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 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BEQUEST 
 
 OF 
 
 STEWART HENRY BURNHAM 
 1943 
 
Cornell University Library 
 BV 3265.B41 
 
 Other sheep :a missionary companion to 
 
 3 1924 022 905 701 
 
B Cornell University 
 B Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022905701 
 
OTHER SHEEP 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 SOULS IN ACTION. The Crucible of the 
 New Life. Expanding the narrative of 
 Twice-Born Men. 
 
 Cases of conversion in wliich the dynamic change was 
 completed through struggle on the part of the individual, 
 a progressive struggle of the will even after the heart had 
 been persuaded. 
 
 i2mo. Net, $1.25 
 
 THE CAGE. A Novel of Marriage. 
 
 The theme of this book is that '* social questions are 
 difficult and dangerous while the one central and eternal 
 question of life, Whither goesi thou ? remains unan- 
 swered." 
 
 l2mo. Net, $1.20 
 
 THE CHALLENGE. A Novel of Two Con- 
 tinents. 
 
 This records the struggle between two ideals. In India 
 Mr. Begbie has discovered a new and stimulating atmos- 
 phere for his genius — the vein of romance which gives - 
 the uplift to all reality. 
 
 i2mo. Net, $1.20 
 
OTHER SHEEP 
 
 A MISSIONARY COMPANION 
 TO "TWICE-BORN MEN" 
 
 "Other sheep I have zvhich are not of this fold." — John x: 16 
 
 BY 
 
 HAROLD BEGBIE 
 
 Author of "SOULS IN ACTION" 
 
 HODDER & STOUGHTON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
Copyright, 1912, 
 By George H. Doran Company 
 
 fc -' ^'- 
 
 4 7-^''V;' ^O"/ 
 
 f \ . 
 
PREFACE 
 
 " Ask of Me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine 
 inheritance." 
 
 Beyond the narrow boundaries of Europe extends a vast 
 territory thick-sown with a various population of heathen 
 humanity. The pulse of civilization, throbbing so furi- 
 ously in the West, seems over this enormous area scarcely 
 to beat at all. It is as if evolution had circumscribed its 
 energies to the coasts of Christendom, as if humanity had 
 chosen Europe for its line of march and made Asia its 
 perpetual camp of rest, as if the West represented the 
 creative week-days of mankind and the East its everlast- 
 ing sabbath. 
 
 In Europe, amid the roar of wheels and in the glare of 
 the furnace, science seeks for truth, the politician labours 
 for millennium, religion preaches struggle, and humanity 
 wrestles for a destiny. In Asia, where sleep and silence 
 brood upon the pensive earth, science sits with folded 
 hands, the politician has yet hardly opened his eyes, an 
 immemorial religion whispers to the soul to surrender, 
 and humanity dreams of nothing but annihilation for its 
 final good. The stream of existence floods through Eu- 
 rope turbulent and foaming to the invisible ocean of eter- 
 nity ; in Asia the waters of life are like a stagnant fen. 
 
 Whether Europe has any responsibility towards Asia, 
 or whether Christianity owes any duty to heathendom, 
 East and West have met and the hemispheres of ge- 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 ography and the zones of the whole earth have become the 
 one world of man. This, for good or for evil, is accom- 
 plished; and though the stream of European civilization 
 has only begun to stir the marge of Asian stagnation, 
 nevertheless the two waters have actually touched, are 
 now inevitably destined to commingle, and either Europe 
 must be swamped and overwhelmed by Asia or Asia 
 swept forward concurrently with Europe by the same 
 impulse of progress, the same impulse of faith in ulti- 
 mate perfection. 
 
 Awakening Asia is the new planet in the political skies. 
 And the supreme question for civilization is whether she 
 wake to the moral restraints and sanctifying respects of 
 the Christian religion, or to the logical nihilism of an 
 honest materialism. 
 
 There is a foolish notion abroad that Christianity — 
 Eastern in its origin — is the religion best fitted for the 
 West, and Hinduism — an idolatrous superstition sur- 
 viving from the dark night of paganism — the religion 
 best fitted for an awakening India. Those who cherish 
 this notion not only ignore the consideration that if Chris- 
 tianity be true it is true for all mankind, but would have 
 us think that an Orient waking to the knowledge and 
 culture of the Occident will still satisfy its soul Avith the 
 myth of its own departed darkness. Far from this folly, 
 is the truth of things; and nothing could be more fatal 
 to civilization than to let a loose prejudice against mis- 
 sionaries blind the eyes of Europe to this certain truth, 
 that Awakening Asia will either rise up in the faith of 
 Christianity or in the no- faith of a truculent materialism. 
 
 Materialism in England is saturated through and 
 through with the ethical ideas of Jesus; our intellectual 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 agnosticism is moral with the inexpungable leaven of 
 Christianity. But in such a country as India, men who 
 grow out of the superstitions of their ancestors, stand 
 empty-souled in the midst of the universe and have noth- 
 ing in their minds but the impulse of struggle for exist- 
 ence. Unless this growth out of superstition be accom- 
 panied by a growth in Christianity, calamity beyond the 
 wit of man to imagine must eventually overtake the hu- 
 man race. Let these dense millions once believe that 
 morality is a social contrivance, that spiritual respon- 
 sibility is a mere invention of the priest, that life has 
 no immortal significance for the individual, that existence 
 here is nothing more serious or complex than a struggle 
 to gratify the sensual appetites ; let this perfectly logical 
 inference from the dogmas of materialism once be drawn 
 by the cunning and inquisitive mind of the East, and at 
 once earth would witness that frightful spectacle of 
 which the virtuous man stands most in dread — the hu- 
 man race organizing itself for evil. 
 
 In contrast to this threatening night of anarchy, is 
 the bright dawn that awaits the whole earth in an East 
 risen to the call of Christ. And no one who has discussed 
 religion with the peoples of India can hesitate a single 
 moment to believe that Christ is as able to call the East 
 as He is able to save and maintain the West. I do not 
 defend all missionaries of the Christian religion, and as 
 this book will show, I disapprove profoundly of many 
 methods hitherto employed to convert the peoples of In- 
 dia; but my reason is convinced that the true religion 
 revealed by Jesus in the East is a religion not only 
 " suitable " to India, and not only the one religion which 
 can elevate the millions of India, but that those millions 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 are both ready and eager to embrace the faith of Christ 
 when it is presented to them in the spirit of its founder. 
 In India, as still in Europe, 
 
 The hungry sheep look up and are not fed; 
 
 but everywhere there are signs that the Little Flock is 
 enlarging its fold, that the Other Sheep are being called, 
 and that Christ will yet draw All Men unto Him. The 
 pages which follow demonstrate the truth of this asser- 
 tion. 
 
 It is as well perhaps that I should begin by offer- 
 ing a propitiatory sacrifice to those stern and minatory 
 guardians of the Public Intellect who, not without good 
 reason, clap damnation on any book of foreign travel 
 which seems to them shot from the press with the imprint 
 of a return-ticket visible and offensive on its title page. 
 And I cannot better placate these critics, nor more ef- 
 fectually get the interest and curiosity of my readers, 
 than by furnishing an account of the strange and roman- 
 tic person in whose company I made most of my jour- 
 neys and whose matchless knowledge of the peoples of 
 India was laid frankly and unsparingly open to me by the 
 generous hand of affectionate friendship. 
 
 It is not the length of time he spends in a country, but 
 rather the people he meets and the sympathy he brings 
 to an understanding of the new environment, which most 
 help the inquiring traveller to form a right judgment and 
 best enable him to present a faithful account of his ex- 
 ploration. 
 
 My credentials are the gentleman whom I now present 
 to my readers under his Indian name of Fakir Singh. 
 No one, I believe, is better acquainted vi^ith the mind and 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 soul of India; no one has ever penetrated further into 
 the holy of hoHes of her immemorial solitude and seclu- 
 sion; no one can pretend to a knowledge anything like 
 so intimate and sympathetic of her inner life, her human 
 heart, and her troubled soul. When he is describing the 
 peoples of India, one exclaims — " ce n'est plus la repre- 
 sentation de la vie, c'est la vie meme, la vie humaine palpi- 
 tante et f remissante, et non pas seulement la vie exterieure, 
 mais la vie interieure, la vie mysterieuse de I'ame." For 
 he is neither a blundering theosophist shut up in a tower 
 with a few Indian philosophers as ignorant of Sanskrit as 
 of physical science, nor yet a British Official pestered out 
 of his life by incessant correspondence and fenced about 
 by the necessary pomp and circumstance of his position; 
 far from all this, he is an amiable scholar, a curious in- 
 quirer, and a gentle, earnest Christian, wandering into the 
 villages and homes of the peoples, sitting under their 
 trees with them, sharing their simple food, speaking their 
 languages like one of themselves, observing their cus- 
 toms as naturally as if he had been born into them, and 
 drawing from them their fullest confidence and their en- 
 tire faith by means of a sympathy only perfect because 
 it is spiritually and intellectually sincere. 
 
 This unique person, then, is at once the inspiration 
 and warrant of my book. To make his acquaintance 
 was one of the chief enthusiasms with which I journeyed 
 Eastwards to discover the place of Christianity in India ; 
 and, although I do not agree with all he has to say, and 
 although I gained from other men, such as Sir George 
 Clarke, Sir John Hewett, and Sir Louis Dane, much 
 striking and useful information, and although many of 
 the opinions I express in this book may give even pain to 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 the amiable Fakir, still, gratefully do I acknowledge that 
 it is this extraordinary man who brought me nearest 
 to the heart of India and who seems to me now the fittest 
 propitiation that I can offer at the altar of judgment. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Fakir Singh ... . . i 
 
 The Children of India . . ... 15 
 
 The Temple of Terror . . 40 
 
 Two Pandals .... ... ... 59 
 
 The Devil-Dancer -77 
 
 The Witch 88 
 
 Devil-Priests 99 
 
 Respectable Hinduism 127 
 
 The Laundry of Souls . ... . 135 
 
 The Collision . ... . 155 
 
 What It Costs . . 181 
 
 De Profundis ... 198 
 
 Buddha-Land . . 214 
 
 Restoration 242 
 
 The Bhils . . . 253 
 
 The Doms . . 274 
 
 The Bhatus and a Brigadier . . 303 
 
 The Haburas and a Chokidah . 319 
 
 The Lion in the Way .... . 328 
 
 The New Birth 342 
 
 Notes 349 
 
FAKIR SINGH 
 
 There is no man living, perhaps, whose career bears 
 so strong a resemblance to the history of Don Quixote 
 as the turbaned and dhotied Englishman in India known 
 as Fakir Singh. And it is no mere caprice of fancy 
 which sees in his long, lean, and cadaverous counte- 
 nance, with its strained expression of the dreamer and its 
 dignified note of spiritual austerity, a likeness, a remark- 
 able and compelling likeness, to the great gentleman of 
 La Mancha. 
 
 Fakir Singh, till middle life, was a Mr. Tucker, of 
 the Indian Civil Service. Born of pious parents, he 
 grew up in the atmosphere of Victorian Evangelicalism, 
 and like so many members of the Civil Service in those 
 days, gave up the time of his leisure to promoting a 
 knowledge of Christianity among the natives of his dis- 
 trict. He was a great Sahib administering justice, faith- 
 fully performing the duties of his office, and teaching the 
 heathen from his place of overlord the story of Christ 
 and the discipline of the Church. 
 
 Just as the reading of many books on chivalry turned 
 the brain of Don Quixote and made him a knight-errant 
 as nearly Christlike as any figure in the field of art, so 
 the reading of many treatises and tracts on religion 
 worked upon the heart and soul of our Indian Civil Serv- 
 ant till he abandoned the common ways of life and be- 
 came at last as romantic a knight-errant of Christianity 
 
2 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 as ever begged his bread and slept under the stars. A 
 single sermon in a journal published by the Salvation 
 Army in London was this good gentleman's culminating 
 Feliciano de Silva. "Here is the true light!" he ex- 
 claimed, and with new joy in his heart set himself to 
 read the little newspaper from beginning to end. 
 
 Instead of discussions on dogma, instead of painful 
 exegesis and mournful lamentations on the faithlessness 
 of that generation, in this humble journal he found story 
 after story of triumph and conquest — narrations of 
 souls rescued from the edge of ruin and spirits dragged 
 from perdition by the hands of rejoicing faith. It was 
 like a trumpet to his soul. Straightway he applied for 
 leave, set sail for England, and attended the first pos- 
 sible meeting of the Salvation Army, at which General 
 Booth was speaking. 
 
 The eloquence of the old General, and the magnetism 
 of that remarkable personality, fired him to the pitch 
 of enthusiasm. The call for self-sacrifice was like a 
 music in his heart. The thought of battle against sin, 
 sorrow, and ignorance worked like a madness in his 
 brain. He presented himself before General Booth after 
 the meeting and stated his desire to become a Salvationist. 
 He was asked to call at the Headquarters of the Sal- 
 vation Army on the following day. He found himself 
 cautiously received. The General hesitated to accept 
 the sacrifice. In a few years' time the volunteer, a 
 rather fine-looking gentleman, would be entitled to his 
 pension. Surely it was better to wait — better that he 
 should help the Salvation Army as a friend and see 
 when the day came for retirement whether he was still 
 willing to bear the hard life and unyielding discipline of 
 
FAKIR SINGH 3 
 
 a soldier. This consideration had to be weighed. But 
 not for long. The volunteer called again. " I have re- 
 tired from the Civil Service," he announced ; " I am now 
 penniless; you must take me; there is no one else to 
 whom I can go." 
 
 To win India for Christianity was the master- 
 thought of this Fakir who had sacrificed place and pen- 
 sion for his religion. And with this master-thought 
 there beat upon his brain the saying of Keshab Chandar 
 Sen, founder of the Brahmo Samaj, that never would 
 India surrender to Christ so long as the Saviour of the 
 white races appeared before her peoples in European 
 dress. 
 
 The wise and statesmanlike views of General Booth 
 harmonized with the convictions of the Fakir. India, 
 if she wanted the Salvation Army, must pay for the 
 Salvation Army. No mission could be considered safe 
 which depended upon foreign countries for its support. 
 Anything in the nature of buying converts was to be 
 avoided. India must be taught to feel that Christianity 
 was a blessing passionately to be sought and gratefully 
 to be received, something for which they must be ready 
 to make sacrifices and endure persecution. The neces- 
 sity for self-support was the first and chief consideration ; 
 and this consideration led to the decision, that whatever 
 system was introduced it must be sufficiently inexpensive 
 to succeed among the poor and humble classes of In- 
 dia. 
 
 Accordingly, the Fakir decided, with the blessing of 
 his General, to adopt the native dress, to follow native 
 customs, and in everything to bring the mission of the 
 Salvation Army into as close a correspondence with the 
 
4 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 traditions, habits, and manners of India as the nature of 
 Christianity would allow. 
 
 'At first official India was filled with consternation at 
 the news of an invasion by the Salvationists. The Fakir 
 had scarce landed in Bombay before he was arrested and 
 cast into prison. It was held that the methods of the 
 Salvation Army would imperil the prestige of the rul- 
 ing race, that its bands and street-corner preaching would 
 lead to riots among the conflicting peoples of the Em- 
 pire. Men in high office, who are now the friends and 
 (warm admirers of the Fakir, looked with genuine horror 
 and alarm at this new disturbance of India's difficult 
 peace. 
 
 But when the first storm had abated, our Don Quixote 
 set put alone on a journey of exploration, to judge how 
 best the mission of the Salvation Army might be set in 
 motion for the good and blessing of India. " I had in 
 my soul," he told me, " a desperate determination to 
 break down at any and every cost all barriers that divided 
 us from the peoples of India." 
 
 His equipment was meagre. Clothed in turban and 
 dhoti, with a sack for his bedding and a small tin box 
 for his papers, he set out barefoot and unaccompanied on 
 a journey as romantic and critical as anything adventured 
 by the Knight of the Rueful Countenance. He is well 
 acquainted with Indian customs, he speaks most of the 
 languages and dialects, and he has to perfection that ex- 
 quisite sense of courtesy and thoughtfulness which alone 
 can ensure the European from giving offence to the al- 
 ways suspicious and self-conscious native mind. But 
 how great the plunge and how hazardous the venture! 
 He was a Sahib and the son of a Sahib. Such a Sahib 
 
FAKIR SINGH 5 
 
 wandering about the country barefoot and in native dress, 
 begging his curry and rice at the door of the peasants, 
 sleeping under the shade of village trees, and speaking 
 of Christ and the new life of conversion to the water- 
 drawers at the well and the reapers in the rice-field, might 
 indeed provoke curiosity and attract the multitude; but 
 what privation and discomfort he must endure, what risks 
 of disease and death he must encounter, and what opposi- 
 tion, ridicule, and contempt he must expect from the peo- 
 ple of his own race and traditions. Nevertheless, he " had 
 in his soul that desperate determination to break down at 
 any and every cost all barriers that divide us from the peo- 
 ples of India " ; and he was fired and exhilarated by the 
 thought that at last Christ should appear before Easterns 
 as an Eastern, and the religion of Christ reach to their 
 souls not as an alien patronage of the ruling race, but as 
 a liberation and a blessing from God. 
 
 One of the first places he visited was Naini Tal, and 
 scarcely had he got to the Indian Dharamsala, or rest- 
 house, before a policeman appeared with a warrant for 
 his arrest. He was taken before the young magistrate 
 who had issued the order, probably as a jest, and after 
 answering a few questions was set at liberty. The 
 superior officer of the young magistrate, who was a sin- 
 cere Christian, hearing of this arrest became very indig- 
 nant, severely reprimanded his subordinate, and sent the 
 Fakir a donation of three hundred rupees. Thus har- 
 ried and thus encouraged, the barefoot missionary passed 
 to Almorah, where his fame had preceded him, and 
 where he found himself honourably welcomed by the 
 Sadr Amin, one of the leading Hindus of the place, who 
 begged him to be his guest. The Fakir acknowledged 
 
6 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 the graciousness of the invitation, but reminded the 
 Hindu that he was of such a high caste that the low 
 caste people of the place would not be able to approach 
 the Fakir did he accept the great man's hospitality. 
 But to this the Sadr Amin replied : — 
 
 Zat pat puchhe nako 
 
 Jo Har Ko bhaje, so Har Ka ho; 
 
 which being interpreted means, " Let no one ask his 
 caste; he who worships God belongs to God." So the 
 invitation was accepted. People thronged to the house, 
 questions were asked and answered, the religion of 
 Christ was presented in its supremest aspect as liberation 
 from sin, and perhaps for the first time in that place the 
 animosities and antipathies both of religion and race 
 were entirely forgotten in the unifying apprehension of 
 a universal God. For the return journey to Naini Tal, 
 the Sadr Amin insisted upon lending the Fakir a pony, 
 and not only rode the whole way at his side, but acted 
 as his host when the town was reached. Moreover, 
 hearing that at an English meeting a hundred and one 
 rupees had been subscribed for the Salvation Army, he 
 said : " We, too, must have a meeting in my house, and 
 we also will have a collection." His joy was excessive 
 when he found that the gifts of the thronging crowd in 
 his house surpassed the subscription of the English meet- 
 ing by two rupees. 
 
 Years afterwards General Booth was in Calcutta, and 
 a leading English official mentioned to him a conversa- 
 tion he had had with the Sadr Amin soon after this visit 
 of the Fakir. " Sadr Amin Sahib," he said, " you have 
 always been regarded as a staunch Hindu, and as one 
 
FAKIR SINGH 7 
 
 having no sympathy with Christianity; how is it, then, 
 that you received this Salvationist into your house and 
 even presided for him at his meeting? " " Sahib," was 
 the reply, " had I seen Christianity such as this before, I 
 should myself have been a Christian." 
 
 At Batala, one of his next stopping-places, our Fakir 
 was accosted by a Hindu in the streets who asked him 
 to what religion he belonged. " To the Jiwan-Mukti 
 Pant — the Get-Saved- While-You-Are-Alive religion," 
 was the good-natured reply. " Where are you going to 
 get food ? " asked the Hindu. " God will provide," 
 answered the Fakir. " Come to my house ; honour me 
 by coming," said the Hindu eagerly. The Fakir raised 
 the same objection as in Almorah. " But my house shall 
 be open to all, none shall be turned away," replied the 
 high-caste Hindu, and the invitation being accepted he 
 proved as good as his word. The house was soon packed 
 to the doors and beyond. The people watched the Sahib 
 eating his meal with his fingers from the plantain leaf on 
 which it was served; and when the necessary mouth- 
 washing and finger-washing were concluded, they asked 
 for some " Gyan," or religious instruction. 
 
 The people listened with intense interest. There, like 
 one of themselves, sat the white Fakir who had eaten 
 after their custom, who wore their dress, and who spoke 
 their language eloquently and without check. He 
 brought no charge against their own religion, he made 
 no mock of their gods and goddesses, he expressed no 
 anger against their priests. But with his pale face full 
 of a solemn earnestness, his strained eyes shining with 
 enthusiasm for his Christ, he told of a religion so exactly 
 fitted to their needs, so entirely and wonderfully Eastern 
 
8 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 in its spirit, that they marvelled to think it was Christi- 
 anity — the religion of the demons who take life and 
 eat the flesh of pigs.^ 
 
 The heart of all Indian religions is the desire for 
 Liberation. Persuaded by an immemorial pessimism 
 that existence is always accompanied by pain, they listen 
 eagerly to the Brahman or the Buddhist who teaches 
 them how to escape from the curse of life. It is this 
 inherited and unalterable conviction of the Eastern mind 
 which the Fakir first seized upon and has ever after- 
 wards used for bringing home to the heart and brain of 
 India the religion of Chi'ist. The word Salvation be- 
 comes with him the Indian word for Liberation. The 
 religion of Christ is presented as a Liberation, and not 
 as a Liberation from an existence incurably bad, but 
 from the sins and ignorances which make that existence 
 seem incurably bad. It is not a Liberation from life, 
 but a Liberation from despair, death, and something 
 worse; it is not a Liberation into annihilation, but a 
 Liberation into everlasting joy and felicity; and, more- 
 over, it is not a Liberation painfully to be earned beyond 
 the grave, but a Liberation gratefully and joyfully to be 
 experienced in the present world. It is as Life, and as 
 Life More Abundantly, that the white Fakir insists upon 
 the Liberation of Christianity. 
 
 In this manner he was speaking to the great crowd 
 in the Hindu's house at Batala, when voices were sud- 
 denly heard at the door and the place became invaded by 
 a body of native Christians from a neighbouring Mis- 
 sion. They had heard of the Fakir's arrival, arid had 
 come with a request that he would visit them. As chance 
 
 ^ Europeans are widely known among Indians as " demons." 
 
FAKIR SINGH 9 
 
 would have it, an aunt of the Fakir was working in this 
 Mission, the Miss Tucker known to readers of that gen- 
 eration as " A. L. O. E." It was difficult, therefore, for 
 the solitary to refuse the invitation. But before set- 
 ting out for the Mission, he retired to the shade of a 
 tree and there held converse with some hundreds of 
 Hindus and Muhamadans, while his former friends 
 hurried to the bazaar and returned with sweetmeats and 
 milk for his refreshment. When he did set out in the 
 evening for the Mission, it was in the company of over 
 two hundred Indians who went with him all the way, a 
 mile beyond the city walls, and remained for a meeting 
 which astonished and delighted the heart of the orthodox 
 Miss Tucker. 
 
 Thus cheered and encouraged, our traveller journeyed 
 to Amritsar, the holy city of the Sikhs. " It was dark 
 when I left the train," he told me. " 1, walked through 
 the Hall Darwaza, or gateway of the city, which was 
 named after Colonel Hall, my official superior when I 
 was first appointed to Amritsar as a young civilian. I 
 had not proceeded far when a Sikh soldier, who had been 
 a fellow-passenger in the train, came running after me 
 and inquired where I intended to pass the night. 
 ' Under some tree,' I told him ; ' I am even now search- 
 ing for such a place.' ' There is no need for that,' said 
 the soldier ; ' I have a friend at the Golden Temple, one 
 of the priests; gladly he will receive you.' I was de- 
 lighted at the idea of sleeping in the shadow of the 
 Golden Temple, and cheerfully accepted the soldier's in- 
 vitation. The priest received us very cordially, and 
 insisted upon my having a charpoy, or string-bed, for the 
 night, though I assured him that the floor would do quite 
 
lo OTHER SHEEP 
 
 well. A Muhamadan merchant, who had known me 
 ten years before, when I was an Assistant-Commissioner 
 in the station, had joined us on the way, and now went 
 off to the bazaar and brought some milk plentifully sweet- 
 ened with sugar. As he carried it with his own hands 
 through the streets, his tears dropped into it; and he 
 afterwards told me with what deep emotion he watched 
 me raise to my lips the drink watered by the tears of his 
 soul. On the following morning a space was cleared 
 for me in one of the large rooms where the Granth Sahib, 
 or sacred book of the Sikhs, was usually read. This 
 was not in the main temple, but in one of the side build- 
 ings attached to it, near the priest's quarters where I had 
 been accommodated for the night. It was a Sunday 
 morning. You may imagine my feelings as I addressed 
 an audience of Sikhs in the name of Christ at the very 
 heart and centre of the Sikh religion. Towards noon a 
 carriage drew up, and Babu Rallia Ram, a Christian law- 
 yer whom I had known well in the past, appeared to 
 claim me as his guest. My Sikh hosts, however, were 
 unwilling to surrender me, and they only agreed that I 
 should go for two hours on a visit to my friend and his 
 family, on condition that I returned and held a meeting 
 in the Guru ka bagh, the garden attached to the temple. 
 I went away with my friend, who was astonished to find 
 me in the Golden Temple, and returned to the Sikhs 
 according to my word. There were several hundreds 
 waiting for me, and a move was made to displace one of 
 the priests from his low pulpit where he was reading the 
 Granth Sahib. I saw that it would hurt his feelings to 
 be supplanted, and asked whether another place could not 
 be found. I was conducted to an empty talao or tank, 
 
FAKIR SINGH ii 
 
 the steps of which made an excellent auditorium, and 
 there we held a most interesting meeting. Never be- 
 fore, and never since, I believe, has a Christian been 
 allowed this privilege. The romance of it must strike 
 the dullest. The significance of it should surely in- 
 fluence the wise. This one incident furnishes, I am sure, 
 justification, if justification is necessary, for our adop- 
 tion of Indian costume and methods. Here was the 
 Salvation Army installed in the very heart and head- 
 quarters of Sikhism, not only as an honoured guest, but 
 as a teacher of religion. When that evening I knelt in 
 prayer at the priest's quarters there were others who 
 knelt with me and accepted the Way, the Truth, and the 
 Life. What became of them, or whether they remained 
 faithful, I do not know ; but round Amritsar and Batala 
 at the present day we have some of our most successful 
 and encouraging work. Our followers there are cer- 
 tainly numbered by thousands." 
 
 It was never intended, he tells me, that the fakir sys- 
 tem should be generally adopted, but it was necessary to 
 cross the dividing line and discover the best way of reach- 
 ing the heart of India. Not all the officers of the Sal- 
 vation Army, but many of them in those pioneer days 
 begged their food, slept in the open air, and trusted to 
 the hospitality of the people for their daily bread. I 
 have talked with several of these people, men and women, 
 and they one and all speak with delight of those hard and 
 difficult days of pioneering. Some of these people, par- 
 ticularly the women, made a profound impression upon 
 me, and one was touched by their almost passionate love 
 for the Indian peoples, against whom they never speak a 
 word of harm. The work done by some of them, per- 
 
12 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 haps, exceeds the accomplishment of Fakir Singh, and 
 it would be one of the most romantic books in the world 
 that told their story in the full.^ But they are content 
 to toil, nameless and very often solitary, and the one 
 earthly reward they seek is the love and confidence of 
 the childlike peoples of India. In this way a close inti- 
 macy has been established by all of them with the various 
 races ; and in the case of Fakir Singh a knowledge of the 
 people, always remarkable and profound, has become 
 probably as absolute and unique as is possible to any 
 European mind. 
 
 These brief details from the romantic life of Fakir 
 Singh at the beginning of his great adventure, will, I 
 hope, persuade the reader that I have enjoyed unusual 
 opportunities for penetrating behind the veil of Indian 
 mystery. For I have travelled from one end of India 
 to the other in his company. I have dipped my hand 
 into his wayside bowl of curry and rice ; I have walked 
 with him through palm forests in Southern India, 
 shared the hospitality of his roof in the midst of Hima- 
 layan snows; listened to his stories, questioned him, 
 stood at his elbows on the platforms of railway stations 
 and in the streets of cities, attended his public meetings 
 in villages and towns, and on a hundred occasions en- 
 joyed the frank and pleasant intimacy of his conversa- 
 tion. Other men I have met in India, greater intellects 
 and more powerful personalities, whose acquaintance 
 with Indian thought is at once catholic and sympathetic; 
 but, as I said before, none could give me so close and 
 intimate a knowledge of the real and human India as 
 this wandering Don Quixote of religion. Therefore, 
 
 ^ See Note, page 349. 
 
FAKIR SINGH 13 
 
 though I am conscious of many disagreements with him, 
 it is only of him I think when seeking to placate my 
 critics and winning for myself the confidence of my 
 readers. 
 
 Would that I had but a little of the genius of Cer- 
 vantes that I might make the reader feel the charm and 
 graciousness of this noble gentleman, whose perfect bal- 
 ance of laughter and tears, whose exact symmetry of 
 pathos and comedy, whose nice equivalence of sanity 
 and madness make him true brother of Don Quixote. 
 In the manner of his life a fanatic, there is nothing in 
 his soul of the fanatic's inhumanity. The severity of his 
 visage is lightened by a frequent smile, and occasional 
 bursts of good laughter witness to a spirit of tolerance, 
 good-nature, and cheerful benevolence such as you will 
 never find in a thoroughbred bigot. Full of enthusi- 
 asm, for ever dreaming dreams and projecting Utopias, 
 he is at the same time a calm and wise administrator, 
 trusted, respected, and consulted by some of the very 
 first men in India on matters needing a cool head and 
 a judicious temperament. He has the facts and figures 
 of India at his fingers-ends ; he could write a blue-book 
 on the weaving-industry, silkworms, and irrigation; and 
 very easily and pleasantly, believe me, he could keep 
 you up to the small hours of the morning talking about 
 the various mulberries suitable for India, the need for 
 a crusade against plague-spreading rats, the wisdom of 
 planting the right kind of eucalyptus in districts infected 
 by malaria, and the utility of cassava as a drought-re- 
 sisting plant which provides a wholesome food (tapi- 
 oca) both for men and animals. But all through the 
 march of these industrial and political ideas, one is con- 
 
14 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 scious in him above everything else of the ideaHst who 
 has made the great sacrifice, of the dreamer who has seen 
 a vision, and of the saint hungering and thirsting for the 
 salvation of mankind. He is a man busied about many 
 things, but centred in the reality of existence. He rides 
 forth in turban and dhoti on the Rozinante of Salva- 
 ■tionism to perform prodigies of valour and to win 
 against all the giants of this world no less a kingdom 
 than India; but, in spite of his strange dress and the 
 passion of his challenge, there is in his heart nothing 
 more than a great love for humanity and the simple faith 
 of a little child. 
 
 He is such a man who founds no empires and be- 
 queathes no throne, but who inspires the affection of 
 friends and the respect of enemies, and leaves behind 
 him a memory of the noblest virtue and the purest 
 heroism. 
 
THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 
 
 It is an experience of unforgettable enchantment to pass 
 for the first time from the hurly of England's wintry 
 skies to the calm azure and pellucid beauty of the East. 
 A blinding snowstorm and bitter cold at Brindisi, a mel- 
 ancholy passage through leaden seas and drenching rain 
 to Port Said, and then, suddenly, as if half the world 
 had dropped away behind one — air that is like melted 
 pearls, a sky blue as forget-me-nots, a sun red-gold as 
 the core of a furnace, and stillness 
 
 . . . . quiet as a Nun 
 Breathless with adoration. 
 
 It is as though a magician had translated one in sleep 
 to some delicious palace of ensorcellment in the upper 
 air. Through the long corridor of the Suez Canal, with 
 its tapestries of tawny desert and sombre palms and car- 
 avans of camels, this magician leads the wondering 
 traveller into the wide gallery of the Red Sea, haunted 
 by ghosts of Israelites and murmurous with the wheels 
 of Pharaoh's chariots. Along this gallery whispering 
 of the past, the traveller is led to the sunset curtain of 
 Aden, which the magician draws to one side, disclosing 
 the glimmering atrium of the Arabian Sea. And now 
 across this vast and lovely vestibule, whose roof at night 
 burns with the brightest stars, and where the Southern 
 Cross hangs like a window into heaven above the verge 
 
 IS 
 
i6 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 of the moonlit mosaic of the sea, drawing always more 
 joy into his heart and feeling himself more and more 
 the victim of hallucination, the traveller moves into 
 bluer waters and under more burning skies, till he 
 comes at last to the Gateway of the Kingdom of 
 Dreams, and finds himself standing on the shore of a 
 New World. 
 
 Everything is different. The air is heavy with a new 
 fragrance. The traveller is conscious, in a drowsy som- 
 nambulism, of a breathing and a scent, of a glamour 
 and a heat, which are new to him and make a strange 
 atmosphere for his soul. 
 
 He is aware of change absolute and complete, both in 
 the heavens and in the various humanity passing before 
 his eyes like figures in a dream. The sun, little more 
 intolerable than the hottest of our summer days, the 
 same sun that was pleasant and innocuous in Egypt, has 
 here a devil and is full of peril for the human brain. 
 It dazzles the white walls of the houses, it burns upon 
 the overhead wires of electric trams, it glows on the 
 cobbles of the streets, it blazes on the dark leaves and 
 hanging dusty roots of the banyan tree — and its light 
 is not the jovial gladness of rejoicing summer, but the 
 anger of hostility and the menace of madness. You do 
 not rejoice in this beautiful sun, you fear it and you 
 may even come to hate it. 
 
 But this fear of the sun is forgotten in the new and 
 insistent witchery of India's humanity. The traveller 
 finds himself staring and open-mouthed, like a child at 
 a puppet show. He sees a beautiful city of noble archi- 
 tecture and spacious streets occupied and possessed by 
 such strange and incongruous people that their serious- 
 
THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 17 
 
 ness and solemnity strike him at first as a wonderful 
 jest. It is not at all with offence to the Indians, but 
 rather as a stricture on the parochialism of the traveller, 
 that I compare this first sensation of amused astonish- 
 ment to the feeling of the ridiculous which overtakes a 
 visitor to zoological gardens. One laughs at solemn 
 giraffes, serious pelicans, and disdainful ostriches chiefly 
 because they are not laughing self-consciously at them- 
 selves. "What are you laughing at?" demanded an 
 ugly bus driver of a giggling cabman. " What ! don't 
 you ever laugh when you look in the glass ? " was the 
 rejoinder, ending in the chastening reproof — " why, a 
 joke's thrown away on you." " Un paysage," says 
 Amiel, " est un etat d'ame." Coleridge teaches that the 
 passion and the life of outward forms have their foun- 
 tains in the human soul. If the traveller in India on his 
 first shock of astonishment wonder why the remarkable 
 people crowding the streets and thronging the open 
 shops are not smiling at their own absurdity, it is mani- 
 festly because he is centred in his insularity and blinded 
 by his habituated Westernism. 
 
 But he may surely be excused for this first gaucherie. 
 To begin with there is the question of hats. In Europe 
 eccentricity in head-dress is the exclusive province of 
 women; in India it belongs solely to men. The little, 
 thin-armed, straight-legged women of India go by with- 
 out hats of any kind, either exposing their coco-nut- 
 oiled black hair entirely to the blaze of the sun, or else 
 drawing half-way over their heads a portion of the cloth 
 which only partially conceals their bodies. On the other 
 hand, the good gentlemen of India sport every kind of 
 hat imaginable. The old and bespectacled Parsi goes 
 
i8 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 by in a tall, brimless, and patent-leather erection which 
 strikes a compromise between the mitre of a bishop and 
 a domestic coal-scuttle stood upon its end; the younger 
 and frock-coated Parsi saunters along under a little 
 dove-coloured dome like a pudding-basin with just 
 a narrow pediment of fur for the rim. Here comes a 
 bearded Muhamadan with a turban so huge that one 
 thinks at first he is a dhobi carrying home somebody's 
 washing on his head; and here comes a jolly little fat 
 Hindu wearing a scarlet turban no bigger than' the pad 
 affected by our peripatetic adventurers in muffins and 
 crumpets. Between these two sizes and shapes in 
 turbans, you see on the heads of the unconscious people 
 a hundred fantastic contrivances in swaddling-cloth of 
 every colour under the sun. If all the tulips in Kew 
 Gardens started to walk about at a level of five feet and 
 a few inches from the ground, really they would not 
 make so notable a chiaroscuro as the turbans of an 
 Indian city. 
 
 In addition to the turbans you have the fez of the 
 cab-driver, the chocolate-coloured skull cap of the 
 Kashmiri, the flat fur roll and flowing drapery of 
 the Dervish, the comical wide-brimmed straw hat of 
 the Chinaman, the sort of busby or bearskin of the hill- 
 man, the embroidered smoking-cap of the Muhamadan, 
 the polo-cap of the Babu, and the mountainous rust- 
 coloured natural hair of the mendicant and the pilgrim. 
 Moreover, these masculine adornments of the head are 
 only a detail in the general raiment of the peoples, which 
 is so diverse and many-coloured that it is like a pageant 
 to stand at any street corner or to sit at any window of 
 the city. 
 
THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 19 
 
 Most of the people go barefoot, and the clothing of a 
 vast multitude of them suggests nothing more compli- 
 cated than a bathing costume topped by a towel round 
 the head. The garments of the women reach a little 
 below the knees, leave the arms naked, and disclose a 
 part of the sides; the colours of these saris are always 
 beautiful and becoming, and never give the most exact- 
 ing taste the smallest sense of vulgarity or absurdity. 
 Many of the men wear Western clothes, but some of 
 them as a concession to Oriental feeling leave the front 
 flap of their linen shirts hanging outside, like a sporan, 
 from under their waistcoats. Parsis affect broadcloth, 
 or alpaca frock coat and linen trousers, but consider a 
 cravat either a superfluity or a wanton obscuration of 
 a gilded collar-stud. The true native, however, sticks 
 to his handsome robes or his becoming dhoti, and the 
 dazzling streets of the cities are made joyful and beau- 
 tiful by these splendid colours and these gorgeous folds. 
 Nothing can exceed in dignity the figure of a tall Mus- 
 sulman, with flowing beard and eagle eyes, clad from 
 head to foot in shimmering white, standing on the steps 
 of a mosque and fresh from his meditations with Allah 
 surveying the toy-like and doll's-house effect of a native 
 bazaar. And nothing that I have ever seen excels in 
 beauty the figure of a Hindu woman dressed in a gold- 
 edged robe of royal blue crossing a green rice-field with 
 one chocolate-coloured arm raised to support a brazen 
 vessel on her head, the other swinging, sun-glinted, at 
 her side, with as much strength as dignity. Of a truth 
 there is beauty and nobility among these peoples as well 
 as drollery and childishness; but it is not at first that 
 one perceives the glory of their vestments. It is easier 
 
20 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 for the curious European to laugh at the scarlet-dyed 
 beard of an old copper-coloured gentleman incessantly- 
 munching nuts while he squats listening on the open-air 
 counter of his shop to the reading of a religious book 
 by a spectacled friend with a tag of hair projecting like 
 a rat's tail from the back of his shaven head, than to 
 admire the beauty of the total pageant. 
 
 Perhaps it is the blending of dignity and absurdity 
 which leaves the final impression on a traveller's mind 
 and finds him with mixed feelings when he comes to 
 sort his ideas. For instance, there is a handsome tree- 
 shaded road in Bombay, running between gardens and 
 the sea, where the rich and fashionable take the air from 
 five to eight o'clock of an evening, and where you may 
 see more splendour in five minutes than any capital of 
 Europe could show you in a week ; here you may behold 
 in the midst of motor cars and lordly chariots a fine 
 brougham drawn by a pair of tall horses, with two 
 flunkeys on the box and two flunkeys at the back, 
 carrying in its drab-lined interior a Parsi lady dressed in 
 the most delicate pale silks imaginable, who, leaning back 
 on her cushions, rests a naked biscuit-coloured foot 
 on the ledge of the door, every toe twinkling in the sun. 
 And I think that if one looks long enough there is always 
 a humorous nakedness protruding somewhere or another 
 from the pomp and glory of the gorgeous East. 
 
 Above and beyond, infinitely beyond the interest of the 
 clothes, is the interest of Eastern physiognomy. The 
 traveller soon learns the truth of a statement made by 
 Sir Bamfylde Fuller in his " Studies of Indian Life and 
 Sentiment," that it requires actual experience to realize 
 the astounding truth that "the population of a district 
 
THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 21 
 
 or a town is a collection of different nationalities — 
 almost different species — of mankind." This same 
 author declares that it is hardly too much to say that 
 " the inhabitants of India are differentiated into over 
 two thousand species of mankind, which in the physical 
 relations of life have as little in common as the inmates 
 of a zoological garden." You cannot imagine, unless 
 you have visited India and really studied the peoples, 
 how this wonderful and amazing diversity contributes to 
 the delight and interest of the country. The traveller, 
 new to this crowding pageant of humanity, is not a 
 calm and critical observer among one people solid in a 
 single nationalism, but is a drifting and bewildered unit 
 shouldered and jostled by over two thousand species of 
 humanity, each separated from the other by unbridge- 
 able gulfs of thought and feeling. His politeness to 
 one is almost an affront to a hundred others ; his famil- 
 iarity with the language of one is but double-dutch to 
 the rest. The Muhamadans are divided into sects that 
 are at sword's point with one another; the Hindus are 
 multiplied into many nations and hundreds of castes; 
 there is schism among the Buddhists; and the hills of 
 the north are inhabited by half-savage and entirely 
 savage peoples each as separate and distinct from the 
 other as all are separate and distinct from the peoples 
 of the plains. With an area only a little more than half 
 that of Australasia, India and Ceylon carry under the 
 stars a fifth of the entire human race, and this fifth, 
 packed into so small a compass, is divided intb over two 
 thousand species of mankind, utters its thoughts in twenty 
 main languages and over five hundred differing dialects, 
 and is infinitely more split up and fragmentary than all 
 
22 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 the peoples of Europe, both in traditions and the com- 
 mon habits of daily life. 
 
 This astonishing variety appears in the faces of the 
 peoples. To the European, one Japanese is as like an- 
 other Japanese as one sheep is like another sheep; but 
 to the European, even in the first hours of his arrival 
 on Indian soil, the inhabitants stand out from each other 
 with a difference as complete as that vi^hich separates 
 horses from dogs, or thrushes from chaffinches. The 
 earliest impression is made by the strange paint marks 
 on the foreheads of these peoples. He sees men with 
 three white bars across the brow, like a hurdle; others 
 with two upright strokes of white running up to the 
 hair; others with two similar upright strokes of white, 
 but divided by a significant line of vermilion; others 
 with foreheads plastered all over with grey ash ; and still 
 others with a spot of scarlet between the eyebrows, like 
 a holly-berry or a particularly jovial wart. In naked 
 savages these marks would appear natural or seemly; 
 but on the foreheads of serious gentlemen in Euro- 
 pean clothes or venerable, benign and bearded Father 
 Abrahams in noble turbans and robes of apostolic gran- 
 deui", they have a most bizarre and disturbing effect. 
 Soon, however, the eyes get accustomed to these caste 
 marks, these religious or social symbols which shout to 
 the beholder, " I am a fine fellow," or " I believe in such 
 a god." After the first shock of amused surprise, un- 
 distracted and undisgusted, the gaze settles itself to ob- 
 serve in the people their mould of features and the play 
 of their expressions. 
 
 As various as the shades of their colotiring, which 
 move from a sad yellow through every hue of brown 
 
THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 23 
 
 up to an ebonized black, are the features and expressions 
 of the Indian peoples. One man is noble and kingly, like 
 a Roman Emperor or an English judge; another is as 
 Mongolian as a Chinaman; a third as hook-nosed, crafty, 
 and dislikable as Shylock ; a fourth as beautiful as Moses 
 or Elijah; a fifth as bulbous-featured as a caricature; 
 a sixth absolutely as negroid and animal as a South 
 African savage; a seventh like Flaxman's drawing of 
 the grizzled Ulysses leaning on his staff; an eighth 
 majestical and superb, like one's imagined Akbar ; a ninth 
 like the low-foreheaded mummies of the Pharaohs; a 
 tenth heavy, plethoric, sad-eyed, tall-browed and thick- 
 bearded like the late Lord Salisbury; an eleventh like a 
 Red Indian; a twelfth like one of Mr. Reed's prehistoric 
 men; and a thirteenth close-lipped, self-consequential, 
 and stern like a County Councillor or an esteemed mem- 
 ber of a London Vestry. 
 
 There is not this remarkable and complete difference 
 among the women. The suppressed and trivial life 
 forced upon them by tradition probably accounts for an 
 uninteresting sameness affecting both Hindus and Mu- 
 hamadans. The men, on the other hand, with three 
 hundred million gods to choose from, furiously inter- 
 ested in the incessant strife of their contending religions 
 and the incessant feud of their innumerable politics, and 
 with the business of money-getting and money-hoarding 
 always occupying their unsleeping brains, live more in 
 the world, and are marked by all the passions of the 
 market-place and all the jealousies and superstitions of 
 the temple. It is, indeed, impossible to exaggerate the 
 impression made upon a quiet and observing mind by 
 this wonderful facial diversity of the Indian peoples. 
 
24 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 a diversity which is not merely spread over the vast 
 extent of India's geography, but which may be seen in 
 a single street in Bombay in the course of half-an-hour's 
 walk. 
 
 In the dusty and heavy-smelling bazaars, which are 
 narrow streets composed of dolls'-house-looking build- 
 ings of painted boards, with shutters to the upper win- 
 dows, and open shops on the ground floor rather bigger 
 than rabbit-hutches and raised two or three feet from the 
 gutter on stumps of wood — in the bazaars, these 
 thronging figures talking in the road, entering mosque 
 or temple, sitting cross-legged in the shops, or sharing 
 a hookah on a balcony, appear natural and congruous in 
 spite of their conflicting variety. But you cannot imag- 
 ine unless you. have seen it, what a strange eff^ect is pro- 
 duced by this immense diversity of race and raiment 
 in those modern parts of an Indian city where the stone 
 buildings are magnificent, where motor-cars glide in and 
 out of gong-sounding electric trams, and shopkeepers 
 exhibit in fine windows all the comforts and inventions 
 of European luxury. Long-robed figures like Levitical 
 priests pass slowly in front of these commercial win- 
 dows, an electric tram crowded with turbans and 
 dhoties goes swinging round the corner of a huge hotel ; 
 a string of little carts filled with cotton and drawn by 
 tiny white bullocks, the tail-twisting and stick-flourish- 
 ing drivers sitting on the pole, goes bumping over the 
 cobbles, past the showrooms of a French milliner ; under 
 a banyan tree outside the great ofiice of an electrical 
 engineer, the barber, sitting on his haunches, is shaving 
 the bowed head of a crouching Hindu ; sitting on the 
 kerb, resting her back against the standard of an electric 
 
THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 25 
 
 light, a woman — oblivious to all the world — is search- 
 ing the head of her daughter for undesirable lodgers; 
 in the shadow of a garage filled with 'snorting cars and 
 perspiring chauffeurs, the ear doctor is consumedly en- 
 gaged with iron instruments down the burrow of a boy's 
 ear; and the dirty, round-shouldered, cigarette-smoking 
 gharry-wallah, sitting cross-legged on the box of his 
 little rubber-tyred Victoria, is one man ; the half -naked 
 Hindu, beating his oxen, on a water-cart, is another man ; 
 the benign and whiskered Parsi money-lender, under 
 his white silk umbrella is another man; the Goanese 
 servant in spotless white linen carrying a bouquet of 
 flowers to his mistress is another man; the policeman 
 in flat, yellow cap, blue tunic, and blue breeches ending 
 in bare calves is another man; and so on, all the way 
 through these splendid streets and beautiful avenues — 
 every other man different and interesting, every face 
 telling a different story of religion and custom, and every 
 shadow on the dazzling stones falling from a different 
 road and a different journey. 
 
 It is almost uncanny to walk alone through the streets 
 of an Indian city at night. The bare feet of the people 
 make it seem as though the grave had given up its 
 sheeted dead; they pass one without sound, they flit by 
 one as noiselessly as moths, they start up out of dark 
 places or come round street corners with a silence that 
 almost takes away the breath. And later in the night, 
 if the traveller penetrates to the quiet native streets, he 
 finds the pavements, the doorways, the staircases, and 
 the corridors strewn with white-robed figures sleeping 
 with the stillness and the quiet of the dead, while from 
 some window above sounds the monotonous drone of 
 
26 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 the tom-tom and the nasal wail of a nautch girl. An 
 Indian can sit for an hour on his haunches, only the 
 feet touching the ground ; and he can sleep as comfort- 
 ably on the bare stones of the pavement outside his house 
 as any European can sleep on a spring-mattress. 
 
 One has to remind oneself again and again that these 
 interesting and delightful people not only differ violently 
 from each other in the matter of religion and in the 
 habits of social life, but that they are all absolutely and 
 perfectly different from us in the whole range of in- 
 tellectual outlook. It is natural to suppose when pass- 
 ing a British-looking gentleman in a more or less Euro- 
 pean suit of clothes or in buying a box of cigarettes from 
 a charming old man who puts one in mind of some Bibli- 
 cal hero, that however greatly his complexion may differ 
 from one's own, however unusual his costume would 
 appear in Paris or London, however crimson his teeth 
 may be with the chewing of betel, that the premises of 
 his philosophy, the postulates of his science of life, are 
 very much the same as one's own. But, insularity is a 
 sad blunderer. This polite and even jest-making Hindu 
 believes that the world is flat; his god is a mixture of 
 Bacchus, Don Juan, and Dick Turpin ; he would no more 
 be seen walking side by side with his wife than killing 
 a cow; he would no more sit down to meals with his 
 wife and daughters than he would say his prayers in a 
 mosque; he regards science as an absurd delusion; he 
 considers that women have no souls to speak of; and 
 as for your honoured, superior, and complacent self he 
 holds in his heart that you are filthy in your habits, mad 
 in your ideas, and loathsome to the gods. 
 
 I found myself saying very often as I walked in the 
 
THE CHILDREN OF INDIA a; 
 
 wide and magnificent streets of Indian cities, " All these 
 people believe that the world is flat." The phrase re- 
 peated itself involuntarily, until my mind seized the full 
 significance of its monotony. They inhabit a different 
 vi^orld from ours. We buy and sell with them, we laugh 
 and talk together, we are as good friends as they will 
 let us be, and we are never likely seriously to fall out 
 and come to a bloody rupture — but, the thoughts of 
 their hearts are not our thoughts, the aspiration of their 
 souls is not our aspiration, and in everything which 
 makes man a rational creature different from all the 
 animal creation they are as separate and distinct from 
 us as the earth from the moon. 
 
 Here, I think, is one aspect of India's romance. The 
 ■peoples, separated among themselves into over two 
 thousand species of mankind, are so separated from us 
 that they are like inhabitants of another world. They 
 have a different morality and a different geography. 
 They are so constituted that they can conceive of a god, 
 and even worship him, who violates every canon of their 
 own moral code and would seem a frightful monster to 
 the London hooligan. They think of disease and 
 drought and dreams in a manner laughable to the young- 
 est schoolboy. They have no knowledge of the globe, 
 no interest in the discoveries of science, and no respect 
 for the inventions of civilization. They shrink from 
 taking life, and yet they will let a dog die of starvation 
 before their eyes, or contemplate unmoved the agony 
 of a wounded ox. They go to our surgeons and doc- 
 tors, make use of our telegraph and telephone, but the 
 Jains among them will pay a man to sleep in the bed they 
 are leaving for a few nights, so that the fleas and bugs 
 
38 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 may not perish of starvation. And these three hundred 
 milHons of people, inhabiting so different a universe from 
 ours, are controlled in their political destiny by a mere 
 handful of Englishmen; their rivers are being har- 
 nessed by English engineers, their woods conserved and 
 developed by English foresters, their deserts improved 
 into thriving fields by English agriculturists, their mines 
 ransacked for gold and coal by the same quiet and re- 
 lentless power, and even the serenity of their blue sky 
 is now being clouded by the factory smoke of these same 
 islanders from the West. Firm and immovable as they 
 appear to stand in their immemorial beliefs, these three 
 hundred millions of human beings are silently and im- 
 perceptibly altering the texture of their minds and com- 
 prehending a new significance in life. The man who 
 ascends with you in the lift of an hotel and tells you 
 that the world is flat, has a son who is reading Herbert 
 Spencer; and even though the son may still believe in 
 Krishna and smother himself in simulated blood on the 
 obscene and disgusting festival of Holi, he studies John 
 Stuart Mill and ranks himself a synthetical philoso- 
 pher. 
 
 Consider the romance of this British governance. In 
 the direct civil government of the two hundred and 
 thirty millions of British India and in the partial super- 
 vision and advisory assistance of the seventy millions 
 in Native States, only twelve hundred Englishmen are 
 employed, including military officers attached to the civil 
 arm. From a little inconspicuous island in the northern 
 seas, twelve hundred men bred in a different religion, 
 speaking a different language, and holding an entirely 
 different theory of the universe, master and dominate 
 
THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 29 
 
 the destiny of three hundred alien millions — master and 
 dominate that destiny for the good of the three hundred 
 millions and for the peace and security of the whole 
 world. 
 
 There are two secrets for this romantic state of af- 
 fairs. First, the quality of the Sahib — a man who 
 must never lie, never take bribes, and never " let down " 
 a friend; and second, the invisible Fleet of England, 
 which preserves India from the greed and rapacity of 
 the marauder. It is in the inviolate security assured by 
 the British Navy that the handful of Englishmen domi- 
 ciled in India do their work and keep the peace; and 
 those sensational and tiresome people who are for ever 
 telling us that we shall assuredly lose India, forget that 
 so long as the British Navy holds the sea it is just as 
 impossible for England to lose India as for the same 
 little country to lose the county of Rutland. 
 
 To an extent greater than the average Englishman 
 knows, India is a self-governing country. Next in im- 
 portance to the 864 Civil charges, which are mostly 
 held by members of the Indian Civil Service, including 
 Indians, the next 3,700 superior judicial and executive 
 appointments are all held by Indians, with about 100 
 exceptions. Nearly every subordinate position is held 
 by Indians. 
 
 In the case of the Cities, there are 742 municipalities 
 controlled by 9,800 representatives, of whom half are 
 elected by the people and the other half selected by Gov- 
 ernment from amongst the wisest and most intelligent 
 of India's philanthropic and public-spirited men of af- 
 fairs. The Rural Population is similarly controlled by 
 1,073 Districts and Local Boards, on which 15,800 
 
30 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 of India's leaders serve, half by election and half by 
 selection. 
 
 These few figures, wonderfully eloquent of British 
 methods and the confidence guaranteed by the British 
 Navy, effectually sweep away the foolish contention of 
 harebrained sentimentalists that India is a country liv- 
 ing under the tyranny of an alien Government. The 
 twelve hundred Englishmen in India are working in 
 association with the sanest Indian intellects for the glory 
 and power, the happiness and prosperity, the peace and 
 order of India herself; and if in single particulars they 
 appear to run counter to Indian demands it is only be- 
 cause the granting of those demands, in their honest and 
 considered judgment, would weaken the connection 
 with England and so imperil the absolute peace guaran- 
 teed by the British Navy, which is essential to the evolu- 
 tion of India's destiny. 
 
 Picture to yourself what would happen if we with- 
 drew from India. First, the Parsis would flee for 
 their lives, carrying I know not how much wealth and 
 intelligence out of the country. Then the Muhama- 
 dans would attempt to settle by musket and knife those 
 furious sectarian differences which resulted in bloodshed 
 during the last Mohurrum. Hindus would seize the op- 
 portunity to fall upon the hated Mussulman; Rajah 
 would march against Rajah; like a flooding sea the 
 long-knifed heathen of the hills would descend upon the 
 plains ; and the navies of European and Asiatic powers, 
 eager for the rich fruit of Indian prosperity, would ap- 
 pear at different parts of the coast and proceed to annex 
 all that they could hold of India's soil. The miracle 
 of a single India, only brought into existence by the 
 
THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 31 
 
 genius of England, and only possible so long as the 
 British Navy holds the sea, would disappear, and once 
 again, as it was in the beginning, the continent of India 
 would be split up into a hundred warring and discordant 
 countries. 
 
 These people, whose destiny has come into our hands 
 by the providence of God, are children, and like the Chil- 
 dren of Israel, they are on a great march from servitude 
 to freedom, from darkness to light, from ignorance to 
 knowledge. To set such a wicked and crazy person as 
 the " patriot " Tilak at their head, who has not only in- 
 spired the murder of noble men, but has actually justified 
 murder as a holy thing, is an outrage.^ To inflame them 
 with the speeches recently made by a certain English So- 
 cialist travelling through the country, is a crime. Even 
 to permit a European woman to make Benares the head- 
 quarters for a theosophical propaganda, which may pos- 
 sibly have as disastrous results for the British Raj as for 
 the evolution of Christianity in India, is a hazardous ex- 
 periment in laissez-faire. These are not only the views 
 of the best Englishmen in India; they are the opinions 
 of the best Indians themselves. 
 
 It would be much better, able and responsible men 
 
 1 " The Divine Krishna teaching in the Gita tells us we may kill 
 even our teachers and our kinsmen. . . . Rise above the Penal 
 Code into the rarefied atmosphere of the sacred Bhaghavad Gita and 
 consider the action of great men.'' Tilak was here speaking with 
 enthusiasm of the Mahratta leader, Shivaji, who persuaded the 
 Muhamadan General, Afzul Khan, "to meet him in peaceful con- 
 ference half-way between the contending armies, and, as he bent 
 down to greet his guest, plunged into his bowels the famous ' tiger's 
 claw,' a hooked gauntlet of steel, while a Mahratta force sprang out 
 of ambush and cut the Muhamadan army in pieces." — Quoted in 
 Indian Unrest, by Valentine Chirol. 
 
32 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 assure me, if England made her whole mind on this sub- 
 ject quite clear to the Children of India. She should 
 acknowledge by the mouth of the King-Emperor, that 
 the ideal of Indian Self-Government is a just and hon- 
 ourable aspiration, and she should declare her willing- 
 ness to further this worthy movement in every way 
 consonant with law and order ; but in most emphatic lan- 
 guage, and in every part of the country, and on every 
 possible occasion, she should point out that such a con- 
 summation is only possible while India's internal peace 
 is secured by the British Navy (to which India makes 
 no contribution whatever), and announce her unwaver- 
 ing determination to destroy any influence at work which 
 is in the least degree likely to corrupt the authority of 
 the central Government or weaken the connection be- 
 tween the two countries. And what she threatens to do, 
 she should do. A wise statesman would as mercifully 
 remove such creatures as Tilak, who dare to justify 
 murder, as a man of science would remove a malignant 
 growth from the human body. And India would re- 
 spect such action. " There are three talkers in India," 
 an able member of the Civil Service told me ; " the man 
 with a just grievance — whose grievance should be re- 
 moved ; the man who talks for the sake of talking — and 
 who may be left talking; and the man openly bent on 
 overthrowing the British tutelage — who should be 
 hanged." 
 
 Let it be always borne in mind that the intelligent 
 Indians are less than a handful in comparison with the 
 millions who can neither read nor write, and that there 
 are literally millions, surrounding the virtuous peoples 
 of India, who practise as a quite ordinary matteti 
 
THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 33 
 
 immoralities which would bring them into the criminal 
 courts of Europe. The ignorance of some of the mil- 
 lions of India, as this book will show, is something so 
 incredible that it is difiScult to think of them as human 
 beings. And the immoralities of many of them are so 
 horrible and revolting that it is almost possible to think 
 of them as the creation of infernal power. 
 
 But the true designation for these people, the very 
 worst of whom are docile and charming, is that of this 
 chapter's heading. They are children. One must not 
 think of them as grown men nor judge them by a single 
 European standard. They are different from us in 
 almost every particular that makes man an intellectual 
 being. Like children they consult the stars, listen to 
 the wind, regard the lightning, and watch disease spread- 
 ing death through their midst. Like children, they be- 
 lieve the most fantastic stories of gods and demons. Like 
 children they accept without question or demur anything 
 told to them with the least semblance of authority. And 
 like children they are afraid of the dark, and in all that 
 they attempt to achieve fear the frustrating enmity of 
 malicious devils. 
 
 Does it not help one to realize the true state and con- 
 dition of these children, to know that seventy millions 
 of them — think what these figures mean — seventy mil- 
 lions of them accept without the smallest spirit of re- 
 bellion the unwritten law which makes them for the 
 whole of their lives outcasts and helots? These seventy 
 millions know themselves to be an abomination and a 
 horror to the castes above them. Without suspicion 
 they allow themselves to be exploited by the very people 
 who say they are " untouchable," and whose food would 
 
34 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 be polluted and uneatable if even their shadow fell upon 
 it. In every village there is an outcasts' quarter, sep- 
 arated from the other castes. No Brahman priest will 
 come near them, sick or dying. No caste postman will 
 give their letters into their hands. No caste doctor 
 will attend them in illness. They have to fashion their 
 own gods and create their own priesthood — a " black " 
 priesthood which is regarded with unutterable loathing 
 by the holy priest in the sacred temple. And they do 
 not question or rebel. Because they are the sons of 
 their fathers, they are what they are, and thus they must 
 remain, " untouchable," to the day of their death. 
 
 Remember always that the cities of India are mere 
 potting-sheds and greenhouses in the midst of an enor- 
 mous garden. Something like ninety per cent of the 
 population live on or by the land, and these 270 rural mil- 
 lions out of a rough total of 300 millions, are as illiterate 
 and superstitious, however charming in manner, as any 
 savages in the remotest darkness of Africa. I do not 
 mean for a moment that they are repellent and hideous ; 
 more polite and engaging people I have never met, more 
 gracious and hospitable people do not exist among the 
 finest peasantry of Europe — but their ignorance and 
 their superstition and many of their habits are as bar- 
 barous as anything to be found among the most savage 
 heathen. 
 
 What is the root of this barbarism, extant in the twen- 
 tieth century and living cheek by jowl with the civiliza- 
 tion of England? 
 
 " Where women are honoured," says an ancient seer, 
 " the Divinities are complacent ; where they are despised 
 it is useless to pray to God." 
 
THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 35 
 
 There are two interpretations of the monition — 
 Cherchez la femme. 
 
 In spite of the publicity given by English newspapers 
 to the revolutionary ideas of the " new woman," and in 
 spite of plays and novels which might make one think 
 domestic happiness nowhere existed, everybody knows 
 who has gone about the country at all that the centre 
 of English life is the home and that the centre of the 
 home is the Mother. It is against the Englishwoman's 
 lofty and calm conception of Motherhood, and not 
 against man's amused indifference, or his irritable dis- 
 gust, that such a violent wave as the Suffragette move- 
 ment, which must be distinguished from the Woman 
 Question, breaks itself into the spume of failure and 
 the froth of defeat. To be the mother of strong sons 
 and beautiful daughters is still the supreme ambition of 
 the Englishwoman. And the home, with all its inno- 
 cent pleasures and delightful ambitions, is still the fiixed 
 and steadfast centre of our national righteousness. 
 
 Nothing of this sort is known in India. Nothing in 
 the least degree approximating to the ideal of English 
 motherhood is known among the peoples of India. A 
 woman may indeed be a veritable termagant and make 
 the life of her husband a scarce endurable martyrdom, 
 but she is never his companion and friend, and never the 
 moral providence and spiritual counsellor of his children. 
 She cooks her husband's meal, but may not eat till he has 
 finished ; she goes out to work in the fields with her hus- 
 band, but may not walk at his side. You will see women 
 in India loading an engine with coal, making bricks in 
 the brick-fields, laying stones on the road, bearing hods 
 of mortar up the scaffolding of a new building, and 
 
36 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 sweeping up the manure of the street, or carrying the 
 European pail to the cess-pit; but you will never see a 
 woman going arm-in-arm with her husband to a concert 
 or festivity, or playing games with her sons. You will 
 never see a happy and rejoicing mother, the pride of her 
 husband, the joy of her children, and the supreme influ- 
 ence for character and prosperity in the home. 
 
 And yet, by the irony of fate, infinitely the most beau- 
 tiful building in India, perhaps in the whole world, is 
 that ivory-coloured tomb of loveliness dreaming in a 
 green garden on the banks of the Jumna, whose slender 
 minarets and lofty dome, whose pierced and carven mar- 
 bles and inlaid walls of precious stones are raised as the 
 memorial of a man's love for a woman. And not, as 
 some people are disposed to think, as the passionate sac- 
 rament of a lover for his mistress, of some Antony for 
 his Cleopatra, but as the enduring and solemn rever- 
 ence of a husband for as virtuous and homely a matron 
 as ever brought fourteen children into life and died in 
 childbed. Such is the Taj Mahal — a witness to a man's 
 love for his matronal wife, and it stands in a country 
 where men and women neither walk together nor eat 
 together, and where the woman is degraded to the most 
 menial and bestial of toils. 
 
 Surely the great march on which the Children of India 
 have set out must be swift or slow, victorious or disas- 
 trous, according to the place in it assigned to women. 
 As my book will show, the religion of the West has a 
 most helpful and emancipating effect on Indian women, 
 and it seems to me almost the clearest thing in the diffi- 
 cult destiny of India that the ultimate salvation of the 
 country lies with a higher and nobler domesticity created 
 by women conscious of a righteous God and a pure 
 
THE CHILDREN OF INDIA jf 
 
 heaven. To look into the bright eyes and smiling face of 
 an Indian woman converted to Christianity is to feel 
 full of a glad confidence in India's future, and to realize 
 the supremacy of Christianity as a force in human evo- 
 lution. How different are one's feelings on beholding 
 the most tragic figure in the whole world — an Indian 
 old woman, shrivelled and wrinkled to the bone, drag- 
 ging weary feet through the dust, frowning at the sun 
 out of watery eyes, and muttering to herself an inarticu- 
 late Miserere as she draws nearer to the hovel where 
 no one is watching for her return, no one will give her 
 welcome, and where in the darkness of a corner she will 
 eat her morsel of rice and fall asleep ignored by all the 
 rest of the household. 
 
 For a woman to survive her husband in India, it is 
 purgatory ; but to grow old in her widowhood — it is 
 hell. The Indian widow is not permitted to re-marry. 
 How must it be then, with such a country, possessing 
 27,000,000 widows, 6,000,000 of them under fourteen 
 years of age, and 14,000 of them under four? In 
 zenanas, according to a Government Census, there are 
 40,000,000 women. ^ 
 
 Fundamental to this chief question of the Woman, is 
 the question of Religion. Everything in India is what 
 it is because of Religion. The problem of what is called 
 " Indian Unrest," as Mr. Valentine Chirol shows in his 
 conclusive book on the subject, is at the bottom a 
 religious question. The position of women is the ordi- 
 nance of religion. And truly it is the same with every- 
 thing else in India from one end of the country to the 
 other. Until the religions of India are thrown by the 
 peasant as well as the Babu, to the waste-heap of 
 
 1 See page 350. 
 
38 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 humanity's childishness, until their gods and goddesses, 
 their devils and their demons, become the stock-in-trade 
 of the satirist and the clown, no real movement can be 
 made from darkness to light, and no pulse of joy and 
 enthusiasm beat from the heart of her various humanity. 
 And it is because this conviction is to me so obvious and 
 certain, that one is almost tempted to regard as more 
 serious than the propaganda of unquiet politicians, that 
 corner-creeping and unconscious treason of theosophy 
 which is exalting Indian philosophy above our pure 
 religion breathing household laws, and is, consciously or 
 unconsciously, encouraging the easily-conceited intellect 
 of India to regard the peoples of Europe as benighted 
 savages and brutal fools. Let us make no mistake in 
 this matter. India without a religion is an impossible 
 conception. India with her present religion is ceasing 
 to exist. What is the religion we have to give her? 
 and how far can the Government, without departing 
 from its traditional attitude of impartial overlord, safe- 
 guard her from false religions undermining all authority 
 and corrupting every fibre of the moral being? 
 
 What is the true drama of Modern India ? — it is the 
 collision of Christianity and Brahmanism, the conflict 
 of two differing souls, the struggle between a spiritual 
 materialism and a material spiritualism. India, with her 
 immemorial antipathy to the fierce clangour and unsleep- 
 ing energy of materialism, is feeling in every vein of her 
 body the beat and pulse of a materialism as eager and 
 confident and elated as the spirit of adventure; and this 
 alien materialism, whatever the particular forms of its 
 religious creed, is shot and saturated in all the warp and 
 woof of its being with the morality of Christianity and 
 
THE CHILDREN OF INDIA 
 
 the spiritual hauntings of Christ. However ugly and 
 however selfish and brutal it may seem, the materialism 
 of Europe is spiritual in its attitude towards the uni- 
 verse, if only by the long and ineradicable heredity of 
 Christian influence. It cannot out-think its centuries 
 of Christianity. On the other hand, the spiritualism of 
 India, which has long ago departed from the beautiful 
 dreamings and baseless metaphysics of the Vedas, is the 
 most material and childishly superstitious animalism that 
 ever masqueraded as idealism. 
 
 In the shock and impact of these two souls, the soul 
 of Christianity and the soul of Hinduism, the soul of 
 Europe and the soul of Asia, one beholds the modern 
 drama of India. 
 
 To understand the least thing about India you must 
 understand the religion of Hinduism. And truly to per- 
 ceive the immense problem of the future, a future con- 
 cerning all the world, for India is the heart of the East, 
 you must study the subtle and leavening effect of Chris- 
 tianity upon Hinduism, of Christian materialism upon 
 pagan spiritualism. 
 
 Two forces are wrestling in India for a mastery which 
 must ultimately affect all mankind. Outwardly, the 
 sense of conflict is not apparent, and to a superficial ob- 
 server it would seem that India is pursuing her own and 
 ancient road utterly oblivious to the soul of Europe; but 
 inwardly there is being waged as stern and fierce a con- 
 test as ever heaved the world to this side and to that, and 
 it is not the bodies of nations that are at grips, but the 
 soul and inward mystery of humanity — the spirit of the 
 East at enmity with the spirit of the West, and the soul 
 of Darkness with the soul of Light. 
 
THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 
 
 One of the greatest delusions of modern Europe is the 
 hazy notion, born of Sir Edwin Arnold's poetry, Madame 
 Blavatsky's conjuring tricks, and Mrs. Besant's whim- 
 sical theosophy, that the East is spiritually superior to 
 the West. There are good and well-intentioned people 
 both in Europe and America who genuinely believe that 
 the religion of Christianity is actually crude, inferior, 
 and trivial in comparison with some mythical and en- 
 tirely non-existent religious occultism guarded by the 
 mysterious holy men of India. There is a still more 
 numerous host among the white races which holds with 
 a most sloven and treasonable ignorance which it re- 
 gards as a pleasing form of cosmopolitan tolerance, that 
 Christianity is only one of many religions all very much 
 alike and all more or less similar in their service to 
 humanity. 
 
 The truth is that an honest man who travels through 
 India even with the most casual observation and the 
 least effort to discover the fact of things, finds himself, 
 must find himself, again and again, bowing himself in 
 spirit with a new adoration in his soul and a fresh un- 
 derstanding in his mind, before the majestic beauty and 
 incomparable sublimity of the Divine Christ. If, after 
 my long journeys through India, one feeling is stronger 
 in my mind than any other, if one illumination burns 
 in my soul more luminously and more steadily than 
 
 40 
 
THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 41 
 
 another, if one conviction is paramount and sovran above 
 all others, it is that Christ stands in the history of man- 
 kind absolutely alone and unchallengeably supreme as the 
 Light of the World. And this conviction rests not only 
 upon the sinless life and exquisite words of the Master, 
 nor upon the civilizing work accomplished by Christian- 
 ity in Europe, but upon the realization brought home 
 to my soul by the condition of modern India as to the 
 great miracle of Christ's personal victory over the Brah- 
 manism and racial superstitions of His own day. 
 
 Exactly what the Brahmans are to modern India, the 
 Scribes and Pharisees were to Palestine. And while 
 Christ by the influence of His character and the magic 
 of His Personality easily overthrew those Scribes and 
 Pharisees and sent His gracious teaching to the ends of 
 the earth, all the Missions in India, protected by the 
 dominant power and supported by the well-nigh inex- 
 haustible wealth of civilized nations, fling themselves in 
 vain against this rock of traditional Brahmanism. 
 
 It is well that the truth should be known. Among the 
 educated and upper classes of India, Christianity can 
 claim but few triumphs. There are no direct conversions 
 worth speaking about except among the lowest and the 
 most depressed classes, where Christianity is moving to 
 amazing victory. The indirect effects of Christianity, 
 presently to be considered, are pervading the whole 
 fabric of Indian national life — an immense, a wonder- 
 ful achievement — but there are no direct effects worth 
 mention, no winning of disciples and no real catalogue 
 of conversions among the Brahmans and the castes 
 immediately sharing in the power and plunder of Brah- 
 manism. Against the good and reforming Buddha, 
 
42 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 Brahmanism stood firm; the little body of Jains, with 
 their quite farcical humanitarianism, only witness to the 
 failure of yet another efifort at reformation. Muham- 
 adanism/ which is a pure and lofty religion in com- 
 parison with Hinduism, has had no cleansing and no 
 uplifting effect upon Brahmanism; the Parsi worship of 
 nature has not touched the outermost fringe of Brah- 
 manism ; and, after centuries of missionary labour, Brah- 
 manism remains adamant and unconquered before the 
 hosts of Christendom. Brahmanism is now apprehen- 
 sive, is even angrily alarmed and violently afraid of 
 Christianity ; but not at all because it forsees the conver- 
 sion of India — only because it dreads the indirect effects 
 of Christianity upon caste and upon its own tyrannical 
 power over the people. 
 
 All the unrest in India which is treacherous, unscrupu- 
 lous, and bloody-handed comes from the Brahmans, 
 and its inspiration is the alarm felt by Brahmanism at 
 the increasing conversions to Christianity among the out- 
 casts, and the extraordinary progress of Christian ideas 
 among the Indian peoples in general. But Brahmanism 
 itself is utterly untouched by the spirit of Christ. If 
 it is moving at all in the direction of Christianity, it is 
 moving under the cover of darkness and is armed with 
 the weapon of the assassin. Christianity, and not Eng- 
 land, is the supreme enemy of Brahmanism, as Christ, 
 and not Rome, was the supreme enemy of the Scribes 
 and Pharisees. 
 
 1 The two foundational pillars of Muhamadanism — the worship 
 of One God, and the abomination of idolatry — offer an invitation to 
 Christianity which will surely one day lead to great events. But this 
 is a subject to be considered elsewhere. 
 
THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 43 
 
 It is well that the reader should acquaint himself with 
 the true nature of Hinduism, and see exactly what it 
 is that Brahmanism sets itself to guard. Let him banish 
 from his mind any idea that there is something mys- 
 terious and wonderful in the Eastern religion. Let him 
 rest assured that the Indian theosophy which makes con- 
 verts of queer people in Europe and America, is some- 
 thing of which 99,999 persons out of every 100,000 in 
 India would not understand a single word. And let 
 him know for a certainty that all the magic and marvels 
 of Madame Blavatsky were revealed by the Society for 
 Psychical Research, which sent a trained inquirer to 
 India, as tricks and cheatings of a very trivial character. 
 
 What, in sober truth, is the chief religion of India, 
 known under the including name of Hinduism? Sir 
 Monier Williams has put it in a single phrase — it is a 
 mental disease. " The great majority of the inhabitants 
 of India," he says, " are from the cradle to the burning 
 ground, victims of a form of mental disease which 
 is best expressed by the term demonophobia. They are 
 haunted and oppressed by a perpetual dread of demons. 
 They are firmly convinced that evil spirits of all kinds, 
 from malignant fiends to merely mischievous imps and 
 elves, are ever on the watch to harm, harass, and tor- 
 ment them, to cause plague, sickness, famine and dis- 
 aster, to impede, injure, and mar every good work." 
 
 Terror is the spirit of Hinduism. Fear is the tyrant 
 of the Hindu. His humanitarianism, with which Eu- 
 rope is often reproached by vegetarian theosophists, has 
 nothing whatever to do with kindness towards animals, 
 but is entirely inspired by fear of offending some god 
 or demon, or of destroying the reincarnating soul of a 
 
44 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 hero or a friend. Always he is afraid. I have talked to 
 devil-dancers, to low-caste and to high-caste Hindus 
 throughout India, and in all cases I have found that 
 fundamental in their mind to every concept of the uni- 
 verse and every apprehension of the spirit world, is a 
 vital and ineradicable terror. Convert a devil-dancer, 
 make him quite sure that God is Love and that Christ 
 has saved him from perdition, and still you will find 
 him haunted by the fear that Satan is never absent from 
 his side waiting to seize and destroy him on the smallest 
 opportunity. That is ever his master-thought. Always 
 to the Hindu there is a giant menace overspreading the 
 firmament and darkening the earth with the shadow of 
 an implacable hostility. It is far easier for him to con- 
 ceive of three hundred million wicked gods, than to be- 
 lieve in one God absolutely pure, absolutely kind, and 
 absolutely good. His experience of life justifies the one 
 theory and denies the other. Existence for him is not 
 the gift of a loving Father, but a cruel and hazardous 
 martyrdom created by malignant devils. Pain and dis- 
 ease strike at him from the air and from the ground; 
 famine descends upon his laboured fields with a blast of 
 destroying hate ; he cries to the gods for rain — and 
 the only answer to his cry is an earth of iron and a sky 
 of brass; in the midst of rains that beat his crops to 
 earth, he beseeches demon or god for mercy, and the 
 answer comes in a flood that sweeps away his hut and 
 drowns his cattle; never for him is life a gift of love 
 shining with the testimony of divine beneficence. 
 
 " Why do you pray to a devil ? " I asked a venerable 
 Hindu in Southern India. " Sahib," he replied, " why 
 should I pray to a God who is good ? " 
 
THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 45 
 
 It is with them the clearest logic in the world that 
 prayer to a benign and loving Heaven-Father must either 
 be superfluous or of the nature of insult ; whereas, surely 
 it is most just and reasonable that poor and defenceless 
 humanity should kneel and humble itself before those 
 black and awful powers which afflict it with a chastise- 
 ment utterly unthinkable from a God of Love. 
 
 Here lies the mightiest blunder of Christian mission- 
 aries. To a people in whom this conviction is fixed and 
 steadfast, they have presented the idea of a good God 
 who is the author of all their mischief, and whose mercy 
 can only be procured by abasement and supplication. 
 They have not taught — of course, I speak generally 
 — that suffering is largely the merciful process of edu- 
 cation following the infringement of natural laws set 
 in motion for the good and profit of mankind; nor that 
 prayer is an aspiration of the immortal soul seeking 
 communion with its Maker, not a request for benefits 
 and advantages. They have attempted to teach the In- 
 dian what it is impossible for a rational man to believe 
 or for an honest man to prove — that a Creator who is 
 perfect goodness and perfect love requires to be moved 
 by prayer before He will act with ordinary kindness 
 towards His creatures; and that prayer to such a God, 
 faithfully prayed, will do away with all the distresses 
 of humanity. And the Indian, listening to such a mis- 
 sionary, sees stronger and hardier men of the white race 
 building canals against famine, draining the land against 
 flood, and using the science of medicine against plague 
 and fever — not praying to their good God for the pre- 
 vention of these calamities. What does he conclude? 
 If prayer will suffice, why all this labour and activity? 
 
46 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 And if labour and activity are necessary, why pray? 
 To him it seems infinitely simpler and obviously more 
 logical to follow the long tradition of his fathers — to 
 placate by every means in his power the evil forces in 
 the universe, and certainly to risk no fear of displeasing 
 the good gods by presuming to tell them what they 
 should do with the world. 
 
 A reasonable and explicating Theism, the true Theism 
 of a true Christianity, is not only opposed by a super- 
 stitious and traditional Hinduism, but also by the misrep- 
 resentations of Christianity deep-rooted in the Indian 
 mind by the unconscious blasphemies of Deism. The 
 Indian still thinks that our religion implies a God who 
 made the world and blundered it : who, having made it, 
 repented of His work and left the Devil to do with it 
 what he would : and who afterwards incarnated Himself 
 for a few years and failed to overcome the power of 
 His adversary. It is most difficult to make the average 
 Indian mind conceive of a God now and always associ- 
 ated with humanity, a Creator who is still creating, a 
 Light that is still shining, and an Energy that is still 
 redeeming and uplifting. 
 
 A young Hindu educated at Oxford said to me on this 
 subject — " If the missionaries had talked to us more 
 of salvation and less of damnation, Christianity would 
 have made real progress among our educated people long 
 before now." 
 
 Think what it must be for these people, schooled to 
 believe that suffering proceeds from a wicked and hostile 
 force, to be told that a good God is the author of their 
 damnation. 
 
 This is really what the teaching of the missionaries 
 
THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 47 
 
 — a teaching, of course, absolutely at variance with the 
 goodness of Christianity — has implanted in the Indian 
 mind. They have not said, " If you believe you will be 
 saved," but, " If you do not believe you will be damned." 
 Their God is the Hindu's Devil. 
 
 Different, vastly different, is the method of Fakir 
 Singh; and to the hopeful and persuasive tone of its 
 teaching as much as to the earnestness, humility, and 
 native simplicity of its teachers, I attribute the extraor- 
 dinary success of the Salvation Army in India. Here, 
 as showing the true method of Christian propaganda, I 
 will describe a colloquy of Fakir Singh with one of the 
 many Nicodemuses among the modern Indians. 
 
 Picture to yourself the scene. Under a tree, close to a 
 well where women are drawing water and labourers are 
 driving their oxen to the trough, sits the Salvationist 
 in native dress talking to a little company of turbaned 
 figures about the Good Shepherd and the way of libera- 
 tion. The sun sets behind a grove of palm-trees, the 
 strange scent of an Eastern night begins to breathe 
 from the warm dust, the soft sky grows gradually per- 
 vaded with pale and trembling stars, out of the distant 
 jungle, lifting its tall trees and spreading bushes to the 
 violet hills, come the vespers of birds, the ravening cry 
 of beasts of prey, and the sigh of night. The last woman 
 leaves the well with a brazen vessel balanced on her head 
 and another steadied against her hip. The labourers 
 are driving their cattle back to the shelter of the village. 
 A shadow falls between heaven and the earth. A cres- 
 cent moon appears above a cluster of bamboos. The 
 little company of turbaned figures rises from the ground, 
 and with homely courtesy and a genuine kindness of 
 
48 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 heart, each man salaams to the Fakir. One remains be- 
 hind. 
 
 " Guru," he says, when the others have passed out of 
 hearing, " I am a man who does harm to no one, and 
 good to those who are in sorrow or distress; do I need 
 your Christ to save me from damnation ? " 
 
 " How is that possible ? " answers the Fakir. " Christ 
 did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to re- 
 pentance." 
 
 " Ah ! that is what one can understand." 
 
 " He came to heal those who have no physician." 
 
 " That is what I wanted to hear." 
 
 " He is a seeker of lost sheep. Those who have a shep- 
 herd do not require Him." 
 
 " Then, as I am a good man, and as I need no physi- 
 cian, and as I have a shepherd in my own religion, why 
 should you tell me about Christ ? " 
 
 " In case you are not quite certain that you are good, 
 and that you need no physician." 
 
 " Well, no man is perfectly good." 
 
 " That is true, O brother." 
 
 " A man is a man ; he is prone to evil." 
 
 " You have wisdom." 
 
 " But, tell me, what do you mean by sin ? " 
 
 " I mean the knowledge of the heart that it is un- 
 happy and disquieted ; the feeling of the soul that it is not 
 at peace with God; the thought, O my brother, the 
 thought of the conscience that death may have a fear 
 and a hazard for the spirit." 
 
 " Well, but if a man follows his religion ? " 
 
 " That is not enough. Nay ! that is surely not 
 enough." 
 
THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 49 
 
 " Guru, he does the best he can." 
 
 " But it does not give him peace." 
 
 " Yes, but how should he know that another religion 
 will give him peace? That is the heart of this business! 
 How should he know ? " 
 
 " Brother, he must try for himself. If you are ill, 
 and you send for a doctor who makes you no better, 
 do you not send for another, and yet another, until 
 you discover one whose medicine gives you strength 
 and whose care restores you to the joy of health? 
 Brother, the soul is sick as well as the body; there are 
 soul doctors as well as body doctors. My religion says 
 that it can take away the unrest of the heart and give 
 peace to the soul — the peace of God which passes all 
 tmderstanding. Does your religion make such a prom- 
 ise? If it does, and if after long trial you have found 
 that your heart is still disquieted and your soul is yet 
 full of unrest, is it not wise, for the peace of your own 
 heart and for the health of your own soul, that you 
 should make trial of another religion ? I do not ask you 
 to try my religion if your heart is at peace with God and 
 you can contemplate the hour of your death without dis- 
 may. But if your heart is unhappy with a sense of guilt, 
 if your conscience will not let you rest, and if your soul 
 is afraid of death, then I invite you to make trial of my 
 religion. And I ask you, because I, too, was unhappy 
 and full of unrest until I bowed myself before the Light 
 of the World and followed the Way, the Truth, and the 
 Life." 
 
 In every religion of the East there is a door always 
 standing open through which the true disciple of the 
 Way can enter and win companions for his soul. It is 
 
50 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 the door of the human heart. Troubled and unhappy is 
 the heart of India. The banks of the sacred rivers are 
 thick with pilgrims seeking peace of mind and rest of 
 soul. The shrines are congregated with human weari- 
 ness and spiritual disquiet. The relics of saints are rev- 
 erenced and besought for a peace of heart wistfully 
 desired. For a surety of soul dimly imagined, the 
 temples are filled with kneelers and the worn rosaries 
 turned in ceaseless prayer. The religions of the East 
 endure because they have failed. 
 
 To go as a theologian to these hungering and thirst- 
 ing millions and to dogmatize about the origin of evil 
 and the nature of Christ, is but to anger and confuse 
 them. They are seekers of peace. It is not a definition 
 that they desire, but rest of heart and quiet of soul. 
 They need, not a pedagogue, but a physician : a good 
 shepherd, not a casuist. 
 
 The supreme weakness of Hinduism is its utter 
 incapacity to satisfy the human heart. And this impo- 
 tence arises from the absence of a moral code. Christi- 
 anity insists upon a cleansed heart. Hinduism asks only 
 for a surrender of the reason. Hinduism attributes all 
 the ills of humanity to the circumference of the uni- 
 verse. Christianity points to the human centre, the 
 heart of man. The Hindu gods are wicked and abomi- 
 nable, prostitution is a means of financing many of the 
 temples, a man may consider himself a good and pious 
 disciple of his faith who lies, steals, and violates the law 
 of sex — there is no insistence whatever on the supreme 
 need for a cleansed heart. " He who pronounces 
 Durga," says one authority, " though he constantly 
 practises adultery, plunders others of their property, or 
 
THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 51 
 
 commits the most heinous crimes, is freed from all 
 sins." Indeed, sin, in the true sense, scarcely exists in 
 the conception of Hinduism. Ask a man how it is that 
 he worships as a god one who is immoral and iniquitous 
 and he will reply, with a smile for your ignorance, that 
 surely a god may do what he likes. Samarthi ko dosh 
 nahin — the Mighty may do what they please. " The 
 duties of life," says Bishop Caldwell, " are never incul- 
 cated in any Hindu temple. The discharge of those 
 duties is never represented as enjoined by the gods, nor 
 are any prayers ever offered in any temple for help to 
 enable the worshippers to discharge those duties 
 aright. . . . We meet with a moral Hindu who has 
 broken altogether away from religion; and what is still 
 more common, yet still more extraordinary, we meet 
 with a devout Hindu who lives a flagrantly immoral 
 life. In the latter case, no person sees any inconsist- 
 ency between the immorality and the devoutness." It 
 is absolute truth that spirituality in their imagination is 
 a state of being in which a man may do whatever he 
 pleases without the fear of any evil consequences. For 
 a man who can say " Aham Brahma — I am God," there 
 exists neither good nor evil. Sin, which Christianity 
 declares to be the source of all disquiet and unrest, for 
 Hinduism is only a serious matter where it exists as part 
 of a general attachment to earth life jn the heart of a 
 man not yet covetous of annihilation. The peace sought 
 by India is the peace of non-existence. 
 
 In a few sentences it is possible to express quite truth- 
 fully and without any danger of omission or misrepre- 
 sentation the religion of the vast majority of the Hindu 
 peoples. They believe that life must always be accom- 
 
52 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 panied by misery: that deliverance from individual ex- 
 istence can only be attained by the cessation of all 
 desires — good or bad : that man is surrounded by 
 malignant forces hostile to his happiness : and that the 
 gods and goddesses, who are altogether indifferent to 
 Conduct, are to be cajoled and even threatened into 
 affording protection or bestowing material prosperity. 
 
 The first object of a Hindu's life is to beget sons, in 
 order that his journey through hell, after the miseries 
 of this earthly life, may be shortened by the sacrifices of 
 male heirs. Until he is the father of sons, the Hindu 
 considers that he walks the earth in the very greatest 
 peril of soul. So soon as he can boast of sons 
 (daughters are of no avail in the business), he can take 
 his religion more easily, and propitiatory sacrifices to the 
 gods are varied among the low castes by thrashings and 
 spittings and curses when these idols fail to avert dis- 
 aster or prosper an undertaking. Nevertheless, the 
 Hindu is always in a state of some uncertainty about his 
 soul, not on account of his sins, but because he fears 
 reincarnations of pain and horror, and stands in awe of 
 gods as capricious and vague in their requirements of 
 humanity as they are cruel, revengeful and iniquitous. 
 Hinduism is a weltering chaos of terror, darkness, and 
 uncertainty. It is a religion without the apprehension of 
 a moral evolution, without definite commandments, and 
 without a God. 
 
 I have asked many of the humblest Indians in various 
 parts of the country what they understand by evil, and 
 the answer was always the same. Evil consists in con- 
 duct punished by the Government. They acknowledge 
 the difference between right and wrong, but it is impos- 
 
THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 53 
 
 sible to make them realize anything approaching to the 
 nature of a rehgious sanction in the sphere of morals. 
 For them religion is mainly a life-long effort to placate 
 the demons who afflict them, and — - among the more 
 spiritual — an agony of soul to reach that dehumanized 
 condition of min'd in which the desire for annihilation is 
 supreme. " They eat religiously, drink religiously, bathe 
 religiously, dress religiously, and sin religiously." 
 
 There is hardly one representation of the Hindu gods 
 (who, by the way, are scarcely ever black, but white like 
 Europeans) that is not ugly and repulsive to a degree 
 almost incredible. You see pictures and idols of these 
 gods which suggest the grotesque figures in a panto- 
 mime. One god has the head of an elephant; another 
 the head of a monkey — and so on. "The shape and 
 operations of divine and semi-divine beings," says Sir 
 Monier Williams, " are generally suggestive of the mon- 
 strous, the frightful, the hideous, and the incredible, the 
 deeds of its heroes, who are themselves half-gods, trans- 
 port the imagination into the region of the wildest 
 chimera; and a whole pantheon presents itself, teeming 
 with grotesque and unwieldy symbols, with horrible cre- 
 ations, half-animals, half -gods, with man-eating ogres, 
 many-headed giants and disgusting demons." ^ 
 
 The stories concerning these gods and goddesses are 
 not only contemptible and ridiculous, they are so fright- 
 fully obscene and so abominably filthy that they cannot 
 even be obscurely hinted or vaguely adumbrated in Eng- 
 lish print. " The stories related of Krishna's life," says 
 one authority, " do more than anything else to destroy 
 the morals and corrupt the imagination of Hindu youth." 
 1 See page 352. 
 
54 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 The generous people who take that easy view of 
 idolatry made popular by Carlyle's bludgeoning rhetoric, 
 would find themselves forced to other opinions if they 
 lived in the house of a Hindu and witnessed the con- 
 tinual and painful service rendered to these absurd effi- 
 gies of brass or clay. An Indian himself has shown the 
 folly of the thesis that an idol is an instrument for elevat- 
 ing the mind to a realization of an invisible god. " For 
 whatever Hindu purchases an idol in the market, or con- 
 structs one with his own hands, or has one made under 
 his own superintendence, it is his invariable practice to 
 perform certain ceremonies, called Pran Pratishtha, or 
 the endowment of animation, by which he believes that 
 its nature is changed from that of the mere materials of 
 which it is formed, and that it acquires not only life but 
 supernatural powers. Shortly afterwards, if the idol be 
 of the masculine gender, he marries it to a feminine one: 
 with no less pomp and magnificence than he celebrates 
 the nuptials of his own children. The mysterious pro- 
 cess is now complete; and the god and goddess are 
 esteemed the arbiters of his destiny, and continually re- 
 ceive his most ardent adoration." ^ 
 
 It is a truth, as another writer points out, that this 
 idolatry is much the same as a child's play with its dolls. 
 " Little children talk to their dolls as if they had life. 
 They dress them, pretend to give them food, put them 
 to sleep, and so forth. Grown-up people do the same. 
 They treat their idols as living beings. They offer them 
 food, though they cannot eat; they have different kinds 
 of music before idols that cannot hear; they wave lights 
 
 1 In this rite one seems to perceive the dim origin of a later 
 doctrine called Transubstantiation. 
 
THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 55 
 
 before what cannot see. In the cold season they furnish 
 them with warm clothes ; in the hot season they fan them ; 
 and lest mosquitoes should bite them, they place them 
 within curtains at night." 
 
 This is the religion of by far the greatest number of 
 India's inhabitants. If the reader has any doubt in his 
 mind as to the faithfulness of my summary, let him 
 obtain a copy of Popxdar Hinduism, published by the 
 Christian Literature Society for India, which contains 
 authoritative quotations not only from such European 
 scholars as Max Miiller, Monier Williams, and Alfred 
 Lyall, but from the writings of converted Hindus and 
 the sacred books of Hinduism itself. A perusal of this 
 little volume, saving the labour and distress of a pro- 
 founder study which is really not worth a serious man's 
 while, will bring an overwhelming conviction to the mind 
 of any just person that Hinduism, root and branch, is the 
 absurdest superstition imaginable, that it has its rise in 
 a savage animalism, and contains absolutely nothing 
 which can be of the very smallest service to the evolution 
 of humanity. 
 
 What I have written will lead the reader, I hope, to 
 perceive that the true attitude for Europe towards India 
 is that of the adult towards the child. It would be un- 
 just to view the immoralities of the Hindus with the 
 same measure of indignation meet and necessary in the 
 case of a European. One must feel pity for a people so 
 kindly, so docile and so simple who are so blind to uni- 
 versal truth and so marvellously obedient to authority. 
 They are as children frightened by darkness and haunted 
 by the ghost stories of their parents. It is not with them 
 as with certain schools of religion in Europe, that their 
 
56 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 superstition is an affectation and their ritualism a pose in 
 aestheticism. They are terribly in earnest. It is neces- 
 sary always to remind oneself that these toiling and 
 obedient millions are 'as childlike in reason and intuition, 
 and as real and earnest in their childishness, as the Chil- 
 dren of Israel. 
 
 This, then, is the religion which Brahmanism sets 
 itself to guard. And the object of Brahmanism's 
 solicitude is not the religion itself, but the paralysing and 
 emasculating effect of that religion on the peoples whose 
 submissiveness is essential to its own power. ^ Brahman- 
 ism, which can still order an educated man who has 
 broken caste to take into his mouth the five products of 
 the cow, which can still make a Rajah go barefoot in 
 penance to the sea while itself rides triumphantly in a 
 palanquin, which can still keep seventy million people in 
 a condition of absolute helotry, is such a power in priest- 
 craft as nothing in the history of ancient times or the 
 mediaeval chronicles of the Latin Church can even 
 faintly parallel. And against this mighty and utterly 
 unscrupulous force, standing guard over the Hindu 
 temple of terror and holding in its hand the scourge of 
 earthly chastisement and the flaming keys of hell, the 
 soul of European democracy is now going up in many 
 forms which strike terror to its heart, but in none so 
 menacing to its power and so threatening to its peace, 
 as in the form of the meek and lowly Christ with His 
 gospel of the cleansed heart and His promise of libera- 
 tion from the sense of sin. 
 
 Christianity, I beg you to believe, is the supreme 
 enemy of Brahmanism. The victory of Christ in India 
 ' See page 352. 
 
THE TEMPLE OF TERROR 57 
 
 is the victory of enlightenment as well as of elevation, 
 of freedom as well as of virtue, of joy, courage, and 
 hope, as well as the victory of moral grandeur. 
 
 If you would know the full difference between Brah- 
 manism and Christianity consider that Brahmanism in 
 many parts of India takes into its temples little girls of 
 ten and twelve years of age; that with pomp and cere- 
 mony it marries these poor children to a god; that the 
 children are kept in the temple to sing and dance before 
 satyr-inspired worshippers ; that the money paid for their 
 moral corruption by these worshippers goes to the priests ; 
 and that as soon as they reach an age which is considered 
 unprofitable, they are turned out into a strange and 
 friendless world to become the slave-women of any pimp 
 or pandar of the bazaar.^ 
 
 In the following chapters I hope to give the reader 
 from the diary of my travels and the chronicles of my 
 conversations with Indians, as well as a graphic picture 
 of Indian life, a clearer and more human idea of the dif- 
 ference between Christianity and Hinduism. But this 
 present chapter will surely suffice to rid the mind of Euro- 
 peans corrupted by theosophical moonings and mystical 
 sentimentalism of the monstrous delusion that there is 
 anything in Hinduism which can be of the smallest serv- 
 ice to humanity, or that it has achieved anything in the 
 long course of its history except the debasement, the 
 degradation, and the defilement of human nature. 
 
 Aryan philosophers have uttered beautiful ideas, Dra- 
 vidian poets have composed mellifluous verses, thoughts 
 gracious and pleasing are woven here and there like 
 
 1 This well-known state of affairs is fully described in a book 
 entitled, Things as they are in Southern India. 
 
58 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 golden threads into the immense and sombre fabric of 
 Indian literature ; but Hinduism, the religion of the ruck, 
 in the long course of its development has contributed 
 neither glory to history nor honour to humanity, man's 
 knowledge of the universe owes it not a farthing of debt, 
 freedom is contemptuous of it, and conduct can accuse it 
 justly of a thousand crimes.^ 
 
 1 See page 352. 
 
TWO PANDALS 
 
 Accompanied by a friend and fellow-traveller, I set out 
 soon after landing in Bombay for the South of India, 
 where I was to meet Fakir Singh, see parts of the country 
 seldom visited by the tourist, and make acquaintance with 
 a subject which has always had a curious interest for my 
 mind — humanity's worship of evil as represented by 
 devil-dancing and other perversions of the religious con- 
 science. 
 
 To reach Trivandrum, chief city of Travancore, an in- 
 dependent state in Southern India, we journeyed by train 
 to Quilon, climbing into the tall mountains where ele- 
 phants, tigers, sambur, and other creatures of the jungle 
 range through a forest of dense and far-spreading 
 beauty. We descended in many sweeping circles, 
 through the rich splendours of sunset, to sea-level on the 
 other side, and thus on to the end of the railway journey. 
 It was eight o'clock in the evening when our train stopped 
 at Quilon. The platform of the station was thronged by 
 a multitude of half-naked, chocolate-coloured natives. 
 Through this loud-chattering mass of people we made our 
 way to the refreshment room, ate our dinner, and a few 
 minutes before nine set out to walk through the town of 
 Quilon to the boats which were to carry us through the 
 night on the backwaters of Travancore to the capital city 
 of Trivandrum. 
 
 The moon was shining above the palm-trees, and ex- 
 
 59 
 
6o OTHER SHEEP 
 
 cept for the circle dazzled by her radiance, the sky was 
 studded with stars which burned, twinkled, and glittered 
 with an indescribable magnificence. The dark, myste- 
 rious, and tree-shaded streets of Quilon were crowded 
 with barefoot natives who passed us by as silently as 
 ghosts or approached us out of the shadows with the 
 suddenness of apparitions. The houses in the streets 
 showed no lights till we reached the market, where a row 
 of stalls glowed with a soft yellow brightness and a little 
 pandal, an open erection of bamboo and leaves, set up for 
 the celebration of a Muhamadan festival called Mohur- 
 rum, occupied a garish corner and shone with all the 
 momentary and tinsel vivacity of an English fair. For 
 a few moments we were surrounded by a gaping mob who 
 eyed us with consuming interest, and whispered among 
 themselves as to this sudden appearance of two English- 
 men in their midst. A couple of rickshaws followed us 
 into the gloom of the trees, the men in the shafts sound- 
 ing their spring bells and inviting us to ride. 
 
 We came presently to the backwaters. Steps dug in 
 the banks led us down to the Indian country passage- 
 boats, called vullums. These strange vessels resemble the 
 gondola of Venice, but without the tourist note. They 
 are long and narrow, with a slightly raised prow, carved 
 into some unintelligible design. The timbers are not 
 nailed together, but sewn with cohair and made water- 
 tight with fish-oil. The middle is roofed with palm leaves 
 laced and woven into a rounded framework of bamboo. 
 Part of this roof is movable, and can be pushed back to 
 leave an open space in the centre. The floor is covered 
 with matting, on which a bed can be made at either end. 
 The crew, for a long journey, consists of four natives, 
 
TWO PANDALS 6i 
 
 two in the bows, and two in the stern. They shove the 
 boats along with bamboo poles in shallow water, and row 
 it with long oars ending in a small spoon-shaped blade 
 when they enter the lakes. At intervals they are relieved 
 by fresh men from the scattered villages along the banks. 
 These men are good-looking, chocolate-coloured, black- 
 haired people, having abrupt features, a protruding lower 
 lip, fine eyes, and bodies as thin and wiry as a vigorous 
 English boy. 
 
 I am still haunted by the memory of that night journey 
 through the backwaters of Travancore. Although the 
 sea was almost within a stone' s-throw, and although the 
 backwaters are tidal and salt, there was no sense of the 
 ocean in the air, no sound of its unrest through the trees, 
 and no touch of its vastness in the long, narrow line of 
 water stretching before us through the trees. The silence 
 was that of primeval forest. The scents were inland and 
 tropical. The peace was immemorial and eternal. The 
 air which came to one with the movement of the boat was 
 warm and soft and caressing, like the breath of a sleeping 
 , child. 
 
 On either bank, tall and graceful palm-trees crowded in 
 a density through which neither star-shine nor moon- 
 light couH make a glimmer. The trunks of those nearest 
 to us leaned with a tired languor towards the water, and 
 their heavy branches of burnished green drooped down- 
 wards, tired and depressed, as though weighted by the 
 moonlight, burning on their outer plumes. High over- 
 head, in central heaven, the full moon, double-ringed 
 with orange fire, veiled the blinding brightness of her 
 beauty and poured upon the aisle of water, not shafts 
 of lidless light, but slumbrous dust of silver — a falling 
 
62 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 mist of clouded radiance which was like an opiate to the 
 senses. 
 
 Every now and then we saw on the banks mud huts 
 roofed with palm-leaves, and heard a woman crooning 
 to her child. The rhythmic sound of the poles, first strik- 
 ing the water and, after the shove, rising with a dripping 
 noise to the moonlight, came to our ears with the calls of 
 birds disturbed in the forest. We heard, too, the monot- 
 onous sound of bare feet in the prow and in the stern, as 
 the punters moved backwards and forwards at their work. 
 
 I watched the stars and gave myself up to the breathing 
 charm of the forest, till my senses were drowned in sleep. 
 Under a canopy of palm-leaves, my head resting on a pil- 
 low, my body covered by a sheet, I fell into as calm 
 and blissful a sleep as the serenity of stars ever gave to 
 mortal man. But only for a brief space did I lose myself 
 in this deep slumber. I woke to the discordance of hell. 
 Shouts, yells, screams filled my ears. I raised my head 
 and looked out. The forest had disappeared. There 
 was neither moon nor stars. All was darkness — a pitchy 
 blackness which hid everything from the eyes and closed 
 about one like a muffling cloak. I felt the boat moving 
 forward at a furious speed, but could see no water. I 
 knew that the natives were pressing on their poles, but 
 could hear no sound of their pattering feet. Clamour and 
 darkness were all I could comprehend. Then a light 
 flashed at me — close to the edge of the boat. 
 
 We were passing through a long tunnel in the moun- 
 tains, and the shouting noise came from the natives at 
 cither end of our long craft. They Avere making pande- 
 monium to drive away, or at any rate to keep at arm's 
 length, the devils supposed to haunt the interior darkness 
 
TWO PANDALS 63 
 
 of the earth. A drizzle of water dripped from the curved 
 roof of the tunnel. Lamps were burning dimly in the 
 walls at far distances. 
 
 Soon I relapsed into the deliciousness of my former 
 oblivion, and when I next opened my eyes it was a few 
 minutes before the dawn. At the end of the green arcade 
 of water and trees, the sky was ribbed with bars of grey 
 cloud edged with scarlet flame ; beneath this grating was a 
 flare of liquid yellow: above it the sunless sky was the 
 softest of pale blues. As we looked, the grey bars of 
 clouds thinned into flecks of fire which rose and presently 
 floated away like a flock of birds. The green lines of 
 palm-trees began to dazzle the eyes ; the liquid yellow of 
 the distant horizon became so radiant that it hurt the 
 gaze ; and then out of the water flooding with fire rose the 
 red rim of the sun and throbbed and blinked and pulsated 
 till distance glowed like molten gold and the whole earth 
 became conscious of heat. 
 
 The crew were laughing at their work. Their thin 
 arms as they lifted the poles shone with sweat, their legs 
 as they walked forward and pushed off with one foot 
 from the curved prow ran with moisture, their chocolate- 
 coloured backs bending and straining, every muscle visible 
 and hard, glittered with a dew of toil. Their faces were 
 as wet as if they had been plunged into water. In a lan- 
 guage of guttural velocity they called to each other, and 
 laughed across their faces, showing teeth as white as the 
 flesh of coco-nuts. The palms of their hands and the 
 soles of their feet were as pale as a European's. 
 
 In issuing from the canals and passing across the lakes 
 we had glimpses of natives working in the rice-fields — 
 little armies of black men and women almost as naked as 
 
64 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 on the day they were born. The air was now filled with 
 the song of birds. Dragon-flies of brilliant colour flashed 
 past us with a buzz. On either side were gorgeous flow- 
 ers and the rich leafage of croton plants. The colours of 
 the rainbow glowed at us from the wings of birds and 
 butterflies. . . . 
 
 Before noon we reached Trivandrum and disembarked 
 at a landing-stage crowded with natives. We left our 
 servant to bring on the luggage, and set out in a gharry 
 for the Travellers' Bungalow. 
 
 Trivandrum is a city which is never seen. No one has 
 set eyes upon it. From the Maharajah in his palace and 
 the able representative of Great Britain at the Residency, 
 down to the oldest coolie and the most ancient harridan 
 among the outcast sweepers, no one has beheld Trivan- 
 drum. For this mighty city, with thousands of inhabi- 
 tants, has been built into a forest so vast as to hide it, 
 and so undulating as to separate it into hundreds of scat- 
 tered fragments. Red roads, soft and dusty, wind 
 through the forest; and as one drives along, a church or 
 a bungalow appears for a moment and then as suddenly 
 disappears ; a line of mud huts wedged between the trees 
 scarcely discloses itself as a native street, so dense is the 
 gloom, so subdued the colour of the huts ; a clearing made 
 in the trees for a palace or a mansion seems like a trivial 
 vista in the midst of an everlasting jungle of immemorial 
 trees. 
 
 The Travellers' Bungalow is said to be one of the very 
 best of these Governmental rest-houses in India. The 
 secret is that sometimes it is used for an overflow of 
 guests from the British Residency. The rooms are 
 large and lofty ; the furniture is good and cool ; the serv- 
 
TWO PANDALS 65 
 
 ice is excellent; and the food eatable. It is a beautiful 
 low building, with a red-tiled roof, a portico hung with 
 cool ferns in the centre of the veranda, and a pleasant, if 
 dusty garden, where the sun beats upon hundreds of 
 flowers and the crows ceaselessly caw from the surround- 
 ing trees which shut it in and altogether isolate it from 
 the rest of Trivandrum. 
 
 That evening we made the acquaintance of an Eng- 
 lishman on the veranda, and after smoking a cigar with 
 him, strolled, at his suggestion, through the garden and 
 out into the moonlighted road, to visit a neighbouring 
 pandal across the road, in which was being celebrated 
 the festival of Mohurrum. Our presence in the 
 group of Mussulmans occasioned some surprise, but the 
 crowd parted for us, a lounging figure in white, with a 
 fez on his black head, rose hurriedly to greet us with a 
 smiling courtesy, and we were conducted to the chief 
 seats in front of the garish pandal and offered cigarettes 
 and cigars. This pandal, which had a kind of altar or 
 shrine at the back, before which food was placed for the 
 Prophet, was decorated with tinsel stars, Japanese lan- 
 terns, paper flags of various colours, and branches of 
 palm. 
 
 It was a scene most picturesque and Asian. The 
 ground in front of us was occupied by squatting figures 
 in various coloured dresses and turbans and loin cloths; 
 a large Punch and Judy box faced us in the distance, 
 occupied by two men with a little girl in the centre, 
 motionless, and whitened. Men dressed as women and 
 animals danced and joked and clowned in the little space 
 immediately before our chairs. At every ten minutes 
 or so, the tom-tom was banged monotonously and the 
 
66 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 whole company brake into a nasal drone which deafened 
 the ears and made discord of peace and mind. 
 
 From first to last this religious festival was prurient 
 and suggestive, everything turning upon sexualism. 
 Certain things that I saw cannot be written, but on the 
 whole the immorality was rather that of corrupted chil- 
 dren than the abhorrent bestiality of depraved minds. 
 It was rather jaded iniquity than determined depravity. 
 Again and again I found myself regarding the people as 
 children, and in their simple smiling faces and the almost 
 listless character of their attention, I saw that one should 
 feel pity for them, and not judge them as men before 
 whom a choice has been presented and who have elected 
 for iniquity. They were beating the tom-tom, singing 
 their songs, and dancing their wriggling dances till three 
 o'clock in the morning. 
 
 I have mentioned this trivial incident as a contrast to 
 what follows, as a contrast which should bring home to 
 the least imaginative of readers the immense difference 
 between the mind of Christ and the mind of Asia. 
 
 On the day following our arrival in Trivandrum we 
 were invited by Fakir Singh to attend an afternoon meet- 
 ing in the compound of the Salvation Army's Girls' 
 School, where another and far bigger pandal had been 
 set up, but for a very different purpose. Of all the sights 
 I saw in India, this was one that made the most instant 
 impression. When we arrived, we found the trees sur- 
 rounding the sun-flooded compound filled in all their 
 branches with men and boys; the great space of the com- 
 pound in front of the pandal entirely occupied by a dense 
 multitude of men and women; the pandal itself filled 
 from end to end with boys and girls ; and the veranda of 
 
TWO PANDALS 67 
 
 the school packed with high-caste natives, officers of the 
 army, and European residents interested in the amazing 
 work of the Salvation Army. It was one of the most 
 striking congregations I have ever seen. And all those 
 squatting thousands on the ground surrounding the pan- 
 dal, all those bird-like figures loading the trees, all that 
 mass of black-faced and solemn-eyed humanity packed 
 so tightly and sitting so patiently, had come into Trivan- 
 drum from the neighbouring villages, some of them 
 twenty-five and thirty miles away, to hear the story of 
 that Divine Man whose Personality has revolutionized 
 the other side of the world. They had brought their 
 food with them ; they had slept under the trees or in their 
 bullock-carts on the way, and to-night, after the long 
 entertainment had come to an end they would stretch 
 their rolls of matting on the ground where they were now 
 sitting, and sleep till the dawn. 
 
 These villagers were in some cases the laity of the 
 Salvation Army, in some cases inquirers, and in some 
 cases waverers not yet wholly persuaded to abandon their 
 gods of terror and give themselves to a God perfectly 
 pure, perfectly holy, and perfectly kind. They had been 
 sought in their distant villages by officers of the Army, 
 and for a year at least many of them had gathered to- 
 gether to hear the Bible read and listen to the preachers 
 of Christ. 
 
 The first part of the afternoon's programme was given 
 to the children. We heard the boys' band playing such 
 music as tom-tom and bamboo-reed can never make — 
 glad music, and strong music, music to which men can 
 march with their heads upright, a music made for 
 triumph and unconquerable hope. To teach these boys 
 
68 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 any music at all is something of a victory, but to teach 
 them such music as we heard, and to teach them to play 
 it so accurately and with such a swing in its joy — this 
 is achievement of a notable kind. And the music had 
 passed into the souls of the boys. Instead of slouching 
 bodies, they stood upright and strong; instead of matted 
 or twisted hair, their heads were as neat and brushed as 
 a British soldier's; instead of scowling looks and heavy 
 sensualism, their faces were bright with intelligence and 
 glad with health. It seemed an illusion that these hand- 
 some and smart boys could be the sons of the crouching 
 villagers massed together in the dust of the compound. 
 
 We saw a company of girls in pretty frocks perform 
 a drill with their coloured scarves. We heard them 
 sing. We heard them recite. We saw them act. 
 From beginning to end, only a little nervousness marred 
 the performance of these childish minds awaking to intel- 
 ligence. They looked so pretty and charming, they were 
 so kempt and self-respecting, there was such under- 
 standing in their eyes and in the smiling curves of their 
 lips, that one had constantly to remind oneself that these 
 were the children of heathen villagers, so profoundly 
 ignorant and so disastrously superstitious that they can 
 almost be described as savages. ^ 
 
 But the first note of definite religious interest came 
 when Fakir Singh, Commissioner for the Salvation 
 Army in India, rose to address the multitude. He 
 
 1 For five shillings a month the Salvation Army can feed, clothe, 
 and teach a child in its excellent schools. It is only lack of money 
 which keeps a host of children outside those crowded doors. I 
 looked at the savage children and I looked at the children of the 
 Army, and- felt how hard it was that the one should be blessed and 
 the other cursed. 
 
TWO PANDALS 69 
 
 began by saying that everybody there had at least heard 
 about Jesus, that they all knew what Jesus asked human- 
 ity to become, and that the One True God Who is the 
 Father of humanity only asks His children to conquer 
 their sins in order that they may be everlastingly happy 
 as pure angels in a beautiful heaven. I watched the 
 faces of the multitude. Heads were bent forward to 
 hear, in all those thousands of eyes there was intensity 
 of interest, in not one single face did I see self -conscious- 
 ness, stupidity, or an inclination to smile. Men and 
 women, young men and young girls — the whole vast 
 multitude, listened with a rapt attention. They were 
 like enthralled children listening to a story. 
 
 Then came a dramatic incident. Suddenly in the 
 midst of his simple talk the Fakir asked how many of 
 the people who had heard about Jesus wanted to con- 
 quer their sins and to become gentle and kind, pure and 
 virtuous, good and holy. In a second the air was filled 
 with lifted arms. I do not think there was a single 
 person in all that large gathering who did not lift an 
 arm to heaven. 
 
 " Those hands of yours," said the Fakir, his eyes shin- 
 ing and his voice very quiet and earnest, " are prayers. 
 Your Father sees them and understands. He beholds 
 you with a tender and compassionate love. He knows 
 your hearts — your hearts which are hidden from all 
 the world. According to your sincerity He will answer 
 your prayer. And now let us bow our heads, and fold 
 our hands, and pray to Him in silence." 
 
 It was an unforgettable sight. The faces which a 
 moment before had been raised to the speaker — faces 
 of men, many of them, expressing every degree of sav- 
 
yo OTHER SHEEP 
 
 agery and woe, bestiality and suffering: faces of women 
 strangely beautiful and yet marred by a frowning dis- 
 content or a heavy animalism — became suddenly bowed 
 and hidden. The compound was filled with silence. Not 
 a finger was moved. Not a robe stirred. The multi- 
 tude was motionless. And the sun beat down through 
 the trees on this field of humanity lifting its soul to God. 
 One realized at that moment how frightful is the 
 penalty of sin, and how immediate the appeal of Christ 
 to the human soul once definitely conscious of its misery. 
 Many of these villagers who have hitherto followed their 
 natural inclinations all the days of their lives, who have 
 ever felt the world to be simple animalism, and the uni- 
 verse filled with gods as lustful and bestial as themselves, 
 who can live so easily and with so little dread, who are 
 surrounded by nature's most lovely manifestations, and 
 enjoy a climate which is summer almost from year's 
 end to year's end — are wretched and unhappy, are 
 conscious of something wrong in life, are aware of 
 something inexpressible and undefined which disquiets 
 and hurts their hearts. And immediately they hear the 
 simple story of the Christ, they feel the sun shine into 
 the darkness of their souls and an answering response 
 stirring in the depths of their hearts. They do not say, 
 Is it true? They do not dispute and contend. They 
 set no casuistry of the mind between their souls and the 
 great joy coming to them out of the new heavens. They 
 only know that it is restful and sweet to lay the burden 
 of their long misery at the feet of One Who is sinless 
 and compassionate, human and Divine : that to set them- 
 selves for the sake of this adorable Person to be better, 
 presents a goal which more really and worthily fills and 
 
TWO PANDALS 71 
 
 widens the horizon of their lives than the labour of the 
 fields; and that to contemplate God as a Father Who 
 cares for them, and, because He cares for them, is seek- 
 ing to fit them for higher joys and purer heights of 
 being than anything they can imagine or dream, makes 
 of existence at one stroke a rational and a glorious op- 
 portunity. 
 
 These villagers had streamed into the town of Tri- 
 vandrum, not so much to see their children performing 
 in the afternoon, as to hear in the evening once more, 
 and this time in a new way, the story of Christ. Offi- 
 cers of the Salvation Army had visited them in their 
 houses, had held meetings in their villages, and had read 
 to them from the New Testament the story of Christ; 
 but now they were actually to see with their eyes what 
 hitherto they had heard with their ears. 
 
 In the evening the compound was more densely 
 crowded than in the afternoon. At least five thousand 
 people — probably many more — were sitting on the 
 ground under the stars, fathers and sons, mothers and 
 daughters, brothers and sisters — a dense swarm of 
 black-faced and almost naked humanity, whose eyes re- 
 flected the moonlight and whose white turbans and loin 
 cloths shone like the cerements of a graveyard wak- 
 ened to immortality. Only a few lamps were burning. 
 The interior of the pandal was occupied at the back by 
 a white sheet. In the centre of the multitude was an 
 ofificer of the Army with a magic lantern. When the 
 lights were put out, and the people had stmg a hymn, 
 one could still see the glitter of eyes and the shine of dark 
 skins in the moonlight. 
 
 It was very striking to observe the effect made upon 
 
72 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 these awaking savages by the picture of General Booth 
 when it appeared upon the sheet. There was a cry of 
 admiration and love, hands were clapped with an aban- 
 donment to enthusiasm, and then a shout of acclaim 
 rose from all the host. One thought of the humble work 
 begun in East London only a few years ago by a Not- 
 tingham preacher, and reminded oneself of the fame of 
 this old man, not only in the distant forest of Southern 
 India, but all over the wide world and among all the 
 various races of humanity. 
 
 There were other pictures : and then came the Life of 
 Christ, told by paintings and moving-pictures. As one 
 followed the simple story, through all the beauty of its 
 earlier incidents to the culminating tragedy which has 
 changed the heart of the human race and given a new 
 heaven to the soul of man, one perceived how infinitely 
 higher and more compelling, how infinitely more human 
 and Divine, how infinitely simpler and appealing is the 
 religion of Christ than all the perversions of religion 
 which have nailed the soul of Asia to the rock of suf- 
 fering and sin. They cannot be compared. Hinduism 
 is not another path to God; it is a pit of abomination 
 as far set from God as the mind of man can go. It 
 is not the Bread of Life, but the Dead Sea fruit of 
 bitterness and death. It is not hope, but despair. It 
 is not effort, but surrender. It is not attainment, but 
 defeat. 
 
 When the story had been told, a lamp was brought 
 into the pandal, and the Fakir stood up and appealed to 
 those whose hearts had been touched and searched by 
 the pictures, that very night to come out and make peti- 
 tion to heaven for its mercy and its love. He spoke in 
 
TWO PANDALS 73 
 
 simple language, making use of parables which a child 
 might understand, and set himself to awaken in the mul- 
 titude a desire for goodness and a longing for peace of 
 heart. Nothing could have been more simple, more 
 quiet, more true. It was the Christianity of the Mount 
 of Olives. 
 
 For a moment or two after his appeal there was 
 silence, breathless and nervous. He made a second 
 appeal, saying, " Who will be the first to come out and 
 ask God to forgive his sins ? " A young man rose from 
 the midst of the sitting multitude, and made his difficult 
 way to the pandal. He was clothed in a white turban and 
 a white loin cloth, with a shoulder cloth of white hang- 
 ing at one side of his body. He was tall, good-looking 
 and of great strength. There was a sulky nobility in his 
 eyes and an obstinate resolution in his strong lips. He 
 looked neither to the right nor to the left. His head was 
 a little bowed. His arms moved gracefully at his sides. 
 The light of the lamp shone in his eyes and the light 
 of the moon on his black shoulders and neck. He was 
 like a shepherd. 
 
 Others followed his example. One saw officers of 
 the Salvation Army, Indians and Europeans, moving 
 among the seated thousands, and bending down to 
 speak to them. In the meantime the wide and spacious 
 pandal was crowded with kneeling figures. Women and 
 girls congregated together, and women of the Salva- 
 tion Army kneeled at their sides, mothering them, and 
 encouraging their prayers. Men formed by far the 
 greater number of kneeling figures, most of them young 
 men between twenty and thirty years of age. They 
 kneeled in the dust, their hands at their sides, their eyes 
 
74 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 opened, their heads slightly raised — figures so still that 
 they might have been carved in ebony. 
 
 There was now a ceaseless stream of men and women 
 into the pandal. The seriousness of the procession, and 
 the solemnity of the kneeling multitude, made a pro- 
 found impression. Presently, encouraged by the Fakir, 
 who moved amongst them praying and blessing them, 
 the whole kneeling company began to pray aloud. The 
 noise of those deep voices filled the night. Each man 
 prayed his own prayer, uttered his own longings, ex- 
 pressed his own needs. In a low monotone, rising to 
 an almost ringing earnestness, thousands of Tamils and 
 Malayalis lifted their voices to the Father of humanity, 
 while the hundreds in the pandal besought Him to for- 
 give their sins, to heal their wretchedness, and to accept 
 them as His children. 
 
 Imagine the scene. As far as eye could see, stretch- 
 ing out into the glimmering moonlight of an Eastern 
 garden, there were thousands of half-naked people sit- 
 ting and standing on the ground, hunched up on the 
 boughs of trees, packed shoulder to shoulder on the walls. 
 Under a great open tent of palm-leaves, where a lamp 
 was burning and unlighted paper lanterns were hanging 
 from the branches, hundreds of men and women were 
 kneeling and praying to God, with white and black 
 officers, of the Salvation Army moving in and out 
 among them. Those officers represented many nations : 
 among them were a Brahman, a Singhalese, a Malayali, 
 a Tamil, a German, a Norwegian, a Swede, an Austra- 
 lian, an Englishman, and a Scot. All were praying. 
 The voices of these various nationalities rose in the air 
 with a cry inspired by love for a sinless Ideal, with a 
 
TWO PANDALS 75 
 
 passion and a longing uttered from the need of their 
 common humanity; and all these separate voices and 
 different words rose in a perfect unison, like the prayer 
 of a single family under their father's roof. One felt 
 that the unity of nations is not a dream, but one of the 
 very first and most certain results of a catholic Chris- 
 tianity. The kneeling host, the rolling thunder of their 
 supplication, the moonlight, the solemn stillness of the 
 trees, the reverence and quiet of the watching multitude, 
 and those servants of God drawn to India out of all the 
 nations of the earth moving to and fro in the midst of 
 them — one felt at that moment the passion of religion 
 and the Fatherhood of God. 
 
 I can still see those kneeling Children of India. I 
 can still see the disciples of Christ moving amongst 
 them. I can still feel the soft and scented air of that 
 Eastern night, and see the moonlight shining on the 
 white garments of the watching multitude. And I can 
 still hear, as though it were an organ in the next room, 
 the mighty sound of those many voices rolling up to 
 their new heaven and making appeal to their new God 
 and their first Father in heaven. As I recall that 
 scene, I see the sensual grins and jaded eyes of the poor 
 Mussulmans round their street-corner pandal in honour 
 of Mohurrum. 
 
 An hour after this wonderful experience, I was talk- 
 ing to a man who had been devil-possessed for many 
 years, and whose remarkable story appears in the next 
 chapter. When I parted with him and issued from the 
 interior of the school premises, I found the veranda 
 occupied by women sleeping on mats and the whole 
 wide garden strewn with sleeping figures. In the 
 
■jd OTHER SHEEP 
 
 moonlight, surrounded by the tall trunks of palmyra and 
 coco-nut palms, and by the interwoven branches of flower- 
 ing shrubs and scented trees, the spectacle was one of 
 singular beauty and a most gracious appeal. Those 
 tired sleepers, sleeping in the dust of the garden, had 
 come many miles through the hills and the forest to hear 
 the story of Christ; the bullocks and carts of some of 
 them were visible in the shadows; the sound of their 
 breathing was like the noise of a summer sea ; before the 
 dawn they would be moving with their wives and fam- 
 ilies back through the jungle, and back over the hills, 
 to the mud huts of their distant villages. Some of them 
 that very night had " found Christ." Some of them 
 were sleeping with a new peace in their hearts and a new 
 joy in their souls. All of them, perhaps, had drawn at 
 least a little closer to the Light of the World. 
 
 It was like a scene from the Bible. The heaviness of 
 the languorous leafage, the softness of the air, the ex- 
 treme brightness of the moon, and the grinding splen- 
 dour of the stars — these, and the breathing multitude 
 hooded and wrapped in white garments, lying at full 
 length on the ground, so silent and so still, filling the 
 whole garden with the sense of human weariness and 
 heavenly care — touched the mind with thoughts of 
 those who had crossed the hills of Galilee two thousand 
 years ago on a like errand. 
 
 One walked softly through that garden, not for fear 
 of awaking the sleepers, but out of reverence for the 
 hush which brooded there like the blessing of God. 
 
THEi DEVIL-DANCER 
 
 He crouched against a wall, one leg under him, an elbow 
 resting on the upraised knee of the other leg, with the 
 hand pressed against his face. He was naked except 
 for a sack-coloured shoulder cloth and a grey cover- 
 ing about his loins. His skin was a dusk-deadened cop- 
 per. His black hair stood out from the sides of his 
 head and rose in tangled confusion from his brow. The 
 dark eyebrows pressed upon the lids of long and watch- 
 ful eyes which were full of serious brightness. The 
 upper lip was shaded by a line of smooth hair. The 
 mouth was sullen and threatening; when he spoke the 
 lips opened quickly and wide, showing teeth which had 
 been filed to tigerish sharp points. Across the prominent 
 cheek bones the face was broad and vigorous; at the 
 chin it was pointed and peevish. I have seen few ani- 
 mals so naked of dignity and repose, and no human being 
 outside of a madhouse so unalterably marked with mental 
 anguish. 
 
 I sat on a chair in front of him, and at his side knelt 
 an Indian officer of the Salvation Army, able to speak 
 the man's difficult dialect, who acted as interpreter. 
 While I was speaking the crouching Malayali regarded 
 me with a look of watchful fear ; when my question was 
 interpreted he turned his head to the Salvationist and 
 spoke rapidly, in a voice of eager anxiety, using few 
 gestures with his arms, but those fine and commanding, 
 
 77 
 
78 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 often rolling- his head from side to side in distress at not 
 making himself understood, or raising his eyes to the 
 roof of the veranda under which he was crouching with 
 a look of most eloquent faith and joy in God — a small, 
 animal-like human being, with dawning intelligence and 
 exhausted misery in his eyes, and the beginnings of a 
 new philosophy in his just awakened soul. 
 
 He lived in a distant village in Southern India where 
 for many centuries the people have offered propitiatory 
 worship to a particularly odious devil. His father was 
 a devil-possessed man who lived by using his power to 
 exorcise from others devils less powerful than those 
 which tormented him. The faith of the village did not 
 trouble itself with gods, good or immoral. The people 
 believed in a power of evil definitely and eternally 
 arrayed against them. To offer sacrifices and perform 
 ceremonies which would placate this afflicting devil 
 seemed to them obviously more rational than to suppli- 
 cate any god whose beneficent qualities surely guaran- 
 teed them against the possibility of attack from that 
 quarter. 
 
 The dancer's father may be described as a priest of 
 this devil-worship. He was not only the most powerful 
 exorciser of devils, he was not only a seeker of favours 
 from his devil, but he had definitely made a compact 
 with this devil to serve him on earth and in the worlds 
 beyond. In some dreadful and unrecorded moment of 
 his tortured life this man of the jungle and the moun- 
 tains had sold his soul to that power of evil in the uni- 
 verse which seemed to him the master of his fate. 
 Henceforth, a freeman of hell, he offered sacrifices in 
 a devil grove, and went about the villages earning money 
 
THE DEVIL-DANCER 79 
 
 for the arrack he drank day and night by casting out 
 devils and praying for favours and mercy to the chief 
 of the devils in the name of those troubled with sick- 
 ness, calamity, and fear. 
 
 The boy was twelve years of age when his father was 
 stricken with illness. He was a normal boy of the vil- 
 lage, quick and vivacious, but as heathen and ignorant 
 as all the rest of his community. Up till that time he 
 had little troubled his head about devils, beyond taking 
 care never to go out after dark and always to avoid such 
 places as burying grounds, where a great number of 
 devils were known to have their dwelling. But now 
 he had a new-birth and experienced a perverted con- 
 version, terrible in the consequences. The father was 
 raving and gnashing his teeth on his deathbed. The 
 family stood round the writhing figure, regarding it with 
 consternation. Suddenly the father started up, and seiz- 
 ing his son by the long hair of his head, dragged the boy 
 down to him, and rubbing ashes upon his head cried in 
 a loud voice, " Promise me to serve the devil — promise 
 me, promise me ! " Then, loosing the child, he spread 
 his arms to the group of his wife and children, and im- 
 plored them with his last breath to yield their souls to 
 the devil. His last words were, " Serve the devil." 
 
 For three or four days nothing occurred. The life 
 of the family went on as usual. The death of the devil- 
 possessed father seemed to make no difference in its for- 
 tunes. There was the same poverty, the same frugality, 
 the same misery, and the same monotony of labour. But 
 one night as the eldest son lay on his ragged mat wait- 
 ing for sleep, he felt himself suddenly stricken with a 
 deadly cold which convulsed all his limbs and shook him 
 
8o OTHER SHEEP 
 
 with so great a trembling that the teeth rattled and 
 gridded in his mouth. He says that he saw nothing, 
 but that he felt the approach of a devil. He was power- 
 less to scream, powerless to ward off the attack. He 
 lay in a breathless and palsy-stricken terror. Then, as 
 if a cloud had swallowed him up, he felt his body occu- 
 pied by something not himself, . became aware of an 
 overshadowing and masterful spirit sitting in the tene- 
 ment of his body and taking absolute possession of his 
 will. 
 
 He became unconscious. Early in the morning he 
 awoke, and leaving his house plunged into the jungle 
 and ascended the mountains. He does not know why 
 he sought this solitude, he cannot tell why he was not 
 afraid of beasts and evil spirits; driven into the wilder- 
 ness by the demon possessing him, he simply went on 
 and on, a leaf blown by the wind, a spar swept by the 
 waves, a soul bereft of volition and the power of deter- 
 mination. 
 
 He threw himself down from heights. He felt him- 
 self lifted off his feet into the air. He beat himself with 
 stones, tore out his hair, and scratched his flesh with 
 his nails till it was wet with blood. The night came and 
 he was not afraid. Without sleep and without fatigue, 
 he wandered hither and thither, wailing and groaning, 
 shouting and singing, laughing and crying. He was 
 conscious neither of hunger nor thirst. The hot sun 
 blazed down upon his unprotected head, and he sought 
 no shade. His body became burned with the heat, and 
 he sought no water. With a consciousness which 
 seemed to be drowning, suffocating, and expiring, he 
 felt himself swept forward by the devil possessing him, 
 
THE DEVIL-DANCER 8i 
 
 and had neither the will nor the wish to fight for his 
 safety. 
 
 How long he remained in the jungle on that occasion 
 he does not remember. He returned eventually to his 
 home and found that his fame was established as a devil- 
 possessed boy. He explains that his devil was heredi- 
 tary; that as far as memory could reach members of his 
 family had been possessed by spirits; that at the death 
 of the father the eldest son always inherited the family's 
 devil. Every one in the village, and in some of the 
 neighbouring villages, recognized his devil as the one 
 which had possessed the father. He was called on to 
 exorcise devils, and was given gifts of rice for his serv- 
 ices. 
 
 Up till the moment of his possession he had been a 
 good boy. He had been, that is to say, perfectly moral 
 and obedient. He is quite certain on this point. And 
 he is also quite certain that from the moment of his pos- 
 session he became one of the greatest scoundrels in that 
 neighbourhood. He became sexually vile and dreadful. 
 He craved for the disgusting spirit called arrack. He 
 loved to eat and rub himself with filthy things. It gave 
 him, not pain, but positive pleasure, to stab and slash 
 himself with a knife. His arms are yet rutted with 
 gashes and his neck pitted with the marks of his stab- 
 bings. He could handle fire, and would rub it on his 
 head and body without being either blistered or hurt. 
 He could put himself into a terrible frenzy and perform 
 in this state acts of strength and daring which sent his 
 fame into all the countryside. He told us what were 
 the signs of his devil's activity and frenzies. He would 
 begin to spit blood, then he would be shaken with a 
 
82 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 palsy, then his senses would become jumbled, muddled, 
 and covered with a muffling obscurity, and for one night 
 every bone in his body would ache as though he had 
 been beaten by many clubs. After that he was pos- 
 sessed and swept forward for days and weeks by the devil 
 possessing him. 
 
 He never saw his devil, or any other devil; but he 
 described with a wonderful quickness of gesture and a 
 sudden flashing of the eyes what he has seen in the 
 darkness of the night and the solitude of the jungle. 
 Light has flashed at him from two sides, flashed with 
 incredible swiftness, as if two fingers of flame sprang 
 upon each other and vanished in the ferocity of their 
 collision ; then straight in front of him, a little above the 
 level of his eyes, he has seen a creature like a cat spin- 
 ning round and round in a rush so electric that it has 
 made a circle of light about it in the darkness; and he 
 has felt monkeys brushing past him and then has seen 
 them disappear into nothingness. 
 
 Like his father he dedicated himself to the devil — 
 definitely elected to serve Evil. He became as really 
 possessed by evil spirits as saints have been possessed by 
 the Spirit of God. All his experiences are a perversion 
 of those recorded by holy men and pure women in the 
 literature of Christianity. 
 
 On one occasion he spent seven days and nights with- 
 out nourishment of any kind, committing excesses of 
 indescribable horror in gravej^ards and wandering 
 through the darkest and most dangerous parts of the 
 jungle. 
 
 He became the most celebrated devil-possessed man 
 for many miles around his village. He was regarded 
 
THE DEVIL-DANCER 83 
 
 with reverence and dread. A man gave him his daugh- 
 ter in marriage, and this woman worshipped the devil. 
 People of high caste sent for him to cure them of sick- 
 ness or to offer sacrifices to the devil in times of plague 
 or famine. On one occasion a Sudra family — that is 
 to say, a high-caste family — sent for him to cast out 
 a demon afflicting one of its young women. This 
 demon, known as Rectasorie, or blood devil, tore the 
 girl till she was dabbled all over with blood. The devil- 
 dancer remained with her for seven days, wrestling 
 ceaselessly with that devil, and finally cast it out. The 
 girl was completely restored. The act was commemo- 
 rated by a silver medal which the Sudra himself hung 
 round the dancer's neck, placing at the same time seven 
 rupees in his hand — a large sum of money for any vil- 
 lager in India to earn at a single stroke. 
 
 So great was his fame that it checked the work of 
 Christianity in a neighbouring village where the Sal- 
 vation Army had lately planted a local Corps. People 
 challenged the Christians to perform such miracles as 
 this man could do every day of the week. The Ad- 
 jutant was a Malayali, a man converted from the depths 
 of heathenism to the heights of a most beautiful purity. 
 This man, feeling himself unworthy to attempt miracles, 
 set himself to pray for the soul of the devil-dancer. He 
 gave up an entire week to this purpose, and ceaselessly 
 petitioned God all those seven days to give him the soul 
 of the devil-priest. 
 
 The answer to his prayer seemed to be a growing con- 
 viction that he should go to the man and speak to him 
 of Christ. He set out on this errand full of that utter 
 and childlike faith which is the most striking and at- 
 
84 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 tractive feature in the character of an Indian truly and 
 earnestly converted. He went as the first Apostles went 
 on their missions with the good news of a risen Christ. 
 It did not trouble him to think of what he should say; 
 it did not occur to him that his errand was wild and im- 
 possible. Full of quiet joy, conscious of a holy spirit 
 leading him forward, he passed barefoot over the dusty 
 road with the sun shining in his eyes through the leaves 
 and branches of the forest. 
 
 Half-way to the village he encountered the devil-wor- 
 shipper on the road. His heart beat with hope at this 
 coincidence so like an answer to his prayer. He stopped 
 him and invited him to rest under the shade of the trees. 
 The devil-dancer's arms were full of live fowls which he 
 was carrying to a devil's temple. He was meditating 
 on the pleasure of killing these birds and smearing him- 
 self with the hot blood. When the Adjutant learned 
 this business he said, " Brother, do not do this act, but 
 come with me to my village and let me tell you in my 
 house the wonderful story of Jesus, Who has power to 
 save all men and to cast out all devils." 
 
 Greatly wondering, the dancer consented, and the two 
 men set out for the Adjutant's village. On the way the 
 story of Jesus was told to the devil-worshipper. He 
 listened with interest, asked a few questions, and became 
 strangely quiet and tranquil as the journey drew to its 
 end. Once in the house, the Adjutant invited his friend 
 to pray with him. For the first time in his life, the 
 devil-worshipper directed his thoughts to a God of 
 purity and goodness. They prayed together that the 
 devil might be cast out of the dancer, that he might be 
 set free for evermore from the powers of evil, and that 
 
THE DEVIL-DANCER 85 
 
 his heart might become pure. Once and again the man 
 cried out in terror that he could feel the devil coming 
 to take possession of him; the Adjutant answered these 
 cries by bidding him take courage and pray with stronger 
 faith to the great God over Whom neither man nor devil 
 could triumph. " Oh, I fear that the devil is coming ! " 
 cried the man. " No : keep praying to God ; the devil 
 will not come," replied the Adjutant. So they prayed, 
 these two Children of India, in a little mud hut on the 
 southern slopes of the Western Ghats whose palms are 
 stirred by breezes from the sea, prayed to the Father of 
 humanity, to the Jesus of Nazareth, and to the Christ 
 of Calvary, until the sun was hidden and the darkness 
 of evening fell upon the forest. Throughout the day 
 they had prayed, and now at eventide it was well with 
 the man. Suddenly, lifting his head, he cried out in a 
 glad voice — " God has delivered me from the power of 
 the devil ! God has come to me ! I can feel Him in my 
 heart." 
 
 This event took place more than a year ago. For 
 the first two months he was occasionally thrown into a 
 great fear by feeling that the devil was approaching 
 him. Instant and passionate prayer in every case 
 brought immediate relief. He was never once tempted 
 to drink arrack, to commit any hideous acts, or to in- 
 dulge in sexual excesses. And now for ten months he 
 has been unmolested by his devil and wholly happy in 
 his heart and soul. If those who have any knowledge 
 of the biting and fastening effect of hereditary supersti- 
 tion on the mind of the savage and ignorant, will reflect 
 upon this instantaneous change of soul, they will con- 
 fess, whatever their opinion may be as to his possession 
 
86 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 by a devil, that sincere prayer to a good God produces in 
 the heart of a man changes akin to miracle. 
 
 He was twenty-four years of age when the Salva- 
 tionist first spoke to him. He was a man famous in a 
 vast district, able to live without work, enjoying a 
 notoriety which was flattering to his pride, and as ig- 
 norant of God as he was abandoned to loathsome and 
 filthy practices. He is now a man between five-and- 
 six-and-twenty. He lives a life of extreme penury by 
 the toil of field labour, earning a penny or sometimes 
 three half-pence a day. In his spare time he goes among 
 those who formerly feared and respected him, telling 
 them the story of a Christ Who has delivered him from 
 the power of all the devils in hell. He has become 
 singularly sweet and gentle. He is clean in all his 
 habits, and pure even in the thoughts of his heart. By 
 his testimony many people hitherto abandoned to devil- 
 worship and immorality have become converted to 
 Christ. He is something of a saint and is loved by an 
 increasing company of Christians in the hills of Southern 
 India. 
 
 One thing has made a great impression on him. 
 When he was a child he suflfered constantly from sick- 
 ness and disease. When his children were born they, 
 too, suffered in an almost identical fashion. But now, 
 for a whole year, ever since the day of his first prayer 
 to God, those children have been free of sickness and 
 pain, and he himself conscious of a new delight in per- 
 fect health. His eyes smile with joy as he tells of this 
 change. " It is good to believe in God," he says, with 
 a childlike earnestness and simplicity. He told me it 
 never once occurred to him that there was any sin in 
 
THE DEVIL-DANCER 87 
 
 serving the devil, and that never once did the thought of 
 spiritual punishment in the next vi^orld strike his mind 
 with dread. He felt himself to be so entirely at the 
 mercy of an immense power whom it was impossible to 
 resist, that he resigned himself will-less and unthink- 
 ing into the arms of a force too mighty for his opposi- 
 tion and too overshadowing for any thought of a good 
 God to enter his mind. 
 
 Never till the Salvationist met him in the way had he 
 thought of God, felt himself guilty and debased, or ex- 
 perienced the smallest dread of death. 
 
 And now, as I have said, he is something of a saint, 
 is a man of prayer, and a lay missionary, converting the 
 devil-worshippers of his district to the pure and beautiful 
 religion of Jesus Christ. 
 
THE WITCH 
 
 There is a woman in Southern India whose weird ex- 
 perience in demonology helps one in the twentieth cen- 
 tury to understand certain mysterious records in the 
 Old and New Testaments which seem to a superficial 
 judgment quite unreal and wholly unworthy of a serious 
 man's attention. It is certainly a narrative which Mr. 
 Frederic Myers and Professor James would have deemed 
 worthy of a most careful examination. 
 
 The woman of whom I tell lives in a poor and once 
 degraded village inhabited by Mala people, and belongs 
 to one of the very lowest castes. As a child she imag- 
 ined that a Presence was always close at her side, and 
 grew up in the companionship of this mysterious entity, 
 who not only accompanied her into the rice-fields or the 
 jungle, but who sat with her at meals and shared the 
 mat on which she slept in the mud hut of her parents. 
 She talked, without fear and without any sense of the 
 unusual, to this friendly ghost, consulted it, received an- 
 swers from it, and always guided her conduct by its ad- 
 vice. Sometimes she would see it. 
 
 There was nothing dangerous or threatening in this 
 intimacy, and students of psychical science will know 
 that quite healthy European children have imagined for 
 themselves an " invisible playmate " — an unseen com- 
 panion to whom they have talked aloud, and whom they 
 have professed even to see in the shadows of a shrubbery 
 
 88 
 
THE WITCH 89 
 
 or the darkness of a corridor. There was in the present 
 case nothing to mark out the child either as a privileged 
 intimate of demons or as an unbalanced degenerate. 
 She was strong and healthy. She did her work well, 
 and grew up with the ordinary ideas of a village woman. 
 Her parents found no difficulty in getting her a hus- 
 band. She bore children who were physically efficient 
 and managed her household with practical common sense. 
 All this time the familiar spirit was at her side, harm- 
 less, helpful, and never in the way. She often asked his 
 advice about the buffaloes, the crops, and the children. 
 
 At the age of thirty-five she fell suddenly ill. She 
 was seized with a constant and severe vomiting. Her 
 eyesight became dim. People seemed to her blurred and 
 indistinct. She could look without blinking into the 
 face of the midday sun. In this condition, alike puz- 
 zling to herself and to her family, she one day became 
 aware of a greater nearness and a more vital reality in 
 the familiar spirit. Its presence became overwhelmingly 
 close; there was a marked insistence in its haunting. 
 For the first time in her life she became afraid, but felt 
 herself powerless to resist this overshadowing menace. 
 For the first time she was conscious in the friendly 
 ghost of enmity and cruelty. 
 
 One afternoon, as she lay trembling and apprehensive 
 on her mat, the obsessing demon suddenly sprang upon 
 her, entered her body, and took complete possession of 
 her will. This is her own language, as near as I can 
 express it in English; and I would beg the reader to 
 remember that whatever the explanation of the occur- 
 rence may be, to the woman herself it was undoubtedly 
 a case of demon-possession. The critical reader will 
 
90 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 also bear in mind that up to this point the woman was 
 perfectly healthy, that she had borne children, and that 
 she was only five-and-thirty years of age. 
 
 Possessed by her demon, she became either restored 
 to health or quite indifferent to sickness. She was so 
 strange in manner, and so eloquent in her account of 
 the event, that neither her husband nor her neighbours 
 doubted for a moment that she was the privileged and 
 honoured darling of the demons. Her fame spread 
 through the village. People came at first to see her, 
 and then to consult her. She was sent for by those who 
 had illness in their house or who wanted to avert some 
 disaster from their cattle or crops. She enjoyed the 
 power and notoriety of this new position, but from the 
 very first — on this she is entirely clear and convinc- 
 ingly emphatic — she felt unhappy and distressed by the 
 divided occupation of her brain. 
 
 But consider the extraordinary change in her for- 
 tunes. From being an ordinary low-caste woman of 
 the village, who worked for the family, cleaned the brass 
 vessels of the household, moulded cow-dung into fire- 
 cakes, worked in the paddy fields, fetched water from 
 the well, and ground rice in the little hand-mill under 
 the veranda of her house, she became so illustrious and 
 terrible to the whole country round about that Brah- 
 mans, who consider themselves as gods, actually wor- 
 shipped before her, while people of the highest caste 
 would remain for hours prostrate before her house. 
 She was practically deified. And she could gain all the 
 rice and dahl necessary for her family's subsistence 
 merely by surrendering herself to trances and letting 
 the demon say what he could through her lips. She be- 
 
THE WITCH 91 
 
 came what the Bible calls a Witch and what psychical 
 science calls a Medium. 
 
 For six years she enjoyed an unequalled glory in those 
 parts of India as an oracle and a healer. She cured the 
 sick, she raised the ail-but dead, she prevented disaster, 
 and she uttered counsel which brought good-fortune. 
 But all these six years were marked for her by an in- 
 creasing wretchedness of mind and by a disquiet of soul 
 which became at last utterly intolerable. She, the ora- 
 cle and chief power of her village, she, a witch famous 
 in all that part of India, would wander away from her 
 home and seek advice from the most humble and de- 
 graded devil-dancers as to getting rid of her infernal 
 Control. She performed every magic for this purpose, 
 faithfully obeyed a hundred superstitious rites, and by 
 fasting and supplication sought to oust the mastering 
 devil from her body. But in vain. She drove stakes 
 into the ground and made rings about her house, in 
 order that the devil should not be able to reach her; 
 but, so she declares, he would spring upon her from 
 the roof, and getting possession of her, would fling her 
 to the ground and tear her with a ferocious revenge. 
 She was obliged to go where this devil urged her, to 
 do what he commanded, and to say what he said. 
 
 Not very far from her own dwelling was a little village 
 where the Salvation Army had set up its banner of 
 Liberation. She had heard of Christ as " One to Whom 
 people prayed in trouble." She had no further knowl- 
 edge of Christianity, and was entirely unacquainted with 
 the story of Christ's life. He was to her only " one of 
 the gods." 
 
 It occurred to her, in a mood of utter dejection, that 
 
92 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 she should make trial of this new God. She said 
 nothing to her family, but set out one day for the 
 village occupied by the Salvationists. When she ar- 
 rived she found a meeting in progress. She entered the 
 hall, and advanced to the platform. One who was 
 present tells me that the poor miserable woman appeared 
 to be dazed and unconscious, like a sleep-walker, that 
 when she reached the platform she suddenly uttered a 
 scream which was perfectly " soul-thrilling," fell down 
 upon her knees, and seizing the feet of one of the Salva- 
 tionists, held them in a vice of iron and remained in that 
 posture, shaken by a violent convulsion, for fifteen min- 
 utes. 
 
 She was praying, but she does not remember what 
 entreaty left her soul or what happened to her. No 
 one had spoken. Nothing had been preached to touch 
 her heart. No hymn had been sung to open a door for 
 her into the way of peace. But she felt conscious of 
 restoration, of something that gave her freedom, above 
 all things of a new and delicious independence of her 
 demon. The mere prostration before this God who 
 was kind to people in trouble brought her a sense of 
 relief. 
 
 " I was never afraid after that," she declares. " The 
 demon used to come to me, but he did not speak." 
 
 Christianity, be it remembered, was at this time as 
 foreign to her understanding as the literature of Greece 
 or the text-books of physical science. 
 
 Some few weeks after this occurrence, she was one 
 day gathering wood in the jungle, when she felt herself 
 moved as by some unseen power to kneel down then 
 and there, and beseech Christ to rid her once and for 
 
THE WITCH 93 
 
 ever of that devil's presence. " I did not knov/ that 
 Christ had ever cast out devils," she says, " all I knew 
 at that time was His Name, and that people in trouble 
 prayed to Him ; nothing more." 
 
 Surrendering herself to this inexplicable and sudden 
 inclination, the poor gatherer of sticks kneeled down in 
 the solitudes of the jungle, and prayed calmly and ar- 
 ticulately to Christ for succour and complete liberation 
 from the menace of evil. 
 
 On the instant, she says, the haunting spirit left her. 
 
 Amazement was followed by joy, and joy thrilled and 
 swelled in her breast, till it became a glorious gratitude 
 and a passionate adoration. She had not lost a devil. 
 She had found a god. Somewhere in the blue heavens 
 lived One named Christ Who was able to perform 
 extraordinary magic. Who listened when the heart 
 cried to Him, and Who felt compassion for the wretched 
 and the sorrowful. This was all. She knew nothing 
 of a virgin birth, certainly nothing of an immaculate 
 conception, nothing of the Lake of Galilee, the Mount 
 of Olives, Calvary, the garden sepulchre, the road to 
 Emmaus, and the road to Damascus. Nothing of theol- 
 ogy, nothing even of Christianity. She was neither 
 baptized nor confirmed. Of such a book as the Bible 
 she had never heard. Christ, for her, was one of the 
 gods, but one to Whom people in trouble prayed; and 
 out of her great wretchedness and with a very willing 
 surrender of her whole being, she had prayed, and the 
 prayer had been answered. 
 
 It was with wonder unspeakable that she learned the 
 earth-story of Christ from the Salvationists to whom 
 she carried in a joyous gratitude the news of her deliv- 
 
94 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 erance. She was spell-bound by the simple beauty and 
 the poignant tragedy of that story. Converted already, 
 for nothing will shake her from the certainty that she 
 gave her soul to Christ alone in the jungle, she became 
 a Christian, and went back to her village with the 
 supreme intention of telling others the good news of 
 Liberation. 
 
 You can imagine how different now the village seemed 
 in her eyes. She had embraced the idea of a God who 
 is Good; she had perceived religion as something defi- 
 nitely concerned with the moral advancement of human- 
 ity. In her village, devils were worshipped out of fear, 
 gods were ceremonially served for material prosperity, 
 and no one paid the very smallest attention to morality. 
 It was a little habitation of men and women, sunken in 
 iniquity and practising unspeakable abominations with- 
 out shame and without the least idea of any need for 
 reformation. 
 
 The Witch, seeing all these accustomed things with 
 new eyes, set herself to teach the people our pure religion 
 breathing household laws. But she, before whom 
 Brahmans had prostrated themselves, and to whom evil 
 had been a power and an autocracy, found herself now 
 as a virtuous and God-loving woman, the scorn and 
 derision of all the people. Those who had kneeled to 
 her, treated her now as " untouchable " ; those who had 
 feared and trembled before her, mocked her with the 
 vilest and most contemptuous taunts. 
 
 This little Sodom, this miniature Gomorrah of South- 
 ern India, remained indifferent to the religion of Chris- 
 tianity, and continued in its hideous iniquity and its 
 
THE WITCH 95 
 
 odious superstition, blind to the miracle accomplished in 
 the Witch, deaf to her entreaties, and careless of her 
 warnings. 
 
 A Salvationist who worked in the place at that time 
 said to me, " It was an immoral, bad village ; our few 
 converts were no credit to us ; the people seemed incapa- 
 ble of spiritual birth; the whole thing was thoroughly 
 unsatisfactory." And yet, surely a light from heaven 
 had shone into its darkness. 
 
 Some three years ago cholera appeared in this village. 
 Like an avenger from the outraged heavens, it swept 
 away the ringleaders of evil, and filled the rest of the 
 people with an agony of terror. In this condition of panic 
 — a state which cannot be imagined by Europeans - — they 
 did not seek devil-dancers and they did not kneel to their 
 idols, but once more they prostrated themselves before 
 the Witch and implored her to supplicate her good and 
 holy God on their behalf. It is a very remarkable and 
 significant fact that these people, who were perfectly 
 sincere in their superstitions, and genuinely contemptu- 
 ous of Christianity, turned to the Christian God in the 
 hour of their extremity. 
 
 The Witch bade them repent of their many and 
 grievous sins, taught them to pray, and in the open 
 village street, the rest kneeling beside her, besought God 
 on their behalf. Her prayers, I am told, were of ex- 
 traordinary beauty. She always began — her eyes 
 raised to heaven and her arms uplifted — with the 
 words, whispered in an imploring tenderness — " O 
 God, You are my Father ! — my Father! " 
 
 The scourge continued to afflict the village. Sixty 
 
96 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 deaths had occurred when she said to her husband, 
 " Let us leave this house and go into the fields, and build 
 a gudisha." So they went out, and built the little 
 shelter, and by seven o'clock in the evening it was fin- 
 ished. She had prepared the evening meal, her husband 
 and her son had eaten, when of a sudden she pressed her 
 hand to her side and said, " It has come to me ! I be- 
 lieve I have got it!" No sooner were the words ut- 
 tered than she was seized with convulsions, her limbs 
 contracted, and she was gripped by an agony indescriba- 
 bly dreadful. In a few minutes she was lying stiff and 
 full length upon the ground. The husband stooped 
 down and touched her feet. " They are cold," he mur- 
 mured, trembling with fear; then he touched her limp 
 hands : " She is dead," he whispered, getting on his 
 feet; "come, we cannot stop here." Father and son, 
 stricken with a great fear, moved away, and spent the 
 night under a tree some quarter of a mile from the 
 woman and the cholera. 
 
 Early in the morning, on his way to the village for 
 a burying spade, the son, passing by his mother, looked 
 at her, and saw that her eyes were open. He drew 
 nearer, and said, " I thought you were dead." She 
 motioned to him to come nearer still, and said with 
 great eagerness : " Go to our house, and in a pot tied 
 to the roof you will find five rupees; bring them to me 
 here." The son went on this errand and returned with 
 the money. " Tie it up in my cloth," said the woman, 
 and when this was done she appeared to be at peace, 
 and sank into a quiet sleep. 
 
 After several days she became quite well, and was 
 able to work in the fields, to do her household duties, 
 
THE WITCH 97 
 
 and help her neighbours. For six weeks she went about 
 these duties, the money always tied up in the corner of 
 her cloth. 
 
 Then came the Harvest Festival, when the Salvation- 
 ists give what they can of their pice and annas, their 
 rice and their dahl, for the conversion of India. The 
 Witch was the first to rise with her offering, and her 
 offering was the amazing sum of five rupees, which she 
 took from a corner of her sari. She was asked how she 
 came to give so liberally, and she told the following nar- 
 rative. 
 
 When she had been deserted by husband and son — 
 dimly conscious that she was deserted — a feeling of 
 intense and most wretched loneliness overcame her 
 senses, and she thought how bitter it was to die alone. 
 The sun had set; the day stood at the gate of twilight 
 waiting for the stars ; over the sad earth, gradually losing 
 outline and colour, fell the grey shadow of impending 
 darkness; on the air came to her a coldness, an indiffer- 
 ence, an isolation. To die alone — how bitter and how 
 hard! In the extremity of her weakness, from the 
 depths of the swoon that held her soul, she sought 
 despairingly for life and another sunrise. To live, to 
 feel the morning light, and to see fellow-creatures, 
 to be one of many in the sunshine of familiar earth — 
 this became a hunger and thirst to the woman dying of 
 cholera in the falling night, forsaken and alone. 
 
 " Then," she tells, " I thought to myself — I will pray 
 to Jesus ; and with the thought came the idea that I should 
 promise Him an offering. I thought, ' What can I give 
 Him ? ' And I remembered that in a pot hung from the 
 roof of my house were five rupees which I had saved 
 
98 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 towards buying a milk buffalo. I said to myself, ' I 
 will offer God these five rupees and ask Him not to let 
 me die alone in the cold night.' So I began to pray; 
 but as I was praying I saw a vision, and forgot my 
 prayer and my offering in the wonder of the vision. 
 For I saw as clearly as if they had been real people, two 
 Salvationists approaching me out of the shadows, and 
 one of them came quite close to me and opened a 
 Bible and began to read to me, and then he closed the 
 Bible and knelt down at my side and prayed for me; 
 afterwards he rose, whispered to the other, and looking 
 back at me for a moment, disappeared into the dark- 
 ness. As they passed out of sight I fell asleep, for the 
 reading and prayer had given me peace, and I lay like 
 that till morning. As soon as I woke I remembered the 
 vision, and when my son came to me I sent him for the 
 five rupees, and ever since then I kept them, waiting for 
 the Harvest." 
 
 The village is at this day almost entirely Christian, and 
 the former Witch is a transforming and redeeming power 
 throughout that whole district. Whatever be the expla- 
 nation of her possession, the story set down in this place 
 is the deposition of a woman as holy and as powerful 
 for righteousness as any female saint in the Roman Cal- 
 endar. 
 
DEVIL-PRIESTS 
 
 The whole subject of demonology is full of difficulty 
 for the student who is at once catholic in his research 
 and unbiassed in his judgment by the easy verdicts of 
 nineteenth century science. He naturally shrinks from 
 the idea that invisible and disembodied entities haunt 
 the earth seeking human tenements as means for ex- 
 pressing their passion and their lust. He knows that 
 while the oldest of records bear witness to the existence 
 of witches and that while the savage races of the earth 
 still bow themselves in terror before a devil-possessed 
 person, the evidence for such a mystery among civilized 
 nations dwindles down to a few cases of more or less 
 genuine mediums who professed to be " controlled " in 
 trance by spirits from another plane of existence. The 
 great thesis of Frederic Myers does not solve the prob- 
 lem. The madhouses of Europe do not offer any in- 
 telligible explanation. He acknowledges that by far the 
 greatest number of human beings still have affiance in 
 devil-possession, but shelters himself against belief in 
 any such irrational and distressing theory behind the 
 solid testimony of enlightened and progressive nations 
 that devil-possession does not occur. 
 
 And yet, in such a country as India, where the belief in 
 devils is universal and where he may see for himself many 
 strange and shaking things among the devil-worshippers, 
 the student must sometimes be tempted to believe that 
 
 99 
 
loo OTHER SHEEP 
 
 there is at least some Power in the universe definitely 
 evil whose work in the world, however effected, is ac- 
 complished through human instruments. And he may 
 be led by his inclination towards this belief, to wonder 
 whether those numerous instances among civilized na- 
 tions of rational men and women driven against their 
 wills to alcoholism, to kleptomania, and to unaccountable 
 violence, as well as those more multitudinous instances of 
 men and women otherwise sane, consciously yielding their 
 wills to disfiguring vices, to brutalities towards children, 
 and to the spiritual debasements of unintelligent vul- 
 garity, are not in some way or another expressions of the 
 activity of that same malevolent Power whose manifesta- 
 tions among savage people it is easier to define but not 
 more easy to explain. 
 
 After many close and careful conversations with devil- 
 worshippers in India, I find myself less inclined to dog- 
 matize upon this subject than was the case with me a 
 year ago. But I do feel at least certain of this, that it 
 is as easy to find among civilized nations baffling in- 
 stances of wills over-ridden by exterior Evil, as cases 
 in India of demon-possession which to the victims them- 
 selves, even after the purifying and uplifting experience 
 of Christianity, appear to be incapable of other explana- 
 tion. 
 
 In the following narrations the reader will find ample 
 evidence for believing that at least it is supremely haz- 
 ardous for any human will to surrender itself to the idea 
 of Evil — whether such a force has entity or not, and 
 whether the surrender be definitely made or merely rest 
 in a treacherous inclination. With certainty we may 
 eay, in spite of brazen lungs raised in Europe against the 
 
DEVIL-PRIESTS loi 
 
 decalogue and the moral code, that the path of evolving 
 humanity is beset by no greater danger than the tempta- 
 tions towards anything which is not absolutely and 
 strenuously good. 
 
 This man was not a devil-dancer, but a devil-priest. 
 He is handsome in appearance, not unlike Tennyson. 
 The long thick iron-grey hair is combed back from the 
 head and curls outward from the nape of the neck : the 
 moustache and beard are likewise iron-grey. In spite 
 of a particularly black skin, the fine-cut featiiires arid the 
 large eyes bring him closer to the European than is the 
 case with many Indians of lighter complexions. He 
 has a pleasant expression and the whole character of his 
 face is one of a lofty spirituality. It was odd to see 
 this noble-looking man sitting cross-legged on the floor 
 of my rest-house at Nagercoil. He refused a chair, sat. 
 himself on the ground, and with hands folded in his lap, 
 raised his eyes to mine and awaited questions. While 
 we talked, lizards ran about the whitewashed walls, and 
 from the dusty garden outside came the monotonous cry 
 of the hoopoe. 
 
 He told me that his father had been a devil-dancer, 
 but that he himself had begun life as an assistant in 
 the temple raised to this devil's honour. The devil was 
 a female named Ammon. Her worship is not so repul- 
 sive as that of the male devil Cholamarden, whose dan- 
 cers in their loathsome frenzy eat the raw heart and 
 steaming entrails of a pig in addition to drinking its 
 blood ; but the effect of her worship is disastrous to mo- 
 rality. Children of eight and nine years of age, he told 
 me, are absolutely corrupt. Disease of a terrible nature 
 ravages the whole country. " I remember a boy," he 
 
I02 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 told me, " who once saw a caste girl going to market and 
 dragged her off to the jungle; she was obliged to go to 
 the hospital, and she was only nine years of age; the boy 
 was twenty. Do you wonder why Indians cling to their 
 custom of early marriage? These child marriages re- 
 lieve the parents' anxiety. Immorality is universal." 
 
 In the temple of Ammon, he told" me, there is an outer 
 court to which people come with offerings of camphor, 
 coco-nuts, plantains, rice, fried fish, and other things. 
 The assistant takes these gifts and carries them into the 
 inner court, where the priest offers them to the goddess. 
 During this service in the " holy of holies," the people 
 in the outer court give themselves up to the very vilest 
 and most disgusting immoralities, using all the time the 
 foulest language imaginable, and utterly abandoning 
 themselves to an orgy of iniquity. It is implicitly be- 
 lieved that this orgy, so delightful and exciting to them- 
 selves, is pleasing to Ammon. 
 
 At harvest time the temple becomes a hell. For eight 
 days the priest must remain in the darkness of the inner 
 court and never go outside for any purpose whatever. 
 Every family must contribute two rupees to the festival. 
 The gifts of fruit, vegetables, and fish are afterwards 
 divided among the people, who fill the outer court with 
 the shrieks and yells of their maddened lust. The devil- 
 dancers, excited by arrack and encouraged by tom-toms, 
 hand-clappings, and shouts of applause, whirl themselves 
 into a condition of anaesthesia in which burning oil does 
 not blister the palms of their hands. Men, women, and 
 children are driven mad by an ecstasy of faith in the 
 physical power of their devil-goddess. To her they 
 scream their hymns of praise, for her they fling them- 
 
DEVIL-PRIESTS 103 
 
 selves upon the ground, and to give her — their pro- 
 tectress and providence — pleasure and amusement they 
 commit a hundred lurid and filthy obscenities prompted 
 by the whirling inspiration of the orgy. 
 
 As devil-priest, the man of whom I am writing re- 
 ceived a double portion of all the gifts brought to the 
 temple, and without labour of any kind he lived the proud 
 and indolent life of a spiritual autocrat. It pleased him, 
 he told me, to encounter Indian Christians and to taunt 
 them with the power of his devil-goddess. He did not 
 understand Christianity, but he knew that Christians 
 worshipped some god or other whose mildness and 
 feebleness caused him an infinite amusement. Could any 
 of the Christians dance for hours, drink the blood of a 
 dying pig, jump into a fire, or take burning oil of cam- 
 phor into their hands ? " Your God," he used to say 
 contemptuously, " is not so powerful as my goddess." 
 
 He was not a drunkard, as so many worshippers of 
 evil are, but he was given up to immoralities as much 
 for their own satisfaction as out of deference to his god- 
 dess. It never once occurred to him all his life that 
 there was anything in these practices either hateful or 
 bad. 
 
 He was a grown man, married, and the father of a son, 
 when an incident happened which altered the whole course 
 of his life. He was alone in the temple one day, offer- 
 ing incense to his demon, when the noise of rolling 
 drums outside diverted his attention from the altar. To 
 see what the noise meant, he left his offerings on the mud 
 table, passed into the outer court, and made his way to 
 the door. As he came into the bright sunshine he saw 
 a company of Indians dressed in a similar native dress. 
 
I04 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 congregated at a corner of the street, with a flag in their 
 centre, and a number of boys playing drums round the 
 lifted banner. He recognized them as a new force on 
 the side of Christianity of whom people had lately been 
 talking in those parts, a body of people, white and black, 
 who called themselves Salvationists. 
 
 Out of curiosity the priest crossed the red dust of the 
 road and stood with the crowd of amused neighbours 
 who had now gathered round this fresh excitement in 
 their lives. The drums ceased. The Salvationists 
 sang a hymn which did not convey any definite idea to 
 the devil-priest; and then one of their number, a native 
 of high caste, began to speak. He talked about a God 
 Who demanded from man, not sacrifices and not im- 
 moralities, but a cleansed heart and a soul determined to 
 righteousness. He declared that this good and holy God 
 had an enemy, and that the work of this enemy was evil. 
 To please the good God, to secure His help and to enter 
 His heaven, it was first of all necessary for a man to 
 repent of his sins, to listen to the voice of his conscience, 
 and to decide that henceforth he would commit no act 
 and entertain no thought which the voice of his con- 
 science declared to be either definitely wicked or un- 
 worthy of a child of God. 
 
 The devil-priest walked away with two new thoughts 
 in his mind. He conceived the possibility of a God Who 
 was perfectly good. He saw definitely that there was 
 such a thing as sin. 
 
 " For many days," he told me, " I could not free 
 myself from these new thoughts, which haunted me. I 
 felt they were true. I did not doubt my former beliefs, 
 but I felt that these two ideas of the Salvationists were 
 
DEVIL-PRIESTS 105 
 
 tnie. A good God — and Sin. Sin which endangered 
 the soul and made it impossible for it to be happy and 
 safe after death. I became afraid. I thought to my- 
 self, God may be more powerful than Ammon. God 
 is a hater of sin. Ammon is a lover of sin. Goodness 
 and Evil — those two ; which is the stronger ? I felt 
 sure, though I cannot tell you how, that Goodness was' 
 stronger than Evil. For a whole month I fought a bat- 
 tle in my soul. I would go to the Salvationists at their 
 meetings, hear what they said, and then return to my 
 temple, and in the darkness of the altar struggle to think 
 it out. Some of the officers would say to me — ' Come 
 and test our God; come and try Him; see if He is able 
 to do what we say He can do.' And although I had 
 begun to long for a cleansed heart, and although I felt 
 a great longing to be free of sin and different from what 
 I was, I refused this challenge and remained a priest of 
 Ammon — because I was afraid of her. At last, so strong 
 was the longing for liberation, I determined to ask Am- 
 mon herself whether I should become a Christian or 
 stay as her priest. I feared to try the Salvationists' 
 God; I felt that it would be safer to get guidance from 
 the goddess of my fathers. So one day, I offered in- 
 cense to Ammon, prostrated myself before the altar, and 
 besought her to tell me in a vision what I should do. I 
 waited for hours. There was no vision; there was no 
 sign. For the first time, out of a great necessity, I had 
 sought help from my goddess, and she remained indiffer- 
 ent. I rose from my knees, and I said to myself, ' There 
 is no life in this goddess ; why, then, should I serve her ? ' 
 I went straight out of the temple, sought the Salvationists, 
 and gave myself to God. What happened to me at that 
 
io6 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 moment I cannot describe ; I saw no bright light, I heard 
 no voice, and I was not conscious of any unseen Pres- 
 ence at my side — but I felt that some wonderful Power 
 had entered into me and had completely changed me. I 
 seemed all at once to be different from what I had been 
 up to that very moment, and above everything else I felt 
 happy in the love of a good and merciful God." 
 
 This was in the year 1892. Ever since that day this 
 once lazy and arrogant priest, subjected to frightful per- 
 secution from the Sudras, has earned his own living as 
 a humble cultivator, has worked without pay for the 
 Salvation Army, has given liberally to its funds, and has 
 always devoted one day in every week — a great sacri- 
 fice to the struggling Indian — to worship of God and 
 meditation on His way of liberation. 
 
 I asked him if he had ever experienced dreams of 
 terror since his change of life, or seen visions which gave 
 him strength and consolation. 
 
 " Devils have come many times," he replied, quietly, 
 " to torment me in my dreams. I have never seen a 
 vision from heaven. But I do not fear the devils. I 
 am so sure of God. He has answered my prayers, and 
 He has given me " — his face became lighted with a 
 smile of happiness — " complete peace of heart." 
 
 " Will you give me an instance of your answered 
 prayer ? " 
 
 " Very willingly. The cholera came to us, and my 
 son was brought to the edge of death. No one thought 
 he would recover. The doctor had given up hope. I 
 prayed to God. I said, ' He is my only son. Spare 
 him a little longer and I will be thankful to Thee — so 
 
DEVIL-PRIESTS 107 
 
 thankful, O my Father.' God heard that cry. He saved 
 my child." 
 
 They told me that the father came to the next meeting 
 of the Salvationists, and gave seven rupees as a thank- 
 offering for this answered prayer. 
 
 Perhaps of all the converts from devil-worship to 
 Christianity none impressed me so much as the old and 
 beautiful man known now over a wide district of South- 
 ern India as the Saint of Manady. 
 
 To see him is to feel an instant reverence ; to speak with 
 him, even through an interpreter, is to grow strangely 
 and humbly fond of him. For in this tall old stooping 
 man, thin as a lath and bowed with something more than 
 years, one is conscious of a spirit awed into the wonder- 
 ing simplicity of childhood by communion with the Eter- 
 nal. He is a saint, and a saint who has seen God. He 
 does not seem to belong to the earth ; he appears to have 
 risen into a state of being which is higher than humanity. 
 And yet there is in the large eyes and the shrinking 
 body, something timorous and dog-like, as though a faith 
 greater than anything demanded by religion has arrested 
 and atrophied his reason. At one moment the soul 
 kneels to him; at the next the intellect feels compassion 
 for him. 
 
 Tall, thin, even emaciated, with mild and beautiful 
 lips, eyes that are full of wonder, a brow ploughed with 
 the deep furrows of solitude and meditation, this gra- 
 cious and childlike patriarch of the Tamils shrinks from 
 the world, covers his face with humility in approaching a 
 European, and stoops to kiss the hand of those from 
 whose race he has received the gift of God. Leaning 
 
io8 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 on his long staff, naked save for his loin cloth, he re- 
 minded me of Ulysses returning beggared to the gates 
 of Ithaca. The short, grey hair comes forward to the 
 brow; the moustache and beard only just cover lip and 
 chin; the mild eyes, eloquent of suffering and aspiration 
 and visions, are habitually bent upon the dust; the ears 
 stand away from the head; the neck is like a cord; the 
 long, lean body, with the hollow breast and stooping 
 knees, witnesses to suffering, patience, and privation. I 
 have never seen any man's gestures so beautiful and so 
 entirely sincere as the awe-filled gestures of humility with 
 which this wandering man of prayer greets and takes 
 leave of a stranger. 
 
 He told me that he remembers quite well how his par- 
 ents used to say, " We must worship God." He would 
 go as a child to the river, bathe himself, and then enter- 
 ing a Hindu temple would say, " God, God, God," — 
 not knowing what the word meant. Four vices marked 
 his childhood — drinking, lying, stealing, and lust. He 
 indulged in these vices while he obeyed all the ceremonial 
 instructions of the priest. Religion was nothing but a 
 form. He had not the smallest notion of a good God, 
 was never told that his bad habits were sinful. 
 
 His first faith was in a devil. At the age of twenty- 
 five or twenty-six he was appointed a priest in a temple 
 devoted to propitiating twenty of these wicked gods. 
 As priest his duty lay in guarding the vestments and 
 vessels, the swords and bells, which were kept for festi- 
 vals in the inner court of the temple; he it was who 
 purified them with ceremonies and ashes and gave them 
 to the devil-dancers in the outer court, which was 
 always crowded on high days with an excited and evil- 
 
DEVIL-PRIESTS 109 
 
 minded congregation. In the inner court were many- 
 idols and shrines; the people would bring for offerings 
 to their idols, coco-nuts, plantains, flowers, oil, and in- 
 cense ; it was his business to pour the oil in lamps round 
 the idols, to burn the incense, to place the flowers before 
 the images, and after purifying the coco-nuts and plan- 
 tains, to retiirn them to the people with the statement that 
 they had been accepted by the devil. Every Tuesday and 
 Friday, people anxious to get children or to avert sick- 
 ness would bring offerings to the temple. 
 
 He tells me that he believed in devils, but had no faith 
 at all in these offerings and ceremonies. He was, if one 
 may say so, a Blougram of Hinduism. In his village, 
 as I have said, they acknowledged twenty devils, 
 and the old saint of Manady lived at that time upon the 
 superstition of the people. He was married and had 
 four children; he was one of the leading men of the vil- 
 lage and of the panchayat — a kind of village council; 
 he possessed several buffaloes, owned a coco-nut grove, 
 and had many fields under rice. It was a life as full of 
 prosperity and authority as any Tamil could desire. 
 
 How he cannot explain, but gradually there grew in 
 his mind the notion that his four vices — drinking, lying, 
 stealing, and lust — were wrong. Nothing in his re- 
 ligion suggested this notion. The devils whom he served 
 were themselves all given over to these four vices and 
 to many others. He had never heard of a good God, 
 and was utterly unacquainted with Christianity. Never- 
 theless, he came to feel in his heart of hearts that drink- 
 ing, lying, stealing, and lust were wrong. He became 
 aware of the difference between right and wrong; there 
 was no regenerative process in his soul, only a distress 
 
no OTHER SHEEP 
 
 and vague unrest at the growing certainty of this differ- 
 ence between acts which were right and acts which were 
 wrong. He did not know in the least what to make of it. 
 
 I tried to get from him a clear statement of this change 
 in his soul. I asked him whether he had not been told 
 as a boy that vice was wrong. He was emphatic in his 
 negative. I asked him if he had never heard of philo- 
 sophic Hinduism, of Gautama's teaching of Christianity's 
 demand for a clean heart. He assured me that never 
 once in his life had he heard words of any kind which 
 made a distinction between good and evil. On the con- 
 trary, devil-worship had implanted in his mind the idea 
 that excess and sin were pleasing to the invisible forces 
 of nature. Up to the age of twenty, he told me, his 
 mind was an utter blank as to anything good or evil; 
 after twenty, devil-worship associated the idea of evil in 
 his mind with the mystery of existence; and then, be- 
 tween the age of forty and fifty, unaccountably, from 
 nowhere that his former life could indicate, came this 
 idea of goodness, this strange and frightening idea that 
 there was wrong in what he did because it opposed some- 
 thing that was different, something that was pure, some- 
 thing that was good. 
 
 He was in this disturbed state of mind, when his far- 
 away village, ten miles even from Nagercoil, was visited 
 by a party of Salvationists. When he first saw the red 
 coats he was filled with fear, associating them with the 
 Government! One of the Salvationists, a European, 
 came to him and asked if they might pass the night in 
 his coco-nut garden. Without thinking what he did, like 
 a man in a dream, he gave the Salvationists the key of the 
 place and left them. 
 
DEVIL-PRIESTS iii 
 
 At night he came from his house, and stood in the 
 shadows of the trees, watching the Salvationists. The 
 grove was flooded with moonlight. They had spread 
 their blankets on the ground, had eaten their meal, and 
 were now singing a hymn. The words were in Tamil, 
 but he could not understand them. At the end of the 
 hymn they kneeled down, and one of them began to 
 pray. Drawn by curiosity, the devil-priest came out of 
 the shadows and approached the group in the moonlight. 
 He sat with them and they talked to him. It was con- 
 fusion for his brain, this new religion of which they spoke 
 so confidently. A good God was something he could 
 dimly comprehend; but the rest, what did it mean? How 
 could it be squared with his experience of life? He re- 
 turned to his house, troubled and perplexed. 
 
 But he found pleasure in talking to these Salvationists, 
 and for the eight days they rested in his garden he was 
 constantly in their midst, and even attended some of the 
 services that they held in the village. He used the 
 phrase, " I determined to be bolder," when he spoke of 
 going to their services. I asked him what it was that 
 made him go. " I found pleasure in their talk," he re- 
 plied. 
 
 At the end of the eighth day he began to experience 
 the glory and joy of faith in a good God. " I believed ! " 
 he exclaimed, raising his wondering eyes and lifting up 
 his hands. " A living God ! " he whispered ; " a living 
 God ! " This faith came to him very quietly and with- 
 out violence or shock of any kind. He described his 
 feelings at that wonderful moment as a sensation of 
 lightness. He said, " My whole heart was filled with re- 
 joicing." 
 
112 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 But this was only the first movement in his mind. 
 He believed in God, in a living God, in a God Who was 
 good. 
 
 At a public meeting held by the Salvationists in the 
 village, he renounced idolatry and accepted the religion 
 of Christianity. 
 
 The people of the village came about him, angry and 
 expostulating, saying that he was subverting the true re- 
 ligion and would bring disaster on them and on himself. 
 He replied that God was good, and he would pray to 
 Him if evil threatened. 
 
 He placed himself in the hands of an Indian Chris- 
 tian, by name Devasigamony, now one of the ablest Sal- 
 vationists in Southern India, and began to explore the 
 inwardness of Christianity. From faith in a living God, 
 he moved to faith in an incarnate Christ. From faith 
 in an incarnate Christ, he moved to faith in His teaching. 
 He believed in what Christ taught. Belief with him 
 meant absolute certainty of conviction. 
 
 " And then," he says, " I saw the horror of my past 
 and the mercy of the Christ Who had redeemed me by 
 His love. I believed what He said, that to enter the 
 Kingdom of Heaven, a man must be born again. I knew 
 that my sins would cling to me, in spite of my faith in a 
 living God, unless I was converted and became as a little 
 child. I saw, too, that it would be of little use for me 
 to preach faith in a living God to my people, when what 
 they needed was repentance of their sins and liberation 
 through the love of Christ. I felt how true, how true, 
 was this teaching of my Lord." 
 
 So he went publicly to a second meeting of the Salva- 
 tionists and there bowed himself down and prayed 
 
DEVIL-PRIESTS 113 
 
 for the mystery of conversion. He rose up another 
 man. 
 
 In the strange history of Christianity, many have ex- 
 perienced in a moment of flooding Hght the mystery of 
 a new birth, freeing them altogether from the thraldom 
 of habitual sins and setting their feet in a new way of 
 exalting joy; but few, I think, ever so profoundly ex- 
 perienced this great mystery as the old and withered 
 Saint of Manady who then and there, from a man of 
 many sins and a grasping avarice, became as a little 
 child. 
 
 It was instantaneous this conversion, this utter trans- 
 formation of character; and the Christian gift that he re- 
 ceived from God at this font of new birth was an abso- 
 lute faith in prayer. This is what marks him out from 
 all other men I have ever met. His life is a continual 
 prayer. He loves prayer. It is not so much an activity 
 of his soul as a world in which he moves and has his 
 being. 
 
 From morning to night, on the road as he journeys, 
 beneath the tree where he rests, in the houses he visits, 
 and under the stars as he waits for sleep, always he is 
 praying. Unable to read, he can do nothing but pray. 
 And prayer fills him with unutterable happiness. As 
 we spoke together, in the pauses that came as I ques- 
 tioned the interpreter, the old man would close his eyes, 
 and the gentle lips would move in communion with God. 
 
 From the moment of his conversion he was subjected 
 to persecution. His masters, the proud Sudras, at- 
 tempted to reave his lands from him. The barber and 
 the dhobi were forbidden to visit him — a deprivation 
 terrible to a Hindu. His wife and his children 
 
114 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 opposed him. At this time, too, disaster overtook him. 
 One after another his buffaloes died, and his crops failed. 
 The people pointed at him as an object of hatred to 
 their gods. Cholera appeared. Nine Salvationists died, 
 and the devil-dancers announced that the cause of the 
 cholera Vi^as the devil's anger against Christianity. 
 
 But still the old man held to his new faith. " My dis- 
 asters," he says, " only drevi^ me nearer to God. They 
 only made me feel my great need of Him." The people 
 sent to a hill-devil, said to be more powerful than their 
 own valley-devils, beseeching the hill-priest as a favour 
 to send his devil that the Saint might be destroyed. A 
 devil-dancer came bearing an enchantment. This en- 
 chantment consisted in a repetition of words, a curse 
 upon the Saint and all that belonged to him. Strange 
 to tell, the Saint's sister and her husband were stricken 
 down with fever ; but he went to them, rubbed water on 
 their heads, prayed to God for them, and they became 
 well. The man who brought the enchantments died on 
 the same day. 
 
 This strange event gave pause to his enemies. Some 
 even felt an awe for him. He went to a woman who 
 was very ill, prayed for her, and she became well. An- 
 other woman with no child came to him, he prayed, and 
 a child was given to her. A man named Veeran, who 
 is still living, returning from his week's work in the 
 fields, became suddenly like a raving madman and then fell 
 down in a dead faint ; it was probably a case of sunstroke, 
 but the people thought him dead, bound up his head in 
 the usual way of preparing for his funeral, and were 
 carrying him away when the Saint came to them, placed 
 water on the man's head, and began to pray ; the man sat 
 
DEVIL-PRIESTS 115 
 
 up and asked for Kungi-water. There is another man 
 still alive, who was in a dying state from some internal 
 trouble, when the Saint came to him and raised him up 
 to new life by prayer. 
 
 These events established his fame. But he shrank 
 from living a life similar to that of a devil-dancer, and 
 so, ma.king over his house and lands to his eldest son, 
 he turned holy man for Christ, and went out with only 
 his staff and a worn Tamil Bible which he cannot read 
 himself, to preach the liberation of Christianity and to 
 pray for the Children of India. 
 
 He has made himself an outcast and a beggar for 
 Christ. Throughout that part of the country, homeless 
 and penniless he wanders from village to village, begging 
 his food from the people, telling those who will hear 
 him about a good God, and praying continually to his 
 Christ. Sometimes he will be persuaded to stay for a 
 few days in the house of a villager, sometimes a little 
 crowd of people will follow him into the jungle, some- 
 times he will rest under a tree in some distant hamlet 
 for as long as a week, but chiefly he is seen, lonely and 
 solitary, upon the road, his grey head bare to the sun, 
 his emaciated body, naked save for the white cloth about 
 his loins, his feet shuffling slowly through the dust, the 
 long worn staff of the pilgrim dragging in his right hand, 
 the left hand nursing a faded and blistered Bible against 
 his breast, his eyes bent upon the dust, his lips moving in 
 prayer. 
 
 Some people come to him, seek him out, and question 
 him. Others, following his Master's example, he calls 
 to quiet conversation. At one time he called young men 
 to follow him, but they replied, " We have our work to 
 
ii6 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 do." He says that men listen to him more readily than 
 women. He thinks it is best that he should be alone. 
 
 I asked him if he had ever seen spirits or angels or 
 visions since his conversion. He replied that he has seen 
 many evil spirits walking about in the night. I asked 
 again if he had ever seen angels. After a pause, his 
 large wonder-full eyes becoming suddenly very solemn, 
 he made answer : " Sometimes I see Christ ; close at 
 my side : walking with me on my pilgrimage." 
 
 Alone, solitary, and always uncertain of his next meal, 
 this strange and beautiful old man has accomplished an 
 extraordinary work for Christianity. He has not only 
 been the means of definitely converting many men from 
 heathenism, but he has shaken the faith of a whole vast 
 district in devil-worship. It is true that people seldom 
 send for him until soothsayers, witches, and devil- 
 dancers have failed, but they do send for him at last, and 
 the marvellous results attributed to his prayers have 
 turned the hearts of many from the idea of Evil to the 
 idea of Good. Even the Sudras, the proudest and most 
 rigid caste in Southern India, send for him on occasion. 
 Not long ago, at a place called Poothapandy, a devil was 
 said to have got possession of three men, who became 
 suddenly frantic and dangerous, behaved like the demon- 
 possessed in the New Testament, and were finally 
 brought to a state of uncontrollable madness. The Saint 
 of Manady went to them. On his arrival he found that 
 one of the men was dead. He prayed to God in the 
 house of the other two, and then commanded the devil 
 to go out. Both men perfectly recovered. Such stories 
 concerning him are innumerable. 
 
DEVIL-PRIESTS 117, 
 
 Another story concerning a devil-priest will be suf- 
 ficient to acquaint the reader with the nature of this 
 demon-worship and the extreme difficulty encountered 
 by Christianity in the deep-rooted traditionalism of the 
 Indian peoples. 
 
 Masillamony of Vadasery is a tall and heavy old man, 
 with a face that tells of long and arduous conflict of 
 the soul. There is in the small and puckered eyes a look 
 of weariness and unlifting sorrow; the tall forehead is 
 bagged and overhanging with wrinkles : the mouth, just 
 visible between white moustache and short beard, is 
 depressed with something that is almost bitterness. He 
 is laborious and slow, but there is in his face a look of 
 masculine dignity; one feels in his presence the sense of 
 power and authority. 
 
 At the age of nineteen he abandoned heathenism and 
 surrendered to a Christian Mission which had lately sent 
 emissaries .to his village. In this village he was a man 
 of considerable influence, and by his persuasions the en- 
 tire community of a hundred families renounced idolatry 
 and became Christians. The idols were destroyed; the 
 temple was laid level with the dust. 
 
 Masillamony at the age of fourteen had married a 
 wife of nine. On the death of this wife he had married 
 again. And now, soon after his conversion, the second 
 wife dying, he proceeded to make arrangements for a 
 third marriage. Now, he was headman of the village 
 at this time, a man of unusual intelligence, and one of 
 those personalities which are like a magic on the wills 
 of other men. Such a person was worth marrying, and 
 perhaps the fortunes of the village depended in no small 
 
Ii8 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 measure on the character of his next wife. In any case, 
 the pastor in charge of the Mission, a Native Christian, 
 made up his mind that Masillamony should marry one 
 of his relations. Masillamony, on the other hand, made 
 up his mind that he would marry in quite another quar- 
 ter. There was a dispute, a rupture, a feud, and at last 
 open war. The pastor refused to perform the ceremony 
 of this new marriage. Masillamony, with the help of his 
 friends, performed the ceremony for himself, according 
 to the Christian rites so far as he understood them. 
 
 There followed a tremendous upheaval in that little 
 village. The Native pastor issued an edict fining every 
 person who had attended this marriage, which he de- 
 clared to be invalid. Masillamony in a towering passion 
 hurled defiance at the pastor, and calling the people about 
 him proposed that they should return to the worship of 
 their fathers. Nearly the whole village followed his 
 leadership. 
 
 On his threshing floor, which had been cleansed from 
 idolatry, he set up the old swamis and rebuilt a temple 
 to the sandal-wood goddess. He, the headman of the 
 village, became priest and devil-dancer of this temple. 
 He drank deeply of arrack to work himself up into ter- 
 rible frenzies. " Of course, I had to do it," he says, 
 " or the people would have had no faith in me." He de- 
 clares that he himself had no belief either in the god- 
 dess or the ceremonies. He was a priest for the sake 
 of power and out of a spirit of revenge. But he con- 
 fesses that the wild music and the frenzied dances be- 
 stowed upon him some unaccountable immunity from 
 pain. Great pots of boiling water, into which turmeric 
 and other things had been placed, were thrown over him 
 
DEVIL-PRIESTS 119 
 
 as he danced, and he says that they seemed to him only 
 like cold water. 
 
 He had never been grossly immoral himself, but the 
 village was corrupt, and moral perversions of an odious 
 character were common. He says that he never looked 
 upon these things as sinful, but regarded them as shame- 
 ful, and sought, by his power as headman, to put a stop to 
 them. He tells me that he felt even as a youth that im- 
 morality was something unworthy of human nature. 
 
 I pressed him on the point of his faith in the goddess. 
 " I do not know," he replied, " whether I really believed 
 in her or not. I felt that there was something true in 
 the idea, and I knew that as priest I had opportunities 
 for power over the people. It was for power that I per- 
 formed the ceremonies of the temple. I wanted to be 
 master." " But," I asked again, " did you ever think to 
 yourself, — There is no such person as this sandal-wood 
 goddess; there is no such thing as a devil-goddess 
 at all?" 
 
 " I knew that there were evil spirits," he said. 
 
 " How did you know ? " 
 
 " There are evil spirits," he replied, " everybody knows 
 that there are evil spirits." 
 
 " Have you ever seen any? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " But you believe in them ? " 
 
 " They have no power to do anything ; but there are 
 many evil spirits ; I know it." 
 
 " Have you ever seen visions of any kind? " 
 
 " Yes. I have had a vision. Once. It was not long 
 ago. Three angels came to me. Two did not open their 
 mouths, but one said to me, ' Thirty-one people will die 
 
120 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 in this village.' I asked, * Why should God so suddenly 
 destroy the lives of all these people ? ' The same angel 
 said, ' The order has passed.' The other two did not 
 speak. Then they disappeared. In three days' time 
 cholera came suddenly, and thirty-one people perished. 
 No more than thirty-one. Exactly thirty-one. That is 
 the only vision I have ever had." 
 
 He told me that although he had never properly real- 
 ized Christianity, he was haunted by the idea of Christ all 
 through the long years of his devil-priesthood. He was 
 wretched and unhappy. But pride kept him on his 
 course. " I was too proud to yield," he said. " The 
 Mission sent a new pastor; they tried to get me back; 
 but I laughed at them." 
 
 One day a European Salvationist came to the village. 
 He had heard of Masillamony, and going up to him, he 
 took his hand, led him into the shade of a tree, and said, 
 "You must become a Christian." They remained sit- 
 ting and talking under the tree for more than an hour. 
 At the end of this conference Masillamony said, " If 
 ever I become a Christian again, it will be as a Salvation- 
 ist." 
 
 He told me that he felt his heart softened by this col- 
 loquy under the tree, and that ever afterwards he was 
 haunted by it, knowing himself to lack something, to be 
 incomplete, to be untrue. Altogether he remained a 
 devil-priest for thirty -eight years after the rupture with 
 the Mission, and all those years were dogged for him 
 by wretchedness and the haunting of a great lack in his 
 life. 
 
 Towards the end of this long misery there came to 
 him a Native Salvationist, one Sena Putra, a saintly 
 
DEVIL-PRIESTS 121 
 
 man as simple as a child, wistful in his methods, and 
 tranquil in his faith. The two would sit together in the 
 gloom of Masillamony's mud house with the fine porch 
 of carved wood and the granary above the living room. 
 Masillamony used to laugh at him. " Why," he would 
 say, banteringly, " I know the Bible better than you do ! " 
 And Sena Putra, being too gentle and too humble to con- 
 tradict or even doubt the boast, would reply, " Then 
 that is another reason why you should surrender to 
 God." 
 
 On the one side of this controversy was a master- 
 ful old man, serving idols, given to devil-dancing, and 
 tenacious of his authority in the village; on the other, 
 as meek a disciple of Christ as ever found joy in sur- 
 render to the will of God. The one man was unhappy, 
 uncertain, unrestful; the other, happy, certain, restful. 
 The one man had intelligence and power; the other, 
 nothing but the sweetness of a spirit dwelling continually 
 in the blissful region of faith. 
 
 It was the saint who conquered in this contest. He 
 said nothing to persuade the old priest, triumphed over 
 him never once in argument, and was many times dumb 
 before the Scriptural onslaught of his powerful antag- 
 onist. But he possessed the secret. In his face there 
 was neither storm nor vexation, in his voice there was 
 neither trouble nor perplexity. He spoke of Sin as 
 something that separated the heart of man from God, 
 and of Christ as the Saviour Who sets free the heart of 
 man from all the fetters and barriers of Sin. He spoke 
 of Liberation — of the freedom of a heart cleansed from 
 evil and so set upon goodness that it becomes the dwell- 
 ing-place of God. He said that religion gave peace to 
 
122 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 the brain and joy to the heart. He said — " To be born 
 again is to be at rest." 
 
 The other man, dwelling in the shadows of his dark 
 house, or going down to his rice-fields, or entering the 
 temple of his goddess, was haunted by the knowledge 
 that he lacked peace. He said to himself — " This 
 goddess gives me nothing." He said to himself — " I 
 was a Christian once, but I did not understand." He 
 would sit by himself wondering if he could yet be born 
 again. " If I would be a Christian," he thought, " it is 
 certainly necessary to be born again." 
 
 Then, so insistent at his heart was the longing for 
 liberation, he said — ■" I will seek God " ; and he felt him- 
 self even with the resolution at the door of a new life. 
 No more idol-worship, no more service of the devil, no 
 more darkness, uncertainty, and fear. He came out 
 from his dark house, passed down the curving street of 
 mud-houses, and presented himself before Sena Putra. 
 " Take me," he said ; " I know now what I want to be — 
 I know, too, what these people must become." 
 
 Such was the power of his personality that the whole 
 village came over with him to Christianity. 
 
 Some months after a little ceremony was made of 
 handing over to Fakir Singh as head of the Salvationists 
 in India the temple in which Masillamony had served 
 as priest. 
 
 I was present at the strange scene. From the crowded 
 town of Nagercoil, where the Hindus can still prevent 
 any European from walking down their streets at a time 
 of festival, came a procession of Salvationists, winding 
 with the dusty and uneven road to the little village of 
 East Vadasery. Their band Avas playing and their ban- 
 
DEVIL-PRIESTS 123 
 
 ner caught the flames of the setting sun. On the faces 
 of the men there was a look of triumph and amusement; 
 the young women — so wonderfully, so amazingly dif- 
 ferent from the poor wretched women still living in the 
 degradation of Hinduism — marched with a self-con- 
 scious joy. Every now and then this bright and happy 
 procession, with which were marching several European 
 Salvationists, would lift their voices and sing to the 
 band in melodious Tamil a hymn to the Christian God. 
 People who came to their doors, or who stood at street 
 corners to watch them pass, gazed with something very 
 like pride at the smart and splendid young men of the 
 band and the handsome vigorous girls marching with 
 their tambourines and smiling as they went. It was 
 as if the India of to-day was watching the India of 
 to-morrow. 
 
 East Vadasery lies off the main road, some little way 
 beyond the large hospital of the Salvation Army. You 
 leave the broad, tree-sheltered road, and crossing an old 
 bridge, follow a narrow lane which curves like a ser- 
 pent between hedges of cactus and fields of rice till it 
 ends abruptly in a street of mud-houses — low, palm- 
 roofed buildings red-brown in colour and flush with the 
 lane. At the end of the street, where it widens and 
 ends in a wall with a stile descending to the rice-fields, 
 and under the beautiful shadows of a huge tree, stands 
 the little temple — a pitiful enough structure, but with 
 something pleasing and picturesque in its low-reaching 
 roof and its quasi-tower over the altar of the goddess. 
 
 As the procession, filling the whole street, which was 
 decorated with paper flags of many colours, advanced 
 to the open space before the temple, I saw old people 
 
124 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 peering out at it from the dark interiors of the little 
 houses, like animals afraid. At the temple the Salva- 
 tionists sang a hymn in Tamil, which went to a tune of 
 triumph and contained the lines : " We have been wor- 
 shippers of false gods; Let us now take up the Cross; 
 Soldiers of Jesus ! " Old Masillamony stood in front 
 of Fakir Singh, careworn and anxious it seemed to me, 
 watching the face of this great Guru, and holding in 
 his hands the handsome iron key of the temple. 
 
 Beyond this congregation stretched a wide landscape 
 of green rice-fields, in the distance a wooden-railed 
 bridge over the canal, and farther away still purple 
 mountains misty and soft in the glory of the setting sun. 
 Men and women were at work in the fields. Above 
 them, in the quiet beauty of the skies, wheeled a great 
 kite — one of those birds in whom the Hindus see an 
 incarnation of Krishna. 
 
 Masillamony's son read an address, in which Fakir 
 Singh was invited to take possession of the temple and 
 make it a place of Christian worship. Then the old 
 man stretched out his hand, the Fakir took the key, and 
 people pressed forward to enter the abode of the god- 
 dess. 
 
 It was dark inside, so dark that people struck 
 matches. There was no furniture of any kind. The 
 walls were not decorated. In the outer court was some- 
 thing that served as an idol. Beyond, where the steps 
 led to the altar, three or four clumsy shapes of mud 
 represented all the forces of devil-worship — making 
 their last stand against the reason of man and the con- 
 science of righteousness. 
 
 The little lights twinkled in the darkness and gloom 
 
DEVIL-PRIESTS 125 
 
 of the temple. Voices sounded everywhere. Crow- 
 bars began to break up altar and idols with a dull thud- 
 ding noise. The foul air became suffocating with their 
 dust. 
 
 I made my escape from the scene, and went to visit 
 the house of Masillamony ■ — ■ the house from which he 
 has ruled the village through a long lifetime, and the 
 house in which he sat for so many months in conflict 
 with Sena Putra. I wanted to see that interior more 
 than the idols he had served without faith. 
 
 Over the door was a handsome porch with carved 
 pillars, the wood blistered, cracked, and unpainted. 
 The door itself was heavy and strong, with a handsome 
 handle. Inside one found a large and gloomy room, 
 to which light entered from a door at the back, on the 
 step of which some shabby fowls were waiting for food. 
 A rough ladder-like flight of stairs led from the floor 
 of trodden clay to a loft above. There was no chair 
 in the room, no table, and no bed. In one of the cor- 
 ners lay a reed mat where the old man slept; near the 
 stairs stood three or four barrels containing grain; at 
 the back of the room several brass vessels, brightly pol- 
 ished, were ranged upon the floor. 
 
 It was like a barn save for its extreme cleanness and 
 some subtle sense of humanity which haunted the dark 
 air. One could not think of it as a man's house. 
 There was in it nothing either of comfort or disorder. 
 As the byre or stable or sty of some ascetic dwelling in 
 unbroken solitude with the thoughts of his own soul, 
 one could understand the strange and throttled human- 
 ity of this sombre place. But one could not feel that 
 a woman had ever lived there, that love had been glad 
 
126 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 there, that children had ever played on its earthen floor 
 or made the mud walls re-echo with their play. 
 
 I climbed the ladder-like stairs to the apartment 
 above. It was a swept and garnished loft crowded with 
 barrels of grain. It was there, in the dim light and 
 under the hot roof, that one realized the wealth of the 
 proprietor. These innumerable tubs and barrels filled 
 to the top with the fruits of the earth, represented a 
 European's bank, a miser's gold and a collector's 
 treasures. They were wealth and security. Let the sun 
 scorch the earth, let the rains destroy the crops, let 
 Governments fall, let the bourses of the civilized 
 nations send ruin to the ends of tlie earth, let calamity 
 succeed calamity — and still, here there would be wealth 
 and security. 
 
 When I came out from the dwelling all the idols were 
 demolished, and a look of relief had appeared in the 
 puckered eyes of Masillamony. He was surrounded by 
 talkative villagers, and with one hand at the bunch of 
 white hair on his chest, the fingers of the other fidget- 
 ing with the considerable waist of his loin cloth, the 
 fat and bearded old man was listening with troubled 
 patience to these chatterers, as I have seen the late 
 Lord Salisbury lending an unwilling ear to the inquisi- 
 tive and too pushful lesser members of his party. But 
 the look of anxiety was gone. There was satisfaction 
 in the small mouth and the light of laughter in the eyes. 
 
RESPECTABLE HINDUISM 
 
 Among the men I met in Southern India was a little 
 droll creature in gold-rimmed spectacles, whose pro- 
 truding and widespread teeth under a ragged mous- 
 tache shone with the same light of cheerful good spirits 
 as glittered in his happy eyes. The whole face was 
 a-shine with amusement. One could not sit in his com- 
 pany without smiling. Everything in the universe 
 seemed to move his mirth. And he was eager in his 
 talk, quick in his movements, and delighted with all 
 he said — like a child at a party. I never knew the real 
 meaning of the word chuckle till I got into conversation 
 with this little parcel of human cheerfulness. 
 
 He came of a high-caste family, and was well ac- 
 quainted with Hinduism. It occurred to me that a born 
 humorist might be able to furnish a more intelligible 
 account of this perplexing religion than some of the 
 philosophers whose tedious works on the subject had 
 often exasperated me by their contradictions and confu- 
 sions. So I asked him if he would tell me all about Hin- 
 duism, respectable, orthodox, high-caste, and non-devil- 
 dancing Hinduism, just as he would tell an Indian all 
 about Christianity — easily, conversationally, and hold- 
 ing only to the main points. 
 
 At this he burst out laughing, hugged his knees as 
 
 127 
 
128 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 he sat on the floor, and pressing his protruding teeth 
 upon his brown under-lip regarded me with a satisfied 
 delight. 
 
 " It will make you laugh ! " he exclaimed. 
 
 " To begin with — ? " 
 
 " Oh, the beginning is funny. It is ridiculous. The 
 beginning is Brahma. Brahma is the god of gods, but — 
 he is never worshipped ! There is not a single temple 
 erected to Brahma, and not a single Hindu ever prays to 
 him. Do you know why? Well, it's a funny story. 
 Hinduism begins with three gods — Brahma, Siva, and 
 Vishnu. Those are the three from whom the other three 
 hundred million gods have all descended. One day Brah- 
 ma and Vishnu had an argument. They couldn't decide, 
 these two gods, which was the taller. Of course they got 
 warm on the subject. Brahma said he could give young 
 Vishnu a head; Vishnu retorted that he could beat old 
 Brahma by a couple of heads and fling in three necks 
 and four pairs of shoulders — so there! Something 
 like that. In any case the dispute got so hot that they 
 determined to make an end of it. They agreed that one 
 should go up into the mountain of creation, and the 
 other down, and he would be the taller god who first 
 came to the end of things. Brahma elected to go up, 
 and turned himself into a bird. Vishnu said he would 
 go down, and converted himself into a pig. Very well. 
 One — two — three, OFF ! Away they went. Vishnu 
 began to pant and to blow. 'Pouf!' he says; 'I 
 can't stand this any longer; a little of this goes a long 
 way,' he says, and back he comes. Brahma flew up 
 and up, but he got tired. He wished creation wasn't 
 quite so big or his wings weren't quite so heavy. ' My 
 
RESPECTABLE HINDUISM 129 
 
 eye ! ' he says, ' but the world's bigger than I thought 
 it was.' For forty years the brave old fellow kept it 
 up, but he got sicker and sicker, his eyes could scarcely 
 keep open, and his wings began to moult — flying ma- 
 chines weren't invented in those days. Just when he 
 was nearly done, he saw a flower falling towards him, 
 and asked it where it came from. ' Don't talk to me,' 
 said the flower; 'I come from the top of Siva's head; 
 I've been falling for years; and I'm dreadfully tired.' 
 That's what the flower said. Brahma glanced up, and 
 thought to himself, ' This isn't good enough,' and he 
 said to the flower, * Look here, will you tell Vishnu 
 that I have seen the top of the hills?' 'Anything you 
 like,' said the flower. And down they both went to- 
 gether. When he saw them, Vishnu asked, ' Have you 
 been to the very top ? ' ' Yes,' said Brahma. * Has 
 he ? ' asked Vishnu. ' He has,' said the flower. 
 * Then I've lost,' said Vishnu ; ' but, at the same time 
 
 — hullo ! what's that ? ' They all sprang up in alarm. 
 Fire leaped out of the earth; Siva descended in a rage 
 
 — and oh, how he cursed that flower, and oh, how he 
 rated Brahma, and oh, how Vishnu chuckled with de- 
 light! That's the story of the Hindu trinity. The 
 Brahma of Brahmanism, because he told a lie, is never 
 worshipped and is not permitted to have a single tem- 
 ple ; the North of India worships Vishnu, and the South 
 of India worships Siva — and as for the flower — 
 the wild apple flower — it is never used in temple wor- 
 ship. You will see it in a girl's hair, but never on a 
 Hindu altar. It told a lie ! " 
 
 " Is there jealousy," I asked, " between the followers 
 of Vishnu and the followers of Siva ? " 
 
I30 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 " The most religious of them," he replied, with a 
 chuckle, " quarrel like cat and dog." 
 
 " But the others " 
 
 " No, they don't quarrel : at least, they aren't at it 
 morning and night. But each thinks the other is wrong. 
 They have different temples, and different ceremonies. 
 They do not mix together." 
 
 " Which is the better ? " 
 
 "Neither! Both are bad.", 
 
 " In what way? " 
 
 " Oh, bad." 
 
 " Are they both sensual in their form of worship? " 
 
 He nodded his head. 
 
 "The priests?" 
 
 " Ninety-five out of every hundred," he said, " are 
 immoral. Five in every hundred are good men." 
 
 " Tell me about the ceremonies." 
 
 " There's no preaching to begin with," he replied. 
 " I was a Sivite for twenty-eight years and I never once 
 heard a sermon and never once heard a priest teach 
 morality. Never once in twenty-eight years ! The 
 people pray their own prayers, and the priest burns lights 
 and camphor before the idols. Incense is never used 
 for high-caste gods — only for demons. The temple 
 girls — ■ you know what they are, I suppose ! — posture, 
 and dance, and sing. The people pray, and these girls 
 in fine dresses and covered with jewels, sing their songs, 
 writhe with their bodies, and wave their arms in the air." 
 
 " Are the words of their songs indecent ? " 
 
 " No ; oh, no ! They are called The Garlands of God, 
 and are songs of praise. They contain such sentiments 
 as — ' I will worship thee : the only god ! I will praise 
 
RESPECTABLE HINDUISM 131 
 
 thee, and give thanks to thee. Thou hast created me, 
 fed me, and wilt take care of me.' It's different from 
 the singing of the devil-dancers : but — well, the girls 
 are there only for one purpose. The priests don't keep 
 them to praise god when they're old! There are some 
 ugly scenes in these temples. Every day, morning and 
 evening, and sometimes midday, the priest performs his 
 ceremony at the altar. The girls remain in the outer 
 court. No one else is present. Then he comes down 
 from the altar and enters the outer court carrying the 
 gods' rice to the girls. They crowd round him, laugh- 
 ing, and pushing, and jesting. Well, you can imagine 
 the rest. Horrible places ! They never have any win- 
 dows. They are practically air-tight. Where the god 
 dwells it is pitch dark and suffocating. Oh, you 
 wouldn't like one of those temples ! " 
 
 I asked him about the nature of the prayers prayed 
 by the genuine worshippers. 
 
 " Hindu people of the better class," he said, " are 
 not immoral in their prayers, but they only kneel for 
 material blessings. They go to get something out of 
 their god. It is wonderful how many of them believe 
 in idolatry. They polish their gods, feed them, cover 
 them up, fan the flies away, and would rather injure 
 themselves than one of their idols. They fear what 
 Siva may do to them. They don't want to be better 
 people. Prayer means, ' Don't hurt me,' or ' Please 
 give me something nice.' They're funny people! " 
 
 " Now, in a few words, what do these people be- 
 lieve?" 
 
 " Hinduism is just this — belief in reincarnation and 
 aspiration after non-existence. Everybody believes that 
 
132 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 a person must be born seven times, as grass, plants, 
 trees, insects, birds, animals, men; afterwards, that a 
 person will -go on being born until he is fit to inhabit the 
 body of a Brahman. Then — well, of course, there's 
 nothing else — heaven ! And heaven is a ceasing of 
 the individual life in the universal consciousness of the 
 god." 
 
 " But there are bad Brahmans ? " 
 
 " A bad Brahman has to be born again. According 
 to the nature of his sin, so he must descend and begin the 
 climb once more till he is fit to be a Brahman." 
 " That is the faith of Hinduism? " 
 
 " If I was to tell you about the philosophy " 
 
 " No, we will leave that." 
 
 " What I have told you is what the people believe. 
 It is the religion of India." 
 
 " Now, tell me what are the commands of this re- 
 ligion. What does it tell a man he must not do? " 
 
 " It tells a man," he replied, with another chuckle, 
 " that it is shameful — 
 
 To walk with his wife in the street. 
 To eat with his wife in the house. 
 To shave himself. 
 
 To eat in the presence of a European. 
 To touch a person of lower caste. 
 To let a low-caste person enter his house. 
 To permit his wife to sit while he is standing. 
 These things are universally condemned." 
 " And what does it command a man to do ? " 
 " In morality, nothing. No ; it only tells a man how 
 he must wash, what he must say when he is doing this 
 and that, and — well, other ceremonial things. There 
 
RESPECTABLE HINDUISM 133 
 
 is no moral teaching at all. Not a bit. Not a scrap. 
 It is generally believed that the holiest man is one who 
 lives an existence of privation and commits no sin; in 
 some of the sacred books there are moral ideas; five in 
 every hundred of the priests are virtuous men ; but Hin- 
 duism, the religion of the Indian peoples, does not lift 
 a little finger either to save the sinner or to make men 
 better. That isn't its business. I assure you, Hindu- 
 ism is something which never yet helped a man, a 
 woman, or a child. It has plunged millions into dread- 
 ful sins, and millions more it has driven mad. But 
 helped us — no ! Oh, dear, no ! " 
 
 He explained to me that the Sivites paint three hori- 
 zontal bars of white upon the forehead, and the Vishnu- 
 ites two upright bars of white with a red one dividing 
 them. The two white bars stand for Vishnu's feet and 
 the red represents his wife. The Hindu placing these 
 bars on his forehead says, " I bear thee and thy wife on 
 my brows." Concerning the red spot worn between the 
 eyes he told the following legend with great gusto : — 
 
 " Siva and his wife Parvati were one day playing a 
 game of marbles. In the middle of the game she asked, 
 * Who are the sun and moon ? ' He replied, ' They are 
 my eyes.' ' What ! ' she cried ; ' do you mean to tell me 
 that if I close both your eyes the whole universe will be 
 dark?' 'I do, indeed,' he answered. 'May I try?' 
 ' Certainly.' She lifted her hands and placed them over 
 her husband's eyes. Instantly the whole universe became 
 dark. In this appalling darkness all the people of the 
 earth stood still and cried to Siva for help. The cry 
 touched his heart. Between the two hands of Mrs. Siva 
 there appeared a light, burning and glowing in the centre 
 
134 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 of Siva's forehead. The little red spot worn by Hindus 
 all over India commemorates that merciful event." 
 " But," I asked, " what became of the marbles? " 
 He laughed and hugged his knees. " They dropped 
 out of the story," he replied. 
 
THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 
 
 At a- sweeping curve of the river Ganges, rising from 
 an earthen cliff high above the swerving water, stands 
 the sacred city of Benares — its palaces and temples, 
 its pinnacles and cupolas, its minarets and spires crowd- 
 ing with flashing gilt, garish paint, and fluttering flags 
 into the perfect blue of a pure heaven. 
 
 The bank, on which this wonderful city stands with 
 so superb a beauty, gives its complexion to the river and 
 its spirit to the place. It is in colour like the bottom of 
 a pond dried and cracked by the sun, a pallid brown 
 that is almost grey. Without the solid richness of mud 
 or the innumerable vivacity of sand, it has a worn, 
 shabby, and melancholy look — as torpid as putty, as life- 
 less as stucco. One is not conscious in this crumbling cliff 
 either of the vigour of endurance or of the energy for 
 catastrophe : it will not stand stubborn and unshaken for 
 a thousand years, nor will it suddenly be blown away in 
 a cloud of glittering dust. It impresses one with the 
 sense of a subsidence which is perpetual but laborious 
 — ■ a mouldering down, and a crumbling away, so grad- 
 ual that the cliff will never perish, and yet so continual 
 that it will be for ever falling. 
 
 Benares is of the very stuff of this earthen cliff on 
 which it stands aspiring to the blue of the sky and sub- 
 siding to the mud of the river. In spite of painted 
 buildings, brazen domes, coloured towers, and glitter- 
 
 135 
 
136 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 ing balconies; in spite of the green foliage of pipal, 
 neem, and tamarind trees which lift themselves above 
 square roofs or thrust their branches between the walls 
 of the crowding architecture — in spite of all this colour 
 and ornamentation, the prevailing tone of the sacred city 
 is a dull pallid and lifeless brown. The traveller looks 
 up from the painted barge on which he is moving slowly 
 with the tide, and sees above him an immense and far- 
 spreading cluster of earth-coloured walls; and it seems 
 to him that these walls, piled one above the other, have 
 been moulded out of the inland cliff itself, that they 
 are as dry and arid as the baked earth out of which they 
 rise, and that like that cracked and mouldering earth 
 they are crumbling everlastingly away into the dust of 
 ruin. It is a blistered and a withered city, a city of 
 melancholy and exhaustion, a dry, thirsty, and suffo- 
 cating city — a city which is like a mummy. 
 
 And yet this shabby and dilapidated city, because of 
 its humanity, presents to the eye a picture of extraor- 
 dinary brightness. The wide and splendid stairs lead- 
 ing down to the river's edge are thronged with thou- 
 sands of pilgrims dressed in all the gorgeous colours of 
 the sun. The carved and glittering balconies shine with 
 a raiment so resplendent that one imagines a king to 
 be lodged in every house. The landing-stages, with 
 their poles reflecting sunlight, are packed with a vast 
 company who seem to be the actors in some glorious 
 pageant waiting to march forth with flags and music. 
 Even the muddy river, for the entire length of the congre- 
 gating walls, is thick with worshippers up to the waists 
 in water, and the brown and yellow and black and choco- 
 late skins of these thousand devotees, sparkling with 
 
THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 137 
 
 wet, add colour and vivacity to the general scene. 
 Moreover the pure air twinkles and thrills with the 
 flight of swallows, the ledges and sills of the houses are 
 heavy with pigeons, on the stages and on the stairs cows 
 white as milk chew the cud of many-coloured flowers, 
 and up from the burning ghats where their dead are 
 given to the flame ascends the blue and silver smoke of 
 the Hindu's fire of wood, beautiful and glad. All is 
 colour, movement, and life. The' very water which 
 worshippers fling in adoration to the sun forgets the 
 mud of the river and becomes the glittering dust of 
 diamonds. The pallid brown of the city walls swims 
 into the lucent blue of the sky. And all the foulness 
 and melancholy, all the dilapidation and ruin, all the 
 squalor and shabbiness of the holy city is transmuted 
 into the beauty and the wonder of some dazzling dream 
 by the glowing magic of the sun. 
 
 The scene suggests the festivity of a fair. Along 
 the edge of the river one sees huge umbrellas of bamboo 
 at every possible angle, and a glittering confusion of little 
 temporary buildings which are something like a tent, 
 something like a bathing-machine, and something like 
 a market-stall. Here the excited and chattering pil- 
 grims disrobe for the river, kneel to innumerable idols, 
 wring out their clothes, rub themselves dry, and laugh 
 with their friends. All round these picturesque shanties 
 and leaning umbrellas are the drying garments of the 
 worshippers, hanging their lovely colours from rope 
 stretched between two slender poles. Among the 
 crowding people move the fruit-sellers with their red 
 oranges and yellow melons, the dusty snake-charmers 
 with their shabby boxes of innocuous cobras, the 
 
138 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 indolent sellers of sweets with their trays of coloured 
 sugar hung from their necks, the huge and herculean 
 wrestlers, the emaciated and filthy saint, the creeping 
 touts of the dancing girls, the bhisti with his dripping 
 goatskin of water, and jugglers, acrobats, and singers 
 — all of them variously dressed and variously noisy. 
 The air is filled with a clamour which drowns the roucou 
 of the pigeons. It is a cheerful noise — the noise of a 
 fair in which everybody is pleased with himself. The 
 faces of the multitude gleam with joy — white teeth 
 and brilliant eyes making a sunshine of their own. You 
 hear a constant obbligato of happy laughter to the glee 
 of human merriment made by a thousand voices. It is 
 a jolly scene. It is like a French watering-place 
 crowded with holiday-makers from Paris. People are 
 where they have longed to be. The goal is reached ; the 
 sun is shining; and life is good. The painted barges 
 and little boats crowding the river are filled with pleas- 
 ure-makers. 
 
 But in the midst of all this contagious jollity, there 
 are scenes which strike horror and pity at the heart of 
 the traveller. He sees the dying boy, with ghastly roll- 
 ing eyes and shrivelled limbs, being carried down to the 
 healing river by his brothers arid his friends. He sees 
 the corpse, wound in a pretty, flimsy robe and borne on 
 a slight stretcher between slender poles of bamboo, wait- 
 ing for the wood to be piled up for its burning. He 
 sees on the top of a great flight of stairs, under the 
 shadow of a lofty arch, the disconsolate widow wailing 
 her loss and rocking herself to and fro in the arms of 
 her comforters. He sees the sweating and gasping son 
 swing back his long pole to break the skull of his dead 
 
THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 139 
 
 father before the flames shall burst it. He sees little 
 groups of all but naked men shovelling into the muddy 
 river the blackened ashes of the dead. And he sees 
 loathsome humanity exhibiting its deformities and its 
 diseases to the afflicted and distressed, whining for 
 money at one moment, and cursing the refusal of it at 
 the next. 
 
 The juxtaposition of festivity and lamentation is what 
 chiefly strikes the observer. The shriek of the dying 
 mingles with the cajoleries of the conjuror, the wail of 
 the widow mingles with the loud laughter of a group 
 gathered round an acrobat, the crackle of the death fire 
 mingles with the music of love songs. He looks from 
 a miserable leper to see a gymnast swinging his Indian 
 clubs in the sun. He looks from the smoke and ash 
 of the burning ghat to see children in gaudy clothes 
 playing with tinselled toys. And while the stairs and 
 landing-stages are crowded with all this sorrow and 
 with all this joy, in the water itself, telling their beads, 
 looking up to heaven with a strange ecstasy, or stand- 
 ing like carven figures with bowed head, folded hands, 
 and moving lips, the pilgrims are praying to their gods 
 and seeking liberation from their sins. 
 
 In the water, which is littered as if with confetti by 
 millions of flower petals offered to Mother Ganges, you 
 may see men standing at prayer who startle you by 
 their likeness to the pictures of Christ — eyes large, 
 luminous, and tranquil, the features perfect, the long 
 hair falling gracefully about the neck, the moustache and 
 beard leaving the tenderness of the mouth unhidden — 
 the whole face exquisite with meekness and majestic 
 with spirit. And side by side with these ascetics, you 
 
I40 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 see the hard old man of handsome but sensual appear- 
 ance, whose copper-coloured skin, stretched and shin- 
 ing over rolls of hanging fat, flames in the sun with the 
 challenge of wealth and power. Such a man scoops up 
 the muddy water in his hollowed palm and rubs it on 
 his shoulders, down his arms, and over his enormous 
 bosom, with the action of one who is doing good busi- 
 ness and would do it briskly and heartily. Another 
 man, thin, bitter, and bird-like, the cords of his neck 
 taut as steel, his shaven head like a skull, strides into 
 the river with set and earnest face, flings the water up 
 into the air with an angry flourish of the arms, and 
 seems to regard the gods with stern displeasure or a 
 masterful contempt. Another man, whose bulbous eyes 
 and full lips suggest a sense of humour, comes tardily 
 and self-consciously into the crowded river, and draw- 
 ing a deep breath and pinching his nose between thumb 
 and index, suddenly bobs his head under the tide and 
 comes up gasping and dripping and relieved. Some 
 stand praying, some lift handfuls of water to the sky, 
 some are rubbing themselves with vigour, some are sit- 
 ting up to the neck, some are jumping up and down 
 like bathers at the sea, some are kneeling offering fruit 
 and flowers to the river, some are shouting jokes to their 
 friends on shore, and some are lying comatose and 
 dreadful at the water's edge while their fathers and 
 mothers anoint them from the sacred tide. Old white- 
 haired men, middle-aged men, mere striplings, and little 
 boys - — their skins witnessing to vastly different climates 
 and their features proclaiming vastly different castes — 
 an immense and never-dwindling congregation of 
 
THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 141 
 
 humanity — there they are waist deep in Mother Ganges, 
 seeking communion with the powers of the universe and 
 a Hfting of the burden of their conscious wrong. 
 
 Just above these pilgrims, close to the place where the 
 dead are burning and the place where wood is being busily 
 chopped for the death fires, there is a temple guarded 
 by a staring notice-board which declares in English that 
 women are not admitted to its precincts. The exterior 
 of this temple consists of wood carvings, and every one 
 of the pictures carved in the black wood is a grinning 
 obscenity. It is not possible even to hint at the nature 
 of some of these sexual lubricities, but the reader must 
 take my word for it that they are filthy to a degree 
 unreached in the worst pornographic literature of 
 Europe, that motherhood is debased in some of them 
 so vilely that it might seem a devil had done the work, 
 and that in every one of these abominable impurities 
 there is a salacious leer and a lecherous grin. And this 
 place is a temple. As I moved away I noticed, at right 
 angles from the temple, a line of buildings with iron 
 railings in the place of windows and doors, like the 
 cages in a menagery. " That," said my guide, " is the 
 priests' quarter." I looked into one of the cages and 
 saw a woman sitting in the shadow of the background. 
 " She is the woman of one of the priests," said my guide. 
 At the head of the stairs leading down to the river we 
 were confronted by an old and frowning man whose 
 forbidding face reminded me of certain criminals I have 
 seen in Wormwood Scrubs. He held out his hand, 
 angrily and commandingly. " What does he want ? " 
 I asked. " Bakshish," said my guide. " But what has 
 
142 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 he done ? " " He is a priest." I gave him nothing, and 
 he cursed me in mumbled language and with murderous 
 looks. 
 
 As we descended I said to my guide, who was a young 
 Brahman and spoke excellent English — " How is it 
 possible for such a temple to stand in the holy city of 
 Hinduism?" "I am sorry to say," he replied sadly, 
 " that there are worse things than that in Benares. I 
 do not like to tell visitors the truth, because it brings 
 shame to my religion. But in this little city there are 
 two hundred dancing girls, and the people are very 
 wicked — they are not good. It is wrong. It should 
 not be. It is not our religion." " But," I persisted, 
 " that temple is not a secret sin : it is a place of worship; 
 it is open to all the world ; it is served by priests ! " 
 "There are too many priests in Benares; some of them 
 are very wicked," he answered. " But this temple — 
 does no one condemn it? is there no such thing in 
 Benares as a public opinion? What I want to under- 
 stand, do you see, is the unchallenged existence of such 
 a place, served by priests, in the sacredest city of India 
 — the city to which pilgrims come thousands of miles 
 from every quarter of the country, to rid themselves of 
 just those very sins which this temple is erected to 
 excite and justify. I cannot understand how it is al- 
 lowed to stand." " There are many things like that." 
 " But the pilgrims — the people we saw praying in the 
 river and bathing in the holy water : they are in earnest, 
 they are not hypocrites, they are struggling to be good, 
 they want to be better ? " " Oh, yes, a few may come 
 because their parents desire it or because the priests 
 have ordered it; but most of them are seeking libera- 
 
THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 143 
 
 tion." " And they say nothing about this temple ? " 
 He shrugged his shoulders — " They do not bother about 
 it; and — they are afraid of the priests." "They know 
 that many of the priests are wicked?" "Everybody 
 knows that ! " " But it makes no difference to their 
 faith?" "No; they believe their religion." Now, im- 
 agine such a temple as this at Oxford or Winchester or 
 Wells. But there it stands — in the centre of Benares, 
 unchallenged, and guarded by priests. 
 
 The interior of the city is scarcely less crowded than 
 the riverside, but in all else wholly different. Instead 
 of the infinite blue of heaven, the happy sense of mov- 
 ing water, and the wide, clean, wholesome air of un- 
 broken distance, one finds oneself in dark and tortuous 
 streets whose huddled houses, from their littered gutters 
 to their overhanging balconies, reek of dilapidation and 
 breathe decay. The ground floors of these grimy 
 dwellings are used for merchandise, and there one sees, 
 framed by the blackened woodwork of the shop front, 
 the grinding of flour, the hammering of brass, the 
 roasting of gram, the carving of wood, the stitching of 
 raiment, the weighing of meat, and the forging of iron. 
 One interior is bright with the tinted sugar of the con- 
 fectioner or the gleaming trays and vases of the brass- 
 worker: another is dark and miserable with rusty iron 
 and broken shards. In one shop, smoking an* enormous 
 hookah, and clothed in spotless white, the rich and cor- 
 pulent merchant lounges against his carpets or his fur- 
 niture; next door, with ragged garments and sweat- 
 ing arms, the lean and haggard master works painfully 
 beside his crucible of fire. From a shabby window 
 overhead issues the monotonous but haunting melan- 
 
144 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 choly of the tom-tom, the sad twang of the zither, and 
 the rhythmic beating of hands, with a woman's raucous 
 voice breaking every now and then into this wailful 
 music in a nasal crescendo of discordant passion. The 
 trodden earth or the uneven stones of the roadway 
 scarcely show for the garbage; the shops and cellars 
 reek like rabbit hutches; from wall to wall the street 
 is crowded with an indolent and spitting multitude; and 
 everywhere — buzzing in the dark air above the people's 
 heads, almost obliterating the meat and sugar and grain 
 in the shops, and assaulting your face and neck and 
 hands as you force your way through the stench and 
 the crowd — there are flies. 
 
 It is impossible for any picture or any photograph to 
 convey a faithful idea of an Indian city. Two essential 
 and ubiquitous components they must always lack, how- 
 ever skilful the painter, however accurate the lens. 
 One thing is the glittering blackness of a cloud of flies ; 
 the other — dust. The flies make an atmosphere of 
 their own, and it is in this atmosphere that a street of 
 native houses looms into vision; it is an atmosphere as 
 depressing and suffocating as fog and yet as vivacious 
 and quivering as the atmosphere of a summer sea. It 
 is an atmosphere that vibrates with vitality, that shines 
 and glitters with incessant movement, and yet chokes 
 the soul with a sense of loathing and disgust. The tired 
 and yawning dealer, squatting on the counter of his little 
 grimy shop will every now and then lazily fan the 
 marauding flies from his evil-smelling fish or his raw 
 and bloody meat; and then they rise into the air like 
 a cloud of coal-dust, swarm there for a moment with 
 a sickening buzz, and then descend once more upon their 
 
THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 145 
 
 prey — some of them settling on the owner's face till 
 it loses recognition, covered by a spotted veil. The 
 string of mules descending the declivity of these steam- 
 ing streets is accompanied by a host of flies; the 
 bullock-carts, loaded with unspeakable things, are black 
 with them; the diseased, the wounded and the ulcerous 
 are pursued by them and speckled with them — the very 
 houses seem to throb and pulsate with the mist beaten 
 by these hundred million wings. Until one has seen 
 with his own eyes the black dance of the buzzing fly in 
 the bazaar of an Indian city, it is impossible for him 
 to visualize that crowding scene or imagine that offen- 
 sive air. 
 
 With the flies there is the dust. So far as I know dust 
 is a thing no painter can counterfeit, and no camera can 
 reproduce. I mean the dust of architecture — not the 
 clean, sweet, transitory dust of the open road or the 
 windy field — but the old, sour, black, and abiding dust 
 of mouldering stone and crumbling brick, the dust which 
 settles upon ledge and sill, which works its way into the 
 flutings of carved wood, which is the pigment and com- 
 plexion of ancient stone, which mantles blistering wood 
 and peeling paint, which is the black rime on the toothed 
 arches of dark entries, which is the leaden bloom on rusty 
 lamps and hooded porticoes, which is the mildew in 
 doorways and the must on rotten stairs — the dust of 
 time, the dust of decay, the dust of death. 
 
 How should a painter, baffled by the specks of damp 
 gold on a child's sandshoe, express this shabbying dust 
 of bitten stone and nibbled brick which clothes the habi- 
 tations of men with the vesture of mortality ? And yet, 
 is it not this common and unpaintable dust which 
 
146 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 breathes into the air of cities the mysterious atmos- 
 phere of architecture ? — is it not this grime of the 
 ages, this crumbling away of magnificence and strength, 
 which gives to a temple, a palace, or a street its char- 
 acter and significance? A painter may suggest age and 
 may suggest decay, but apparently he cannot clothe his 
 picture with this covering and tangible garment of an- 
 cient time. And a photograph of a building old as 
 Rameses, lacking only this vesture of dust, becomes as 
 contemporary as a town hall or a free library. 
 
 I have been surprised, looking through the photo- 
 graphs which I brought back with me from India, by 
 the utter failure of the camera to give even the very 
 faintest sense of a city's atmosphere — that something 
 on the walls of buildings and in the air of streets which 
 is what we receive into the mind long before we have 
 begun minutely to observe or critically to particularize. 
 It is not only that a photograph lacks colour; it is not 
 only that a photograph is unnatural with arrested move- 
 ment — the air is lacking, the character is wanting, and 
 the soul is dead. " 'Tis Greece, but living Greece no 
 more." 
 
 In all the cities of India, but chiefly in Benares, a 
 sense of the crumbling dust of time, shabbying every- 
 thing and saddening everything, is essential to a faith- 
 ful apprehension of the scene. The vivid colours of the 
 people's clothes and the garish paint on the woodwork 
 of the houses, are seen through a mist breathing from 
 this everlasting dust. And it is in the air — suffocating 
 the nostrils, irritating the throat, and inflaming the eyes 
 of the unacclimatized European. It is in the air, like 
 motes in a shaft of sunlight; it falls from the roof, it 
 
THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 147 
 
 ascends from the road, it comes from the rumbling 
 wheels and swaying pole of the bullock-waggon, from 
 the pack on the laden ass, from the dark interiors of 
 smith and turner, from the rustle of feet padding on the 
 stones, and from the windows, doorways, and balconies 
 of the nodding houses. It is the living breath of the 
 living city. 
 
 One thing more is essential to a faithful realization 
 of these Indian streets. In addition to the breathing 
 atmosphere of dust and the myriad dance of disgustful 
 flies, there is the heavy, pungent, and narcotic smell of 
 the East. If you can imagine what the air would be 
 like in a shop built of sandal-wood and stocked with 
 fish, where dirty carpets were being beaten and chests of 
 greasy brass loaded with pot-pourri, you will be able to 
 realize the floating scents and drifting odours of a Na- 
 tive street. 
 
 Benares is perhaps more remarkable for its dust and 
 smells than any other city in India. For in addition to 
 its never ceasing tide of pilgrims, it is a city of innumer- 
 able temples, and many of these temples are nothing 
 more than stables for cows, cages for monkeys, hospitals 
 for the sick, and common lodging-houses for the desti- 
 tute. You may look through a gorgeous temple door 
 of shining brass into the dusk and reek of a stifling in- 
 terior, and see in the mephitic gloom a monstrous bull 
 snufiing at trays piled with rose-petals while his wor- 
 shippers crowd about him in the slime and steam of his 
 ordure. You may enter the precincts of another temple, 
 and find every foot of your progress challenged by chat- 
 tering monkeys who grab at your hands or snatch at 
 your clothes for the food which is offered to the gods. 
 
148 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 And elsewhere, in narrow slums, through burrowing 
 alleys, and at filthy corners, you will come across dark 
 and sinister temples whose tanks of horrible water are 
 surrounded by the scrofulous and the leprous, while the 
 broken and spittled stones of their pavements are strewn 
 with humanity eating its food, uttering its gossip, and 
 sleeping away the fatigue of its pilgrimage. The smells, 
 the dust, the dirt, the flies, of these dark and twisting 
 streets, make such an atmosphere as fill the mind of a 
 European with loathing and disgust. 
 
 But of all cities I have visited, Benares stands in soli- 
 tary supremacy for interest and illumination. I do not 
 think there can be another place in the world where a 
 man may see the soul of humanity so visibly. Other 
 cities amuse or charm; Benares teaches. Other cities 
 show us the social organism; Benares, the individual 
 soul. In a single hour, making a loitering journey from 
 the temples to the riverside, a man may learn something 
 of the human soul which all the books of the world 
 have failed to teach him. He may come to a knowl- 
 edge of the human mind which he has not realized even 
 from a profound study of The Golden Bough and Hu- 
 man Personality. For here, visible to the eye of sense, 
 crowding every street, thronging every stair, and muddy- 
 ing a great river, is the soul of man seeking rest from 
 the burden of its own particularity, and, in that im- 
 memorial quest after peace, descending to such outrage- 
 ous folly and such degrading absurdities as stagger the 
 brain of a rational man and fill his mind for a moment 
 either with compassion or wild contempt for his own 
 species. 
 
 Again and again I said to myself, looking at these 
 
THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 149 
 
 pilgrims abandoned to their orgiastic ritual, " Re- 
 ligion is a degradation." Again and again I felt that 
 Faith is a peril and a stumbling-block to the evolution 
 of humanity. And long after I had escaped from the 
 dust and the flies, the smells and the slime, of this sacred 
 city, I was haunted by the repetition of this single 
 thought — the mind must act as if there is no God. 
 
 For the supreme lesson taught by Benares is the 
 danger of unreasoning Faith. Among these pilgrims 
 there are those who sincerely believe in God, they come to 
 the Ganges with the passionate desire to be cleansed 
 from sin, they ardently hold the faith that God will 
 give them peace at the end of this religious observance; 
 and, if faith in God is pleasing to God, if aspiration after 
 cleanness is a true prayer to a heaven which answers 
 prayer, then, they should be, these earnest and passionate 
 pilgrims, as dear to the heart of God and as secure in 
 peace of soul, as the faithful Catholics and Protestants 
 of Europe. But for myself, I found it impossible to 
 think that any infinite and perfect Being could take 
 pleasure in such servile abasement and such childish 
 superstition; and I felt that if heaven must make choice 
 between these children who have degraded reason, and 
 men of science who have exalted reason, it would be no 
 heaven that opened its gates to the children. 
 
 Benares gives to one the absolute certainty that the 
 evolution of humanity depends upon reason. The ex- 
 ercise of this faculty is of course essential to the human 
 race, but if Faith attempts to usurp the chief place in 
 human progress, disaster must overtake humanity. The 
 most devout Christian does surely act as if there were 
 no God in moments of peril and catastrophe. If his 
 
I50 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 house is on fire, he does not pray, but sends for the 
 fire-engine. If his child is bitten by a mad dog, he does 
 not pray, but runs for the doctor. If his eyes are fail- 
 ing, he does not pray, but consults the oculist. If his 
 children are many and his income precarious, he does 
 not pray, but insures his life. Pressed to an honest 
 confession, the most earnest and trustful Christian is 
 forced to admit that his material life is ordered far more 
 by the exercise of his rational faculties than by his faith. 
 And if any man can read history with honest eyes, must 
 he not perceive that until superstitious faith in an over- 
 ruling and constantly interfering Providence, was sup- 
 planted by the masculine resolution to manage this world 
 with human hands, to manage it and rule it by the in- 
 genuity and might of human reason, life was a sad and 
 wasteful and cruel business. 
 
 It is the divine gift of Reason which differentiates 
 mankind from the animal world; and wherever Faith 
 is ascendant over Reason, humanity is degraded to the 
 brute level. Nor does even the true Faith serve God 
 and Man, when it maligns Reason for lack of its own 
 quality, since no one acquainted with the slow and 
 laborious ascent of humanity, measured by millions of 
 years, from magic and sorcery, from cannibalism, 
 totemism, barbarism and idolatry, can doubt that Rea- 
 son has ever been the morning star of the human race, 
 leading the soul upward and onward from a false and 
 partial to a true and comprehensive knowledge of the 
 Universe. Reason is never at a stop, and therefore it 
 can never formulate a creed. Always it is moving 
 towards fuller knowledge of the cosmic process ; and with 
 every painful step of its advance it reveals a more majes- 
 
THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 151 
 
 tic universe and fills the soul with a deeper and sublimer 
 reverence. If Reason is accused of lack of Faith — 
 by those who participate in its thousand achievements 
 — may it not justly answer that to work is to pray, and 
 that to believe in the perfecting of things is to believe 
 in God ? 
 
 Certainly the faith which is in Hinduism is a faith 
 perilous to humanity. To see a man standing in the 
 muddy river of Benares, rubbing himself with the filthy 
 water, and to reflect that such a man — who would 
 surely be better employed in stoking a railway-engine 
 or ploughing a field — is convinced in his brain that 
 the depravity of his heart is thereby washed away, and 
 that he is giving pleasure to Eternal God — this is to feel 
 that a faith which commands a surrender of reason is 
 more deadly to the human race than the blankest agnos- 
 ticism or the wildest atheism. An agnostic such as Hux- 
 ley is surely a nobler, nay a diviner, representative of 
 humanity than these pilgrims to the Ganges. And the 
 priests of the cow temple or the monkey temple, though 
 they offer sacrifices all day to the invisible gods, surely 
 they are more dangerous to the human race than the 
 frothiest atheist of a London park. 
 
 One sees in this city not only the peril of faith, but 
 the inevitable calamity of mysticism carried to its logical 
 conclusion. The fakirs, who so trust God that they 
 take no thought for the morrow, and are content with 
 the day when they have begged sufficient rice for stom- 
 ach's need, are no whit different from the loose-lipped 
 and rolling-eyed inmates of our mad-houses. Their 
 faith is so supreme that their reasons have atrophied. 
 They are stupid. They are mad. Let any ascetic- 
 
152 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 minded youth, steeped in the literature of the saints, and 
 indined to the behef that God may be reached through 
 privation of body and by meditation of soul, come to 
 the banks of the Ganges and cleanse himself of folly. 
 He will there see men who do what so many mystics 
 have enjoined, and who have become in the process de- 
 humanized skeletons and poor jibbering idiots.^ 
 
 But chiefly, Benares must be regarded as a laundry 
 of souls. From all parts of India, packed like bundles 
 of firewood in trains composed of interminable luggage 
 vans, riding down from the hills, footing it over dusty 
 roads, jolting along in bullock-waggons and palanquins, 
 the mother carrying her baby, the friends supporting 
 their sick, and the mourners bearing their dying, millions 
 of Hindus, from the great Rajahs to the most destitute 
 peasants, stream in a never-ceasing tide through the 
 streets of the holy city, descend the steep and broken 
 stairs to the filthy river, and there, with exclamations of 
 joy and smiles of ecstasy, wash the foul linen of their 
 dirty minds or their troubled souls. Look at it how 
 you will, unless you are rickety with sentimentalism or 
 fanatical with hatred of reason, there is little but con- 
 tempt and disgust in this spectacle of Hindu holiness. 
 You see humanity degraded and grovelling; you see it 
 laughing with the joy of satisfaction in its own shame- 
 ful degradation ; you see it — this humanity formed for 
 heroic deeds and capable of divinest intuitions — grin- 
 ning in an abasement to which the lowest brute and the 
 meanest insect have not fallen. And in face of all this 
 public and laughing riot of faith, you cannot ride away 
 from the horror of it on the tolerance that it is merely 
 1 See Notes, page 353. 
 
THE LAUNDRY OF SOULS 153 
 
 the outward and visible form of some inward and spirit- 
 ual emotion ; you cannot soothe yourself with the flattery 
 that you have a penetrating and an understanding soul 
 because you see in all this hideous ceremonial only the 
 mystery and symbolism of a spiritual tragedy. It is 
 too public: it is too literal: it is too honest. No; there 
 is nothing of symbolism in this spectacle. Ganges water 
 is sacred and holy. It is to this water, this very water 
 flowing muddily before your eyes, that your symbolists 
 have brought their sinful souls, their aching sick, and 
 their corrupting dead. It is Ganges water, not any 
 power that it symbolizes, which will wash away sin, cure 
 lepers, and carry the souls of the dead into Paradise. 
 Look at them, these holiday-making pilgrims, as they 
 crowd and fight into their homeward trains or take to 
 the road on their return journey; in almost every case 
 you will see that they carry bottles and jars and pots 
 filled with this holy water. The Ganges symbolizes noth- 
 ing; it is itself the laundry of souls, the hospital for 
 disease, and the channel to Paradise. They take this 
 sacred water back with them to their distant villages, 
 and when they commit a sin they touch themselves with 
 it, and when their children are sick they anoint them 
 with it, and when they would placate a demon they oflfer 
 him a drink of it. For them there is no symbolism but 
 a most potent magic in this water. They regard their 
 pilgrimage not as a sacrament, but as a cure. Benares 
 is not their Zion ; it is their Marienbad. 
 
 One only feeling is possible to the just man who sur- 
 veys this scene and can master his disgust and bridle his 
 contempt and can overcome his shame. It is a feeling 
 of pity. 
 
154 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 Once more we realize that the Children of India are 
 still in the infancy of humanity; and, smiling at those 
 who would exalt Hinduism to the pure region of Phi- 
 losophy or would bring it into any comparison with the 
 sublime religion of Jesus, we watch the Ganges carry- 
 ing down to the sea the rose-petals of the pilgrims and 
 the ashes of the dead, and feel for the millions of India, 
 still living in the darkness of superstition and the shadow 
 of priestcraft, a sorrowful compassion — the compas- 
 sion of a grown man for a child terrified by ghost stories 
 and afraid of the dark. 
 
 But while it is impossible to regard this bathing of 
 the multitude in Mother Ganges as an act of symbolism, 
 it is nevertheless important to perceive that the people 
 are driven to the magic of the river by a real and im- 
 memorial spiritual compulsion; and a consideration of 
 the nature of this compulsion will conduct us from the 
 crumbling earthen cliff of Benares to the arena of col- 
 lision where the spirit of the East is at grips with the 
 spirit of the West. 
 
THE COLLISION 
 
 There are people in Europe who appear to think that 
 the theory of reincarnation has a Hindu origin; and 
 there are others, less ignorant, who attribute the first 
 glimmerings of this idea to the mind of Pythagoras or 
 to the soul of Plato. The truth is that far more than 
 a mere notion of this transmigration of souls, rather 
 a fundamental and unquestioning belief in the doctrine, 
 existed among savage and barbarous people at the very 
 beginning of time. Indeed, one may almost venture 
 to assume that the first and earliest belief regarding the 
 spiritual world held by those dim and shadowy races 
 who swim like ghosts in the mist and mirk preceding 
 the classical era, and whose vigorous descendants are 
 still to be found in various unhandselled places on the 
 globe long after the documents of the classical era have 
 become yellowed with age, was the assured conviction 
 that the traveller returns from the bourne of death and 
 miserably haunts the inhospitable earth until a new body 
 be born for his habitation. 
 
 It seems, for instance, that the ancient and wide- 
 spread practice of circumcision may have had its origin 
 in this belief, for among races at the present day the 
 severed skin is carefully hidden in some secret place 
 known only to the boy or his parents, so that his spirit 
 after death may find in it the nucleus as it were of 
 another body. The shedding of blood in human sacrifices 
 
 iSS 
 
iS6 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 may also have had its spring in this same intuition, for 
 there are barbarous tribes in many quarters of the world 
 who still pour blood upon the bodies of their dead in 
 the belief that it will strengthen departed spirits to find 
 new bodies. In any case, on the authority of Dr. J. 
 G. Frazer, we know that among all the Central Austra- 
 lian tribes " the belief is firmly rooted that the human 
 soul undergoes an endless series of reincarnations, the 
 living men and women of one generation being nothing 
 but the spirits of their ancestors come to life again, and 
 destined to be themselves reborn in the persons of their 
 descendants." 
 
 So that, far from being the fine flower of Hindu oc- 
 cultism, this notion of metempsychosis or transmigra- 
 tion of the soul, whether it be true or not — is a sur- 
 vival from the black night of human history — a dream 
 or a nightmare bprn to those tragic ancestors of every 
 disease and every €uperstition. Terror and Ignorance. 
 Terror was the first "bridegroom, and Ignorance the first 
 iride, and from this Adam and Eve of humanity, with 
 many another credulous and affrighted offspring, came 
 the infant Reincarnation, no doubt muling and puking in 
 his nurse's arms. 
 
 Now, it is important to realize the remote antiquity of 
 this notion, because it is the base and foundation of 
 philosophic Hinduism. And it should also be borne in 
 mind that, although the evidence is conclusive for the 
 notion of reincarnation being prehistoric and absolutely 
 savage, there is no dogmatic mention of it in Hindu litera- 
 ture till the post-Vedic period, when with the Upan- 
 ishads — " commences that great wail of sorrow which, 
 for countless ages, has in India been rising up to heaven, 
 
THE COLLISION 157 
 
 and which, as time goes on, will deepen into the dark- 
 ness of despair." Apparently the doctrine was not de- 
 veloped, certainly not taught, till one of the later Sas- 
 tras, and it is taught, as a writer has been careful to 
 point out to intelligent Indians, in a book which teaches 
 a quite mad geography, a most fantastical astronomy, and 
 makes an absolute Alice-in-Wonderland of the serene 
 and majestic unity of nature. Therefore, we find at the 
 base of Hinduism, which attempts to masquerade be- 
 fore Europe as a profound philosophy and an esoteric 
 psychology, a belated enunciation of the prehistoric be- 
 lief in transmigration, and we discover that this " divine " 
 revelation was made by a very ignorant and preposterous 
 person. 
 
 Until we apprehend the Indian's attitude towards this 
 notion of reincarnation we cannot realize either the spirit 
 of Hinduism or the nature of the great conflict now 
 proceeding between the religion of Christianity and the 
 religion of Brahmanism. It will therefore be worth 
 while to consider exactly what the doctrine of trans- 
 migration means to the Hindu, and to clear our minds 
 of any whimsicalities on the subject gathered from the 
 lucubrations of European theosophists. The doctrine 
 has been explained by one writer in the following illus- 
 tration : — 
 
 We are bound to our existence by two chains, the 
 one a golden chain and the other an iron chain. The 
 golden chain is virtue, and the iron chain is vice. 
 We perform virtuous actions and we must exist in 
 order to receive their reward; we perform vicious 
 actions, and we must exist in order to receive their 
 
158 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 punishment. The golden chain is pleasanter than the 
 iron one, but both are fetters, and from both should 
 we seek to free our spirit. 
 
 Another writer has expressed himself as follows : — 
 
 The being who is still subject to birth may at one 
 time sport in the beautiful garden of a heavenly- 
 world, and at another be cut to a thousand pieces in 
 hell; at one time he may be one of the highest gods 
 and at another a degraded outcast; at one time he 
 may feed on ambrosia and at another he may have 
 molten lead poured down his throat. Alternately he 
 may repose on a couch with the gods and writhe on a 
 bed of red-hot iron; become wild with pleasure and 
 then mad with pain ; sit on the throne of the gods and 
 then be impaled with hungry dogs around. 
 
 " Transmigration," as Monier Williams truly says, 
 " is the great bugbear, the terrible nightmare and day- 
 mare of Indian philosophers and metaphysicians. All 
 their efforts are directed to getting rid of this oppressive 
 scare. The question is not, What is truth? Nor is it 
 the soul's desire to be released from the burden of sin. 
 The one engrossing problem is. How is a man to break 
 this iron chain of repeated existences? How is he to 
 shake off all personality ? " 
 
 Ask a Hindu, says Dr. Robson, what is the chief end 
 of man's existence, and he will answer Liberation. This 
 is the answer which will be given alike by the peasant 
 and the philosopher of any of the Schools. Ask him 
 what he means by Liberation, and he will say that it is 
 " to cut short the eighty-four " — meaning the 84 lakhs 
 
THE COLLISION 159 
 
 of births through which the soul may possibly pass on 
 its journey to absorption into unconscious spirit. 
 
 There is absolutely no suggestion in the Hindu doc- 
 trine of transmigration, no hint of any kind, that the 
 spirit may ascend on the stair of being by virtuous ac- 
 tions and spiritual hunger ings into the presence of a lov- 
 ing and desirous Heaven-Father. It is no stair for them, 
 leading either upward or downward, but a blank and aw- 
 ful cul-de-sac ending in annihilation. They refrain from 
 good actions for fear of being born again to receive their 
 rewards, and they refrain from bad actions only for fear 
 of being born again to receive their punishments. Good 
 actions are only superior to bad actions because. they en- 
 tail reward instead of punishment. And bad actions are 
 not so serious as good actions because the priest has pro- 
 vided the means of purification. 
 
 The pilgrims whom we saw bathing in Ganges River 
 were driven there, as was said at the conclusion of the 
 last chapter, by a spiritual compulsion, and. although the 
 goal in view is not the Paradise of God but the uncon- 
 sciousness of annihilation, the root of the compulsion, 
 I feel sure, is one and the same with the clamour of 
 the Christian soul, instinctive in all the races of man- 
 kind, for conversion and new birth. It is significant 
 that the Christ's idea of palingenesis, or new birth, 
 should have its origin in that universal unrest of the 
 human spirit which the Hindu philosopher seeks to medi- 
 cine with cessation from birth. And here we come into 
 that tumultuous arena where Christianity and Brahman- 
 ism are wrestling for the soul of India. 
 
 Among all the races of mankind there exists the 
 consciousness of something wrong in life. The poet 
 
i6o OTHER SHEEP 
 
 Horace and the poet Job are here of one mind with the 
 
 aborigines of Australia; the youngest disciple of the 
 philosopher Nietzsche would here find himself in agree- 
 ment with the most ignorant Kikuyu of East Africa. 
 Whether a man looks upon the universe as a roaring 
 piece of anonymous machinery or sees in it the beauti- 
 ful and evolving creation of a gracious Providence, he 
 comes sooner or later to the melancholy conclusion that 
 man is born to sorrow as the sparks fly upward. Not 
 all the burly confidence of Walt Whitman, not all the 
 studied gallantry of Louis Stevenson, can dry the uni- 
 versal tears or drown the universal sighs of our suffering 
 humanity. " For the world," says Sir Thomas Browne, 
 " I count it not an Inn, but an Hospital ; and a place 
 not to live, but to die in." " The supreme and mysteri- 
 ous Power," says Winwood Reade, " by whom the uni- 
 verse has been created, and by whom it has been ap- 
 pointed to run its course under fixed and invariable law ; 
 that awful One to whom it is profanity to pray, of whom 
 it is idle and irreverent to argue and debate, of whom 
 we should never presume to think save with httmility 
 and awe; that Unknown God has ordained that mankind 
 should be elevated by misfortune, and that happiness 
 should grow out of misery and pain. I give to uni- 
 versal history a strange but true title — The Martyrdom 
 of Man. In each generation the human race has been 
 tortured that their children might profit by their woes. 
 Our own prosperity is founded on the agonies of the 
 past. Is it therefore unjust that we also should suffer 
 for the benefit of those who are to come ? " Always there 
 is a hope of something better, always there is a vision of 
 
THE COLLISION i6i 
 
 some Promised Land ahead, always we await the spark 
 from heaven — but the Present is full of disappointment 
 and distress. 
 
 Yes, we await it ! — but it still delays. 
 And then we suffer ! and amongst us one. 
 Who most has suffered, takes dejectedly 
 His seat upon the intellectual throne; 
 And all his sad experience he 
 Lays bare of wretched days ; 
 Tells us his misery's birth and growth and signs. 
 And how the dying spark of hope was fed. 
 And how the breast was soothed, and how the head, 
 And all his hourly varied anodynes. 
 
 " Misery," cries the Hindu, " always accompanies ex- 
 istence. All modes of existence result from desire. 
 There is no escape from existence except by destruction 
 of desire." 
 
 The conviction that life is sad, that whatever a man 
 may think, do, or believe, misery will assuredly dog 
 his footsteps from the cradle to the death fire, weighs 
 so oppressively on the mind of the Indian convinced of 
 reincarnation that he can see nothing but wisdom in the 
 self-inflicted tortures of the fakir and will himself go 
 to extraordinary lengths for the purpose of abbreviating 
 the sentence of his personality. A fakir will sit with 
 clenched hands till the nails grow through the palms 
 and protrude like a bird's claws from the backs; or he 
 will hold an arm above his head until it becomes a with- 
 ered and a rigid stump. And the ordinary Hindu will 
 perform monotonous ceremonies, offer food to idols, 
 make pilgrimage to sacred rivers and sacred shrines. 
 
i62 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 shave his head, cover his brow with ashes, paint his 
 chest and arms, and even eat the excrement of the cow, 
 rather than imperil his chance of a short cut to ever- 
 lasting oblivion. At the base of all his thought con- 
 cerning life and the universe, is the conviction that ex- 
 istence is sorrowful. 
 
 Now, a man would think that to a people so 
 plunged in the abyss of misery, so sunken in the slough 
 of despond, so overshadowed by the dark mountain of 
 despair, the good news of the Christ would sound as a 
 trumpet. Think of the words : — 
 
 / am come that they might have Life and that they 
 
 might have it more abundantly. 
 He that cometh unto Me shall never hunger, and he 
 
 that believeth in Me shall never thirst. 
 Come unto Me all ye that are weary and heavy-laden. 
 I am the Light of the World. 
 These words have I spoken unto you that My Joy 
 
 might remain in you, and that your Joy might be 
 
 full. 
 
 Think of the revelation that God is a Father, that this 
 Father so cares for humanity that the very hairs of our 
 heads are numbered, that He desires no ceaseless sacri- 
 fice and no monotonous ceremonial, but only the love of 
 our hearts; and that, loving mankind as a father loves 
 his children, He has prepared for those who respond to 
 this love with the simple love of their human hearts, a 
 Kingdom of everlasting joy and felicity. 
 
 Does it not seem to us that such wonderful and shin- 
 ing good-news would be hailed with a shout of thanks- 
 
THE COLLISION 163 
 
 giving by these millions of self-torturing souls afraid of 
 death and afraid of birth? 
 
 Why is it, then, that the Darkness of Asia withstands 
 and repels the Light of the World? 
 
 The answer to this question, if fully given, would 
 lead us far from India and carry us into the stifling at- 
 mosphere of European theology, where Italian priests, 
 German scholars, French philosophers and English mor- 
 alists are still shattering the peace of Galilee in their 
 struggle for the Keys of Peter. But the answer must 
 be given if only in brief, and fortunately the truth of it 
 is so reasonable and apparent that it can almost be com- 
 pressed into an epigram. 
 
 Christianity is rejected by Brahmanism not as the 
 noblest thesis of Optimism, but as an inferior thesis of 
 Pessimism. Brahmanism considers, and justly, that its 
 own ancient philosophy of Pessimism is superior to Cler- 
 icalism's modern philosophy of Pessimism. It has no 
 knowledge of Christianity as the gospel of Optimism. 
 It rejects not the Heaven-Father of Jesus, but the hostile 
 God of the priest Who must be propitiated and concili- 
 ated. It rejects not the love of God Who asks only 
 for the love of His children, but the capricious arbitrari- 
 ness of a God Who has made the immense hazards of 
 heaven and hell to turn upon intellectual assent to a set 
 of theological dogmas. 
 
 The answer to our question. Why does the Dark- 
 ness of Asia withstand and repel the Light of the World? 
 is another question — Does Christianity, in Europe or 
 in Asia, represent Jesus as the Light of the World? — 
 is it a religion of joy or a religion of sorrow? 
 
 I think the reader will perceive what I mean if I com- 
 
i64 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 that God knows our needs before we express them, and 
 that like a father He delights to give us what we need 
 for our bodies and our souls. " When ye pray," said 
 the Master, " use not vain repetitions, as the heathen 
 do : for they think that they shall be heard for their 
 much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them: 
 for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, 
 before ye ask Him. . . . Consider the lilies of the 
 field ... if God so clothe the grass of the field, 
 which to-day is and to-morrow is cast into the oven, 
 shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? 
 Therefore take no thought, saying. What shall we eat? 
 . . for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have 
 need of all these things." Now, compare this wonder- 
 fully beautiful and reasonable idea of a Father-Creator, 
 ever mindful of His Earth Children, with the ritualist's 
 attitude towards a far-off and estranged God constantly 
 demanding sacrifice and entreaty, from timid and fright- 
 ened worshippers. 
 
 But for the present moment it remains to point out 
 that the unrest in India is not truly political but religious, 
 and that its roots are buried in that immemorial pes- 
 simism of Asia which we have seen to be the base and 
 foundation of Hinduism. Spiritual unrest is the true 
 arena of controversy, and it is over the weary body of 
 this unrest that Brahmanism and Christianity are wrest- 
 ling for the soul of India. 
 
 Education has shaken the faith of millions of people 
 in the superstitions of Hinduism. There are almost as 
 many sceptics and agnostics in the schools and colleges 
 of India as in the universities of France and Germany. 
 But whereas the agnostic in Europe rises with relief 
 
THE COLLISION 165 
 
 from his moribund ecclesiasticism to live what he would 
 consider the full and exciting life of an optimistic ma- 
 terialist, the young sceptic of Bombay, Calcutta and 
 Lahore rises only from his idols and his ceremonies, 
 and continues in the enervating and will-paralysing cli- 
 mate of India a pessimist convinced that misery accom- 
 panies existence. That is to say, he casts off the religion 
 of Hinduism but not its philosophy. Imagine the un- 
 rest and dreary aimlessness of such a mind. Is it not 
 in this spirit that the decadents of modern Europe — 
 
 Who hesitate and falter life away. 
 
 And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day, 
 
 go to their ruin? No faith in God, and a conviction 
 that life is a meaningless martyrdom! — what can be the 
 worth of such a personality, and what its end? Cer- 
 tainly for the Indian, so childlike and leaning, such a 
 condition is perilous beyond the power of words to ex- 
 press. He loses the support of authority, he strips him- 
 self of tradition, and naked to the storms of adversity 
 and the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, he 
 stands repeating his Miserere of Pessimism to the un- 
 heeding stars and the silence of eternity. Better for 
 him if he could still believe that there is peace in Ganges 
 water and magic in the Brahman's charm, better if he 
 could still paint his forehead with the sign of Vishnu 
 or Siva and go to the temple with his offering of fruit 
 and flowers, better, far better, if he could still believe 
 that the universe is congregated with the powers of good 
 and evil contending for his spirit — anything rather 
 than this paralysis of will, this emptiness of the heart, 
 this death of the soul. 
 
i66 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 Unrest!' — do not I pray you think of Indian unrest 
 as a new school in poHtics or a new form of treason, 
 these things are but the untimely fruit of the Asian 
 Igdrasil, whose roots strike deep into the past of Man 
 and whose branches stretch upwards to the sky of his 
 dim future. The unrest of India is the shaken idol and 
 the troubled priest, it is the torn mantra and the broken 
 thread. All through the history of India, as indeed, all 
 through the history of every nation under the sun, there 
 has been this ground-swell of disquiet and unrest, this 
 hidden tide of travail and disenchantment. The world 
 has never been quiescent and humanity has never stood 
 still. Always the earth has been sweeping through the 
 fields of light, and always humanity has been moving 
 from the darkness of its ignorance and out of the shadow 
 of its inexperience, into new knowledge and new un- 
 certainty. The long past behind us, where so many 
 have marched and so few have bivouac'd, is strewn with 
 the dust of witchcraft, the ashes of idols, and the bones 
 of slaughtered gods. It is a road still wet with the 
 blood of martyrs and the tears of disillusion. Hope 
 and a sublime confidence have carried the kings of 
 humanity ahead of the race and they have sung to men 
 of kingdoms in nature so wide and majestic that it is an 
 ecstasy to breathe that heavenly air; but always there 
 have been mourners at the broken altar and always dim 
 multitudes of the human race have loitered round the 
 shrine deserted by its god. 
 
 The present agnosticism in India has been widened by 
 education, but its origin belongs to Christianity. The 
 missionaries of the Christian religion have done a work 
 in India only comparable with the achievement of the 
 
THE COLLISION 167 
 
 first apostles in Europe. They have not converted Brah- 
 manism into Christianity, but they have begun the Chris- 
 tianization of Brahmanism. They have not changed the 
 altar of the gods into the altar of Jehovah, but they have 
 erected over that altar the decalogue of Christian mor- 
 als. In a word, they have lifted up in the empire of 
 superstition and idolatry, the ethical ideal of civilization 
 which is the Character of Jesus. 
 
 This is not merely a conviction from my own observa- 
 tion and studies, but the settled opinion of the first minds 
 now directing the Government of India. I find that 
 every man in a high and responsible position, in a posi- 
 tion which enables him to survey the whole various field 
 of Indian life as it is manifesting itself over his own 
 province, holds the opinion that a revolution of a most 
 significant character is now taking place in Indian 
 thought, and that this revolution is the work of Christi- 
 anity. There are those who think that this revolution 
 is all for the good of India, others who regard it with 
 misgiving; but not a single man I consulted of all those 
 able to form a correct judgment, expressed any doubt 
 whatever as to the reality and enormous importance of 
 the revolution. 
 
 Christianity, helped by education and the presence of 
 a Government more democratic and more socialistic than 
 any Government in Europe,^ has succeeded in that very 
 direction where Buddhism failed, and where modern 
 Hinduism appeared to be least vulnerable. Christianity 
 has given India the sense of human brotherhood and 
 the idea of social ethics. The immemorial theory of 
 Caste is definitely challenged, the Brahman's contempt 
 
 1 See page 328. 
 
i68 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 for the poor is now regarded with new eyes, and genuine 
 shame is felt for Hinduism's neglect of ignorance and 
 its indifference to suffering. The collision of Christi- 
 anity and Brahmanism has resulted thus far in a new 
 birth for Hinduism, but not a new birth unto Christ. 
 The grave of Hinduism has become a cradle, but not 
 the manger of Bethlehem. Hinduism is now a child 
 destroying the idols which were once its toys but its 
 forehead is not marked with the sign of the Cross. 
 Christianity has begun to moralize Hinduism, a superb 
 achievement, but it has not spiritualized Hinduism with 
 the joy and serenity of Jesus. 
 
 In a private letter written to me by one of the Gov- 
 ernors in India, the prophecy is ventured that the In- 
 dian Census Report for the present year will witness 
 to a more extensive work of conversion than in the 
 previous decade, and he speaks of high-caste Indian 
 Christians who are sincerely religious. " But as a rule," 
 he writes, " it must be admitted that direct success in 
 the way of conversion is attained among the lower orders 
 of the population, and it is most easily effected among 
 jungle tribes and low castes." After referring to a par- 
 ticular Mission which " baptizes anybody who asks for 
 it," he gives me the written opinion of an able man of 
 affairs and a close student of ethnological questions, on 
 the subject of Christianity's indirect effects on Hin- 
 duism : 
 
 Apart from direct conversion. Missionary enter- 
 prise has had enormous indirect results. There is one 
 small sect, the Radha Swami, which has actually de- 
 veloped a doctrine bearing the closest resemblance to 
 
THE COLLISION 169 
 
 that of the Trinity. Some elements were already ex- 
 isting in the Kabir Panthi tenets which, according to 
 Grierson, were taken directly from Christianity some 
 centuries ago, but the modern development is much 
 closer. What strikes one most however is the tend- 
 ency among Hindus to study Christianity not as the 
 Eclectic Brahmos to absorb what is best in its reli- 
 gious teaching, but to ascertain the secret of its success 
 and apply the results to strengthen Hinduism. Such 
 a tendency is most marked in the case of the Arya 
 Samaj. This sect has been influenced for good in its 
 social and ethical aspects by contact with Christianity. 
 Its rejection of caste (theoretical at present) and all 
 ritual is also probably strengthened by the same 
 contact, but in purely religious matters its attitude 
 towards Christianity is direct hostility. It has bor- 
 rowed the Missionary system but confines its converts 
 to Hindus or persons whose ancestors were Hindus. 
 The few instances of Europeans who have joined it 
 need not be taken seriously. Thus it may be said 
 generally that one great effect of Missionary work has 
 been to excite religious zeal among the mass of In- 
 dians, but to this must be added the warning that the 
 zeal so roused is directed towards the improvement of 
 indigenous creeds, not towards an acceptance of 
 Christianity. 
 
 " I may, in confirmation of what is said above," 
 writes the Governor, " mention that a very bitter attack 
 is made upon Christianity by Munshi Ram, the head of 
 the Kangri Gurukul, and his co-editor of the Vindica- 
 tion of the Arya Samaj. The Arya Samaj is hostile to 
 
I70 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 all existing religions in the East, to Muhamadanism, 
 Orthodox Hinduism, Buddhism, but it reserves its most 
 violent attacks for Christianity." 
 
 Another Governor told me that Christianity in his 
 province had done little more than create a spirit of 
 agnosticism among the educated young people in large 
 towns, " and this, of course," he added, " is all to the 
 good." It is good only so far as it represents a break 
 with superstition; so far as it tends to deepen and 
 intensify the unrest of India's heart, it is extremely 
 perilous. 
 
 The position as it stands at present is this : From the 
 work of the Missions a knowledge of the Character of 
 Jesus has penetrated educated opinion; this knowledge, 
 affecting national ideas on many subjects, has driven the 
 arrogant and self-satisfied Brahman to become a violent 
 missionary for Brahmanism; it has created a new re- 
 ligion of Hinduism among the more liberal and enlight- 
 ened minds of the community, and has given zeal and 
 enterprise to the religious conscience of the people. 
 Leave out of count for the present the wonderful and 
 moving conversions of Christianity among the humble 
 and meek, the poor and lowly, the unhappy and the out- 
 cast — conversions which should inspire the courage of 
 Christendom and lead to a fresh enthusiasm for the re- 
 ligion of Jesus; leave these conversions out of count for 
 the present, and the position is what I have stated it to 
 be — a revivified Hinduism, a new activity in religious 
 thought, and a Brahmanism roused and oppugnant. 
 
 One of the Indians with whom I discussed this matter, 
 a scholar, the principal of an important college, and one 
 of the leaders of the Brahmo Samaj, told me that Chris- 
 
THE COLLISION 171 
 
 tianity was doing a great work for Hinduism. " Your 
 science has helped us," he said, " to understand the phys- 
 ical universe, your literature has broadened our minds 
 and deepened our sympathies, but Christianity has per- 
 haps done more than these in recalling us to the great 
 ethical truths of our own religion. We now perceive 
 that the longing of man is for the Infinite; we go back 
 to our ancient books and we find that our forefathers 
 longed for the Infinite; and we know, as the best of our 
 people have always known, that communion with the 
 Infinite is possible to man and does not demand the inter- 
 ference of the priest. We have a great reverence for 
 Jesus ; we feel, with Emerson, that He ' saw with open 
 eye the mystery of the soul ' ; we confess that He re- 
 vealed the noblest truths; and we acknowledge the great 
 debt owed to Him by all humanity. But we do not 
 call Him God. We could not do that. We shudder at 
 the claim Christianity makes for Him. We do not see 
 from the Bible that He made that claim for Himself. 
 As a Teacher, He teaches us; as a Light, He shines be- 
 fore us; as a Voice from God, we listen to Him with 
 reverence and with gladness. But we do not say He 
 was God. We do not say He was the Infinite. Cer- 
 tainly we reject all the ritual and ceremonial of ecclesias- 
 tical Christianity, just as we reject all the ritual and 
 ceremonial of our own priestly Brahmanism." 
 
 The following information given to me by a man well 
 acquainted with the facts, concerns a University Hostel 
 in the United Provinces: — 
 
 The Hostel is managed by a Warden, sub- Warden 
 and two Residents, all Englishmen, the first two being 
 
172 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 clergymen. Students visit the staff for individual 
 Bible study two or three times a week. The attend- 
 ance for this purpose is purely voluntary and no special 
 privileges are allowed to students who do so attend. 
 For a time there was a boycott of Bible study, but ex- 
 cept during that interval about half the students and 
 generally more than half have attended. Most of the 
 students are Brahman, but the popularity of the Hostel 
 is shown by the fact that every year four applications 
 are rejected for each admission. Now, during the ten 
 years for which this Hostel has existed 450 students 
 have resided in it, and there has been one baptism 
 and one other case of conversion though the convert 
 finally shirked an open profession. ... It is 
 obvious that parents, while they recognize the advan- 
 tages of their son's honest guidance, have no fears of 
 the latter losing their own religion. The caste Hindu 
 has a firm belief in the perfection of his religion at 
 some remote past and thinks that that past is capable 
 of return. 
 
 Mr. thinks, and I agree with him, that if 
 
 Christianity ever does prevail in India it will come 
 from below. If Hinduism remains as it is, Christi- 
 anity may spread rapidly when education increases 
 among the low castes. //, however, Hinduism is 
 liberalized, as for example on the lines of the Arya 
 Samaj, Mr. thinks that it is quite capable of hold- 
 ing its own. I go a little further than he does, and so 
 far as one can attempt to look forward in such a mat- 
 ter, it seems to me almost certain that in such condi- 
 tions it will hold its own. 
 
THE COLLISION 173 
 
 Now, in conclusion of this present chapter, I must take 
 leave to caution the reader against thinking that this 
 fermentation of rehgious ideas is general to the various 
 peoples composing the Indian Empire. It is limited to 
 an extremely Little Flock — to the educated. But just 
 as the ideas of the educated in Europe percolate by some 
 mysterious process to the least intellectual circles of our 
 complex society, so that the mind of an uncultured and 
 inarticulate democracy is sometimes actually in advance 
 of orthodox opinion, and has broader vision and nobler 
 horizons than the conservatism and traditionalism of 
 classes far less ignorant, so in India one is conscious 
 of a general disturbance of the mental atmosphere and 
 feels that the leaven of new ideas is working towards 
 a revolution which will one day be total and complete. 
 However, at the present time, the fermentation which 
 is visible and tangible and audible, the fermentation which 
 is engulfing gods and sapping the foundations of human 
 faith in a spiritual destiny, is restricted to the cities and 
 even there is only active among the young and the mid- 
 dle-aged. 
 
 The human millions of India still inhabit a darkness 
 such as brooded over the whole earth in the dim ages 
 of mortality's first ascent into the field of consciousness. 
 They show the student of evolution some of the very 
 earliest stages in the advance of humanity. They teach 
 us to know ourselves as we were before the dawn of 
 Christianity and the rise of science. They witness to fhe 
 steadying and most important fact, that evolution is not 
 a process independent of mankind, not a universal ad- 
 vance of human nature, not a propulsion of spiritual 
 forces exerted on all the peoples of the earth simultane- 
 
174 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 ously and with equal force, but a process peculiar to cer- 
 tain races, dependent absolutely on the exercise of the 
 rational faculty, and demanding a continual effort and a 
 perpetual rigour of the moral nature. 
 
 It is proved so far as anything which concerns the 
 earliest ages of evolution can be proved, that Magic pre- 
 ceded Religion. There were witches before there were 
 priests, and magicians before there were kings. This 
 is the great and illuminating thesis of The Golden Bough^ 
 a book which more than any other work of man gives 
 to the mind such a sense of its own immemorial an- 
 tiquity that it evermore thinks in aeons and anticipates 
 no finality. Dr. Frazer has demonstrated that far back 
 in the abyss of time man in his savage state first be- 
 lieved himself capable of controlling natural objects, and 
 that it was only after a long experience of nature's in- 
 difference to spell and talisman, that the more intelli- 
 gent rose to a conception of creatures bigger and stronger 
 than himself who controlled the world from an invisi- 
 ble altitude or an unfathomable depth. Thus came Re- 
 ligion, superstitious Religion, and Religion permeated 
 with the spirit of Magic. And to the present day, not 
 only in India but throughout the world and at the very 
 heart of civilization, and in the purest religion known 
 to history, this earliest faith of the human race persists 
 and is ever at war with the spirit of evolution. 
 
 When we survey the existing races of mankind from Green- 
 land to Tierra del Fuego, or from Scotland to Singapore, we 
 observe that they are distinguished one from the other by a 
 great variety of religions, and that these distinctions are not, 
 so to speak, merely coterminous with the broad distinctions of 
 race, but descend into the minuter subdivisions of states and 
 
THE COLLISION 175 
 
 commonwealths, nay, that they honeycomb the town, the vil- 
 lage and even the family, so that the surface of society all 
 over the world is cracked and seamed, sapped and mined with 
 rents and fissures and yawning crevasses opened up by the 
 disintegrating influence of religious dissension. Yet when we 
 have penetrated through these differences, which affect mainly 
 the intelligent and thoughtful part of the community, we shall 
 find underlying them all a solid stratum of intellectual agree- 
 ment among the dull, the weak, the ignorant, and the super- 
 stitious, who constitute, unfortunately, the vast majority of 
 mankind. One of the great achievements of the nineteenth 
 century was to run shafts down into this low mental stratum 
 in many parts of the world, and thus to discover its sub- 
 stantial identity everywhere. It is beneath our feet — and not 
 very far beneath them — here in Europe at the present day, and 
 it crops up on the surface in the heart of the Australian 
 wilderness and wherever the advent of higher civilization has 
 not crushed it under ground. This universal faith, this truly 
 Catholic creed, is a belief in the efficacy of magic. While 
 religious systems differ, not only in different countries, but in 
 the same country in different ages, the system of sympathetic 
 magic remains everywhere and at all times substantially alike 
 in its principles and practice. Among the ignorant and super- 
 stitious classes of modern Europe it is very much what it was 
 thousands of years ago in Egypt and India, and what it now 
 is amongst the lowest savages surviving in the remotest cor- 
 ners of the world. The Golden Bough, Third Edition, Chap. 
 IV, pp. 235-236. 
 
 The learned author in another part of his book makes 
 the following translation from Dr. W. Caland's Altin- 
 disches 'Zahber-ritual, mentioning that some good au- 
 thorities hold that the very name of Brahman is derived 
 from brahman, " A magical spell " : — 
 
 He who has been wont to regard the ancient Hin- 
 dus as a highly civilized people, famed for their 
 
176 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 philosophical systems, their dramatic poetry, their epic 
 lays, will be surprised when he makes the acquaint- 
 ance of their magical ritual, and will perceive that 
 hitherto he has known the old Hindu people from one 
 side only. He will find that he here stumbles on the 
 lowest strata of Vedic culture, and will be astonished 
 at the agreement between the magic ritual of the old 
 Vedas and the shamanism of the so-called savage. If 
 we drop the peculiar Hindu expressions and technical 
 terms, and imagine a shaman instead of a Brahman, 
 we could almost fancy that we have before us a mag- 
 ical book belonging to one of the tribes of the North 
 American red-skins. 
 
 Dr. Frazer is careful to remind his reader that the 
 barbarous influence of faith in Magic is not confined to 
 India, to North America, to the centres of Africa and 
 Australia, but is present in the jnost civilized countries 
 and makes itself evident even in the religions which have 
 done most to overthrow its dominion. While we prop- 
 erly adjudge Brahnianism to be a form of Magic, we 
 should do well, therefore, to examine our own religion 
 and see how far this ancient superstition is recurring 
 and so dragging back a pure faith in a spiritual religion 
 to the ceremonialism and idolatry of a savage past. 
 Most important is it for us to make this examination, 
 before we send emissaries of our religion to convert the 
 races who are still pkuiged in the night of superstition 
 and whose priests know more about Magic than our 
 missionaries are able to tell them, and whose ceremonies 
 are more full-blooded with thorough-going belief in ritual 
 
THE COLLISION 177 
 
 than anything that the most ransacking medisevalist can 
 discover or invent. 
 
 In the following quotation from Dr. Frazer's work 
 the reader will perceive how easily Magic may become 
 associated with Christianity and will realize with what 
 wisdom the great men and the great poets of Israel, 
 guarding the glory of their faith in a Spiritual God, set 
 themselves to crush and extirpate its menace in the form 
 of idolatry or in the shape of priestcraft : ■ — 
 
 Among the ignorant classes of modern Europe the same 
 confusion of ideas, the same mixture of religion and magic, 
 crops up in various forms. Thus we are told that in France 
 "the majority of the peasants still believe that the priest 
 possesses a secret and irresistible power over the elements. 
 By reciting certain prayers which he alone knows and has the 
 right to utter, yet for the utterance of which he must after- 
 wards demand absolution, he can, on an occasion of pressing 
 danger, arrest or reverse for a moment the action of the 
 eternal laws of the physical world. The winds, the storms, 
 the hail, and the rain are at his command and obey his will. 
 The fire also is subject to him, and the flames of a conflagration 
 are extinguished at his word." For example, French peasants 
 used to be, perhaps are still, persuade.d that the priest could 
 celebrate, with certain special rites, a " Mass of the Holy 
 Spirit," of which the efficacy was so miraculous that it never 
 met with any opposition from the divine will ; God was forced 
 to grant whatever was asked of Him in this form, however 
 rash and importunate might be the petition. No idea of 
 impiety or irreverence attached to the rite in the minds of 
 those who, in some of the great extremities of life, sought by 
 this singular means to take the kingdom of heaven by storm. 
 The secular priests generally refused to say the " Mass of the 
 Holy Spirit," but the monks, especially the Capuchin friars, 
 had the reputation of yielding with less scruple to the en- 
 
178 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 treaties of the anxious and distressed. In the constraint thus 
 supposed by the Catholic peasantry to be laid by the priest 
 upon the deity we seem to have an exact counterpart of the 
 power which, as we saw, the ancient Egyptians ascribed to 
 their magicians. Again, to take another example, in many 
 villages of Provence the priest is still reputed to possess the 
 faculty of averting storms. It is not every priest who enjoys 
 this reputation, and in some villages, when a change of pastors 
 takes place, the parishioners are eager to learn whether the 
 new incumbent has the power (pouder), as they call it. At the 
 first sign of a heavy storm they put him to the proof by in- 
 viting him to exorcise the threatening clouds; and if the result 
 answers to their hopes, the new shepherd is assured of the 
 sympathy and respect of his flock. In some parishes, where 
 the reputation of the curate in this respect stood higher than 
 that of his rector, the relations between the two have been so 
 strained in consequence that the bishop has had to translate the 
 rector to another benefice. Again, Gascon peasants believe 
 that to revenge themselves on their enemies bad men will 
 sometimes induce a priest to say a mass called the Mass of 
 Saint Secaire. Very few priests know this mass, and three- 
 fourths of those who do know it would not say it for love or 
 money. None but wicked priests dare to perform the grue- 
 some ceremony, and you may be quite sure that they will 
 have a very heavy account to render for it at the last day. No 
 curate or bishop, not even the Archbishop of Audi, can pardon 
 them; that right belongs to the Pope of Rome alone. The 
 Mass of Saint Secaire may be said only in a ruined or deserted 
 Church, where owls mope and hoot, where bats flit in the 
 gloaming, where gypsies lodge of nights, and where toads 
 squat under the desecrated altar. Thither the bad priest comes 
 by night with his light o' love, and at the first stroke of eleven 
 he begins to mumble the mass backwards, and ends just as 
 the clocks are knelling the midnight hour. His leman acts as 
 clerk. The host he blesses is black and has three points ; he 
 consecrates no wine, but instead he drinks the water of a well 
 into which the body of an unbaptized infant has been flunfv. 
 He makes the sign of the cross, but it is on the ground and 
 
THE COLLISION 179 
 
 with his left foot. And many other things he does which no 
 good Christian could look upon without being struck blind and 
 deaf and dumb for the rest of his life. But the man for whom 
 the mass is said withers away little by little, and nobody can 
 say what is the matter with him; even the doctors can make 
 nothing of it. They do not know that he is slowly dying of 
 the Mass of Saint Secaire. The Golden Bough, Third Edition, 
 Chap. IV, pp. 231-233. 
 
 I must not further plunder Dr. Frazer's great work, 
 but must content myself by saying that in that monu- 
 mental thesaurus of superstition and misbelief, which 
 is at the same time the most engaging and charming 
 story ever unfolded by a master hand, the reader will 
 find innumerable instances gathered from the British 
 Isles, and in our own day, of a lingering faith in the 
 absurdest Magic to be found in heathendom, a faith 
 if not so blasphemous as that to be seen openly practised 
 among the ignorant peasants of a Roman Catholic coun- 
 try, yet a faith entirely at variance with the religion of 
 Jesus. 
 
 Most people have smiled over that letter of Horace 
 Walpole giving an account of his experiences in Italy : 
 " Among other things of great sanctity there is a set 
 of gnashing of teeth, the grinders very entire; a bit of 
 the worm that never dies, preserved in spirits; a crow 
 of St. Peter's cock, very useful against Easter; the 
 crisping and curling, frizzling and frouncing of Mary 
 Magdalen, which she cut off on growing devout. The 
 good man that showed us all these commodities was got 
 into such a train of calling them the blessed this and the 
 blessed that, that at last he showed us a bit of the blessed 
 fig-tree that Christ cursed." Such is the foolishness of 
 
i8o OTHER SHEEP 
 
 a Latin Christianity penetrated and suffused by the an- 
 cient superstitions of Magic; but are there not evidences 
 in our own Christianity, in spite of all the light and 
 liberalism flooding England from one end of the coun- 
 try to the other, of the same persisting superstitions 
 and the same inclination of the human mind towards 
 Magic ? 
 
 I hope that no reader will regard the latter pages of 
 this chapter as a digression. My object has been to show 
 that a Christianity which is priestly in character and 
 which savours in the least degree of Magic, cannot look 
 for the conversion of India, where an immemorial priest- 
 hood and a thorough and explicit Magic are masters of 
 the situation.^ I can easier believe that Brahmanism will 
 eventually colour this priestly and sacrificial Christian- 
 ity, carrying our ritual and our ceremonial still further 
 from the majestic simplicity of Jesus, than that such a 
 Christianity will ever convert India from her unrest and 
 her pessimism to the faith of a little child and the peace 
 that passes all understanding. 
 
 1 It is most important to bear in mind that England's greatest 
 obstacle to an understanding with Muhamadan people throughout 
 the entire East is the ceremonialism of Christianity, regarded by all 
 Mussulmans as blasphemous idolatry. 
 
WHAT IT COSTS 
 
 A YOUNG Hindu, handsomely dressed and of a noble 
 countenance, entered one day the headquarters of the 
 Salvation Army in Calcutta, and drawing a Bible from 
 his cloth inquired if he might ask a question. The Sal- 
 vationist to whom this inquiry was put, studying his 
 man, anticipated controversy. To his surprise, however, 
 the young Brahman turned to the incident of the man 
 who had great possessions, and reading that story, 
 slowly and thoughtfully, emphasized the words Sell 
 whatsoever thou hast, repeated them, and at the end of 
 his reading went back to them again. 
 
 " I want to know," he said, " what is the meaning 
 of those words — Sell whatsoever thou hast. Can you 
 tell me what they mean ? " 
 
 The Salvationist, a little puzzled and perplexed, re- 
 plied that the command referred to those great posses- 
 sions of the young man which were the chief obstacle 
 between his soul and God. " In spite of a wish to be 
 good and kind," said he, " this young man was so taken 
 up with his fine goods that he loved them more than 
 God. Money was for him the greatest thing in life. 
 Until he could bring himself to sell his property and 
 give up his money to the poor, he could not truthfully 
 say that he loved God with all his heart, and with all 
 his mind, and with all his soul." 
 
 The Brahman listened attentively, closed his Bible, 
 
 i8i 
 
i82 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 and said quietly : " I fear you do not understand it. 
 I think I know what it means, but I am not certain." 
 
 The Salvationist asked him if he desired to become a 
 Christian. 
 
 He replied : " I am not willing to sell all that I pos- 
 sess." 
 
 " You know the text," asked the Salvationist, " What 
 shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose 
 his own soulf " 
 
 The Brahman looked at him steadily, and replied 
 — " Some day I will sell all ; but not yet." 
 
 When he had departed the Salvationist turned to 
 Mark's gospel and read quietly to himself the story 
 of the man who refused discipleship : — 
 
 And when He was gone forth into the way, there 
 came one running, and kneeled to Him, and asked 
 Him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit 
 eternal life? 
 
 And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou Me 
 good? there is none good but One, that is, God. 
 Thou knowest the commandments. Do not commit 
 adultery. Do not kill. Do not steal. Do not bear false 
 witness, Defraud not. Honour thy father and mother. 
 
 And he answered and said unto Him, Master, all 
 these have I observed from my youth. 
 
 Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said 
 unto him. One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell 
 whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou 
 shalt have treasure in heaven : and come, take up the 
 cross, and follow Me. 
 
 And he was sad at that saying, and went away 
 grieved : for he had great possessions. 
 
WHAT IT COSTS 183 
 
 It seemed to him that he had given a right answer, 
 he could not see what other answer was possible; and 
 yet this young Brahman had said, " I fear you do not 
 understand it." The story was simple enough. A 
 man morally good but possessed by his possessions, had 
 come to Jesus with the unrest of a soul starving for 
 the spiritual life; and he had been told by Jesus that if 
 he wanted to perfect his morality he must sell his pos- 
 sessions, get rid of his money, and give up his life to 
 the service of his fellow-men. That was the story. 
 Jesus Himself had supplied the commentary. " It is 
 easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, 
 than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God." 
 
 But he remained troubled and uneasy, haunted by 
 the reproachful thought that some other answer might 
 have given peace to the heart of the inquirer and per- 
 haps helped him to make the great surrender. 
 
 Some little time after this event, the young Brah- 
 man appeared at one of the meetings of the Salvationists 
 in Calcutta. There was a great crowd in the hall, but 
 the young and distinguished-looking Brahman was 
 recognized by the Salvationist and they exchanged 
 greetings. At the conclusion of the address, an appeal 
 was made to those who truly desired the liberation of 
 Christ, to come out in the sight of all men and kneel at 
 the bench of penitence. 
 
 To the relief and delight of the Salvationist, among 
 the very first to rise was the young Brahman; but 
 scarcely had he moved a few steps from his place in 
 the crowded audience, when a storm seemed to break 
 out in the meeting. A group of men, raising a shout 
 and uttering threats and maledictions, started up from 
 
i84 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 the back, thrust their way through the frightened peo- 
 ple, laid violent hands upon the young Brahman, and 
 bore him out of the hall with such wrath and indigna- 
 tion on their faces as struck terror into the hearts of the 
 low-caste people. 
 
 For a few weeks nothing more was heard of this 
 young man. Then one day he appeared at the head- 
 quarters of the Salvationists, and said, " I want you to 
 take me in." 
 
 He turned to the man whose advice he had first 
 sought, and said, " I have begun to sell my all." 
 
 They learned his story up to that moment. It ap- 
 peared that he had come across a Bible at his college, 
 and out of curiosity had begun to read it. The Charac- 
 ter of Jesus, the beauty of His teaching, and the no- 
 bility of His bearing in the hour of persecution and 
 death, had made a profound impression upon him. Of 
 such a Master he desired to be a disciple. But the 
 conditions of discipleship were hard. He was haunted 
 by the command. Sell whatsoever thou hast. He con- 
 sidered what it was he should have to sell, and the 
 sacrifice appeared greater than he could bear. In his 
 trouble and distress, thinking perhaps that his knowl- 
 edge of English or his ignorance of Christianity had 
 led him astray he came to the Salvationists and asked 
 the meaning of those words. Sell wliatsocz'cr thou hast. 
 The answer had not satisfied him. He felt convinced 
 that his own instinctive interpretation was the true one. 
 He went home to consider it. His interest in Chris- 
 tianity was now so great that he discussed it with his 
 tutor, his fellow-students, and even in his home. He 
 belonged to the highest caste of Brahmans, and his 
 
WHAT IT COSTS 185 
 
 father, a rich and powerful man, officiated in the temple. 
 In such a household to discuss Christianity was to dis- 
 cuss Socialism at a King's table. Ridicule was poured 
 upon the pretensions of this religion. No one seemed 
 to feel as he felt the wonder and magic of Jesus, no 
 one even seemed to realize the beauty of that perfect 
 Character. The discussions that he introduced met with 
 contemptuous ridicule, and were extinguished in dis- 
 dainful laughter. Even his tutor, for whom he enter- 
 tained a great affection, and who was a man of learning, 
 dismissed the religion of Christianity as a matter un- 
 worthy of serious attention. 
 
 Nevertheless, so potent was the spell of Jesus on his 
 heart and mind, that he determined at last to surrender 
 his soul to Christianity. For this purpose he had at- 
 tended the meeting of the Salvationists. But the sus- 
 picions of his people had been aroused. Watched and 
 spied upon, he had been followed to the meeting, and 
 at the moment of his surrender he had been dragged 
 away and carried to his home. There the entreaties of 
 his father and the tears of his mother, though they 
 shook his whole nature, had failed to alter his resolution, 
 and for more than a week he had been chained hand and 
 foot, and fed upon rice and water. At the first oppor- 
 tunity of escape, he had come to the Salvationists and 
 now he asked them to take him in. 
 
 " Why do you come to us ? " he was asked. 
 
 " Because," he answered, " you appear to me truly 
 to be following Christ." 
 
 For a fortnight he lived openly at the headquarters, 
 refusing their offer to send him to a place of safety. 
 Then, suddenly and without warning of any kind, he 
 
i86 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 disappeared. Two months passed without news of him. 
 He had mysteriously vanished out of life. Not a sign 
 came to them that he was alive. Whether he had been 
 abducted, or of his own will had gone back to Hinduism, 
 no one could say. He had appeared anxious and un- 
 certain during that fortnight's residence, constantly 
 reading his Bible, constantly seeking private com- 
 munion with God in prayer. They realized that the 
 change was a great one — from the luxury and comfort 
 of his father's house to the rough lodging and short 
 commons of their own primitive establishment; with 
 the large humanity which characterizes so many of 
 these good and simple men, they acknowledged that 
 the actual life of poverty and self-sacrifice is different 
 from the ideal and is not without its disappointment 
 and its disillusion. Perhaps the reality had been too 
 much for him. Perhaps he had repented of his im- 
 pulsive conversion. 
 
 But one day he came back to them. He told his first 
 friend among these Salvationists that he had been 
 carried away by his parents to Benares, that their en- 
 treaties had become threats and menaces, that his father 
 had paid a large sum of money to get him rein- 
 stated in caste, and that he had been forced to bathe in 
 the Ganges, and that he had been compelled to bow to 
 idols. 
 
 " I submitted," he said, " because it entailed no vio- 
 lence on my part; but when I stood in the Ganges, I 
 prayed — Lord Jesus, wash me in Thy precious blood 
 and I shall be whiter than snow ; and when I was kneel- 
 ing in the temples, I prostrated my soul before the 
 Eternal Father, and said — Thou art God alone." 
 
WHAT IT COSTS 187 
 
 He told of how his mother had implored him on her 
 knees not to disgrace them by becoming a Christian, of 
 how the horror of becoming a casteless man had been 
 forced upon him by his father, and of how his loved 
 tutor and his brothers had joined with their father and 
 mother to make him feel the shame and scandal of de- 
 serting Brahmanism for the despised life of a Christian 
 outcast. 
 
 " Well," said the Salvationist, " you have now 
 proved for yourself the meaning of those words. Sell 
 whatsoever thou hast." 
 
 " Not yet," he answered ; " but, I have nearly sold 
 all." 
 
 Some days later he came to this Salvationist and said 
 to him — "It is over now. I have sold all." He ap- 
 peared to be heavy with desolation and bowed with 
 grief, but there was nevertheless in his eyes the look of 
 a man who has come through darkness and is glad of a 
 light that is yet too strong for him. 
 
 He was asked what final sacrifice had been made. 
 
 " Everything is given up now," he answered. " I 
 have not only ceased to be a Brahman; I have ceased to 
 be a human being. I am not only an outcast, I am 
 dead. I have neither father nor mother, brothers nor 
 sisters. They made an effigy of me, they set up a pyre, 
 and when the effigy was burned, they buried the ashes. 
 It was not the effigy they buried ; it was me. Not one of 
 my family now regards me as a living man. If I meet 
 my mother in the street, she will pass mc without a 
 word. If my father were to see me dying of hunger, 
 he would not give me a morsel of food. It would not 
 be me my mother passed in the street, it would not be 
 
1 88 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 me to whom my father refused food; it would be a 
 stranger and an outcast. I, their child, am dead; I, 
 their son, am buried. It is the end." 
 
 In this way he sold his sonship, his property, his 
 rank, his comfort, and became an outcast on the face 
 of the earth. Now, to certain Indians this would be no 
 hardship, and even to certain Brahmans it would not 
 be a burden so very grievous to be borne ; but to a Ben- 
 gali Brahman, the softest and least virile of all Hindus, 
 and to a Bengali Brahman brought up in an atmosphere 
 of the greatest comfort and luxury, such a sacrifice de- 
 manded a superb heroism. 
 
 For, this rich youth, stripped of his social trappings 
 and exposed to the poverty of the open world, went out 
 with a single European Salvationist as an Apostle to as 
 low and degraded a people as one could find in almost 
 any part of the world. He went to the Santals, 
 aborigines of Bengal, a people who eat rats and snakes, 
 and who are looked upon even by low-caste Hindus as 
 the untouchable offscourings of the human race. It 
 was his own wish that he should go to these particular 
 people, and he went with only staff, blanket and water- 
 pot. He slept in the open; he accepted the rice which 
 these untouchables cooked for him; and, seated under 
 a village tree, surrounded on all sides by these degraded 
 savages, with a concertina in his hands, he would sing 
 songs about a God of Love and a happy heaven after 
 death, or tell them in their own language and with all 
 the force of their own idiom the story of Jesus. 
 
 Up till that time the Salvationists had experienced 
 the greatest difficulty in approaching the suspicious and 
 ignorant Santals. But now, perfectly sure that these 
 
WHAT IT COSTS 189 
 
 strange Europeans in native dress were not " coolie- 
 catching for Assam," the villagers extended to them the 
 pleasantest of welcomes and gave them a serious hear- 
 ing. The result was a work of considerable useful- 
 ness among these poor savages; many became faithful 
 and devout Christians, and a new idea of morality was 
 born into their barbarous philosophy. 
 
 For some years the young Brahman gave himself 
 body and soul to this hard, difficult, and heart-break- 
 ing life. He was transformed from a soft and troubled 
 youth into a vigorous and rejoicing man. He loved his 
 work. He loved the people. Never once did he com- 
 plain of his rough life, never once did he speak harshly 
 of the Santals' stupidity and their deadness to spiritual 
 ideas. So long as men would listen and he could tell 
 the story of Jesus, he was happy; and he loved above all 
 things to hear them pray to Our Father in their own 
 language, with their hands crossed and their faces raised 
 like little children to the sky. 
 
 It was his devotion to this work which brought about 
 his death. In an epidemic of small-pox he was work- 
 ing with increased devotion and renewed energy, when 
 he contracted the disease. He died without a shadow 
 of doubt, without a shadow of regret. Life had been 
 as he could have wished it to be. 
 
 " You are not sorry," he was asked, " that you sold 
 all that you had ? " 
 
 " No," he answered, " no, I am not sorry : I am glad. 
 But, I have missed my mother and I should have liked 
 to have my tutor for my friend." 
 
 From this narrative the reader will understand that 
 it is no easy thing for Christianity to effect conver- 
 
I90 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 sions among the high-caste Hindus. When the taunt 
 is levelled, or the confession fairly made, that Chris- 
 tianity can only boast of conversions among the humble 
 and the outcast, it should always be borne in mind that 
 to effect conversions in other castes is a matter of the 
 very greatest difficulty; nay, a matter almost impossible 
 among the highest castes of all. For, to convert a 
 Brahman is to take Portsmouth and capture Berlin, so 
 defended is he by the armament of custom and the forti- 
 fication of prejudice. Indeed, when a European really 
 grasps the network of cunning device which the piercing 
 ingenuity and intolerant arrogance of Brahmanism have 
 combined to build for its defence against Christianity, 
 he will marvel that any single man of the higher castes 
 has ever escaped into freedom. 
 
 At the beginning of all these devices there is the ques- 
 tion of marriage. The Brahman priest keeps the tight- 
 est hand on Hymen's torch, and makes it the truncheon 
 of obedience. He knows that the first business of every 
 Hindu, after he has begot a son to sacrifice at his tomb, 
 is to find husbands for his inconvenient and expensive 
 daughters. Let a man defy his priest ever so slightly, 
 and he will find no one of his own caste willing to pro- 
 vide a husband for his daughter. It is forbidden by the 
 priest that men should cross the sea; hundreds of Hindus 
 violate this command every year; and perhaps for some 
 time afterwards they live in contemptuous indifference 
 to the priest's displeasure. But let a daughter be bom 
 to them, or let them desire to find a wife for one of 
 their sons among high-caste families, and then, down on 
 their marrow-bones they must go to Jack Priest. Nor 
 is it enough that they kneel. Asiatic ideas of humilia- 
 
WHAT IT COSTS 191 
 
 tion are not so mild as European. The humble and sup- 
 plicating cringer must consume in the presence of his 
 master — what think you? — the five products of the 
 cow! Yes; this is unvarnished, absolute truth. Of 
 course, the priest is accommodating. The very rich may 
 get off with a swinging fine and two or three pilgrim- 
 ages : a man of power and influence may only have to 
 touch with a finger, and then carry the finger to his 
 tongue, the five discordant products of the sacred cow; 
 but a man out of whom the priest can get nothing and 
 from whom he looks for no protection or assistance, and 
 perhaps whom he desires vindictively to humiliate and 
 abase, must actually take into his mouth and swallow 
 the milk, the saliva, the tears, the urine, and the excre- 
 ment of the cow. 
 
 To break caste in India is to break a priest's rule, and 
 the consequences of such a violation are but faintly 
 imaged to our mind in the consequences which would 
 befall a man in England who cheated at cards, forged 
 cheques, purloined jewellery, and blackmailed his 
 friends. We can better imagine the condition of things 
 in India by likening it to a supposititious state of affairs 
 here, in which a man who ate jelly with a spoon would 
 next day find himself the shivering victim of an archi- 
 diaconal visitation, or a man who wore a white tie with 
 a dinner jacket find himself cast upon the Thames Em- 
 bankment by the Archbishop of Canterbury and chivvied 
 out of Rowton House and Salvation Army Shelter by 
 the ceaseless activity of the Bishop of London. For the 
 offences which the priest punishes with outlawry or 
 loathsome ceremonies of abominable degradation, are 
 not crimes against society and not defiance of Almighty 
 
192 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 God, but are things right and proper to every free-born 
 man, and sinful only in this, that they are forbidden by 
 the etiquette of Brahmanism. 
 
 But that etiquette is designed with a cunning and far- 
 reaching purpose. It is to keep Hinduism uninfluenced 
 by any religion, philosophy, or science in the world; 
 it is to keep the Hindu faithful to Brahmanism; and it 
 is to preserve the power of the Brahman. 
 
 You may be the greatest aristocrat in Europe, or the 
 most holy saint in the world, but the faithful Hindu, 
 however disgusting his habits and unprincipled his con- 
 duct, will go wash himself, spiritually disinfect himself, 
 after shaking your hand. For there is flattery in the 
 iron law of Brahmanical isolation. The Hindu is en- 
 couraged to regard himself as the first flower of the hu- 
 man race; he is taught from his youth to look upon the 
 white man with contempt and aversion; he is bred in 
 the highest conceit ever known in history; and he is 
 made to feel that the prison which shuts him in and 
 makes him a miserable slave is in truth a proud palace 
 of superiority which protects him from the contagion of 
 inferior people. 
 
 The fundamental and axiomatic doctrine of reincarna- 
 tion, with all its subsidiary ceremonials of death, is a 
 most powerful guard against invasion, a most powerful 
 preventive against desertion. A superstitious man 
 taught to think that he may be born again, endlessly, 
 endlessly, and in eveiy condition of misery and degrada- 
 tion, and who has inherited with the blood of his parents 
 the fixed belief that the Brahmans can control the pow- 
 ers of the universe, will think twice, nay, will think a 
 thousand times, before he takes such a step as will incur 
 
WHAT IT COSTS 193 
 
 even the annoyance of those powerful twice-born men, 
 much more such a step as will flout them and bring all 
 the artillery of their magic against his soul. 
 
 In no country in the world is custom — Dastur — so 
 omnipotent as it is in India. My servant going with me 
 on my shopping excursions always got a commission at 
 every native shop we entered. He had not taken me 
 there, and he neither selected the articles I purchased 
 nor helped to make my wants known to the shopkeeper; 
 he was there merely to carry my parcels and to direct my 
 cab-driver; but he always got bakshish, or as such com- 
 missions are significantly called, dasturi. " It is the 
 custom," he told me. Never mind how unreasonable 
 or preposterous a thing may be, so long as it is sanc- 
 tioned by Dastur, it is held to be the most natural thing 
 in the world. 
 
 Therefore, with a Brahmanical priesthood governing 
 every department of social life, arbiter of marriage and 
 lord of death, and with a people absolutely subservient 
 to the time-honoured laws of Custom, how can we won- 
 der that the classes most amenable to priestly discipline 
 because they are the principal sharers in the advantages 
 of that tyranny — a solid phalanx of superstition and 
 conservatism — how can we wonder that they should 
 withstand the warring and contending and competing 
 missionaries of a dismembered Christendom? Is it not 
 a matter for amazement that any conversions at all 
 should occur among these guarded, governed, and dis- 
 dainful millions? 
 
 That there is a real rivalry between .the various mis- 
 sionaries of Christianity the following brief, almost 
 amusing, almost gruesome, and withal sorrowful story. 
 
194 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 told to me by a doctor in one of the Salvation Army hos- 
 pitals, pretty faithfully attests. The doctor in question, 
 a young man bristling with energy, quick in action, reso- 
 lute in purpose, and most engaging with his mixture of 
 profound religiousness and joyful humour — was called 
 to the deathbed of a young Native converted to Chris- 
 tianity by the Salvation Army. This poor fellow's 
 father had been converted by the Roman Catholic Mis- 
 sion and there was a certain amount of strife between 
 them. 
 
 " When I arrived," said the doctor, " I found one of 
 our Salvationists, an excellent good man, soothing the 
 boy's last minutes with kind words and gentle assur- 
 ances of comfort. He had been sent for by the mother. 
 Some time after my arrival, into the house came a Ro- 
 man Catholic priest, post haste. We were amazed. He 
 took no notice of us, said no word to the boy, now al- 
 most unconscious, but began with a deal of puffing and 
 panting to get into his sacred robes. While he did this, 
 the Salvationist knelt down and prayed. The priest told 
 him to stop. He went on. The priest came to the bed- 
 side and began the service of Extreme Unction. This 
 riled me. Then he ceased and said to the Salvationist, 
 ' Stop that row ! ' But our fellow went on — fine ! fine ! 
 Oh, he was a master at praying. But think! There 
 was I, holding the boy's pulse, of course he was quite 
 unconscious then, with a Salvationist praying hard at 
 my side of the bed, and a Roman Catholic priest gab- 
 bling away as fast as he could go, on the other; and 
 over us all — Death ! Death ! — the great Mystery ! I 
 felt just like a referee, with my watch in my hand, wait- 
 ing for the end of a race! I was mad as fire with the 
 
WHAT IT COSTS 195 
 
 priest, and I was half afraid the Salvationist might stop 
 praying and leave the Catholic last on the field — to 
 boast afterwards that the boy had died a faithful Ro- 
 man. So I kept on whispering to our officer to go on, 
 to keep it up, all the time feeling the pulse and keeping 
 an eye on the perspiring priest. Prayer was of no avail, 
 but I wanted our man to be there, and I bade him go on. 
 And all the time, the priest was rattling away and the 
 poor pulse was flickering into everlasting quiet. Just 
 before the priest had come to the point of his ceremony, 
 the pulse stopped, and I said, ' It's over — God bless 
 him.' I tell you, if the priest had started on his busi- 
 ness of touching the body and all the rest of it, then and 
 there I should have knocked him down. My blood was 
 up. The whole thing fairly sickened me. Fancy, the 
 interference, the insolence, the scandalous humbug of 
 it ! But can't you see the scene ? — the robed priest on 
 one side, the praying Salvationist on the other, and I, 
 holding the pulse and the watch, and telling our man to 
 keep on praying. It wasn't a race for a man's soul. 
 But it was a race for decency and justice. I think if 
 the dying boy had been conscious enough to know what 
 was going on, I should have taken that priest by the 
 scruff of his neck, and — . But it was a scene, I tell 
 you. Lord, Lord, what a world it is." 
 
 Not once or twice, and not here and there, but many 
 times and all over India, I heard from men outside the 
 arena of religious activity, that the conflict between vari- 
 ous Missions is fatal to the progress of a true and funda- 
 mental Christianity. One Mission comes into a dis- 
 trict, sets up its buildings, and employs a certain num- 
 ber of Indians : then comes another Mission, goes one 
 
196 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 better in the way of buildings, and offers a more liberal 
 wage — actually taking away the servants of its rivals. 
 I know myself painful instances of such a state of 
 things. And there is one small town, almost a village, 
 where you may see no less than three large Mission hos- 
 pitals ! Is it a matter of wonder that the Indians laugh 
 among themselves, compare wages, go where they get 
 most, and offer themselves to any form of religious 
 ceremonial, baptism or anything else, so long as they 
 get good wages and medicine for nothing? 
 
 One most deplorable aspect of this unseemly rivalry 
 is the fact that a united Christendom, even with a gos- 
 pel of pessimism, might have converted long ago the 
 whole of the depressed classes. A Governor of a great 
 province said to me, " I am absolutely certain that if the 
 Missions had been united, and all the money poured 
 into India had been from the first spent on a con- 
 centrated errand to the outcast peoples, Christianity 
 would now be able to claim 70,000,000 Native Chris- 
 tians. These people, you see, have everything to gain 
 and nothing to lose, by becoming Christians. They are 
 outcasts, and Christianity would make them members of 
 the Sahib's caste. They are the slaves of the castes 
 above them; and Christianity would set them free. I 
 cannot imagine anything easier for missionary enter- 
 prise than the conversion of India's depressed classes. 
 And, mark you, a democracy of 70,000,000 Christians 
 would have a most astonishing effect upon the higher 
 castes. But — dissension, rivalry, quarrels ! Every- 
 where a waste of money and a waste of effort! It is 
 pitiful. However, they are doing good work here and 
 there, and I suppose a united Christianity in Europe, 
 
WHAT IT COSTS 197 
 
 America!, or Asia, is as wild a dream as Plato's Repub- 
 lic and More's Utopia." 
 
 But in spite of the Brahman's jealous and angry 
 hatred of Christianity, in spite of his new-born zeal for 
 Hinduism, and in spite of the lamentable divisions 
 among the Christians, conversions of a marvellous char- 
 acter do occur, and are occurring every day, where Chris- 
 tianity is faithfully and earnestly presented as a libera- 
 tion from misery and a way of peace. The story that 
 follows, which seems to me perhaps as remarkable a 
 narrative as one can find in all our modern literature of 
 religious experience, testifies to the unique power of 
 Christianity, to the miraculous nature of conversion, 
 and to the supreme need of Christianity's cleansing mo- 
 rality in a country more enfeebled by appalling vices 
 than by the tyranny of its priests. 
 
DE PROFUNDIS 
 
 Although the scene of this story is laid in Ceylon, 
 the reader may rest assured that in every way it is 
 symptomatic of existence in India, and also character- 
 istic of religious experience in India wherever the appeal 
 of Christianity for a cleansed heart is brought faithfully 
 home. 
 
 The man of whom I write is now forty-nine years of 
 age. He is remarkable in appearance for a perfect tran- 
 quillity of expression and a sweet gravity of demeanour 
 such as one associates with the favourite disciple. His 
 dark hair is combed back from the forehead and curls 
 outward from the nape of the neck ; his large grave dark- 
 coloured eyes are shadowed by the eave of calm and 
 noble brows; the nose is aquiline and finely chiselled at 
 the nostrils; the gentle lips are all but hidden by mous- 
 tache and beard of iron grey; he is dark-skinned with 
 the cloudy opaqueness of a true Tamil. 
 
 One is struck by the depth of gravity in the beautiful 
 calm eyes, by the sad sweetness of the gentle mouth, 
 and by the tone of the quiet voice, which is almost husky 
 in its lowness and its modesty. He has all the repose 
 and serenity of the Buddha with the meditation and 
 spiritual humanity of St. John. In his presence one is 
 conscious of a rebuke, a sweet and smiling rebuke, to 
 all hurry, noise, struggle, and glibness. The atmos- 
 phere of the man is the solemn calm of a forest and the 
 
 198 
 
DE PROFUNDIS 199 
 
 steadfast quiet of a lake. He seems to breathe the 
 very peace of God. 
 
 It was the notable and arresting appearance of this 
 man which first attracted me, and led me to seek an 
 introduction to him from Fakir Singh. I had heard of 
 his extraordinary success as a missionary, his almost 
 unique power among Indians; but it was the man's face 
 that interested my attention. I anticipated a life-story 
 of spiritual grace and religious refinement; I never 
 dreamed that such a man could have lived in depravity, 
 could have descended to the depths of the abyss. I 
 can now more easily think of St. John as a Satyr or the 
 Baptist as a Sybarite, than visualize this gentle and com- 
 posed saint as the man he was four-and-twenty years 
 ago. 
 
 He was born in Colombo of well-to-do Tamil par- 
 ents who were converted to Christianity before his birth 
 by the Church Missionary Society. He was taught as 
 a child the new religion of his father and mother, and 
 grew into boyhood with much the same knowledge of 
 Christianity as one finds in the ordinary English child 
 of church-going or chapel-going parents. 
 
 He was sent to a good school in Colombo, and soon 
 showed himself a boy of unusual ability. But he had 
 not been long at this school before he became the Aac- 
 tim of vice. He knew it to be wrong, he felt himself 
 shameful, he even convinced himself that the punish- 
 ment of such an abomination was the unquenchable fire 
 of an everlasting hell, but he could not break free from 
 it. He used to pray so hard for deliverance from this 
 sin when he was at church that his father and mother 
 thought him more than usually devout, and praised him 
 
200 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 for his devotion. Stung by the mockery of this praise, 
 and conscious of hypocrisy, he fought with all his 
 strength to conquer the evil propensity that was slaying 
 his soul. For a few weeks he could stand against the 
 terrible power tyrannizing his will, and then, like a man 
 under hypnotic influence or a slave hasting to do his 
 master's bidding, he fell again, and was plunged into a 
 darkness that eclipsed his soul. 
 
 From school he went to a college at Kandy. He 
 there lodged at a boarding-house, and his handsome ap- 
 pearance and charming manners made him a favourite 
 with women staying in the same house. It was his first 
 experience of the world, his first acquaintance with 
 women's society. Unfortunately for his peace of mind, 
 these women were of a second-rate and unhealthy char- 
 acter. The conversation of the shabby boarding-house 
 degraded him and made him wretched. 
 
 He would pass whole nights upon his knees, praying 
 to God, agonizing with his soul, clamouring for deliv- 
 erance. " I used to feel," he told me, in his low and 
 muffled voice, " as if I were wrestling with another 
 being. It was as if something not myself had my soul 
 in its grip." 
 
 When he returned to his home he became on friendly 
 terms with the English pastor of his parents' church, 
 and even acted as an assistant in the church services. 
 At last, so wretched was he, and so attracted by the 
 goodness of his new friend, that he determined to speak 
 to him. 
 
 " I did not tell him," he said, " what, I have told you, 
 but I confessed to him that I was troubled with terri- 
 ble thoughts. He was a ma-n of extraordinary holiness. 
 
DE PROFUNDIS 201 
 
 He heard me patiently and sympathetically, even affec- 
 tionately. ' Pray,' he said, ' pray, and read the Bible. 
 You must pray; there is nothing else.'" 
 
 But this poor youth had prayed as perhaps the other 
 had never prayed in his whole life. He had shut him- 
 self in his room and through all the dragging hours of 
 the long night had cried to God out of the agony and 
 tragedy of his soul's need for mercy and for help. He 
 had prayed with all the passion of his temperament and 
 with all the force of his moral being. He had cried to 
 God, cried with his soul, night after night, night after 
 night. He had lifted to heaven a face wet with tears 
 and streaked with the striving of his spirit. Pray! 
 Had he not prayed again and again? Had he not hum- 
 bled and abased himself, gone down into the dust and 
 ashes of humiliation, and supplicated, implored, en- 
 treated, and sobbed his soul out? Many times. 
 
 There was no one to help him. He became dejected, 
 even morose. His parents, noticing the change in him, 
 suggested that he should go and help his brother in a 
 business up the country. He welcomed the prospect of 
 change, and left Colombo as soon as arrangements were 
 completed. 
 
 The business to which he went — this man with the 
 face of a saint — was a glorified grog-shop. It is true 
 that the brother described himself as a wine merchant 
 and could boast of a " wholesale department " in his 
 trade, but the place was a drinking-saloon and the com- 
 pany that frequented it of a wild and dissolute charac- 
 ter. The house was situated on a large tea-estate, and 
 the landlord was the owner of one plantation, and the 
 manager of many others — a roaring Irishman, always 
 
202 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 drunk and abandoned to the mad excesses and helter- 
 skelter escapades which made Jack Mytton a hero of 
 his time. This man and many another planter visited 
 the grog-shop every day and few ever quitted it till 
 they were badly drunk. The first horror of the youth 
 from Colombo soon wore off in the gaiety and hilarity 
 of his new atmosphere; he did not give himself to drink 
 and he did not take to the prevalent gambling; but he 
 let himself go with the tide of existence in this wild 
 place, continued his evil courses, and gave up the strug- 
 gle for freedom and purity. 
 
 At the death of his brother, he took possession of the 
 business and set himself to make money. He was sober, 
 industrious, and dishonest. He learned to adulterate 
 the liquor he sold, carefully removing the capsules of 
 bottles for this purpose, and so carefully replacing them 
 that it was impossible to detect the transaction. He 
 wasted no money on dissolute excesses or reasonable 
 amusements, kept himself clear of the women in the 
 district, and never imperilled his savings in speculation 
 or gambling. But he had one typical and foolish ex- 
 travagance. He loved jewels. It was with him some- 
 thing of a passion to cover himself with chains, and 
 gold, and glittering stones. To this end he adulterated 
 drink, hoarded money, and kept himself aloof from 
 the dissolute racket of the place. All the time, he felt 
 that the liquor trade was a bad one, and sometimes he 
 would make an effort to conquer his fatal sin; but, on 
 the whole, he was a bad man who takes life as he finds 
 it and in a hobby which gratifies his sensuous nature 
 loses the sense of responsibility and forgets his soul. 
 
DE PROFUNDIS 203 
 
 So long as he could buy jewellery he was content to go 
 on with his life. 
 
 He was reckoned by the planters a good man but 
 something too effeminate and rather a humbug. If he 
 ventured to reprove them for drinking too much they 
 used to laugh contemptuously and say to him, " Oh, you 
 can't preach ; you're in the business ! " They liked to 
 turn his saloon into a bear-garden. They would call 
 Tamils and Singhalese into the saloon and tell them to 
 do some absurd or shameful thing; a refusal meant a 
 blow. The roaring Irishman would very often order 
 the grog-shop keeper to use foul and blasphemous lan- 
 guage; a refusal meant a row. On one occasion land- 
 lord and tenant had a fight, a long and horrible fight; 
 but a week after that event the landlord came with a 
 company of his friends, apologized to the publican and 
 presented him with a gold pencil-case. The kicked and 
 beaten Tamils would always be rewarded aftei- maltreat- 
 ment by their bullies, who were only cowardly and 
 brutal in drink. They were generous men enough on all 
 occasions, and in their sober moments, straightforward, 
 honest, and hard-working — men who would have 
 scorned to ill-use a Native. But drink turned them into 
 madmen, and in drink they very often " made hay " of 
 the grog-shop. 
 
 The wild landlord would sometimes send for the pub- 
 lican and receive him in his bedroom. " He used to lie 
 in his bed," I was told, " smoking and drinking, while 
 small pigs, for which he had sent, were being chased, 
 squeaking and squealing round the room by his dogs; 
 he would sit up against the pillows, watching this hunt — 
 
204 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 shouting with laughter, encouraging the dogs, and mak- 
 ing the whole house ring with his yells. And in the 
 midst of all this he would tell me how sorry he was for 
 such-and-such an escapade in my saloon, assure me that 
 he meant to stop all such nonsense in future, swear that 
 drink was a curse, and end up by imploring me to finish 
 a bottle of whisky with him." 
 
 Many years afterwards, when the saloon-keeper was 
 a captain in the Salvation Army, these two men en- 
 countered in the rest-house of a village where the Army 
 was conducting a mission. The Salvationist endeav- 
 oured to turn the heart of the Irishman but all in vain; 
 then he asked him for a subscription. " Willingly," 
 said the planter, and dipping pen in ink he wrote the fol- 
 lowing chit : " Please give Captain the sum of one 
 
 rupee to send all the people in this village to hell." 
 
 But this was after the miracle had happened. 
 
 The man of my story married while he was yet a pub- 
 lican. A child was born to him and he began to ex- 
 perience the pleasures of domestic life. He was pros- 
 perous ; he had many friends ; and he was devoted to his 
 wife. But presently he felt the ancient stirrings and 
 unrest of his master vice, and soon again he found him- 
 self in conflict for his soul. His horror and fear at this 
 return of a demon he had hoped was slain, this resurrec- 
 tion of a spectre he had dreamed was gone for ever out 
 of his life, filled him with misery and despair. He went 
 to church ; he read his Bible ; he prayed ; he fought man- 
 fully against disaster. " It was as though I were being 
 pushed into sin," he said to me. 
 
 One day when he was in Colombo he stopped before 
 a bookshop window, and seeing a volume that he thought 
 
DE PROFUNDIS 205 
 
 might help him in his conflict, he went in to buy it. 
 There were two people in the shop — the man in charge, 
 wearing a uniform, and a poor broken-down drunkard. 
 The man in the uniform was talking to the drunkard 
 and endeavouring to make him realize the need of God 
 in his struggle against drink. The publican, struck by 
 this man's words, and now realizing that the shop be- 
 longed to the Salvation Army, went to some bookshelves 
 and made pretence of looking for a volume, while he 
 listened to every word that was being said. 
 
 " There was something in the tone of that man's 
 voice," he told me, " which held me like a spell. It was 
 so full of assurance. It was as though he knew by his 
 own experience that what he said was true. And he 
 made goodness seem so happy. I began to feel that 
 there was hope for me. I remember that I felt sur- 
 prised by the drunkard's want of response. It seemed 
 so clear. It seemed so true. It sounded so good." 
 
 But two years after that incident he was still in the 
 midst of conflict, a man desperate with uncontrollable 
 vice and sunken in despair. 
 
 He was walking one day with his mother in the streets 
 of Colombo when they came upon an open-air meeting 
 of the Salvationists. They both stopped and listened. 
 The mother was greatly struck by the earnestness of the 
 speakers, and as they walked away she spoke about it. 
 Her son, who was a secret smoker — -his mother and 
 father having a great aversion from tobacco — took his 
 cigars from his pocket and without letting his mother 
 see, dropped them on the road. He had the feeling that 
 he must give up smoking. He also had the feeling that 
 he would be able to give up his vice. 
 
2o6 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 But the strife continued, and though he prayed for 
 strength, no strength came to him. He was being driven 
 straight to madness and suicide by an impulse of his 
 being of which his whole nature disapproved and yet 
 against which his will was powerless to resist. 
 
 It chanced one year, when he went to renew the li- 
 cence of his premises, that he stayed with his brother- 
 in-law in a small town where the Salvationists were that 
 night holding a special meeting. He suggested that they 
 should attend this meeting and see what the business of 
 Salvation and Conversion really meant. His brother- 
 in-law fell in with the suggestion and they went to- 
 gether. 
 
 Many men, public characters for sin and crime, gave 
 their testimonies at this meeting to the saving power of 
 conversion and the joy and peace and happiness of the 
 new birth. One of the speakers was a converted Bud- 
 dhist who had been convicted of forgery. This man 
 spoke very quietly, and without any strain after effect, 
 telling how he had been led by sin step after step 
 towards crime, and how all his efforts to fight against 
 temptation had failed. The unhappy publican was pro- 
 foundly moved by this story. The Buddhist spoke of 
 the strength that came to him when, realizing at last that 
 Christ's love had saved him, he bowed at the bench of 
 penitence and yielded up all his efforts in overflowing 
 gratitude to his Saviour. 
 
 " I felt that what he said was true. I felt that I had 
 been struggling in my own strength. And I felt that 
 it needed one great moment in my life, one moment, 
 to change me from a beaten and despairing man into a 
 
DE PROFUNDIS 207 
 
 soul at peace with God and cleansed from sin. It was 
 like a light in my soul. It was a revelation. At last, it 
 was a voice from heaven. But how to reach that mo- 
 ment! Oh, I shrank from it! By nature I am timid 
 and nervous; and in those days I was weak with self- 
 consciousness and feeble with diffidence ; I could not bear 
 to be the central figure in any scene; I always escaped 
 from any gathering in which I might be called upon to 
 make a speech, or in which I might in any way have to 
 take a prominent part. But I felt that my conversion 
 turned upon one great moment, one decisive and terrible 
 ordeal, and I longed for the power to rise up then and 
 there and throw myself down at the penitent bench. I 
 suppose something of this deep emotion must have 
 shown in my face, for one of the Salvationists, a woman, 
 came to me and asked me if I would not confess my need 
 of God's mercy. I half rose from my seat, but pretend- 
 ing that I had only risen because a woman was speak- 
 ing to me, I sat down again, trembling and afraid. But 
 just as in former times I had felt that pushing towards 
 sin, so I felt now a pushing towards the penitent-form. 
 So strong was this impulse that in spite of my failure I 
 rose again. This time my brother-in-law, thinking that 
 I wanted to go home, rose also, and I felt ashamed, and 
 said nothing of my feelings, but walked out of the hall. 
 However the hour was at hand. I kept saying to my- 
 self, " If I die to-night ! and even if I live, only this 
 slavery!" The horror of dying as I was, the fear of 
 living as I was, mastered my feeble will and cowardly 
 purpose. Without a word to my companion, I turned 
 suddenly about, ran back to the hall, and making my 
 
2o8 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 way to the front — I was like a man in a dream — flung 
 myself down at the penitent- form and cried aloud for the 
 mercy of God." 
 
 As he knelt there, shaken by a wild emotion and 
 almost beside himself with religious passion, a woman- 
 Salvationist came to him, knelt at his side, and with a 
 hand on his shoulder, said in a calm and quieting voice 
 — " What are you praying for, brother ? " 
 
 He answered, " For Salvation." 
 
 " Why do you pray to God ? " she asked. 
 
 "Because I feel God can save me." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "I feel it." 
 
 " Have you not heard that Jesus died for sinners ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "For whom? " 
 
 "For the whole world." 
 
 "Are you not included in it?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Do you believe that ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Do you believe it?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " When do you believe it ? " 
 
 " Now." 
 
 "When?" 
 
 " Now." 
 
 As he said that word for the second time, he was con- 
 scious of a light in his soul, and he felt as though he 
 were " drowning in sweetness " ; and whether it was the 
 voice of the Salvationist or of an angel he cannot tell, 
 but a voice came to him in his great moment of ecstasy, 
 
DE PROFUNDIS 209 
 
 and said to him — " For the sake of Jesus, God pardons 
 you." 
 
 " I cannot describe to you," he said, " the wonderful 
 beauty of that moment. It was an utter loss of self. 
 It was an escape from darkness, an entrance into light. 
 Ah, more than that! I felt myself drowning in sweet- 
 ness. The whole universe was one great ocean of sweet- 
 ness and I was drowning in it. But even that cannot 
 tell you what I felt. Perhaps it is wrong to say I felt 
 anything, or thought anything, or realized anything. 
 It would be truer to say I was just conscious of sinking 
 into an ocean of sweetness and that my whole being was 
 overwhelmed by unutterable joy." 
 
 The Salvationist who was kneeling at his side, said 
 to him — " Speak to the people." Without a thought or 
 shadow of misgiving he rose to his feet, faced the whole 
 audience, and told them of the new joy in his heart. 
 He smiled as he said to me, " I was a wonder to my- 
 self. Words poured from me. A flood of words ! " 
 Then, with grave countenance, he added, " Truly I may 
 say that at that moment I was filled with the Spirit of 
 God." 
 
 From that minute the devil was exorcised. He was 
 five-and-twenty years of age ; and now, for twenty-four 
 years of happiness and peace he has never known one 
 moment of temptation or heard one whisper from the 
 fiend that afflicted him. He has been cleansed. He has 
 been born again. It is as if he had never committed his 
 sin. 
 
 On the day following his conversion, he proceeded 
 by train to the town where he intended to renew the 
 licence for his saloon. Suddenly as if a voice had 
 
2IO OTHER SHEEP 
 
 spoken at his ear, he feh that it was wrong to con- 
 tinue in a trade that spread so much misery and de- 
 graded so many souls. " I felt that I was stopped on 
 my journey by an invisible hand. I got out at the next 
 station, and made my way home. But on that return 
 journey, I stopped again and again, like a man without 
 a will of his own, and though the voice told me that to 
 keep a saloon was inconsistent with my new birth, I 
 argued with myself, and said, ' But money is owing to 
 me; it is my business, I have a wife and child; I have 
 no other means of existence.' Nevertheless, the voice 
 conquered me. It repeated the word Inconsistent 
 again and again. I returned, determined to give it up." 
 
 But before he took this step he paid a visit to the 
 Salvationists, and asked them what he should do. " Roll 
 your barrels and bottles into the ditch," they told him; 
 " God will provide." 
 
 He went back to his house and spent the entire night 
 in prayer. When the morning came his soul was con- 
 vinced and happy. He had reached that point when 
 the spirit decides absolutely for a right course and is con- 
 fident of God's approval. He took ofif all his rings, his 
 watch and his jewellery; and put them aside for ever. 
 Then he went to his wife and told her what he had de- 
 termined to do. She rejoiced at his decision. 
 
 Ridicule was encountered from everybody else. The 
 planters came to the house and rated him for a fool. 
 His friends expostulated. His relations objected. Only 
 his wife stood by him, and encouraged his action. At 
 a meeting which he held in his house a little later, his 
 wife professed conversion with some of his relations. 
 
 He sold his business and set up an oilman's stores. 
 
DE PROFUNDIS 211 
 
 A solicitor in the neighbourhood undertook to collect 
 the considerable debts owing to him. In a few months 
 he discovered that this solicitor was defrauding him. 
 He went to law about the matter, and the case was sent 
 to the High Court at Colombo. Before it came on for 
 trial, he attended a meeting of the Salvation Army, and 
 after its conclusion was asked to become an officer. He 
 replied : " I am afraid I cannot ; I am a family man ; 
 and I have just begun to open a new business." They 
 said to him, " You have been helped, and you should 
 give your life to helping others; come, we will find some- 
 thing for a family man." He said, " I must consult my 
 wife." " No," they answered him, " consult your own 
 heart." 
 
 He felt a powerful inclination to give up everything 
 and to embrace the life of poverty; but the hesitation, 
 and diffidence, and self-distrust, which were character- 
 istic of him in those days, and which now, transformed 
 by a profound religious experience, are the charm and 
 modesty, and self-suppression of a perfectly pure soul, 
 held him in uncertainty. 
 
 To his delight, when he laid the matter before his wife, 
 she agreed to the sacrifice, and offered to become a Sal- 
 vation Army officer with him. 
 
 In August, 1887, he sold his business and entered 
 with his wife and child the Salvationists' Training Home 
 in Colombo. The lawsuit was still pending, and now, 
 with a heart set on other things, he petitioned Govern- 
 ment not to proceed with the case. But it was a crim- 
 inal action and it had to go on. The lawyer was sen- 
 tenced to five years' imprisonment. 
 
 And now began for him, on the very threshold of 
 
212 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 his new life, trouble and persecution. It began with his 
 wife's complaint of loneliness. Wisely or unwisely, 
 there was a division of sexes in the Training Home and 
 his wife resented this separation and complained to 
 him of loneliness. Perhaps she found the rough lodging 
 and spare food of a disciple less agreeable than the 
 glowing vision of self-sacrifice. She objected to wear- 
 ing a uniform, and her child supported the objection 
 with continual grumblings. When he went out into the 
 streets with a begging-bowl for food, his wife's com- 
 plaints and objections became an angry rebellion. At 
 last, finding him determined to go on, she left him, left 
 him without word of any kind, and took the child to her 
 mother's house. 
 
 When he heard where she was gone, loving her deeply 
 and being tenderly attached to his child, he wrote a long 
 letter to her, begging her to return, imploring her not 
 to break her solemn vows to God. She answered the 
 letter, but refused to come back. She said her mind 
 was made up. Nothing on earth would induce her to 
 live the life of a Salvationist. 
 
 " For five years," he told me, " I only saw her once. 
 Nothing that I could say had power to change her reso- 
 lution. The separation caused me great grief. I felt 
 the estrangement more than I can tell you. It seemed 
 to me terrible that religion should be the cause of this 
 break in a union which had been so happy, and which 
 had promised to be so full of blessing." 
 
 One day, after these five long years of separation had 
 passed, and when he was an officer doing great work 
 for Christianity among the Singhalese, he received a let- 
 ter from his wife saying that she had thought matters 
 
DE PROFUNDIS 213 
 
 over, and had now made up her mind to enter the Train- 
 ing Home and become an officer. 
 
 She came and his heart was on fire with joy and grati- 
 tude, for it needed but the love of his wife to make his 
 life perfect with happiness. But he found that she 
 had come back to him, as the man she loved, and not to 
 him as the Salvationist, whose manner of life she still 
 regarded with irritation and aversion. 
 
 " For eight years," he said to me, in his quiet voice, 
 a sad smile in his grave eyes, " she was unsympathetic 
 to our work. But at last the love of God softened her 
 heart. Ten or eleven years ago she surrendered her- 
 self utterly to the call of heaven. For ten or eleven 
 years she has been to me the most loving of compan- 
 ions and the most encouraging of help-meets. She is 
 an officer in the Army, and so is one of our sons. The 
 eight years seem now like a night that has passed. I 
 feel that for the last ten or eleven years I have been 
 living in heaven. She is most earnest, sympathetic, and 
 helpful. I learn from her, and I lean upon her. She is 
 like an angel, leading me forward," 
 
BUDDHA-LAND 
 
 The story told in the last chapter had Ceylon for its 
 setting, but my narration was purposely without colour 
 of scene or breath of atmosphere. Now I should like 
 to tell the reader about that beautiful island, not only 
 because it is so wonderfully beautiful, but because I 
 there came across one or two stories of a profoundly 
 interesting nature and made acquaintance with Buddhism 
 as it really is and not as it is made to appear in books 
 of theosophy. 
 
 India is like a huge ear, and from the narrowing lobe, 
 suspended by the blue ribbon of the sea, Ceylon hangs 
 gleaming like a pearl. One is apt to think about it as 
 a Wight of our Indian Empire, a tiny jewel almost in- 
 significant in relation to the vastness of its neighbour- 
 ing continent. But in truth there is a majesty and 
 splendour in this glittering island, a majesty of moun- 
 tains and a splendour of forest which breathe into the 
 mind a sense of grandeur and destroy the illusion of 
 littleness. Ceylon is nearly as big as Ireland, it has a 
 mountain zone of over four thousand miles, its highest 
 peak pierces the blue sky eight thousand feet above the 
 whisper of its waves, forests thick as earth's earliest 
 ages still riot over five thousand square miles of this 
 garden island, and in the deep solitude of those forests 
 as many as five thousand wild elephants, with panthers 
 and jackals, find their living and keep their freedom. 
 
 214 
 
BUDDHA-LAND 215 
 
 Then there are the broad waters of Ceylon — tanks, riv- 
 ers, lagoons, and backwaters : — 
 
 In the plains there are comparatively few rivulets 
 or running streams; the rivers there flow in almost 
 solitary lines to the sea. . . . But in their course 
 through the hills and the broken ground at their base 
 they are supplied by numerous feeders, which convey 
 to them the frequent showers that fall in these high 
 altitudes. Hence their tracks are through some of 
 the noblest scenery in the world; rushing through 
 ravines and glens, and falling over precipitous rocks 
 in the depths of wooded valleys, they exhibit a suc- 
 cession of rapids, cataracts, and torrents unsurpassed 
 in magnificence and beauty. On reaching the plains, 
 the boldness of their march and the graceful outline 
 of their sweep are indicative of the little obstruction 
 opposed by the sandy and porous soil through which 
 they flow. Throughout their entire course dense for- 
 ests shade their banks. 
 
 The traveller, however great his experience of the 
 globe, soon loses in Ceylon that irritating glance of con- 
 descension with which he is occasionally apt to survey 
 small islands and little peoples. A few miles out from 
 the Sea Capital, with its unequalled sunsets and its whis- 
 pering palms, he finds himself in the midst of sublime 
 mountains, and in the centre of unhandselled forest. 
 Even the extreme loveliness of slender trees, the bright 
 green of the valleys and hedgerows, the midsummer 
 pageant of wild flowers, the gentle music of little brooks 
 and rustling waterfalls, do not beguile from his mind by 
 the affectionate tenderness of their beauty, the sense of 
 
2i6 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 grandeur which comes to him from the scarred crest of 
 the tall mountains and the sense of age-long majesty 
 which breathes into his soul from the crowding splen- 
 dour of the forest. 
 
 I can recall now as if it were yesterday the morning 
 on which I travelled by train from the Sea Capital to 
 the Hill Capital. After leaving Colombo and crossing 
 a valley brilliant with the green of rice-fields, gorgeous 
 with the crimson and gold of wild flowers, and tropical 
 with the heavy luxuriance of coco-nut palms, plantains, 
 and bamboos, the train wound its way into the hills and 
 began its six-thousand-feet climb into the mountains. 
 The track lies on the edge of a mountain range, and, 
 across a green plain glittering with ribbons of water and 
 dense with foliage, one looks to another range of moun- 
 tains which completely rings in the shining garden be- 
 low one's gaze. On the day that I made this journey, 
 all round the wide and distant circle of the hills, great 
 burly clouds of silver-white were bursting like waves 
 against the russet peaks of the mountains, sending up a 
 smoky spray, and pouring over the rugged crags a 
 veritable foam of vapour. Above them the arc of heaven 
 was a moist blue, trembling with beauty and quiver- 
 ing with light; but all round the tops of the mountains 
 it was as if a tempest raged, and as if an angry sea hid- 
 den by their walls of stone, was buffetting those mighty 
 rocks and sending high into the air the broken fury of 
 its waves. It almost seemed as if the torrent of those 
 broken waves would stream like a flood down the moun- 
 tain-side, submerging the valley and filling to the very 
 brim the mighty basin of the hills. 
 
 And beneath the crest of these hills, which shone red- 
 
BUDDHA-LAND 217 
 
 gold against the clouds, like a cloak thrown carelessly 
 over the shoulders the forest descended in great folds 
 of green to the tilled orderliness and garden quiet of the 
 plains. In the midst of this jungle growth, one saw the 
 slender silver trunks and scarlet flowers of the cotton- 
 tree, the tall Palmyra palm loaded with its plumes of 
 clouded yellow, the soft and tender branches of the 
 acacia, the wide and drooping fronds of the coco-nut 
 palm, and clumps of orange-coloured bamboos, whose 
 feathery green leaves stood out from the darkness of 
 enormous rhododendrons. For the rest, great cumbrous 
 trunks and spreading boughs filled the whole scene of 
 the forest with strength and power. 
 
 Monkeys could be seen leaping from tree to tree, their 
 young clutching them from below; the lakes and pools 
 were bordered by storks and herons and flamingoes 
 standing like statues in the still water; the bushes glit- 
 tered with the plumage of fly-catchers and parakeets; 
 the fields below were being ploughed by buffaloes, and 
 overhead one saw the wide-winged hawk " sailing with 
 supreme dominion through the azure deep of air." 
 
 Such a morning it was, too, when the heart of the 
 great earth can be seen beating under her vesture of 
 spring, when the air becomes visible like a blue water, 
 and the rays of the morning sun are like a mist of fire. 
 Everything seemed to swim in an ether that throbbed 
 with the joyous travail of existence ; a faint dimness like 
 the moisture of a girl's eye softened all lines and sub- 
 dued all colours ; and a gentle wind fresh as the ululating 
 rustle of a summer sea moved the glimmering air with a 
 breath that sparkled like the dew. 
 
 The dust of India, the depression of India, the wist- 
 
2i8 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 fill sadness and shabby melancholy of India, nowhere 
 molest the beauty of this darling island floating like the 
 reflection of a skyey Paradise on the bosom of the In- 
 dian Ocean. It is, indeed, a little Eden, demi-Paradise, 
 and its luring air, sweet with every scent and odour of 
 the angels' garden, is fresh with the sense of morning 
 and glad with the hope of Spring. 
 
 As clearly, too, can I remember a night in this lovely 
 island, when my friend and I, who had rested at Kandy, 
 some two thousand feet above sea-level, left the railway 
 at a small station, and journeyed by bullock-cart into the 
 wilderness of the interior. Fakir Singh had told me 
 that if I wished to see something of village existence in 
 Ceylon, I could not do better than go to a little far- 
 away hamlet where he was carrying his magic lantern to 
 hold a meeting in the forest. My friend and I drove to 
 the Gardens of Peradeniya in the afternoon, where the 
 air, laden with the scent of many spices, was black with 
 flying- foxes, startled by a gunshot; and after seeing the 
 trees and flowers and shrubs of these famous Gardens 
 we drove to another station and took train for the little 
 town where a bullock-cart was awaiting us. It was to- 
 wards evening when we arrived, and after being jolted 
 in a springless cart over as rough a track on the earth's 
 surface as ever presumed to call itself a road, we arrived 
 at our destination with the setting of the sun. 
 
 A -visit from Fakir Singh, all over India and Ceylon, 
 is regarded as a great event by his co-religionists. We 
 found a procession of Salvationists, headed by banners 
 and music, waiting to give him welcome. After greet- 
 ings, exchanged while the little humped bullocks were 
 being unyoked before a hutfible inn, the procession re- 
 
BUDDHA-LAND 219 
 
 formed and marched forward, by way of a wooded lane 
 impossible even for the wheels of a bullock-cart. At 
 the end of this cool and scented lane was a stile in the 
 hedge, and the stile led precipitously down into rice- 
 fields, flooded with the rays of the setting sun. We 
 scrambled over the stile and slid and tumbled down the 
 steep bank into the fields. A narrow path, raised a few 
 inches above the muddy bed of the rice, crossed the wide 
 fields and wound its way to a forest on the further side. 
 A little brook intersected these fields, and as we got 
 upon the plank that bridged it, I noticed an adder in 
 the water. Quick as lightning one of the Native Salva- 
 tionists plunged his arm into the stream and brought 
 out the squirming snake, his hand grasping it just below 
 the head. " He can catch any snake," I was told. " He 
 is a snake-man, and knows how to catch them." He 
 let the snake lick his nose, said something and threw 
 it back into the water. I asked what he had said, and 
 inquired why he had not killed the reptile. " He said 
 that it was not a poisonous snake," came the answer; 
 " as for killing it, he never kills any snakes, not even 
 the dangerous ones ; it is bad luck." " But he is a Chris- 
 tian, and no longer looks on a snake as god or devil ? " 
 " Ah, but it is a superstition ! He would not kill a 
 snake." 
 
 Following at the end of the loitering procession, I 
 was struck by the picturesque character of the scene. 
 Like a many-coloured serpent, winding with the narrow 
 footpath and dazzled by the sun, the long line of happy 
 and brightly-dressed humanity seemed, even while it 
 shone so vividly in the midst of the green fields, to be 
 trivial and insignificant, so vast was the sense of dis- 
 
220 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 tance and so overpowering the sense of the sky's height. 
 Far away across the fields of rice rose the forest and 
 above the forest rose the mountains and above the moun- 
 tains rose the sky. And the long line of humanity 
 softly laughing and gently talking in the midst of sunken 
 fields, some of the tambourines tinkling against the saris 
 of the women, had its face towards the setting of the 
 sun — an immense arch of molten gold which was like 
 a gateway into everlasting glory. The air of the fields 
 was quiet with the feelings and thoughts of evening. A 
 solemn stillness held the woods. A majestic peace 
 brooded on the mountains. It was only in the distant 
 west, where the mighty conflagration of the sun throbbed 
 and vibrated with great beats of shuddering fire, that one 
 was conscious of machinery and toil. 
 
 We entered the forest by means of a bridge and found 
 ourselves all at once in a deep gloom. Our forest path 
 ascended from the low level of the rice-fields and 
 swerved away over a soft floor of dusky brown into the 
 heart of the woods; the huge trunks of darkening trees 
 loomed up into the dim air like massy pillars carrying 
 the branching roof of a temple. A cloistral silence 
 hung like a thick curtain from the over-arching boughs. 
 The faint patches of pulsing light which here and there 
 glimmered on the ground were like the fading reflec- 
 tions from a painted window or the fragments of a 
 broken mosaic. And the floor of the forest rose and 
 fell in a chaos of quiet, as if the earth had once long 
 ago writhed under the monotony of the shadowing trees 
 until their roots had fastened upon her and held her 
 still. 
 
 The silence was presently broken by the loud bark- 
 
BUDDHA-LAND 221 
 
 ing of dogs, and a sweep of our winding, ascending, and 
 descending path brought us in a few moments before a 
 mud-house with a veranda of palm-leaves set in a clear- 
 ing of the forest. In front of this house rose a small 
 stack of some rough grass, faggots of wood, and a barn 
 for rice. To the right was a line of outhouses, at the 
 corner of which two or three dogs were chained to tub- 
 kennels. Two Native women were lighting lamps of 
 coco-nut-oil, which they hung in the veranda. Mats 
 were spread on the floor under these lamps, and here 
 we were invited to seat ourselves and eat the curry and 
 rice prepared for us by the host of Fakir Singh. Dur- 
 ing this meal we talked in low voices, and as the dark- 
 ness deepened all around us there came from the forest 
 the noise of frogs and crickets, growing louder and 
 louder till the whole earth seemed to ring with it. And 
 then as if fairies were dancing through the trees to dress 
 their Arcady for the delight of the Fakir, the air sud- 
 denly began to twinkle with innumerable lights and 
 these little glowing points of fire rose to the very tops 
 of the trees, fluttered down the dim trunks, and drifted 
 hither and thither in a slow eternal motion — fire-flies 
 brighter than glow-worms and as numerous as the stars. 
 A little later and the forest became lit up here and there 
 with a smoky haze of ruddy fire, where companies of 
 people from distant villages were making their way by 
 torchlight to the scene of the meeting. And when it 
 came for us to depart, we also found our way through 
 the forest with these flaming torches — torches nearly 
 six feet in length, composed of coco-nut leaves banded 
 tightly together, which burn with a leaping roar and a 
 scarlet flame for ten or fifteen minutes. It was a jour- 
 
■222 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 ney of enchantment, to walk with the rising and falling 
 floor of the forest, swinging one of these long torches, 
 seeing the stately trunks of the trees lit redly up in a 
 smoke of fire and to watch the crowding shadows on 
 the ground in front of us. All the air was ringing with 
 the rattle of frogs and the chirping of crickets, and 
 outside the little radius of one's guttering torch the whole 
 forest twinkled with fire-flies. 
 
 The meeting was held in a space between two houses, 
 roofed in for the occasion by palm-leaves supported on 
 poles of bamboo. There was a rough platform at one 
 end, part of which was under the veranda of a dwelling- 
 house; and beside this platform was a stretched sheet 
 where the magic lantern was making a disc of white 
 light, in which one saw magnified insects on the other 
 side of the sheet fluttering backwards and forwards beat- 
 ing their wings against the obstruction. For the rest, 
 from one end of the space to the other, there was a 
 great multitude of people sitting on the ground, their 
 dark, intelligent faces lifted to the screen, their hands 
 folded in their laps. The women sat by themselves, 
 many of them with babies in their arms; and one saw 
 in the light of the lamps how beautiful they were and 
 how superior to Indian women in dignity and vivacity. 
 The men were also of handsome appearance, but some- 
 thing effeminate, their long hair knotted over the neck 
 and fastened on the top by a large comb; they had dig- 
 nity of expression and a certain nobility of features, 
 but they wanted the gaiety and alacrity which made the. 
 women so wonderfully pleasant to eyes fresh from In- 
 dia. Shoulder to shoulder, a dense mass of humanity, 
 crowding the whole space of the pandal from end to 
 
BUDDHA-LAND 223 
 
 end, these forest people sang hymns to God, prayed in 
 the Name of Jesus, and Hstened with an unquestioning 
 eagerness to the words of the Fakir. 
 
 My friend and I were obliged to leave this meeting 
 before its conclusion, and with three Singhalese Salva- 
 tionists to guide our feet and carry our torches we made 
 our way through the forest, crossed the rice-fields, and 
 arrived at last before the inn where our bullocks had been 
 unyoked. The driver had seen the flare of our torches 
 and had wandered off in search of his oxen. We went 
 inside the humble inn, which was a black and smoky in- 
 terior like an inferior fowl-house, and drank tonic water 
 and ate biscuits from Reading. Outside the Salvation- 
 ists were filling the starry heavens with loud and pro- 
 longed calls to the invisible driver of the bullock-cart — 
 Coo-e! Coo-o-o-o-ee ! ! Coo-o-o-o-o-o-o-e-e-e-E ! ! ! After 
 some ten or fifteen minutes, he appeared with his little 
 oxen, and helped by the Salvationists got them yoked to 
 the cart and his lamps lighted. Then we started off. 
 
 The driver turned out to be a nervous fellow, fright- 
 ened of the dark. Our road led through thick forest, 
 and not even the host of fire-flies, which swarmed in 
 every tree bordering our way could chase the darkness 
 out of our path. The driver sat bunched up on the pole, 
 jerking the reins, rocking his body backwards and for- 
 wards like the cox of a beaten boat, twisting the tails 
 of his cattle, and talking to himself in a frightened un- 
 dertone. As we had a train to catch, and the last train 
 of the night, we bade him hurry, but he shook his head, 
 pointed to the dark air above our heads and to the black 
 road under our wheels. Every now and then a more 
 than usually dislocating bump quenched the glimmer of 
 
224 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 a lamp, and immediately he jerked the bullocks back on 
 their haunches, sprang to the ground, and with trembling 
 hands proceeded to strike imperfect matches. My trav- 
 elling companion, more used to motor-cars than bullock- 
 carts, decided to walk, and as the night was hot, took 
 off his coat and carrying it over an arm stalked on 
 ahead with the little torch of a long cigar to light his 
 way. As he went he dropped out of the pocket of his 
 coat, without observing the loss, an envelope containing 
 a letter of credit for some hundreds of pounds and a 
 letter of indication. Two or three weeks afterwards the 
 envelope with its contents was restored to him by the 
 Colombo police. 
 
 The warm night, scented with the odours of spice 
 gardens and the deep perfume of the forest, made the 
 journey even in a bullock-cart one of exceeding charm. 
 At long intervals on the road, a little company of white- 
 clad barefoot men, accompanied by dogs, would sud- 
 denly appear in the light of our lamps, stare in at us 
 with frowning eyes, and then disappear into the dark- 
 ness, their voices drowned by the gridding of our 
 wheels. But for the most part it was a journey through 
 darkness and silence, with the glitter of fire-flies on either 
 side of us, the broken light of sprinkled stars overhead 
 and the sense of dim columns rising up in the gloom 
 and crowding close about us like an invading army. In 
 this central and enclosing darkness, our little cart with 
 its foggy lamps and its steaming and grunting bullocks 
 crept along, bumping and jolting, like a moth with a 
 broken wing. 
 
 At the station we found the bridge spanning the line, 
 and all the approaches and doorways strewn with sheeted 
 
BUDDHA-LAND 225 
 
 figures. We were told that some were pilgrims waiting 
 for a morning train, and some were coolies employed 
 at the station whose work would begin early in the 
 dawn. The stir and movement of the station, and the 
 clangour of a shunting train, seemed to make no dif- 
 ference to the repose of the sleepers, who lay as still as 
 the dead. 
 
 In the refreshment car of our midnight train we found 
 a company of over-dressed and loud-talking Eurasians 
 (Burghers as they are called in Ceylon) whose tumblers 
 of whisky had spilled jerkings of liquor on to the cigar- 
 ash scattered over their littered table. The noise of their 
 voices — they were speaking in English — the offensive 
 braggadocio of their vulgar talk, the smell of the car, 
 and the quality of their cigars — made too great a con- 
 trast after the solemnity and silence and breathing sweet- 
 ness of the forest. We turned out, and continued a hun- 
 gry and thirsty journey ir an ordinary carriage. 
 
 We had returned to Kandy, because of an invitation 
 from a young and devout Buddhist to visit the holy 
 shrine which guards the tooth of the Buddha. Early 
 after breakfast on the next day we walked to the beau- 
 tiful little temple where this relic is kept, and passed 
 from the dazzling sunlight and fresh air of the mountain 
 town, into the shadows and closeness of the temple's 
 precincts. We passed under cloisters, crossed a court- 
 yard, and stopped before a counter stocked with trays 
 of flower petals, behind which a priest in a soiled and 
 shabby yellow robe was standing like a sentinel. Our 
 companion took off his boots, received a little basket of 
 jasmine flowers from the priest, and going forward in 
 his stockinged feet led us up a flight of oak stairs 
 
526 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 crowded with pilgrims into the outer court of the tem- 
 ple. 
 
 " These people," he explained, " do not come here to 
 pray. You will see them kneeling before the shrine, but 
 you must not think that they are addressing supplica- 
 tions to Buddha. We recognize that Buddha cannot 
 help us. Pilgrims to this shrine come to gain merit. It 
 is with us a meritorious act to visit the shrines conse- 
 crated by the holy life of Buddha. One kneels down, 
 not to pray, but to think of Buddha, to think of his life 
 and to meditate on his chief doctrines." 
 
 Before us hung a dark-coloured curtain. Our friend 
 drew this on one side, and we found ourselves before 
 the shrine. 
 
 Quite close to us, on passing through the doorway, 
 rose the sacred altar, for this shrine is no bigger than 
 a box-room. The little apartment, windowless and 
 heavily ornamented with fading gold and decaying tapes- 
 try, was illumined by candles. A casket of gold and sil- 
 ver, encrusted with precious stones, stood on the altar; 
 below it on an immense tray was a heap of flower 
 petals. Beside the altar was the priest in his yellow 
 robe, the head and face clean shaven, one arm obtruding 
 bare from his yellow robe. A youth stood at his side. 
 
 Our friend presented his basket-tray of jasmine flow- 
 ers, which the priest accepted and placed on the altar. 
 They spoke together for a minute, and then our friend 
 moved to one side of the shrine and washed his hands — 
 whether by command of the priest after contact with 
 Europeans or as part of the ceremony I could not un- 
 derstand. Tapers were then lighted and we were al- 
 lowed to approach close to the altar and examine the 
 
BUDDHA-LAND 227 
 
 design of the casket and the beauty of its jewellery. 
 We were told that such-an-one had given this precious 
 stone and such-an-other had given that, and how much 
 the diamonds were worth, and how much the pearls, and 
 how much the rubies; and how all this here was real 
 gold, and how all that over there was real silver — till 
 one felt as if one were standing before the shrine of 
 Carlo Borromeo under the altar of that marble wedding- 
 cake at Milan. 
 
 The twinkling candles in this dark little shrine of 
 metal and tapestry, the heavy scent of flowers, the sub- 
 dued gleam of gold and silver, the soft glow and sparkle 
 of precious stones starting out of the shadows, and the 
 figure of the shaven priest in his yellow robe, so kindly 
 in appearance and so indulgent in his courtesy — made 
 an impression on the mind which the vulgarity of sight- 
 seeing could not minimize or obliterate. But the chief 
 feeling that one had was of the extraordinarily close sim- 
 ilarity of Latin Christianity and pre-Christian Buddhism, 
 the feeling and the sensation of a same immemorial su- 
 perstition persisting through the forms and ritual of two 
 religions so diametrically opposed as the religion of An- 
 nihilation and the religion of Life. 
 
 This feeling was intensified when we turned our backs 
 upon the tooth in its casket — a tooth which I am told 
 is as large as an elephant's — and visited some of the 
 other shrines surrounding the temple. After throwing 
 from the balcony of the library arecanut flowers to the 
 huge tortoises in the temple tank, we made a round of 
 the shrines, studying crude pictures of hell as childish 
 and disgusting as those of the Campo Santo at Pisa, 
 and observing the faithful at their devotions. We 
 
228 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 learned that women come to these shrines to ask favours, 
 not to seek holiness or to acquire strength for victory 
 over sin, and that they have their favourite shrines for 
 this purpose. So in Italy you may see poor peasants 
 kneeling with apparently the most rapt devotion before 
 a tinsel figure of the Mother of Jesus stuck all over with 
 sham jewellery, crowned with a coronet, and illumined 
 by coloured candles; and you will learn that they are 
 praying for luck in the next lottery and that they say to 
 each other, " Such and such a Madonna is no good ; I 
 prayed to her for six months and the jade did nothing 
 for me ; you should try Our Lady of S. Agostino." ^ 
 
 The likeness which exists between the priests of all 
 religions is very remarkable. Just as there is a likeness 
 between soldiers of every country, so in the priests of 
 Buddhism, Hinduism, and Catholicism there is a very 
 strong and notable family resemblance. The bare-headed, 
 yellow-robed and sandalled priests striding under their 
 umbrellas in the streets of Kandy, each followed by a 
 loose-lipped and sensual-looking boy, have just the ex- 
 
 ^ It is not long since the report was spread, that one day when a 
 poor woman called upon this image of the Madonna for help, it be- 
 gan to speak, and replied, " If I had only something, then I could 
 help thee, but I myself am so poor!" This story was circulated, 
 and very soon throngs of credulous people hastened hither to kiss 
 the foot of the Madonna, and to present her with all kinds of gifts. 
 The image . . . now sits shining with ornaments of gold and 
 precious stones. Candles and lamps burn around, and people pour 
 in, rich and poor, great and small, to kiss — some of them two or 
 three times — the Madonna's foot. . . . Below the altar it is in- 
 scribed m golden letters that Pius VII promised two hundred days' 
 absolution to all such as should kiss the Madonna's foot and pray 
 with the whole heart Ave Maria. Frederika Bremer, quoted in 
 Hare's Walks in Rome, p. 443. 
 
BUDDHA-LAND 
 
 229 
 
 pression of intellectual power, bigotry, and contempt for 
 every knowledge except their own craft, which one is 
 accustomed to see in the faces of European priests. 
 They are fine-looking and striking-looking men, but they 
 are tyrants. The loftiness and self-confidence of their 
 appearance are the fruit of a conceit, a vanity, and an 
 arrogance from which the man of science, the historian, 
 and the inspired poet would shrink horrified and ashamed. 
 They bear upon their brows the seal of a petty tyranny 
 and the mark of a pettifogging pride; whether they be 
 Brahmans, Buddhists, or Romans, it is the same; you 
 may see written in all their faces by the unerring hand 
 of their own souls the " Thank God I am not as other 
 men," which has ever marked the Pharisee from those 
 who weigh and examine tradition, and who give to 
 Truth what these others abdicate to authority — their 
 reason and their life. The complete surrender of the 
 reason to a set of ideas which cannot be proved and 
 which are as repugnant to common sense as they are 
 contrary to experience, seems to affect the countenance 
 of man in the same way all over the world however con- 
 trary and antagonistic the sets of ideas may be. 
 
 At the famous mountain temples hewn out of the rocks 
 of Dambulla and Matale, we found tawdry decorations, 
 shabby pretentiousness and infantile frescoes. The pil- 
 grim who climbs from the road into the mountains by 
 graceful but most tiring steps, who mounts the high 
 rocks plastered with bats at their shadowed summits, 
 and wanders with a winding path through beautiful 
 grassy places happy with birds and butterflies and flow- 
 ers, must surely be vexed and disappointed when, breath- 
 less, exhausted, and with aching legs, he comes before 
 
230 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 these trumpeted shrines. A roof of zinc covers the ve- 
 randa, a bell-pull of barbed wire hangs beside a blistered 
 door of deal, fading pictures of hell peel on the walls, 
 and inside the temples — which smell foully of damp 
 and darkness and stone, and which he enters surrounded 
 by priestly and lay hangers-on eager for a rupee — he 
 finds nothing but Megalomania. One recumbent figure 
 of Buddha measured forty-seven feet! The scheme of 
 colour throughout is red and yellow. The whole effect 
 is gross and grotesque. A cavern of gloom whose walls 
 are shaped into sleeping Polyphemi ! Every figure of 
 Buddha is shown to one with a yard measure. 
 
 One of the saints led me to a hollowed space in the 
 floor of a temple where water quivered in the dim light. 
 " It is by the Will of God," he said amiably; " you can- 
 not see the water fall and no man knows where it goes; 
 it is by the Will of God." The ground on which we 
 stood was a slop of mud; I looked up to the roof, and 
 saw that the rocks were wet, green, and slimy; a drop 
 of water fell as I looked and splashed into the pool ; as 
 for where the water goes the saint himself had told me 
 that a large basin was filled twice daily from this pool 
 'for use in the temple. But one saw in the man's face 
 the look of a child that loves to deceive itself and be 
 deceived ; it would have been cruel to destroy his " Will 
 of God " with a fact in natural law; he was of the great 
 host and company who regard credulity as a virtue and 
 the abnegation of divine reason as an act pleasing to 
 God. 
 
 But, the poor fellow's face when he examined my 
 bakshish! He expostulated, and argued, and spread his 
 arms, and surveyed me — man of God that he was — 
 
BUDDHA-LAND 231 
 
 with a most unholy and murderous contempt. The 
 spirit of Buddha vanished from his mild eyes and ami- 
 able lips; he became angry, derisive, rude. And as our 
 servant distributed a few annas among the hangers-on 
 of this priest, they too fell a-quarrelling, so that the 
 whole scene was like a scramble on a race-course. We 
 left them and crossed the natural platform of rock, fol- 
 lowed by our grinning Hindu who had thoroughly en- 
 joyed this altercation and had told the hangers-on of 
 the priests many hitherto unpublished particulars con- 
 cerning their ancestors; and from the edge of the bastion 
 we looked over a panorama of beauty so enchanting 
 after the grotesque, childish, and vulgar Megalomania of 
 the temple, that one could almost have prayed to it. 
 The distant mountains melted into the pearl-coloured 
 clouds, the rolling jungle filled the intervening space with 
 a foliage brown, green, and golden, and pouring like a 
 cascade down the sloping rock below our eyes was a 
 shimmering flood of flowers which hummed with the 
 scent of bees and sparkled with the morning dew. The 
 whole wide scene was bathed in sunshine and the still 
 air was sweet with the song of birds. 
 
 That the pure and beautiful if melancholy religion 
 of Buddha should descend upon such evil times and 
 become so sordid, shabby, and mean a thing — even the 
 very antithesis of its modest founder — is only a con- 
 firmation of the now generally accepted truth that the 
 religious experience of a single man, once formalized and 
 stereotyped for the multitude, tends towards violence, 
 insincerity, and superstition. 
 
 Life in Ceylon under the Buddhist priesthood is not 
 an elevating subject for the student of human nature. 
 
232 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 The priests themselves, divided into two warring sects, 
 are very often, very often indeed, men of a perverted 
 immorality. " We think nothing of that," I was told 
 even by Buddhists. " Priests are all the same." " It 
 is one thing or the other with these fellows." And 
 when I pressed to know whether the immorality of this 
 priesthood did not lead men to question the truth of the 
 religion, I was told that it made no difference at all. 
 " It is the life and teachings of Buddha that we follow : 
 the priests are of no account; we do not take any notice 
 of them. If you see a man bow down to a priest in the 
 road or the street, you must always remember that he is 
 paying homage to the yellow robe — the symbol of Bud- 
 dha's holy life." 
 
 I learned that not one man in a thousand really gives 
 his thought to the Buddhist's ultimate Nirvana. " Ab- 
 sorption into Universal Being," I was told, " is an event 
 so remote and so immensely beyond the merits of ordi- 
 nary men, that nobody is concerned about it in the very 
 least. The dominant idea with us is so to live that we 
 may secure a decent reincarnation. That is the religion 
 of Buddha. A meritorious life leads to happiness at the 
 next birth ; an evil life leads to unhappiness." 
 
 Who can say that here is a likeness to Christianity? 
 For the heaven of Jesus is to be won by the soul that 
 does good because it loves goodness, and whose love of 
 good springs from its adoration of God. He gives men 
 a Spiritual Father in heaven; He gives them in Himself 
 a Moral Ideal on earth; and He declares that love of 
 God expressed by service to men bestows upon the hu- 
 man heart a joy that cannot be taken away and a peace 
 that passes understanding. " I am come," He said, 
 
BUDDHA-LAND 2^3 
 
 " that they might have Life, and that they might have 
 it more abundantly." Surrender your selfish isolation, 
 your lonely particularity, your disturbing ideas of what 
 is due to you, and your individual assertion of your 
 rights ; surrender all this, and born again by the revela- 
 tion of God's Love, long for holiness with all the strength 
 and power of your soul, learn that holiness is service, 
 and you will come to find that in works of mercy and in 
 deeds of love there is a life grander, more joyful, more 
 satisfying, and more abundant than any dark and narrow 
 life of a soul prisoned in the cell of its own existence. 
 
 Buddhism is a synonym for Egoism, and not the 
 mere crude and only half-conscious egoism of the ma- 
 terialist, but the concentrated, intense, and wholly con- 
 scious egoism of the soul. Buddhism is I Myself think- 
 ing of I Myself; Christianity is Christ my Master think- 
 ing of Man my Brother. The one promises Annihila- 
 tion; the other Life. 
 
 In the forest village which I have just attempted to 
 describe, and afterwards in Colombo, I met among the 
 Salvationists a remarkable man converted to Christianity 
 from Buddhism whose story will better help the reader 
 to realize the difference between the two religions than 
 many pages of disquisition. 
 
 This person, Samaraveera by name, is a tall, thin, ro- 
 mantic-looking man of some forty years of age. He is 
 lighter-coloured than most Singhalese, has large and 
 handsome eyes, and small features; he wears a mous- 
 tache and on one side of his forehead his thick black 
 hair hangs over as far as the eyebrow. The high cheek- 
 bones stand out like curves drawn with a pencil, the 
 cheeks are sunken, the long bare neck, with its prominent 
 
234 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 Adam's apple, is so thin that all the cords are visible. 
 The expression of his face is one of gentle sweetness. 
 His voice is low and modulated. He has the air of a 
 scholar given up to spiritual devotion. He speaks Eng- 
 lish without the least trace of a foreign accent and has a 
 perfect command of idiom and vocabulary. 
 
 " Buddhism," he said to me, " must never be re- 
 garded as an original and separate religion. It is Hin- 
 duism reformed, and is quite as centred in Hinduism as 
 Protestantism, which is reformed Catholicism, is cen- 
 tred in Christianity. The vital principle of each re- 
 ligion is the theory of reincarnation; and both postu- 
 late Nirvana, or absorption into the unconscious essence 
 of Being, as the final end of a soul's existence. Buddha 
 denounced Hindu gods, but he spoke of one great Being, 
 and his idea of this Being is much the same if not quite 
 the same as the philosophic Hindu's idea of Brahma. 
 Buddhist Kings have had as many as forty wives; the 
 priests of Buddhism practise immoralities which are 
 common among the priests of Hinduism. The purest 
 form of Buddhism is found in Ceylon, but although the 
 priests do not marry here, as they do in Japan, still it is 
 generally known that they are not virtuous. There are 
 two sects of Buddhism in Ceylon, the Siamese sect, and 
 the Amarapura sect. The priests of the first sect leave 
 one shoulder bare, and represent the worldly and ma- 
 terial side of Buddhism; they deal only with high-caste 
 people and consider themselves an aristocracy. The 
 Amarapura sect cover both shoulders under the yellow 
 robe, are more pious, live purer lives, and go among the 
 low-caste peoples — but with patronage. Both priest- 
 hoods exercise a tyrannous power over the people and 
 
BUDDHA-LAND 235 
 
 claim a spiritual sovereignty. In all schools of Bud- 
 dhist thought, sin is condemned only as an offence 
 against one's neighbour; never as a barrier erected by 
 the soul itself against the love of God. 
 
 " The legends about Buddha are just as grotesque as 
 those about Hindu gods. At his birth he is said to have 
 asserted his supremacy over all gods; fresh from his 
 mother's womb he walked seven steps towards north, 
 south, east, and west, and proclaimed himself supreme. 
 But in truth Buddha was a man like other men; he 
 never claimed divine origin, and never said that he was 
 an incarnation of Siva, Vishnu, Brahma, or any other 
 god. He was a good man who saw the sin and suffering 
 of life with pain and sympathy, and he sought to save 
 men from sin and suffering by teaching them to crush 
 in their souls all desire for existence, good or bad, happy 
 or miserable. 
 
 " All the books and all the ceremonies of Buddhism 
 are in Pali, which is high Singhalese, a language known 
 only to the priests. Buddhism in this respect is like 
 Roman Catholicism. But the chief condemnation of 
 Buddhism is its powerlessness to recreate a fallen na- 
 ture or restore a broken life. It is beautiful and sweet 
 as an idea, as a sad and poetic philosophy of paganism; 
 but it is not a religion. If it is a religion, it is inade- 
 quate to the world's needs, pitifully inadequate. It is an 
 inefficient religion — therefore it cannot be true. What 
 is not true is not a religion." 
 
 He told me his own story in the following words : — ■ 
 
 " My parents were prominent Buddhists, my father 
 being one of the trustees of the temples — that is to say, 
 a manager and controller of finances, for the priests 
 
236 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 touch no money themselves. Every full-moon day I 
 used to go with my parents to the temple, and I loved to 
 go because my mind was filled with the charm of Bud- 
 dha's teaching. I thought there could be nothing sweeter 
 in all the ideas of men than Buddha's noble teaching 
 about Kindness. ' There is great virtue in Kindness.' 
 ' The greatest power is Kindness.' ' Kindness to man 
 and animal.' I worshipped in common with all Bud- 
 dhists, but very devotedly because my heart was so 
 deeply touched by this doctrine of Kindness, the Trinity 
 of my religion — Buddha, his Teaching, and his Dis- 
 ciples. I thoroughly, almost passionately, believed the 
 beautiful doctrines, and like other Buddhists would wor- 
 ship even an immoral priest because he wore the robe 
 that Buddha wore. 
 
 " At an early age I was seized by an attack of dysen- 
 tery which brought me to death's door. My parents in 
 despair sent for the priests. My father said that if I 
 recovered he would dedicate me to the priesthood. The 
 priests came, erected a beautiful altar in my bedroom, 
 filled it with flowers, and for seven days and nights 
 chanted their invocations. They took the sacred string, 
 dipped it in holy water, rubbed saffron on, and tied it 
 round me. 
 
 " I recovered, and my father repented of his vow. 
 He thought me clever and refused to let me bury myself 
 in the priesthood. This was a most poignant distress to 
 me. I longed to be a priest. All my thoughts and feel- 
 ings and hopes and aspirations were set upon the priest- 
 hood. But my father withstood all my entreaties, re- 
 mained firm against the disappointment of the priests. 
 
BUDDHA-LAND 237 
 
 and sent me to the only school in our neighbourhood, 
 which happened to be a Christian school. 
 
 " I must tell you that even as a boy I had a very keen 
 sense of the horror of sin. I felt it to be atrocious and 
 abominable. As I look back now, I can truly say that I 
 was conscious even as a child of the existence of God 
 within me. And I firmly believe that my horror of sin, 
 something far deeper than the Buddhist notion of an of- 
 fence against one's neighbour, was created in my heart by 
 the Holy Spirit. 
 
 " Some of the teachers at the school to which I was 
 now put endeavoured to make a Christian of me. L 
 did not examine the Christian doctrines or even study the 
 life of Jesus; it was enough for me that Christians killed 
 animals. I used to exclaim, ' But Christians kill an- 
 imals ! ' I felt that to be atrocious. Christians killed 
 birds. How cruel, how dreadful! I hated Christians; 
 or at any rate I despised them. I had always been taught 
 to regard Christians as bad people. Converts to Chris- 
 tianity, I was told, were mere office-seekers, people who 
 wanted to become officials. I had a bad view of the 
 whole thing. One of my uncles had a Bible which he 
 kept and studied diligently for the purpose of contro- 
 verting Christians — a work on which he prided himself 
 and which gave him a supreme pleasure. Soon after I 
 went to school he gave me a Bible as a present, and said 
 to me, ' Don't you ever become a Christian.' I said, ' No, 
 I never will ! ' — for I thought Christians the most cruel 
 and degraded people on the earth. When I came to read 
 the Bible I felt that it was an absolute fairy-story. The 
 whole thing seemed to be impossible and absurd. And 
 
238 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 the death of Christ — a felon's death! I could not get 
 over that. Buddha — the son of a King! Oh, how 
 great the difference ! That the Son of God should perish 
 on the cross, hanged like a criminal between two thieves, 
 struck me as a thing too dreadful to think about, and too 
 unthinkable to be true. Besides, there was in the Bible 
 from beginning to end the idea that God had created the 
 world, a good God, a perfect God, a God all-wise, all- 
 knowing, and all-powerful. But I knew that creation 
 Avas imperfect. I knew about sorrow and death. It 
 seemed to me as unthinkable to make a good God the 
 creator of a world so full of cruelty, misery, sorrow, 
 and sin as to believe that the Son of God died on a 
 felon's cross between two dreadful thieves. 
 
 " But although my teachers at school failed utterly 
 to make a Christian of me, they widened my knowledge, 
 broadened my sympathies, and gave me a different no- 
 tion of Christian character. As I grew up I felt more 
 and more the conviction of sin in my heart, and was con- 
 scious of an unrest which worship of Buddha and devo- 
 tion to his Teaching could not allay. I was aware in 
 myself of some inarticulate longing for greater holiness 
 and deeper peace, for a more harmonious relation in my 
 soul to the universe surrounding me. I began to realize 
 the beauty of Christ's character and to feel in His Teach- 
 ing some mystical sweetness that ministered to the sad- 
 ness and disquiet of my heart. I used to read the four 
 gospels, and think about a God of Love — one all-em- 
 bracing and merciful Father in heaven Whose creation 
 had been marred by man himself. Then I began to feel 
 guilty, terribly guilty, and the fear of dying in isolation 
 from God took hold of me and made me afraid. 
 
BUDDHA-LAND 239 
 
 " The only Christians who attracted me were the Sal- 
 vationists. I was attracted by observing the self-sacri- 
 ficing lives of these people and their intense earnestness 
 and simplicity. I was already dimly aware that no rit- 
 ual or ceremonial, no pomp of worship and no mere 
 acceptance of an idea or a doctrine could give me the 
 peace of which I was in quest. Quite dimly, but still 
 consciously, I felt the need for a change of heart, a new- 
 birth, a complete revolution of being. I do not know if 
 I can make clear to you what I then felt. My thoughts 
 were troubled, my heart was full of unrest, I was con- 
 scious of a great loneliness. I wanted Truth. With all 
 my mind and soul I wanted Truth. To be sure of 
 something as absolutely True — this was the hunger and 
 thirst of my whole being. And in this drifting condi- 
 tion, half-believing in a God of Love, and touched by the 
 beautiful Teaching of Jesus, I saw these Salvationists in 
 my neighbourhood, living lives of extreme self-sacri- 
 fice, avoiding everything in the nature of ceremonial or 
 formalism, and preaching the religion of Jesus with a 
 devotion which was perhaps my first knowledge of earn- 
 estness. 
 
 " I felt I should like to know more about these peo- 
 ple, and began to attend their meetings. Several Bud- 
 dhists went out of mere curiosity, and my presence 
 attracted no attention. My people thought I was far 
 too intellectual to become a Christian, and they hoped 
 that I should one day distinguish myself either in Gov- 
 ernment service or as a professional man. The meet- 
 ings had various effects upon me. Sometimes I was 
 deeply impressed, sometimes I felt chilled and repelled, 
 sometimes I felt how hopeless it all was — to understand 
 
240 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 the Will of God and discover the truth of things. But 
 the wonderful lives of these people, and the marvellous 
 manner in which they converted wicked and degraded 
 men into good and holy men, had such an attraction for 
 me that I could not resist attending their meetings. 
 
 " It was at a special gathering that my illumination 
 came. The European officer made this meeting the oc- 
 casion for a great searching of the heart, for a pitiless 
 cross-examination of the conscience. As the meeting 
 proceeded I felt myself the victim of a terrible despair. 
 I was a sinner condemned and lost. Of myself I could 
 do nothing. For ever I might struggle and strive, but 
 it would always be the same — unhappiness of heart, 
 doubt of mind, and wretchedness of soul. There was 
 no light in myself to pierce the darkness crowding upon 
 me from every point of the universe. There was no con- 
 ceivable action possible to me which could make me at 
 peace with the mystery of things. I was in darkness, and 
 I was in ignorance. To die as I was — a stranger to 
 God, a soul seeking of itself to establish peace with God 
 — this would be terrible. 
 
 " I was a sinner, and to sinners Jesus had said. Come 
 unto Me. I felt that Jesus had power. I could see no 
 other way of escape and deliverance but by Jesus. 
 
 " What was I at the moment ? A soul arrested by the 
 great central idea of Right and Wrong. To be cleansed 
 from sin, to be purged of misery, to feel myself standing 
 on a rock secure in strength greater than my own and 
 fixed in a holiness infinitely higher than my own — this 
 was my longing. And to whom could I go? — of all the 
 Teachers and Philosophers in history, to whom could I 
 go? To none, save Jesus. He alone teaches how the 
 
BUDDHA-LAND 24I 
 
 heart may be cleansed, how the soul may be born again, 
 how the spirit can rest like a little child in the Love of 
 God. But — The ordeal! I cannot tell you how I 
 shrank from it. My struggle for new-birth, my longing 
 for conversion, all the turmoil of my soul for some new 
 and wonderful thing to happen to me, was spiritual. 
 And a physical act was required! In that moment of 
 shrinking and recoil, as if he were an angel sent by God 
 direct from the sky, a Salvationist came to me and helped 
 me to decide. I rose from my seat and went forward 
 before the people. I surrendered myself in that moment 
 to God. I knelt trembling, a raw heathen full of dark- 
 ness, and opened my heart and uttered a prayer for the 
 first time in my life. I rose a new man. I rose to a 
 new world, for a new purpose; and twenty-one years 
 have gone by since that night, so memorable and so 
 wonderful to me, twenty-one years of hard work, un- 
 broken consolation and deepening joy. At the moment 
 of my conversion I felt at rest, suddenly at rest; I was 
 conscious of a delirious sense of victory after the severe 
 struggle, and happy — happy with a strange irradiation 
 of light pervading all my soul, and the feehng of a hope 
 that supported me and lifted me up." 
 
 This man for twenty-one years has been a most de- 
 voted Salvationist, working for the Kingdom of God in 
 Ceylon, a man whose influence as a spiritual force is 
 acknowledged both by Europeans and Natives. And 
 that such a man and such a body as the Salvation Army 
 is necessary to Ceylon, let the brief stories related in the 
 next chapter witness. 
 
RESTORATION 
 
 There are many streets in the midst of Colombo which 
 suggest the comfort and domesticity of an EngHsh sub- 
 urb. Although they are within a few minutes' walk of 
 a sea-front, brilliant shop-windows, factory chimneys, 
 military barracks, Government offices and a Native quar- 
 ter as Eastern as the Delhi bazaars, they are so shut in 
 by towering trees and so illuminated by their bird- 
 haunted gardens, that one might imagine them as far 
 from the busy city as Sydenham or Finchley from the 
 central roar of London. 
 
 In one of these quiet streets there is a red-bricked 
 house standing back from the road which looks as sim- 
 ple and ordinary as any of its neighbours. Nothing 
 marks it as a separate dwelling. There is no plate or 
 board on either of its drive gates or over its porch. It 
 wears the same appearance of languorous calm and un- 
 eventful domesticity which characterizes every other 
 house in the long and somnolent street. And yet it is 
 a habitation of tragedy and sorrow beyond the power 
 of human language to express. It is a Rescue Home. 
 
 At the back of this house, under a broad veranda 
 where the sun's light enters cooled and greened through 
 a hanging curtain of whispering leaves, I found a party 
 of Singhalese girls, busy with needlevi^ork while an 
 elderly Native woman read to them from a book. 
 
 Among these girls was a little child, dressed in a sleeve- 
 
 242 
 
RESTORATION 243 
 
 less white jacket and a red and yellow skirt, whose 
 extreme youth and face of settled suffering and unalter- 
 able grief at once moved my pity and awoke my curi- 
 osity. She was under twelve years of age. The tiny 
 face, shadowed by clustering dark curls, was dull and 
 sorrowful; there was no brightness in the sullen eyes, 
 no childhood in the tragic little mouth. Her neck was 
 so thin that a child could easily have spanned it with two 
 hands; her arms were little more than skin and bone; 
 under the linen of her jacket the baby breasts only just 
 showed, as a cigarette case shows in a waistcoat pocket. 
 She was a child, and nothing but a child ; a child as un- 
 formed and immature as an English girl of her own age. 
 And she had come to the Rescue Home from a hospital. 
 
 This is her story. 
 
 She does not remember a father. In rather sordid 
 poverty but not in actual misery she grew up under the 
 care of her mother, helping in the home and playing in 
 the streets like so many other children in that crowded 
 quarter of the city. At the age of eleven her mother 
 said to her one day : " I cannot afford to keep you any 
 longer; I have arranged for you to go to work, you will 
 earn money and the people will give you food and 
 clothes." 
 
 That evening the mother took her to a native hotel, 
 and handed her over to the man who had bought her as 
 a part of his stock-in-trade. This hotel still stands in 
 Sea Street, near the Fish Market — a vile place in a 
 filthy alley of ugliness and iniquity. The child was too 
 frightened to cry out to her mother not to desert her. 
 Although she had no idea in the world of her true pur- 
 pose in that evil place she was stricken with a paralysing 
 
244 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 terror and wanted to flee from the noisy house and the 
 brutal-faced man who looked her over with scowling 
 eyes. But she felt herself to be powerless, as indeed she 
 was, and followed her master up a flight of crazy stairs 
 to the upper floor. He opened the door of a room, bade 
 her pass in, and told her she might go to sleep. She 
 woke in hell. 
 
 For six or seven months she remained a prisoner in 
 this house. There were three other girls to share her 
 misery and her degradation. They were fed on the 
 poorest rice, were given no money, were made to work 
 in the house, and were constantly beaten by their mas- 
 ter. Not once in all that time was she allowed to go out 
 of doors. Through the morning she did the laborious 
 housework; from the afternoon to the small hours of 
 the night she was the victim of her master's trade. And 
 the men who visited this house were the lowest pariahs 
 of the place — loathsome and abominable coolies, 
 drunken and diseased sailors, the filth and ofifscourings 
 of a Native quarter in a seaport town. 
 
 Towards the end of her imprisonment, this child just 
 over eleven years of age, was smitten by one of the most 
 terrible diseases with which nature punishes an intem- 
 perate animalism. It became so bad at last that her 
 master himself took her to the hospital, claimed to be 
 her owner, and said he would come back to fetch her 
 when she was cured. 
 
 One of the women doctors in this hospital, taking an 
 interest in the child, gradually got her story from her, 
 and at once sent to the Salvationist in charge of the 
 Rescue Home. The two women, both of them practical 
 saints of the twentieth century, determined to save the 
 
RESTORATION 245; 
 
 child body and soul. For five weeks she received all 
 the love and care and science of the hospital, and from the 
 hospital she passed to the love and care and science of 
 the Rescue Home. The man who had bought her came 
 twice to the hospital and demanded to have the child 
 restored to him ; he had paid for her and she belonged to 
 him; he actually attempted to threaten the hospital with 
 proceedings at law. 
 
 But the child was safe from this monster, and she 
 is likely to remain safe for the rest of her life. In the 
 Rescue Home she has become the pet and fondling of 
 the other girls, she is adored by the officers in charge, 
 and slowly — very slowly, of course — she is building up 
 the shattered strength of her body and the ruined fabric 
 of her mind. Often the poor little creature will be found 
 weeping silently and secretly; often she will accuse her- 
 self of being slow and stupid at her work; and some- 
 times even to the loving people watching over her resto- 
 ration with such tender solicitude, it seems as though 
 she will never be able to rid her mind of its terrible 
 nightmare of the past. But one of the Native Salva- 
 tionists, who is in charge of the needlework class and 
 who reads to the girls while they are busy with their 
 needles, said to me as she caressed this little child with 
 all the affection of a mother — " She is praying and im- 
 proving." 
 
 Among the girls seated in the green light of the ve- 
 randa busy with needlework, was one somewhat older 
 than the others; a handsome and capable young woman, 
 whose story I learned partly from herself and partly 
 from the Native Salvationist in charge of the establish- 
 ment. 
 
246 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 She was a village girl, the daughter of humble 
 peasants, and, until disaster overtook her, had spent all 
 her life in the simple surroundings of the little mud 
 house which they called their home. At this time she 
 was a tall and gracefully-formed girl, past the shapeless- 
 ness of childhood and not yet a fully-matured woman. 
 
 One day there came to the door of their village house 
 a venerable old man peddling various articles of the 
 household. As he talked to the mother, he studied the 
 girl, and presently he asked if the mother could spare 
 the child, " for," said he, " I know of a lady in Colombo 
 who wants an ayah — a fine house and the wages are 
 fifteen rupees a month." 
 
 To the villagers of Ceylon, I discovered, the name of 
 " Colombo " has the same magic which Paris has for so 
 many French provincials. It is to them a fairyland of 
 blinding splendour and inexhaustible delight. They see 
 it as a city of enchantment, sparkling with myriads of 
 lamps, ringing with music, and crowded from morning 
 to night with men and women dressed like Kings and 
 Queens. Little village children tell each other stories 
 about this magic city of Colombo; young girls dream 
 about it ; and young men do not rest until they have been 
 there. 
 
 " When I heard him say Colombo," the girl told me, 
 " I felt so excited that I could not speak. Oh, it seemed 
 to me too wonderful to be true ! It was more wonderful 
 than the fifteen rupees a month, which seemed to me like 
 a fortune. I had always longed to see Colombo, so that 
 I had often dreamed about it, but I never thought that 
 my dreams would come true." 
 
 The mother, dazzled by the fortune so suddenly pre- 
 
RESTORATION 247 
 
 sented to her daughter, parted with the child, and that 
 very day, without inquiry of any kind, the venerable 
 pedlar and the young girl started for Colombo. They 
 reached the city at night, and leaving the railway station, 
 made their way into the narrow and bewildering streets 
 of Slave Island. The old man explained to the wonder- 
 ing girl that it was too late to go that night to the lady's 
 house, and said that he would take her to a nice quiet 
 hotel where she could rest till the morning. He stopped 
 before the door of an evil-looking house, and bidding 
 the girl wait for him, went inside by himself. After a 
 few minutes he returned and conducted the girl into the 
 interior, where he presented her to the proprietor. " It 
 may be a day or two before I can come back and take you 
 to the lady's house," he said, in farewell, " but you must 
 wait here till I come and fetch you." Then he departed, 
 never of course to return. 
 
 After some three or four days the landlord came to 
 her and asked if she had money to pay her bill. She 
 had nothing. He became angry ; but, when she cried, he 
 told her that he would not hand her over to the police. 
 " You must work to pay me back for your food and 
 lodging," he told her, and she was set to cook food and 
 to scrub floors. 
 
 There were several women in this house and their 
 manner of living soon came to the knowledge of the 
 country girl. They received from their visitors presents 
 of cigarettes and cigars, clothes and a little cheap jewel- 
 lery, but no money. From each of their visitors the 
 landlord got what he could — any sum from five rupees 
 to fifteen — six shillings and eight-pence to a sovereign. 
 For this, he fed them, gave them lodging, and treated 
 
248 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 them with a constant brutality. His house was their 
 prison, and he was their jailer. 
 
 The country girl found herself as completely a prisoner 
 as the others. She was not allowed to leave the house, 
 and was carefully watched by her master or his hire- 
 lings when her work took her near the door or the win- 
 dows overlooking the street. For three days she was 
 driven and harried at this housework till her body was 
 fatigued to the point of exhaustion and her heart almost 
 broken by despair. On the night of the third day she 
 became like the other girls in the house. 
 
 She remained a prisoner for a whole year, her one 
 attempt to escape being easily frustrated and most cru- 
 elly punished. At the end of this time she was obliged 
 to go into the Lock Hospital, suffering from the same 
 disease as the child in the last story. 
 
 She responded at once to the kindness of doctors and 
 nurses, and showed a most intelligent interest in the 
 ministrations of the Salvationists. She said to them, " I 
 do not understand all you tell me, but I want to be good ; 
 if you will let me, I should like to go into your home." 
 Every Thursday a Salvationist paid her a visit, and 
 gradually the poor unhappy creature came into the sooth- 
 ing and re-creating atmosphere of religion. Towards the 
 end of her period in hospital, a woman from the brothel 
 came to see her. She sprang out of bed at sight of this 
 visitor, rushed to the bathroom, and locked herself in. 
 When they were able to assure her of protection and 
 she was induced to open the door, she told them that she 
 would a thousand times rather die in the hospital than 
 go back to the brothel. They promised to save her from 
 the clutches of her tyrants, and in a few weeks' time she 
 
RESTORATION 249 
 
 was taken to the Home. Nearly four years have passed 
 since that day. She is now one of the most enthusiastic 
 workers for her suffering sisters, and every other Sun- 
 day pays a visit either to the Lock Hospital or the Jail 
 with the message of Christianity. In the Rescue Home 
 she is like an angel to the other girls, and is entrusted 
 with work, and helps them to forget the haunting con- 
 tagion of their past lives. 
 
 She told me that the majority of bad women in Ceylon 
 are without shame, and manifest no longing to be good. 
 The Eurasian women are the worst. Many of the 
 brothels are kept by German women, who employ agents 
 all over the island to get them children of twelve years 
 of age. The police of Ceylon constantly come to the 
 Salvation Army with girls who have been ruined by 
 these procuresses. 
 
 Another story shows another aspect of this rescue 
 work. A Singhalese Christian girl, twenty-nine years of 
 age, charming in manner, and pleasant to look upon, is 
 the sad heroine of this different tale. During an ab- 
 sence of her parents from home, she became as weak as 
 water in the hands of a philandering cousin, and finally 
 yielded to him. For nearly four months she hid her 
 secret, and then it was discovered by her mother. In a 
 few minutes the house was in an uproar. The mother 
 stormed at her, the father beat her without mercy, and 
 finally she was thrown out of the house and told never 
 again to darken its door. 
 
 The miserable girl wandered away to the houses of 
 relations, but in every case met with scorn and derision. 
 No one would take her in. Everybody upbraided her. 
 At last, in despair, she made her way from the villages 
 
250 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 into the jungle, and there for a whole week wandered 
 aimlessly to and fro, broken-hearted, terrified, starving, 
 and despairing. It seemed to her that all the world was 
 against her, that nowhere under heaven was there pity 
 for her condition. But she was young, she was strong, 
 and the passion to live was vigorous in her blood. Hun- 
 ger drove her out from the jungle, and she set her face 
 towards a village. She was now thin, ragged, and wild- 
 looking. Children eyed her askance, women watched 
 her with suspicion, some of the men mocked her. How- 
 ever here and there she found a person to give her a 
 little handful of rice, and at night she would lie down 
 and sleep in the shadow of a friendly doorway. It was 
 better than the jungle. 
 
 Her condition was soon obvious to all the world. 
 Instead of creating pity in the heart of humanity it only 
 intensified mocking and scorn. She was no longer a 
 woman, she was a pariah dog. They hunted her away 
 from their doors with bitter words and wounding taunts. 
 Now and then food was given to her, but never a kind 
 word. It was " Take and begone " from village to vil- 
 lage, till she felt herself hated and loathed by all man- 
 kind. 
 
 At last she encountered something in the nature of 
 kindness. A woman at whose door she had begged a 
 little rice, said to her : " You should go to Colombo. 
 There are some Christians down there who call them- 
 selves Salvationists and who look after people like you. 
 They will take you into one of their houses. You had 
 better go to them at once. It will soon be too late." 
 
 With this crumb of comfort for her despairing soul, 
 the miserable girl tramped all the way with her grievous 
 
RESTORATION 251' 
 
 burden to Colombo, and asked for the Salvation Army. 
 In a few minutes the whole aspect of her life was 
 changed. From being a pariah she found herself treated 
 with the most endearing kindness and stimulated by 
 words of strong and bracing encouragement. They car- 
 ried her to the hospital, and when her baby was born, it 
 was adopted by one of the Salvationists. She entered 
 the Rescue Home for a week, and when her strength was 
 recovered, she set out to return to her home. 
 
 Now that she was no longer a scandal, now that the 
 child was born and taken from her, she hoped that her 
 parents would receive her with love and let her be as one 
 of the other children. But no sooner had she entered 
 her home than they flew at her with reproaches. They 
 brought back the past, they struck her across the face 
 with their hands, and they called her wasa-ganya — the 
 word that stings a pure woman. It was impossible for 
 her to stay. Very sorrowfully, with tears in her eyes 
 and a most bitter agony in her heart, the unhappy crea- 
 ture turned away from her home, and homeless, parent- 
 less, friendless, once more an outcast on the face of the 
 earth, went out into the world which is so cruel to all 
 and so perilous for lonely women. But this time she 
 knew that there was one place where doors would be 
 open to her, where a kind welcome would greet her, and 
 where she might live as a human being. 
 
 It is now over six years since she returned to the Res- 
 cue Home in Ceylon, and all those years have been 
 marked by a wonderful deepening of her spiritual life. 
 She was described to me as " admirable " — a girl who 
 was always happy, always kind to others, always ener- 
 getic at her work, and always grateful to those who be- 
 
252 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 friended her. But for the Salvationists, but for that 
 always open door of the Salvation Army, she must have 
 ended her life in the horror and ruin of depravity. " Her 
 father and mother," I was told, " are grateful now, are 
 sorry for what they did in the past, and always give her 
 a kind welcome when she goes to see them." 
 
 Other stories I heard in the Rescue Home, equally 
 tragic, equally hopeful, and equally illuminating; but 
 these three are perhaps sufficient to give the reader an 
 idea of the need for a real and saving religion in the 
 island of Ceylon. Buddhism does absolutely nothing for 
 the fallen, and has little strength for the falling. The 
 climate of the island, the presence of a large number of 
 young unmarried European men, the lightness and the 
 flippancy with which purity is everywhere apt to be re- 
 garded in an age of perishing superstition and triumph- 
 ing materialism, make it essential for the health of the 
 Singhalese people, and in particular for the happiness of 
 Singhalese girls, that religion in its high aspect of a 
 noble morality should be constantly in evidence through- 
 out the length and breadth of Ceylon. 
 
 If I may venture to express an opinion on the difficult 
 question of government — I would say that more power 
 should be given to the police to visit the innumerable 
 brothels of the big towns, that the work of the native 
 procurer and the German procuress should be brought to 
 .a stop, and that the severest punishment allowed by the 
 law should be meted out to any man or any woman who 
 is keeping children against their will in houses of immo- 
 rality. It is not easy to make war on vice, but to make 
 no war at all is to be guilty of a crime. 
 
THE BHILS 
 
 The more clearly we come to see that civilized man is 
 not a fallen angel but an ascending creature of barbaric 
 ancestry, the more interested we are likely to become in 
 those races of the earth who still preserve for us in their 
 manners, customs, and superstitions the earliest chapters 
 in the history of our strange and eventful progress. 
 
 It is intelligible enough that a gentleman in England 
 should wish to know about his great-great-grandfather, 
 or that a lady in Rome should spend a considerable part 
 of her life in convincing the little group of her acquaint- 
 ance that one of her ancestors was a nobleman. But 
 such archaeology is but the toying of the nursery in com- 
 parison with that larger interest in our antiquity which 
 carries the mind back to the very beginning of human 
 emergences. For there is not a single custom or man- 
 ner or superstition of primitive peoples which does not 
 hold a taper to the darkness and mystery of our own 
 complex society and our own individual region of per- 
 plexing consciousness. The most modern European 
 may find in the habits of a single aboriginal tribe still 
 inhabiting the world and still living the entirely ignorant 
 and absolutely superstitious life which preceded the rise 
 of the Pharaohs and the birth of Greek philosophy, an 
 explanation of strange stirrings and dim motions which 
 haunt the chambers of his brain and trouble his soul 
 with an inexplicable persistence. 
 
 253 
 
5354 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 The vast continent of India is a monument to the ever- 
 lastingness of superstition. From the most refined and 
 philosophic Brahman down to the most degraded Un- 
 touchable, this immense congeries of humanity, this fifth 
 of the entire human race, is governed from birth to death 
 by a wand of superstition to which the rod of Nero or 
 the scourge of the Inquisition was but as a snapping 
 twitch. And among these various peoples of India, but 
 separated from them as utterly as the sand of the Plains 
 from the waves of the Indian Ocean, there are tribes and 
 races of mankind still more ignorant, still more super- 
 stitious, and still more primitive, who have never been 
 absorbed by the comparatively advanced civilization of 
 Hinduism and who preserve for us in all the freshness 
 and vivid power of actual life the most barbarous man- 
 ners and the most savage superstitions of remotest 
 antiquity. 
 
 In certain districts of India these strange and separate 
 peoples are termed " Criminal Tribes " ; in others they 
 are merely docketed as aborigines. For the most part 
 they live the nomadic life of gypsies, and get their liv- 
 ing by bow and arrow, by fish-hook, by spear, by intimi- 
 dation, and by stealing. They have been from the earli- 
 est times of the British occupation a thorn in the side of 
 Government, and a costly thorn in particular to the es- 
 timates of those provinces in which they live and main- 
 tain a stubborn resistance to honest work and the morality 
 of the Ten Commandments. " It is men of this class," 
 says Sir Bamfylde Fuller, " who are said to be able to 
 steal a man's bedclothes off him. The tribes are kept 
 under close supervision, and efforts are made to reclaim 
 
THE BHILS 255 
 
 them, but without much success. The best use that can 
 be made of men of this class is to enlist them as village 
 watchmen. They are, as a rule, faithful to their salt, 
 and they are exceedingly skilful detectives. They will 
 trace a stolen bullock by its footprints for miles across 
 country." He tells a story which will help the reader to 
 realize the marvellous genius of these simple and igno- 
 rant people in the province of crime: — 
 
 An acquaintance of mine, who had lived for some 
 time in the cantonments of Cawnpore, shifted his res- 
 idence to the civil station, a mile or two distant, 
 and amongst his other servants took his watchman 
 with him. A few days later, he received an anony- 
 mous letter pointing out that the watchmen of the 
 cantonment were not of the same community as those 
 of the civil station, and advising him to engage a new 
 man. He thought little of it, so it was decided to use 
 a more forceful argument. It was the hot weather, 
 and, as usual, he slept out of doors. Waking one 
 morning, he was amazed to see all his drawing-room 
 pictures swinging from the branches of the tree above 
 him : within the bungalow a party of " ragging " un- 
 dergraduates might have been enjoying themselves: 
 the furniture was turned upside down. His bureau 
 stood wide open. Money had not been touched, but 
 his stock of postage-stamps had been taken, and was 
 neatly disposed around the edge of the lawn, on each 
 stamp a pebble, so that it might not be blown away. 
 He made no more ado about changing his watchman. 
 {Studies of Indian Life and Sentiment, p. 284.) 
 
256 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 Sir Edmund Cox has lately told in his book, Police 
 and Crime in India, a story which shows how the extraor- 
 dinary ingenuity of the Indian criminal is combined with 
 a most reckless contempt of human life. 
 
 A party of thieves one night broke into the house 
 of a banker named Girwar Prasad. They effected 
 their entrance by digging a hole through one of the 
 outer walls with a short, sharp-pointed iron bar. The 
 thieves had collected their plunder and were departing, 
 when Girwar Prasad awoke, heard a noise, and ran 
 down. He entered the room just in time to see the 
 last of the thieves crawling out through the hole; his 
 legs were still inside. With great presence of mind 
 the banker ran forward and forced himself between 
 them. The thief was now caught. With his legs 
 separated he could not get out, and with his arms and 
 shoulders beyond the wall, neither could he force him- 
 self back. 
 
 Girwar Prasad summoned his servants and sent for 
 the police. Meanwhile he remained exultant ; through 
 this thief the rest would be apprehended, and his prop- 
 erty recovered. But in this he was disappointed. So 
 soon as the other thieves found that their comrade was 
 fixed in the hole they took measures to prevent his be- 
 traying them. They drew their swords, cut off his 
 head, and carried it off together with their plunder. 
 The police, on their arrival, found only a bleeding 
 neck protruding from the hole, and a body that no 
 one could identify. 
 
 How barbarous some of these people are may be gath- 
 ered from such information as Sir Bamfylde Fuller gives 
 
THE BHILS 257 
 
 of the head-hunting Nagas. " No man," he says, " can 
 expect a nice girl to marry him unless he can show her 
 a ghastly trophy; and, so brutalized are human feelings, 
 that heads of women and even of little children count 
 for as much as the head of a warrior; indeed, they count 
 for more, as to kill a woman or child a man has to ven- 
 ture himself well inside the land of the hostile village." 
 Then there are the Aghoris who are actually said to eat 
 human bodies : — 
 
 I came across one of them who lived on a sand- 
 bank in the Ganges, and arrested the corpses which 
 floated down-stream. Carrying a human skull, they 
 blackmail shopkeepers by threatening to throw it upon 
 their stalls, and to pollute irretrievably their stock-in- 
 trade. . . . There are actually ten thousand per- 
 sons who at Census time classed themselves as Aghoris. 
 All of them do not practise cannibalism, and some of 
 them attempt to rise in the world. One of them se- 
 cured service as cook with a British officer of my ac- 
 quaintance. My friend was in camp in the jungle 
 with his wife and children, when his other servants 
 came to him in a body and refused to remain in serv- 
 ice unless the cook was dismissed, since they had dis- 
 covered, they declared, that during the night time he 
 visited cemeteries and dug up the bodies of freshly 
 buried children. (Studies of Indian Life and Senti- 
 ment, pp. 44, 45.) 
 
 Now, among all these various peoples of India who 
 are reckoned as something worse than untouchable by 
 the orthodox Hindu, there are tribes here and there 
 
258 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 whose superstitions are gross but not abominable, and 
 whose criminal instincts do not greatly exceed the rather 
 poetic pillaging of the English poacher. These tribes, 
 while they rank above the cannibals and head-Tiunters of 
 other districts, retain all the most primitive customs and 
 superstitions of antiquity, and at the same time manifest 
 a certain inclination towards the English influence. Such 
 a people, for instance, are the Doms, the Haburas and 
 the Bhils, among whom, thanks very largely to the cour- 
 age and sagacity of the greatest British statesman now 
 in India, the Salvation Army is beginning a work of 
 remarkable promise for civilization. Centuries of un- 
 speakable tyranny, and many years of an iron supervision 
 by the police, have made these people sullen and suspi- 
 cious; but one cannot go amongst them in their settle- 
 ments and villages, or visit them in the prisons where 
 so many of them are incarcerated, without feeling that 
 the Salvationists have set their hands to a work of the 
 most romantic character and that here, perhaps, more 
 than in any other quarter of the world a student of hu- 
 man nature may actually stand and watch the rise of 
 the soul from the very depths of animalism to the faint 
 beginnings of spiritual existence. 
 
 The Bhils are said by the Encyclopcedia Britannica to 
 be " the remnants of a Mongolian race which first dis- 
 placed a yet earlier Negroid population, and was then 
 itself shouldered out by a Caucasian irruption." These 
 people living shoulder by shoulder with the most ad- 
 vanced civilization of modern times, bear in their patient 
 faces all the marks of this immemorial antiquity. They 
 have the worn and weary look of travellers who have 
 come a long journey, and on that journey have seen such 
 
THE BHILS 259 
 
 sights and experienced such adventures as have destroyed 
 in their souls for evermore the faculty of wonder. They 
 are a tired, a quiet, and a conservative people. Although 
 under the influence of the British power they have 
 ceased to be marauders, they still cling to their bow and 
 arrows; and although they have adopted from the Hin- 
 dus the practice of burning dead bodies, they still keep 
 a link with their past by burying the dead bodies of 
 women.^ Peaceful cultivators of the soil and good sol- 
 diers, they remain as primitive and as separate and as 
 superstitious as those far-off ancestors who poured into 
 India before the dawn of history and drove the horde 
 of savage negroes into the distant south. 
 
 A story of their courage and endurance was told to 
 me by a Salvationist doctor. The rivers are infested 
 with turtles, and sometimes a crocodile makes his ap- 
 pearance; when a half-cooked corpse is taken from the 
 fire and flung into the river, the turtles swarm round it 
 and begin to eat, until with a smashing sound like a 
 crack of thunder a crocodile's tail scatters the turtles 
 and the crocodile takes possession of the corpse. An 
 unfortunate Bhil on one occasion was grabbed by a croc- 
 odile, the sharp teeth locking in the man's leg. Before 
 he could be dragged away, four of his friends seized him, 
 
 1 This fact I learn from the Encydopcedia Britannica; but I was 
 told by a European who has lived with the Bhils for something like 
 a quarter of a century that burying is only resorted to when there 
 is not sufficient wood for burning'. I was not then aware of the 
 information contained in the Encyclopedia Britannica, and did 
 not ask whether any difference is made between the dead bodies of 
 men and women. Mr. Edgar Thurston tells me that women, being 
 of small account, are generally buried instead of burned, to avoid 
 trouble and expense. 
 
36o OTHER SHEEP 
 
 and then began a tug-of-war which resulted in a victory 
 for humanity. The man, with his leg torn and lacerated 
 beyond description, was brought fifteen miles in a burn- 
 ing sun to the Salvation Hospital, and underwent am- 
 putation without a murmur. The doctor was then 
 implored to return with his rifle and shoot the crocodile. 
 The wailing of women, counterfeiting a funeral, at- 
 tracted the crocodile. He raised his head from the water 
 and the doctor shot him. A tremendous festival of joy 
 celebrated this event; and the man recovered. 
 
 I learned from contact with these people that they be- 
 lieve in no god, but that the crops induce them to bestow 
 upon the earth the title of a goddess — Mata, or Mother 
 Earth. Although they may fairly be described as athe- 
 ists they are yet firmly convinced of the soul's persistence 
 after death, and hold in common with nearly all savage 
 and primitive peoples the doctrine of reincarnation. 
 They believe that the soul goes somewhere after death, 
 and has the power to return and afflict the living. Par- 
 ticularly do they fear the returning spirits of a father-in- 
 law or a mother-in-law. Devil-dancers, who enjoy 
 great respect among these people, are more often called 
 upon to exorcise the incarnating spirits of these two 
 relations, who so frequently figure in the comic drolleries 
 of more civilized people, than any other spirits, except an 
 extremely malignant female devil, named Dakan. 
 Should a person fall sick, and the devil-dancer fail to get 
 rid of Dakan, who has caused the illness, a Bhil family 
 will move their hut — perhaps a whole village will move 
 — in order to escape the haunting spirit. Death itself is 
 attributed to this devil. A person would never die but 
 for the enmity of Dakan. Some spirit of good is sup- 
 
THE BHILS 261 
 
 posed to preside over human life, probably Mata, the 
 Earth Mother, and when a person dies the Bhil says that 
 the devil has triumphed over this good spirit. 
 
 They are far from being vegetarians. They not only 
 eat flesh food, even the flesh of lizards, but they cheer- 
 fully consume the dead body of any animal found in the 
 jungle. They have no scruples on this head and hold 
 that a man is free to take, kill, and eat an)rthing that he 
 finds pleasant to the taste and nourishing to his physical 
 vigour. 
 
 Custom allows each man as many wives as he is fool 
 enough to saddle himself with, but in practice one man 
 finds one wife comfort enough. Girls marry when they 
 are about eighteen years of age, and young men at twenty 
 or twenty-four. The marriage ceremony is one of high 
 importance. The bridegroom in his home and the bride 
 in hers colour themselves saffron, not only on the legs 
 and feet, and face and hands, but all over their gar- 
 ments. For seven or ten nights each household keeps 
 music going from sunset to midnight — the bride sitting 
 sideways on the shoulder of a young man, one leg over 
 his chest and one over his back, and the bridegroom 
 actually performing the same gymnastic on the shoulder 
 of one of the girls who is a guest in his house. As a con- 
 clusion to this junketing, the relations and invited guests 
 bring presents of money — the union of a man and 
 woman always being considered an occasion for co-op- 
 eration among relatives and their more intimate friends. 
 On the following day the bridegroom is brought with 
 music to the bride's house, carrying money in his hand 
 for the bride's father. A sham quarrel immediately 
 takes place. The father of the bride says that the money 
 
262 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 is not sufficient; the bridegroom swears that it is a deal 
 too much; voices rise to the pitch of clamour, language 
 becomes orientally florid, and just when it seems that 
 skulls must be cracked and faces scratched, the friends 
 of the bridegroom carry him off some two or three fields 
 away. Here they remain, discussing how well or how 
 ill the scene has been acted, until the male relations of 
 the bride arrive in force to carry him back, after a pre- 
 tence of conflict. Arrived in the bride's house, the head- 
 man of the village, or the oldest relation places a little 
 raw sugar in the mouths of the bridegroom and bride, 
 joins their hands together, and in the same breath that 
 he declares them man and wife demands his fee of one 
 rupee. The young men now seize the newly-married 
 wife and carry her off to the bridegroom's house, where 
 they feast together; then they carry her back to the 
 house of her parents, and depart with joy. At any mo- 
 ment after this transaction, the bridegroom is free to go 
 and fetch his wife — but he is expected to bring presents 
 for her family. 
 
 In the case of a poor man, they have to resort to the 
 Biblical expedient of working seven years for the bride 
 as a seiT^ant of her father : but during these seven years 
 the bridegroom cohabits with his wife, and a man often 
 has five cheerful children when he goes out from the 
 house of his father-in-law, a free man and at last a mar- 
 ried man. There is also another arrangement, a third 
 marriage system : a man will pay down five or ten rupees 
 for his wife, on the undertaking of her parents that this 
 sum of money (6^. 8d. or 13J. 4J.) shall be faithfully 
 returned if the lady should prove unsuitable; or it may 
 
THE BHILS 263 
 
 be that the sum of money is paid every year, like th« rent 
 of a house or the hire of a piano. 
 
 There are said to be some three millions of these peo- 
 ple, and in the sandy country of the Panch Mahals you 
 see them going through the jungle with their bows and 
 arrows, nearly naked, like little creatures in the charming 
 fantasies of Arthur Rackham. The bowstring is a slice 
 of cane, but they are so practised in stealing stealthily 
 upon their prey that they do not need a far-carrying en- 
 gine of destruction. And the bow and arrow is very often 
 carried merely as the London clerk carries a cane in the 
 underground railway — as a decoration, or a companion 
 for the hand. The Bhils for the most part are culti- 
 vators. 
 
 A Bhil generally sleeps in the fields or on the veranda 
 of his house. The house, built of teak poles and bam- 
 boo branches plastered with mud, is occupied by the 
 women, the children, and the animals — buffaloes for 
 ploughing, goats for milk, and fowls for eggs. The 
 centre of the floor is usually the fireplace, a small altar 
 of stones on which dried cow-dung serves as fuel. The 
 man rises when " the yellow starts in the sky " — their 
 own phrase for the dawn — and smoking his huge and 
 unwieldy hookah filled with rude country-grown tobacco 
 sprouts, starts out for the fields. Before " the yellow 
 starts in the sky " the cock crows, and at that clarion the 
 wife gets up from the floor of the house and begins to 
 grind the Indian corn for the day's needs. She then 
 milks the cows; and the children, sometimes only four 
 years of age, go forth with the cattle to forest or to 
 field. At eleven o'clock the man returns from his weed- 
 
364 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 ing or ploughing, and he and the woman sit down to eat. 
 The meal consists as a rule of Indian corn in the form of 
 bread or boiled in buttermilk ; if there are no vegetables, 
 salt is added, but salt is never used when vegetables ap- 
 pear in the bill-of-lading — that would be far too great 
 a luxury. After this repast, the woman goes out to work 
 in the fields and does not return till five in the evening. 
 They are only busy during seed-time and harvest, but two 
 crops in the year mean that their times of slackness are 
 never prolonged. 
 
 A farm of eight acres is an average size, and the rent 
 is about twelve annas an acre, all taxes included. But 
 this rent of a shilling an acre is increased by the unjusti- 
 fiable exactions of Native policemen and the petty tax-col- 
 lectors called talatis, which the British Government la- 
 bours so courageously to stop. Each Bhil, for instance, 
 takes it in turn to give a fowl to the policeman, and 
 those who have no fowls must needs buy one. It is 
 never well to fall out with the least of policemen or the 
 smallest of petty tax-collectors. " Their right hand is 
 full of bribes." The Bhil is further harried by forced 
 labour. His bullocks and his carts are pressed into the 
 service of his Hindu masters, and he is made to carry 
 wood, to clean up police stables, or to do his share of 
 night-watching without recompense of any kind. For 
 instance, when all the people fled from Dohad in the 
 time of plague the Bhils were forced to go into the town 
 and act as watchmen. I asked an old Bhil what his peo- 
 ple thought about these things. He smiled, spread his 
 hands, and humped his shoulders. " It is the Govern- 
 ment, the Government; and we must do it." There was 
 no more to be said. " If we do not do these things," he 
 
THE BHILS 265' 
 
 said, " we are beaten by the police ; it is better to do 
 them." Needless, of course, to say, that the British Gov- 
 ernment, far from countenancing this time-honoured op- 
 pression, does all in its power to end it. 
 
 Theoretically the Bhil is a small farmer, but in fact he 
 is only the labourer of the sankar, the money-lender, to 
 whom every year his crops are mortgaged. The Bhil 
 is ignorant of accounts, and the kind sankar does all this 
 difficult work for him — even arranging the matter of 
 taxes. The Bhil usually agrees to pay fifty per cent, but 
 it is probable that he pays a hundred per cent. The 
 sankar allows him to take what he needs from the crops, 
 and generally leaves a little standing in the ground. The 
 sankar is rich; the Bhil is poor. 
 
 I inquired what the Bhils thought of this existence 
 ruled by a money-lender. " We are happy," I was told, 
 and then, after a pause, " but, there is a feeling." Ap- 
 parently, so long as they have food, they are content. 
 No people in the world, I was told, think less of to-mor- 
 row. And of all the people in India I was told they are 
 the most moral as regards sexual matters. If a girl 
 goes wrorig, according to them, she is got rid of; if for 
 some reason she is allowed to stay, the man is made to 
 marry her. This law is inexorable. They have a curi- 
 ous custom that a girl who has never given birth to chil- 
 dren must wear white cloth over her breasts; the gor- 
 geous colours beloved of all Indian women for their 
 breast-cloths are only allowed by the Bhils to those 
 women who have borne children. The women wear 
 great coarse bangles of brass on their legs, reaching 
 from the ankle almost to the knee; they are fond of 
 jewellery, which they wear in their noses and lips, as 
 
^6 OTHlER SHEEP 
 
 well as in their ears and around their heads. For a 
 bridegroom to kiss his bride in her gala attire must be 
 very like, one would think, thrusting the lips through an 
 ironmonger's shop — a clattering and a metallic kiss, not 
 pretty, but no doubt exhilarating after the feasting, 
 dancing, and artificial brawls of the marriage ceremony. 
 
 In the town of Dohad, at the house of a Swedish 
 Salvationist, I had a long conversation with a venerable 
 Bhil who for nineteen years has lived the life of a Chris- 
 tian and been a considerable force on the side of civili- 
 zation and progress among these primitive people. This 
 old ebony-coloured fellow, under his shabby pink-col- 
 oured turban with its faded red ribbon bearing the title 
 Mukti-Fauj, which means Salvation Army, sloping 
 down towards the right eye, presented a curious appear- 
 ance. The long Semitic nose hung far over the upper 
 lip; the mouth, depressed at the right corner, curled 
 high up at its left extremity, leaving two long horse 
 teeth, half yellow and half red with betel juice, exposed 
 to view; these protruding teeth pressed upon the lower 
 lip, which stretched right across the face and lost itself 
 in iron-grey whiskers of a straggling mutton-chop order; 
 the face, narrow at the chin, was exceedingly broad over 
 the prominent cheek-bones; the eyes were large and 
 handsome, the whites like porcelain, the brown iris 
 clouded by a bluish haze, the lashes dark and thick; and 
 the entire countenance was covered with fine wrinkles 
 and marked by deep lines, hollow cheeks, and heavy bags 
 under the eyes. 
 
 While he squatted on the ground, watching me with 
 an unmistakable scrutiny, the immense mouth performed 
 amazing evolutions in the business of chewing betel-nut, 
 
THE BHILS 267 
 
 while the withered and claw-like hands plucked spas- 
 modically at the folds of the dhoti in his lap. A little 
 group of young men, one of them his son, watched the 
 interview on the veranda from the dusty yard filled with 
 bullock-carts; and the old fellow constantly flashed a 
 glance in their direction, a nonchalant and rather swag- 
 gering glance, as much as to say, " You see what a great 
 person I am; a Sahib from England has come to hear 
 about our people and it is from me that he seeks his in- 
 formation." 
 
 Kushal-Kangi, to give him his honourable name, was 
 at one time a devil-dancer, and was famous for the pas- 
 sion of his frenzy and his power over evil spirits through- 
 out the Panch Mahals. He would be fetched with pomp 
 and circumstance to villages afflicted by misfortune or to 
 houses in which a person had suddenly been seized by a 
 demon or stricken down with illness. He would dance, 
 to the increasing fury of the local musicians, until the 
 sweat poured from him, his eyes started from his head, 
 and he was so elevated that he could command the devil 
 to go out or the fever to be still. 
 
 I asked him whether he truly believed in those days 
 that devils did take possession of people and that he him- 
 self had a genuine power over them in his ecstasy as a 
 devil-dancer. 
 
 He smiled and shook his head. " I never believed in 
 anything of that kind," he answered. " I was a devil- 
 dancer for food and for respect. It was an easy life. 
 It amused me. It gave me the sense of power which I 
 found agreeable. I did not believe in devils." 
 
 One day, nineteen years ago now, the Swedish Sal- 
 vationist in whose house I was resting at Dohad, came 
 
268 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 into the village of Ablod and there met Kushal-Kangi. 
 He was impressed by the Bhil's intelligence, questioned 
 him, and found that he did not believe in devils or credit 
 himself with supernatural power. As they sat at meat 
 together, for Kushal-Kangi had offered the invading 
 stranger the hospitality of his house, the Salvationist 
 said to him point blank, " If you do these things, in which 
 you do not believe, you are a hypocrite." 
 
 He then spoke to him about Christianity, and placing 
 his hands on the Bhil's head prayed that God would en- 
 lighten his soul, cleanse his heart, and make him a mes- 
 senger to his people. 
 
 " That was the start of it," said Kushal-Kangi, ad- 
 dressing my host. " You put your hands on my head, 
 and you prayed to God. I felt that if it was true I must 
 worship. It was as if something outside of me was say- 
 ing to me, ' It is true : it is perfectly true; there is a God, 
 and He is good.' I felt that if God was good, I must 
 certainly worship Him, and obey Him. But was it true? 
 Well, I thought it was true; it seemed true; and there 
 was a strong feeling from outside me that it really was 
 true." 
 
 I asked him what had most struck him in the message 
 of the Salvationist. He answered, " That God was 
 good." It was no illumination to him that there was a 
 God, he really did not very much care whether there was 
 a God or not ; but that there was a good God, a God Who 
 was perfect love and perfect virtue and perfect holiness, 
 this seemed to him such a wonderful and beautiful idea 
 that he wanted to worship such a God immediately. 
 
 It is curious how the instinct to worship manifested 
 itself instantly in this man who had never visualized a 
 
THE BHILS 269 
 
 Supreme Being and who had never prayed. We have 
 for so long a period come to regard prayer as a suppli- 
 cation for mercy and an agonized entreaty for help and 
 succour, that we have almost altogether lost the higher, 
 calmer, and far more beautiful form of communion with 
 the Father of Creation which is expressed in worship. 
 The spirit which overflows in a glittering minstrelsy from 
 the skylark's throat, and which comes to us in the splendid 
 music of an organ, or in the highest poetry of Words- 
 worth, is the spirit of outpouring and ecstatic worship — 
 adoration of the Ultimate, the Everlasting, and the Beau- 
 tiful. Prayer with the majority of Christians, on the 
 other hand, is something sad, mournful, and sombre — 
 a spirit nowhere to be found in Nature and, so far as I 
 am aware, unknown among primitive peoples. 
 
 Kushal-Kangi was confident in his assertion that the 
 first conviction which came to his soul was the joyful 
 and liberating desire to worship this good God. He told 
 me that he went away to the forest, escaped from the 
 village, freed himself from contact with humanity, and 
 there, on his knees, offered the adoration of his heart to 
 this new idea of a God Who was good. It seemed to 
 him, instantly and immediately, not only the right thing 
 to do, but the happy thing to do. He was, as it were, 
 transported by a lovely and a perfectly beautiful idea. 
 
 But he was conscious of no effect from his prayer. 
 He had offered worship to God in the hope that such a 
 God might exist, not in the sure knowledge of that sub- 
 lime Existence. He rose from his knees troubled and 
 perplexed, but not discomfited. On his return he knelt 
 down again, and prayed in the jungle that if a good God 
 existed the truth of that Existence might be made known 
 
270 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 to him. Some of the villagers saw him on his knees and 
 ran back to the village with the news that Kushal-Kangi 
 had turned Muhamadan. He rose again from his knees, 
 and still unconscious of certainty, returned to the village. 
 As soon as he entered his house, his children regarding 
 him with wonder, he knelt down for the third time and 
 prayed for the manifestation of a good God. 
 
 " At that moment," he said, " I felt God enter my 
 soul. I was possessed by God. There was no doubt 
 about it. And so I believed. I believed in Him after I 
 felt He had done me good." 
 
 By the feeling of " good " he means a feeling of hap- 
 piness. It was to him, this conversion, a liberating and 
 a joyful experience, a translation from darkness to light, 
 an uprising from sickness to health. But as the days 
 passed, he felt that he had not got all the good and bless- 
 ing out of this new light in his soul. He wanted to be 
 happier still; he wanted to lose himself utterly in deeper 
 ecstasies of joy. 
 
 One day he was working in the fields when he felt 
 himself called to serve God just as if a voice had spoken 
 at his ear. Straightway he drove his buffaloes back to 
 the homestead, and started off on the eight-mile walk to 
 the house of the Swedish Salvationist. " I want to join 
 you," he said; " I want to become a Christian." " Why 
 have you come to us ? " he was asked. " Jesus has led 
 me," he replied ; " I feel that He is leading me to bring 
 my own people to God." He was accepted as a Salva- 
 tionist, and returned to his village to begin his extraor- 
 dinary work of conversion among the Bhils. 
 
 But at the beginning he was subjected to persecution. 
 The headman of the village called a meeting and excom- 
 
THE BHILS 271 
 
 municated Kushal-Kangi for becoming a Christian. To 
 be outcasted among the Bhils meant in those days that 
 the guihy person could neither smoke with others nor 
 eat with others. This sentence of isolation could always 
 be turned aside by the gift of a goat to the headman, but 
 Kushal-Kangi as a Christian would not stoop to a bribe, 
 and as a Christian he determined to make war upon the 
 laws of caste. 
 
 Now, among the Bhils, parents are greatly respected, 
 it is almost their only religion. The eldest son of a 
 family is called dada by his brothers and sisters, which 
 means " father," and is treated with considerable rev- 
 erence. When a man marries, the eldest brother of his 
 bride becomes his father-in-law as well as the actual 
 father of the bride. An eldest son, in fact, is treated 
 from the day of his birth in a manner which educates him 
 for the high office of parent, so that the tradition of rev- 
 erence for age and respect for parents may never fall into 
 contempt. 
 
 Well, Kushal-Kangi was the head of a very large fam- 
 ily, and soon after he had been thrown out of caste by 
 the headman, he sent far and wide and summoned all the 
 members of this huge family to a conclave. At this con- 
 clave Kushal-Kangi asked his family to show their re- 
 sentment of the insult put upon their chief by the head- 
 man, and demanded that they should outcaste the head- 
 man, condemn Mm to pay the fine, and refuse to admit 
 him into caste until he had provided food for the whole 
 village. The dutiful assembly agreed to these proposals 
 without a dissentient voice, and the judge of Kushal- 
 Kangi found himself flung out of caste by a handsome 
 majority. 
 
272 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 It was this historic action of Kushal-Kangi which set- 
 tled the caste question among the Bhils — a really inter- 
 esting and striking occurrence. 
 
 By the manner of his changed life, by the eloquence 
 of his preaching, and his untiring kindness to those in 
 sorrow and distress, Kushal-Kangi has done an extraor- 
 dinary work for Christianity among a people whom it 
 is really as difficult to tear away from their immemorial 
 superstitions as to wrench a screw from a steel plate. 
 For these Bhils are of so great an antiquity that they are 
 almost without any sense of curiosity, without any desire 
 for betterment, and without any instinct of worship. As 
 they bear the oppression of their Hindu tyrants, patiently 
 and without a murmur of complaint, so they accept life 
 as they find it and lift not a finger to make it happier or 
 better. But Kushal-Kangi can point to the last Census 
 returns and show that 209 people in his village registered 
 themselves as Christians, while many others among them 
 are Christians, but, fearing the Hindus, have failed to 
 confess the fact to a Government servant. For nearly 
 sixteen years he has been an officer in the Salvation Army, 
 and his village, over which he rules with the authority of 
 a King, is known far and wide as the most virtuous, law- 
 abiding, and happy community throughout the Panch 
 Mahals. 
 
 Although in sexual matters moral enough, and as a 
 rule a kind and easy-going people, the Bhils have abso- 
 lutely no control over their tempers and in drink or in 
 anger are careless of any consequences. Murder is often 
 committed in the Panch Mahals, murder of which the 
 Government seldom hears, and violent explosions of rage 
 lead frequently to feuds of the fiercest and most blood- 
 
THE BHILS 273 
 
 thirsty character. But even quarrels and domestic 
 brawls are unknown in the village of Kushal-Kangi, and 
 his influence is slowly widening with that of the British 
 Government throughout the Bhil country, making for 
 gradual progress, enlightenment, and virtue throughout 
 the Panch Mahals. 
 
 I went with Fakir Singh on one occasion to a jungle 
 village, fourteen miles from the little town of Dohad, 
 miles and miles away from soldiers and police, and miles 
 away from the presence of a Government official. As we 
 stood on a bare hill, looking down into the gloom of deso- 
 late A^alleys, and far away to the violet mists of the ho- 
 rizon, where the sun had gone down in scarlet suddenness, 
 the Fakir said to me : " What a wonderful thing is this 
 Pax Britannica ! Here we are in a jungle country, among 
 a heathen people ignorant of God and acknowledging no 
 code of Christian morals, and we are perfectly safe — a 
 few Salvationist missionaries surrounded on all sides by 
 thousands of savages ! There has been nothing quite like 
 it in the world before." 
 
THE DOMS 
 
 It is a unanimous opinion in India that Sir John Hewett, 
 the Lieutenant-Governor of the United Provinces, stands 
 first among the little group of able men directing the gov- 
 ernment of India. 
 
 In a vast province so perfectly governed that treason is 
 almost unknown and even famine is handled with so 
 sure a hand that the mortality is negligible, the presence 
 of savage and lawless people roving about the country to 
 the terror of the peaceful and the ceaseless anxiety of the 
 police, was felt by Sir John Hewett to be an anachronism 
 too ridiculous for the twentieth century and a slur on the 
 British raj too serious for him to suffer. 
 
 Apparently everything had been tried by Government 
 to bring these Criminal Tribes abreast of modern times. 
 They had been provided with land and cattle, they had 
 been so harried by the police that they should have been 
 as weary of a wandering existence as Poor Jo, and their 
 crimes had been punished with an unmistakable severity. 
 In spite of all this, as their ancestors had defied the influ- 
 ence of Hindu and Muhamadan, so these, their degen- 
 erate and scarcely human descendants, defied the British 
 influence. They would not work, they would not keep 
 the peace, and they would not refrain from picking and 
 stealing. Over the length and breadth of the United 
 Provinces they roved in beggarly hordes, and wherever 
 
 they went an army of police had to follow them. Not 
 
 274 
 
THE DOMS 275 
 
 only was it unthinkable that these savages should be al- 
 lowed to flout the raj, but it was a very serious matter of 
 expense for the Government to keep an eye upon them. 
 
 It chanced on one occasion, when Sir John Hewett 
 was in England on furlough, that he heard of the Salva- 
 tion Army's work of reclamation and regeneration among 
 the broken earthenware of Europe. It struck him at once 
 that similar methods might possibly be successful with 
 the Criminal Tribes of India. Straightway, then, he 
 paid a visit to General Booth, and these two men, so dis- 
 similar in a hundred ways, met on the common ground 
 of redemption and discussed the soul of man. General 
 Booth, as most men know, is an old patriarch, thin and 
 bowed, with a face of ivory, dim eyes, hair and beard the 
 colour of snow — a face that age, goodness, and un- 
 selfish labour have combined to soften and make beauti- 
 ful. Sir John Hewett, a very tall and burly figure, is in 
 the full strength and power of middle-age, a man who 
 carries himself like a soldier, has in his eyes the soldier's 
 hard and penetrating scrutiny, and in his mouth the sol- 
 dier's set and resolute -determination; neither his life nor 
 his temperament have softened the hard and vigorous 
 lines of his countenance ; he is a man, one would say, com- 
 mitted to business, conscious of power, used to obedience, 
 and the sworn foe of sentimentalism. 
 
 But the old patriarch, with his dim eyes and rasping 
 voice, brought home to the mind of the statesman one of 
 the great fundamental truths of human experience, which 
 too often legislators neglect, and the enemies of religion 
 conveniently ignore. That truth may be expressed in a 
 favourite epigram with Mr. Bramwell Booth, " You can- 
 not make a man clean by washing his shirt." If you have 
 
276 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 a bad man to deal with, you must seek to alter the set 
 and current of his soul; if you have tribes and nations 
 of evil-doers to govern, you must give them religion. To 
 alter the circumstances of a man's life, to set him in con- 
 ditions where his liability to vice is small and where the 
 commission of sin will be most surely punished; to deal, 
 in short, only with the body of a man when it is his soul 
 that is the cause of trouble — this is to fall upon most 
 certain failure. Only one power is known in all the long 
 experience of human history by which a bad man may 
 become a good man — really and truly a good man ; and 
 this power is religion. 
 
 Sir John Hewett came to terms with General Booth. 
 The Government agreed to provide territory, and the Sal- 
 vation Army undertook to provide men; the Criminal 
 Tribes were to be brought into this territory, and the Sal- 
 vationists were to be responsible for their regeneration. 
 
 Now, in former times the Government had provided 
 land for some of these Criminal Tribes, and the experi- 
 ment had proved a dismal failure. What was the new 
 factor in the present arrangement? A simple and most 
 human thing, and yet the most miracle-working power on 
 earth — Christian Kindness. The great statesman, the 
 resolute man of affairs, yielded to the argument of Gen- 
 eral Booth — love and kindness can do more for wicked 
 men than an army of policemen. 
 
 Before I tell the reader what I- saw of this quite amaz- 
 ing work among the Criminal Tribes of the United Prov- 
 inces, I should like him to realize the courageousness as 
 well as the statesmanship of Sir John Hewett's action. 
 No sooner was it known what he was about, than a per- 
 
THE DOMS 277 
 
 feet outcry was raised among the Brahmans against Gov- 
 ernmental proselytizing of the Natives. They had never 
 lifted a finger to help one of these unfortunate wretches; 
 on the contrary, they had held them off at arm's length as 
 Untouchables and had themselves by an unparalleled 
 ostracism and a most deliberate cruelty been responsible 
 for nine-tenths of their crimes and miseries; but now, 
 directly that it seemed Christianity was to save these 
 people, the Hindus became their loving and devoted cham- 
 pions, and would save them from the wicked mission- 
 aries of the British Government. In all history can you 
 think of a more unspeakable hypocrisy ? These precious 
 Brahmans, whom we are sometimes asked to regard as the 
 keepers of a pure religion or as noble patriots brutally 
 trodden into the dust of their own native land by the 
 alien heel of British tyranny, were not ashamed, are not 
 at the present day ashamed, to raise their voices and to 
 excite public indignation, on the score of religion, against 
 this little loving act of kindness towards the men and 
 women whom they themselves had made pariahs and out- 
 casts. 
 
 But their clamour could not shake the resolution of 
 Sir John Hewett. He stood firm against all the fury 
 that professional agitators sought to flog out of the in- 
 difference of Hindu Democracy. He had made it no 
 stipulation with General Booth that the Salvationists 
 should not proselytize; it was enough for him that Gen- 
 eral Booth had accepted the task of reclaiming and regen- 
 erating the Criminal Tribes, and he was well aware that 
 this act of Christian Charity was not undertaken for the 
 purpose of inflating the figures of Salvationist conver- 
 
278 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 sions. His arrangement had been made, and by that ar- 
 rangement Sir John Hewett announced his unalterable 
 determination to abide. 
 
 Quite recently the political societies in India have taken 
 an interest in the Depressed Classes, one of the great 
 fruits of Christianity in India ; and as I showed in a for- 
 mer chapter, they are seeking to save these Depressed 
 Classes from the Christian missionaries in order to estab- 
 lish Brahmanism on a surer and a broader foundation. 
 Therefore the Government of the United Provinces has 
 been severely criticized for its grants of land and money 
 to the Salvation Army, and only the other day a debate 
 took place in the Lieutenant-Governor's council in which 
 a grant of 2,400 rupees for the Sansia Colony was op- 
 posed by the Hindus. On this occasion the answer of 
 Mr. Burn, the very able Minister of Finance, was not 
 only a perfect justification of Sir John Hewett's policy, 
 but was so admirable a statement of the whole question 
 of these Criminal Tribes that I shall take leave to quote 
 it in full. He said : — 
 
 " The history of the attempts made by Government to 
 reform and reclaim criminal tribes in these provinces is 
 not an encouraging one. They began many years ago 
 and many different methods have been tried. The tribes 
 have been subjected to every variety of discipline from the 
 slightest to the most severe. Attempts have been made 
 to settle them on the land. When fields were allotted to 
 them, they complained that they had no cattle. When 
 cattle were given to them, they sold them. They asked 
 for seed, and when seed was given to them, they ate it 
 instead of sowing it. Some years ago when a settlement 
 of Doms was in my charge the only method which could 
 
THE DOMS 279 
 
 be evolved of seeing that the land was sown was to pay- 
 outsiders to sow the land for them and have the opera- 
 tion performed under the direct supervision of an offi- 
 cial. There is one difficulty in connection with any offi- 
 cial attempt to deal with these people on which special 
 stress must be laid. Recently there has been much dis- 
 cussion in the public press as to what are called the de- 
 pressed classes. The criminal tribes which we are dis- 
 cussing belong to these classes. Personally, I am strongly 
 of opinion that all of them would describe themselves as 
 Hindus and that all Hindus would so regard them, but I 
 would ask members to pursue this a little farther and 
 realize what their holding to the Hindu religion means. 
 Socially they are beyond the pale. They may not enter a 
 Hindu temple. No member of a respectable caste will 
 go near them if he can help it. H one of them touches 
 a member of a high caste the latter is defiled. I make 
 these remarks in no carping spirit, but simply with a de- 
 sire to put the plain facts before the Council. Some of 
 these people practise habits which are repellant to every- 
 body. H their demands are rejected, or if they are 
 crossed in any way, they have recourse to actions of un- 
 speakable filthiness. It is obvious, having regard to the 
 strict ideas of the orthodox and high-class Indian com- 
 munity, that any dealings with such people are attended 
 with difficulty, and when the relation between the criminal 
 tribes and Indian officials is one of subordination on the 
 one side and strict discipline on the other, the difficulties 
 are immensely enhanced. I can say without hesitation 
 that Government is not satisfied with the success of the 
 work of reclamation through official means in the past. 
 This being so, the Council is invited to consider what bet- 
 
28o OTHER SHEEP 
 
 ter promise is held out by taking advantage of the offer 
 of the Salvation Army to assist. It is obviously de- 
 sirable, and indeed necessary, not only that every one en- 
 gaged in the reform of such persons should be competent 
 and honest, but also that they should put their hearts 
 into their work and should possess an unlimited fund of 
 enthusiasm. I have given reasons why such enthusiasm 
 is not to be expected from Indian officials, and I repeat 
 that in doing so I have no desire to criticize the tenets of 
 Hinduism which make it impossible that this should be 
 the case. The Salvation Army, on the other hand, works 
 through officers who are not only capable of enforcing 
 such discipline as is required, but are fully equipped with 
 the necessary enthusiasm. They live among the people 
 and enter into their lives in a manner in which no official 
 can be expected to do. Their influence is personal and 
 humanizing. They study and learn to know every in- 
 mate of the settlement and enter into the lives of their 
 charges with a tact and zeal that are already producing 
 admirable results. Their officers are usually married and 
 both husband and wife work together. These are briefly 
 the a priori reasons why the help of the Salvation Army 
 has been gladly enlisted by Government. Three settle- 
 ments have been placed in charge of the Army, (a) A 
 Dom settlement at Gorakhpur, (&) an Habura settlement 
 at Moradabad, and (c) a Bhatu settlement at the same 
 place. Most of the inmates of these settlements are em- 
 ployed in non-agricultural industries in the hope that they 
 may be brought to practise a suitable livelihood and may 
 give up their hereditary calling as thieves. These indus- 
 tries include weaving, carpentry, bag-making, rug-mak- 
 
THE DOMS 
 
 2«I 
 
 ing, rope-making, the keeping of poultry and goats, and 
 the rearing of silkworms. Women are taught sewing, 
 thread-work and lace-work. For children an industrial 
 school has been opened to which parents or guardians 
 voluntarily send their children from all districts. Night 
 schools for adults have also been established with fair 
 success. Melas, meetings, feasts and magic lantern serv- 
 ices are held at the settlement. The inmates are thus 
 made to feel that the settlement is not a penal institu- 
 tion or a system of compulsory detention, though dis- 
 cipline is by no means overlooked, and, when necessary, 
 is enforced. In the last resort a man who proves in- 
 tractable in spite of all efforts is sent away. From an 
 economical point of view the experiment is likely to cost 
 much less than any of its predecessors. A married Eu- 
 ropean officer receives with his wife fifty rupees a month. 
 No Indian of anything like the same capability would be 
 content with such a stipend. The explanation why per- 
 sons of some ability are ready to work as they do for so 
 little is found in the fact that their wants are few and 
 their zeal is great. The system of central management 
 is thorough. Government is not asked to contribute even 
 the full expense of the upkeep of the settlements. After 
 a term of years the Salvation Army hopes that many of 
 them will be self-supporting. Some time must elapse be- 
 fore the success of this institution can be really judged, 
 but prospects are excellent. 
 
 " I have attempted to show that the experiment is hope- 
 ful in every way. The Honourable Member who pro- 
 posed this resolution has asked, that in making grants to 
 the Salvation Army, Government will insist that no at- 
 
282 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 tempts are made to convert these people. If such a con- 
 dition were imposed the Salvation Army would almost 
 certainly withdraw from the work. Up to the present 
 there have been few conversions. It is possible that in 
 future more of the inmates will be drawn to join the re- 
 ligion of those who have shown themselves to be their 
 benefactors. This result can hardly be regarded as af- 
 fording any genuine cause for complaint on the part of 
 the Hindu community. I have twice stated that the en- 
 lightened classes of Hindus appear unable owing to their 
 religion to come into close personal contact with these 
 people. But if other religious organizations, whether 
 Hindu, Muhamadan, or Christian, choose to come for- 
 ward to make similar efforts, if they can show as good 
 credentials as the Salvation Army has shown, and that 
 they are ready to co-operate as the Salvation Army has 
 co-operated, I do not think there would be any reluctance 
 on the part of the Government to afford them such as- 
 sistance as has been given to the Salvation Army. Last 
 of all, the members of the tribes themselves are entitled 
 to some voice in the matter. I have recently seen a let- 
 ter describing the latest development and will conclude 
 my remarks by reading an extract from it. The letter 
 says: 'A party of Bhatus are marching towards Mo- 
 radabad from Farrukhabad to apply for admission into 
 our settlement. There are a lot of men in the party who 
 are hiding in the jungles to keep away from the police.' 
 The simple brevity of this account is sufficient. I ask the 
 Council to oppose the resolution on the ground that it 
 would destroy at its inception the most promising experi- 
 ment which has yet been tried, an experiment which has 
 as its aim the elevation of an unfortunate class which will 
 
THE DOMS 283 
 
 otherwise remain sunk in degradation and a nuisance to 
 its neighbours." 
 
 From this official utterance the reader will perceive that 
 the Government's difficulty in dealing with the Criminal 
 Tribes is a great one, that it is complicated in recent times 
 by the jealousy of Hindu politicians working for the re- 
 form of Brahmanism, and that religion is recognized by 
 the greatest statesmen in India as a supreme force in the 
 regeneration of humanity. The reference of Mr. Burn 
 to the " necessary enthusiasm " of Salvationists seems to 
 me an utterance significant enough to attract the attention 
 of politicians in Europe and to arouse the zeal of Chris- 
 tendom. 
 
 Certainly what I saw of Salvation Army work among 
 the primitive peoples of India vastly increased my respect 
 for that extraordinary organization, which, all over the 
 world, is doing spade work for civilization with results 
 that are among the first evidences of Christian truth. I 
 shall now give the reader some idea of this work in the 
 United Provinces, beginning with a numerous and inter- 
 esting tribe known as the Doms — a name which is pro- 
 nounced like our word domes. 
 
 I made acquaintance with these people at Gorakhpur, 
 one of the cleanest and pleasantest towns in all India. 
 The settlement is just beyond the native quarter, and in 
 charge of it, alone with all these dangerous criminals, is 
 a Scotsman and his wife. The first sight that struck me 
 on passing through the gateway and entering the dusty 
 square surrounded by mud houses, was a pretty and fair- 
 haired British child standing in the midst of half-naked 
 and wild-looking natives — the child of the Salvationists. 
 The full romance of this spectacle did not come home to 
 
284 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 my mind until I had studied the Doms and penetrated 
 into the savage darkness of their minds. 
 
 The men are a tall and muscular race but without the 
 smallest suggestion of enthusiasm, virility, or intelligent 
 consciousness in their heavy and animal faces. The 
 women, on the other hand, struck me as handsome if 
 fierce and tigerish creatures — tall and vigorous women 
 who held their heads splendidly, walked like goddesses, 
 and flashed great eyes of confident self-approval at any 
 stranger who presumed to gaze at them. To look from 
 the men to the women was like looking from one race 
 to another, from one epoch to another epoch, almost from 
 barbarism to civilization. In no race of men I have ever 
 encountered was the feeling stronger with me of a soul- 
 lessness and absence of mentality which seem sometimes 
 to separate uncivilized people from the human species. 
 One felt that these people were mankind in the making, 
 the dough of humanity, not the bread, something out of 
 which the race of man might ultimately be produced; 
 one did not feel that they were ignorant, weak, fallen, or 
 degenerate; the central conviction was that they repre- 
 sented some transitional species between the absolute ani- 
 mal and the incipient man. 
 
 There are many hordes of this gypsy-like tribe in the 
 United Provinces. They are thieves by tradition and by 
 nature, and the vigilance of police and the rigour of prison 
 have combined to make them feel that life is a misei'y. 
 Until Government entrusted them to the Salvation Army, 
 I do not suppose a more wretched and unhappy people 
 were to be found on the earth's surface. For while steal- 
 ing seemed to them the only occupation of life and the 
 only means of living, law and order stood in their path, 
 
THE DOMS 285 
 
 dogged their footsteps, and laid them by the heels on 
 every occasion that they followed their natural instincts. 
 They tell stories to each other of their ancestors. Ac- 
 cording to their tradition there was at one time a Dom 
 rajah. In those days they were rich. They built fine 
 houses and laid out magnificent gardens. They fought 
 for their wives — Homeric wars. When a man stole 
 another man's wife, the relations of the defrauded man 
 would rise up and go in pursuit of that wicked man. 
 Life was good then — a ceaseless battle. 
 
 But these stories only come on the rarest occasions. 
 The general talk is of thieving and crime. The Doms 
 have become a tribe of petty thieves, stealers of dirty 
 towels and goats and fowls, and their conversation has 
 descended to the pettiness of their thefts. Talk of this 
 nature is occasionally diverted by ghost stories. 
 
 They have a conception of some life after death, but 
 cannot say what that life is like and show veiy little curi- 
 osity concerning it. They believe that there will be a 
 place for the Doms in the next world. When a man dies 
 they place drink and curry in the mouth, lay a pipe in the 
 grave, and say to the corpse, " When you wake up in the 
 next world be sure and go to the Dom Khana, where you 
 will get plenty of gambling." They do not trouble about 
 this next world; they do not care what becomes of them 
 or where they go ; and they think that exactly the same 
 fate — whatever it may be — awaits both good and bad. 
 
 They have an absolute faith in the devil, but do not 
 place him outside of the world. They believe that the 
 earth belongs to him, or at any rate that he is the chief 
 power on the earth, and to him they attribute every ill 
 and every misfortune, and even death itself. They are 
 
286 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 afraid of the devil in this life, terribly afraid, but they 
 laugh at the idea that there is any devil in the next world. 
 They tell one with emphasis, " The devil lives in this 
 world." Like the Hindus they number amongst them 
 men who profess to cast out devils. 
 
 Once upon a time the Government gave these people 
 land, ploughs, and cattle. The Doms killed the cows, ate 
 them, and sold the hides. The land was taken away from 
 them for this dishonourable conduct. And now they 
 feel that a great act of injustice has been perpetrated 
 against them. They claim that the land is still theirs. 
 Certain Doms, in fact, live on this land. Of all the sub- 
 jects in the world the one they are most eloquent about 
 is this " robbery " of their land — they will talk to you 
 about it with flowing words, faces of indignation, and 
 gestures of a most righteous anger. " The land was 
 given to us," they say; "how can it belong to other 
 people ? " 
 
 I noticed that while the young men and lads were as 
 dough-like and loutish as the grown men, the younger 
 children showed evidences of brightness and intelligence. 
 The handsome and tigerish women get their fine looks 
 from the sway they exercise over the men; women do 
 not steal, but they tell men to steal ; no man, they say, is 
 worth marrying who has not stolen so much jewelleiy; 
 they are the spokesmen for the men and can face a Gov- 
 ernment inspector or an official of the police with an al- 
 most insolent self-assurance. But the brightness and 
 intelligence of the children come from another source. 
 They are the first-fruits of education, kindness, and the 
 iniluence of Christianity. The response they make to the 
 , treatment of the lonely Scotsman and his wife is remark- 
 
THE DOMS 287 
 
 able. They seize at once the notion of morality, the dif- 
 ference between right and wrong, the idea that goodness 
 is something better and wiser and fitter than sin and 
 crime. Not only this, they exhibit undoubted intelli- 
 gence, and become skilled weavers and makers of carpets. 
 One touch of kindness — how romantic to think it came 
 from Scotland ! — has transformed these young barbari- 
 ans, marked for misery and evil, into quick-witted, moral 
 and happy human beings. 
 
 But it is heartbreaking work for the lonely Scotsman 
 and his wife to make the adult Dom conscious of a good 
 God and a revealing Christ. Here and there they see 
 the light break into the darkness of a soul, but for the 
 most part to attempt to teach religion to these people is 
 like trying to teach a dog to sing or a parrot to paint. 
 
 Among their converts is a very interesting man, so su- 
 perior in appearance to the other Doms that I could not 
 at first think he belonged to them; a man between thirty 
 and forty, with regular and handsome features, intelli- 
 gent eyes, a firm mouth, and hair so carefully parted and 
 brushed and moustache so dandified that but for his black 
 skin he might have passed for a European man of fashion. 
 
 His name is Chitra, and he was born in a Dom village. 
 He roamed with his parents in the jungle till the Govern- 
 ment drove them into a Khana. He remembers little of 
 the jungle life, but his parents told him about it, and talk 
 in the Khana was chiefly about the crimes committed 
 during that wandering life. Religion of any kind was 
 never mentioned. He had absolutely no idea of a God. 
 His ideas of right and wrong were made for him by 
 Government. To steal was wrong because it meant the 
 jail. Apparently there is no code of morality among th| 
 
288 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 Doms. A husband may share his wife, if the wife agree; 
 trouble never arises unless the husband objects, and then 
 there is always a fight. One thing alone among them is 
 counted indubitably wrong, and that is the violation of 
 a child. After thirteen or fourteen a girl is free to the 
 world, but before that age she is sacrosanct. To lie, far 
 from being wrong, is a high attainment. Nothing is 
 counted greater among them than the ability to deceive. 
 Drunkenness is highly enjoyed, and is not considered 
 wrong; they rejoice that for a couple of pice a man can 
 buy enough arrack to make him supremely and deliciously 
 drunk. It is the finest thing in the world to them, this 
 escape from the burden of consciousness and the ennui 
 of their wretched existence. They are extremely taciturn 
 among themselves, and will seldom dedare how they 
 came by money, jewellery, or any other property cun- 
 ningly acquired from the common enemy. A man will 
 suddenly give evidences of prosperity. His greatest 
 friend will say admiringly, " You are very rich." The 
 other will bow his acknowledgments. After a pause the 
 friend will ask, " How did it come? " — and the answer 
 will be, " Who knows ? " Again a pause, and then the 
 questioner will inquire confidentially, "Was it stolen?" 
 And with a blank countenance the lucky man will reply, 
 "Who knows?" 
 
 Chitra told me the story of his conversion. " When I 
 came into the Salvation Army Settlement I learned to 
 work and I listened to what was said to me. I got to 
 know that God had made me. It must have been the 
 Spirit of God that revealed this knowledge to me. It 
 came suddenly. It did not seem strange. At once it 
 seemed true. My spirit answered as if it knew. I re- 
 
THE DOMS 289 
 
 member that when I was asked, ' Where is God ? ' — I 
 replied, ' In every place.' And when I was asked, 
 ' Where is God as far as you are concerned ? ' — that I 
 answered, ' In my heart.' And I used to pray, ' Open 
 my heart's door.' I became conscious in my heart of 
 God telling me what was right and what was wrong; I 
 am still conscious of God in my heart; He is always tell- 
 ing me what is right and what is wrong." 
 
 I asked him, " Can you remember what were your first 
 feelings when you heard that there was a good God ? " 
 " My first feeling," he replied, " was fear. I was afraid 
 because of the wrong in me." " Had you been afraid 
 because of the wrong in you, before you heard of a 
 God? " " No, it did not trouble me. When I felt that 
 there truly was a God, then I was afraid. But I was not 
 afraid for long. After my fear, then came gladness. I 
 began to feel happy. Little by little, for a year and a 
 half, I was learning about God. Then the truth came to 
 me, and I was no longer afraid at all." 
 
 Soon after he had settled down to a useful life, the 
 desire to have a child became very great with him. He 
 had been married for some time, but no children had come 
 to cheer his home. With a Dom, as with every Hindu, 
 the desire for a child is so great as to be a passion. 
 Chitra, fresh from savagery, could not control this in- 
 stinct. He looked about in the Settlement, saw a woman 
 whose husband was in jail, and took her into his home. 
 The Salvationist, discovering this state of things, turned 
 Chitra and the second wife out of the Settlement. In 
 two months he returned and begged to be taken back. 
 His repentance was sincere. The husband of the second 
 wife was out of jail and ready to take his wife and to 
 
290 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 forgive her for this union with Chitra. As for Chitra's 
 wife, she wanted nothing better in the world than to 
 have her husband restored to her. So the matter ended, 
 and both couples are now thoroughly happy and the best 
 of friends. But Chitra's wife came at Christmas-time 
 to the wife of the Salvationist, and asked if she might 
 have a doll for her present. Whether this request was 
 made out of the hunger and pathos of her motherless 
 heart, or whether it is a relic of that ancient homoeopathic 
 magic common among almost every primitive people, I 
 do not know ; but it was rather a tragic sight to see the 
 pretty wife of Chitra with the doll in her lap, and Chitra 
 looking on, and trying to make it seem a matter of no con- 
 sequence. 
 
 Chitra has been three times in prison. His first sen- 
 tence was a year for burglary, and at the time the 
 burglary was committed he was asleep in his own house. 
 His second sentence was a year for stealing, and again 
 he was innocent. The third sentence was one of two 
 years, and this time he was really guilty — he had run 
 away from the village to escape the persecution of the 
 police. He told me that he never worked; that he used 
 to get his food by begging. The Doms, he said, are very 
 clever at whining money and food out of other people; 
 but they boldly intimidate and threaten the farmers who 
 are now in possession of their land — the land once given 
 to them by Government. 
 
 I asked him what was the general feeling among the 
 Doms concerning themselves and their position among 
 other peoples. " The Doms are proud of themselves, be- 
 cause they know that other people fear them. They like 
 to think that they can frighten a man by looking in at 
 
THE DOMS 291 
 
 his door or following him into the fields. But they are 
 now tired of a life which is never safe from the police, 
 and they are coming to the Salvation Army in consid- 
 erable numbers, begging to be taken into the Settlement 
 and taught a trade, or at any rate protected from police 
 interference." 
 
 I inquired if they readily understood the religion of 
 Christianity as he explained it to them. " It is most dif- 
 ficult," he answered, " to make them understand anything 
 about religion. They understand the morality of Chris- 
 tianity, but not the religion. When you say to them, 
 It is wrong to do this or it is sinful to do that; they will 
 nod their heads, and they will tell you, ' That is good 
 teaching.' But when you speak about a good God in 
 heaven, about love for this God, about longing to see 
 Him, and about the promise of Jesus — no! they do not 
 understand; it puzzles them; they shake their heads and 
 say, ' We do not know.' To show you how difficult it is ; 
 they could not understand prayer when they first came 
 into the Settlement! New people who come in now, 
 laugh when they see us praying. They do not know what 
 prayer is, and when we try to explain, they laugh; they 
 think it foolish. But the word has become a part of their 
 new language. When we hold a meeting, no matter what 
 it is about, they say to each other, ' Come to Prayer.' 
 Some of them are more intelligent than others. Some 
 are completely changed by religion. But most of them 
 are too ignorant, or too tired, or too miserable to care 
 anything about it. They are not even curious. It is 
 very seldom that they talk about religion amongst them- 
 selves. Hardly ever do they ask me a question. And 
 my difficulty is, that while I can explain to them the feel- 
 
292 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 ings of my own heart, I can never say whether they un- 
 derstand. They never tell you, ' We do not understand,' 
 and they never ask, ' Will you explain this or that ? ' — 
 they only say, ' We do not know.' But it is certain that 
 they are happy here. Doms come from all parts, begging 
 us to find room for them ; and they understand the moral- 
 ity of Christianity directly we begin to teach them. The 
 next generation will be civilized, and Christians." 
 
 It is worth noticing that in the case of these Doms 
 the appeal has first to be made to the reason, not to the 
 heart. Their reason responds to moral teaching; but 
 their hearts remain obstinately closed to emotion and love. 
 Among civilized people, religion appeals first to the heart, 
 and, as Coleridge so well pointed out, the intelligence is 
 developed and enlarged afterwards, by the healthful ac- 
 tion of this cleansed heart. 
 
 Another Dom spoke to me about prison life. What 
 he narrated is probably true, but the Government, of 
 course, have no hand in the shameful part of it. It is 
 the Indian who is hard on the Indian. Let the English 
 chief turn his back, and Native afflicts Native, and the 
 Jack-in-ofifice becomes a tyrant. I could give many in- 
 stances of this unfortunate state of things. " In jail," 
 said this Dom, " they give us little food and much water. 
 They do nothing to teach us or touch our hearts. The 
 warders are very brutal. They carry a stick like a roller, 
 and they hit us with it. They say to us, 'If you don't 
 mal<e your relations give us money, we will beat you.' 
 Doms come to us and beg for money to give to these 
 warders, so that their sons or their fathers or their 
 brothers may not be beaten. One warder would put men 
 in water up to the neck for an hour. First he would 
 
THE DOMS 293 
 
 beat them, then put them in the water; then take them 
 out, beat them, and put them back in the Water; and a 
 third time. Beat — water ; beat — water ; beat — water ; 
 three times. Other warders hit men with their fists. 
 When a Dom comes out of prison he is often dazed and 
 numb; many die soon after. One warder watches at 
 night to prevent talking, fighting, smoking, and gam- 
 bling. No talking is allowed night or day. I was in 
 prison for two years, all except two months ; it was terri- 
 ble. I came to the services in the Settlement because I 
 wanted to give up thieving and lying, to do work, to earn 
 my living, and to remain in the peace and happiness of 
 the Settlement. I can now earn nine and a half rupees 
 a month. I say to the others, ' Better for you to be like 
 me. I do not steal. I am not sent to jail. I pray to 
 God. I earn money. I am happy.' They see that I am 
 happy. I always say to them, ' See how happy I am. 
 Is it not a fine thing to be happy ? ' And they say, ' It is 
 true; we want to be good.' Oh, a great change is taking 
 place among the Doms. The old race will die out, and a 
 new one will be born. All the children will soon be 
 Christians. There will be no more crime, and no more 
 jail." 
 
 The splendid little Scotsman in charge of this Settle- 
 ment agrees that a great change is taking place, although 
 he makes the frank acknowledgment that no one could 
 say the Doms are Christians. " When we first started," 
 he said, " I used to be wakened from sleep in the middle 
 of the night by a noise like pandemonium, and I had to go 
 down and separate the men, who were fighting like wild 
 beasts. It really was hardly safe in those days. But we 
 stuck to it, and prayer and kindness have succeeded so 
 
294 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 far as to put a stop to all fierceness and fighting. They 
 realize now that the Mukti-Fauj is here to help them; 
 that we are not agents of the police, but Christians try- 
 ing to be kind and helpful. I do not think we should 
 be criticized for our slowness to convert. One must rec- 
 ognize that our task is first to make the Doms human, 
 and then Christians. They are demoralized at present 
 by their own habits and by the brutality of the police. 
 There are only some four European officers to all the 
 police looking after these three million Doms; it is im- 
 possible to prevent tyranny and injustice. But there has 
 been a vast improvement among the police in recent years. 
 Sir John Hewett has handled this matter finely. He has 
 not relaxed the severity which is really necessary in deal? 
 ing with large bodies of nomadic and marauding tribes, 
 but he has taken steps to prevent that severity from be- 
 coming the weapon of the blackmailer. The Govern- 
 ment, indeed, has been splendid in this matter. One of 
 them came to see our Industrial Exhibition, and he said 
 publicly that by going for the inside of the Doms instead 
 of the outside, the Salvation Army had done more in 
 two years than the Government, with all the forces of 
 law and order at its disposal, had been able to do in 
 twenty-five years." 
 
 He told me that in the worst of these Doms there is 
 always something to which appeal may be made. One 
 of these police-hunted wretches, he said, went away to 
 Jamaica and there made money, learned English, secured 
 a good position, and was free of all fear ; but he came back 
 to the Dom country and was almost immediately seized 
 by the police and thrown into jail. " Why did you 
 come back? " asked the Scot. " Dis heart," he answered, 
 
THE DOMS 295 
 
 placing his hand on his breast and bursting into tears, 
 " long to see poor old mother." 
 
 I paid a visit to the jail on a certain Sunday morning, 
 as I wanted to see the religious service which the Salva- 
 tion Army is now permitted to hold in the prison for the 
 benefit of Dora prisoners. We drove out from Gorakh- 
 pur in a carriage, and passed through charming country 
 rendered more delightful by the brightness of the sun, the 
 freshness of the air, and the scents of Spring which came 
 to us on the cooling wind. The jail is approached by a 
 long avenue of alternate tamarind and teak trees, the pale 
 red walls, tiled roofs, and gate of entry with its armed 
 sentinel, blocking out the tender blue of distance with a 
 sinister abruptness. But even the prison walls, the 
 guarded gate, and the threatening bayonet of the sentry, 
 could not rob the goodness from the air or cloud the joy 
 of that perfect morning in Spring. I had no melan- 
 choly thoughts or feelings of depression as the gate, 
 opened and I passed into the shadow of this human cage. 
 
 Through the heavy gateway one passed into a paved 
 court, from whose coolness and shadows one saw that 
 the avenue of trees left outside the barred door, but this 
 time formed only of tamarinds, was continued across a 
 green and sunny space to the inner buildings of the 
 prison. Under the two first tamarind trees on the left 
 hand side of the central path crossing this space, and oc- 
 cupying in horseshoe formation a wide circle of broken 
 pink brick between the path and the grass, was gathered 
 the congregation of Dom prisoners. They were dressed 
 for the most part in awkward thick hairy coats of dark 
 grey edged with white, and wore from a steel ring circling 
 their necks a block of wood stamped with the dates of 
 
296 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 their sentences and the Act under which they had been 
 convicted. Two or three had steel gyves upon their 
 ankles, but the majority wore only a single ring on one 
 leg, to which the full fetters would be attached when 
 there was any danger of escape. They were squatting 
 on their haunches, the arms laid across the knees, the 
 heads inclining wearily in every case towards one of the 
 humped shoulders. Upon their shaven heads was a small 
 round cap — foul, greasy, and worn at as many different 
 angles as there were prisoners. 
 
 Before this horseshoe of wretched humanity, was a row 
 of chairs in which we were invited by the Salvationists, 
 two of them converted Doms, to take our seats. The 
 sun shining through the soft leaves of the tamarinds 
 chequered the pink ground with light and shade and 
 sprinkled a dust of gold upon the unhappy captives; 
 two or three warders in khaki and tall turbans of gloomy 
 blue, their club-like truncheons under their arms, stood 
 looking at the gathering in the full sunlight of the cen- 
 tral path; gangs of prisoners passed every now and then 
 on the narrow paths slanting across the grass of the court; 
 ten or eleven prisoners at a distance of some fifty yards 
 sat upon their haunches and listened to the service; the 
 Native doctor was busy weighing a section of his five 
 hundred captives on the opposite side of the avenue ; the 
 clink-clank of prisoners toiling in the blacksmith's shop 
 came to us from the distance; in the trees, on the roofs, 
 and in the dust of the paths birds were quarrelling and 
 chirping with all the energy of urgent controversy. 
 
 The service was extremely simple. The Salvationist 
 of the Settlement, making his rich Scotch accent sound 
 through his Hindustani, repeated sentence by sentence 
 
THE DOMS 297 
 
 the words of a hymn and then beating time with his 
 right hand led the singing. This singing was the work 
 of the Salvationists. The crouching prisoners sang not 
 a word and in their eyes was the dull listlessness of a 
 dense stupor. A prayer followed, a prayer that God, 
 who is Father of all men, would make Himself mani- 
 fest that day and bless with His presence and His mercy 
 the service held in the prison. None of the prisoners 
 bowed his head, closed his eyes, or covered his face. 
 Afterwards the same Salvationist spoke of Christ and 
 the revelation made by Him of God's way to the King- 
 dom' of Heaven. The Doms did not shift their posi- 
 tions nor manifest the least interest. There was more 
 singing, and then one of the converted Doms, dressed in 
 the red jacket of the Salvation Army, bareheaded and 
 holding in his hand a New Testament, stood before the 
 prisoners. He told them to open their hearts to the 
 Spirit of God. "It is wrong," he said, "to steal; it is 
 wrong to get drunk; it is wrong to gamble and fight. 
 When you do these things, the police catch you, and 
 you are locked up in prison. See how you suffer! Sin 
 is always punished. You cannot be happy while you do 
 wrong. It is only by doing good that a man can be 
 happy. Sin is punished on earth, and it is punished in 
 hell. Heaven is only for those who are good and love 
 God. If you want to go to heaven you must be good. 
 If you want to have a happy home, with a wife and chil- 
 dren, you must be good. I was like you till I gave my 
 heart to God. I used to steal and drink. I was taken 
 away from my home. I was locked up in prison. My 
 heart was full of sin. But the Spirit of God taught me 
 the way to happiness. I gave up sin. I learnt to work 
 
298 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 for my bread. And now I am happy. You must open 
 your hearts to God. You must give up sin. You must 
 come into the Salvation Army Settlement and learn to 
 work for your living. Then you will be happy like me." 
 
 Throughout this earnest and straightforward address 
 I carefully studied the faces of the prisoners. Not in one 
 of them could I discover the smallest beginning of re- 
 sponse, the least trace of understanding. Like men half- 
 stupefied by a drug, or worn to the point of sleep by 
 some laborious exercise, they regarded the preacher out 
 of closing eyes, and let their heads sink more and more 
 towards the support of their shoulders. But for the 
 languor in their faces they might have been carved out 
 of ebony. 
 
 In almost every case the skull was small and narrow, 
 the cheek-bones projected far beyond the temples, and 
 the jowl was full-rounded. The mouths were firm but 
 without energy, compressed in a bitter resignation and a 
 settled lethargy. In the eyes, some of them handsome 
 enough, I could see neither intelligence nor cunning; 
 here and there one noticed the beginnings, but only the 
 beginnings, of craft. It seemed to me that these big, 
 black-faced, small-skulled, and weary-eyed prisoners, be- 
 longed rather to some species of torpid animals than 
 to the most wicked or the most stupid races of hu- 
 manity. 
 
 A Native girl, rescued by the Salvation Army from a 
 famine district, and trained throughout childhood in the 
 methods of the Army, stood under the shade of the 
 tamarinds and spoke in a most gracious and winning way 
 to the crouching prisoners of God's love for men and 
 His yearning to bestow peace and happiness upon all 
 
THE DOMS 299 
 
 those who will seek His blessing. Her voice was exceed- 
 ingly musical, she had the gentlest of kind eyes, her ges- 
 tures were all tender and compelling — but there was no 
 response from the prisoners — absolutely no response of 
 any kind. 
 
 After another hymn, a vigorous address by the Salva- 
 tionist, in which he told of the worst men in England 
 changed in a second by conversion from misery to joy, 
 and a closing prayer, I was invited to walk round the 
 horseshoe of captives and ask them any questions I might 
 like. For the first time I detected something of intelli- 
 gence in these poor miserable men. They seemed to re- 
 gard me as a Sahib of the Government with power to 
 unlock their prison doors. Every one to whom I spoke 
 seemed to rouse some drowning intelligence in his brain 
 and professed his wish to enter the Settlement and live 
 a law-abiding life — not with any enthusiasm, not with 
 any repentance for the past, but with a tired effort to 
 convince me that they were sick to death of their condi- 
 tion. 
 
 It came to me that perhaps in the silence of their hearts 
 these children of savagery against whom the centuries 
 have sinned so long and grievously, put the God of Chris- 
 tianity to a test, and pray for deliverance. Suppose that 
 they do this? They are told that He has only to be 
 asked for mercy and that mercy will come to them. 
 They are told that He is all-powerful and that there is 
 nothing that He cannot do. Suppose they pray to Him. 
 Suppose, with the dull cunning of animals, they put this 
 new God to a test. " Take me out of prison, place me 
 in the Salvation Army, do not let me spend any more 
 years in this cruel prison." And then, when the Sal- 
 
300 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 vationists come to them on Sunday, and they say — 
 " We want to be good ; let us come into the Settlement 
 and we will worship your God" — they must be told, 
 " there is six months more of your sentence still to run." 
 What a God ! — a God who cannot even deliver a man 
 from an unjust sentence of imprisonment! — a God 
 Who is said to be a worker of wonders, an almighty and 
 great God Who must wait upon the police before He can 
 act! 
 
 One often thinks when a clergyman reads in Church 
 with dramatic energy the wonderful chapter in which 
 Elijah challenged the priests of Baal to a conflict in 
 magic, how hard it would fare with him if some 
 atheist rose and challenged him to a conflict of the same 
 kind. 
 
 The Doms are so simple and primitive as to be scarcely 
 human. To make them realize the existence of a God 
 is extraordinarily difficult; to make them grasp the 
 idea of a God Who is at one and the same time per- 
 fect Love and unalterable Law, is, I should say, impossi- 
 ble. As I looked at them during this service I wondered 
 what Pascal would say of them, or Bossuet, or Bishop 
 Butler, or the latest popular preacher in New York. 
 Are they, indeed, children of God and heirs of eternal 
 life? Do they represent the race against which Satan 
 directs the artillery of hell and for which the innocent 
 Christ offered up His life on the cross? Or are they 
 vestiges of humanity's brate origin? Men who have 
 never fallen, and men who have never risen; creatures 
 who must be lifted by education and science into the 
 kingdom of civilization before they can understand the 
 
THE DOMS 301 
 
 alphabet of religion and take a first step into the King- 
 dom of God? 
 
 One thing to me is wholly certain. The prison system 
 can help in no single way to make these miserable sav- 
 ages intelligent human beings. It is a monstrous sys- 
 tem. Lock men up by all means, keep them in your 
 power, and feed them with the same care that a wise man 
 gives to his horse and his dog, but in the name of com- 
 mon sense do not shut them out from the influences of 
 useful work, animal companions, healthy games, litera- 
 ture, art, science, and human kindness. I cannot think 
 how men can be so stupid as to allow the present prison 
 system to continue for another day, unless it is the effect 
 of that fear and distrust of our fellow creatures which is 
 the foundation of all conservatism and the solidest ob- 
 struction to all progress. No one, I am sure, could doubt 
 for a moment after a visit to the Dom Settlement, where 
 a single Scotsman and his wife perfectly control an armjr 
 of barbarians, that if all the prisons of England and 
 India, nay, of all the world, were given into the keeping 
 of the Salvation Army the regeneration of the Criminal 
 Classes would be accomplished in a few decades. It is 
 not enough to supplant the military governor by the 
 trained Doctor and the schoolmaster ; something is needed 
 which science does not possess and education cannot cre- 
 ate to order — that wonderful enthusiasm for humanity, 
 that unquestioning belief in human perfectability, that 
 absolute faith in the love and mercy of God, which are 
 only to be found among those to whom religion is a 
 personal experience. Crude to us the method of the Sal- 
 vation Army may appear; it may grate upon our senses 
 
302 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 and strike jangling discords across the stately music of 
 our spiritual life ; but this Army has the secret of saving 
 men. It has " an unlimited fund of enthusiasm," and 
 its " influence is personal and humanizing." No finer 
 testimonial was ever given to the Salvation Army than 
 the statement of Mr. Burn in India: " They live among 
 the people and enter into their lives." 
 
 I have seen this work and I bear witness to it. 
 
THE BHATUS AND A BRIGADIER 
 
 " Kind words," says Faber, in a charming phrase, " are 
 the music of the world; they have a power which seems 
 to be beyond natural causes." It is the mystery of kind 
 words that they do not need, like the delicate seeds of 
 a rare plant, to have the ground prepared for them ; they 
 break into flower even as they fall, and whatever may 
 be the nature of the soil. A nocturne by Chopin, a land- 
 scape by Claude, a sonnet by Shakespeare — these things 
 demand even among the civilized and refined something- 
 beautiful in the soul before their appeal can become irre- 
 sistible; but a kind word may arrest a brutal nature in 
 the very commission of a crime or literally create a new 
 spirit in the mind of a savage. It is astonishing that 
 this power of kindness has not been put to greater use 
 among the law-makers of humanity in their hard task of 
 elevating those great masses of men dragging everywhere 
 like a dead weight on the skirts of progress. Philan- 
 thropy is not a hobby of the sentimental, it is a power of 
 unparalleled force in the mechanism of evolution. One 
 has only to consider the extraordinary results of a few 
 years' experience among the Criminal Tribes of India 
 by a religious organization which relies on kindness and 
 kindness alone for its redemptive work, to realize how 
 victorious is this energy of the soul, and of what vast 
 service it might be to the general progress of mankind. 
 For these Criminal Tribes are not only willing to enter 
 
 303 
 
304 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 the settlements of the Salvation Army, they are every- 
 where clamouring to be admitted. I cannot easily for- 
 get the pathetic appeal made to me by a Bhatu of Mo- 
 radabad — an appeal made by the eyes and the hands — 
 as he knelt before me, beseeching that I should get him 
 admitted to the crowded and over-crowded Settlement of 
 his tribe. And soon after I had left Moradabad, I heard 
 from the admirable Brigadier in charge of the work, an 
 Indian, that an army of several hundreds of these people 
 were then on the march to the Settlement, the wives carry- 
 ing babies, the husbands carrying young children, and 
 the older children carrying the family possessions — 
 marching by night, and hiding in the jungle by day, for 
 fear that the police might intercept them and drive them 
 back. It is a pitiful thing, a terribly pitiful thing, that 
 these harried and much enduring people, who go down 
 on their knees imploring the Salvation Army to take 
 them, should have to be repulsed simply for want of a 
 little money. The Government has done all it can do, 
 in giving land and buildings and making grants; but 
 much more money will be needed — and one hopes that 
 the rich men of India as well as the rich people in Eng- 
 land and America may realize it — -before all these mil- 
 lions of useless, profitless, and suffering humanity can be 
 brought within the pale of civilization and made a bless- 
 ing to humanity. 
 
 While the man of whom I have spoken knelt before 
 me, a much pleasanter-looking Bhatu, indeed a rather 
 noble specimen of mankind, sat on one of the stairs de- 
 scending from the veranda of the Settlement's head- 
 quarters — once a palace — and told me about his peo- 
 ple and himself. It was an afternoon of insufferable 
 
THE BHATUS AND A BRIGADIER 305 
 
 heat; an old fellow stood behind my chair beating the 
 flies away from me with a cloth, and in my hands I held 
 a tumbler of constantly replenished lemon water. Be- 
 fore me were the two Bhatus; three steps lower down 
 sat an old and withered woman, an elbow resting on her 
 knee, her face lying in the cup of her hand, her eyes 
 watching me, her lips mumbling a monotonous solilo- 
 quy. Beyond us, at the bottom of the high veranda on 
 which we sat, stretched the dusty compound, shimmer- 
 ing in the blinding sunlight and patched by the pale 
 shadows of listless trees. And from every point in that 
 compound came the cackle of fowls, for the Brigadier's 
 wife is an expert in poultry, and from behind us in the 
 cool shades of the large house came the rattle of the 
 looms, where the Bhatus were at work as weavers. 
 
 The handsome Bhatu said to me, " Our people were a 
 race of soldiers. We served a mighty Rajah, who gave 
 us many lands, and we were rich. Once we refused to 
 fight for him; our lands were taken from us and we 
 became a wandering people. That is a long time ago. 
 Since then our people have been dacoits and outcasts. 
 There has been no place where we could rest. Our suf- 
 ferings have been very great. The police used to make 
 our women do what they asked; if we resisted they 
 placed brass pots in our camps and we were arrested for 
 stealing. You must do what the police tell you, right 
 or wrong, or you go to jail. It is not safe for a Bhatu 
 outside the Settlement." 
 
 I asked him' about the religion of the Bhatus. " We 
 know there is a God, but we do not know anything 
 about Him. We do not know what He wants. Our 
 bhagats (fakirs, or holy men) know something about 
 
3o6 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 the devils. After death we Hve in another world, but we 
 do not know what it is like. We do not think much 
 about these things. Mostly we talk about stealing and 
 fighting and the police." 
 
 " Do you worship your ancestors ? " I asked. 
 
 " No ! " he answered emphatically. " We are very 
 angry with our ancestors. All our troubles have come 
 from them. If they had fought for the great Rajah we 
 should not have suffered. And for many years all our 
 ancestors have been dacoits. There are boys of twelve 
 among our people who are first-rate dacoits. They can 
 attack a man in the dark and rob him. They can take 
 jewels from women. They learn from their fathers, 
 and they are not afraid. We think our fathers have led 
 us into wrong. We know that dacoiting is wrong be- 
 cause we get sent to jail." 
 
 The Brigadier in charge of this work, who acted as 
 interpreter, said to me : " The Bhatus have a very bad 
 name, especially the women. The women are dancers, 
 beggars, and prostitutes. The men are fearless and very 
 cunning. A police superintendent told me that with 
 five Bhatus he would storm any village in India. They 
 are audacious, strong, and extraordinarily ferocious. 
 They fight with two long sticks in their hands. They ap- 
 proach an adversary carrying both these sticks, and from 
 either hand fling one at his face with frightful force, 
 and then spring upon him with the other. While the 
 women dance or beg, the men go into the jungle and 
 hunt for pig and deer. They are a bold people, rather 
 a proud people; but they are perfectly amenable to dis- 
 cipline when they are sure of kindly treatment." 
 
 The Bhatu told me about marriage customs. He 
 
THE BHATUS AND A BRIGADIER 307 
 
 said that the women are more numerous among Bhatus 
 than the men, the opposite condition of things to that 
 which obtains among the Haburas, a tribe presently to 
 be considered. They are very strict about their mar- 
 riage ceremony, even when the bride is a professional 
 woman. Everything must be done with much pomp and 
 in due order. No one can be married without a feast. 
 Parents demand as much as four hundred rupees for a 
 daughter, but the money is generally spent in a ceremo- 
 nial debauch of which the bridegroom and his relations 
 are careful to obtain an adequate share. They drink 
 country arrack at these festivals, but it is only at wed- 
 dings that they give way to drink with intemperance. 
 To get a young girl for his wife is the chief desire of 
 a Bhatu, and when he has saved enough money for this 
 purpose his chief occupation is to guard his possession 
 from the police. 
 
 The reader may remember that I quoted Sir Bamfylde 
 Fuller as saying that certain thieves in India can steal 
 the bedclothes from a sleeper. As the Bhatus are ex- 
 pert and most daring burglars, and as I had established 
 a complete confidence with my friend on the veranda, 
 I asked him through the interpreter to tell us how these 
 burglaries are committed — to tell us the secret of these 
 extraordinary visitations. While he was speaking, after 
 a consultation with the poor fellow clamouring to be 
 admitted to the Settlement, the old woman flashed angry 
 eyes at him and muttered in far louder tones her myste- 
 rious and never interrupted soliloquy. 
 
 He told me that the burglars go to a burying ground 
 where a dead virgin has lately been given to the flames, 
 and carefully collect a portion of her ashes, these ashes 
 
3o8 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 they take to their bhagat, or magician, who performs 
 certain ceremonies over them, and returns them to the 
 burglars. The ashes are now ready for use. " We go 
 to a house," said the Bhatu, " enter it very carefully, 
 and sprinkle these ashes on the faces of the sleepers. 
 We have to be very careful not to make the slightest 
 noise in entering the house, but as soon as we have 
 sprinkled the ashes we may make just as much noise 
 as we like; the sleepers will not wake till the spell is 
 worn off in the morning." 
 
 He was perfectly natural in this narration, and it was 
 evident from the anger and annoyance in the eyes of 
 the withered old woman on the steps below him, that he 
 was telling me a genuine secret of his people; but it 
 seemed so incredible that the ashes of a virgin could act 
 in this magical fashion and I was so sure of being im- 
 posed upon, that I turned to the Native Salvationist with 
 a smile and asked him what he thought of the tale. 
 
 To my surprise I found that the Salvationist was not 
 smiling, on the contrary that he was grave and thought- 
 ful. He answered my question in these words, " I have 
 never heard this account before; it seems to me im- 
 possible to be true, but it makes me think, because in two 
 or three recent burglaries the police have found a green- 
 ish-grey ash scattered about the house, particularly round 
 the beds where people have slept." 
 
 Now, it is possible that the bhagat is not content with 
 ceremonial rites when he handles the ashes, and that he 
 either impregnates them with a powerful narcotic or that 
 he substitutes for them altogether something of a sopo- 
 rific character; however that may be, it is interesting to 
 bear in mind that both Dr. Frazer and Mr. Edgar 
 
THE BHATUS AND A BRIGADIER 309 
 
 Thurston give many instances in their books of the sav- 
 age belief in the virtue of almost everything attaching 
 to a virgin — from a drop of her blood to her ashes 
 after death. And Mr. Thurston, who probably knows 
 more about the primitive peoples of Southern India than 
 any man now living, tells me that in certain districts a 
 pregnant woman is very often attacked and murdered 
 for the sake of that which she carries, and that the buried 
 bodies of little girls are constantly dug up because of 
 the magical value attached to everything about them. 
 
 The Indian Brigadier in charge of the Bhatu Settle- 
 ment is a man of culture whose mind is governed by lib- 
 eral ideas. He is a man, too, of practical common sense, 
 with unusual powers of organization; the last man in the 
 world to attach any importance to the superstitions of 
 uncivilized peoples. But he told me that there are many 
 things in the practice of the Criminal Tribes which can- 
 not be satisfactorily explained on natural grounds : and 
 in telling me the story of his own life he referred to an 
 incident which makes it certain for him that we are gov- 
 erned more than we yet realize by invisible forces. 
 
 He was born in Southern India — -his father a high- 
 caste Hindu who had been converted to Christianity by 
 the American Mission, his mother a Tamil Christian. 
 Soon after marriage the man became dissolute and in- 
 temperate in his habits. Two children were born of 
 the marriage, and the poor woman, who appears to have 
 been something of a saint, was greatly distressed by this 
 degrading and ruinous change in her husband's charac- 
 ter. 
 
 " When the days came," said the Brigadier, " that 
 my father abandoned himself to drink, my mother used 
 
3IO OTHER SHEEP 
 
 to pray for him, remaining for hours upon her knees. 
 One night she had a dream. She dreamed that she was 
 in the jungle with my sister, then a child in the arms. 
 As she wandered through the jungle, very distressed 
 and unhappy, like one who had lost her way, a gharry 
 suddenly appeared before her in the trees, shining with 
 light, the horses as if fashioned from fire; and in the 
 gharry was seated an old man with a beard of flowing 
 white and garments that shone like the horses. She was 
 afraid, and stood still, holding my sister to her breast. 
 But the old man said to her, ' Come near,' and as he 
 spoke she lost her sense of dread, and moved forward. 
 Then the old man said to her, ' Be at peace, and do not 
 distress yourself; in three years and three months it will 
 be well with you.' Then he vanished from her sight. 
 When she woke in the morning the impression of this 
 dream was so vivid that it was as if she had truly been 
 in the jungle and had actually seen the old man and 
 heard him speak. She made a note of the dream and 
 the prophecy, said nothing about the matter, and con- 
 tinued her daily life as before. My father became 
 worse and worse; the prosperity of the home began to 
 dwindle; my poor mother never knew a single hour of 
 peace and hope; in fact, you could scarcely imagine a 
 home more wretched and more threatened with ruin. 
 This state of things continued for three years and three 
 months, and then to the very day, my father disap- 
 peared. Without a word, without a hint, without a 
 quarrel, without warning of any kind, he vanished. My 
 mother went to the police, and to the mission: every- 
 thing was done to discover whether he was alive or 
 dead, but no information could be got of any kind. It 
 
THE BHATUS AND A BRIGADIER 311 
 
 was really as if the earth had opened and swallowed 
 him up. From that day to this, nearly forty years, no 
 news has been forthcoming as to what happened to him. 
 I often discussed the matter with my mother and she 
 was always perfectly clear that the day of his disap- 
 pearance fulfilled the prophecy of her dream. Both she 
 and myself were struck by the incongruousness of the 
 gharry in this dream, but my mother declared emphatic- 
 ally that it was a veritable gharry, and not a chariot or 
 vehicle of a more striking kind. One cannot explain 
 these things. They happen; we are surprised by them; 
 and we go on." 
 
 The disappearance of the father plunged the family 
 into poverty. The mother dressed as a widow, gave 
 up the use of flowers, and went as nurse to the minister 
 and his wife in charge of the American Mission. This 
 couple appear to have been very noble people. The 
 Brigadier's eyes grew tender when he spoke about them. 
 " He was like a father to me, and she was a second 
 mother. They loved us, my sister and myself, and they 
 gave themselves to us as if we had been their own chil- 
 dren." The boy was clever and passed from the mis- 
 sion school to the higher education of a college course. 
 I have not seen a Native of India with a finer shaped 
 head, or more intelligent eyes; but for his dark skin he 
 would pass for a typical French savant — a bright, 
 rapid, and vivacious intelligence. While he was at col- 
 lege, the missionaries were obliged to return to America. 
 He went to see them off from Madras, and so great was 
 his grief at parting from them that he could not restrain 
 his tears. While he stood there, vainly struggling to 
 restrain his grief, he saw some Europeans dressed in 
 
312 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 Native clothes, two women and a man, who attracted 
 his attention even in his grief; he saw them through his 
 tears. After parting from his friends, he wandered 
 wretchedly through the streets of Madras, like a dog 
 bereft of his master. Darkness fell on the city, and still 
 he could not bear to go back to college. As he entered 
 a certain street he saw a hall into which people were 
 passing as if for a meeting. He approached the door, 
 looked in, and saw the three Europeans in Native dress 
 who had attracted his attention a few hours before. 
 Struck by the coincidence, and curious to discover who 
 they were, he entered the hall. 
 
 " I had no knowledge at that time," he told me, " of 
 the Salvation Army, and this meeting made a very great 
 impression on my mind. I was struck by the earnest- 
 ness and sincerity of the Salvationists. I also felt a lack 
 in myself of something which was essential to my peace 
 of mind. For many weeks and months afterwards I 
 was haunted by the picture of those three people on the 
 platform, indeed it is an ineffaceable impression to this 
 day. I was extremely wretched and unhappy. I 
 missed my American missionaries with my whole heart, 
 and I was fighting against sin. I was about eighteen 
 years of age; and although I was pure, and had no 
 impulse at all towards immorality, I was so quick- 
 tempered and so ungoverned in my anger, that I felt in 
 despair about myself. It is curious that I was of a very 
 shy and retiring disposition; not a man, one would say, 
 to fly in a passion and lose control of himself. But so it 
 was. The least opposition or annoyance flung me into 
 a rage, and in a rage I was capable of anything — vio- 
 lence and ferocity of a dreadful nature. I used to go 
 
THE BHATUS AND A BRIGADIER 313 
 
 into the hills and pray; I was very constant in my at- 
 tendance at church. I wanted to feel that God was 
 near me; that He was not afar off; that He was not half 
 real, but actually real, and close at my heart to strengthen 
 my better resolutions and guard me against anger. 
 
 " I must confess to you that I had inherited some- 
 thing of Hinduism in my nature. The Hindu religion 
 teaches that a man must work out his own salvation, 
 that escape from existence can only be won by the work 
 of the man himself, it is he who must do everything. 
 Now, although I had faith in God, and although my ob- 
 ject was the very opposite of the Hindu religion, I was 
 yet trying to reach my goal by the same methods. 
 Nothing that I had learned from the American Mission 
 gave me any other conception of the Christian religion. 
 I thought I could win God. Not till later in my life did 
 the truth flash upon the darkness of my soul like a great 
 light — the truth that consciousness of God and free- 
 dom from sin are not to be won by effort, or by formality 
 of any kind — but by receptiveness of the heart. 
 
 " This truth came to me when I was staying with my 
 sister, who had married a Native clergyman. I met at 
 her house a Salvationist, a relation of her husband. The 
 sight of the uniform revived in my mind the picture of 
 the meeting in Madras, and I was conscious at once of 
 a singular, I may really say a magnetic attraction in the 
 man. So great indeed was the attraction of this Sal- 
 vationist, he was a Hindu, that I told him all my trou- 
 bles that very evening, and after he had comforted and 
 encouraged me, we spent the whole night on our knees 
 praying to God for illumination. It came at daybreak. 
 Quite quietly and naturally, but with a sense of serenity 
 
314 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 for my heart that I cannot express to you, the light en- 
 tered, and I saw that God loves a man in spite of his 
 sins and in spite of his failures. It was this wonderful 
 knowledge that God really had love for me, that His 
 attitude towards me was that of a father, irrespective 
 altogether of what I was, in spite altogether of my sins 
 — it was this knowledge that entered into my troubled 
 soul and into my exhausted heart, just like a Voice 
 breathing the words of Christ, Peace be still. My relief 
 was so great that I rose up and said, ' He has given me 
 His love. I know now the only happiness, the only sat- 
 isfaction.' 
 
 " Instead now of dwelling on myself, and striving to 
 make my own way, I thought instantly of others, and 
 longed to share with them the knowledge of God which 
 had given such wonderful and beautiful peace to my 
 own soul. But when I spoke to my sister and my 
 brother-in-law about becoming a Salvationist they op- 
 posed the idea. My brother-in-law said to me, ' This is 
 only an emotion; it will wear off; you will be sorry if 
 you take a step such as you contemplate in your natural 
 excitement.' The Salvation Army meant poverty, and 
 in those days it also meant ostracism. The other mis- 
 sions disliked its methods, and Government officials felt 
 greatly annoyed by the appearance of Europeans in our 
 Indian costume. My mother implored me not to throw 
 away my life. I was taken to village meetings, and my 
 brother-in-law held out to me the prospect of becoming 
 a respectable clergyman with a decent income and a 
 comfortable house. I was influenced by these ideas, but 
 I still wanted to be a Salvationist, because I felt there 
 was no utter happiness and no complete satisfaction 
 
THE BHATUS AND A BRIGADIER 315 
 
 without a total surrender of the soul to a life of self-sac- 
 rifice. However, I let them arrange for me to enter a 
 theological college, and started off one day to enter on 
 my training for a clergyman. By some miscalculation I 
 arrived a day too soon, and having nothing to do I jour- 
 neyed to the town where my sister was living that I 
 might spend the afternoon with her. There in her house 
 I met the Salvationist who had so greatly influenced me 
 and who had brought me to a true knowledge of God. 
 It was a difficult moment for all of us. My sister and 
 my mother had carefully kept us apart; I had never seen 
 him nor heard from him since our first meeting; and 
 now, just as I was about to begin my training for the 
 Church, we encountered. During the time I was at the 
 house we were never left alone together, and I could see 
 that my brother-in-law was determined to save me from 
 the man's influence. But when he came to go for bul- 
 lock-carts, it was discovered that only one could be 
 found, and so in spite of all their precautions, I and the 
 Salvationist were obliged to travel together. I am more 
 grateful than I can tell you that there was only one 
 bullock-cart to be had that night. For as we journeyed 
 together, the man's magnetism overcame me, all my en- 
 thusiasm revived, and I felt as sure as I have felt of 
 anything in my life, that God's Will with me was that 
 I should become a Salvationist. Instead of going to the 
 theological college, I went straight to Madras, and of- 
 fered myself to the Army. Some weeks afterwards 
 while I was at a meeting a message came that I was 
 wanted outside, and going to the door I found a well- 
 known missionary waiting to speak to me. He was one 
 of the best missionaries in India, a man of extraordinary 
 
3i6 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 goodness, and one who had exercised a certain charm 
 over my mind. He came, at the wish of my mother and 
 my brother-in-law, to beg me to enter the theological 
 college and to consecrate my life to the ministry of the 
 American mission. We spoke together for fifteen min- 
 utes. How I answered him I do not remember now; it 
 is all like a dream : but I know that he returned to my 
 sister and my brother-in-law, and said to them, " You 
 must let him be; he has been called by God." And 
 since that day I have never known unhappiness or dis- 
 satisfaction. I have lived every hour. Wherever I 
 have been sent I have found a sphere of usefulness, and 
 now, in charge of this Settlement, I am happier than I 
 have ever been — my one distress that we have not more 
 money to take more of these poor Bhatus into our care." 
 
 The Settlement is one for which Fakir Singh has a 
 particular affection, and the least imaginative man, I 
 think, could not fail to be struck if he saw these Bhatus, 
 these former murderers, burglars, and dacoits, working 
 intelligently at the looms, peacefully cultivating the land, 
 and learning with pleasure and delight to be dairymen 
 and poultry-keepers, under the spell of kindness and the 
 magic of Christian love. 
 
 The Brigadier is not a man to exaggerate or to 
 prophesy millennial bliss. He acknowledges that to 
 make some of the older Bhatus understand Christianity 
 is impossible. He does not anticipate that he will soon 
 be in a position to flourish the announcement of whole- 
 sale conversions among the Bhatus in the delighted faces 
 of a pious missionary-supporting public in America and 
 England. But he is convinced, with no shadow of mis- 
 giving, that kindness can reclaim these people from 
 
THE BHATUS AND A BRIGADIER 317 
 
 crime and barbarism, that a few years will suffice to 
 make the Settlement a self-supporting colony of man- 
 ufacture and agriculture, and that education and the in- 
 fluence of Christianity will convert the whole of the next 
 generation to moral ideas and the standards of civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 I visited the looms and purchased some of the 
 products, which are now pronounced to be by an exact- 
 ing housekeeper, of a very good quality. The men at 
 the looms appeared to me a fine and handsome race, a 
 race of beings no whit inferior to any of the peoples of 
 India except some of the highest Brahmans, Parsis, and 
 certain of the hill tribes. They have a manly and vigor- 
 ous look, hold themselves well, and are not sleepy, dull 
 and torpid with that inhuman inertness of the Doms. I 
 imagine that under the care of such a man as the Briga- 
 dier there will be no difficulty in bringing these intelli- 
 gent, courageous, and energetic people into the first 
 ranks of Indian humanity. 
 
 " I find," he said, " that they are anxious to learn 
 weaving, and that they soon grasp the difficulties of that 
 trade. Indeed, I should say that they were unusually 
 quick at learning. But the older men, and the women 
 long accustomed to a life of prostitution, are only anx- 
 ious to enter the Settlement as a place of peace and se- 
 curity. I have no illusions on that head. Some show 
 a keener and quicker intelligence than others, some re- 
 spond to Christian ideas very easily, and many are by 
 nature what one would call good men and virtuous 
 women. In fact, they are a mixed body, representing 
 many stages of human progress. But who can doubt 
 that the worst as well as the best of them, should be 
 
3i8 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 delivered from their wretched and useless life and 
 helped towards something which is at least consecrated 
 by Christianity ? " 
 
 I am glad to say that the people of Moradabad now 
 take a kindly interest in the Settlement, and that the 
 Brigadier finds he can dispose of almost all his products 
 among the European community. 
 
THE HABURAS AND A CHOKIDAH 
 
 A MILE or two from Moradabad is the Settlement, pro- 
 vided by the Government and managed by the Salvation 
 Army, for a tribe known as the Haburas, to whom 
 reference was made in the last chapter. These people 
 are almost as fierce as the Bhatus and almost as animal 
 as the Doms. They occupy a mid-way position between 
 the beastlike races of man, and the races who have come 
 by audacity and valour to the semblance of civilized hu- 
 manity. 
 
 The Settlement lies some way from a road, and in 
 crossing the land with my friend the Brigadier — 
 whose name of Jivandham, Joy of Life, harmonized 
 with the beautiful morning on which this visit was paid 
 — I saw some of the Haburas at work in the fields. A 
 group of men, cutting down a tall reed grass with instru- 
 ments resembling our bill-hooks, attracted my notice, but 
 I learned with surprise that they were not Haburas. 
 "We have to employ these men," said the Brigadier; 
 " for the work of cutting this sharp and stubborn reed 
 is beyond the skill and beyond the strength of the Ha- 
 buras." He told me that the hands of the Haburas are 
 as soft and tender as children's from centuries of idle- 
 ness, and that they become easily disheartened if given 
 work which taxes their strength or skill. " They are so 
 backward," he said, " that they cannot even build their 
 
 319 
 
320 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 own mud houses; we have to employ men to build and 
 repair all our buildings. As for this reed, it is not a 
 serious matter, we pay piece work, and the sale of the 
 reed leaves us a profit." 
 
 Presently we passed a genuine Haburah. He was a 
 small old man, naked save for his loin cloth, and so 
 wrinkled and shrivelled and pathetic that one could not 
 look at him without compassion. He was seated on the 
 ground, his little legs open, and with a scraping instru- 
 ment, was scratching and dragging from the land be- 
 tween his feet, a small plant that suggested a straggling 
 carnation root fresh from the nursery and very much 
 scorched by the sun, and in most urgent need of mois- 
 ture. This little dried up plant he placed in a bag at his 
 side, and went on scraping at another. I learned that 
 this is a plant of exceeding value in India, a plant hold- 
 ing the highest honour in the estimation of many a great 
 Sahib and many a great Rajah — for it is the dub grass 
 (cynodon dactylon) which to the horse in India is what 
 meadow hay is to the horse in England. " We sell it 
 in Moradabad," said the Brigadier, " and get a good 
 price for it." 
 
 The shrivelled old man on the ground had feet and 
 hands as narrow as any girl twelve years of age. It 
 was a curious contrast to look from these pretty ex- 
 tremities — the soles of the feet and palms of the hands 
 as white as any European's — to the bald head, the fur- 
 rowed brow, the dim and sunken eyes, the indrawn lips, 
 and curving chin of his withered countenance. I was 
 struck by the extreme dimness of his eyes, and spoke to 
 the Brigadier about their condition. He addressed a 
 
THE HABURAS AND A CHOKIDAH 321 
 
 question to the old man, and then, stooping forward, 
 lifting a lid, and tilting up the head so that the sun 
 struck full in the eye, he said, " He is almost blind." 
 
 We continued our walk across the land, and presently 
 came in sight of what seemed to be a mud fort. I must 
 explain that our carriage had been met in the road by the 
 chokidah of the Settlement, once the head man of these 
 Haburas, and this man had insisted, in spite of my wish 
 to leave it in the carriage, on carrying a heavy coat 
 which I had been wearing on account of the cold. 
 When I noticed the distance which still lay between us 
 and the Settlement, the sun being now at its hottest, and 
 the walk of a good heating nature in spite of the cold 
 air from the snow mountains, I spoke of this coat to 
 the Brigadier and asked whether it could not be left on 
 the ground till we returned. He laughed and said, " Oh, 
 the chokidah feels no weight, I assure you; have you 
 noticed him? " I turned and saw that the man was liter- 
 ally quivering with pride. " He is a fine fellow," said 
 the Brigadier, " by far the best of the Haburas, and to 
 appear in the Settlement carrying the coat of a white 
 man, will be an event of great consequence to him. 
 Long after you are back in England, he will remind his 
 people that he carried the Sahib's coat through the vil- 
 lage. When you think that a year or two ago he was 
 a dacoit, probably a murderer, it is rather striking. But 
 these Criminal Tribes, the best of them at any rate, are 
 like that; trust them, put them on their honour, give 
 them authority; and they are splendid." I asked him 
 to thank the chokidah for putting himself to so much 
 trouble on my account. When he got the message, he 
 
322 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 turned to me with eyes that flashed, showed me white 
 teeth in the proudest of smiles, and salaamed with a 
 grave dignity. 
 
 We passed through the gateway of the Settlement — 
 a most rickety and fragile pair of gates like magnified 
 hurdles — and greeted by a Native Salvationist who 
 lives among the people — came into this little centre of 
 reclamation, this village of Haburas. 
 
 The place was like a good-sized farmyard, 120 yards 
 square, with the difference that the low mud hovels en- 
 closing it were not for animals but for humanity. Here 
 and there in the centre were young trees bandaged and 
 swathed in reeds to protect them from the buffaloes and 
 goats which roamed about among the people. Every- 
 where one saw cocks and hens of a rather sorry descrip- 
 tion, and dogs of no description at all. Against the 
 walls of the houses men were lying in a half-sleep, their 
 eyes blinking in the sunlight. In the entrances to the 
 hovels one saw mothers searching in the heads of their 
 children for lice and fleas. Little naked boys dragging 
 sticks too long for them through the dust, stopped in 
 their dissipation of chasing fowls, to stare at the visit- 
 ors. Some of the children wore round their necks a 
 string hanging with stones, beads, bones, and claws — 
 the gift of their priest; they were all horribly dirty. A 
 man came towards us carrying a child on his arm, and 
 leading another by the hand; he wore the most pathetic 
 expression on his face, bowed himself earthwards, and 
 then looked at me with all the imploring appeal of a 
 practised beggar in London but wedded with such a 
 poignancy and profundity of sincerity that I was touched 
 to the heart " He wants you to know," said the Na- 
 
THE HABURAS AND A CHOKIDAH 7^2^ 
 
 tive Salvationist, "that his wife died last week, and 
 that he is very sad." 
 
 An old man rose from the dust as we approached 
 him, and stood before me, a living skeleton. One could 
 have said every bone was visible in his body, from the 
 knife-edged ribs to the most delicate tendons in the 
 wrist. Such poverty of body I have seen but once before ; 
 such age but seldom ; such living death never. He stood 
 there, his arms extended from the side, his hands open, 
 his almost invisible eyes peering at me from the depths 
 of the sockets, the hairless skull bowed towards his 
 breast. It was his welcome. 
 
 " This man," said the young Salvationist, " is very 
 old. He remembers the Mutiny." 
 
 I noticed a brown string bound tightly round his 
 wrist, so that it was almost buried in the withered skin. 
 " How did he come by that string ? " I asked. The old 
 man told the Salvationist in a quavering voice that it 
 had been tied there by the priest as a cure for spleen. 
 I asked some questions about his life, and standing 
 there in the sunshine and the dust, with his chest curved 
 inward, his knees standing far over, and his pathetic 
 arms hanging feebly at his sides, he told us what he 
 could remember of the past. He was born, he said, 
 when the tribe was on a long march. He remembers 
 that as a child he lived in villages, jungle villages, but 
 that as he grew older he was always marching about, 
 here and there, to and fro. He never worked except to 
 hunt; the Haburas eat lizards, cats, mice, tortoises, 
 foxes, and jackals. He was taught religion by his par- 
 ents. If he never ate rabbit, they told him, he would go 
 to a happy place when he died. That is the only com- 
 
324 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 mandment he was ever taught — Thou shalt not eat rab- 
 bit. It was for him all the law and the prophets, and 
 as he had a wholesome fear of devils he was careful to 
 keep it. The rabbit appears to occupy in the supersti- 
 tions of the Haburas the place more amply filled by the 
 cow in those of the Hindus. As for stealing and mur- 
 der, these things were not considered wrong. All the 
 Haburas go in for dacoity, housebreaking and murder. 
 
 He told us that he is perfectly sure devils exist and 
 that they haunt the world and afflict humanity. On one 
 occasion, he told us, as a party of which he was a mem- 
 ber were returning at night from the jungle, a female 
 devil suddenly rose from the earth and caught hold of 
 him by the arm; he shook her off and hastened after the 
 others, who had taken to their heels. Next day one of 
 the party went blind and never saw again. 
 
 I asked if the Haburas pray to the devils. He told 
 us that they pray regularly to the evil spirits and offer 
 sacrifices to them, convinced that all the trouble and 
 sickness and harassing which afflict them proceed from 
 the devils. He said the Haburas are terribly afraid to 
 die because of the demons. The demons are so bad 
 now; what will they be in the next world and after 
 death? Terrible, terrible! He shook his old head, 
 heaved a sigh, and moisture welled up into his almost 
 sightless eyes. The young Salvationist laid a hand on 
 his arm, said something to him which was evidently in- 
 tended for encouragement, and we passed on. I looked 
 back and saw that the poor old being was still shaking 
 his head. 
 
 We came upon a group of more vigorous and cheer- 
 ful men, who grinned self-consciously and behaved like 
 
THE HABURAS AND A CHOKIDAH 325 
 
 nervous children when we stopped to speak to them. I 
 asked if they could show me one of the lizards they eat. 
 A man went off, dived into a hovel, and returned with a 
 big, fat, dust-coloured lizard which he dropped at my 
 feet. I was surprised to see that this creature, still 
 living, made no effort to escape; it remained prone on 
 the ground, its tongue shooting from its thin lips, its 
 bead-like eyes blinking in the light. " They cook it 
 alive," said the Indian Salvationist ; " they make a fire, 
 throw the lizard in, and when it is baked they remove 
 the skin, which easily comes off, and eat the flesh." 
 " But," I said, " does it make no effort to escape ? " 
 " Oh, no," he replied ; " you see, they break the back- 
 bone directly they catch the creature." He stooped and 
 lifted the lizard from the ground. " This one has its 
 back broken." 
 
 One was shocked, of course, inexpressibly shocked, but 
 — " they know not what they do." For to these men, 
 from the first hour of consciousness, life is a hideous 
 torture and a frightful wretchedness. Haunted by dev- 
 ils, oppressed by their priests, harried and driven by po- 
 lice, they inhabit a universe which is full of oppugnance, 
 hostility, and cruelty; they are wanderers on an earth 
 which shows them no kindness, which hides even its mice 
 and lizards from them; which burns up their bodies 
 with heat and buries its water deep under the ground 
 where they cannot reach it — a universe without love, 
 without happiness, without rest; a universe which 
 flashes a sword in their face whithersoever they turn 
 and stands ever ready to strike them from behind with 
 the dagger of their own necessities. H you could look 
 into the faces of these people you would see there a 
 
326 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 bitterness, a hopelessness, and a despair such as would 
 almost terrify your well-being and make you afraid. 
 They are like men who have been stretched on the rack, 
 broken on the wheel, and cast into the wilderness to die. 
 They have none of the rounded animalism and dough- 
 like stoHdity of the Doms; they are just human, just 
 living, just conscious. Nature has brought them to that 
 point where they can experience suffering and exercise 
 reflection, and then has abandoned them. 
 
 But dreadful as they are and unintentionally brutal 
 as they are, these men respond to human kindness. 
 There are only a few of them ever likely to become in- 
 telligent weavers and carpenters, but they may in time 
 succeed as scientific husbandmen of a rather primitive 
 type; and certainly there is ample evidence to show that 
 in their hearts there is something which welcomes kind- 
 ness, is grateful for kindness, and endeavours to express 
 gratitude. 
 
 The Salvationist's wife, an Indian, who lives with her 
 husband and children in this mud enclosure — a very 
 pretty and cheerful little creature — told me that she is 
 not in the least afraid of the Haburas. " At first I was 
 afraid; there was a great fight one night; and I thought 
 they would kill each other; but my husband went and 
 spoke to them and they were quiet. Some of the men 
 and women are really trying to be good. Some of them 
 are good. I like them very much. They are just like 
 children; if you treat them like children they will do 
 what you ask them and listen to you when you try to 
 teach them." 
 
 It is only quite lately that the Haburas came into the 
 hands of the Salvation Army, and experienced for the 
 
THE HABURAS AND A CHOKIDAH 327 
 
 first time in their existence the influence of kindness. 
 In another generation or two they will be a fine race of 
 useful and upright people. 
 
 I pointed to the gates as we went out, and asked the 
 Brigadier whether such a flimsy protection was sufficient 
 at night. 
 
 " No," he said, with a smile, " but there we have all 
 the protection we need " — and he pointed to the proud 
 and strutting chokidah whose body was turned that the 
 Haburas might be quite certain that he really did carry 
 the Sahib's coat upon his arm. 
 
THE LION IN THE WAY 
 
 It is a foolish calumny to exhibit the Indian Govern- 
 ment, as some men now do, in the character of a lolling 
 epicure or a bedizened circus master. There may be, 
 as there are in all governments, matters for criticism, 
 but I think there is no government in the v^forld more 
 earnest in the cause of progress and enlightenment than 
 the Government of India, no government in the world 
 that can show a more impressive record of achievement, 
 no government that is served by a more faithful, indus- 
 trious, and human-hearted Civil Service. It is enough 
 for the critics of this Government, if they can obtain 
 one or two narratives of English rudeness to Indian gen- 
 tlemen, to condemn the whole Government ; and the vis- 
 itations of plague and famine are sufficient for them to 
 prove that the Government is idle and iniquitous. 
 
 What is the real truth ? From men of such command- 
 ing genius as Sir John Hewett down to the humblest 
 engineer employed by the State, the whole Indian Gov- 
 ernment is ceaselessly employed in developing the re- 
 sources of the country and promoting the prosperity of 
 democracy. The Government, for instance, supplies 
 " more than a third of the total irrigation of the coun- 
 try." 
 
 Not only do these canals increase prosperity: they 
 create it. Two of the Punjab canals literally have 
 
 338 
 
THE LION IN THE WAY 329 
 
 converted desolate uninhabited plains into thriving 
 countries. Along the banks of the Chenab canal now 
 stretch fields and villages inhabited by a million people, 
 where twelve years ago a few nomads wandered over 
 a desert of parched earth and camel-thorn. The 
 State irrigation works of India are, of their kind, the 
 greatest and most beneficent triumphs of engineering 
 that the world has seen.^ 
 
 Sir Louis Dane said to me in his picturesque way, 
 " We are adding an Egypt a year to the Empire by our 
 canals, but England takes no notice." All this Social- 
 istic work is nothing to the Socialist at home. Let a 
 young tea planter object in his railway carriage to a 
 Native who collects at bedtime his lice in a box, lest he 
 should hurt them by lying on them, and the fact that 
 the Indian Government has bestowed happiness and 
 prosperity on a million people inhabiting what was once 
 a desert of parched earth, is but a flourish of jingoism 
 to the outraged propriety of our universal reformer. 
 
 Perhaps few people in England realize, from the Tory 
 who violently supports it to the Socialist who as vio- 
 lently defames it, how far the Government of India 
 has gone along the road of what we should term in 
 England the wildest and most godless Socialism. To 
 begin with the soil of India is national property, and 
 the land tax is national revenue. Imagine such a state 
 of things in England! Again, the railways of India 
 are national property, and the State lets them out to 
 Syndicates and largely controls their management. Im- 
 
 1 Studies of Indian Life and Sentiment, by Sir Bamfylde Fuller, 
 p. I9S- 
 
330 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 agine such a condition of things in England! Again, 
 the national revenue of India, with no Navy to pay for, 
 is devoted in enormous sums to the development of the 
 country. Imagine such a thing in England ! Strange is 
 it not that the home Conservative defends in India what 
 he would die to oppose in England, and the Socialist 
 attacks in India what he so eloquently demands for Eng- 
 land! 
 
 Let the reader judge between the poor calumny of 
 these extreme Socialists and the sober words of Sir John 
 Hewett. That great administrator, in addressing an In- 
 dustrial Conference, convened by himself, to increase the 
 prosperity of the United Provinces, had the honesty 
 and courage to make these following references before 
 an audience composed chiefly of Indians: — 
 
 " One experienced manager of a cotton mill in these 
 provinces, speaking at the Industrial Conference at Be- 
 nares in 1905, said : — 
 
 " ' Go where you will and search where you may, you 
 will find everywhere the same complaint, and that is the 
 poor quality of labour. And it is poor because the la- 
 bouring man is not thrifty. He only values money for 
 whatever it can give him at the moment. He does not 
 value work for work's sake. To him it is unfortunately 
 a matter of complete indifference whether his work is 
 bad or good. He does not value time, because his prac- 
 tice is not to do as much as possible in a given time, but 
 as little as possible.' 
 
 " One of the leading merchants in Calcutta writes to 
 me as follows : — 
 
 " ' Keep in mind, however, the good old British sys- 
 tem of apprenticeship which ensures a boy mastering his 
 
THE LION IN THE WAY 331 
 
 craft and generally loving it too. The Indian people 
 don't go to work in the mills for the love of the thing, 
 but to make a living. I have spent thirty-three years 
 inside mills here, but not one Indian has suggested an 
 improvement in machinery or treatment of raw ma- 
 terial. Such a state of things would be impossible in 
 Britain. The workman there is very low down in the 
 scale who does not plan and think out schemes to make 
 his tools more effective.' 
 
 " Mr. Chatterjee has noticed the low intellectual 
 standard of the handloom weavers, and advocates ' a 
 very wide extension of primary education among the 
 weaving classes.' " 
 
 And he proceeded as follows : — 
 
 " Gentlemen, when I began my address I said that the 
 problem before us was no light one. It is equally cer- 
 tain that it is of the utmost importance to this country 
 that every effort should be made to solve it without de- 
 lay. In no country that I know of have the conditions 
 now existing in India ever presented themselves before. 
 We have a large and expanding railway system; we 
 have four or five great centres of industry which would 
 compare favourably with many of the industrial centres 
 of Europe; we have the richest possible collection of 
 mineral and vegetable products ; we have a foreign trade 
 of nearly 212 millions sterling, much of which consists 
 in the export of our valuable raw products in return for 
 manufactured articles made in the United Kingdom 
 and foreign countries. In certain of our ports you 
 might imagine yourself in one of the bustling cities of 
 Europe. Take a few miles' journey into the interior of 
 the country, and you will see hardly any signs of indus- 
 
332 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 trial enterprise, and will at once recognize that you are 
 in a country the inhabitants of which are far too much 
 dependent on a single industry, viz., agriculture. For 
 such a condition of things we can find no precedent, and 
 it is vain to look for precedent in our efforts to remedy 
 it. Two problems set themselves palpably before us. 
 First, we must educate people so as to divert their en- 
 ergies to industrial pursuits other than agricultviral. We 
 must educate skilled labour for all our industries. We 
 must develop among our workmen an interest in their 
 work to replace the feeling that the day's work is only 
 done for the day's wage; and we must bring up edu- 
 cated foremen, supervisors, and managers. We must en- 
 courage research into the potential value of our raw 
 produce. Secondly, we must endeavour to overcome the 
 shyness of capital, and success in this respect cannot be 
 achieved unless the leaders of the people throw them- 
 selves enthusiastically into the work. 
 
 " We have now to consider on the facts that will be 
 laid before us what principles we can and should adopt. 
 I have no fear that you will shrink from your responsi- 
 bilities as the most representative body hitherto assem- 
 bled in India to grapple with these weighty problems. 
 I have no fear that you will be timid in experiment or 
 fearful of risk where novel conditions must be dealt 
 with, or shackled by precedent where no true precedent 
 exists. I have no fear that you will accept past failure 
 without investigating its causes to see if they cannot be 
 removed. For my part I consider that the object to 
 be gained is worth a heavy sacrifice. I confess that my 
 imagination is powerfully affected by the opportunities 
 of the present occasion. We cannot regulate the sun- 
 
THE LION IN THE WAY 333 
 
 shine and the shower, the seed time and the harvest; 
 that is beyond the power of man. But we can control, 
 to some extent, the disposal of the products of the earth, 
 thereby opening new avenues to employment and spread- 
 ing greater prosperity over the land. We may make 
 some mistakes; we may spend some money unprofitably ; 
 but I am confident that we are entering to-day on labours 
 which will not be in vain." 
 
 Do not these remarks convince one of an honest de- 
 termination and even an enthusiastic devotion, in the 
 cause of Indian prosperity? Are they not the utter- 
 ances of a practical statesman whose supreme objective 
 is the progress and development of the common people? 
 
 Such is the spirit which animates the Indian Govern- 
 ment. Into whatever province I went I found men of 
 great ability and strong earnestness, spending them- 
 selves for the peoples of India, giving their days to the 
 labour of promoting the wealth and happiness of de- 
 mocracy — and enthusiastic about it. In no single 
 province did I hear of any legislation which by the great- 
 est stretch of imagination could be designated class leg- 
 islation; the entire energies of Government, the entire 
 forces of a brilliant and assiduous Civil Service, are de- 
 voted to the uplifting and safeguarding of Indian de- 
 mocracy. 
 
 I do not strain metaphor when I liken the twelve 
 hundred Englishmen at the head of the Indian Gov- 
 ernment to the managers of a commercial enterprise 
 whose whole object and purpose in existence is the pros- 
 perity of their undertaking. Between each province 
 there is a jealousy, a trade rivalry, a spirit of compet- 
 ing enthusiasm. It is the .strain and energy of these 
 
334 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 countrymen of ours to excel each other in the great ad- 
 venture of Indian prosperity. 
 
 Consider for a moment what this Government has 
 done. First, it has established peace throughout the 
 length and breadth of India, a peace in which the 
 humblest outcast can walk unafraid and the most in- 
 dustrious pursue his calling without risk. This by itself, 
 considering the racial conflicts and religious animosities 
 of the immense continent, is an achievement of the first 
 magnitude. But the Government has not been content 
 with this achievement. It has lighted the torch of edu- 
 cation, and it has preached the gospel of humanity. The 
 widow is no longer allowed to immolate herself upon the 
 pyre of her husband; the rich man is no longer allowed 
 to rob and oppress the poor; the devotees are no longer 
 allowed to fling themselves under the wheels of Jagan- 
 nat ; torture has ceased as a legal instrument, and human 
 sacrifices have been stamped out. Hospitals have been 
 built for the poor whom the Brahman priest and the 
 caste doctor would not touch. Colleges have been set 
 up for the youth who desires learning. The doors of 
 the Civil Service have been opened freely to Indians of 
 every race and caste. Smallpox has been largely brought 
 under control. Famine is recognized as Government's 
 concern. And the revenue of the State has been de- 
 voted with lavish hands to reclaiming the desert, regen- 
 erating humanity, and prospering the hand of Science. 
 A more Socialistic Government, as I said above, is 
 scarcely to be found in the whole world. If it is not a 
 Government of the people for the people, it is a Govern- 
 ment of enlightened European democracy working for 
 progress, enlightenment, and truth among a people 
 
THE LION IN THE WAY 335 
 
 dominated and degraded and enslaved by ,a religious 
 aristocracy. It is a Government which has bestowed 
 Freedom on those who were slaves. 
 
 Never was the real position of things in India better 
 stated than by Mr. Valentine Chirol in the " Conclu- 
 sion " to his great monograph on Indian Unrest: — 
 
 We do not rule India, as is sometimes alleged, by 
 playing ofif one race or one creed against another and 
 by accentuating and fostering these ancient divisions, 
 but we are able to rule because our rule alone prevents 
 these ancient divisions from breaking out once more 
 into open and sanguinary strife. [British rule is the 
 form of government that divides Indians the least. 
 The majority of intelligent and sober-minded Indians 
 who have a stake in the country welcome it and sup- 
 port it because they feel it to be the only safeguard 
 against the clash of rival races and creeds, which 
 would ultimately lead to the oppressive ascendency of 
 some one race or creed; and the great mass of the 
 population yield to it an inarticulate and instinctive 
 acquiescence because it gives them a greater measure 
 of security, justice, and tranquillity than their forbears 
 ever enjoyed. 
 The same writer in summing up the tributary causes 
 
 of modern unrest — 
 
 the great confused movement which is stirring the 
 stagnant waters of Indian life — 
 
 enumerates — 
 
 the steady impact of alien ideas on an ancient and 
 obsolescent civilization; the more or less imperfect 
 assimilation of those ideas by the few; the dread and 
 
336 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 resentment of them by those whose traditional as- 
 cendency they threaten; the disintegration of old be- 
 liefs, and then again their aggressive revival ; the care- 
 less diffusion of an artificial system of education, 
 based none too firmly on mere intellectualism, and 
 bereft of all moral or religious sanction; the applica- 
 tion of Western theories of administration and of 
 jurisprudence to a social formation stratified on lines 
 of singular rigidity; the play of modem economic 
 forces upon primitive conditions of industry and 
 trade; the constant and unconscious but inevitable 
 friction between subject races and their alien rulers; 
 the reverberation of distant wars and distant racial 
 conflicts; the exaltation of an Oriental people in the 
 Far East; the abasement of Asiatics in South Africa 
 — all these and many other conflicting influences cul- 
 minating in the inchoate revolt of a small but very 
 active minority which, on the one hand, frequently 
 disguises under an appeal to the example and sym- 
 pathy of Western democracy a reversion to the old 
 tyranny of caste and to the worst superstitions of 
 Hinduism, and, on the other hand, arms, with the 
 murderous methods of Western Anarchism, the 
 fervour of Eastern mysticism compounded in varying 
 proportions of philosophic transcendentalism and de- 
 generate sensuousness. 
 
 I have the highest authority for saying that Indian 
 unrest, while it is a troublesome matter, is not suffi- 
 ciently serious to cause alarm. It is impossible that 
 any mutiny could dislodge the British Raj, and the re- 
 sult of a sanguinary revolution, if it ever came to that 
 
THE LION IN THE WAY 337 
 
 would (I am told) only serve to make us better friends. 
 Without artillery the mutineers would be powerless 
 against our trained forces; and the telegraph, the tele- 
 phone, and wireless telegraphy are weapons in the 
 hands of Government not only to guard against sur- 
 prise but to attack instantly at every point of danger. 
 Furthermore, there is no indication that the revolution- 
 ists dream of so prodigious a folly as a second mutiny; 
 all the evidence points to the likelihood that they will 
 even abandon murder and assassination and develop some 
 form of passive resistance or universal strike. 
 
 The best way to prevent any such catastrophe is the 
 original policy of the Indian Government, a policy which 
 is now receiving the support of all cultured and sensible 
 people, namely, a policy of industrial development. And 
 I should like to say that there is not a province or district 
 in India, the Government of which does not gratefully 
 acknowledge the great assistance it has received in this 
 field of enterprise from the Salvation Army. To the 
 Salvation Army belongs the credit of Land Banks, the 
 revival of spinning as a cottage industry,^ the growing 
 of the most suitable mulberries for silkworms, the em- 
 ployment of Criminal Tribes in agriculture, the extended 
 use of cassava, and many other highly important develop- 
 ments in trade and industry. 
 
 For too long the young men of India have regarded 
 Western education only as a ladder to Civil Service em- 
 ployment or as an avenue to the Bar. Disappointed of 
 
 iThe improved handloom invented by an English Salvationist in 
 India has won gold medals and first prizes at innumerable exhibi- 
 tions, and is now being largely adopted by the Government as a 
 means for saving the millions of hand weavers from extinction. 
 
338 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 employment after years of admirable thrift and most 
 painful study, they have become the easy and embittered 
 victims of the seditionist and the priest. To turn their 
 attention from the learned professions to the active field 
 of commercial and industrial expansion, to give them the 
 glow of enterprise and the courage of initiative, this is 
 the policy of the Indian Government and already it is 
 beginning to justify itself. 
 
 " The hour of political reform," said Madame de 
 Remusat, " is also that of educational schemes." India 
 illustrates the truth of this significant saying, and the 
 whole future of the continent may be said to hang on the 
 educational schemes which are now fermenting in the 
 minds of people conscious of a political existence. On 
 this subject, beyond venturing to express the opinion that 
 Government should raise the salaries of schoolmasters 
 to a point which will attract the first and noblest minds 
 in the country — perhaps the simplest solution of the Ed- 
 ucational Question in England as well as in India — I 
 will make a few quotations from the addresses of Sir 
 George Clarke, Governor of Bombay, to show my read- 
 ers in what spirit the Indian Government is confronting 
 perhaps the most difficult of all its problems : — 
 
 " In words which ought to be printed in letters of gold 
 in every class room in the world, Ruskin has defined 
 what should be the aims of the schoolmaster. ' The en- 
 tire object of education,' he wrote, ' is to make people 
 not merely do the right things, but enjoy the right things 
 — not merely industrious, but to love industry — not 
 merely learned, but to love learning — not merely pure, 
 but to love purity — not merely just, but to hunger and 
 thirst after justice.' Those are counsels of perfection 
 
THE LION IN THE WAY 339 
 
 enshrining ideals which may be unattainable except in in- 
 dividual cases. Yet surely Senates of Universities and 
 Governments, which have grave responsibilities for the 
 education of the people, in India especially, should hold 
 fast to such ideals which supply the only valid tests by 
 which their educational achievements can be judged. In 
 so far as education in India produces results approxi- 
 mating to the conditions laid down by Ruskin, it will be a 
 life-giving force, purifying and invigorating the body 
 politic. It can only accomplish these results if the true 
 ends are ever kept in view by those who direct its policy 
 and its methods. 
 
 " Our education is never complete. We can and we 
 ought to go on learning to our life's end, and at best 
 Collegiate training is but a foundation upon which we 
 may build if we choose. To those of you who have made 
 no plans for the future, I suggest consideration of the 
 teacher's profession. It is poorly paid as I have pointed 
 out. It is not honoured as it should be and will be in 
 time to come; but there is no other walk of life in which 
 a young Indian can render his country so great and so 
 lasting a service. It is the earnest and conscientious 
 teacher alone who can train the minds and bodies and 
 help to form the characters of the rising generation. 
 He only can effectively fight the good fight against super- 
 stition, ignorance and ruinous customs. The noble spirit 
 of self-renunciation dwells among you, and in the ranks 
 of our teachers we have some shining examples of prac- 
 tical devotion. As I hope I have explained, we need many 
 more such examples, and for those of you who will ac- 
 cept self-sacrifice and forgo material advantage fine ca- 
 reers are open — careers which will develop what is best 
 
340 OTHER 'SHEEP 
 
 in you and will assuredly bring you abiding happiness. 
 I conclude my address as I began with some words of 
 Ruskin in which we may all find help and inspiration: 
 ' Let every dawn of morning be to you as the beginning 
 of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close; then 
 let every one of these short lives leave its sure record 
 of some kindly thing done for others, some goodly 
 strength or knowledge gained for yourselves.' To the 
 young men and women who to-day end their period of 
 pupilage and stand at the great parting of the ways in 
 their lives I can offer no truer advice than these noble 
 words." 
 
 From these brief extracts the fair-minded reader will 
 perceive not only that the Educational Question in India 
 is regarded in a wise and statesmanlike manner, but that 
 the spirit which informs the Indian Government is one 
 of which England has reason to be proud. There is in 
 that Government, whatever its shortcomings, a note of 
 fatherliness, a strain of paternal tenderness; and how- 
 ever implacable it may be to fomenters of disorder and 
 preachers of sedition, it acts as a providence to the law- 
 abiding millions of India, and seeks their welfare while it 
 covers their weakness with the shield of the British Navy. 
 
 There is a Lion in the way, but this Lion is not so 
 fierce as he is painted. Let any man turn to the past 
 history of India and compare those blood-stained pages 
 with the documents of the past fifty years, and he must 
 come to the conclusion, if he is a just judge, that the 
 presence of the British Lion in India has been a mercy 
 to that country and a blessing to civilization. 
 
 In the attitude of Government towards Education, in 
 
THE LION IN THE WAY 341 
 
 their realization that moral teaching is essential, and that 
 the schoolmaster should serve commerce as well as lit- 
 erature, one perceives the great hope of the future. And 
 we may be certain that just as the Indians free themselves 
 from the incivilities, isolations, and social barbarisms of 
 their perishing superstitions, so they will meet in the 
 Englishmen of India a body of men not only willing to 
 be their friends but ready to share with them even more 
 than at the present moment the burden of Government. 
 
THE NEW BIRTH 
 
 " It was Christianity," says Mr. Bernard Lucas, " which 
 awoke the West from the sleep which followed the 
 mighty activity of the Greek mind, and set her feet in 
 the path' of true progress. It is Christianity which has 
 stirred India from her still longer sleep, and it will be 
 Christianity which will offer to her the material for a 
 spiritual life and thought which will bring untold bless- 
 ing to the world." Indirectly, as I have attempted to 
 show all through this book, the religion of Jesus has 
 exercised a vast and miraculous influence on the peoples 
 of India; and this influence would unquestionably have 
 been vaster, more miraculous, and direct, if Christianity 
 had been presented to India by a united and rejoicing 
 Christendom as the blessing and good-news of a Heaven- 
 Father. 
 
 In concluding this book I should like to leave in the 
 reader's mind, with the sentiment of hope, the stronger 
 and more masculine inspiration of an earnest purpose. 
 India can be won for progress, because it can be won 
 for Christ; and it can be won for Christ swiftly and 
 victoriously if the followers of Jesus awaken to the new- 
 birth of Christianity and give themselves with enthusi- 
 asm to this moving spirit of emerging truth. 
 
 What is this new-birth of a religion whose glory is 
 that never once has it stood still but always has marched 
 abreast of the conquering human mind? In a single 
 
 342 
 
THE NEW BIRTH 343 
 
 word, it is a resurrection from sorrow to joy. All that 
 the strokes of science have inflicted on this religion is to 
 destroy its accretions; the religion itself rises from the 
 ruin of those accretions with its first beauty undimin- 
 ished and its first incomparable glory heightened and 
 enhanced. No longer do men regard themselves as liv- 
 ing under the frown of the displeasure of the Infinite; 
 no longer do they feel themselves to be miserable and 
 guilty wretches crawling through the hostilities of three- 
 score years and ten to the anguish of eternal torment; 
 no longer have they any consciousness of the Everlast- 
 ing God as a blundering Creator. Fear towards the 
 Universe has died out of the European mind. They 
 have ceased to think of a Devil in their recognition that 
 the first parent of all sickness, sorrow, misery, and evil 
 is human Ignorance. Every man who has dispelled igno- 
 rance by the light of Knowledge they recognize as a 
 servant of truth and a minister of God. And they will 
 never again, so long as civilization advances, surrender 
 their reasons and their souls to the magician and the 
 soothsayer. 
 
 In the first brightness of absolute knowledge, when 
 the Churches trembled and the atheist made his boast, 
 it seemed as if Jesus had fallen from the glory of Sav- 
 iour to the humbler greatness of prophet and idealist. 
 But it was only for a little while. The human heart, 
 whose emotions are ahead of all knowledge, the human 
 heart created by God and restless till it rests in Him, 
 looked back across the aeons of its journey under the 
 stars to see what light from heaven had streamed upon 
 the pathway of antiquity, what voice from , God had 
 sounded through the confusion of times past; and there 
 
344 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 was none greater than Jesus. In a sublime loveliness of 
 beauty, He met the searching gaze of the troubled, back- 
 ward-looking legions of humanity; and when they turned 
 to go forward again, He was there in front of them — < 
 the true Shepherd and the Light of the World. 
 
 He remains not only the one Ideal of humanity, but the 
 sole Hope of immortal life. He is the Way, because 
 our divinest instincts proclaim it right to follow Him: 
 the Truth, because in Him alone can the nations ad- 
 vance with safety: the Life, because by Him alone can 
 the soul be born again. 
 
 It is quite certain that men will come to Him more and 
 more ; indeed. He has never been so diligently sought, so 
 passionately desired, as in these present days; the very 
 controversy which still rages round the four little simple 
 beautiful documents which preserve for us the essential 
 sweetness of His Character, is but a witness to His at- 
 traction; nor can any man imagine a time in which it 
 will be for the world as if He had never existed. But, 
 there is one immense and separating difference between 
 the present-day quest of Jesus and the quest of other 
 times. It is not with a hunger to surrender the reason 
 and to rest in the bosom of authority like a tired and 
 frightened child, that the world now seeks the Christ; 
 it seeks Him by the reason and for the reason, swept to- 
 wards Him it is true by the purest instincts and divinest 
 emotions of the heart, but determined in the strength of 
 its God-given reason to find the absolute Jesus, not a 
 false Christ, not a Chimaera, not a Legend. 
 
 And it is surely the business of those to whom Christ 
 is a blessing and a powei", to clear away from before the 
 feet of those who seek Him all the obstacles and barri- 
 
THE NEW BIRTH 345 
 
 cades of error which timorous ignorance and jealous su- 
 perstition have set up in every age between the world and 
 its Light, and which still persist for the darkness of un- 
 numbered souls. 
 
 India, as I hope this book may be the means of show- 
 ing, brings home to the honest mind with an irresistible 
 force, the knowledge that well-nigh all our Christian 
 ceremonial and ritual is the vestigial product of supersti- 
 tion and idolatry. And India teaches us that a sacri- 
 ficing priesthood engirded by ceremonial and ritual has 
 always been the instrument of pessimism, terror, and 
 abasement. Reflection on these two indisputable facts 
 must force the mind to their two logical and illuminating 
 conclusions, conclusions which, the more they penetrate 
 the human conscience, the more swiftly will they hasten 
 the new-birth of Christianity. We must conclude that 
 the ceremonial and ritual of a degraded superstition can- 
 not be the true method of a spiritual religion ; and equally 
 are we forced to the conclusion that the pessimism of 
 our religion, so similar to the pessimism of Hinduism, 
 must have its origin in the tradition and authority which 
 have so closely copied the methods of superstition. 
 
 Out of these conclusions there rises the new Chris- 
 tianity, the " evangelium," or " glad-tidings," of Jesus. 
 Always there has been this Christianity living in the 
 hearts of men, but it has never yet become a world re- 
 ligion. The morality of Jesus has saved the world from 
 death, but the religion of Jesus has not yet fired the world 
 with joy. Not until men live beautiful and fearless lives 
 in the sure knowledge that God is a Father, will the 
 earth ring with joy and the soul of man sing with bless- 
 ing. And never will the Fatherhood of God come home 
 
346 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 to humanity while the Athanasian definitions, the quar- 
 relling theologies, and the trivial superstitions of sym- 
 bolism stand between the souls of men and the pro- 
 nouncement of Christ — " I am come that they might 
 have life and that they might have it more abundantly. 
 . . . My Joy no man taketh from you. . . . 
 Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is My 
 brother, and My sister, and mother. . . . Come 
 unto Me, all ye that are weary and heavy-laden. . . . 
 I am the Light of the World. . . . When he was 
 yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compas- 
 sion. . . . Our Father Which art in Heaven." 
 
 It is the work of the Twentieth Century to rescue the 
 glad-tidings of Jesus from the ruins of the gloom, and 
 menace, and pessimism of a falling ecclesiasticism. We 
 cannot hope for an immediate millennium or even antici- 
 pate a cessation of hostilities. There will be fierce fight- 
 ing, a period of darkness and despair, perhaps a moment 
 of relapse into paganism. But the victory will come. 
 Christ will conquer because there is no other. 
 
 And I cannot imagine a more hopeful beginning for 
 this great conflict than that which India appeals to us to 
 make now; a beginning which all those who really rely 
 upon Christ, and not upon the habits or traditions of a 
 particular Church, should be most willing to make — 
 the deliverance of a single message. 
 
 It is impossible at present that the missionaries should 
 teach either a uniformity in acts of worship or that they 
 should agree to an entire absence of ceremonial ; but they 
 would be only the soulless parts of a dead machinery if 
 they refused to consider whether they cannot agree to 
 
THE NEW BIRTH 347 
 
 present to India a single message of the essentials of 
 Christianity. 
 
 The Fatherhood of God, the necessity for a cleansed 
 heart, the certainty of rest in Christ, the surety of ever- 
 lasting joy and felicity for the pure and righteous — 
 these simple things are the essentials of that teaching 
 which is now broken up into a hundred contradictory, 
 contending, and competing theses. Is it not possible to 
 agree that only the essentials, the indisputable and beauti- 
 ful essentials of the Master's teaching, should be pre- 
 sented to India, that all which lies beyond the moral 
 essentials should be left to India herself to discover and 
 evolve ? 
 
 At least let the Churches decide this central and de- 
 termining question- — Is the religion of Jesus only an 
 evolution of the older religion of Buddha, the religion of 
 sorrow, resignation, and non-existence, or is it the sole 
 and solitary religion of joy, action, and hunger after 
 God? 
 
 Not only India waits for that answer, but the whole 
 world. 
 
NOTES 
 
 Page 12 
 
 The success of the Salvation Army in India must not be 
 ascribed only to the genius of Fakir Singh. To begin with, his 
 marriage to a daughter of General Booth carried into the 
 mission field of India one of the most able children of a unique 
 family, and the influence of Emma Booth in the affairs of the 
 Salvation Army in India is felt to this day. The success of the 
 Army, as so many of the narratives in this book witness, seems 
 really to belong to the sincerity of its missionaries, both Euro- 
 pean and Indian. When Fakir Singh left India for America 
 the work proceeded without let or hindrance, carried forward 
 by the earnestness and devotion of its officers and converts. 
 The personality of General Booth has also been a vast influence 
 in this crusade. His visits to India have been occasions of 
 extraordinary enthusiasm. It is also his plan of employing 
 women as missionaries which has had such an awakening 
 effect upon the peoples of India, particularly the poorer classes 
 who are so wonderfully amenable to sympathy and gentleness. 
 If I have formed a correct opinion, the secret of the success of 
 the Salvation Army in India is the same in America, England, 
 and most of the other countries where it has organized itself, 
 to wit, tremendous earnestness carried forward on a tide of 
 sweeping enthusiasm inspired by unquestioning faith in the 
 Bible and unfailing love for humanity. And one must not 
 omit from our count, the organizing genius of Mr. Bramwell 
 Booth who from the International Headquarters of the 
 Salvation Army in Queen Victoria Street, directs this great 
 tide of world-wide enthusiasm and keeps the Army ever at its 
 
 work of redemption. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 349 
 
350 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 Page 37 
 
 The following account from the book of Abbe Dubois men- 
 tioned below, will give the reader a luminous idea of the 
 Hindu's attitude both toward women and sorrow : — 
 
 The happiest death for a woman is that which overtakes her 
 while she is still in a wedded state. Such a death is looked 
 upon as the reward of goodness extending back for many 
 generations; on the other hand, the greatest misfortune that 
 can befall a wife is to survive her husband. 
 
 Should the husband die first, as soon as he breathes his last 
 the widow attires herself in her best clothes and bedecks herself 
 with all her jewels. Then, with all the signs of the deepest 
 grief, she throws herself on his body, embracing it and uttering 
 loud cries. She holds the corpse tightly clasped in her arms 
 until her parents, generally silent spectators of this scene, are 
 satisfied that this first demonstration of grief is sufficient, 
 when they restrain her from these sad embraces. She yields 
 to their efforts with great reluctance, and with repeated pre- 
 tences of escaping out of their hands and rushing once again 
 to the hfeless remains of her husband. Then, finding her 
 attempts useless, she rolls on the ground like one possessed, 
 strikes her breast violently, tears out her hair, and manifests 
 many other signs of the deepest despair. Now, are these noisy 
 professions of grief and affliction to be attributed to an excess 
 of conjugal affection, to real sorrow? The answer will appear 
 rather perplexing, when we remark that it is the general 
 custom to act in this manner, and that all these demonstrations 
 are previously arranged as a part of the ceremonies of 
 mourning. 
 
 After the first outbursts of grief, she rises, and, assuming a 
 more composed look, approaches her husband's body. Then 
 in one continuous strain, which would hardly be possible under 
 real affliction, she apostrophizes her husband in a long series 
 of questions, of which I give a summary below: — 
 
 "Why hast thou forsaken me? What wrong have I done 
 thee that thou shouldst thus leave me in the prime of my life? 
 Had I not for thee all the fondness of a faithful wife ? Have I 
 
THE NEW BIRTH 351 
 
 not always been virtuous and pure? Have I not borne thee 
 handsome children ? Who will bring them up ? Who will take 
 care of them hereafter ? Was I not diligent in all the duties of 
 a household? Did I not sweep the house every day, and did 
 I not make the floor smooth and clean? Did I not ornament 
 the floor with white tracery? Did I not cook good food for 
 thee? Didst thou find grit in the rice I prepared for thee? 
 Did I not serve up to thee food such as thou lovedst, well 
 seasoned with garlic, mustard, pepper, cinnamon, and other 
 spices? Did I not forestall thee in all thy wants and wishes? 
 What didst thou lack while I was with thee? Who will take 
 care of me hereafter ? " 
 
 And so on. At the end of each sentence uttered in a plaintive 
 chanting tone, she pauses to give free vent to her sobs and 
 shrieks, which are also uttered in a kind of rhythm. The 
 women that stand around join her in her lamentations, chant- 
 ing in chorus with her. Afterwards, she addresses the gods, 
 hurling against them torrents of blasphemies and imprecations. 
 She accuses them openly of injustice in thus depriving her of 
 her protector. This scene lasts till her eloquence becomes 
 exhausted, or her lungs are wearied out and she is no longer 
 capable of giving utterance to her lamentations. She then 
 retires to rest for a while, and to prepare some new phrases 
 against the time when the body is being prepared for the 
 funeral pyre. 
 
 The more vehement the expressions of a woman's grief, the 
 more eloquent and demonstrative her phrases, the more 
 apparently genuine her contortions on such occasions, so much 
 the more is she esteemed a woman of intelligence and educa- 
 tion. The young women who are present pay the most minute 
 attention to all she says or does; and if they observe anything 
 particularly striking in her flights of rhetoric, in her attitudes, 
 or in any of her efforts to excite the attention of the spectators, 
 they carefully treasure it in their memory, to be made use of 
 should a similar misfortune ever happen to themselves. If a 
 wife who was really afflicted by the death of her husband con- 
 fined herself to shedding real tears and uttering real sobs, she 
 would be thoroughly despised and considered an idiot. The 
 
3S2 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 parents of a young widow once complained to me of her 
 stupidity as follows : " So foolish is she that, on the death of 
 her husband, she did not utter a single word; she did nothing 
 but cry, without saying anything." 
 
 Page 53 
 
 " The most popular of the divine hierarchy of the Hindus — 
 the goddess known as the ' Great Mother ' — is depicted as an 
 ogress. She is black in face: her eyes are fierce: blood drops 
 from crimson mouth and protruding tongue: she is garlanded 
 with human skulls. . . . The cult of Siva has degenerated 
 into phallic-worship in one direction and into demon-worship in 
 the other." ..." Kali is propitiated by bloody sacrifices of 
 buffaloes and goats. To the extremists among her followers 
 sexual restraint is a denial of authority. In her name prostitu- 
 tion has become a temple service, and her attributes have 
 corrupted deplorably the instincts of youth." — Studies of Indian 
 Life and Sentiment, by Sir Bamfylde Fuller. 
 
 3f£ n^ 'T^ 'f* 
 
 Page 56 
 
 The reader who wishes to make himself acquainted with the 
 barbarous customs which have flourished under Hinduism, 
 from superstitions connected with animals down to mutilations, 
 tortures and human sacrifices (Meriah) could not do better than 
 consult the Ethnographic Notes in Southern India of Mr. 
 Edgar Thurston, published by the Madras Government. 
 
 Page 58 
 
 Dr. Barnett, Professor of Sanskrit at University College, 
 London — a discriminating admirer of Eastern literature, de- 
 scribes the Brahmanic priestcraft as " perhaps more crassly ma- 
 
NOTES 353 
 
 terial in spirit and in practice than any other in the records of 
 literature." In The Heart of India, page 25, he says of this 
 priestcraft : " An immensely intricate web of ritual — often of 
 the most gruesome and butcherly kind — was spun around the 
 whole of Indian life, with the avowed object of forcing from 
 the powers of nature the gifts of worldly welfare which were 
 theirs to bestow; and the ghostly power of the Brahman be- 
 came supreme in the land." 
 
 At pages 19 and 20, he says, " In Indian metaphor, the gods 
 are the milch-kine of the faithful, the priests their milkers. 
 Wealth and worldly welfare are the chief objects of religion." 
 
 The same author quotes (page 112) some Telugu satires on 
 the Brahmans: "Will the application of white ashes do away 
 with the smell of a wine-pot? Will a cord cast over your neck 
 make you twice-born? What are you better for smearing your 
 body with ashes? Your thoughts should be set on God alone; 
 for the rest, an ass can wallow in dirt as well as you. The 
 books that are called Vedas are like courtesans, deluding men, 
 and wholly unfathomable: . . ." In spite of this contempt, 
 in spite of a hundred efforts to get rid of this insolently tyran- 
 nical and obviously superstitious priestcraft, Brahmanism re- 
 mains the master of India. 
 
 Page 152 
 
 The Abbe Dubois in his admirable book, Hindu Manners, 
 Customs, and Ceremonies, tells the following stories of two 
 Indians who sought to become holy men after the Hindu 
 fashion : — 
 
 " I was a novice for four months," said one of them, " under 
 a Sannyasi who had built himself a hermitage in a lonely spot 
 not very far from the town of Bellapuram. Following his in- 
 structions, I spent the greater part of each night awake, 
 occupied in keeping my mind an absolute blank and thinking 
 of nothing. I made superhuman efforts to hold my breath as 
 long as possible, and only breathed when I was on the point 
 of fainting. This suffocating exercise made me perspire pro- 
 
354 OTHER SHEEP 
 
 fusely. One day, at high noon, I thought I saw a bright 
 moon, which seemed to move and sway from side to side. 
 Another time I imagined myself enveloped in darkness at 
 midday. My director, the Sannyasi, who had warned me that 
 while going through this course of penance I should see 
 marvels, was greatly pleased when I mentioned these visions 
 to him. He congratulated me on the progress I was making, 
 and prescribed fresh exercises which were even more severe 
 than the first. The time was not far distant, he assured me, 
 when I should experience much more surprising results from 
 my penance. At last, worn out by these foolish and fatiguing 
 practices, and fearing lest my brain might really be turned, I 
 left the Sannyasi and his meditative penances, and returned to 
 my former state of life." 
 
 The other man said : — 
 
 " The Sannyasi under whose direction I placed myself had 
 built his hermitage at some distance from the fort of Namakal, 
 in a desert spot. Amongst other exercises which he lay down 
 for me, he obliged me to stare at the sky every day without 
 blinking my eyes or changing my position. This prolonged 
 effort inflamed my eyes terribly and often gave me dreadful 
 headaches. Sometimes I thought I saw sparks of fire in the 
 air; at others I seemed to see fiery globes and other meteors. 
 My teacher was much pleased with the success of my efforts 
 and with the progress I was making. He had only one eye, 
 and I knew that he had lost the other in following out this 
 practice, which he assured me was indispensable if I wished to 
 attain to perfect spirituality. But at last I could bear it no 
 longer, and fearing that I might lose the sight of both eyes, I 
 bade farewell to meditation and the celestial firmament. I also 
 tried another kind of exercise for a time. My master told 
 me that an infallible means for making rapid progress towards 
 spirituality was to keep all the apertures of my body completely 
 closed, so that none of the five pranams (winds) which are in 
 it could escape. To do this I had to place a thumb in each 
 ear, close my lips with the fourth and little fingers of each 
 hand, my eyes with the two forefingers, and my nostrils with 
 the two middle fingers ; and to close the lower orifice I had to 
 
NOTES 355 
 
 cross my legs and sit very tightly on one of my heels. While 
 in this attitude I had to keep one nostril tightly shut, and 
 leaving the other open I had to draw in a long deep breath; 
 then, immediately closing that nostril, I had to open the other 
 and thoroughly exhale the air I had first inhaled. It was of 
 the greatest importance that the inhalation and the exhalation 
 should not be performed through the same nostril. I continued 
 this exercise until I lost consciousness and fainted away." 
 
 THE END 
 
''im 
 
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