fordo6tors,
Priests reciting prayers. ... ' The Master
was sick unto death,' they told me. We waited
that night; and in the dawn hour, I, being holy
myself and privileged, went to the rich man and
told him as he lay in agony, that to my mind,
not the do6lor, but expiation would cure him.

64 Between the Twilights

**'What!' he said, startled, for his sins I
think were not few, ' must I bear penalty in
this life, when I am willing to carry my burden
in the next.' *Oh! a small matter,' I sug-
gested; *somethingeasy of expiation. Think
— a wrong perhaps to some private or Temple
servant.' But he remembered nothing. So I,
pretending I had seen the thing in a dream,
told him, and instantly the threader of gar-
lands was sent for and honoured with gifts
and feastings. When the holy man heard of
this he took the nail from the rich man's knee
and he recovered immediately. . . . Yes, I
believe in curses. But they are not good, they
belong to the things of the body."

" Sitting dhama " is the Curse Coercive. I
thought the practice extinft, till last year I
found a half-mad thing mechanically telling
his beads in a Raj courtyard of my acquaint-
ance, as he sat beside the image of Ganesh
the luck-bringer, under the pipal tree where
lay the offerings of red and yellow flowers and
sacred grass-tufts. It was midday and he sat
bareheaded in the sun, unkempt, unshaven,
blear-eyed.

So had he sat a fortnight, touching neither

The King of Death 65

food nor drink. The lady of the house dis-
puted a debt claimed by him in the name of
an ancestor. She bade him sue, but he, wise
man, preferred this method. At the moment
he was only just alive, and his wits seemed to
have preceded him to the new genesis. We
called him back, with kind words and chinking
of money under the trunk of the Luck-Bringer
himself. It was the money I think that reached
him on the Border Land. He laughed for joy
and wept many salt tears into his first spare
meal of rice and watery pulse; but the family
borrowed more money to make a great feast
because the house was saved from a Curse!

Another variety of compelling your desire
is the burning of a cow or an old woman.
While, for a woman, the simplest way is the
time-honoured custom of sulking. Early Indian
domestic archite6lure provides for this. There
was always a sulking-room in the *' Inside"
(compare boudoir)^ and here sat the woman
who insisted on her own way; and here no
doubt came husband or father with gift of
shawl or toe-ring to release her. . . .

My wise ones tell me many stories as we
sit on the roof in the hour between the Twi-

66 Between the Twilights

lights. But the story of my Wisest one her-
self is one of my favourites. You must know
that she is a very holy woman indeed. At her
birth, so many years ago that her devotees
bring you data to prove her a hundred years
old, it was prophesied that she would be **a
religious," and her Father built her a Shrine,
and taught her things which only Priests may
know. She can perform every jog^ and can
read one's thoughts in any language. Her
face is the face of her who has attained, and
her dignity and self-poise I have nowhere seen
surpassed. She dresses oddly — the sex of the
devotee must not be proclaimed — in the nether
garments of a man, i.c.^ loose white drapery
about the legs, and a long coat. Her hair is
worn in coils on the top of her head, and round
her neck hang sacred beads, and Kali's necklet
of skulls in gold and enamel work. To her
the symbol is not gruesome. Kali, she will
tell you, was the power of God, the ** Energy
of the Gods," and the heads represent the
Giants of wickedness whom she has slain.

She is extraordinary in her dealings with
people, so quick to discern true from false;
so fearless in her denunciation of hypocrisy.

The King of Death 67

withal that she is never aught but courteous.
I love sitting beside her when pilgrims come,
pilgrims from all parts of India who fall at
her feet and pass on to other shrines, or linger
in the outer courtyard on the chance of a word;
the meaning of a text, some family or caste
difficulty, advice as to the moment's physical
or worldly need, all are brought to her; for
she shuts out nothing, and is a dear shrewd
Saint about business other than her own. I
have known her wave oflP a pilgrim — **She
would not insult her feet " was the reason
given. She seemed to gather all that mattered
about this type of person in a single glance.
To one who came in curiosity pure and simple,
though he pretended interest in some Sanskrit
text, she said, quietly looking him in the eyes
while he fumbled over his unveracities : ** No!
you shall not hear whence I came, nor any-
thing about me." But to another more sincere,
though equally curious, she said — he had spoken
no question — " I come from a land where
women ride and men wage war."

In 1857 she was already a famous Sanskrit-
ist, so powerful that her influence, purely re-
ligious, was mistaken for political. She was

68 Between the Twilights

suspe6led of collusion with Khande Rao
Peishwa, and a guard of soldiers was sta-
tioned round her cell and Temple. When the
country settled down, she wandered to the
different places of pilgrimage all over India,
meditating and buying merit. Everywhere
had she been, everywhere that is holy, and as
an old woman, eyes dim with prayer, throat
drawn with fasting, she has settled in Bengal
and devotes herself to the religious education
of her community. ** I have spent a lifetime
in prayer: now I am ready to work," she ex-
plains. But the praying is not over.

From 5 to 9 of a morning, she shuts her-
self away in her House of Gods, and no one
dare disturb her. Here in India, where shrines
are many, and there is no false shame about
entering and praying — doors wide — nay, where
the Godling sits by the wayside, and where it
is a common thing to see a woman stand on a
highway, head against some outer wall of a
Temple — the moment's contact a prayer, or
bowing to the Earth on some crowded pave-
ment— it is curious that not one of her devotees
or friends has any knowledge of what is within
her House of Gods — whether it is empty or

The King of Death 69

has the whole panthology. Yet all alike —
alien in faith, disciple, or visiting devotee —
have seen her face as she leaves that house
after her communings with eternity; and well
— is there not a story of the Mount of Trans-
figuration ?

So, she cured herself of a serious illness
during which, thinking it (perhaps meaning
it) to be her last, she had summoned to her
side by some telepathic power the faithful from
all parts of North India. I say ** meaning,"
because I am forced to believe that the Indian
woman who has her will in training can die at
will : more rarely she can live at will. Probably
the latter is the rarer because, poor thing, she
has so much more incentive to die than to live.

Well, this time my Wisest of the Wise had
ele6led to live after all. Her choice was not
incompatible with her faith in a God who held
the keys of Life and Death. It was only that,
being given free will, it was within her power
to steal the key of the House of Death.

*' Has one ever stolen the key of the House
of Life? " I asked.

** I know of none such," was the cautious
answer of wisdom.

70 Between the Twilights

Then I — **Talk to me, Mother, of Life and
Death. What is Life?"

And she — **A dream in the heart of a
dream. ... It is as if one should sleep, and
sleeping dream that he was dead. That dream
within a dream is this, that men call Life."

**And Death?"

** To-morrow's dream. The next-door house.
God's tenant am I in this house in which you
find me. But agreement I have none. God
will tell me to quit, nor give me notice. Death
is but the house I next inhabit. There will be
other houses after that." Death, it would
seem, is but a change of house, we have failed
to repair the present tenement, or it is too
small for us, or our neighbourhood is unsuit-
able, so we are given the chance of another,
and after that, perchance, yet another and
another, through all the lives appointed to us.
But our personalities remain. We can never
sink those.

Once again, she talked of Death as "the
Innermost Dream — but we shall wake."
**The end of the Death dream is only sleep,
that is Life: when we wake from life, it is to
Life Eternal."

The King of Death 7 1

** And what is that?"

*'Rest — in the perfe6l attainment of all
truth, of all knowledge and of all reality."

The body, I gather, is degradation to the
soul. Any '* house " is in a measure degrada-
tion and belongs to the state of progress.
Some day we shall be free of all houses. We
shall lose ourselves in the Great Soul. That
is the final '* Twilight" — the time of Union
for each individual soul.

** Then shall there be no more Death." . . .

She ceased speaking, my Wisest of the
Wise, and silence fell between us as we looked
together at the dying Sun.

Oh ! the gray and silver gray on the water.
Oh! the gold, limpid, liquid, lambent gold in
the sky and on the water. . . .

**And the King of Death is but the first
Sunset." . . .

P,S. — Since the above was written, my
Wisest of the Wise has arrived at her Sunset
hour. Her going was very beautiful and very
simple: shortly before her time was come, she
left the Town where she dwelt, for the holy
city of Death. She was no worse and no better

72 Between the Twilights

than she had been any day the year and more,
but she knew, apparently. Then, one morn-
ing, she said quite calmly to her disciples, after
the ceremonial bath and poo/uy "This is the last
time I shall worship in this house " (her body);
*' now, waste no time in regret, let us talk the
things we should be sorry to have left unsaid."
. . . And all that day the faithful gathered about
her, and she expounded the scriptures with an
insight unequalled even by herself. She ate
nothing — **Why prop up the house that is
tumbling?"

At night she asked to be taken down to the
Sacred River — a Hindu dies with her feet in
the water; and there she sat among her friends
on the stone steps of the Ghat, claiming no
support, no physical comfort, now silent, now
setting afloat some beautiful thought in words
that will always live for those who loved her
. . . and then just in the gray mystery of the
dawn hour, '*It is right," she said, and fell
back. . . . They put her into a boat and took
her across to the Ghat of the Soul's departure,
and here they slipped her gently into the
Stream ... for that is all the burial service
for one who is holy.

The King of Death 73

Later, her disciples came to me with faces
radiant. "She has attained," they said.
"Yes!" said the Holy Man, Truth-named,
"she has attained in that she ele6ted not to
attain;" and then they told me that, sitting
that night of stars and dark spaces by the
River of Death, one had said to her: "You
are blessed; you have attained." And she
made answer: "Nay! it was given me to
attain; but I put it aside, desiring re-birth
once more for the sake of the work, to which
I have put my hand, here among you."

" And a man's future is even as his desires.
That is true truth. Miss Sahib!" concluded
the Wise man, Truth-named.

VII
THE WISE MAN— "TRUTH-NAMED"

IT was at the house of my Wise Woman
that first I saw him. He wore a* straight
long robe, the colour of the pilgrim flag, or
of the inner lining of the fruit of knowledge
when you break through the sheath in which
it shelters from the world.

About his head were wound fold on fold of
muslin of the same mystic hue, and the way
of winding, and his speech, bewrayed him of
the Punjab.

But as I have said, you must never locate
the holy. He walked with head ere6l, straight
as an arrow, nor receiving nor giving saluta-
tion to any; and he came to me where I stood
talkingtomy Wisest of the Wise, and *' When,"
said he, "may I come to talk with the Miss
Sahib ofthe big-little things?" And I: "How
know you that I like to talk of these things?
and what are they? "

The JVise Man — " Truth- Named'' 75

** I know; the Miss Sahib knows. When
may I come?"

So we found a convenient season ; and he,
the free, made of himself for the sake of re-
moving ignorance, a slave of time, coming
pun6lually Sunday after Sunday to talk the
big-little things, '* Life and Death," and
"Whence we come," and ** Whither we are
bound."

With eyes screwed together in earnestness,
one finger on the tip of his nose as he medi-
tated, he would talk hour after hour; nor did
he discourage discussion, he begged it. It
was one way he said of teaching us to know
ourselves. "And how shall we know God
until we know ourselves ? " "Be self-knowers,
God is within, and it is the God in us that
seeks to find God." ..." God! by what sign
shall we know Him? how conceive? Imagine
a world without space or place or time or any-
thing created. Imagine only light and light
and light, everywhere pulsing, throbbing. . . .
From the beginning was that, and only that,
and that was God. But with God exists the
Power and Mercy of God, not separately, but
as closely allied as sweetness to sugar, as the

76 Between the Twilights

scent of the rose to the rose, as the colour of
a flower to the flower. . . . Men talk of one
God as if there could be two or three. There 's
just God — the All-pervading, the Essence of
Being, the heart of the heart of Beauty, the
great first Flame which lights every flame that
leaps into life. . . . Light and light and light,
brilliance at the soul of brilliance . . . the God-
spark in every soul, in everything created . . .
only by recognizing this shall we recognize
God, there is no other way.

"... Yes! the windows of the soul get
dimmed and the flame gives no light. Is that
the fault of the flame? Clean the windows of
the soul; such work is allowed to man, such
only, not his to create Light, that was and is
from Eternity.

"One day all the several sparks of light
will go back to the Great Central Light whence
they came, the soul will find God. . . . What
need to make haste? What need to fret?
Every soul must find God at long last . . .
light will return to Light."

In countries loved oi the Buddha one sees
by the roadside a little shrub with white leaves
among the green. The Buddha passed that

The Wise Man—'' Truth-Named " 77

way, is the legend, and the shrub has kept
memory of the passing. I have sometimes
thought that so among the leafy professions
of mankind there are some white souls that
keep the memory of the passing of the Great
God. The " Truth-Named " is one such.

I remember on one occasion thanking him
when he had said things which gave food for
thought.

"Huh!" he said, "Miss Sahib, that was
not yet talk of God. I did but try to make a
clearing in the jungle where we might sit
down and meditate about these things." An-
other day he said: "There are three diseases
in the world — A6lual Sin'' (the breaking of
what we call commandments), "this disease
can be cured by good works; Restlessness^ to
be cured by meditation ; 2ind Joylessness, to be
cured by making occasion to give joy to others.
The mark of a true religion is Joy."

Referring to the first cure, I said: "Then
you believe in the efficacy of good works, oh !
Truth-Named Singh." And he said: "Good
works are fetters, fetters of gold, but still
fetters."

78 Between the Twilights

When the Datura tree hung out its burden
of bells, and the pilgrim season had begun,
he came to me with as much excitement as his
calm abstra6lion from all emotion permitted.
And, "There is a Lat (Lord) Swami," he
said, * 'sitting in a grove at Dum Dum. Would
the Miss Sahib like to talk with him? "

*' Is he holy?" I asked.

'* I know him not, but he is called a Lat
Swami, he should be so. He has been teach-
ing the people of the farther England (Ame-
rica) about God and the one religion, it is
said, and he has many disciples in every
country. Besides, he speaks the language of
the Miss Sahib's friend (English), and it is a
chance for the Miss Sahib's friend to question
in her own tongue, as she cannot me." . . .

So we went, and the first time lost our way.
We met strolling minstrels and were offered
seats at wedding feasts, and fighting rams for
our diversion, but no Swami sitting by his
Lake of Lotuses.

Our Wise Man was distressed : ** I gave my
word you would come. Even by mistake we
cannot break a word, it is damage to Saint-
hood " — one's own he meant. *' Make a speedy

The IVise Man — " Truth- Named " 79

occasion to remove the disease of this error. I
myself will conduct you."

But no! he would not arrange the train by
which we were to go. ** Shall I who am free,
compel any to be slaves to time? Come when
you will, I will sit at the Station all day." It
was late afternoon when we could make the
expedition but the "Truth-Named" was
there. He had awaited us since morning,
meditating undisturbed by the bustle of a Rail-
way Station. We were soon in the suburbs
among palm-trees, and rank undergrowth,
and we found the Lat Swami clad in yellow-
silk robes, sitting cross-legged in a grove of
mango-trees, beside a bed of white lotuses.
His face did not appeal, but that we mused,
might be prejudice.

" Askhimthebig-littlequestions," prompted
our Wise Man — himself retiring deferentially
to the level of the least of the Lat Swami's
disciples. And we asked, only to hear in
pompous English, *' I refer you to my book,
which has been well reviewed by the * Daily
Mail.' My Disciple will explain." And be-
fore our gasp of astonishment had spent
itself, came the disciple, a follower from that

8o Between the Twilights

** farther England " who, grovelling before the
Master, produced the book.

But we were busy inventing excuse for
flight. Silence, as we walked away. Then
said our Truth-Named, tolerant humour in his
eyes, "So the Miss Sahib's Friend, and the
Miss Sahib liked not that Holy Man?"

**iVi9.'" I said, '*we did not." Pause —
then, "I am glad the Miss Sahib's Friend,
and the Miss Sahib did not like that Holy
Man. I am glad that they gave not their
discrimination a sickness by liking him."

" But you took us! "

" How could I know? Besides, in a garden
one should smell every flower. . . . To me it
seemeth that the foolish ones of the Farther
England have robbed him of his virtue by
their admiration and praises. It is ever so.
Of virtue do women rob even the holy. Once
that Swami had excuse for knowledge."

** What is the name of her whom he called
Disciple?"

'* How can I know? Foolish one — what need
for other name?"

On the way back we had proof of our. Wise
Man's reality of religion. He would not travel

The Wise Man—'' Truth-Named " 8 1

in our carnage behind the *'fire horse," po-
litely went next door: but just as the train
was about to move we saw him literally kicked
out by some non-Indian, masquerading as a
gentleman.

The poor old *' Truth-Named " found room
elsewhere, and nothing could be done till we
arrived at our destination, when we waited for
him to apologize and atone for the unknown.

**Huh," he said, *'Hhat^ that was nothing.
Forget it. Miss Sahib. It is not. It could not
hurt me, since I did not resent it." . . . *' His
mind carried not fruit of ignorance," as he
said on another occasion. Even so, in his
simplicity has he often enunciated the greatest
of truths.

I have talked in a book of women of Holy
Men, for priests and women are allies the
world over, and in India, particularly is the
influence noticeable. A priest is often the only
man with whom a Purdahnashin may talk,
before whom she may appear unveiled : and,
as I have said before, there is a secret, albeit
about things religious, between wife and priest
to which even the woman's husband may not
be party. Not backward has the Priesthood

G

82 Between the Twilights

been in availing itself of its privileges. Where
his learning is not likely to attraft, the man
of ashes has an inheritance of superstition to
which no woman is proof, and from which
there can be no appeal.

The "Truth-Named" is fearless in denun-
ciation of the ash-smeared and degraded type
of Priest. "In the golden age the only Priest
was Prayer. If we would only study our-
selves, travel in the unknown country of our
minds and souls and personalities, we should
need no Guru, save God. Priests, of all re-
ligions, keep men's eyes bandaged that they
should not see except through the Priest : but
the written word and the book of ourselves is
open to all."

"There is but one religion — the service of
man and personal holiness by realization of
God. No need for rules of conduct, for com-
mandments. Realize God and even the desire
to transgress is slain. But realize God and
the place even of sin in the scheme of the
world will be clear. There is nothing which is
which is outside God. Yes — this is a hard
do6lrine, to be learnt only by sitting aloof
from men, sitting in a place of green trees, in

The Wise Man—'' Truth-Named'' 83

solitudes where blow the winds of God, fresh
and pure."

Perhaps one reason of the ascendency of the
Priesthood was that at one time the priests
were the moneylenders of the Community.
We know this was so even as late as the
eighteenth century. Say a man wished to
borrow ;^3 : he went to the Faqir who put the
sum into his hand in the presence of wit-
nesses, but about 15^". had to be returned to
himself as a present. Interest was never less
than 12 per cent, and the lender kept a
watch-dog at the expense of the borrower,
to see that he did not run away ! So the poor
wretch seldom got more than half the sum
he borrowed, while, to compel repayment,
children were often sold, and most cruelly
tortured.

It is curious to recall in this connexion the
old Sanskritic tale of the learner who went to
the Sage to ask what might be the best pen-
ance for deeds of evil.

*' Gifts of Cows, of land, and especially of
gold to Brahmins."

''Why specially gold?" "The purifying
power of gold. Oh! Purusurama," was the

84 Between the Twilights

answer, ** is very great. They who bestow it,
bestow the Gods."

** How so? " said the obstinate Learner.

** Know, oh! Hero, that Agni{^x€) compre-
hends all the Gods, and gold is of the essence
of Agni."

Women Priestesses there are; but not as a
regular institution of the Purdah. If it is right
to conclude that the system of seclusion is en-
couraged and italicized by the Priests in order
to preserve the man's monopoly, the reason
will be obvious.

Also it would seem as though except as a
religious ele6l before or from birth, or remark-
able for peculiar learning, like my Holiness,
the Priestess chooses the humbler position of
the service of a Guru, leaving guidance to her
male counterpart. Some a6l procurator in
positions not possible of relation; but there
must be exceptions, and one charming young
Priestess at least have I known who owed her
attractions neither to the sacred learning nor to
prophecy. She was from the North country,
and appeared suddenly one pilgrim season in
the vicinity of Nasik, in Western India. Tall
and beautiful, of commanding presence, clad in

The Wise Man—'' Truth-Named'' 85

shell-pink draperies ; a close-cropped head,
discoloured to a brilliant copper by the fumes
of the opium fire — such was the figure that
stood, pilgrim flag in hand, by the roadside,
asking prote6lion of a passing stranger. Re-
markable to look upon she would have been
in any costume, but thus, against the glow of
a low sun-setting, she was arresting.

And her story ? full of humour and pathos.
She and a younger Brother, orphaned early in
life, were left to the care of an Uncle. The
property was the Brother's with reversion to
herself. The Brother died while still a child ;
helped out of life, she conceived when old
enough to understand these things, and the
property was hers and she bride-ele6l to her
cousin. She had loved her Brother passion-
ately— Oh! you saw that, in her eyes and in
the pi6lure she left with you of her attempts
to push Death away from the threshold.
'* Stroke the brindled cow," was the last pre-
scription of the old Priestess, who sat in the
near-by forest: and the child brought in the
old cow to the negle6led bedside. Then, in a
frenzy, she ran to the old Priestess: *' Cut off
my hair" — she was but ten years old — *' and

86 Between the Tiuili^^hts

initiate me. It will, maybe, please the Gods, ^
and spare the life." And the Priestess, alleged ^
seller of God-favours, initiated the child, being I
not unaware of her position and prospers.

But when the beloved Brother died, and the |
Uncle sought to recover the child, she refused i
to come, norcouldshe now as initiated Priestess \
be bride to the cousin. So a bribe to the ;
opium eater procured silence, and the disciple '
her freedom. \

It was a wandering life — now grove, now '
cave, now hill camping-ground — the little
Priestess sitting over the opium fire, her head j
on a prayer-stick, meditating — her instructress
raking in the offerings. A prayer-stick is ^
shaped so — T '- and the head lies on the arm i
stretched across the bar, while the fumes of \
the opium fire produce drowsiness. But the \
life of prayer and meditation, in the name of \
her Brother, became very real to the Baby j
Priestess : and as she grew, and her Old- :
Woman-Guru used her to attra6l devotees to \
the Shrine, there was many a tussle between
righteousness and unrighteousness, till policy
suggested the Child's sanctity as the more i
lasting bait. <

The IVise Man—'' Truth-Named'' 87

She must have been about twenty when they
made the pilgrimage to Nasik; and here the
old woman met her own one-time Guru, and
he claimed the prayer-stick of the beautiful
grand-disciple as a talisman. Perhaps he
claimed more, we were not told ; but the rup-
ture on refusal brought her to that wayside
throwing of herself on the mercy of a stranger.
. . . She was wonderfully adaptive to the de-
mands of civilization, cast away her opium
pipe, and even struggled bravely with forgot-
ten memories of reading and writing; but she
loved best to sit huddled up in the dusk and
tell stories of her wanderings. What stories
they were !

"In every house a Father, in every house
a Mother" — a great phrase with her; and
soon, the wander spirit proved too much for
her. The road called her, and she went —
comet-like. This was many years ago ; but I
still hope to come upon the copper-headed
owner of the prayer-stick.

Once I thought I had found her at a place
of pilgrimage in company with a holy woman
who had gained her reputation for san6tity in
a way unusual. She was an untaught Mathe-

88 Between the Twilights

matician, sat at the mouth of a cave drawing
geometrical figures in the sand, and spelling
out for herself the problems which the world of
books has dedicated to other names than hers.
The pilgrims thought the triangles and para-
bolas magic, and would wag wise heads over
the Mathematician at work; quite content if
after the cabalistic musings which had nothing
to do with their goods and ills she announced
to the inquirer that there would be a good
harvest, or that his son would die and his
enemy be degraded in rebirth.

But if it were indeed my Comet whose
copper head hung over a prayer-stick behind
the Mathematician, I got not opportunity for
speech or sight. Yet, I am thinking that some
day, when the sun is low, that column of bur-
nished light will wait for me once more beside
the Pilgrim's way.

VIII
THE NASAL TEST

A STUDY OF CASTE

CASTE in its origin was merely a guide
to marriage, i.e.^ a man was distin-
guished from his fellow-men simply in order
to determine into what families a woman might
or might not marry.

Moreover, a ''County" family was known
by the width of its nose, caste varying in-
versely as the width. For the only question
with which caste dealt in the long ago, was:
Are you an Aryan or are you a Dravidian ?

There were later stages, influenced, who can
say, by what motives? providing, how know we
now, for what momentary need? serving, who
shall tell us, what personal spites or conveni-
ences? and caste came finally to denote not
only a man's place on the social ladder, but

90 Between the Twilights

his privileges in a spiritual kingdom and his
value in a professional market.

It is a little difficult to explain because there
is, I think, no exa6l parallel in the institutions
of the West. It is a combination of several
determining causes ofexclusiveness — the social
Western conception of the right instin6l and
the appropriate culture, the interests of labour
as represented by trade-guildism, and the
Judaic idea of a chosen people as something
peculiarly the care of a God who nevertheless
made all the world.

And, at the present day, the social and
economic distin6tions are merged in the reli-
gious, so that the feeling, as we find it, is of a
barrier placed by God, not man. Is it not
exa/^lvf.Vherwise in the nearest parallel afforded
by the West? Your neighbour may, in Church,
I take it, assume the privileges of an equal;
in the Park he may not. The Hindu high-
caste man might joke and laugh with his
inferior in the Park; but he will not ^o to
Church with him, i.e,^ he will not eat with
him because this is a religious a6l, and he
will not " pray " with him in the sense of ad-
mitting him to certain mysteries of the religion.

The Nasal Test 91

or the performance of certain sacrifices. Again,
caste implies breeding, only relatively. Indeed,
even the lowest person in the scale of life will
talk of his caste. *' I am of the caste of the
sweeper," he will say quite proudly; and he
has further been known to say : * * I am of the
caste of — the Outcast"; because he knows of
some one who will do what is tabooed even to
him. Caste — that is — denotes a man's place
on the ladder of life, but not of necessity his
place on any one rung rather than another.
In this sense, it is a mere label.

Further, we must remember that with Caste
as a rule — nascitur non fit. There have been
known people who used a semblance of tribal
name to climb into a caste above their own;
or again, take the " Eaters-in-relief-kitchens,"
a caste in Orissa made, we are told, of those
who lost their original caste by accepting re-
lief in famine time; and there are at our doors
others, who by persistent self-restraint and
imitation of the customs of a higher caste pass
by courtesy, for such ; but these do not deceive
the ele6l into intermarriage. A man may buy
himself salvation, a higher place in the world
to come by his spiritual re-genesis. There is

92 Between the Twilights

no bribe of whatever kind which in this world,
will put him on to even the very next rung
of that ladder of Caste.

Now, is it clear that with all this machinery
of exclusiveness there is no condemnation one
of another? If I am of the highest caste, in
this genesis, sitting on the top step of our
socio-religious ladder, and you, say, on the
fourth, I must of necessity exclude you from
"bread and water." That rule our religion,
which is greater than either of us, has made;
but that does not mean that I will not associ-
ate myself with you in other ways. True, I
would not let my Zenana visit yours — my
women are part of my religion — but you and
I might play together, buy and sell together,
work together, travel together. . . .

And yet, again, this contamination against
which I am bound to guard myself is cere-
monial not moral. It is not because you would
teach me to swear or lie or thieve that I cannot
dine at your table, but because drinking water
at your hands, and eating what has been
cooked at your fire, is within the canonical
**Thou shalt not." The odd thing is that
until English education brought other ideas

The Nasal Test 93

to the country, no one resented his place in
life. ** Why kick against the inevitable?" he
would argue. "I shall come again; who
knows but that in my next genesis I might
not myself be sitting on that topmost step?"
All is in a man's own hands — he will reap
hereafter, as he sows now this minute. . . .

And Hindu women? How has caste aj[fe6led
them? We have seen that it was invented pri-
marily for their benefit, for though a man might
marry beneath him, no woman was allowed
like liberty. The natural result of this arrange-
ment was that there were too few men to go
round in the higher castes; and in a scheme
of life and after life which has no room or use
for spinsters, the only resource was to marry
them off as quickly as possible, whence,
in the opinion of some, infant marriage,
though the instin6t of self-preservation against
Mahommedan raids must have done some-
thing.

. Of course, no woman realizes this, and the
reason she will give you for Baby marriages is
that a Father's class of Heaven depends on
the age at which his daughter was married.
If she is settled between three and five he goes

94 Between the Twilights

to a first-class heaven, if between five and eight
to a second class, eight and eleven to a third
class — after that to hells, only to hells! For
herself she is content with the most detailed
and minute table of procedure, nor questions
how it was made. She knows far better than
any man the diflference between + A and — A.
She will tell you also quaint exceptions to the
God-rules. "You may stand by So-and-so
when she is cooking a dish of green (but not
red) pulse, and never never when she is cook-
ing rice. It would all have to be thrown away,
it and the vessels, even if the shadow of a
shadow fell across it." In South India I have
heard tell of a caste of Brahmins so stri6l that
no lower caste may come within thirty yards
of its ele6l; and when the high-caste woman
walks abroad, she has a fore-runner clearing
the way before her face.

Again, with some castes not only must you,
being alien or of a lower caste, not touch their
water or water vessels, but you must not enter
the room which holds the drinking-water. If
you do, the water is defiled. They have too
good manners to tell you this. It may be their
last drop of water in a drought, nevertheless.

The Nasal Test 95

when you have gone away, the water is faith-
fully reje6led. Nor, again, may they drink
water even at the hands of the ele6l if the alien
or outer-brother is in the room.

Different civilizations, different notions of
cleanliness. The point seems to be to learn
each other's aversions and respe6l them. The
Hindu is horrified at the use of tooth-brushes.
**What! use the same brush twice?" She
herself uses a twig of the Neem tree, no
fatter than her own smallest finger, and of
course there is a fresh twig for each using.
Again, at the use of tubs, ''You go dirty
into the water from which you expect to come
out clean," she exclaims. You refer gently
to the bathing in the Ganges. '* Ah, but that
is different," she will answer, "that is holy
water, however apparently impure, however
apparently contaminated, it is holy." Her
reasoning explains what hitherto puzzled me
— how little particular the Hindu is about the
intrinsic cleanliness of water, despite her belief
in sacred streams. The Founders of the re-
ligion, knowing the value of water in a hot
country, called it sacred, no doubt in order to
keep it clean. Their thought was, ''It is

96 Between the Twilights

sacred, do noty defile it." The modern Hindu
says, *Mt is sacred — even the thing that most
defiles, cannot defile it."

The same Hindu who will bathe before
touching the sacred basil, will be absolutely
indifferent as to the water in which she bathes.
If it is a sacred river, a sacred tank, it may be
thick as pea soup with impurities. That is no
matter. . . . Again, another incongruity.
The eating of the flesh of the cow revolts a
Hindu — you do not realize how strongly till
it is something other than yourself — as a dog,
suspe6led of a meat diet, who sniffs at them;
and yet the sacrifice of goats at Kalighat, for
instance, cannot be seen unmoved by the most
inveterate eater of flesh.

The fa6t is, that with the Hindu the root of
all aversion is traditional religion, and this it
is which overlays the ordinary aversions of in-
stin6t or culture. At the present day purely
arbitrary, too, seems the table of clean and un-
clean, though, as in all religions, no doubt it
had its one-time significance. In an agricul-
tural country the cow was a useful animal. If
you wished preservation, the only way was to
declare it sacred. The religious sanation ap-

The Nasal Test 97

peals most strongly to peoples in their infancy,
and in India we find a nation which still keeps
its nursery rules, so to speak. . . . And, as
is proper, the women know far more about
these rules than do the men. A Hindu will
often say, appealed to on this point or that of
religious custom or religion : " I do not know,
but information may be had in the Inside.''
One such Inside produced the fa6l that the
san6lity peculiar to the Ganges applies to one
town at least, to Puri by the Sea. As the
Ganges receives all castes — in death, so does
Puri — in life.

Here such holiness does the very fa6l of
residence give, that it over-rides distin6tions.
A Brahmin would eat at the hand of a sweeper
in Puri, would eat and keep his caste. In
theory, of course, a man should eat at the
hand of a sweeper anywhere, a sweeper, say,
turned Sanyasi (a world-renouncer or holy
man) ; but my same information adds as rider
that no Sweeper, even in Puri, would dream
of thrusting himself on a Brahmin.

I referred the point to my Wisest of the
Wise. " It is true," she said, *'and only the
holiest Brahmin, he who has got so far past

H

98 Between the Twilights

the trammels of his body as not, say, to be
conscious of even heat or cold — for caste is
only a distin6lion of this body — only such a
man would say to the Sweeper, ' Come, friend,
the God in you and the God in me is one: let
me eat at your hands,' — and such an one
could take no sin eating with the Sweeper.
But as long as you are conscious of repulsion,
aversion, there is sin in disregarding it — sin
which will affect the after-genesis, which will
annul a life-time of merit."

This same penalty, loss of caste, is the
reason for what has been called in official docu-
ments *' enforced widowhood." The Priests
attached excommunication to re-marriage.
And since, as we have seen, things social and
things religious overlap in Hinduism, the
Priests had the opportunity of banning in both
ways. No more invitations to caste dinners,
as well as no more visits to the Temple, to
sacred Tanks and Wells and Bathing Ghats,
for the excommunicated. Few women and
fewer men will face excommunication of this
type, and one reads with amusement of the
ardent reformer who, before proposing mar-
riage to a charming widow of his acquaintance,

The Nasal Test 99

wrote a Hundred notes to friends and acquaint-
ances, ''Will you dine with me if I marry
So-and-so?" There were not fifty righteous
found willing", even on paper! But in truth
the number of those who wish or would coun-
tenance re-marriage is very small. The feeling
of the orthodox about marriage is this: It is
a Gift — the gift by a Parent of a daughter to a
husband. The Gift must be a. first Gift, no one
must have had earlier use oi it, no one must
even have had earlier chance of longing for it.
You must be certain the possession is your
very own — wherefore the giving in infancy.
Wherefore again, even if you died after mere
symbolic and before a6lual possession of your
gift, the Gift was nevertheless yours. . . .
Infant widowhood. How can it be given
again — that Gift? If it would be sin in in-
fancy, it would be worse sin later on. And
the woman's reasoning is of the same class.
The best believe in the sacrament of marriage:
they worship their husbands as the life-force :
for his using or abusing, his pleasure or neg-
le6t they exist. He being gone, what is there?
In the old days there was suttee, and who
shall say but that the moral strength it re-

lOO Between the Twilights

presented did not make for something in the
national consciousness? No one ever enforced
widowhood. No one enforced suttee: no one
to-day can really restrain suttee. One old test
was putting your smallest finger into the fire
and burning it to the bone: if you could stand
that, unflinching, you were worthy to be
suttee. Another was stirring boiling hot rice
with your bare hand. I know a woman whose
proudest memory is that some Great-Aunt or
Grandmother stood the test.

Of course misuse of the pra6lice crept in.
Some women became suttee because it was
expe<5led oi them. What tragedies there must
have been ! How the other women must have
whispered: "Will she be suttee? Oh! will
she?" or, "She surely will be suttee!" And
in each case it would have determined the un-
determined. Again, one can imagine the
woman who did not love suffering suttee in
expiation, or in terror at her own gladness of
release; or she who was not loved enough
seeking it in pride or hunger of heart. Oh!
the tragedies in that handful oi ashes on the
suttee stone. Then, again, there would be the
Priest-made suttees, an increasing number as

The Nasal Test loi

the years carried life further and further from
the original ideal.

But, as I said above, the real suttee was
never compelled, nor is she now. Only this
morning I have heard of a woman, within a
four-mile radius of where I sit writing, who
soaked her sari in oil, and falling upon her
dead husband's body set fire to herself; and
of another just saved from a like attempt.
Who could prevent them? Now and again,
as lately in the Punjab or Gaya, cases are
brought to light, and convi6lions point anew
to the law ; but Police administration Reports
do not represent the tale of suttees in any one
Province.

The class of woman who for the kingdom
of Heaven's sake became suttee before the A61
of 1829, still is suttee, either a6lually in the
old-time way, though by stealth and unnerved
by the admiration of the onlooker, or in the
life of religion and unselfishness. We have
all known at least one such Saint living be-
tween her house of Gods and the cares of
other people, a burden-bearer who bears with-
out railing, nay often with cheerfulness, and
who has learnt to live without any hope, save

I02 Between the Twilights

for him with whom she was forbidden to die.
Perhaps the living sacrifice began when she
was but twelve years of age . . . perhaps she
lived to seven times twelve. . . . ''What did
you do?" I asked of one such, **in the long
ago when life pulsed in your veins?" She
smiled at me the smile of her who has at-
tained. "There were the children of other
people who needed love; there is always my
house of Gods. ... I am a Swami-bakht
(worshipper of my husband)."

She to whom I refer was loved and hon-
oured, the high priestess, so to speak, of her
family. "She was too holy for life's common-
place, so the Destroyer set her free to pray,"
as said her Father. Yet, she also was ac-
cursed, a thing of ill-omen, not to be seen on
occasions auspicious, barred then, even from
the Temple. If aught went wrong in the
house, even her staunchest friend would say :
** I must have looked at your face this morn-
ing, Didi.'^ And, to be the bringer of bad
luck, that must be the hard part of the lot o{
these women. That they keep their faces to
the Light, in spite of this, seems to me the
very crown of Sainthood.

The Nasal Test 103

I have spoken of one type of widow, the
rarest; some there are who identify them-
selves with the thing accursed, who have not
the strength, like that other, to falsify the
curse by every moment's life of blessed service,
many who accept misery as their portion ;
some who distra6t themselves from misery by
vice or by lapses from virtue. . . . The odd
thing is that modern Hinduism, as represented
by the Priesthood, would wink at the last-
named, while excommunicating the virtuous
widow who re- married. I said ''the odd
thing," but wrongly, for of course, if my
earlier conclusion be true, and modern Hin-
duism is a system of canonical " Thou-shalt-
nots " and not of refined ethics (as in the
Shasthras\ the Priests are quite consistent.

" You shall be outcast. I will not dine with
you.

It is but another anomaly in this land of
anomalies that that should be the strongest
possible san6tion in a community where there
is no social intercourse in the Western sense,
where individual families live so entirely aloof,
that their womenkind do not visit each other.

But the fa6t is, there is nothing more un-

I04 Betiveen the Twilifrhts

assailable than caste. In the second century
before Christ Buddha strove to break it down
— Gautama Buddha, who was so reverenced
by the Hindu that he is considered an incar-
nation of Krishna. . . . Yet, to-day, in Buddh
Gaya, the preacher of the brotherhood of man
sits in the beautiful old Temple, to which
Hindu and Buddhist alike come on pilgrimage,
with a caste mark on his forehead ! And under
the very shadow of the image the Brahmin
will throw away the food or water defiled by
contacl with the outer-brother.

We see men travelling by the same train
(and of course this and all the other cohesive
tendencies always being quoted to us do eflfe6l
something), and we think this represents a
breaking down of barriers. Does it, of the
real barrier? Listen to the Water-Carriers
on the platform: "Water, water for the Ma-
hommedan"; "Waterfor the Hindu"; "Water
iox the Brahvim.'^ The Brahmin may "water"
any caste, the highest may stoop to serve the
lowest; but the highest may not accept service
of any but the highest.

To my mind this caste problem is one which
will need grapplement before any single other

The Nasal Test 105

obje6l or aim or ambition can be made na-
tional, representative. There is neither speech
nor language in orthodoxy, yet its voice is
heard by those who live among the masses
away from the Anglification of the great cities;
and it is a voice that asserts, that none dream
of disobeying. It is a voice that curses; men
fear to disobey, even when they writhe under
the curse. And all the full ecstatic organ stop
of the handful of vociferating Reformers in
the Metropolis would not drown one silent
syllable of its perpetual invocation!

One word more. I have called this study
the Nasal test. We all know what happens
when a Hindu wife lapses from re6litude.
There is no scene in a law Court, but she
goes through life self-betrayed; she has lost
the tip of her nose. The pain of the punish-
ment is obviously its publicity; but it would
be interesting to know whether in origin it
had any connexion with caste. Is it possible
that the mutilated nose was but symbolical of
the husband's right to excommunicate? " For
this sin you are to me outcast. I know no
greater punishment. Reap even as you have
sown! "

IX

THE MOTHERS OF FIGHTERS

RUGGED hills, all stone and cactus bush,
and brown-white dust and grass the
colour of dust; and, from the desert beyond
the hills, hot dry winds smiting the face. . . .
Such is the country which breeds the warrior
caste — grim and gaunt and attra6live. Nothing
of softness in man and soil, even the very fold
of the hills where elsewhere in the smiling up-
lands of the Deccan or the rhododendron-clad
Himalayas, or the jungle-veiled hills of Cen-
tral India, you expe6l a handful at least of
grass, green and succulent for the sheepfolk :
even this here breeds stones to hurl at the in-
vader when other missiles fail. The Rajput
hill-giant opens his mailed fist and shows you
David's weapons.

*' Nothing of softness in man or soil." And
yet once you are inside those hill-fortresses

The Mothers of Fighters 107

the primness relaxes — you get the very ro-
mance of beauty — lace work in marble, water
palaces and walled gardens. Thus at Oodey-
pore, at the foot of that wonderful rock-hung
fortress of the King who was saved by his
Nurse, is the Suggun Niwas^ sitting like a
lotus flower on its broad green leaf — a series
of marble lattices and balconies and exquisite
turrets, built round the quiet peace of a water
garden of fruit trees, gorgeous study in orange
and green, or the potpoiwri of the flower
garden of my Lady Rosebody. Or there again,
is the Queen of Cities, the Universal Mother
standing to greet you at the mouth of a great
mountain gorge. The road winds higher and
higher, the gates of the outer world close
upon you; you are at home here in the
peace place of " the heart's true ease," beside
the lake of pink mimosa and sweet-scented
thyme. . . .

You walk in the dead cities — the walls have
outlived the rivalry of Kings — the white palaces
glitter on the hill tops, and the priceless mo-
saics still hide in the niches. . . . The fierce
upstanding men of the divided beard, their
swords girt upon their loins, are fighters still.

io8 Between the TwiligJits

You know that when you meet them in the
Cities of the Living, they have not lost their
cult of the sword, their love for the soil, these
earth-born. But, what of the women? The
gardens are deserted and the baths and robing-
rooms, the summer palaces, and the sandal-
wood halls of pleasure, and all the dainty or
thoughtful arrangements which prove the Raj-
putni an individual in the eye o{ her lord —
all deserted. . . . Here, when the King held
his moonlight Durbar on the roof of the
palace, she had hidden to watch the pomp
and circumstance of feudalism, the glitter of
jewelled daggers, the soft richness of brocade,
or the sheen of those richer garments of light
. . . and the Lake lay peaceful at her feet, and
the twin fortresses frowned watch and ward.
. . . Here she was suttee when her Lord died
fighting at the Gate; here she led his armies
to victory; here she drank smiling, the poisoned
cup, which was to save the honour of a line of
Kings. . . .

Down this dusty road, between the high
walled mountains, she walked in the procession
of women, all garlanded with roses and jas-
mine, to make oblation before the Goddess oi

The Mothers of Fighters 109

Children. Or, now again it is the Festival
of Flowers" itself; the grain has sprouted
and the women go with singing and dancing
to bathe in the sacred Lake before they carry
to their lords the green sprig which, worn in
the turban, is sign of love and unity. It
is the Women's Festival. No man may take
part in it; but the grim men of the grim
mountains, with love and reverence at their
hearts, stand at the salute — a guard of honour
for the women as they pass.

Or now she is in trouble — her lord is at the
wars, and her little ones are defenceless in the
Fortress which overlooks the desert . . . what
shall she do? She sends her bracelet, and a
strand of silk, a circlet of gold — it is but a
symbol, to him whom hereby she calls her
Brother, "Bracelet-bound-Brother — and here-
after her soul knows no fear.

And he? the Brother — whose but hers is
his devotion, his life; and he gives both will-
ingly, albeit knowing he may never even see
the face of her he serves. Not the crassest
mind would attach the smallest scandal to the
relationship. . . . And perhaps selflessness in
love, the love of a man, has seldom in India

I lo Between the Twilights

reached a higher level. . . . And that brings
me to a reminiscence.

It was a hot day in an extra oppressive June,
and I was making my way through the Bazaar
of a Raj Town — to the rabbit warren where
burrowed the workers in enamel. The Bazaar
itself was full of interest — open-air booths, gay
with glass bangles and draperies; quaint ox-
carts, tied up in gorgeous red "lampshades " to
shelter the bargaining Purdahnashin; wedding
processions; priests with begging bowls, and
pontifical bulls, small and white and saucy,
moving from grain stall to vegetables, exact-
ing toll at will. . . . But my Master-worker
had more still to chain me. The artists sat
on the roof, dreaming their colour dreams.
They told me they worked on the roof because
in a busy town you cannot get near enough to
the Earth- Mother; and you are reduced to
lessening the distance between you and the
sky. "What would you? — something living
must watch a man at work — if he wants per-
fection."

They sat before queer little tables; some
beat out on the rich gold trinket the pattern
which was to hold the colour — mixed to some

The Mothers of Fighters 1 1 1

secret prescription, old as the City, of precious
stones ground fine as powder; others painted
— their pallet, slabs of brass with five finger
marks for hollow; their brush, steel needles.
All the light and colour in the sky seemed en-
trapped in that workshop. And now, sud-
denly the light has gone, and the workmen
grope after their tools and pack them away ;
and the roof is left to the women and me.

They were telling me a story — the old-time
one of that Queen who full of grief at her
lord's cowardice in refusing to stand by his
overlord, had buried herself alive under a sour
plum-tree, which ever after grew and flourished
exceedingly in appraisement of her deed.
"Tchut"! said one: "Bury herself — what
work! Better far have girt his sword upon
that not-man, and sent him forth in the name
of his Fathers, and of all the fighters yet un-
born.' . . . And all the other women wagged
their heads in appreciation of this sentiment.

Now I had heard that story last in Bengal.
But far other was the comment. The Bengal
variant tells of the clever subtlety with which
the husband avoided the battle, and how it was
only the wife's action which betrayed him to

1 1 2 Between the Twilights

the overlord, who said, " Because this woman
had shame in her heart for a man's cowardice,
the women oi this house shall for ever be
called 'Queens,' but their husbands shall not
be Kings."

And when they get as far as that, the women
say: "What! can any desire widowhood?
Alas, what little love the Ranee had, not to
rejoice that her lord was saved the danger of
death ! Alas ! what defe<5l in love to cast blame
upon him in dying! "

But it is never in Bengal that the story is
followed by another old as the Sack oi Chit-
tore. The Rajput widow is about to spring
into the flames when she sees the boy who saw
her husband die. She pauses awhile, and **Oh
Badal," says she, " tell me ere I go hence to
join my lord — tell me how he bore himself
against his enemy." And Badal: "He was
the reaper of the harvest of battle. I followed
his steps as the humble gleaner of his sword, on
the bed of honour he spread a carpet of the slain
— a barbarian Prince his pillow, he laid him
down : and he sleeps ringed about by his foes."

Hearing which she oi the warrior caste,
goes smiling through the fire to her tryst.

The Mothers of Fighters 1 13

The fa6l is, you see, the ideals of the women
are not the same. Both have given to the
world, do give to the world, new types of per-
fe6tion in love; but to one, love means the
service of the world, and compulsion of the
highest in her Beloved to that end; to the
other it means just the service of her lord, it
means self-abnegation and worship to the ex-
clusion of all criticism.

She of Rajputana although giving royally,
demands something, and gets it: she of Ben-
gal demands nothing, she is here to give, not
to get; and if by chance she is thrown a crumb,
she is grateful to pathos.

The one type, if I may so put it, is mascu-
line, the other the quintessence of femininity
. . . and it is a difference easily explained.
It is the outcome of the history of the two
peoples. The Fighter demands that his women-
kind should be of the stature of the Mothers
of Fighters. So to the beauty of subjection,
she adds the beauty of self-respe6l. In the
other, self is so submerged that there is no
room even for respe6l of self. And, the saint-
hood of the women apart, one questions the
wisdom of the second type, for the man.

I

114 Between the Twilights

The Khettrya Rajputni of to-day though
verystri6llyPurdahnashin is still /z« individual:
still does she claim and keep the spirit which
is hers by inheritance. The festival and prac-
tice of the Bracelet has its place in her life
even now, though the fighting days are over
. . . still is hers the reverence of the Flower
Festival. But the custom of the Mahommedan
has affe6led her also: she lives much in the
Zenana, attending to her gods, her house,
and children.

The Shudra^ who has no purdah, and the
Veiskya, whose purdah means two veils and a
number of women attendants, may be seen in
the street : and, as we look at her in her pretty
red draperies, carrying so gracefully her pyra-
mid of water-pots, or trudging sturdily through
the burning dust to the shrine beside the Lake
— we see in level brow, in frank open coun-
tenance and carriage, the spirit of the free
— and we say to ourselves, " No! the person-
ality of the Rajputni is not dead, it is only
domesticated."

But we carry our questionings no further:
*' By God, I am a Rajput and a King. I do
not talk of the life behind the curtain ! "

X

THE QUEEN WHO STOOD ERECT

IT was a spacious roof-terrace — large even
for the house of a King : for an earthquake
had destroyed almost an entire story, and no
one had troubled to do more through the years
that followed than move away the debris.

So the Zenana had a whole wing of open
spaces at the top of the landing, and here it
was that we sat, under a sky that was like a
pink opal, while the swallows and the yellow-
beaked ntainas^ and crows, flew overhead to
roost. Bats there were too— "devil's mice"
— flapping the sleep out of their wings : and
now, a red-brown throated, red-brown coated
brahmini-kitCy to whom the women made
prayerful salutation. A kingfisher had just
flashed past, bright as the sea at noonday,
bright even in that darkening light, and know-
ing the reverence of the Rajputni for the

1 16 Between the Twilights

kingfisher, I thought the gentle courtesy
his.

It was Nanni-Ma^ Baby's Grandmother,
she who had the face of vi6tory over death,
whoexplained. '"'' Kali Ma chose once to take
that form," she said, inclining her head towards
the red-brown one. A sudden swoop brought
him almost within reach of the baby plaything
and those lonely widow-women, and with ter-
ror in loving eyes the child was clasped close.
Who shall tell what mixture of dread was in
their hearts? dread of the big bird's talons
and dread of Kali the Destroyer, to whom if
she wanted a life, that one life which was
theirs, it must be yielded, cost what it might.
. . . But the love which was the parent and
the offspring of that terror was spilling out of
their eyes as they handed the child each to
each — first Mother clasping him, and then
Big-Mother, while the white-sheeted waiting-
women huddled on their haunches, cloth
drawn beseemingly over mouth, gurgled **Hi!
hi!" wagging their heads, and swaying with
sympathy. It is unique, the attitude of a
Hindu widow to her baby, unique in its beauty
even among baby lovers. For the child re-

The Queen who stood Ere6l 1 1 7

presents more to these lonely ones than just a
soft lovesome bit of flesh and laughter, of
pretty pursed lips and rounded limbs, and
great mop of soft black hair; more too than
the gift of him they love. It is now in itself
their passport to heaven, their token of the
visit of God to the world : it is to be, presently,
the saviour of those who have been closest to
them in life — husband, father. . . .

**One small flicker in the lantern of the
body — should any put out this light, who will
relight it? For us, not even the Creator him-
self, in this life, not even the Creator. . . ."

And the home of Love was the eyes of those
two women as they passed the boy back and
forth between them; and the home of tears
was their heart. ^

And he? — darling rogue of but a dozen or
so bright fortnights of the moon, would tyran-
nize in his manhood even as he tyrannized
now; nor would he hear reproach in that
household of devoted women. Did not his
Father likewise? — who, dying, confessed to
Nanni-Ma^ that the sins he had committed
would need many sacrifices and much off'ering
of the sacred cake for expiation. And she.

1 1 8 Between the Twilights

blaming him not, set patiently about his bid-
ding, sparing nothing — the one note of joy in
that chaunt of sorrow being this: ** He came
to his Mother, he loved her enough to come,
to trust her; "... and, as the half-under-
stood regret passed like a shadow over the
dying mind, she used all her art to brush it
away. " Fear not, my Son; was it not writ-
ten? Is this not fruit of that past birth of
which you have no remembrance. All is illu-
sion even sin ; all is good, yes, even sin could
we know it . . . and your death-ceremonies
shall be to be envied of men, buying you sin-
lessness through many future births. Fear
not. . . . And, when he is of age, the boy,
he also shall perform your ceremony ... a
new birth to righteousness. Do not fear, my
Son."

It is this memory which is in the soul of
Big-Mother, as she plays with her son's son
on the terrace in the mystic hour between the
lights.

But the boy will grow, and there will be a
bride to be found for him. What great excite-
ment this means for the Zenana, few know
who have not gone in and out among the

The Queen who stood Ere^ 1 1 9

women. There is the search among caste folk
near at hand, or at a distance. Often the Priest
of the family goes a tour to consult the horo-
scope of likely candidates. . . . There are
tragedies when Priest meets Priest and doc-
tors the horoscope to fit desire or sloth ; but
that chance must be faced by all alike. . . .
No need, at any rate, to fear that marriage
will take the boy away, it but brings one more
daughter to Big-Mother ... a shy, small
person — among the orthodox, aged ten or
thereabouts, who keeps eyes on floor demurely
the first year of marriage, in the presence of
whomsoever; and always, always runs out of
the room, or hides face and head, standing
reverently in the presence of her lord. Even
many years of marriage do not relax this re-
serve when third persons are by. I have known
mothers of grown sons who will carry one
aside to whisper what is necessary to be said,
but which cannot be said dire6l to their hus-
bands in the presence of others. . . . *'Let
the women be silent." That a wife may not
take her husband's name is a very general rule
throughout India.

Out of all this knot of etiquette, born, it

120 Between the Twilights

seems to me, of some distorted view of danger
to modesty, as well as of a becoming respect
and reverence, it is hard to disentangle the
Indian conception of the love of a maid for a
man. But this is certain, it is unlike what is
the ideal in the West. There is worship; he
is her God; he has brought God close to her.
She is created to serve him with all her powers
of mind and body, to serve and never criticize
or question. The habit of her life is expressive
of the relationship. The day is planned round
his needs. She brings water to wash his feet,
cooks for him, anticipates his smallest want
while he eats; if he leaves on the green plan-
tain leaf oi orthodoxy one mouthful for the
faithful slave, how happy she is the day long!
At his hands she holds her life. ... I re-
member a poor little woman who had been
induced by some modern-minded friend to re-
sent the drunken belabourings of her husband.
. . . She ran away to the protection of a re-
lative, and all the Zenana held up hands of
horror, not at the beating but at her resent-
ment of it. "What! did she not know that
Hindu wives belonged to their husbands, to
be done with as they would? Would she not

The Queen wlw stood Ere6l 1 2 1

g"ive her body to be burned at his desire? Why
not then give it to be beaten at his desire?"
And no reasoning would convince them of a
difference. That this conception of devotion
can rise to great heights one knows. It is not
uncommon for a Hindu wife to make way of
her own accord for some younger wife, even
though retaining her passion of love for her
husband, or rather perhaps, if one could con-
ceive it, because she has arrived at Love's per-
fe6lion. . . . And I have seen her charming
to the second lady: * ' Whom my Lord honours,
shall I not love?" But there is little cmnara-
derie^ except sometimes in old age, when the
grandchildren are growing up; there can be
little between such differences of levels — and
very little community of interest either in work
or play — where one is educated and the other
not, where one may go about the world un-
veiled, and the other is hedged round with pro-
te6lion of wall and curtain.

Again, as there is no choice in marriage,
since the orthodox marry in childhood, there
is little chance for love except after marriage.
"We grow up to think that such an one be-
longs to us," explained an Indian girl to me

122 Between tlie Twilights

of her boy husband; **we take the relation-
ship as you do brothers and sisters; you do
not choose them ; you do not, however, there-
fore of necessity, resent them." That atti-
tude then is the beginning. That it does
lead, as a rule, to loyalty and worship we
know; that it often leads to a very high type
of love, where each goes with each, all the
way, in perfect sympathy, has also been
known.

And the man? *' English people," said a
Hindu to me, **do not understand our rela-
tionship to our wives; they treat their wives
as we treat — left-handed relations." It is true,
the Hindu considers any show of feeling an
insult; he almost neglects his wife in the pre-
sence of third persons. Necessary courtesies
are left to brother, father, trusted old ser-
vant. . . . As they grow older she graduates
in giving, he in taking. Is he paying the
highest price possible to him in — takings I
wonder? Who shall say? My own impression
is that he does not think about it at all, seeing
it has been the habit of generations of Indian
men. One does not think about what is natural.
The pity is that the standard of ethics is differ-

The Queen who stood Rre6l 1 23

ent for men and women — and this surely is
wrong in principle. **As you sow, so shall
you reap," is orthodoxy for the man. **As
you sow, so shall they reap whom you best
love — your son, your husband " — is the
woman's religion. She reaps herself, yes, but
as a secondary result, and her own benefit
certainly never enters into the calculation of
the individual woman.

Do good if you can, but if you cannot, or
will not, stand up to your penalty like a man;
or rather lie submissive under the full flood of
it. Count the cost, the degradation to the
lowest order of creation, the weary re-start
through the gradations of re-genesis. At least
there has been no deceit. Sometimes you may
buy back part of the penalty by counter-
balancing good deeds. An Eastern loves a
bargain, and the business of salvation is one
great mercantile transa6tion; but only men
are allowed on this Rialto.

Vicarious suffering with a woman for chief
a6lor is one of the tenets of the male.

Vicarious pleasM7'ing with a man for chief
a6tor is the woman's.

I said that you took your penalty, you paid

124 Between the Twilights

your price. True, but not always. In the
highest scheme of punishment, whether for
man or woman, some one else pays. The
Gods strike at the thing you love best. If the
Gods are angry with a woman they take away
her husband. Is not the very treatment of the
widow in India recognition of the fa6^, and
does she not so accept it?

But to return to the husband's respe6t for
his wife, that is a good thing to record. Say
it is only policy; " where women are honoured,
there the Gods are pleased; but where they
are not honoured, no sacred rite yields re-
ward." . . . Say it is grounded in the fa6l of
her being his possession ; possibly, but at any
rate it is there. How pre-eminently he regards
her as \i\s property there is proof upon proof.
He leaves to no other hand punishment for
encroachments; he shuts her away, lest eyes
of others who do not own her should see and
covet — it takes more than one generation to
kill the anger in the eye of a man at a glance
of admiration from another, honest though it
be; and when he dies she remains his property
still, that is the reason of perpetual ,>vidow-
hood; and till it was forbidden did she not,

The Queen who stood Ere ft 1 25

as suttee, acknowledge that she was his pro-
perty, useless when no longer needed?

There is a temple on a City wall in a country
of sand and low scrub, gray with dust. The
Temple is beautiful with its outlook on the
sea of sand, and the little earth holes of water
where the women dig in the sand. It is a
Temple to a woman. She was beautiful be-
yond words, and Kings sought her in mar-
riage, and fought for her with the King to
whom she was betrothed. And at last one of
the Kings slew the Betrothed, and claimed
the hand of Ranak Devi. But she, rather
than betray the trust of him whom she had
never seen, but whose she was nevertheless,
sought refuge in suttee. It is her Temple
which you find on the City wall, and round
about it have gathered other women — there is
a very forest of Suttee Stones. You may know
them by this sign — the hand and arms of a
woman graven in the stone, always the right
hand, palm outwards.

And you find here also the pallias or me-
morial stones to warrior Kings and to great
rulers among women. For the place of me-
morial stones, of the dead, of silence, is a

126 Between the Twilights

place of glory. To it come the bereaved, the
empty-handed, to give thanks for those who
have attained; to it come the young, bending
beneath blessings; death and life walk ever
hand in hand, and the white jasmine triangles
of the newly-wed make a fragrant carpet in
the Temple of Memory.

But one cannot write truly of the conception
of Love in any nation without writing a book
without end of the conception of each loving
soul in its loneliness and aloofness. And, when
I said this to my Wisest of the Wise, she made
answer: *'So it is, even so" ... and there
was such beauty in her face that I wished it
had been possible to hear her parable of Love.
But silence of words was between us, naturally,
on the things we most held sacred.

And it was one who sat by who took up the
thought.

"There was a King who loved his Queen
with all his soul, and one day, overcome of
this love, he fell at her feet in an ecstasy, even
in the presence of the c "ives, who being
jealous, said: 'Shameless le! lift up the
hands of the King to your hea

" And the King said: ' Yea, my Queen, so

The Queen who stood Erefi 127

even shouldst thou, when I have done thee
this honour.'

* * But she stood ere6l, smiling gladly. * Nay, '
said she, * not so ; for both feet and head are
my lord's. Can I have aught that is mine? ' "

o

\

XI

PORTRAITS OF SOME INDIAN
WOMEN

TAKE first the Indian wife. Was there
ever the world over a like conception of
the married state? Chief priestess of her hus-
band, whom to serve is her religion and her
delight. One with him in the economy of the
household, certainly, but moving in a plane
far below him for all other purposes — religious,
mental, social; gentle and adoring, but in-
capable of participation in the larger interests
of his life, incapable of participation even in
his games.

*'We are richer," "we are poorer" — that
the bounds of a joint intelligence. To please
his mother, whose chief handmaiden she is in
things domestic, and to bring him a son —
these her two ambitions ; but the latter chiefly,
for to the mother of a son will a husband for-
give even wrangles in the house-place.

Portraits of some Indian Women 129

Oh, theworshippingof Gods, the consultings
of oracles, the stealthy working of charms to
this end! And if the Gods prove gracious,
proud indeed is the little lady, a creature of
good omen, a being to be welcomed at feasts,
to be invoked by the childless. No longer is
she a failure; even widowhood would leave
her with the chastened halo of that son who
is worthy to offer sacrifices.

Such an attitude of mind may seem irrational
to the alien, but it should be remembered that
the whole idea of marriage in the East revolves
simply on the conception of Life; a com-
munity of interests, companionship — these
never enter into the general calculation. Nor
is this strange when one refle6ls on how large
a place life must fill in the thoughts of a
people believing in re-incarnation. As a life-
bringer alone has a woman her place in the
scheme of Hindu philosophy. For life and
religion are inextricable in the loom of Time;
and woman never did have a Vedic value.

Look at her, then, our little Hindu type of
wifehood — gentle, submissive, a perfe6l house-
mistress, moving softly about the women's
domain, "the Inside." Up with the dawn,

K

130 Between the Twilights

she bathes and worships, worships her own
special godling and tends her sacred plant,
then draws from some ancestral well the water
for the household needs, scorning no domestic
duty. A pi6lure good to see is she on these
occasions — her pretty red draperies girt out of
harm's way while she heaves aloft the shorten-
ing rope with subt4e grace. Mark the poise of
head, the turn of slender wrist, as the first
shafts of daylight strike brilliance from mystic
amulet or jewelled armlet. Further domes-
ticities occupy the day, with perchance a little
gossip in the house-place ere the evening meal
brings fresh need for a skilful house-mother.
She waits upon her husband while he feeds;
silent in his presence, with downcast eyes, to
look him in the face were bold indeed. Per-
haps he talks to her of village or family in-
terests; she would not think it strange did he
not.

The boy! Ah, yes, he is a tie. Encouraged
by her husband, she will quote his sayings or
boast his feats and feignings. But there is no
evening home life as in the land across the
seas. After feeding, the man seeks his men
companions, with their talk or their gambling.

Portraits of some Indimi IVomen 131

So, watch the little lady clean her pots and
hie her safe to bed— content.

I would not have you think the pi6lure one
of shadows. Often, and especially where love
has entered into the contra6t, 'tis a twilight
study, softly lustrous. A wife respe6ted as
competent house-wife, as counsellor, as tri-
umphant mother, sharing her husband's
anxieties for the upkeep and shepherding of
their little family, aware of his ambitions, if
little understanding them, and happy in their
joint observance of orthodoxy — that sheet-
anchor of safety to her conservative soul. You
must be careful how you dress this lady in
your pi6lure. Wind her garments about her
in established fashion, even to the smallest
fold; make the red mark of wifehood on her
ample forehead; oil her hair and plaster it
tightly down behind her ears; forget not the
ornaments for ear, for nose ; and never, pray,
forget that gold and ivory bangle — " marriage
lines" to her. About her toe rings you may
suit yourself. Some find them irksome, and
anklets jingle pleasingly in any case. You
must make her plump, there has been no
chance of exercise to tone down outlines;

132 Behveen the Twilights

uxorious, too selfless for vanity; placid, never
roused except in defence of her man or her
brood, but with a reserve of obstinacy which
all the wild horses in the empire would fail to
move. She is the true guardian of the past ;
and uneducated, the true enemy of Progress
in India. This is our lady of the middle class.
The peasant's wife has compensation, for often
she shares her husband's work in the fields,
and that makes common topic. Moreover,
being unlettered, he has fewer temptations
than his wealthier brethren to live an in-
dividual life.

For our studies in sad monotone we must
go to the wives of one seflion of the "England-
returned," as they are called.

Try to picture this lady. She can speak
her own vernacular, perhaps read it, but
Western influences have passed her by.
Greatly skilled is she in things domestic.
She has watched her husband with awe
through the throes of his local university, and
then he sails away out of her ken to that un-
known land beyond the "black waters" of
separation. Dimly through the years does
she hear of him, and great fears are at her

Portraits of some Indian IVomen 133

heart as she thinks of the women he must
meet in that land of "the unveiled"; but
these are fears she may tell to none. What
pre-emption can she have in his affe6lions?
Then he comes back, wearing a bright pink
shirt, an English top-hat, and patent leather
shoes. He drives a dog-cart, and divides his
time between his office and his club; he dines
at English houses — new fears here for breach-
of-caste rules. . . . But she worships never-
theless. To buy him blessings is still left to
her, and Indian wifehood was ever a school
for altruism ; but in a family group you will
grant the inharmoniousness of the anachron-
istic.

Let it be ceded here, however, that there is
another sketch possible of that " England-
returned " one. Some diversity of interests
cannot be avoided; but I have known a few
little wives whose Anglicized husbands did
their best to educate them, led them painfully
through the new ideas, brought them some-
what into the " reformed " life.

To myself the attempt has often seemed
pathetic, trying " to walk with one foot," to
" clap with one hand "; but our little lady is

134 Between the Twilights

painted this time in a glad luminosity of grati-
tude that, having seen the world, he should
still deign to care.

But sometimes the woman, too, has had
chance of Western education. I have known
one or two of her kind in Bengal and Madras,
more in Bombay. Perhaps she passed through
the stage transitional herself once ; at any rate,
she has arrived all safely, keeping her pretty
national dress, keeping also her vernacular.
A great part of her day must be re-made for
the ceremonies of orthodox Hinduism which
she has discarded; yet, something solid she
has in its stead, since no influence will ever
make a Hindu woman irreligious, thank God.

She will talk to you of the struggles of the
great Indian reformers, of Ram Mohan Roy,
of Chaitanya. She will separate for you, with
true discrimination, the symbol from the spirit
in ancient Hindu philosophy. I have even
found her reading Jowett's Plato, Emerson,
Browning. **My husband recommended
these," she explains. Him she companions
as sufficiently as does any woman of the West
her husband, walks with him, drives with him,
and is not watched with hungry, jealous eyes,

Portraits of some Indian IVoihen 135

as are the newly "emancipated" women of
other Indian communities, whom some of us
have seen abroad for the first time in mixed
assemblages of men and women.

Perhaps she is not as good a head domestic
as her great-grandmother; but service is mer-
chantable, and, at any rate, she takes an intelli-
gent interest in the education of her children.

This much has Brahmoism {i.e.^ Hindu
Theism) done at its best; and, mistakes apart,
it is not a bad "best" for a nation in transi-
tion.

The recoil from a too servile imitation of
the West is bringing about a wise admixture
that may eventually prove really useful to the
progress of the nation.

Not yet have I touched upon the stri6lly
veiled woman — the Hindu woman in palaces
or of certain parts of India, and the Mahom-
medan woman.

As queen, she is multiple; subtle tones of
colour here, the peculiar living tincture of
great joys, great sorrows. I have known her
bitter with the consciousness of growing years
and barrenness, lording her seniority over her
young and beautiful rivals — a shrew for whom

136 Between the Twilights

surely there is much excuse; and I have
known her gentle to her co-wives as to much-
loved sisters, admiring of their graces, living
with them in kindly, humorous companion-
ship. Nay, I have known better. I have
known her at so great a height of saintliness
that, her own arms empty, she will pray the
gods to grant her rival the gift of motherhood.

Sometimes she is very young. I recall a
pretty child of seventeen who came to this
particular queendom because her husband was
successful in procuring a white peacock!

" You may marry her," had said the King,
her father, to the suitor, ** if you can bring
me a white peacock."

He had not known that such things were,
and when the expe6lant prince produced a
spotless ghost-bird, the King, for the sake of
his word, had to give him his daughter.

She was very happy in her new home; as
it chanced, she was a unit, and not one of a
group. She had her own gorgeous apartments
and waiting-women. All day she turned over
her pretty trinkets and possessions, or made
charms against the evil eye, or listened to end-
less stories from the Court gossip; and at

Portraits of some Indian Women 137

nightfall she played hide-and-seek on the roof
overlooking that garden where the peacock
had his place of honour.

Sometimes her husband would pay her a
visit of ceremony, when she would sit, eyes
cast down, to answer his questions in mono-
syllables. Sometimes she herself would visit
her mother-in-law, falling at the great lady's
feet in graceful salutation. I have known her
very merry when this formality was overpast.
These visits were her only interludes in mono-
tony. Yet she was not unhappy. She had
expe6led nothing else, and more light and
air fell to her lot than to that of many.

Seclusion is sometimes so rigid that it has
been little better than intermural imprisonment
from one year's end to another ; no garden to
stroll in, no chance of ventilation of any kind
or sort; no outside interests or companion-
ship. Nor would the women themselves thank
you for suggesting innovation. '*Did our
great-grandmothers live otherwise?" they
would ask.

The question now is, how far should the
enlightened members of the community strive
to better the Purdahnashin custom? In the

138 Between the Twilights

days when it came to stay in India there were
alleviations. You have but to look at the
archite6lure of the older towns, of Agra, of
Jaipur, to prove the fa6t. Every courtyard
had its marble lattices, from behind which the
ladies of the house, securely screened, might
watch the bear and tiger-baiting, the wrest-
ling, the ancient games. They had their
private gardens and their baths.

The long pilgrimages in palanquins made
change and movement in their lives. The
system was less injurious to health than it is
now. In a town like Jaipur the whole city is
one running commentary in rubric on such
alleviations. For the secluded lady there were
perpetual peep-holes on to the life of the
street, with its daily pageantry and frequent
carnivals. The more modern householder
builds blind walls in his jealous passion of
keeping.

Is it any wonder that the race grows de-
generate?

Thrown back upon herself, robbed of air for
mind and body, marvel is the Purdahnashin
is as nice as we know her.

Take for instance one trait, the loyalty of

Portraits of some Indian Women 139

wives to their husbands. All who know the
orthodox Hindu Zenana will have pathetic
instances in mind of a loyalty which dignifies
all womanhood. Nor often however, I hope,
is loyalty put to such severe test as with the
little lady whom I found imprisoned in a
fortress in Northern India.

Her story was interesting — she was the
daughter of a King, and educated beyond
ordinary. "She shall be as a son to me,"
had said her Father, and he taught her to
read and write and figure, and rumour said
that even the local magazine was edited from
behind the Purdah. When she was of an age
to marry, her family Priest went a horoscop-
ical tour to secure her a husband.

At Benares he met the family Priest ot
another Raj in search of a bride, and the two
Priests agreed to end their wanderings, and
accommodate each other. But alas ! the bride-
groom's priest had not revealed that his
patron was half-witted, nor that the Ministers
of the estate were in negotiation for a lady
from among themselves. So, on her wedding
day the Raj candidate learnt both that she was
wedded to an idiot, and that she had a co-wife.

140 Between the Twilights

She afterwards said that the first six months
of her life were almost happy, though she did
not realize this till the contrast of the after-
wards had come upon her. They killed her
babies — as they were born, they were both
boys — one they smothered in tobacco fumes,
the second had less merciful handling. For
the birth of the third she requested prote6lion,
taking care to explain that her husband was
not at fault, **God had made him a fool."
She was given a fortress not far from the
Capital, a Guard was put on the gate. . . .
All this happened nine years before help
reached her. In the meantime the Guard had
become her gaoler. Food she had none, save
the remnants of stores laid in nine years pre-
vious; servants or companions she had none.
For nine years had she had speech of no one.

Her father had died; all attempts made by
her old Mother to get to her, or to get news
of her, had failed. Then, in penitence for
making the marriage, her old family Priest
brought me to her. I have never forgotten
what I found at the end of that difficult journey
... a fortress in ruins, the home of bats,
and so unsavoury that the only clean spot was

Portraits of some Indian Wotnen 141

a small roof-terrace furnished with a string
bed and a broken chair or two. Here lived
the Ranee and her son; he was alive and safe
— in this she had her reward ; but provisions
were reduced to one earthen pot of grain, and
endurance was much strained.

She told me her story, with pitiful entreaties
not to hold her husband to blame ; how could
the poor creature, God-blasted, be responsible?
The ministers were responsible, who held her
liable for the fact that her co-wife had
daughters only, always daughters ! Even call-
ing the last — ^^ No more of this Kalidevi " —
had brought no improvement. Yes, she had
seen her husband ; once he made his way
into the Fortress through a private gate while
out hunting, and he climbed up to the roof-
terrace and sat on the broken bed, and said :
" Let me go, lest I be moved to compassion
and help you." And she had helped him to ^o
secretly, swiftly, even as he had come.

Poor man, what further proof were needed
that he could never be to blame. ** Had not
God Himself made him a fool? she blamed
him not," but I noticed that she devoted herself
passionately to providing against like misfor-

142 Between the Twilights

tune for the son. We took her servants and
supplies, and later brought her away in safety
to her Mother. The Fool lives. The co-wife
must now be dead, for when last I heard of
my Ranee two significant things were reported
of her: one was that she worshipped an empty
earthen pot with the left hand (that was to
show contempt), and then, to prote6t herself,
offered the first mouthful of every meal to an
amulet which hung round her neck. And are
not both these things known to the initiated
as referring to ghosts of co-wives alone?

Yet another type is the woman who rules a
State, whether in her own right (as with the
Begum of Bhopal), or as widowed regent.

History tells us of one such lady, whose
diary of statecraft an emperor of India was
glad to consult. Shrewd, wise, far-seeing, re-
sponsible, the Purdah has hardly been any
drawback to the women born with a talent for
ruling, though even for these exists the chief
danger of seclusion, namely, that they may
get to view life through the eyes of one person
— their chief adviser.

Where he is unreliable and the woman is
weak the danger will be apparent to all.

Portraits of some Indian Women 143

It is the chief adviser who rules in reality,
manipulating her revenues, surrounding her
with creatures bound to him by ties of rela-
tionship or purchase; as likely as not her
spiritual guide is also of his choosing, and the
lady is in a coil from which extrication is well-
nigh impossible. I have seen her struggle to
get free, and fall back again helpless; but
most often she is dangerously unconscious of
the subtle influences abroad. Her day is spent
grossly, lying on her elbow among brocaded
cushions, chewing betel-nut, while her maidens
fan her, or amuse her with tales of Court
rivalries and jealousies. Her Prime Minister
brings her documents to sign, and she hears
perhaps an occasional account of his adminis-
tration of the estate, but there is no sense of
obligation towards her people; no interest,
even parochial, in their daily life ; no thought
for their welfare. It is not to the advantage
of the chief adviser to encourage feelings of
this kind, and the woman herself has too little
imagination to care about the wants of subjects
whom she never sees.

But all Indian widows do not rule estates.
What then of the rest? What of the ordinary

144 Between the Twilights

widows, of the highest caste, for instance, the
type of woman who, in the olden days, would
have fed the flames of the funeral-pyre bound
to a husband's corpse? What of her.

For the most part she lives the life of a
willing drudge in the house of her mother-in-
law. " For it is so alone now," as one ex-
plained to me, ** that we can win merit for our
lords."

I have never forgotten the agony of this
little lady, sent home to her own mother to
live in luxury, robbed of her chance of service.

It is not, I think, untrue to say that the
orthodox Hindu widow suff^ers her lot with
the fierce enjoyment of martyrdom and a very
fanaticism of selflessness. But nothing can
minimize the evils of that lot. After all, a
widow is a thing of ill-omen, to be cursed
even by those who love her. That she accepts
the fa6l makes it no less of a hardship. For
some sin committed in a previous birth the
Gods have deprived her of a husband. What
is left to her now but to work out his '* salva-
tion," by her prayers and penances to win
him a better life-place in his next genesis?
So even the "cursings" of her are in their

Portraits of some Indian IVome^i 145

way a satisfa6lion. They are helping her to
pay her debt to Fate.

For the mother-in-law what also is left but
the obligation to curse, exa6lion of that debt?
But for this luckless one her son might still
be in the land of the living.

Now, how shall I make it clear that there
is no determined animosity in this attitude?
The person cursing is as much an instrument
of Fate as the person cursed. Are we not all
straws blown by the wind of Fate, and of our
own past a6lions? Little room is there in
Hindu ethics for the sense of personal respon-
sibility for wrong-doing.

Indeed, the widow is often, especially as she
gets on in years, and in the house of her own
mother, a person loved in spite of her fatal
gifts of ill-luck. She fills the place of a good
home-daughter, is at the service of everyone,
from the eldest to the youngest. Often she is
a devotee, most religious, and greatly sup-
ported by the consolations of her faith. She
will herself say on some occasion of rejoicing :
" Let me not be seen, I am luckless."

And there is certainly no denying that the
sum of self-sacrifice which she represents is,

L

1

146 Between tlie Twilights

at its best, some solid good to a nation — the
salt leavening the lump. One can imagine
how the pra6tice of suttee helped to maintain
this high Hindu ideal of altruism, so com-
paratively easy was it to face that one final
a6l of pain and of glory. But in these days,
and under the petty tyranny of a mother-in-
law, the altruism of the little widow is worn
threadbare.

It is all very well in theory to assert no
personal animosity towards her whom you
hold it a religious privilege to curse, and to
burden with every unpleasant duty imaginable.
Your practice is apt to mislead. Even Hindu
widows are but human, and a lifetime of such
dissembling of love must leave them slightly
bruised at the foot of the stairs.

Again, with the laxity of modern times and
the lapses from orthodoxy, there comes to the
chief sufferer the wonder whether after all she
is dealing vicariously in this spiritual r^ialto;
whether she is buying gifts for her husband
after all. The morbid consciousness that she
is a thing of ill-omen gnaws at her. Admit
the doubt and you admit inability to bear what
is put upon her; you admit discontent, con-

Portraits of some Indian IVomen 147

sciousness of hardship, of ill-treatment. Yet
all these tyrannies, this very doubt, has the
march of time brought to the Hindu widow.
There lies the tragedy. From whatever cause,
she is losing faith in her own sacrifice, in her
old attitude towards life; and therefore is she
to be pitied indeed.

How can we help the fa6l that the number
of women in this class must increase daily?
The age marches forward towards personal
and individual dignity, and the old ideals of
the vicarious are being pushed into the back-
ground of the unregenerate.

The majority suffer in silence; some glori-
ously, some ingloriously and sadly rebellious.
Some fall into the hands of the Widow Re-
marriage Committee, and are re-married. It
is not for the onlooker to say whether this
solution is sufficient. A few are now beginning
to find that life has some use for a woman
unmarried, even for her. They are learning
to earn their own living and to bless the world
with honest labour. She is buying back the
curse, this widow who works, in a way which
must surely conserve for the nation much of
that selflessness which we claimed in the suttee.

148 Between the Twilights

and certainly much more apparent usefulness.
As do6tor, teacher, nurse, and in humbler
walks of life, which of us who know modern
India have known and not blessed the Hindu
widow? For the first time, too, since the Vedic
era, do we find in India unmarried girls over
ten years of age. This is the nearest ap-
proach to spinsterhood in the East, and the
spinster — she is very rare — is almost always
a self-respe6ling woman earning her own
living.

I have said that the impetus of the age is
towards individualism. How can we keep the
Hindu woman out of the great current?

The time when the nation could be served
by a grovelling womankind — if ever such time
there was — is past.

A woman's place in the National life will
now best be filled by the realization of herself;
she must grow to her full stature, taking as
her due her share of God's light and air, of
the gifts of the Earth-Mother.

She need lose none of those qualities which
made her loved in mythology, in the times oi
the Vedas, in history. Indian women have it
within their power to prove to the world that

Portraits of some Indian Women 149

gentle womanly graces are not incompatible
with independence.

What a redemption of that curse of the
widowed, what a revenge on Time, if the
widow herself take the foremost place in this
regeneration of Indian womanhood!

XII
GARDEN FANCIES

EVERYONE in India is familiar with the
homely little Tulsi — the sacred basil —
with its aromatic brown spirals and dull green
leaves. It was sprawling" across the drive of
a house I had newly come to tenant, and while
my Mali and I did tidyings in the Garden, I
spoke to him gently about the plant. '* Move
the sacred garden-person. Suppose some day
we drove over it and hurt it, quite by accident,
what sin! See, put it in a new hole yonder,
by your own hut if you wish." He is a holy
man, my Mali^ from Puri, where dwells Jag-
annath of the Car with his Brother and Sister;
and he will not touch the Tulsi till he has
bathed, saving for it his first draught of water
of mornings. I could only hope that my good
intentions were credited. But he made no sign
beyond a reverence to the Tulsi^ and a wagging

Garden Fancies 151

of his head from side to side, which I inter-
preted as ** Forgive me" (to the plant), **do
I not eat the Huzoor's salt? It is an order"
(for me).

Notwithstanding, the Tulsi moved not, and
frequent reminders at last elicited a reason.
'* It would take a ceremony and a very holy
man to transplant the sacred Tulsi.''

" Bring him; make the ceremonies," I en-
treated, stipulating only that I should be
present.

So, next morning he brought the holy man,
and they sat, both of them on their heels, be-
side the bush, and read it some sacred texts
about Jagannath and his colleagues ; then they
explained to it the situation, my wishes, its
own danger . . . and with many mutterings of
magic words they carried the plant to the new
place.

The rest of the ceremony was fixed for " the
hour of union," and when all was ready I
was duly summoned. Little earthen pots,
fed with oil, in which floated a cotton wick,
made great illuminations about the Mali's
hut.

The Tulsi S2X in its hole, and gathered about

152 Between the Twilights

it in apology and propitiation were the Mali's
gardening tools; the basket, mouth to earth,
holding a light, a brass plate of sugar biscuits
and parched rice, and a pot of Ganges water.
. . . He made an offering of the tools and
foodstuffs, and last of all of a handful oi lovely
white lilies. These he crushed among the
brown roots, bruising them, burying them —
who shall say what symbol he had in his
mind? then he watered the plant, muttering,
and finally settled once more on his heels and
read it a little pink book of invocations to the
God of the Car — read it from cover to cover —
there by the light of the little earthen lamp on
the basket.

When he made himself into a huddled-up
pillow before the tree, head pressed against
the newly-raked earth, I knew the ceremony
was over. What was most extraordinary was
his utter unselfconsciousness. He had been
pleased that I should come, had begged it;
but at his "God-worship," my presence was
completely forgotten. The ritual was more
than form of game. How cruel to suggest to
such as he, then, the thought in my mind,
that the Tulsi probably owed its sacred

Garden Fancies 153

origin and place in every Hindu courtyard to
its efficacy in keeping away mosquitos!

I wondered what reason my Purdahnashin
would give me for the worship of the Tulsi.
I would ask. Curiosity was rewarded with a
beautiful story. Why did she hold the Tulsi
holy? It was only because it was the wife of
the Great God. Did I not know the tale?
Listen then. Once upon a time lived a great
Giant who had a beautiful wife, and was
successful in conquering and possessing him-
self of everything he wished.

In his pride of conquest he forgot all limits
and claimed the wife of the Destroyer himself.
Then the Great God, angry, came himself to
earth to punish the Giant, and slew that
powerful one as he lay beside his bride in all
his security of possession. But when the poor
lady walked forth to make living sacrifice of
herself, as was meet, upon the dead body of
her lord — it was the Great God himself who
was enamoured of her, and he sat by the burn-
ing corpse disconsolate. None could drag him
back to heaven ; nor moved he night and day
till the obje6l of his love had found new form
in the sweet-smelling Tulsi^ with its soft green

154 Between the Twilights

leaves and brown flowering spirals, struggling
upwards to the light.

** Forget not the perfume of the Tulsi. The
customs of your race, in marrying, in dying,
in loving . . ." sang my friend. '* It means
all that to us who sprinkle it with water in the
morning."

But in my little garden there was no holy
Tulsi to sprinkle with water in the morning!
Transplanting suiteth not the aged: and the
friend of the Garden-people appeared before
me sad and shaven.

'*My Mother is dead, and at my hands:
have I leave to carry her to the waters of
oblivion?"

Leave, of course: but let the blame be
rightly fixed; not the worshipper, but the
Huzoor, she who ordered, carried the sin.
This did not satisfy, as I would have wished :
and it was not till many days later that the
faithful slave brought me a cleared brow, and
his mountain top of philosophy.

'* But to him who does not deem it sin it
is not sin."

Garden Fancies 155

Now is that what the sacred plant will
now say henceforth and for ever to my lover
of ceremonies in his garden, and am I
responsible for the dangerous do6trine? I
wonder.

XIII
A CHILD OR TWO

IN an orthodox Hindu house of mine
acquaintance are to be found two darling
Babies, aged four and five. They are girls,
one named *' Lightning-Beloved," the other
after a Greek Goddess.

I made their acquaintance first in the Sum-
mer, and they were most seasonably dressed
in gold waist-bands and an amulet a-piece —
for the Goddess of Learning, a bear's claw,
and for " Lightning- Beloved," a little gold
box of mystic " spare-me-s " against the blue
sword of her tempestuous Lord. ... I was
much in request for games, and daily beguiled
into longer and longer visits; how could one
resist Babies who were just being introduced
to the joys of childhood? And, when I left
the "Inside," there would be one Baby on my
hip — they taught me that, and it is quite easy,

A Child or Two 157

I assure you — and one clinging to leg and
hand as I walked downstairs.

But joy was at the full when I invited them
to come and see me. The hour fixed was at a
distance of a week, and every day I was asked
" has it come?" When it did come I was sit-
ting at my window, and seeing the Raj carriage
and pair, with all its pomp of liveried attend-
ants, dash up the drive, I smiled to myself,
thinking of the semi-nude atoms which would
presently issue thence. Little did I know.
The atoms, my very own Baby friends of the
waist-band and necklet, were translated. At
the door, hand in hand and very shy, stood
two of the quaintest oddities I have ever seen
— my Babies, sure enough, but dressed as
English widows, crepe veil and all, with long
false curls of rusty black hair adown their poor
little black-gowned backs. Oh ! but how I
laughed ! And they stood by, rueful and dis-
appointed, while I stripped them, even to their
natural clothing.

**Then the Miss Sahib loved not the English
clothes; nor" (with a gasp of wonder) "the
hair of another."

''No! Nor'

158 Between the Twilights

And two pairs of brows knit themselves in
solemn puzzlement over this contrariety. Then,
** But the Miss Sahib said she loved the child-
ren people of the English."

**Yes! what then?" (but I had guessed).
"We want the Miss Sahib to love us." . . .
The darlings! Then it was all made clear,
helped out by the Amla. They had, even as
they said, laid their little plot to win love.
They would dress like the children-people of
the English. But how to compass this ! Their
Mother undertook to arrange; and a clever
Amla went to a second-hand clothes shop near
by, which often supplied Theatrical Companies.
** No! they had no dress of the English child-
ren-people; but stay — an English Mem-Sahib
had sold them a dress not long since. They
could make two small copies of this." And
the Babies were reproduced in the sad image
of some English widow (curls and all), who
had evidently fallen on evil days or the brighter
days of second marriage, and got rid of her
panoply of mourning.

I think my Goddess of Learning and
** Lightning-Beloved " know by now that
these foreign arts are unnecessary in the way

A Child or Two 159

of love. I have had no widow repeats, but in
my heart I hide the realization of a pathos and
charm hitherto unsuspe6led in the conscious-
ness of Babydom.

It was in connection with '* Lightning-
Beloved," whose Mother was seeking a hus-
band for her four-year-old, that I came across
the ** orphanless child," as he was described in
a petition. She explained to me that as she was
sonless, "Lightning-Beloved " must be married
quickly to someone without fortune or family,
though of the right caste. He would then be
even as her son, and be supported by her in return
for the honour of an alliance. This extraordin-
ary position, ' ' domesticated son-in-law, " as it is
called, has been accepted even by adults, and
is very familiar in Bengal. I know of one in-
stance where a man waited to propose to the
lady of his choice (it was a reformed Hindu
family), till he could prove himself capable of
supporting her, only to discover that a younger
and rather lazy brother had forestalled him by
accepting the position of the *' domesticated."
However, it was useless arguing the indignity
of dependence with "Lightning-Beloved's"
mother, and one's only chance lay in expound-

i6o Between the TwiligJits

ing Sanskrit scripture as to the possibility of
waiting for marriage till a later age. Unfor-
tunately, it is a question of Priest-gifts desired
at this particular moment, and counter-texts
are produced for my consideration, proving
that delay means risk of a first-class heaven ;
so that nothing but the woman's faith in my
assurance that I will use my influence with
the spiritual Powers to secure her the coveted
position, nevertheless, saves the situation.

For the Goddess of Learning is desired an
adopted son, heir to a Raj. I am pleased with
this choice, the boy has a face like Rossetti's
Blessed Damozel, and a charming disposi-
tion; and we have just been in time to save a
threatened repudiation of him by his adoptive
Mother. It would have been a dreadful thing,
for having by adoption lost for ever all spiritual
rights in his natural family, he would, on re-
pudiation of adoption, be left without ances-
tors for whom to pray; and this, for a Hindu,
is terrible indeed.

A new little settler has lately sought the
shelter of this Raj, a six-year-old Baby in self-
prote6live exile from her own Estate. Under
local law she succeeds as the only unmarried

A Child or Two i6l

''female" to a considerable inheritance, and
as a consequence all around her, grand-
mothers and sisters included, are interested in
her death. They have been drugging her, and
she has been brought into headquarters under
Police guard. I found her in a wretched house
set down in a swamp, and furnished with a
hard plank-bed and a box. " Lotus-born,"
that is her name, is a miserable shrimp of a
Baby, arms like sticks, and a plaintive long-
suffering little face, like a cry for help sound-
ing in my ears to this day. She was very ill
indeed, burning with malarial fever, and aching,
she said, in every limb. She lay on the hard
^^ takht-posh,'' and beside her sat her nurse,
another baby, eight years old. She sat like a
frog, legs crunched up, and her nursing con-
sisted in giving the sufferer a loving pinch
every now and then, murmuring, "There!
that makes it better." And the six-year-old, in
a monotonous little voice which struggled after
cheeriness, would answer, "Yes! Oh! yes."
I found that the Nurse had tied herself to
"Lotus-born" in friendship by a ceremony
peculiar to this part of the country. Two
tanks are dug, contiguous, and the children

M

1 62 Between the Twilights

make a play with fishes and boats, floating
them in the water, and offering rice and feast-
ings on the grass. Quaint songs are sung.

**Who is worshipping the water with gar-
lands of flowers while the sun is overhead? "

** It is I, chaste and virtuous, lucky sister
of a Brother. May I have sons who will not
die."

But "Lotus-born" lived not long enough
to find fulfilment oi her prayer. Better nurs-
ing came too late, and the petals of the Lotus
curled together in eternal sleep.

* Hi * Ik *

The mother of " Lightning-Beloved " is in
great spirits this morning. The son-in-law
ele6l was ill, and I had pointed the moral
about letting children get past baby troubles
before you betroth them ; it is so one lessens
the risk of widowhood.

* ' Well ! at any rate, " she said, ' ' you should
be pleased with me. Your ' Lightning-Be-
loved * is not yet a widow. I saved her from
being born a widow."

This was startling, but I waited explana-
tion.

"When 'Lightning-Beloved' was on the

A Child or Two 163

way to life," she said, ** there came a Guru
from a far country who told my Guru of a
game the women play there. Two women
who are friends, and are about at the same time
to be dowered with the life-gift, betroth two
balls of flowers. If both children are of the
same sex there is no result of the ceremony,
but if of opposite sexes and one die the other
is a widow. . . . She may even be born a
widow."

*' But you would not hold to that? "

** Where it is the custom who can escape?
Yet * Lightning-Beloved ' was not born a
widow ; for this I should have praise from the
Miss Sahib."

'* But it is not your custom."

'* What matter? I should have praise. She
is not a widow! "

^ % * 'iit %

I was musing sadly on children-widows that
morning, because of a story told to me by a
friend. Someone visiting a local prison was
attracted by the misery of a woman who had
murdered her child. He spoke to her, and
she said she wished that her own life had been
taken, for she loved her child, and all she had

164 Between the Iwilights

done was to right the wrong of early widow-
hood. " Her husband died when she was
five. Do not I, who have lived a lifetime of
widowhood, know what that means? Was I
wrong to try to save her from misery like to
mine?"

In truth, apart from the written law, it is
difficult to judge the woman. She loved
her child, and in her own opinion did no
more than pull her gently away from under
the wheels of that Jagannath Car of Hindu
widowhood.

There was my *' Dog-girl," now just dead,
poor child. What of her Mother? she who
has made war upon her only daughter since
her second year. What of her? There is no
law to meet her case. What of her? *'God
has not said a word."

It is a graphic quarrel in three generations
of women, and of women living in the same
Palace, only a courtyard dividing each from
each. Sullenly they lived, silently year in
year out, not a single interest coming from
the outside world to distract their attention
from their hates and resentments. Traffic
indeed with the world they had none. Palace

A Child or Two 165

walls shut them in securely, shut them in
with their broodings and bemoanings, with
the intrigues and loyalties of their several
waiting-women, andwith one gray-white Sarw^,
the red-throated, a ghost-bird, walking rest-
lessly on his high stilts from courtyard to
courtyard.

I saw the solitary creature first in the cow-
dust hour before the stars come out, and he
seemed to me somehow the embodiment of
that quarrel, the lost soul of the inharmonious.

I have said the quarrel was in three genera-
tions— daughter, mother, grandmother — and,
of course, like all Raj quarrels, it had been
made by a third person to suit his own pur-
poses. My conne6lion with it was an attempt
at Peacemaking, when the daughter was about
fifteen, and could speak for herself. Not soon
shall I forget my journeys . . . flat, mud-
coloured country, with mud huts rising out of
the ground, as if you had pinched up the
earth into hiding holes . . . mud-coloured
humans like detached pieces of their own
houses herding undersized goats, or urging
miserable beasts and an unwilling plough over
the baked earth : little vegetation, but here

1 66 Between the Twilights

and there a palm-tree, standing straight and
solitary against the heat-hazed, pewter-coloured
sky, as if even Nature had need here to throw
herself on God . . . This was before the rain.
In a week all was changed, the road was under
water, and I had a weird, mysterious drive
through the rivers of streets. The suspicion
of a moon was overhead, and a glorious fresh
breeze wandered the world. Silently we drove,
swish^ swishy fifteen miles of — a call to secrecy,
as if all the world had finger on lip — ''^ husky
hush'' ... the trees said it, the feathery
bamboos whispering head against head, and
the soft gray clouds, and that veiled moon,
and that wistful breeze, and those muddy
streets, they all said ^^ Hush!'' . . . even the
bare legs of the saises, as they ran by the
carriage, seemed tosaythesame. *^^Hush!" , . .
All the world was slipping into a delicious
forgetfulness and oblivion, and there was none
to see, none save I, thrilling with sympathy,
and that palm or two against the horizon
looking on stiff-necked and aloof as if refusing
to have part or lot in this flirtation oi Earth
and Cloudland. I did not mind the palms. I
hugged myself with the delicious feeling of

A Child or Two 167

being in the secret of the world-things. Once
or twice in our pathless journey we passed
through a village, so close that I could reach
a hand and scratch a soft pink nose of cow or
buffalo at its tethering. The peasant house-
holder lay stretched in his winding-sheet asleep
on the unguarded threshold. No reason for
worry or watch-dog when all your wealth is in
dear Mother- Earth, guarded by the floating
fluid come down from Heaven for that same
purpose. How good will be the rice crop after
this soaking he knows full well, that slow-
minded one who sleeps so blissfully.

But it is after midnight, and we have arrived.
And next morning there are secrets again,
but of a different kind, in the air, and my
work is cut out for me.

It was the little daughter who was most
difficult to manage. " How could she visit
her Mother? she would be bewitched. Had
they not on such-and-such a day — it was the
fifth day of the dark fortnight in the month
of the Spring games — had they not, her
Mother's minions, thrown mustard in her path
as she walked? Did the Miss Sahib not know
that that was a powerful breeder of demons?

1 68 Between the Twilights

Oh! but yes! Colman's mustard that you get
in yellow tins from Europe shops. . . . And, —
" once they bade her to a 'peace-making meal,'
but there was poison in the food . . . How
did she know it? Oh! she was not without
sense, who does not know poison when they
see it ! "

The Grandmother spoke a more forcible
tongue; charges under the Penal Code, with
quaint excursions into the family history of
the past for parallel to this unworthy widow
of her son.

The Ranee herself was dignified. You can
afford dignity when you hold the purse-strings,
and your accusations take the form of reduced
allowances. She entertained me much this
lady. As soon as word was brought her of
my arrival she went to bed, feigning sickness.
How did she know what manner of woman I
might be! It were best to be on the safe side;
if you were ill and in bed you could, with
courtesy, avoid seeing visitors. So she went
to bed. But she sent her Prime Minister and
her most confidential officers to 'call upon me,
that they might report. Was their report
favourable, or did curiosity get the better of

A Child or Two 169

discretion? I know not; but early next morn-
ing a long procession of Palace servants in
red and gold liveries came with gifts of wel-
come. Each man bore a tray of fruits and
things auspicious; one touches the trays, leav-
ing a silver coin behind. They bore also a
letter of compliments praying an early visit.
**Such was the beneficent nature of my visit
to her State, she was well. ..." For me,
after writing back elaborate congratulations
on the quick recovery, I stood at the window
watching the messengers. Their lithe, smooth
bodies glistened in the sun, and on each tray
reposed the red and gold livery of that visit of
ceremony ! Once through my gateway, what
need to carry superfluous mark of civilization.
The days that followed brought their own
burden . . . visits, morning and evening, to
this lady or that at the Palace, and visitors
calling all day, each one with some tale
against his neighbour, some story of Court
intrigue. . . . "Where all is unknown, best
be on the safe side and accuse " was their
motto. And silent patience in the hearer led
to this much knowledge at least, that there
was one man's name held in detestation by all

lyo^ Between the Twilights

alike. . . . And when the sun set there was
solitude, and I walked in the Temple Garden,
a garden which was a wild bed of Indian jas-
mine and other sweet-scented flowers loved of
the gods, or played with the children of the
old Priest at the Monkey Temple; or anon,
sat still, in the cleft of some low branch, while
the Priest himself told legends of the country-
side— quaint tales of miraculous cures, or
gruesome tales of living corpses. . . . And
once an old Mutiny soldier recited Persian
verses to me in a voice that should have
reached his old battlefield at Delhi, many
miles away; and once again, on a dark night
of stars, they showed me the King's games
of by-gone days — little green parrots turning
somersaults in circles of fire, and torch-bearers
dancing a wild tattoo. ... So the days
passed. . . . Of what account was Time to the
believers in Eternity? They would not be
hurried. But every day we gained ground,
and at last all was ready for the great peace.

Etiquette of the stri6lest was imperative: it
needed some care to secure this without fric-
tion. As a personal favour the old Grand-
mother promised to come with me to the

A Child or Two 171

Ranee's apartments; likewise the little daugh-
ter clinging tightly to my hand for fear of
those same mustard demons.

As a personal favour also, the Ranee agreed
to welcome her Mother-in-law in orthodox
fashion.

Five o'clock of an afternoon, and a long
dark room lined with waiting-women standing
ere6l and silent, each waving a huge glitter-
ing fan planted like a flag in front of her . . .
flap^ flapy went the fans, like an elephant's
ears; and the serving-women's ornaments
shone like stars on arm or forehead. I had
just arrived, the first and third generations in
either hand, myself a little fearful as to pos-
sible backsliding. The old lady I seated ; then
going across to the Ranee at the other end of
the room, '* Your Mother-in-law," I said,
"has come to visit you. May I take you to
her?"

It was thus, you see, we adjusted reconcilia-
tion, met each other half way, without too
much sacrifice of pride . . . and, as I led my
Ranee forward, " I want to see," I whispered,
"if your 'falling at the feet' is as pretty as
ours in the West Country." "Prettier," she

172 Between the Twilights

said. "Look!" And,covering'her face, she fell
three times at the feet of the old dame, who
stood there stern as an irrevocable sin. And
she? She might have blessed the prostrate
woman, but, at least, she cursed not; and so
as not to strain forgiveness too far, I made
excuse of heat and else, and had her conveyed
back to her own courtyard.

The Mother and daughter were less cere-
monious; the Mother wept much, and to seal
the peace, made over to her daughter jewels
of gold and precious stones, silver palanquins,
silver bedsteads, silver toilet sets ... all of
quaint Indian patternings — the jewels, magni-
ficent sets of emeralds and pearls, of rubies
and topazes — nose-rings, ear-rings, armlets,
bracelets, circlets for hair and forehead, de-
corations for the little bare feet, showers of
emeralds and pearls falling from a band round
the ankle, over the instep, and ending in a
ring for each separate toe.

And behind the Curtain sat the Prime Min-
ister and Treasurer reading a list of the gifts
— a price Wstl totalling item by item, calling
*' Is it there?" "Is it there?"

The darkness deepened, we finished our

A Child or Two 173

inventory by the light of tall brass lamps —
cotton wicks floating in open pans of oil — the
handmaidens still lined the walls, still waved
their jewelled fans. Once the daughter spoke.
*'A pearl is missing in this nose-ring!" she
said. . . . Do not be hard on her, my poor
little dog-girl. At first, I will own, I was so
myself, chiding her gently for her attitude.
All she said was, *' I have known my Mother
since I was two years old." Then wonderingly,
'*So the Miss Sahib thought her tears true
tears! "

*-^ •U' -^ -it,

w TV" TT ■Tr

Later I saw more of the child, and watched
her grow human and childlike. The *' dog-
girl," I called her, because she had a passion
for dogs, would rescue the most mangy
pariahs off the streets and care for them her-
self, fearless of consequences. I promised
that my own dear "Chow" should visit her,
but as he was, I explained, a high-caste dog,
it could only be when the outcasts were out
of the way ! It was so I got rid of the yapping
pack in the days of heat; but watching from
her window, one later day of hail and thunder-
showers, she saw some ill-treatment in the

174 Between the Twilights

street, and re-admitted the *' outsiders from
Caste." It was on this occasion she rebuked
me. *' Is the spark of life in Caste-Brother
and outcast, in Chow dog and Pariah ? Then
why should I not care for these?"

" But you are a Hindu, Caste is your
religion? "

**That is man's invention; where man has
not invented, let me hear the voice of God
calling me to have compassion on a fellow
life."

And now she has heard the voice of God
calling her out of this life of fellowship, per-
haps, who knows, in supreme compassion of
her own little stunted, shadowed life of high-
castehood. . . .

So, after all, God has spoken.

« « « « «

I had taken these thoughts out for a walk
on a sunny day in the hill country, and had
now arrived at my destination, where I meant
to leave a card.

It was a house which boasted an eleftric
bell, and unlike Indian houses, had a closed
door, overlooking the street. As I pressed
the button two hill children, in blue and red

A Child or Two 175

kimonos, and long plaits of hair, stood watch-
ing me.

'* Poor Miss Sahib," said one to the other,
**she is pressing a piece of wood, and thinks
to open the door that way."

The babies came nearer. "Poor Presence
— pressing the wood at the side," and they
laughed.

I turned round and smiled at them, which
gave the younger courage. "Doors," she
said, " open not with pressings of wood at the
side ; by the turning of yellow balls in the
middle do the foreign people open doors. We
have seen with our eyes."

Then, as if apologizing for instru6ling me:

"Shut doors were ever a foolishness," she
added, and ran away.

XIV

THE TIE THAT BINDS

'* nn'HE Hour of Union" — with the west, a
-L red gold lake of fire, turning to the
colour of smoke — there, behind the tall gray
steeple from which comes the Christian's call
to prayer.

The crows which have been so noisy all day
long spread their wings for flight; the palms
across the road and the great star-flower tree
at my gate are among their bedding places, I
know of old. All things travel toward the
Silence, and my soul stretches herself at ease,
up here in the open spaces of my roof.

What is it saying, the Christian Bell ?
* ' Vivos Voco : mortuosplango : fulgurafrango^
speaking its unknown tongue to a people that
understandeth not, nor wishes to understand.
Vivos vocOf vivos voco. . . . But no bell calls
the Hindu to worship. She worships when

The Tie that Binds 1 77

she will, not necessarily in groups; she rarely
passes a temple without worship, most often
just silent prostration: sometimes she will
creep in and ring the bell that hangs beside
the bull, her timid call of ceremony on the
god : or she will run in to leave a flower, or
to comfort her heart, poor soul, with prayer for
the moment's need. Nor need she pray always
in a Temple. I have seen her light a light at
cross-roads — the very tragedy of a prayer —
among the wheels of traffic in a busy town, a
special prayer this, for a new little life that is
to be. Vivos voco. . . . No need to call where
religion is not imposed, rules of a school whose
head master is God. The head master will
punish infringement of those rules, so teach
the ushers sometimes. . . . But to the Hindu
sin is not an off^ence against any Being; it is
but putting one's self out of harmony with
one's highest attainment. Do it, an you will,
you anger none. You but travel so many
more rounds of the wheel of life ... on and
on ... on and on . . . reaping in the next
cycle what you have sown in this . . . Oh!
the weariness of the pain of birth and re-birth !
Oh! the helplessness of trying to escape.

N

178 Between the Twilights

There is no escape. Life is inexorable. Life
is more inexorable than Death.

* * # # #

And now the gray overhead is tinged with
rosy pink. How long after the sunset lives
the memory of the sunset? This is the marriage
of day and night, the twilight hour, the time
of affe6lion, the time of peace. . . . Now the
clouds are staining the great roof of the world
— their bridal congratulations. Soon, they also
will have fallen back upon silence (for is not
colour speech after its kind?) and then the
God of Night will sprinkle stars all over the
floor of the bridal chamber where day and
night lie hiding while we sleep. For while we
sleep, night walks with day in three great
strides across that star-strewn floor, back to
the east where we find her again. *'As the
Sun sets, but never dies, even so shall the Sun
of my Life set; but I shall not die." . . .
^*' Mortuos pla7igo'\ . . . But why wail if I do
not die? Death is release: death is but the
next chance: the new start. Who wails the
dead? going where all the sunsets go to come
again, even as they.

Say I have done evil : well ! I made my

The Tie that Binds 179

choice. Now I go to pay like a man. Say I
have done well: I ^o to my reward, through the
same door as had I sinned, for but two doors has
this House of Life for all, the same exit the
same entrance. And but two doors will have
the next house, and the next . . . the many
mansions on the way of Peace. For Peace comes
at long last; there is always that; we may
make it come now, this minute, if we choose,
if we lay aside desire . . . "He attaineth
Peace into whom all desires flow as rivers flow
into the Ocean, which is filled with water, but
remaineth unmoved . . . not he who desireth
desire."

But, the chances are endless, why come so
soon to the Peace-place. Let us enjoy all
enjoyment, this house and that, and that . . .
Oh ! the weary wander to the House of Peace.
Oh! the loneliness of the way: for none may
hold my hand as I walk. None may even be
my sponsor. No man shall save his Brother's
soul. This journey to God, to Peace, must
be my own journey of discovery. Oh! the
loneliness of this constant converse with Fate!
It is the loneliness which men are wont to
associate with death : when the Eastern ceases

i8o Between the Twilights

for this — dialogue — he has attained Heaven,
absorption into the Divine. . . . Oh! the
loneliness! Oh! the joy of loneliness and
solitude; the joy of aloofness, each for each.
The Soul and God together, alone together
side by side, and at last, alone and one . . .
one Great Soul. For our souls are carrier
pigeons, homing to God. Mortuos plango.
No, the carrier pigeon has brought its message
through all the worlds, to God Himself. The
pigeon rests at peace in the home of Light.

Fulgura frango . . . Fulgura frango. But
what need to break the lightning, what need?
What is, is good; what happens is ordained.
Fight not with Fate. Love it. Conquer by
loving it . . . Never resent, never resent.
Submit to the evil, and behold it is good. All
is illusion in a world of dreams; who can
tell if the lightning be good or bad? Better
not break it, lest worse befall ; better not.
« « « » «

Even as one looks the illusions of vision
are fading, steeple, trees, house-tops, are only
blurs of grayness, and the other voice of
prayer smites the stillness — " There is no God,
but God" . . .

The Tie that Binds i8i

Beware, beware of resisting* Fate; beware,
there is who kills and who makes alive. None
may oppose Him; why break the Lightning?
Ik * * * ^

Oh ! the time Between the Twilights is good :
one floats on the sea of silence, and is nothing
— just part of the Great Creation — absolutely
at rest, at one with Nature, at peace with
one's self, with one's neighbour.

Shall we remember in the next House, the
furnishings of this? I asked of my Wisest of
the Wise.

'* It will be as you desire, as you intend,"
was the answer; and then, musingly, ** Most
wish to forget, most wish to forget." . . .

There is in her the strangest mixture of
ritual and freedom from ritual. That is because
she is a woman. Hinduism, as we find it in
India now, is but a tradition, of which the
women keep the record. You may believe
what you will, there are no articles of belief,
there are idols for the ignorant, there is poetry,
allegory, which you may interpret as you will ;
there are the beautiful songs of the Bhagavad
Gitay there is the propitiation of evil spirits,
there are the extortions of the ash-smeared ;

1 82 Between the Twilights

there is the ecstasy of the wife-worship of Life,
of her husband, her child. There is the crown
of self-sacrifice, and there is the demand of
the stronger for the service of the weaker.
All stand for Hinduism; but none connote
Hinduism. Of its essence is caste . . . and
here we are back again at our marriage re-
gister. The one fear of the Hindu is, lest
so-and-so will not marry into his family. If
he does that which would prevent marriage
he has ceased to be a Hindu. . . .

And the things which might prove a bar
to marriage among Westerns do not of neces-
sity prove here a bar to marriage. There is
no excommunication for sin; there is ex-
communication, out-casting for breach of a
ceremonial rule. The man under Western
influence may be ashamed of a son-in-law
who has served his time for a crime. Not so
the orthodox Hindu: has he not paid the
penalty for his sin, why cast it up against
him? That account is closed.

If you wish to know what things would out-
caste, ask the women. They have learned from
their grandmothers, and they from theirs.

In the long ago travelling Priests would

The Tie that Binds 183

wander from house to house, telling tales
from the old Epics, or building up that great
fabric of folk-lore which we find in all parts
of India. Often they would a6l the tales they
told or sing them, and this made great enter-
tainment in the lives of the women — Mystery
Play, Oratorio, brought to their doors. In
these latter days your Priest will whisper in
your ear the name of the God you must wor-
ship, and he will dire(5l your worship, and
chiefly your charity; but he gives you no
bundle of ethical maxims, no credo: and in
a woman's private chapel her own tempera-
ment supplies the religion. As I have said,
most usual is the worship of the Baby Krishna^
though there is also the Shiva cult which I
have described, both with the same idea run-
ning through them, the reverence for Creation.
Then to the timid, religion is often but a
faggot of superstitions — what to avoid, what
brings luck . . . every home provides some
old dame learned in this lore.

In one thing, however, all are alike. They
will keep faith with Gods, not always with men;
that matters little, for no one has taught them
that sense of honour, product of the self-cor-

184 Between the Twilights

porate, got from living in masses in the world.
But the Gods are another matter, the Gods
can punish. And the courage with which the
frailest will keep faith, at what cost, offering
a child in performance of some vow to a
Temple, measuring her length along the
ground in pilgrimage . . . this is one of our
paradoxes in India.

In the lives of most there is room for little
beside the worship of the husband, with its
perfe6lion of self-sacrifice, which seems to ex-
haust all of altruism that the religion holds.
And that is perhaps the chief difference be-
tween the standpoint of the West and Hin-
duism. When you benefit your fellow-men, it
is more to buy merit than out of compassion.
I suppose compassion dries up at the fount, so
to speak, in the consciousness or sub-con-
sciousness that misery is only another illusion,
that in a way you have ele6led the present
suffering, that at any rate you might have the
very best of times in your next genesis. But
however it may be, philanthropy among the
orthodox is an acknowledged soul-saving ar-
rangement. Listen to the very beggar in the
street. *'Gift me and buy merit," is his

The Tie that Binds 1 85

prayer. He is not ashamed to beg; you are
climbing to heaven on his shoulders. In a
way it is you who are in his debt.

This absence of altruism is a fa6t which ex-
perience is always emphasizing; and I deem
it the more noteworthy, inasmuch as in the
field of thought and meditation the heights
climbed are very great indeed, it is quite com-
mon to come across a mysticism parallel to
the mysticism of the West. But I would not
be misunderstood; though the do6lrine of
works and merit is the most general kind of
Hinduism, I have met a higher. "Good
works are fetters of gold, but still fetters,"
as said my orthodox interpreter of religion,
and he went on to explain that even the desire
for goodness could be an obstacle on the way
to God. Whereafter he told me this beautiful
story.

There was once a woman who had lived an
evil life. She was a Mahommedan, and she
said to herself, " I will go the Pilgrimage and
wipe out my sins." So she set forth, taking
with her a dog she loved. And as she wan-
dered, her face Mecca- wards, the other pil-
grims shunned her, for they knew her ill-

1 86 Between the Twilights

repute. But she heeded them not, her mind
being full of the so-soon purchase of sanc-
tity. . . . And it came to pass that a few miles
from Mecca the dog fell ill, and she said
within herself, *' I cannot leave it behind. I
must needs stay and tend it." So, albeit with
a sigh, for Mecca was almost in sight, and
she had longed so great a while to be holy
even as those other women by whom she was
shunned, she turned away from the path in
search of water. But it was a place of sand,
and it was long before she found a well, and
then she had perforce to make a rope of her
hair and a bucket of her clothes to draw water
for the poor beast . . . and, in tending him,
day changed into night, but she heeded not —
her whole soul in the desire that he might
live.

And when the pilgrims reached the Holy
City, and were preparing for the evening
prayer, a voice forbade the recital ....
*'This," said the Voice, "is not the place
where God is to be found; go back to where
she whom you deem evil tends a fellow life,
for there to-day dwells God Himself."

Faith is naturally a large factor in the reli-

The Tie that Binds 187

gion of the Hindu women. Belief is so easy
to her. She is troubled with never an intel-
le6lual doubt. Indeed, intelle6i, in her opinion,
is an interloper in the regions of Faith. Where
is the scope for Faith if you use your intelli-
gence? she will argue.

There is a story told, one of many such, of
a South-Indian woman, who believed that
upon a certain day of the new moon, the God
at a certain shrine would work whatever
miracle were claimed by the faithful as a proof
of his power; so, being drunk with ecstasy
after long years of meditation, she set forth to
the Shrine, having first cut out her tongue. . . .
*' My tongue which has often," said she,
"spoken words of unwisdom, will be given
me anew of the God. This is the miracle I
claim." Day after day of her pilgrimage she
trudged cheerfully, joy in her God at her
heart. Day after day she carried but her
water gourd and a small quantity of grain tied
in the end of her saree, and she walked with
the help of a tall bamboo pole, for she was
bent with age ; but the wisdom light streamed
from the gates of her body, so that all knew
her for holy, and crowds gathered about her.

1 88 Between the Twilights

curious as to the faith that was in her, but she
heeded them not; day after day through tracks
of burning sand, through jungle or by river
bed . . . and at last the temple was in sight.
* * # # #

The miracle was that her faith failed not
when her tongue did not grow. After the first
shock of realization, her mind groped after
some explanation which satisfied, and the God
lost no worshipper.

So, in Western India, I have known one —
a Queen and a daughter of a King — also
bowed with years, who had waited half her
life for the fulfilment of a promise.

God would see to it that the promise was
kept. Why waste resentment on him who
seemed a breaker of promises ; God would
resent for her. She was brought to the verge
of death, she had long been the house-mate of
poverty; her faith was proof against all. When
I saw her last she sat among the squirrels
on a dung-smeared veranda in a courtyard,
where cows and buffaloes were stalled. The
squirrels played about her; she had been her-
self a squirrel, she told me, in her last genera-
tion, wherefore they loved her; and she sat

The Tie that Binds 1 89

telling her beads as she had sat for fifty years,
her hand in the embroidered sock of ortho-
doxy.

Had any devil prompted me to suggest to
her justification for unfaith, I should simply
not have been believed. For — of these is the
kingdom of heaven.

One more memory stands out from the
crowd. It is the lamp-lighting hour in the
Temple of the Foot. We have come through
the narrow streets, past the sellers of old
brass and copper, past the gold and white
pyramids of flower-sellers. The air is heavy
with the perfume of jasmine, the sacred bulls
are sauntering up the steps from the river,
pushing through the worshippers with the
arrogance of the beloved. A kind priest has
lighted us under the archway, and we are in
the inner courtyard. Yes, we may come
through the forest of columns, standing
straight and white and cool in the cloisters,
and we may linger close by the great carved
door to watch the pooja. It takes some time
to see in the darkness . . . everything is

190 Between the Twilights

still, so still. There is a great basin of black
marble, and in the middle of it the impress of
a great foot. ... A priest sits on his heels
beside the basin, anointing the foot with
sandal-wood oil, washing it, offering it flowers
and incense.

Another Priest walks round and round the
basin crooning mantras. The real worshipper
is a poor woman in an advanced stage of
leprosy, the flickering light from the little
shells of cocoanut falls upon the masses of
white and yellow flowers, upon the fruits and
incense, upon the costly offerings, upon the
poor mis-shapen face. It is still, so still, so
full of mystery, her face, the flowers, the
Priest, leaping into life like a pulse-beat, with
the flare of the cotton wick. . . . Shiva's great
white bull sits watching his master's symbol
in the Temple beside us: other worshippers
there are none, and the pandas have wandered
to the bathing ghat, to encompass the un-
wary. . . . Sudden my soul hears through the
stillness the message of a child in the strains of
that beautiful anthem of Stainer's. His voice
rises clear and exultant so that I can hear it
across the seas from the Cathedral of old gray

The Tie that Binds 191

stone in the City of Cities. ... '* God so
loved the World." . . .

The Priest is passing the shell-lamp over
the foot itself, in the circles of some ritual,
and the leper bends forward out of the dark-
ness to see the sacred markings. . . . Oh ! the
horror of the ravages of the flesh ! . . . ' ' God
so loved the world." . . .

The Priest sprinkles the foot with holy
water, spooning it out of his copper vessel
with pra6lised hand, and the perambulating
Priest redoubles his mantras. . . . The face of
the leper is a-quiver with peace, and with a joy
that is without dissimulation. . . . ''God so
loved the world." . . .

The pooja is over, the officiating Priest has
pressed the little cotton wicks into darkness.
The leper makes her timid way out of the
Temple, ringing the great bell in the cloisters,
as she returns to her pilgrimage of pain in a
world of illusions. . . . "God so loved the
world," . . . and it was the leper in the Temple
of the Foot who first gave me a glint of the
probable meaning of these glad tidings.

CHISWICK PRESS : CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY

Los Aageles
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