Globe Trotter in India 200 Years Ago

THE
GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA

TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO
Unb tber JnMan Studies
BY
MICHAEL MACMILLAN B.A. (Oxon.)

Fellow of the Bombay
University, and Professor of English Literature
at Elphin stone
College, Bombay
LONDON
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO.
PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1895
RY MORSE STEPHENS
ê
PREFACE
With the exception of the paper on Hered-
ity and the Regeneration of India, originally
delivered as a lecture to the Elphinstone

College Union, the following papers have
appeared before in the pages of the Bombay

Gazette, Calcutta" Review, and Madras
Christian College Magazine, the proprietors
of which have kindly consented to their re-
publication. The quotations from Gemelli

Careri are taken from the translation in
Churchill 's Voyages.
512926
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. The Globe Trotter in India Two Hun-
dred Years Ago :
(i) gemelli careri on his way to india i
(2) gemelli careri in the persian gulf

and indian ocean . . .
13
(3) gemelli careri in portuguese india 25
(4) a visit to the great mogul .

2)3
(5) gemelli careri and his times .

41
II. An Anglo-Indian Man of Letters .

51
III. Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases .

77
IV. Heredity and the Regeneration of

India . . . .
.115
V. Some Indian Proverbs . .
.141
VI. Indian and Homeric Epics . .
171
VII. Morality of the Mahabharata . .

193
Gbe (Slobe trotter in 3nMa Zxoo
Ibun&reb JPeare ago*
GEMELLI CARERI ON HIS WAY TO INDIA.
Gemelli Careri, one of the early European

travellers who visited India before the days of
the English supremacy, was born at Naples in
1651 and died in 1725. He began his journey
round the world, in the course of which he
visited India, on June 13th, 1693, and ended it
on Dec. 3rd, 1699. Although it was family

troubles that drove this Italian doctor in civil
law to start on his long journey, he must have
had a natural inclination for travelling, as he had
already made a tour through Europe in 1683.
Before commencing the recital of his travels, he
gives his readers some hints as to the various

routes to India and as to what the eastern
traveller ought to take with him, so that his
first chapter might have done very well as an
2 THE GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA
introduction to a seventeenth century Murray's

Handbook to India. Of the routes to India avail-
able in those days lie mentions four. The first was
to sail round the Cape in a French, English, Dutch
or Portuguese East Indiaman. But by this route
there was " much danger to life or at least to
health the midst of these horrible tempests
in
and tedious calms, which keep the spirit in con-
tinual alarm, while the body is entirely fed on
spoiled food, and one drinks no water which
isnot tainted and full of worms, all which is due
to the sojourn of thirty or forty days that the
vessel has to make on the Equator. This voyage
may from
cost 100 to 200 pieces of eight accord-
ing to the part of the ship in which you have your
berth." The second route was to go by Leghorn
or Malta to Alexandria, and thence to sail up the
Nile to Cairo, and continue the journey in
Mahometan vessels through the Red Sea. The
third and commonest route for Europeans was
to sail from Leghorn to Alexandretta or Aleppo,
and thence proceed to Ispahan by a choice of five

caravan routes, all of which, however, were in-
fested with robbers. The fourth and safest route,
which Gemelli Careri followed himself and re-
commended to others, was to go to Constantinople

and then on across the Black Sea to Trebizond.
TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 3
As to the manner of travelling, he recommended

those going to the East not to provide themselves
with large sums of money or letters of credit, but to
"
travel with merchandise. The traveller thereby
provides himself with a natural means of inter-
course with all nations, and even the most barbar-
ous welcome a merchant who brings them the
comforts of life, and think that in pillaging or
ill-treating him they would offend in his person

the right of nations and expose themselves to the
same treatment in the form of reprisals." The
best merchandise to take to the East would appear
at this time to have been the Waterbury watches
of the day, and the charms and balms which were
the precursors of Holloway's ointment and pills.
"
One should take these round and long crystals
in the shape of an olive made at Venice, because
Orientals buy them at a high price to ornament
their legs, which they always leave bare.
arms and
The theriac of Venice is still the most esteemed in
the East and at Ispahan. It can easily be
bartered for the precious balm of Persia, that is
called the balm of the mummy. A
large fortune
may be gained by making such an exchange with
one of the king's eunuchs, for whom it is collected.
To make very considerable gain with a small
capital and less trouble, it will be necessary to buy
at Malta these petrified serpents' tongues and eyes

found in the place where St. Paul, according to
the common tradition, caused all the venomous
animals of the island to assemble and die. They
can be bought wholesale at a sou apiece, and in
Persia and in India are sold for as much as two
crowns, and for much more in China experience
;
having made plain that the serpents of these

countries, however venomous they may be, do no
harm to those who wear one of these petrified
tongues inside a ring in such a way that the stone

touches the flesh. Emeralds sell well, because
their colour is extremely pleasing to Mahometans.
Cheap watches are in demand there." The

traveller is also recommended provide himself
to
before starting with a certain amount of medical

and surgical skill, including, if possible, the ability
to operate on diseased eyes. Provided with such
knowledge and a medicine box, the traveller was
" "
esteemed and caressed everywhere in Turkey,
Persia, and India, and had the chance of not
merely paying his way, but returning home rich by
the exercise of the healing art. After this pre-
liminary discourse on choice of route and equip-
ment, Gemelli Careri proceeds to commence the
account of his own journey.
On what he saw and did before he began to
TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. o
travel straight for India we need not dwell.
Suffice it to say that he spent some ten months in
preliminary travels through Egypt, the Holy Land,

and Turkey, before he landed at Trebizond on
April 21st, 1694. From Trebizond he went
through Asiatic Turkey andPersia, visiting on the
way Erzeroum, Kars, Erivan, Ispahan, Shiraz, and

finally reaching the Persian Gulf at Bander- Abbas
after a land journey of 176 days. On his way
through Turkish Asia he met with so much in-
civility, obstruction, and extortion, that

he looked
forward to the day when he should cross the
border as a release and respite from his troubles.

He tells us that, as soon as he got to the further
side of the river that parted the Turkish and
Persian Empires, he alighted down from his horse
to kiss the Persian soil that he had so long

yearned
to reach in order that he might be delivered from
the frauds of the Turks. Persia, however, though
an improvement upon Turkey, was not in every
respect a traveller's paradise. The officials and
people were more courteous to strangers and un-
believers, the caravanserais were all large and
"
magnificent brick buildings, so uniform and well
proportioned, that they are not inferior to the best
structures in Europe," but the Shah's messengers
had an unpleasant practice of requisitioning
travellers' horses for their own use, and the road

police exacted continually small fees for the protec-
tion they afforded. It is remarkable that not only
in Persia but also in Turkey our traveller, though
occasionally threatened, was never actually de-
spoiled by highway robbers. Perhaps the horrible
punishments inflicted on thieves were sufficiently
strong inducements to limit the dishonest to the
safer and more employment of petty ex-
profitable
tortion. Thus was
it that not many adventures of
an exciting character were encountered on the way.
At Erzeroum, owing to a difference of opinion
about paying the duty for a gun, a Turk ran after
Gemelli with a knife, and would have stabbed him
had he not been cleverly collared by Mr. Prescot,
an English merchant, who acted as consul in that
town. Between Ispahan and Shiraz, one of his
travelling companions, the Reverend Father
Francis, had to break the head of an obstinate
Armenian to settle a disputed charge. But with
these exceptions the travellers traversed the whole
distance from sea to sea without coming into
actual conflict with official or private persons.
Although no sensational adventures are re-
counted in Gemelli's diary of this journey, it is
in other respects full of interest. traveller A

through Asia in the seventeenth century was sure
to meet strange characters among the religious

men and merchants who had left Europe to make
their fortunes or preach Christianity in distant
countries. Most of his travelling companions were
Roman Catholic missionaries. We have seen how
one of them specimen of muscular
gave a
Christianity in a controversy with an Armenian.

Another of them was Father Villot, a Lorraine
missionary on his way to Erzeroum, who knew the
"
Armenian language perfectly, and invented a
game like that of the goose to make the
Armenians remember the divine mysteries, calling
it a game of devotion, because the said mysteries
were printed on it." of the pay and
The question
comfort of missionaries, which has lately been
discussed with some violence, seems to have already
cropped out in the seventeenth century for Father ;
Dalmasius, as he toiled up the Armenian hills on

"
foot, exclaimed, Come hither, gentlemen of the
Propaganda, and see what a condition we are in
here. Come along you who do not give a penny,
and I am satisfied you will give all you are worth
to be at home again." Among the secular characters
whom Gemelli met on his travels, a good specimen
of the baser sort was a Frenchman who turned up
at Erzeroum on the 8th of May. and "next day
became a Mahometan, despairing of ever obtain-
ing his pardon for two duels he fought, killing two

men in France." He pretended he had been sent
by the French King into Turkey as a spy. As a
specimen of the more prosperous adventurer let us
take James Norghcamer, Agent of the Dutch
Company in Ispahan, whom Gemelli found " shoot-
ing turtle doves in the garden which was delicious
for its fountainsand curious rows of trees. After
we had drank merrily, he showed me a dozen
horses and mares, the finest any monarch in the
world can be master of, as well for mettle as the
curious spots of several colours, not inferior to the

finest figure, nor could a painter colour them to
more perfection. Thence he led me to see his little
house of sport, where he had ten hawks fit for all
sorts of birds and beasts, with servants to look to
them ;
a custom they have learnt from the
Persians, whose greatest delight this is. He had
several pipes of gold and silver set with jewels
for those to smoke that came to bear him company
by his fish pond. In short, he lived great in all
respects."
On his way through Persia, Gemelli had the
good fortune to be in Ispahan at the time of the

death of the Shah, so that he records the funeral
ceremonies of one king and the coronation of an-
other. Toward the end of September Scia-Selemon
TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. V
(Shah Sulaiman) began to have a continual suc-

cession of apoplectic and although he dis-
fits,
tributed 3,700 tomans among the poor and ordered

all prisoners to be released, he died on the 29th.
The obsequies were performed on the afternoon
"
of August 1st. An hundred camels and mules
led the way, loaded with sweetmeats, and other
provisions to be given on the road to a thousand

persons that accompanied the body. Then came
the body in a large litter, covered with cloth
of gold, and carried by two camels led by the
king's steward. On the sides went two servants
burning the most precious sweets in two fire-pans
of gold, and a multitude of Mullahs saying their
prayers in a very noisy manner." In such state,
surrounded by all the great officials on foot and
with their garments rent, the dead body of the
king went to the tomb of his ancestors, and the
peasants on the way were expected not merely
to rend their garments, but also to gash their flesh
in token of their grief. The coronation of the
new king was by no means an equally imposing
ceremony. When the day considered auspicious
by the astrologers had arrived, "there was heard
an ungrateful sound of drums and trumpets play-
ing to Scia-Ossen (Shah Husain) then seated on
the throne, and in this mean manner was the
10 THE GLOBE TROTTEH IN INDIA
coronation of so great a king solemnised." Five

"
days later Gemelli was at a royal banquet. First
came several sorts of fruit and sweetmeats in
golden dishes. Then three great basins of pillau,
red, white, and yellow, covered with pullets and

other flesh which was distributed in gold plates.
I being at the ambassador's table ate no
pillau,
because I cannot endure butter, and therefore
tasted only some fruit seasoned with sugar or
vinegar. The king had the same diet on a table

covered with cloth of gold." The gold dishes
sound grand, but what shall we say of the king's
"
1,500 horses, noble creatures with gold troughs
before them and great pins of the same metal
"
to tie them by the feet At the court were
!
Akbar, son of the Great Mogul, and many am-

bassadors, including one from the Pope and another
from Poland, the latter of whom was trying in vain
to rouse the Persians to declare war against Turkey,
and so create a diversion in favour of the Eastern
European powers then engaged in war with the

Ottoman armies. At first it appeared that the
new king was something more than an Amurath
succeeding an Amurath. Love of drinking had
ruined his father in mind and body, and Scia-
Ossen signalised his succession by forbidding the
use of wine on pain of death, and breaking all
the vessels containing wine in the palace. Two

poor wretches caught drinking wine were publicly
bastinadoed till their nails dropt off, although
they pleaded ignorance of the edict. But the
hereditary disposition soon proved too strong for
his reforming zeal, and before Gemelli left the
country Scia-Ossen promised to become as good

a toper as his father.
To the antiquarian the most interesting passage
in the account of the journey through Persia
will be the elaborate description of the palace
of Darius at Persepolis, which, owing to the
delicacy of the carving and the architectural skill
displayed in it, was in Gemelli's opinion such a
"
splendid relic of antiquity, that there neither is
nor ever was a wonder in the world to compare
to it." Of more special interest to those of us
who live in India is his account of his visit to
the Goris, the Zoroastrians who remained in Persia,
refusing either to be converted to Mahometanism

or to leave their native country. They lived in
one long street a mile long, adorned with two
rows of green cinar trees. It is interesting to
compare manners and customs as they
their
appeared an observant traveller in 1694, with

to
the manners and customs of the modern Parsees.
They are very careful, he tells us, "to kill all

unclean creatures, there being a day in the year
appointed on which men and women go about

the fields killing the frogs. They drink wine
and eat swine's flesh, but it must be bred by
themselves and not have eaten anything unclean.
They abstain but five days in the year from eating

flesh, fish, butter, and eggs, and three other days
they eat nothing till night. Besides, they have
thirty festivals of their saints. When any of them

dies, they carry him out of the town or village
to a place wall'd in near the mountain. There
they tiethe dead body standing upright to a
pillar (there being many for the purpose) seven

spans high and going to prayers for the soul
;
of the person departed, they stand till the crows

come to eat the body ;
if they begin with the
right eye, they bury the body and return home

joyfully, lookingupon it as a good omen
they ;
if
fallupon the left eye, they go away disconsolate,

leaving the body unburied." The whole account
of the Goris deserves to be examined carefully
by the Parsees of to-day, and, if so examined,

wall be a good test passage by which to form an
opinion of the general accuracy or inaccuracy of
Gemelli's narrative.
GEMELLI CARERI IN THE PERSIAN GULF AND

INDIAN OCEAN.
It was at Bander Congo that Gemelli Careri first
found himself within the sphere of Indian in-
fluence. Indeed, Bander Congo might also be re-
garded as a part of Portuguese India, so great

were the powers and privileges granted to the
Portuguese in this port. There they received by
treaty from the king of Persia a tribute of five
horses and eleven hundred tomans a year. There
they had their flag flying and exercised jurisdic-
tion over all Christians in the town, and we are
even told that their predominance was so great
that no Christian could be converted to Mahomet-

anism there. Indeed, in the words of our author,
"
they had almost as absolute a command as if
they were in Goa, not only over their own subjects,

but all Christians who passed that way."
At the time of his arrival theHindu merchants
were adorning their houses inside and out with
fine cloth and lamps for the Diwali. They re-
ceived the stranger hospitably, and after sprinkling
him with rose-water entertained him with an ex-
hibition of Indian dancers. This account of what
he saw is interesting as being, perhaps, the first
description of an Indian nautch by an European

pen, although the performance has been so often
described by Western travellers to the East since
his time. The dancing women were "clothed some
in Persian, others in Indian dress, and sang in
both languages. The former had a dress of striped
silk which did not reach lower than the calf of the
leg and widened below like a petticoat. Under-
neath they had a long pair of drawers which
descended to the instep and were ornamented with
a circlet of silver. They had also a large number
of gold and on their toes and fingers
silver rings
which were painted with imma or red earth, as

also their teeth, the inside of their eyes, and their
foreheads were with black earth. They wore a
little cap bordered with a band of gauze, half silk
and half thread, whence fell their long hair down
to their waists. A long yellow and red veil covered
their shoulders and came eddying as far as their
arms. Besides double earrings they had in the

middle of their nostrils a great gold ring, and other
pendants fastened or
glued to their foreheads.
But of all these ornaments the most uncomfortable
seemed to me to be a stud gilt or of gold which
they passed through and through the curved part
at top of the nose, which appeared to us
the
Europeans a great deformity. They had a gold

carcanet or a collar of pearls, according to their
means, and beautiful bracelets. In this dress they

began to dance with much gravity to the sound of
a drum and of two pieces of metal, together with
the bells they had on their feet. Afterwards they
excited themselves by a thousand gestures and a
thousand immodest postures, cracking their fingers
with much grace and from time to time mingling
songs with the dance, which pleased me so much
that I wished to see them more than once, and
others also who danced in a different manner in
another house."
While Gemelli Careri was staying at Bander
Congo, the town was startled by a characteristic
Oriental tragedy. The Persian custom-house officer,
being displeased with the conduct of two rich Arab
merchants, took advantage of a visit they paid him
to poison them with diamond dust, which he put
in their cups of coffee. One of them drank the
but the other courteously gave his cup to
coffee,
the uncle of the Persian official. Both of those
who drank the poisoned coffee died in agony on
the following night. The servant who had pre-
pared the coffee disappeared, and it was said that

he had been killed for fear he might reveal his
master's crime.
At Bander Congo our traveller was first intro-
duced to the practices of the Hindu religion.

While there, he visited under a great banyan tree
two Hindu temples, and saw the Indian settlers on
the Persian coast taking their offerings of rice and
butter to the silver-headed and silver-footed image
of Bhawani. Every morning and evening they
went to the seashore to scatter rice on the water
for the benefit of the fishers and to bring back
water to wash the face and ears of their families.
The Indian merchants in Persiamade their best
profit out of pearls. Gemelli saw them separating
the large from the small ones by passing them
through copper sieves as if they were making shot.

By taking them to Surat they could make thirty
per cent, gain, if they managed to smuggle them in
without being detected by the custom-house officers
there.
In spite of the nautches, the shooting and the
Roman Catholic services that Gemelli enjoyed at
Bander Congo, he was eager to go on to India.
His friends, Father Francis and Father Constan-
tine, had taken passages for themselves and for
their slaves on an English ship bound for Surat,
and wanted him to accompany them. But he
would not embark on an English vessel, fearing
the rigorous custom-house at Surat and the French
who lay in wait for English ships attempting to
enter that harbour. So he preferred a Moorish

ship which was taking to Damaun eight horses
that the king of Portugal had received as tribute
from the king of Persia. Although he got his
passage for nothing, he had good reason to repent
of his choice before he reached his destination.
He got on board at five o'clock on a Friday-
night. As ships were not allowed to supply them-
selves with water at Bander Congo for fear of a
water famine there, they touched at Angon, but,
finding the cisterns there dry, had to go on two
miles further to the island of Kechini, where they
took in a supply of brackish water. Gemelli
landed on the island to shoot and take notes, and
found that the inhabitants knew how to manufac-
ture the dried fish familiar to us under the name of
"
Bombay ducks. They eat there excellent pil-
chards, as also in the island of Angon. The people

of the country have no better food. They have
them dried in the sun and keep them as substitutes
for bread during the whole year. Fine pearls are
also obtained in these two islands, but the islanders
like their pilchards better, as something more sure
and easy to fish." On the firstof December he
sailed past Ormuz. Nothing remained to give evi-
dence of the ancient wealth which won its im-
"
mortality in Milton's sounding verse. It grows
18 THE GIOBE TROTTER IN INDIA
neither tree nor herb, being all covered with very

white salt which causes its barrenness. The water
which falls from heaven is the only swe6t water to
be got for drinking there, and it is collected in

cisterns for the garrison of the fort."
Gemelli evidently kept a diary on his voyage, ex-
tracts from which we will endeavour to construct
out of his detailed narrative, taking care to add no-
thing, but abridging and omitting when convenient.

Dec. 4th. Entered Indian Ocean without losing
sight of land. The Moors continually occupied in
rubbing their eyelids with a black drug, good, they

say, for the eyes, pulling out with little pincers the
hair of their beards where they don't want them
to grow again, and covering the nails of their feet
and hands with red earth. They are, however,
much behaviour to strangers
less insolent in their
than the Turks. The captain and crew pay me

much respect on account of the recommendation of
the Superintendent of Bander Congo.
Dec. 7th. Becalmed before uninhabited islands,
used as retreats by corsairs. Excessively hot.
Indian winter seems like an Italian summer. The
Persians on board early in the morning strip them-
selves naked and throw plenty of salt water over
their heads. At evening a favourable wind took
us in sight of the island of Pishini. Our head
still to the east, in order that after making the

point of Diu we may sail more easily towards
Surat and Damaun.
Dee. 8th. False alarm.Vessel coming to meet us.
Amused to see the eagerness with which the Moors
take their rusty matchlocks on which they base

their hopes of defence, as the ship has only eight
cannon, bad and worse served. The ship sheers off,

showing a red flag in token of amity.
Dec. 9th. At daybreak a
ship in the east. The
Moors so frightened that, taking their arms, they
begin to howl like dogs barking at a distance.
They won't get into the skiff to board the vessel,
as I advise them to do, offering myself to go with
them. Presently the suspicious vessel sails away
northwards and puts an end to the cries and fears
of the Moors, who thought was one of the
it
corsairs, called Sangans, inhabiting the isles and

marshy places on the continent near Sind and
Gujarat.
In the evening a calm. Saw a Terrankin or
ship of Kanas. We
had some reason to fear that
itmight take advantage of the darkness of night
to surprise us, so I advised the captain to give
powder and shot to twenty soldiers who were on

board, and to have the artillery loaded and set
sentinels for the Moors travel like brutes without
;
any foresight, waiting for the enemy to be upon

them before they distribute ammunition and load.
Dec. 10th. The terrankin out of sight.
Dec. 11th. An annoying calm. In the evening
a sailor caught a fish
weighing pounds. As it
five
was the first

caught on the voyage, the sailors put
it up to auction, according to the custom of the
Moors, aud fastened it to the mast. After a brisk

competition a merchant bought it for twenty-two
abasis (about six crowns), which were divided
among the sailors for a dinner.

Dec. 12th and 13th.
Contrary winds. Changed
our course to avoid a boat supposed to be manned
by Sangans. At night, real danger in the form of

a squall.
Dec. 14th. Squall worse and wind contrary.
The ignorant sailors resolve to return to Kechini,
although we see an English vessel keeping steadily

on her course. In vain I encouraged them and
assured them that the tempest would not last.
They would not be persuaded. However, I had

prophesied truly the storm stopped before night,
:
and we returned to our course, the captain swear-

ing that it was for love of me that he turned the
ship's head eastward.

Saw for the first time the flying fish. It rises a
gun shot above the water and falls back again,

its wings being unable to sustain its weight of

ten or twelve ounces. It quits its natural element
when pursued by the fish called by the Portuguese
the abnous. This fish, which eats the others, is
blue, of good flavour, and enough for four persons.
Dec. 15th. A furious wind. We are in danger.
A tremendous fall of rain all night, wetting those
below as well as those on deck. The Moorish
women under the poop weep bitterly,
in the cabin
while their husbands on deck call upon Mahomet

to save them from the death which they think
near.
Dec. 16th. Fine weather again. The sailors
think they descry the continent at Giaske which

belongs to the Baluchis, and we make for it, but
can't regain what we lost the day before. All
this was due to the incredible ignorance of the
pilot who came at, a venture, and at Congo had
never been anything but a tobacconist. The
captain, who saw the danger to which we were
exposed by the pilot's inexperience, addressed a
long discourse to me and told me that I ought

to take charge of the ship. I excused myself,
and told him that the old pilot, after
having
chewed opium all day add to the imbecility
to
due to old age, sailed through the night with the
two topsails lowered and the head of the ship
towards the land, thereby exposing the ship to

the danger of running into rocks. If the captain
wished to save us from perishing, he must spread
all sail and turn the ship's head to sea. He
immediately gave orders to this effect, and prayed
me to attend to the compass and watch over the
management of the ship, because, in addition to
the fact that he no longer had confidence in the
ignorant pilot, he believed that I understood navi-

gation and naval charts. As the danger was
common, I yielded to the captain's prayer, con-
ducted the working of the ship, and made the
soldiers take their arms when any ship appeared
in sight. So that on the slightest occasion they
immediately call for the Aga Gemelli, maintain-

ing that as an European I ought to know every-
thing so high is the opinion they have of us.
Thus they make me play the part both of com-
mander and pilot. However, as I don't know
much more than them, all that I do is to guide
the ship southward during the day. As sleep is
a necessity, at night I leave the direction to the
ignorant pilot, who robs us of all the progress

made during the day.
The result is that, though we spread
Dec. 17th.
and had a good wind, we find ourselves
five sails
in the same place as we were in eleven days ago.

Such are the delays to which those are exposed

who embark on Moorish vessels. Towards even-
ing we sight some towns in the kingdom
of Sind,
a province of the Great Mogul.

Dec. 25th. I have such a quarrel with the
pilot, who did not work

the ship at all during the
night, that I refuse any

more to have anything
to do with the working of the ship.
Dec. 28th. At daybreak the ignorant sailors
and pilot think they have made out the town and
fortress of Diu, which projects into the sea more
than any other. On this glad tidings the captain
distributes to all according to the

the crew,
Moorish custom, cacciari, which is a mixture of
black beans, rice, and lentils. They eat it in
Indian fashion, dipping one hand in a plate of
melted butter and filling it in another plate with
the cacciari, which they carry to the mouth by
handfuls.
The sailors turn out to have been mistaken.
Having recognised their error, they turn the ship's
head towards the south for Damaun in such a way

that the wind, from being contrary, becomes
favourable.
Dec. 29th. have already said that the pilot
I
understood neither the compass nor charts. This
was how it happened that to-day, seeing them-
selves near land, they all persuaded themselves

that was the village of Maym (Mahim ?) near
it
Bassein, a town belonging to the Portuguese, and

therefore they had arrived at the end of their
voyage. All the crew manifested great joy, and

still more the merchants, who believed that they
had saved their persons and their goods. As for

the ignorant pilot, proud of having conducted the
ship so successfully to India, he went round with

a paper in his hand to mark down what the
passengers promised him for having shown such
diligence. When he came to me, I told him I
would give him nothing, because I knew well that
the land we saw was not what he thought it was.
Gemelli's suspicions turned out to be well
founded. When they landed they found to their
alarm that, instead of being at Mahim, they were
at Mangalore in Gujarat, 400 miles north-east of
Damaun. However, after that they got on rather
better, and on January 8th, 1695, our traveller
found himself, to his great joy, actually anchored
off Damaun, after a voyage of 1,200 miles, which
would have been only half as long if they had had
an efficient pilot.
GEMELLI OARERI IN PORTUGUESE INDIA.
The farther Gemelli was from his native land,

the better he was pleased. We have seen how he
kissed the Persian soil as soon as he passed the
boundary line between the Turkish and Persian

Empires. His emotions of delight seem to have
been even stronger when he landed at last on the
"
strand of India. "
A traveller," he remarks, who
has been long separated from his native land, and
who has suffered all kinds of fatigues, does not feel
greater joy at returning home and finding himself
surrounded by his friends, to whom he tells what
he has seen, than that which I felt on arriving at
India after a very wearisome voyage. The pleasure
belonging to the mere recital of all the precious

things produced by this rich country may indicate
the great satisfaction I enjoy at this moment, when
I am on the point of seeing them and forming an
opinion of them for myself."
Damaun, the first town in India that he made
the acquaintance of, did not fall beneath his ex-
pectations. When he landed, he found himself in a

very beautiful town built in Italian style and
divided by large parallel streets. The houses were
tiled, and each was surrounded by its own garden
planted with fruit trees. The windows, instead of

glass, were with
fittedoyster shells so beautifully
prepared that they were transparent. Gemelli was
very much impressed w ith the grandeur of the
r
Portuguese in Damaun, whether he looked to their

garments, or the number of slaves who
tables, their
carried them about even the friars in richly
ornamented palanquins. For amusement they
indulged in hunting boars, wolves, foxes, hares, and
tigers. About tigers and boars Gemelli was told at
Damaun a strange piece of natural history which
we may believe or not, according to the amount of
" " are
our credulity. As the tigers," we read,
always going on the tracks of the boars, these

latter, taught by nature to defend themselves, roll
in the mud and then dry themselves in the sun
until it has made them a very hard crust. In this
way, instead of becoming the prey of their enemies,

it often happens that they tear them with their
sharp pointed tusks, having the whole time to kill

them that the tigers are engaged in digging their
claws into this mud to tear it." Gemelli was
rather particular about his food, and found nothing
very good to eat in Damaun, except the bread and

the fruits. The beef and pork were bad, and sheep
and goats were seldom killed. The necessity of
strict abstemiousness was generally recognised.
Any intemperance was sure to be punished by

terrib]e attacks of disease, incurable, or that could
only be cured by such violent burning of the body

that those who recovered bore the scars of the hot
iron upon them till their dying day. The dread of
these diseases, and, still more, of the remedies,
ought to have been a sufficient deterrent from ex-

cessive indulgence in the pleasures of the table.
From Damaun Gemelli visited Surat, at that
"
time the principal port in India, all nations in the
world trading thither, no ship sailing the Indian
Ocean but what puts in there to buy, sell, or load."
All its wealth of spices, cottons, silk, gold stuffs,
muslins, agates, etc., was defended only by a weak
wall, and the streets were narrow, and the houses
were made of mud. Gemelli only stayed a few
days there, and does not give a detailed description

of the city.
The next town he visited was Bassein, still in its
glory a great Indo-European city, although

as
destined to be wrested from the Portuguese forty-
three years later, after having been in their pos-
session for more than two centuries. What Gemelli
admired most at Bassein was the Cassabo, a great
pleasure ground fifteen miles long, full of delightful
gardens planted with all kinds of Indian fruit trees,

and kept green and fruitful by continual watering :
"so that the gentry, allured by the cool and

delightful walks, have their pleasure-houses at
all
Cassabo, to go thither in the hottest weather to

take the air and get away from the contagious and
pestilential disease called Carazzo that infects all

the cities of the northern coast." Our traveller
attended a wedding of some people of quality at
Bassein, and, wondering that the bridegroom gave
the bride his left hand, was told that such was the
Portuguese custom, the idea being to leave the

bridegroom's right hand free to defend his bride.
Gemelli had himself a tempting offer of marriage
at Bassein. He was a Doctor of Civil Law, and
there was no Portuguese Doctors of Civil Law in
India. an inducement to keep him in the
So. as
country, he was offered as wife a lady with a por-

tion of 20,000 pieces of eight (Rs. 44,000), and was
promised legal work that would bring him in 600

pieces of eight (Rs. 1,320) a year. Having no in-
clination to live in those hot climates, he answered
that,though offered 100,000 pieces of eight, he
would never be induced to quit Europe forever.
Whether the lady was of prepossessing appearance
or not is a point upon which our curiosity is not
satisfied.
From Bassein Gemelli made an expedition to

the Buddhist caves at Kennery, twenty miles from
Bombay on the island of Salsette. As neither

Tavernier nor any other European traveller had
described them before him, he gives a long and
elaborate account of their architectural features.
We must not expect to get from him valuable
about their origin. He lived
historical information
in an age not famous for minute historical investi-
gation so, hearing that the construction of the

:
caves was ascribed to Alexander the Great, he
accepts the statement with simple faith on account

of the " extraordinary and incomparable workman-
ship, which certainly could be undertaken by none

but Alexander." The Greek conqueror seems to
have been found as useful in India as the Devil in
England, when an author had to be found for great
works of unknown origin. Thus the cutting of a
way through the rock for the Tanna creek was also
attributed to him. No
doubt the two conjectures
supported each other, and were regarded as con-
clusive evidence of Alexander's presence as far
south as Bassein. So, Gemelli was quite satisfied
and did not trouble his head to question the re-
ceived belief about the construction of the caves,
but devoted all his energies to giving a full
description of them, which is too long to be here
reproduced. Anyone can nowadays visit them

from Bombay with very little exertion. Only it
is tobe hoped that few who visit the caves may-

have their inner man as ill fortified for the expedi-
tion as Gemelli's was. Landing hot and dry on

the island of Salsette, he was offered by Father
Edward, to whose hospitality he had been recom-
mended, nothing more sustaining than a glass of
water and two preserved citron peels, which were
so covered with ants that he could only eat one.
On the following when he was starting
day,
same Father Edward told
early for the caves, the
him the bread was not baked yet, and that he could
dine in a village half way. When he got to the
village indicated, he found nothing to eat there but

a little half-boiled rice and water, so he went on
his way fasting. That he was able on an empty
stomach to make such a thorough investigation of
the caves as he did reflects great credit on his
energy and perseverance. It is sad to relate that,

when he returned to Father Edward's roof after his
"
labours, he fared little better, and went to bed,
quite spent with hunger and weariness, wishing for
the next day that he might fly from that wretched
place." Perhaps, if Gemelli had been more hospit-

ably treated in Salsette, he might have ventured
on to Bombay and told us how it looked in 1695.
Unfortunately he did not choose to do so, but went
straight back to his friends at Bassein.
Gemelli next visited Goa, the metropolis of
Portuguese India. Here he saw most plainly the

evidence of the decline of Portuguese power in
India,which he attributed chiefly to the hostility of
the Dutch, and to the fact that the conquest of
Brazil diverted the greater portion of Portuguese
energy to the New World. The effect of these

causes was visible in the decline of Goa from its
former greatness, manifested by the compass of its

walls, which extended full four leagues, with good
bastions and redoubts, a world too wide for the
city of some 20,000 inhabitants that Gemelli visited

in 1695. He found its trade declining, and its
wealth and grandeur impaired " to such a degree
that it was reduced to a miserable condition." The
commencement of the decline of Goa was supposed
to have been indicated seventy-four years before
Gemelli's arrival by a crucifix on a hill in Goa
"
which was found with its back miraculously
turned towards Goa, which city from that time has
very much declined." There was another miracul-
ous crucifix in the church of St. Monica's Augustin-
ian nuns, one of whom had
died in the monastery
"
with the reputation of sanctity, she having the
signs of our Saviour's wounds found upon her, and
on her head, as it were, the goring of thorns,
whereof the archbishop took authentic informa-
tion." But, of course, the greatest object of religious

veneration at Goa was the body of St. Francis
Xavier at the church of Bon-Jesu. Gemelli, as a
great favour, was allowed to view it, although for
nine years past the Jesuits had allowed it to be
seen only by the Viceroy and some other persons of
quality. It was in a crystal coffin, within another

of silver, on a pedestal of stone but they expected
;
a noble tomb of porphyry stone from Florence,

ordered to be made by the Great Duke. Gemelli
"
tells us that since, with the Pope's leave, the
saint's arm was cut off, the rest of the body has
decayed, as if he had resented it." It was on

account of this supposed resentment that the
Jesuits were unwilling to show the body to every-
body who wanted to see it.

Of the European nations in India, Gemelli evi-
dently much
preferred the Portuguese to the Dutch
and English, which preference is natural enough, as
he was a zealous Roman Catholic. He specially
"
commends Portuguese politeness. Courteous," he
"
remarks, the Portuguese nation," and elsewhere
is
"
he speaks of the Portuguese civility, which in all
places I found they practised more towards me than

towards their own countrymen." One good story
he tells that shows how the Portuguese occasionally
abused their knowledge of the ceremonial law of

etiquette, and how an Indian prince outwitted

them. The son of an Indian king about to visit a
Portuguese Governor got an inkling that an attempt
would be made to sit upon him by giving him no
chair to sit upon so he gave to two slaves instruc-
:
tions of such a kind that he both avoided the

affront and effectually turned the tables on the
"
Portuguese magnate. Being come into the Gov-
ernor's room,and seeing no chair brought him, he
caused his two slaves to squat down, and sat upon
them. The Portuguese admired his ingenuity, and
presently ordered chairs to be brought. After the

visit the two slaves stayed in the Governor's house,
and their master being told of it by the Governor's

servants, that he might call them away, he answered
he did not use to carry away the chairs he sat on."
The Indian prince's ingenuity in converting his
slaves into chairs rivals that of the Highland chief
who won a bet with an English lord by turning his
tall retainers into candlesticks, as related in Scott's
Marquis of Montrose.
A VISIT TO THE GREAT MOGUL.
Gemelli only made one expedition into the in-

what he saw at the end of his
terior of India, but
short journey is of considerable interest to the
historian. He on March 5th, 1694, from

started
Goa to visit Aurangzebe's camp at Galgala. His
journey there and back was very uncomfortable,
for he tells us "it is far different travelling through
the Mogul's country than through Persia or Tur-
key, for there are no beasts for carriage to be

found, nor caravanserais at convenient distances,
nor provisions ; and, what is worse, there is no
safety from thieves. He, therefore, that has not a
horse of his own must mount upon an ox and ;
besides that inconveniency must carry along with

him his provisions and utensils to dress it, rice,
pulse,and meal being only to be found in great

towns inhabited by the Mogulstans. At night the
clear sky will be all a man's covering or else a
tree." He acknowledges, however, that these re-
marks are only applicable to the neighbourhood
of Beejapoor, which was then the battle-field of
India, and harassed by continual war. In the

northern parts of the Empire, near Surat or
Ahmedabad, travelling was safer and more com-
fortable. He started, as we have seen, on March
5th, employing three natives to carry his luggage,
whom he kept up to the mark by a liberal use of
"
his cudgel, because they will never do good
service either for fair words or money, but run
away as soon as they can, and on the other side

TWO HUNDKED YEARS AGO. 35
when thrashed they load themselves like asses."

On the 7th, not far from Portuguese territory, he
saw the dismal spectacle of a sati. The victim
"being come to the place appointed went about
undaunted, taking leave of them all after which
;
she was laid all along with her head on a block

in a cottage twelve spans square made of small
wood wet with oil, but bound to a stake that she
might not run away with the fright of the fire

Lying in this posture, chewing betel, she asked
of the standers-by whether they had any business
by her to the other world, and having received

several gifts and letters from those ignorant
people to carry to their dead friends, she wrapped
them up in a cloth. This done, the Brahman who
had been encouraging her came out of the hut
and caused it to be fired, the friends pouring
vessels of oil on her that she might be the sooner
reduced to ashes and out of pain." Such sights
were ordinary incidents of a journey through
India two hundred years ago.
In spite of the difficulties and dangers of the
journey, which latter must have been considerably
enhanced by his practice of breaking idols when-
ever he thought he could do so unobserved, our
traveller managed to reach his destination on
March 17th. He was hospitably received by the
leading Christians serving in Aurangzebe's array.

They told him it was a pleasure and diversion to
serve the Great Mogul, because no prince paid
his soldiers better, and, if they did not choose
to tightand keep guard properly, they were only
punished by losing their pay for the day they
were convicted of such dereliction of duty. They
were also not deprived of the consolations of
religion by their bigoted employer. The Koman
Catholics in the army had a convenient chapel
with mud walls in which two Canarese priests
officiated. The Christian officers were allowed to
enforce strict discipline. Gemelli saw two Ma-

homedans convicted of being drunk bound to a
stake and cruelly lashed for their offence by
order of a Christian captain, whom they humbly
thanked upon them such a salutary
for inflicting
chastisement. The whole number of the forces in

the camp was estimated to amount to 60,000 horse,
and a million foot soldiers, for whose baggage
there were 50,000 camels and 3,000 elephants.
Taking into account the camp-followers, mer-

chants, artisans and other non-combatants, Gemelli
"
described the whole camp as a moving city con-
taining five million souls and abounding not only in
provisions but in all things that could be desired."
We are not told how much space was occupied by
this huge assemblage, but everything was on a vast

scale. The Emperor's and princes' tents occupied
an enclosure three miles in compass, defended by
palisades, ditches, and five hundred falconets.
On the 21st of March, Gemelli had the honour
of being admitted by the great Emperor to a
private audience. The imperial tents were sur-
rounded by an outer or inner court which had to
be passed before getting into the presence of the
Emperor. In the outer court Gemelli saw kettle-
drums and other musical instruments, and a gold
ball between two gilt hands, which was carried
by elephants on the march as the imperial ensign.
In the second inner court was the durbar- tent.
Passing through this, Gemelli found himself in
the presence of the Emperor, who was seated on
rich carpetsand gold-embroidered cushions. Au-
rangzebe asked him what country he belonged
to, why he had come, and whether he wished
to enter the imperial service. To this Gemelli

answered full courteously that he come
had
"
to the camp only out of curiosity to see the
greatest monarch in Asia, as his majesty was,
and the grandeur of his court and army." The
Emperor next asked him questions about the
war in Hungary between the Turks and the
European powers, and then dismissed him, as
it was time for the public audience. Gemelli

attended the public audience too. The Em-
peror came in, leaning on a staff forked at the
top, and took his seat on a gilt throne. He had a
white turban tied with a gold web and ornamented
by one very large emerald surrounded by four
smaller ones. Two servants warded off the flies
with long white horse-tails, and another stood with

a green umbrella to protect him against the sun.
In person he was " of a low stature, with a large
and stooping with age. The white-
nose, slender,
ness of his round beard was more visible on his
olive-coloured skin." Although he was now
seventy-eight years old, he endorsed petitions
with his own hand, writing without the help of
spectacles, and from his cheerful smiles he seemed
work. While the audience
to take pleasure in his
was going was a review of the elephants,
on, there
that the Emperor might see if the omrahs to
whom they were entrusted kept them in good
condition. After this the princes of the blood
royal, including the Emperor's great-grandson,

came in, clothed in silk vests adorned with preci-
ous stones and gold collars. After paying their
obeisance by putting their hands to the ground, on
their heads, and on their breasts, they sat down on
the first floor of the throne on the left. The
picture of the old Emperor with a benevolent smile

on his countenance, and his children and grand-
children clustered round his throne, is delightfully
suggestive of domestic felicity. It is a pity to
mar it by thinking of the many deeds of blood
against his own kindred by which he obtained and

established his throne. He knew that it was the
hereditary practice of his dynasty for the son to
rebel against the father. He therefore blamed the
folly of his father, Shah Jehan, who prepared the
way for his own overthrow by giving the command
"
of his armies to his sons, although he might have
learnt by many years' experience that the kings of
Hindustan, when they grow old, must keep at the
head of a powerful army to defend themselves
against their sons." Gemelli prophesied that, not-
withstanding all his precautions, he would come to
no better an end than his predecessors, but history
has not verified the prediction.
Next to the Emperor himself, the most interest-
ing person that Gemelli saw at Galgala was Sicun-
der Adil Shah, the deposed king of Beejapoor,
who went to the royal tent to pay his respects
"
with a handsome retinue. He was a sprightly
youth, twenty-nine years of age, of a good stature,

and olive-coloured complexion." His capital had
been taken by the army of Aurangzebe in 1686,
and, according to Meadows Taylor, he died in

captivity three years after. But Gemelli relates
that he saw him alive at Galgala in 1695. King
Tanak Shah of Golcondah, who had lost his throne
and liberty about a year after the fall of Beeja-
poor, was not with the Emperor at Galgala, but
imprisoned in the fortress of Dowlutabad. Gemelli
heard interesting details of the fall of Golcondah
from European officers in the Mogul army who
had taken part in the campaign.
At Galgala Gemelli was unfortunately deserted
by his interpreter and other attendants so he :
was reduced to the painful necessity of proceeding

on his return journey without any servant, and
"
had to venture all alone through a country in-
fested with robbersand enemies to Christianity."
He started on Sunday, March 27th, after first
hearing mass at the mud-built chapel in Aurang-
zebe's camp. He had great difficulty in getting
eatable food on the way. On the second day of
"
his journey, he writes Desiring a Gentile by
:
signs to make me a cake of bread, the knave,

instead of wheaten flour, made it of nachini,
which is a black seed that makes a giddy, man
and so that a dog would not eat it.
ill-tasted
Whilst it was hot, necessity made me eat that

bread of sorrow ;
but I could not swallow it cold
though I had none for three days." Trees and

bushes afforded him shelter by night. On April
2nd he was stopped by Mahrattas, who inquired of
him by signs whether he could shoot a musket or
cannon. On his replying in the negative
they let
him go. The hardships he encountered on this
journey were so great that when he got back to
Goa on April 5th he was very ill. His friends in
that city, who had tried to dissuade him from
making the expedition into the interior, were not

surprised that he returned in such sorry plight.
w
The Father Prefect, seeing me so sick, told me
that had happened because I would not take his
advice. I answered '
Hew patior telis vulnera
facta meis.' Both he and Father Hippolitus en-
deavoured to recover me with good fowls, to which
the best sauce was their kindness and thus I
;
recovered my flitting spirits."
GEMELLI CARERI AND HIS TIMES.
We do not propose to follow the footsteps of our

seventeenth century globe-trotter on the rest of his
journey round the world. Naturally our interest

in him diminishes when he sails away from the
port of Goa to travel farther east. Yet from a
more universal point of view his travels are
interesting to the end. From Goa he sailed to
Macao, on the way passing by the islands of
Ceylon and Sumatra and making a short stay at

Malacca. From Macao he made a seven months'
tour in China, visiting the great cities of Canton,
Nanking and Peking, and personally inspecting

the Great Wall of China. He was graciously
admitted to an interview by the Emperor of China,
as he had been in India by the Great Mogul.
From China he sailed to Manilla, and then across
the Pacific, which he did not find at all pacific, to
Acapulco. He
stayed nearly eleven months in
Mexico, visiting the principal cities, travelling
through the country and risking his life in danger-
ous descents into the bowels of the earth to see the
silver mines. In the end of the year 1698 he
took ship on board the Sevilian, joined the
Spanish plate fleet at Havana, and sailed with it
across to Cadiz. Finally he concluded, in December

1699, at Naples, his voyage round the world, in
which he had spent five years five months and
twenty days of his life.
It does not take so long to get round the world
now. Gemelli believed many strange things ;
but ifhe had been told that in two hundred years

it would be possible to make the circuit of the
world in eighty days, he would have been inclined
TWO HUN DEED YEAES AGO. 43
to laugh in the face of his informant. It took
Gemelli more then eighty days to sail across the

Atlantic to Cadiz, and his voyage through the
Pacificfrom Manilla to Acapulco extended to over
twenty-nine weeks. So that in bis time it was not
advisable for any one who had not a very large
amount of spare time at his disposal to under-
take a journey round the world. The account
given of the hard and disgusting fare obtainable
on this long voyage across the Pacific might
be read with advantage by luxurious travellers
of the present day, who are ready to grumble
if their dinners at sea are not quite such as are
supplied by the best hotel on land. Gemelli made
arrangements with the boatswain to supply him

with food. On flesh days he got " tassajos fritos"
that is, steaks of beef and buffalo dried in the sun
or wind, " which are so hard that it is impossible
to eat them without they are first well beaten like
stockfish, nor is there any digesting them without
the help of a purge." On fish days he had rotten
fish and vegetables like kidney beans full of mag-
gots that swam on the top of the broth. The only
variety of diet was when they happened to catch
sharks. The biscuits were also full of maggots.
If such was the diet available for a passenger who
could pay for what he wanted, the lot of the poor

sailorsmust have been much worse, cheated as they

were of their provisions by the master of the ship.
The sailors had to be paid well for undertaking
such a voyage, or they would never have been
tempted to embark. They got three hundred and
fifty pieces of eight (Rs. 770) for the return voyage.
The merchants made profits at the rate of 150 to
200 per cent. It was reckoned that the captain of
Gemelli's ship would make forty thousand pieces of
eightby the voyage and the pilot twenty thousand.

The amusements they had on boardship, besides
the shark fishing, were dancing and occasional
acting. On December 7th, 1697, although a sailor

had died in the morning, the crew celebrated
saturnalia like those that used to be, and perhaps
are indulged in by sailors on the occasion of
still,
crossing the line. Mock courts were established to

"
try the officers and passengers. The clerk read
every man's indictment, and then the judges passed
sentence of death, which was immediately bought
ofF, with money, chocolate, sugar, biscuit, flesh,
sweetmeats, wine, and the like. The best of it was

that he who did not pay immediately, or give good
security, was laid on with a rope's end at the least

sign given by the president." Gemelli was some-
thing of a gourmand, so we are not surprised to

find that the charge brought against him was eat-
ino- too much of the fish called cachorretas. In
spite of such casual diversions the voyage was

terribly long and tedious, and the first signs of
approaching land were looked for as eagerly as by
Columbus and his sailors when they crossed the
Atlantic. When the first seaweed was seen, the
sailor who saw it got a chain of gold from the cap-
tainand fifty pieces of eight from the passengers.
At the same time a bell was rung at the prow,
everybody congratulated everybody else to the

sound of drums and trumpets, and the Te Deum
was sung. Nor are these rejoicings wonderful
when we consider the length and hardship of the
voyage on the one hand, and the great profit ex-
pected at the end of the voyage on the other.
On land Gemelli suffered less comfort and in-
curred less danger than might have been expected.
His last days in Europe were spent in chains, into
which he had been thrown on suspicion of being a

Venetian spy. But in none of the other three Con-
tinents did he suffer the indignity of imprisonment.
Although he was subject to a great deal of petty

extortion, he was never robbed of the bulk of his
possessions, whichcannot have been small, as
he carried with him some merchandise and col-
went through.
lected curiosities in the countries he
Also he carried with him to the end the MSS. of
his travels, which he seems to have written care-

fully every day. We have seen that he found
Persia well supplied with commodious caravan-
serais. In India he was hospitably entertained in
the Portuguese cities as a good Roman Catholic, but
fared worse when he penetrated into the interior.
In the interior of China travelling was remarkably
safe. At intervals of four miles along the canals
guards were stationed, armed with firelocks, and

they had large boats, with cannons in the prow,
ready to pursue robbers. Similar care was taken
to defend the roads. He was luxuriously rowed
along the canals in boats, and it was "very pleasant
travelling, both the green banks appearing as a man
lies in his bed." Pheasants and fowls and hares
were extremely cheap. At one place he bought
four pheasants for two shillings and hares at three
halfpence a piece. In Mexico there were travellers'

bungalows provided with two servants one to
order the traveller whatever he might require, the
other (a messman) to cook his food and supply him
with fuel and water, all at the public expense
Gemelli was very particular about his inner man,
and informs his readers of the fact as often as he
was incommoded by bad or insufficient food. On
the whole he seems to have fared pretty well. As
to his outer man, we know that on the way through
TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO- 47
Persia he was clad in buckskin breeches, on which

account his fellow-travellers amused themselves by-
pretending that he was a wrestler, as the Persian

wrestlers wore such garments. When those who
saw him thought he was too lean for wrestling, they
were told he was grown lean owing to excessive
exercise. By the time he reached China his buck-
skin breeches were presumably worn out, for we find
him dressed in Chinese clothes.
What strikes us most, perhaps, when we attempt
by the help of Gemelli's travels to estimate the
progress made by the world in the last two
hundred years, is his great credulity. In this
respect there is far less difference between him and
Herodotus, who lived more than two thousand
years before him, than between him and an
ordinary nineteenth century traveller. We have
no reason to think that Gemelli was exceptionally
credulous for his age. He was an educated man,
and as a Doctor of Civil Law must have had
some practice in sifting evidence. His frequent
criticisms of Tavernier show that he knew well
enough that travellers were in danger of being
misled by the deceitfulness of their informants
or by misunderstanding. Yet he was ready to
accept numberless statements that no

educated
man of the present day would think worthy of
a moment's consideration. Many instances of his

credulity have already been mentioned incidentally,
but plenty more are to be found scattered over his
pages. He took away from Egypt a mummy's skull,
"
being good, as they say, for wounds and some
distempers," and this treasure he carried all round
the world with him. He thoroughly believed in
the active interposition of the devil in the affairs
of the world. Seeing some Arabians striking
their breasts with iron pins heavy
enough to drive
through a wall and not hurting themselves, he
remarks " How this came to pass they best know
:
and the devil that teaches thern but this I know,

;
that these cheats and sons of perdition would

not suffer another to strike them with the same
pin, for then perhaps the charm would have failed
them." An Indian tumbler at Bassein performed
such wonderful feats as could not be done, Gemelli
thought, without some supernatural assistance.
Speaking of some of the inhabitants of the
"
Philippine Islands, he remarks gravely that the
devil appears to some of them because they call
upon him in time of need and offer sacrifice to

him." He
accounts for the number of blind people
in Bengal by the custom of exposing infants at
night to be pecked at by crows. He accepts

with faith the story of an old man at Diu who
lived to over 400. "He had changed his teeth

three times, and his beard as often grew grey
after having been black." Compared with him,
the old lady of 114 in the last American census
may hide her diminished head. We have seen

the immense estimate Gemelli formed of the
number of the Mogul's army at Galgala. Still
more astonishing is the population he attributes
to the great cities of China, though not without
hesitation, on the authority of Roman Catholic
missionaries, who estimated the population of Pe-
king at 16,000,000 and of Nanking at 32,000,000 !
In the Philippine Islands he saw leaves which,

"
when they come to a certain pitch of ripeness,
become living creatures with wings, feet and tail,
and fly like any bird, though they remain of the
same colour as the other leaves." What he saw
were, no doubt, specimens of those insects which by
the process of natural selection have become almost
indistinguishable from their leafy habitat. Among

the many wonderful herbs, he mentions a nut which
was such an effective antidote against poison that,
if you carriedabout your person, it not only
it
protected you but hurt your would-be poisoner.

"This is so certain," we are told, "that Father
Alexius, a Jesuit, having one of these nuts he
found accidentally in the garden in his pocket,
50 THE GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA.
and an Indian coming to poison him with a blast

of venomous herbs, instead of doing the Father
harm, he himself dropped down in his sight."
Among the evidences of deficient geographical

knowledge in GemelK's travels is a long discussion
as to whether California is an island or part of
the continent.The belief of a land connection

between America and Asia was based on the
story of a Christian slave at Peking who said that
she had been brought from Mexico to China by
way of Great Tartary. Russia and China were

still far apart, though not entirely out of com-
munication with one another. Gemelli gives an

interesting account of a quarrel between the
Chinese and Russians, or Muscovites as he calls
them, about the pearl fishery of Lake Nepehyu,
and how peace was restored by the good offices
of some Jesuit missionaries. The result of the
"
treaty was the arrival at Peking of the ambas-
sadors from the Great Duke of Muscovy, whom
the Emperor received sitting on a throne raised
twenty steps above the ground, whither he after-

wards made them ascend to drink ;
and though
they at first refused to touch the ground with
their heads according to the custom of the country,
at last they consented. They much admired to
find a Tartar family in such majesty."
Hn Hnolo3nMan flDan of letters*
In the beginning of the present year (1892) Anglo-

Indian literature sustained a severe loss in the
death of one who always hold a high rank
will
among its most accomplished journalists and men of

letters. We refer to Mr. Cur wen, the fatal ter-
mination of whose illness was marked by the

suddenness that is such a terribly common feature
in our life in this country. There was a consul-
tation of doctors, a hurried embarkation of the
sick man in the P. &. O. steamer, and then, in six
days, there came a telegram from Aden, conveying

to his friends the sad intelligence that he had died
in the Indian Ocean, only two days after his de-
parture from Bombay.

There can be no doubt that Mr. Curwen's days
were shortened by hard work and by the late
hours that have to be kept by a journalist. No
profession is more trying to health in this
country
than the press. To sit up late
writing leading
articles on the latest telegraphic is an
intelligence
5i
52 AN ANGLO-INDIAN
unhealthy occupation anywhere, and, in the tropics,

it is simply deadly.
Mr. Curwen came out to join the staff of the
Times of India in 1877, and for fifteen years,

first as assistant editor and afterwards as editor,
gave himself up energetically to the work of the

paper, and spared neither time, nor trouble, nor
health in promoting its success. As a journalist
he was distinguished by shrewd common sense, and
by a quickness of insight which enabled him to
take a clear view of a new situation of affairs with
remarkable rapidity. If his articles did not actually
lead publi opinion, at any rate they were always

well up to date, and thoroughly expressed the views
of the Anglo-Indian community whom the Times
of India represented. But we do not wish here to
dwell upon this phase of his career. In spite of
his marked success as a journalist, we cannot help
regretting that Mr. Curwen lavished on the dry lead-

ing columns of a daily paper so much of the literary
energy that might have been devoted to more con-
his heart he took much more
genial subjects. In
interest in belles lettres than in municipal disputes
and the political questions of the day. Traces of
this leaning might clearly be discerned in the con-
duct of the Times of India during all the years in
which it was under his guidance. A large space
MAN OF LETTEKS. 53
was devoted to the review of literary works ;

on
Saturday the leading columns were almost always
open to the discussion of literary questions, or to
the examination of some new book more or less
connected with India ;
and there was also to be
found in the body of the paper a large amount of
original literary work.
It may be added that Mr. Curwen was always
extremely ready to detect and encourage any
evidence of literary talent, especially among young
contributors. He took a kindly interest in every
one who aspired, in however humble a way, to the
honours of authorship, and was quick to discern
the least sign of promise in their productions
One was to bring out an
of the last acts of his life
edition of Carlyle's Lectures on Literature, the
manuscript of which had long lain concealed from
the world in the library of the Bombay Branch of
the Asiatic Society. There was little or no chance
of the speculation paying from a financial point of
view. Yet the book was brought out regardless of
expense, because it was not only a work of great
literary interest, but was also likely to bring into
notice a promising young Parsee writer, who, till
then, had had no opportunity of distinguishing
himself before the world. In many another case
Mr. Curwen gave a helping hand to those who
54 AN ANGLO-INDIAN
needed it. He did not confine his aid and sym-
pathy to promising young writers, but was always

ready to assist with his advice, as well as with his
purse, those who had fried their hand at journalism
unsuccessfully and fallen into destitution. To the

subordinate members of his office he was a kind
and liberal master, always generous to them in any
difficulty, and willing to give them the much-needed
rest that he too often denied himself.
Mr. Cur wen had already gained some reputation
as a writer in London before he left England. In
the end of the year 1873, he brought out his
History of Booksellers, a large work of five

hundred pages, in which he sketched the rise and
progress of the great English and Scotch publishing
houses, and narrated the principal incidents in the
lives of their founders. The book is full of lively
anecdote and interesting information but, being of;
the nature of a compilation, it afforded the author

little power of displaying his literary talents to
advantage. A year later appeared Borrow and
Song : Studies of Literary Struggle, containing short
biographies of Henry Murger, Novalis, Alexander
Petofi, Honore" de Balzac, Edgar Allan Poe, and
Andre Chenier. This must have been a much more
congenial task for its author than its predecessor.
Himself a new writer, struggling for name and
MAN OF LETTERS. 55
fame, he naturally had more sympathy for men of

genius who had had a hard and painful struggle
with adversity, than for prosperous booksellers.
The lives are told with the enthusiasm which shows
that the biographer loved his heroes in spite of
their follies and their vices. In fact there is no
doubt that, the questions at issue between
in
Philistia and Bohemia, Mr. Curwen was distinctly
on the side of the Bohemian. His partiality for
that mysterious and fascinating country is revealed
again in the last work he brought out before he

left England. This was a work of fiction called
Within Bohemia: or Love in London. It came
out in 1876, and was so successful, that a second
edition was required in the following year. The
review of the stories given in the Academy, re-
"
marks, that the general effect of the volume is
that of immaturity. Mr. Curwen's cleverness is
quite undeniable, and, with all its faults of taste

his book has more character and style than the
ordinary novel." It was, as far as we know, his

first attempt at fiction, and did not do more than
give promise of the more excellent work, in the same
line, that was to proceed from his pen at a later
period, when his talents were matured by practice

and a wider experience of the world and its inhabi-
tants. Mr. Curwen would seem himself to have
56 AN ANGLO-INDIAN
recognised the justice of the verdict of the Academy

critic, for the heroine of one of his later and more
"
mature works remarks, that no man should ever
be allowed to write a novel before he is forty," and,
at the time of the publication of his Bohemian
tales, he had not yet reached his thirtieth year.

For many years after his arrival in India, Mr.
Curwen contributed nothing to general literature.
His intellectual energy seemed to be entirely ab-
sorbed in his journalistic work. But all the while,
in spite of incessant hard work and the imperious
necessity of providing his leading columns daily

with criticisms on current events, he must have
been secretly cherishing an ideal of imagina-
life
tion. For, in 1886, there appeared from his pen, in

Blackwood's Magazine, the wonderful story of the
early experiences of Zit and Xoe, a work full of
poetic fancies and delicate humour, such as could
hardly have been expected from a hard- worked
Indian editor who had to spend most of his time in
the Philistine labour of exchanging hard blows
w ith
7
his local contemporaries. Perhaps it was
owing to a consciousness of this contrast, that this
story in the magazine, and in its subsequent book

form, and the two later works of fiction from the
same pen, were published anonymously. The
author may have thought that the production of
MAN OF LETTERS. 57
such flowers of fancy might seem to the general

public to be incompatible with his reputation as a
newspaper editor holding practical views on the
questions of the day. It is such a work as might
naturally be attributed to a man of letters, who

had retired, like Mr. Stevenson, from the hurry
and skurry of civilised life, to the seclusion of
some flowery isle in the sunny Pacific. For it is a
tale of the days when the world was young, and
when man and woman first began to look with joy
and wonder on the beautiful world in which their
lotwas cast.
The idea of writing the story of Adam and Eve
from a Darwinian point of view, is surely one of the
happiest thoughts that ever entered the mind of an
author in search of an original subject for a story.
It isadmirably worked out, and the result is an
extremely beautiful prose idyll of love and family
life. Mr. Cur wen was neither a philosopher, nor a
man of science. He makes no attempt to give a
strictly realistic account of the life led by man be-
and moral sense were developed.
fore his intellect
If so, his work might have been
he had tried to do
interesting and instructive from a scientific point
of view, but would have failed to give delight to
the general reader. For the most part only such
facts of early human existence as harmonise with a
58 AN ANGLO-INDIAN
life thatnot only simple but also beautiful, are
is
introduced into the story. Thus we are given ac-

counts of the invention of fish-hooks, of flint
weapons, of fire, of pottery, and of boats, but all

the more repulsive and ugly circumstances that
must have attended the life of primitive man, are
kept artistically in the background. In the char-
acters of the hero and heroine, still less
attempt is
made Their thoughts and
at scientific accuracy.
emotions are such as could not possibly have be-
longed to beings immediately sprung from quad-
rum ano us parents. Imagine the children of highly
civilised by some impossible means, to
parent^,
have survived and grown up to manhood arid
womanhood in the solitude of a beautiful desert
island, and the

result would be something like the
delightful combination of primitive simplicity with

half conscious instincts of the artificial conventions
of polite society that is to be found in the char-
acters of Zit and Xoe.
We all remember Eve's account of her first meet-
ing with Adam in Paradise Lost. In Mr. Cur-

wen's story it is Zit who relates the corresponding
incident. By the shore of the sea, one day, a
beautiful apparition came rushing towards him, as
if borne on the wings of the wind. He pours forth
compliments with a fervour and straightforward-
MAN OF LETTERS. 59
ness worthy of the first love of the first man who

ever loved :
"
How beautiful you are ! Your eyes are pure
and blue. Your lips, when you smile, as you did
for a little while at first, are far redder than the
sweetest roses. I never saw anything like the way
your colour comes and goes. And why are you so
fair, and why is your hair so long and golden, and
"
why are your hands so white and tiny ? And,
quite unconsciously, I tried to take one of her
hands in mine.
She drew herself up, and her blue eyes had a
"
strange reproachful look. I am certain," she said
"
very slowly, that it is not right of you to speak
like that. And you really talk so quickly, that I
cannot follow half of what you say."
" "
You would talk quickly, too," I retorted, if
you were talking for the first time in your

life." . . .
I had been watching her eyes and her lips so

eagerly, that I had never noticed that she was sit-
ting all this time upon the back of a beautiful
white horse, and that she was robed, almost from
head to foot, in some soft, whitey-yellowy fleecy
stuff. Both her round arms were bare, and one
shoulder quite free. She had a broad girdle of
60 AN ANGLO-INDIAN
plaited golden grass about her waist, and bunches

of great yellow lilies on her breast and in her hair.
I always think of Xoe as I saw her then lithe- :
some, free, and beautiful, in this flowing, clinging

garment, with one little hand caressing and re-
straining her fiery steed, with her drooping eyes
and faint smile and fleeting blushes.
A beautiful subject for a painting or a sculpture,

bright and graceful as the Europa of Moschus borne
by the divine bull over the waves of the Bosphorus
with her purple robes flowing in the breeze The !
mysterious robe in which Xoe was clad was made of

the great cocoons of tussar silk that she had noticed
clinging to the mulberry trees. She had watched

the spiders for days working at their webs, and
had learnt from them how to spin. Zit thought he
also must go in for clothes, but he made them so
rudely of deerskins that, to his great chagrin, the

fair Xoe only laughed at him for his pains :
"
That is really nice of you," she said, trying to
"
stop laughing, and it suits you exactly. Please,
"
don't think me rude. I can't help it and here she
"
fairly broke down but it does so remind me of the
fright I made of myself two days after I ran away.
I wonder if you went down to the river, too, and
"
looked into it, and how long you stopped there ?
MAN OF LETTERS. 61
My conscience pricked me here, and I cried out

" "
rather bitterly You are really too bad, Xoe !
Her voice changed at once. * I am not bad,"

"
she answered. I don't know how to explain it,
but a girl never says what she thinks. If you
want to get on with me, you must not believe a

word I say, and when I
cry and laugh, you must
not believe me either. There ! It is horrible, but
ever since yesterday morning, I have felt it to be
I don't know
true. why I should warn you like
this perhaps, because I feel it is
good of you and
kind of you to take such a world of trouble to do
what you think I wish, and really you would not
look nice in tussar silk."
This mollified me, of course, and as we sat over
breakfast, I said, "I hope you did not think I
had gone for ever, Xoe ;
I was afraid you would
be frightened."
" "
Oh dear, no ! she replied with half a pout :
<:
saw your stick directly I came out.
I I knew
you would never leave that and then ;
I was
here too."
In the above passage we have a good specimen

of the art with which Mr. Curwen works into
his story, not too obtrusively, reminiscences of
Paradise Lost. It will be remembered how,
62 AN ANGLO-INDIAN
soon after her creation, Eve lay down to look into

the clear, smooth lake that seemed another sky :
" As I bent down to look, just opposite

A shape within the watery gleam appeared,
Bending to look on me I started back,
;
It started back ;but, pleased, I soon return'd ;
Pleased, it returned as soon with answering looks

Of sympathy and love."
Xoe, and seemingly Zit, too, were guilty of the

same weakness as Milton's Eve. The stick, so
archly referred to by Xoe, was a walking-stick
which Zit had carved for himself in his lonely
days, and which had been his only companion
until he met Xoe.
We have not space to dwell longer on the court-
ship of Zit and Xoe, or to tell how Xoe's cruelty
and perverseness drove him to encounter a big
black bear with an aggravating sardonic grin, by
which he would have been killed, had not Xoe
come in the nick of time and saved his life.
He recovered from his swoon to find himself
lying with his head on her lap, and the big black
bear lying stone dead beside them.
" "
Who killed him ? I asked, still bewildered,
trying to rise to my feet.

MAN OF LETTERS. 63
" " "
Be quiet, Zit ! said Xoe very softly. I killed
him, dear. could not help it. I thought he

I
had killed you. Don't be cross to me now. I
will never be cross to you again."

" "
Poor thing," she went on, how pale you
looked! I saw nothing but you, and I
pushed
your big spear right through that horrible beast.
He fell away, and I have been sitting here with
your head in my lap ever since. What a dread-
ful world it is and all, I know, on my account.
I
But I could not help it, and I can't help it, Zit.
Do say that I was right and that I could not
help it."
The author shows much artistic skill in tracing
the gradual transformation by which the way-

"
wardness and liveliness of Xoe's uncertain, coy,
"
and hard to please maidenhood was converted
into the mellower grace of a wife and a mother.
Suffice it to say that she remains equally charming
to the end, even to the last scene of all, when,
as a great-great-grandmother, she looks over her hus-
band's shoulder, and gives his white hair the
loving
little pat that always
presages a scolding. Enough
has surely been quoted to show what a pleasure
is in store for those who have not
yet read this
delightful prose idyll. Yet the story is not one
64 AN ANGLO-INDIAN
that gains by the process of selection, as it is an

admirably finished piece of literary work from begin-
ning to end, full of delicate humour, lively dialogue,
and beautiful descriptions of natural scenery.
The scene of Mr. Curwen's next book opens
in the garden of Eden ;
not in the luxuriant
tropicalscenery where Zit and Xoe loved each
other in the morning of the world, but in the
veritable Garden of Eden as it exists in the present
"
day : a dank, desolate marsh, where the muddy
waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates meet to-
gether." Here Mr. Hicks, the hero, into whose
mouth is put the story of Lady Bluebeard, met
his Eve in the person of Mrs. Fonblanque. She
coolly sat down on the trunk of the Tree of Good
and Evil, which he had just had cut down for the
benefit of an uncle who loved such interesting
curios. Mrs. Fonblanque and Xoe are about as
unlike each other as two women who are both
very charming could possibly be. This difference

might naturally be expected between two persons
separated by all the centuries that have rolled
away since the time when man first appeared
on the earth. The heroine of Lady Bluebeard
is a typical woman of the nineteenth century,
the result of many centuries of evolution and
culture. Although she is always witty and often
MAN OF LETTERS. 65
light-hearted, her life has been saddened for ever

by an unfortunate early marriage, and her modern
education and refinement have spread the "pale
cast of thought" over her brow. She is past the
firstjoyousness of youth her experience of life,
;
so far, has been very melancholy and when she ;
meets her new lover she is wandering rather
aimlessly about the world, the vain attempt

in
to escape from bitter memories. Yet, like
many a lady in real life who has gone through
a discipline of sorrow, she is very charming, and
does much to make those around her happy by
her vivacity, her unselfishness, and her gentle
sympathy. Her character is beautifully drawn,

and has the strong individuality that cannot be
given to a fictitious personage, unless its creator
has a touch of genius. The love story contained
in the novel is so very bare of incidents, that it
would hardly afford sufficient material for a short
story in Belgravia orTemple Bar. It must also

be allowed that the few incidents of which the
plot is composed, are extremely unnatural and
that the conclusion is melodramatic. Neverthe-
less, in this long-drawn narrative, the character
of the hero, and still more that of the heroine,
are made to unfold themselves clearly to the reader
with so much artistic skill that he is

entirely
66 AN ANGLO-INDIAN
fascinated with the book from beginning to end,

and, in spite of the absence of exciting incidents,
the interest never flags.
This fascination is partly due to the psycho-
logical insight of the author, and partly to the
fact, that Lady Bluebeard contains elements of
interest not to be found in ordinary novels. The
leading characters reveal themselves, not so much
by what they by what they say. They
do, as
have long discussions on all kinds of interesting
questions, such as the position of women, poetry,
painting, heredity, and pessimism. There are also
three chapters of clever satire which describe Eng-
land as seen through Oriental spectacles, after the
manner of Goldsmith's Citizen of the World.
These discussions, besides familiarising us with the
speakers, have an interest of their own. Owing to
the wit of the dialogue and the suggestiveness and
variety of the thoughts expressed, Lady Bluebeard

may be compared with such works as The Autocrat
of the Breakfast Table, Guesses at Truth and
Landor's Imaginary Conversations, and does not
suffer from the comparison. There is yet a third
distinct point of interest in Lady Bluebeard, inas-

much as the book
a record of the personal obser-
is
vations made by the author in his holiday tours #
The, greater portion of the two volumes gives a

MAN OF LETTERS. 67
faithful description of what is to be seen in a

voyage from
Baghdad to
Bombay. We have
known travellers by this route who have taken
Lady Bluebeard with them and found it a most
admirable guide-book. This might, at first blush,
seem to be a disparaging remark, did we not
remember that Scott's Lady of the Lake has been,
for nearly a century, a necessary part of the equip-
ment of Highland tourists.
Mr. Curwen's descriptions of Oriental scenery,
and of the cities of Asia and their inhabitants, are
wonderfully animated and picturesque. Here, for
instance, is an admirable sketch of an Arabian
town, struck off in a few bold strokes :
"
But now turn your chair quickly round, Mr.
Hicks. What do you think of that for the Gulf ? "
I am seldom profoundly impressed, but I had
certainly never seen anything like this. We were

steaming rapidly, as I turned, right into a huge
wall of precipitous volcanic rocks. Suddenly we
rounded the point, and glided smoothly into a
quiet little cove, surrounded on its three sides by
towering black hills and rugged mountains. The
nearest hills and crags and peaks to the
right and
left, looking each one of them like an iron-bound
fortress, dropped sheer and bluff to the water's

68 AN ANGLO-INDIAN
edge. At either extremity a strong fortress scowled

fiercely down upon us, and a number of smaller
forts and watch-towers and galleries seemed to
connect the two in a semi-circle behind. The
shore was low and open for a little way in front,
and there, between the black rocks and the blue
sea, nestled a town of white flat-roofed houses.
Weanchored within a cable's length of the
Sultan's palace, with his blood-red flag still stream-
ing over it. There was not a tree or shrub to be

seen. But the white houses, the turreted forts,
the deep blue sea, and the quaint craft with which
the little cove was half filled, contrasted strangely
with the encircling masses of dark rock all around,
and a sky that was, for a moment before the sun
sank, flooded with gold and crimson. To enjoy
the view of Muscat properly,
first you should come
straight upon it, as we did, from a tedious sea
voyage along the arid coast of Persia, and you
should enter the harbour exactly as the sun is
going down. In another moment the sunset guns

were thundering and reverberating among the
rocks, and then all was still, except when a deep
voice from a mosque-tower, here and there, sum-
moned the Faithful to prayers.
The same pen that traced the stern outlines of

MAN OF LETTERS. 69
the picture given above, was equally, or, i

possible,
even more felicitous in painting the rich and
various colours of the forests of Ceylon, of Indian
architecture,and of the motley crowds who kept

holiday at Baroda on the occasion of the Gaekwar's
wedding. Indeed, it is impossible to read Lady
Bluebeard without being convinced that Mr.
Curwen, if he had chosen to travel through Asia
and give an account of his journey, might have
rivalled the author of Eothen.
Mr. Curwen's last work was Dr. Hermione, pub-
lished in 1890. It is less closely connected with
India than his two previous works of fiction. In

Zit and Xoe, although, consistently with the
chronology of the story, no geographical names are

introduced, the beautiful pictures of tropical scenery
are evidently drawn from the author's experience
of India. The heroine of Lady Bluebeard is an
Anglo-Indian lady, and the narrative conducts us
by way of the Persian Gulf to Bombay, and subse-
quently to Baroda, Goa, and Ceylon. In Dr.
Hermione, although the two heroes of the story
are officers of the Indian army, the scene of the
story is laid Cumberland and then in

first in
Egypt. Mr. Curwen was a native of the English

Lake Country, in which his family had been
settled for many generations. In the beginning of
70 AN ANGLO-INDIAN
Dr. Hermione, he returns to the scenes of his
youth, and paints the lights and shadows of the

mountain scenery of the lakes with loving fidelity.
Towards the end of the novel, the scene is abruptly
changed to the southern borders of Egypt, where,
after a skirmish with the Dervishes, the characters
pair off with one another to their own satisfaction

and that of the reader. We can pardon the
abruptness of the transition, in consideration of
the beautiful descriptions of the banks of the Nile
which it enables the author to give us. Here, too,
as in Lady Bluebeard, our author is drawing upon
his own experiences as a traveller. Some time
before he wrote Dr. Hermione he had taken a
holiday trip up the Nile ;

and the glowing account
of the beauties of that famous river is a record of
what he then observed. As a story, Dr. Hermione
is characterised by the same want of incident that
distinguishes Lady Bluebeard from most novels ;
and here, again, the paucity of incident is almost
forgotten, owing to the brightness of the dialogue

and the descriptive power of the writer. So much
is said and so little is done, that the work has
more of the nature of a drama than of a novel.

The characters of the chief persons are revealed,
as inLady Bluebeard, by their conversations much
more than by their actions. They are all interest-
MAN OF LETTERS. 71
ing sketches, although none of them can be con-

sidered such a highly finished portrait as Mrs.
Fonblanque.
In looking back on Mr. Curwen's three works of
fiction, we find that they are weakest in their
plots. The author does not appear to have cared
much for probability or consistency in the con-

struction of his narrative. In Zit and Xoe, the
subject chosen was such a happy one, that a very

simple succession of incidents was sufficient to
supply the thread of the story. In Lady Blue-
beard and Dr. Hermione there is little action, and
the few incidents that are related do not seem to
be very naturally connected with each other.
Even in minor details little attention is paid to
minute accuracy. In the description of a boat
adventure in Dr. Hermione, the wind seems to be
blowing in two opposite directions but that per-
;
haps be defended, on Virgil's precedent, as a

may
characteristic of fictitious storms. On one occasion,
when the sea was spread before Zit's eyes "in
almost unruffled beauty," he nevertheless relates
how "laughing and splashing and sparkling just
beneath my feet, white spray glistened like
its
rainbows." Such inconsistencies, however, are but

small matters. The greatest of all novelists, in an
elaborate description of a storm, made the sun set
72 AN ANGLO-INDIAN
in the east. Such trifling slips, though interesting

to the curious critic, have little weight with us
when we try to estimate the general merits of a
work of fiction.
Mr. Curwen's literary work ought, moreover, to
be judged from a different point of view. He was,
in reality, more of a humorist than of a novelist,
although he happened to express his humour in the

form of fiction. When we call him a humorist,
we do not use the term as applied in America to
such writers as Bill Nye and Artemus Ward, but
in the wider and nobler sense in which the term is
used by Thackeray. To be a humorist, in this
higher sense of the word, requires high intellectual

gifts, and keen insight into human character.
In this latter qualification, Mr. Curwen ex-
celled, especially in knowledge of the weakness

and strength of female character. Xoe, Mrs.
Fonblanque, Edith, and Hermione are real

Dr.
women, very unlike each other, and are all very
interesting psychological studies. There is less
individuality be found among Mr. Curwen's

to
men. Mr. Hicks, travelling over the world in
search of intellectual excitement, is a modernised
repetition of Zit wandering through the primeval

"
forests in which he found so much to see and so
much to taste." Dr. Jones, with his shrewdness

MAN OF LETTERS. 73
and his kindly nature concealed under a trans-

parent probably what Mr. Hicks
veil of cynicism, is
would have developed into, if circumstances had

confined him, until advanced middle age, in a re-
mote provincial town. Nevertheless, Zit, Mr.
Hicks, and Dr. Jones, in spite of the family likeness
that exists between them, are full of life and very
real, and admirably adapted to play their respective
parts as contrasts to the female characters to whom

the author devotes most of his attention.
In the portrayal of the various male and female
characters whom he creates, Mr. Curwen shows a
delicate sense of humour, and a knowledge of
human character, that amply atone for any
deficiencies in the plots of the stories.His novels,
too, are as much distinguished by wit as by humour.
They are, as we have seen, full of long conversa-

tions which would be wearisome to the reader, if
they were not lightened up by epigram, satire, and

acute criticism of literature, art, men, and manners.
As a writer of English prose, Mr. Curwen appears
at his best in descriptive passages. His style is
admirable in its clearness and freedom from all
mannerism and affectation. In his pages we find
the lonely forests and the populous cities of the
East described with equal vividness, so that the
whole scene is conjured up before the imagination
74 AN ANGLO-INDIAN
of the reader with the
perfect art by which art is
concealed. The simplicity and unstudied grace of
his style is very unlike the artificial brilliancy of
that of Sterne, whom he resembles in his subtle
and rather whimsical humour; in the skill with
which he makes the most ordinary situations
amusing or pathetic, or both ;
in his fondness for
digressions in his tendency to relate actual experi-

;
ences of travel in a fictitious setting, and, finally, in

the poverty of incident and the very subordinate
position of the story in his literary works. But

for this difference, we should be almost inclined to
regard Mr. Curwen as a nineteenth century Anglo-

Indian Sterne.
In spite of the chorus of recognition with which
the reviewers greeted the appearance of his later
works, we hardly think that Mr. Curwen has yet

met with the appreciation due to his very great
literary merits. This is, no doubt, partly due to

the fact that his latest and best works were
produced anonymously. It is only under very
exceptional circumstances that the general public

does justice to an anonymous writer. Further, Mr.
Curwen devoted to his journalistic profession a
large amount of the energy which he
intellectual
might have bestowed on literary work of a higher

character, and, just when, in spite of these draw-
MAN OF LETTERS. 75
backs, he was establishing for himself a high
position in the literary world, his career was

suddenly cut short. As it is, however, he has
left
behind him, in Zit and Xoe and Lady Bluebeard,

two works of great originality that will not soon
be allowed to be forgotten, and, in the rather barren
roll of Anglo-Indian literature, he must assuredly
take the very highest rank among those who have

succeeded in throwing the glamour of romance and
poetry over life in the East.

HnQlo^nbian Worbs anJ> phrases*
From a philological point of view India is now in

a position similar to that of England immediately
after the Norman Conquest, and to her own former
position at the period of her history when Mahome-

dan invaders introduced Persian and Arabic into
the country. Just as in England, after the Norman
Conquest, there were two nations living side by

side,speaking different languages, and striving to
render themselves comprehensible to each other,
so now in India we find everywhere Englishmen
speaking English, and the natives of the country
speaking their vernacular, and, as intermediaries
between the two, the educated native and the
Englishman who has mastered Hindustani, Maratbi,
Gujarathi, or whatever vernacular is spoken in the
part of the country in which he dwells. Norman-
French and Anglo-Saxon, after one or two cen-
turies, coalesced into one language, and in like
manner the mixture of Persian and Arabic with
Indian vernaculars produced Hindustani. We have,
at the present time, the first steps of a similar
77
78 ANGLO-INDIAN
fusion between the English language and the ver-

naculars of India, a process which, if continued for
a century or two, would produce a new composite
language, partly of Eastern and partly of European

origin. At present, however, we are only at the
very beginning of such a fusion. English and the

vernaculars are still separated from each other by
a great gulf. Nevertheless, they cannot be in such
close contact without a large amount of mutual
action and re-action, which will be found, on con-
sideration, to be regulated by the same laws as

ruled the early relations of English with Norman
French at the Conquest, and subsequently with the
other foreign languages spoken by the nations with
which the enterprising spirit of Englishmen has
brought them into commercial and political inter-
course all over the world.
The philological results of the British Empire in
India may be briefly summed up as follows: firstly,
that many Indian words have been introduced into

the English language; secondly, that many English
words have been introduced into the vernaculars of
India ;
and thirdly, that several English words and
several Indian words have assumed new senses and
new combinations, owing to the social intercourse
between Englishmen and natives of India.
Let us first consider the words of Indian origin
WORDS AND PHRASES. 79
that have been added to the English language.

Some of them are of such old standing that they
are thoroughly naturalised. The most rigid purist
might use such words as "punkah," "Brahmin,"
" " " "
pariah," curry," "jungle," rajah," and rupee."
They need not be printed in italics in English
books, and are given a place even in small English
dictionaries. Among these words that have been
admitted into full
English citizenship, may, per-
"
haps, be counted salam," one of the most interest-
ing words that India has given to England. The
earliest use of this greeting by an European writer
quoted in Yule and Burnell's Hobson Jobson, is a
passage from Correa, a Portuguese writer who
visited India in the year 1512. But the European
use of the word goes back to a much earlier date
than the sixteenth century. Some time ago, in
turning over the pages of Symonds' Greek Poets,
I came upon an epitaph written on himself by
Meleager, a Greek epigrammatist, who nourished at

Gadara, the town so familiar to us as the home of
the Gadarene swine, just before the Christian era.
It gave me a shock of surprise to find in this
" "
epigram the familiar word salam in Greek
letters. The epitaph ends by addressing the sup-
"
posed visitor to his tomb as follows If you are:
a Syrian, Salam; if you are a Phoenician, Naidios;

80 ANGLO-INDIAN
and if a Greek, Chaire." 1 These lines show that

" "
salam was the ordinary word of salutation
throughout Syria at the beginning of the Christian

era. We
might, therefore, conjecture that "salam"
was one of the words most frequently in the mouth
of Christ and his Apostles. This conjecture is
raised almost to a certainty by reference to the
" "
Gospels. Salam is an Arabic word, meaning
peace ;
and Christ, in taking farewell of his
"
Apostles, says, Peace I leave with you my peace ;
I give unto you not as the world giveth, give I

:
unto you." There is little doubt that the very

word on that occasion actually used by Christ and
"
translated eirene, peace, was salam." The mean-
ing of the text is that Christ did not leave his
disciples an ordinary, meaningless, verbal salam,

but the priceless thing which "salam" really means,
namely peace. We may, therefore, without hesita-
" "
tion add salam to the small list of words which
we know to have been really spoken by Christ.
While such words as salam, punkah, and jungle
are sufficiently naturalised to be used by the most
scrupulous English writer, there are many other

Indian words that are struggling for their English
citizenship, and are mostly found in conversation,
1 'AAA' ei
\xkv Zv/oos k(j(Ti, SAAAM, el 8'ovv crv ye &6lvi,
XAI AI02, el 8 "EAA^v, XAIPE. to 8'avrb <j>pd<rov.
as loot, tapped, dubber, pucka, cutcha, and others

too many to mention. In some cases Indian words
used by Englishmen change their meaning. Thus
"
toddy," which, in its Indian sense, means the juice
of the palm tree, has come to mean in English the
combination of spirits and hot water, that is so
popular a remedy against the cold and mists of
Scotland. Abazaar in English generally means a
fancy fair, and not a market-place. The term
"
lascar," applied to Indian sailors, is derived from
Ioshkar, an army. Sidi, a Hindustani word con-
nected with the Arabic soiyid, a lord, was once a
title of honour, and retains its old sense when
applied to the Prince of Jingeera; but in Anglo-
Indian usage, the poorest Africans who work at the
docks, or in the engine rooms of steamers, are

"
called Seedees, or Seedy boys. Faujdar," from
fouj, an army, properly means a general, but we
apply the originally proud title to a chief police-
man, even though he may be the chief police-
man of a small town, with only some three or four
men under his command. Moshal, a lamp or torch
in Hindustani, means, in Bombay, the servant who
looks after the lamps, undergoing a change of
meaning by metonymy similar to that by which, in

"
ordinary English, spears," "oars," and "rifles" can
"
stand for spearmen," " oarsmen," and " riflemen."
F
82 ANGLO-INDIAN
In some cases the Indian word changes its gram-

matical character when adopted into English.
The noun jawab, an answer, does duty as an
Anglo-Indian verb, when we talk of a suitor being
jawaubed, that is, refused. Khaki is properly an
adjective meaning "of the colour of dust." As
used in English, it is a noun, meaning cloth of that
colour. Jaldi, an adverb meaning "quickly," is

converted into a noun by the British soldier when
he calls upon dawdling natives to " put a little more
jaldi into it." The imperatives of several common
Indian verbs are, in Anglo-Indian conversation,
treated as the stems of verbs, and have the ordin-
ary English verbal inflections added to them.

One such strangely-formed verb has been thor-
" "
oughly naturalised in English. Shampoo is, by
origin, the imperative of the Hindustani verb
champna, but in English it entirely loses its im-

perative force, and is conjugated as a verb of the
" "
weak conjugation, with shampooed as its past
tense and
past participle. PucJcerao, samjhao
maro, and banao are likewise colloquially con-
jugated as English verbs, especially by English
soldiers. Banao is not only used as a verbal
stem, but also as a noun. When Bellew's Griffin
buys a pariah dog, docked and cropped to make
him look like a terrier, his more experienced friend
"
asks him, Where on earth did you get this
WORDS AND PHRASES 83
beast ?
Why, he's a regular terrier bunnow." In
ordinary English we can find instances of impera-

"
tives thus used as nouns, as when a child says, It
is all make-believe," or a parliamentary reporter

talks of a
"
count-out." A similar change of
grammatical value, not unlike that undergone by
the Hindustani imperatives converted into Anglo-
Indian verbal stems, occurred when such verbs
" " " "
as complicate and affect were formed out of
Latin passive participles. But I cannot remember
any instance, except those just mentioned, of
imperatives of foreign verbs being used as new-

English verbs. How it happened, is clear enough.
The words that we have been considering were
continually used in the imperative mood, as words
of command, by Englishmen to their servants and
others, and became so familiar that the imperative

inflection was regarded as an essential part of the
verb. If the records of history were destroyed, and
these verbs, formed from Indian imperatives, still
survived, they would give clear evidence of the

ruling position held by the English in India, just
as the consideration of the French word " mutton,"
"
side by Anglo-Saxon word sheep,"
side with the
indicates that long ago the Saxon shepherds herded
sheep which did not become familiar to their Nor-

man masters until the animal appeared in a cooked
form on the table, as mutton.
84 ANGLO-INDIAN
Having seen that the Englishman makes new

verbs out of the imperatives of Indian verbs, and
out of the passive participles of Latin verbs, we
may finish what is to be said on the subject of

the naturalisation of foreign verbs, by inquiring,
how the native of India is inclined to treat the
English verbs he uses. As a rule, we shall find

that our native servants and other uneducated
natives, who have

a smattering of English, con-
fine themselves to the use of the present participle
to express all moods and tenses. We find this
predominance of the present participle correctly

illustrated by the remarks of the Moonshee in
the Lays of Ind. :
He also said, Saib pray excuse, but what will master do,
What master giving Moonshee man, if master getting
1
through
Two hundred fifty rupee, sircar backsheesh, Saib will get ;
Saibs always giving Moonshee half, got never less, Sir, yet.
I always coming reglar, teaching good."
From a consideration of this tendency, it seems
probable that, if an English verb is ever natural-

ised in an Indian vernacular, it will be in the
permanent form of a present participle. It is
easy to see how uneducated natives should be
inclined to fixupon one particular part of the

English verb for constant use. To do so saves
WOKDS AND PHRASES. 85
the trouble of mastering the inflexions and auxili-

aries, by which, in English, moods and tenses
are
distinguished. The reason why the present parti-

ciple is chosen in preference
to any other part
of the English verb, would seem to be the pre-

valence of the use of tenses formed from the
present participle in Hindustani and other

Indian
vernaculars.
Of the Indian words used by Englishmen,
several have gained acceptance from a resem-
blance to English words of similar meaning. The
Englishman in India soon picks up the word
gari, fixes it in his memory, as he connects
and
it in mind with the English word carriage.
his
In the same way bat cheet reminds him of chit
"
chat, and gup looks like an abbreviation of gos-
" "
sip." a Scotch diminutive applied
Beastie is
as a term of endearment to animals. Thus Burns

"
addresses the mouse as a wee, sleekit, cowrin',
timorous beastie." The term is, perhaps, most
commonly used by Scotch drovers, when speak-
ing of their cattle. So, when we are told in
India that the man who brings us water in
puckals on an ox's back is a bheestie, it is easy to

remember the name. We simply extend to the
Indian combination of man and beast, the term
that is applied to the beast alone by the Scotch
Highlander.
86 ANGLO-INDIAN
In a very large number of cases the Indian word

has been Anglicised by alteration in sound, or at
any rate in spelling, so as to make it resemble

English words and syllables. Such corruptions of
unfamiliar foreign words into more familiar and
intelligible sounds are common in every language.

The French contre danse, meaning a dance in
which the dancers stand face to face, was corrupted
in England into " country dance," and chartreux
and chateau vert become, in English, Charterhouse
and Shotover. The old alliance between France and
Scotland has given the Scotch language " petticoat
tails," which is a pretty corruption of the French
In like manner the English sailor

petit s gatedux.
converts the Bellerophon and the Pteroessa into
the Billy Ruffian and Tearing Hisser. This tend-
ency can be largely illustrated by Anglo-Indian

instances. In some cases the corruption merely
secures a familiar sound, without regard to mean-
ing. Take, for instance, the word punch, derived

from panch, five, because the beverage is composed
of five ingredients, namely, spirits, lime juice, sugar,
spice, and water. "Punch," in more senses than

"
one, is a familiar monosyllable in " English but;
no ingenuity can naturally connect any of its

meanings with the drink which, in its cold form,
proved so seductive to Mr. Pickwick. There is a
similar disregard of meaning in the corruption of
kabdb, tdm-tdm, Nawdb, bdp-re,pandi-kokku into

" " " "
cabob," tom-tom," nawab," bobbery," and
H
bandi-coot." In these cases the familiar English
" " " " "
syllables torn," bob and
are got into coot
the word by hook or by crook, without any regard
to the sense. In most cases, however, there is
enough connection between the corruption and its
meaning to suggest, more or less distinctly, a false
etymology. Sometimes the association of ideas is
" "
very slight. Jolly boat appears to be derived
from the Indian gallevat but the most etymo-
;
logical sailor would scarcely maintain that such a

boat is any jollier than a cutter or a dingy, which
two terms, by-the-bye, are also traced by Yule to
an Indian origin. It was scarcely from any recog-
nition of chivalric traits in his character that Olive's
soldiers dubbed Surajah Dowlah a knight under
the title of Sir Roger Dowlah. When malli was
"
corrupted into molly," there was, perhaps, under-
lying the transformation, the thought that the
name given to the English housemaid might, with-
out impropriety, be transferred to the not very
manly Indian gardener.

In other cases, however, the connection in mean-
ing is too obvious to be denied. Perhaps the most
striking Anglo-Indian instance of this tendency to
find a false etymology is the verb " dumb cow," one
of those Anglo-Indian verbs formed from Indian
88 ANGLO-INDIAN
imperatives. It comes from dam khao, the impera-

tive of the Hindustani dam khana, to eat one's
breath, that is, The Anglo-Indian de-
to be silent.
"
rivative is spelt dumbcow," so as to give both
syllables an English meaning, and raise in the mind
the idea of cowing a person and rendering him
dumb, or of making him as dumb as a cow.
Sitaphal, the fruit of Sita, one of the Indian
names of what we usually call the custard apple,
"
is ingeniouslycorrupted into sweet apple."
"
Breach Candy," the name of a favourite drive by
the sea in Bombay, is derived by Dr. Murray
Mitchell from Burj-Khddi, the tower of the creek.
If this is the correct derivation, the word has been
" "
corrupted into Breach Candy make
in order to
"
it intelligible to English ears, for breach," con-
"
nected with break," in old and provincial English
means an inlet of the sea, for instance in Judges
"
v. 17, where we read, that Asher continued on
the sea-shore and abode in his breaches." Such
an inlet is marked as The Breach " on an old
"
map of Bombay, at one end of what is now

Breach Candy. The Apollo Bunder, at which
the P. and O. steamers land their Bombay pas-
sengers, seems to have been originally called after

a fish which still appears occasionally on Western-
Indian breakfast tables, the palla bunder, until the

English settlers, more familiar with classical my-
thology than with Indian ichthyology, corrupted

"
palla into Apollo. Biscobra," from biskhapra,
"
like dumbcow," is so converted as to provide a
double false etymology intelligible to an English-
man, and suggest that the mysterious lizard meant
has twice the venom of the cobra. The Hindustani
idhar ao converted into hitherao, in order that it
is
may contain the English adverb " hither." The
Bengali guddm, a store-house, is converted into go-

down. The derivation suggested by the change,
though false, is plausible, as in the East store-
houses are generally under ground, so that their
"
owner has to go down into them. " Teapoy is,
by derivation, tinpai, a three-footed table, just as
" "
charpoy is a four-footed bed. But it is small
and convenient for tea ;
and therefore the first
syllable is
spelt accordingly. In like manner, from
"
the association of ideas shown above, " bheesty is
" " "
often spelt " beasty Solar tope is from shola,
;
meaning pith, which is converted into the English

"
adjective solar," from Latin sol, the sun, in order
"
that " solar tope may convey to an Englishman's
ear,by its sound and spelling, the appropriate

" "
meaning of sun helmet. Hanger isgenerally
"
supposed to be derived from the verb hang," be-
cause a sword hangs by one's side. It is really the
same word as the Scotch M whinger," and is de-

rived from the Arabic and Hindustani khangar.
90 ANGLO-INDIAN
Yule quotes an instance of the use of the word as

early as 1574, so that it probably came from Arabia
at the time of the Crusades, rather than, at a later
date, from India. As the word was more common

in Scotland than in England, it may have been
brought back by the survivors of the 15,000 High-
landers and Islesmen who, according to William of
Malmesbury, went to Palestine in the eleventh
century. The abbreviation of chithi and tattoo

" " " "
into the Anglo-Indian chit and tat may also
be, perhaps, regarded as the result of etymological
corruption. The associations of the English word

"
chit," generally meaning a small girl, seem to
have affected the

Anglo-Indian word, so that
" "
chit our colloquial language is used rather of
in
a small note sent by messenger, than of a regular

full-sized letter. Tattoo,by being abbreviated into
"
tat," suggests to the English mind the old English
"
word tit," meaning a
small horse or pony.
"
Gymkhana," about the derivation of which there
has been so much discussion and doubt, is almost
certainly an instance of etymological corruption.

Unless the word is a hybrid, which is unlikely, its
first syllable is a corruption of some Indian word.
But of what word ? Whitworth makes no conjec-
" "
ture on the subject. Yule says that gymkhana
is probably a corruption of gend khana, ball house,
the name generally given to a racket court.

Is it
not,however, more probable that the origin of the

word is jamatkhana, a place of assembly, a word
familiar enough be given in Whitworth's Anglo-
to
Indian dictionary ? Is not this the word that
would most naturally be used by natives to ex-

press the central place of the station, where the
Sahib logwe meet to enjoy themselves after the
labours of the day ? That the idea of meeting is
the idea most naturally connected with "gym-
"
khana is indicated by Yule himself, who, though
he gives a different derivation, describes a gym-
"
khana as a place of public resort at a station."
Jam, the beginning of the word, would easily and
" "
naturally be corrupted into English gym in
conversation, as the gymkhana a place of active is
exercise, and so has some resemblance to a gym-

nasium. There uncertainty about the
is less
etymology of a strange corruption of Indian words

by which the English soldier at Satara found what
he thought a suitable name for the game of bad-
minton. When that game was first introduced at
Satara, the natives called it tam-tam-phul-khel (the
tom-tom flower game), because the battledoor with
which it was originally played resembled a tom-
tom, and the shuttle-cock looked like a flower.
The British soldier, hearing this name, and deter-
mined to give it an intelligible meaning, trans-
formed it into Tom Fool Game, by which means he
92 ANGLO-INDIAN
both etymological instincts, and also

satisfied his
contrived to express his very decided opinion of

the frivolity of the new game.
We may now leave words of purely Indian
origin and proceed to consider those which are
partly of English and partly of Indian origin.
There are a certain number of words that we
use in India, each of which appears, on considera-
tion, to be the result of the blending into one
of two words resembling each other in sound and
in meaning, but belonging to different languages.
For instance, when we are making a bargain with
a native carpenter, ortailor, he will promise to
do his work praper. Who can decide whether
this is a corruption of the Indian barabar, to make
"
it sound like the English proper," or vice versa ?
The truth seems to be that it is a compromise
between the two similar sounds. Take again the
"
term boy," used in addressing native servants.
How can it be determined whether this is the
"
English boy," a term which, like the modern
French gargon, and the Latin puer, was commonly
applied to grown-up servants in the seventeenth
century, or the Indian boi, the name of a caste
much employed in Madras as palanquin bearers
and domestic servants. A similar double origin
"
is required to explain bearer," which is to a large
extent the Bengal equivalent of the term "boy,"

as used in Madras and Bombay. Behara, we learn
from Whitworth, is, in Bengali, as boi is in Telugu,
the name of a caste that supplies palkhiwalas
and domestic servants. Thus, when in Bengal
the Englishman called the men who carried his
palkhi, his bearers, although he usually spelt the

word as if it were formed from the English verb
"
bear," it is impossible to say that the word was
more of English than of Indian origin. After-
"
wards the meaning of bearer" in Bengal changed.
From being applied to the palanquin bearers, it
was transferred to the single servant of the same
caste who took care of his master's clothes, and
thus the word has attained its present meaning.
Another case of double derivation is "wordie,"
an order, which seems to result from the fusion of
the Kanarese varadi, an order, with the English
noun " word," often employed in giving an order,
"
as when we say, send word to so-and-so to come
quickly." It is strange, in Swift's Polite Con-

"
come upon the sentence
versation, to : !
miss,
"
you must give your vardi too Very ! unsatis-
" "
factory explanations are given of vardi in this
context. Some say it is for par dieu; some de-
clare it to be an affected pronunciation of " ver-
dict." May it not be that the term is the Indian
94 ANGLO-INDIAN
word varadi, and that it was introduced into
English polite conversation by some Anglo-Indian,

who returned to England in the days of Swift ?
Such out-of-the-way words often gain a temporary
vogue in fashionable conversation, and then dis-
"
appear to give place to others. Cot" and " buggy"
are two other terms which can, with equal ease,
be traced to Indian and English origin. But
perhaps the most familiar instance of this con-
fusion is the Anglo- Indian " tank," which differs
"
slightly in meaning from the English word tank,"
and slightly in form from the Indian word tdnka.
No doubt the Englishman or the Portuguese for
a word of the same sound and derivation, but of
different spelling, is the Portuguese language
in
also, on landing in India and hearing the word

tanka applied to a reservoir of water, identified
it immediately with the similar word in his own
language, so that this Anglo-Indian word may
perhaps be described as of threefold derivation.

Words and phrases of mixed origin are more
easily treated when the parts derived from different
languages are kept separate in different syllables.
" "
Ordinary English hybrids, such as bigamy and
"tidology," may be paralleled by several similar
Anglo-Indian combinations, as, for instance, brandy-
pawnee, agboat, competition wala, missee baba,

memsahib, purdah lady, travellers' bungalow. In

several of these hybrids we have additional in-
stances of the tendency to corrupt unfamiliar into
familiar sounds. Mr. Stanley Lane Poole says
" "
that John Company was originally Jahan-
Kumpani (Company of the World), the name given
by the natives of India to the United East India
Company. The kalij pheasant of the Himalayas
israther absurdly converted into a college-pheasant,
much as Uxford, the river ford (cf. Uxbridge), was
"
changed into Oxford. Jack, in Jack-fruit" is
a corruption of the Malay chakka, or rather of

the Portuguese word derived from the Malay.
" "
First was originally first chap, or first
chop
stamp, chap being the word we are familiar with
in chdpakhana, a printing house. According to
" "
Yule, quite the cheese is
literally quite the
" "
thing, cheese being a corruption of the common
Hindustani word chiz, a thing. He also traces
the offending word in a phrase generally supposed
to savour of blasphemy to an Indian origin, in
dam, the name of a copper coin worth a fortieth
part of a rupee. Certainly the etymological

analogy of the kindred phrases, "don't care a
" "
curse and don't care a rap," support his view.
"
For a rap was a small Irish coin, and curse," in
the phrase, " I don't care a curse," is
undoubtedly
96 ANGLO-INDIAN
a corruption of the harmless "kerse," which in

"
Chaucer meant cress."
The words which we have next to consider are

those of English origin that have gained currency
in vernacular writing or conversation, or have
attained a new meaning in India. In so doing,
it will be convenient to treat as of English origin
all the words that have come to India from
England, whatever may have been their ultimate
origin. We must
also, of course, regard Scotch
as English. Indeed, the language of Burns has
much more right to the name of English than is
possessed by the literary English to which that
name is generally confined ;
for Lowland Scotch,
as is clearly shown by Earle, is the direct de-
scendant of the language spoken in the Anglican
kingdom of Northumbria, while literary English

isdescended from the language spoken by the
Saxon kingdoms of Central and Southern Eng-
land,and altered by the admixture of Norman
French and many other foreign elements.
No
one can listen long to a conversation be-
tween two natives of India in their own tongue,
without hearing a large number of English words
employed. In the vernacular press many English
words are used to express the legal, political,
and social usages of Europe and the discoveries

of Western science. In some few cases a new
application of an old vernacular term, or a new

combination of vernacular words, is used to express
the new object of thought. Thus we have bijli
Jci batti (lightning lamp) for electric light, and
vilayeti pani (European water) for soda water,
ag gari (fire carriage) for railway train, and tar,

which literally means wire, is used to express
the telegraph, or a telegram. But in the immense
majority of cases English words are used in the
vernaculars to express things and ideas imported
from Europe. Naturally most of the English
words thus adopted into the Indian vernaculars
are more or less altered in sound, so that they
may be pronounced more easily by Indian lips.
The English tendency is to throw the accent
back as far as possible. This is why we have,
" " "
in English, grammar and courage," corres-
ponding to the French grammdire and courage,

and, from the same inclination, we transform the
" "
Indian tappdl and hamdl into tappal and
"hamal." But this tendency to have the accent
as near the beginning of a word as possible, is
as repugnant to the natives of India as it is to
many other foreigners. Hence arises, in English

words employed in Indian vernaculars, a displace-
ment of accents just the reverse of that which
98 ANGLO-INDIAN
often happens when an Indian word is uttered

by Englishmen. If a Bombay tramcar conductor
is asked to
give a ticket for the Municipal Office,
he will generally reply interrogatively "Muni-
"
cipal? and you
will scarcely get your ticket
without conforming to his mispronunciation and
placing the accent on the final syllable. In the
same way, by misplacement of the accent, " hospi-
" "
tal is changed into ispitdl, " towel into towdl
" "
and captain into captdn. Sometimes a con-
sonant is added through laziness. In some parts
of England "gown" is pronounced "gownd," and
the Anglo-Saxon thunor was enlarged into " thun-
" "
der in English, because, after
pronouncing n," the
organs of speech are in such a convenient position
"
for pronouncing d," that it is less trouble to pro-
nounce than to repress that sound. It is in exactly
the same way that governor has come to be spelt
and pronounced govundar in Indian vernaculars.
Etymologists have invented various terms to
express the different ways in which words are
modified for convenience of pronunciation. The
process by which consonants of a different kind

are replaced by consonants of the same kind is
called assimilation. We have an instance of this
kind of corruption in the conversion of "lemonade"

"
into limlet, and of "flannel into falalin. In both
cases the word is changed, so that "1," instead

of another consonant, may follow "1/' just as in
English, or rather in the Latin from which the
"
English word is derived, con and " lateral " "
"
combine, not into conlateral," but into "col-
lateral." In the opposite kind of
other cases
change, called dissimilation, takes place, as when

" "
champagne is changed into simJcin, because
Indian lips find a difficulty in pronouncing the
"
two labials
*
m "
and "
p in such close proximity.
To avoid the same combination of letters in the
" "
opposite order, midshipman used to be pro-
nounced meechilman. Sometimes, to make the
pronunciation easier, a new syllable is added, and

thus "glass," " box," "tax," "constable," are changed
into gilas, holms, tekus, and canas-table. The
last instance is peculiarly interesting, as, by the
operation of two corruptions which cancel each
other, the word has got back eventually to a much
" "
earlier form. Constable
derived originally is
from the Latin comes stabuli, companion, or count

of the stable. In Norman French these two words
combined into the one quadrisyllable word, conest-
able, which in English, by the operation of syncope
"
was reduced to constable." Finally the native of
India, to make the word suit his organs of
speech,
enlarges it again to canas-table, and so produces a
100 ANGLO-INDIAN
word which is almost identical in sound with that

used by William the Conqueror and his barons.
Another common instance of this corruption by
addition of an extra syllable is the insertion of a
vowel before words beginning with st and
sc. Such words are always hard to pronounce.
There is a town in the South West of Scotland
called Stranraer. The children in the neighbour-

hood find it much easier to make this name beîn
with an I, and call it Istranraer. On the same
principle, when the French formed derivatives from

the Latin store, they put a supporting vowel at the
beginning of the words and that is how we find

;
in English "estate" and "establish" side by side

"
with state" and "stablish." These parallels may
be a sufficient excuse for the uneducated Indian
cook who proposes to make his master an eestew,
and for the vernacular paper that describes the
trials in the ismal-cas-corut, but scarcely for an
educational institution not fifty miles from Bom-
bay, that I saw some years ago proclaiming
itself
to the world on a printed board as an Anglo-

Vernacular Eescool. Yet, after all, eescool in India
is the result of the same philological process that

ecole in France and ysgol in Wales.
produced
In other cases the corruption, instead of adding
a new syllable, diminishes the existing number
of syllables by contraction, called

syncope by
philologists. This already been illustrated
has
above in the history of the word " constable," and
we all know that " damsel " is short for damosel.
In just the same way, " pantaloon " and " man-of-
war " are shortened by natives of India into pdtloon
and manwdr.
In the last -mentioned case the corruption is pro-
bably due to the common tendency to give foreign

words a more familiar sound, of which we have
quoted so many instances in the corruption of
Indian words used by Englishmen. Manwar is
much more like a Hindustani or Marathi noun
than "man-of-war," of which it is a contraction.
A clearer case is the corruption of the originally
" "
Mexican word tomato into tambotu, which, in
Gujarathi, as I am told, means a milk pail.

This kind of corruption is specially common in
the case of English proper names. The hill station
of Matheran near Bombay supplies us with several

instances that were recorded in its local paper,
Matheran Jottings, in May, 1892. Panorama Point,
the name of the finest point of view on Matheran
Hill, is corrupted into Pandurang Point, and thus
the long word of Greek origin is shortened into a
very common Hindu name. In like manner the

inhabitants of the hill have converted
Porcupine
102 ANGLO-INDIAN
Point into Palkhi Point, although that name would

be equally appropriate to any other of the Points
to which the groaning Palkhiwalas bear their
burdens. A house was built at Matheran by, or
for, a Mr. Rogers. It was
no doubt, called
first,
Rogersthan, or Roger's Place, but is now only

known as Rajusthan, the Place of the King. This
name, however, being a hybrid, ought, strictly
speaking, to have been treated at an earlier point
of our investigations, when we were considering
words of mixed origin. English surnames are
specially liable to be strangely altered in this way.
" "
Kinloch is corrupted into tin lakh (three lacs),
a name agreeably suggestive of wealth. Mackenzie
becomes Makkhanji, a compound of makkhan,
butter, and ji, an honorary affix. Frere, Moore,
Shaw, are converted respectively into Fer, meaning
distance, Mot, a peacock, and Shah, a king.
Jackson is disguised as Jaykisn, a Gujarathi com-
pound and Krishn, Krishna.
of jai, victory, Ad-
ditional examples of the same kind of corrup-
tion are kindly given me by the Hindi Punchy
from which I may quote the transformation of
" "
Captain Gwyn into Govind Sahib, and of
"
Who comes there," into Hookum durr.
Sometimes, strange to say, one English word or
syllable is corrupted into another. Thus the last

"
syllable of Mackintosh
corrupted into toast,"
is
which following the corruption of the first two

syllables into mahkhan, butter, produces a com-
bination more harmonious from a gastronomic than
from a philosophical point of view. The Hon. Mr.
Peile, now Sir James Peile, was always known in
Western India Appeal Sahib. The English word
as
"
in the law courts, and there
'
appeal was familiar
was, perhaps, an underlying idea that Mr. Peile

was somehow connected, in his official posi-
tion, with the settlement of appeals. A similar
instance is the corruption of the name Ravenscroft,
belonging to another Bombay Member of Council.
The name was a hard one, but reminded the un-
educated Bombay native of the better known name
of Crawford,which he had been compelled to
master when the Crawford markets were built-
This being the case, he determined not to take the
trouble of mastering a new and difficult English
name. So he tacked on the qualifying word
"
revenue," familiar as the name of a government
department, before the name Crawford, and Mr.
Ravenscroft was transformed into Revenue
Crawford Sahib, as he were a newly-discovered
if
species of the genus Crawford.

We have next to consider a large number of
English words that have acquired new meanings in
104 ANGLO-INDIAN
India. As their number is large, it is advisable to

divide them into two classes for separate considera-
tion. Let us first examine those English words
which have changed their meaning by being used
by natives of India, and secondly those which are
applied to strange uses by the English themselves,
although it may be difficult in one or two cases to
be sure that we are assigning each particular word
to its right class.
The two
principal ways in which words change
theirmeaning in the course of time is by generalisa-
tion and specialisation. Generalisation is the ex-
tension of a name to a larger class of objects, as
"
when which originally meant bad
solecism,"
Greek spoken at the town of Soli in Asia Minor,
came to include all cases of the violation of the
grammar or idiom of any language ; specialisation
is the restriction of a name to a smaller class, as
"
when voyage," which used to mean a
the term
journey by land or sea, was restricted to journeys
by sea. Both processes are illustrated by the

following story. A friend of mine was travelling
on official work in the Berars, and had to get pro-
visions from the headmen of the villages through
which he passed. One daycame and
his butler
told him that the village patel was impudent and

refused to supply provisions. The patel, on being
"
called up, said was not impudent but the
: I ;
butler demanded brandy, and I have none." The

u
butler replied : I did not ask for brandy, but
wine. must have wine." His astonished master
I
asked him what in the world he meant by demand-

"
ing wine. Must have wine," replied the butler ;
"
can't make bread without wine." It turned out
that what he wanted was yeast, and then the mis-
understanding was at an end. It will be noticed
that in the above conversation at cross purposes,
the butler had, by the process of generalisation,
extended the meaning "wine," so as to make it
include everything fermented, while the patel, by
the opposite process of specialisation, had under-
" "
stood wine to mean one particular alcoholic
liquor, namely brandy. The tendency to general-

isation is very common among native servants.
They make the word "boot" include boots and

shoes; call tarts, trifles, and sweet omelets indis-
"
criminately pudding apply ;
the name school-
"
master connected with education,
to everyone
whether he teaches in a school or a college, or even
if he an inspector of schools or director of public
is
instruction and they make the word " office " do

;
for their master's place of business, though it be a

school, a college, or a law court. Specialisation is
less common in the use of
English words by Indians,
106 ANGLO-INDIAN
although in the history of the English language it

prevails more widely than generalisation. We see
instances of it in the way in which Bombay ser-
vants narrow the meaning of "ticket" and "cover,"
and understand by these two words a postage
" "
stamp and an envelope. The word sick is used
by natives to express every kind of illness, whether
involving nausea or not. This, at first sight, looks
like generalisation, but it is more probably a case
of the preservation of the older and wider meaning
of the word that prevailed when Englishmen first
came to India. In like manner it has been often
noticed that many Americanisms, for instance, the
" "
use of rare in the sense of underdone, and of
" "
fall in the sense of
autumn, are really survivals
of the meanings that English words had in the days
of Queen Elizabeth and the Stuart Kings, when
the American colonies were founded. Among the
old meanings of words retained in America is this
" "
very use of the word sick in the wider sense,
with which we are so familiar in India.
We come last to English words that are used in
unusual senses, or in new combinations, by English-
men living in India. Some express the amusements
by which the Englishman tries to while away the
years of his exile, such as tent-pegging, pig-sticking,

" "
and sky races. In pig-sticking the verb stick is
used in a sense which has become obsolete. We

now speak, not of sticking an animal with a spear,
but of sticking a spear into an animal. The use of
" "
stick in this old sense points to the amusement
and its name having
originated many years ago, in
the earlier days of English settlement in India; and
in fact we find, in the supplement of Hobson
Jobson, mention of the sport of pig-sticking as early

as 1C79, though it is not called by that name in the
passage quoted. The verb "jink," so often applied

to the boar in descriptions of boar hunts, is a
Scotch word, used by Burns, from which we may
infer that some early enthusiast in the introduc-
tion of the sport was a Scotchman, and that his
influence was so great, that he gave a Scotch tinge
to its technical language. One is also tempted to
claim a Scotch origin for " dispense room." Cer-
"
tainly there is a good old Scotch word spence,"
meaning provision room, which may be found in
Scott's novels. In the description of Donald Bean's
stronghold in Waverley, for instance, we read how

"in one large aperture, which the robber facetiously
called his spence (or pantry), there hung by the
heels the carcasses of a sheep, or ewe, and two cows
"
lately slaughtered." the Scotch " spence
But if
had been attempted by native lips, it would almost

"
certainly have been corrupted into eespence,"
108 ANGLO-INDIAN
" n
whereas the word in use is noteespense but
"dispense." Therefore, we must rather derive it
from the Portuguese word despensa, or the French
word despense, both of which have the same mean-
"
ing and etymology as the Scotch spence." The
spelling would seem to have been altered by
,
" "
English writers from " des to " dis in order to
connect the word with the verb "dispense," because
in the dispense room the Madamsahib dispenses
household necessaries to the cook and butler. Of
"
the derivation of sky races," it is difficult to give
a plausible conjecture. As they are usually held in
the uncertain weather of the monsoon, it has been
suggested that they may be races dependent on the

sky, that is, on the state of the weather. Perhaps
the name may have some connection with sky-
larking, or Norwegian sky-racing, which
with
means racing with snow shoes on the sky or snow.
Of the names of Anglo-Indian dishes we may
take first the familiar "country captain," the origin
of which is
satisfactorily explained by Yule.
"
Country," in India, is used adjectivally to express
Indian, as opposed to European. Thus we have
such expressions as a country-bred horse, country
leather. Just as the Black Prince was so called
because his armour was black, so by a similar
transference of epithet, a country captain is prim
arily a captain of a country ship, that is of a ship

engaged in the Indian coasting trade, and second-
arily, it comes to mean a favourite dish frequently
provided for the captains of such vessels. The

w "
origin of spatch cock is much more puzzling.
Yule and Whitworth do not find, room for it in
their dictionaries. But surely it is an Anglo-

Indian term, for, if you were to ask for a spatch
cock in a London hotel, or English village inn, the
waiter would probably stare at you in blank amaze-
ment. It is commonly explained as a cock or hen
suddenly despatched. This is the meaning, but
" "
can hardly be the derivation. For
spatch cock
"
or " spitch cock is an old English word used
by writers of the time of Shakespeare to express a
way of cooking eels. King, the poetical chaplain
of James I., used the word as a verb in the follow-
ing lines :
" No man lards salt pork with orange peel

Or garnishes his lamb with spitchcockt eel,"
and another writer employs the word as a noun,

seemingly to express an eel cooked in this way.
But in what way ? Johnson in his dictionary says
that to spitch-cock an eel is to cut him in pieces and
roast him. From all this we may fairly conclude
that the word had originally nothing to do with
110 ANGLO-INDIAN
either "despatch" or "cock." The first syllable

may be derived from "spit," as indicated by the
old spelling "spitch cock," and still more by the
spelling of Sir Thomas Browne, who speaks of a
"
dish of spits-cocked scorpions," or it may, perhaps,
be from the French depecer, cut in pieces, spelt in
old French despecher. The second syllable is pro-
bably the passive participle of the verb cook, which
"
in old English writers has only one o," and may
have been pronounced "cockt." Thus the deriva-
tive meaning in either case would mean split in
small pieces and cooked, for, in order that small
pieces of meat may be conveniently roasted, they

must first be spitted together. The old derivation
being forgotten, and a false derivation being in-
vented which gave the word a new meaning, the
spitch cock, which had been a spitch-cockt eel to
our ancestors, changed its character and became an
Anglo-Indian spatch cock.
" "
Chummery is a useful noun which appears to
have been coined in Bombay to express a bungalow
in which two or three persons chum together.
Murray only quotes one instance of the word, but
not in its concrete Anglo-Indian sense. The author
quoted is Besant, the novelist, who speaks of per-

"
sons living together in bachelor chummery," but
in this quotation the absence of the article shows

WORDS AND PHRASES. Ill
" "
that chummery is an abstract term, meaning the
state of being chums. Another social word that,
"
perhaps, originated in Bombay, is the term first
lady," applied to the lady at a dinner party, who is

taken in to dinner by the host. This post carries
with it the important duty of making the first
move to break up the party, and, when the guest
chosen as first lady is a young bride new to India
and unacquainted with this peculiar social usage,

complications arise, and the party may remain un-
broken to an unconscionably late hour, everybody
waiting tor the bride to take her departure first.
" "
In Bengal the verb cart has acquired a new
social meaning. It means, or used to mean, to drive
a young lady out in a cart, or carriage. Such con-

duct understood to imply matrimonial intentions,
is
and considered tantamount to an engagement.

is
"
This use of " cart will be found in Belle w's
Memoirs of a Griffin. Why a new arrival in
India is called a griffin, would be hard to say. A
griffin a strange composite beast, between a lion
is
and an eagle, and, perhaps, the idea is that the new

comer a similarly composite creature, as he has
is
leftEurope and not yet been thoroughly initiated

into the mysteries of Anglo-Indian life. Some
Anglo-Indian colloquialisms are grimly jocular, such
" "
as peg," according to one etymology, and pro-
112 ANGLO-INDIAN
motion nuts." It will probably never be decided

whether pegs are so called because they screw
you up when you are low, or because each adds a
peg to your coffin, or because old-fashioned drinking
vessels were measured by pegs. Possibly, as has
been suggested to me, the word may have an Indian
derivation from pej, a Marathi word meaning a
draught of rice and water, often taken by natives

in the early morning. The most probable explana-
tionis, however, that given by an old soldier, who
remembers that drinks in the canteen used to be

scored up by fixing pegs in a board. This being
the case, the symbol might have come b}^ metonymy
tobe used for the thing symbolised, and " Give me
"
another peg would come to be regarded as a
"
natural equivalent for Give me another drink."
"
The term promotion cashew
nuts," applied to the
nuts on account of their indigestibility, is an indi-
cation of the official character of Anglo-Indian
society, which makes its junior members cynically

regard their seniors as so many obstacles in the
way of promotion. The appreciation of the advan-

tages enjoyed by themembers of the covenanted
"
civil service is expressed by the term twice-born,"
" "
applied to them. Twice-born is a literal trans-
lation of dvija, the adjective that distinguishes the
three higher Hindu castes, the members of which
are born again at the time of their investiture

with the sacred cord. Grass-cutter is another
literal translation of an Indian term, unless it may
'be regarded as a
corruption of
equivalent its
ghdskdta, in which case it should have been men-

tioned earlier, as being not of English, but Indian,
origin. To " cut pay " is a new verbal combina-

tion made in India to give a literal rendering of
the Indian idiom puggar katna, which, if not
translated thus into what may be called dog
English, would require rather more words to ex-

"
press its meaning. Man-eater," specialised in the
"
sense of man-eating tiger, native town," and
"
fire temple," are three more combinations of
English words which acquire in India special mean-
"
ings. Home," as used by the Englishman in
India, almost always means England as opposed to
the land of his exile, and this usage has become so
inveterate, that even natives of this country, when
they contemplate a visit to Europe, may be heard

"
telling their friends that they are going home."
Among the new words which the Englishman
adds to his vocabulary in the East, some of the
commonest are of Portuguese derivation. The
large number of these Portuguese words is a visible
proof of the former extent and power of the Portu-
guese dominion in India. It would, however, be

114 ANGLO-INDIAN WORDS AND PHRASES.
out of place for me to try and trace them to their
origin, when we have in India Portuguese scholars

so much better fitted for the task. I have, indeed,
felt that it was quite venturesome enough, in one so
imperfectly acquainted with the vernaculars of

India as I am, to discuss the words of Indian origin
w hich
T
are daily on our lips in this country. How-
ever, by availing myself freely of the vernacular
knowledge possessed by my pupils at Elphinstone

College, and by consulting the literary labours of
those who have studied deeply the languages of
India, and have given to the world the result of
their studies, it has been possible for me to supply
my own very imperfect acquaintance

the defects of
with Oriental languages. It has been my main
object to show that the same

principles of philo-
logy that rule the formation of the great literary
languages of the world are clearly exemplified even
in such a humble hybrid dialect as Anglo-Indian.
If I have succeeded at all in my endeavour, I must
express in the fullest way my obligations to the
Anglo-Indian dictionaries of Col. Yule and of Mr.
Whitworth of the Bombay Civil Service, without
the abundant material supplied in whose works, it
would have been impossible for me to put together

these few tentative remarks on Anglo-Indian words
and phrases.
Ibereotty ano tbe IRegeneration of
3nofa.
The sphere of the law of heredity extends over

all animate existence. The law that like produces
like prevails over the generations not only of ani-
mals, but also of plants.In treating the question

a distinction must be made between specific and
individual heredity. Specific heredity, the law
that plants and animals of one species cannot produce
plants and animals of another species, that the

seed of the oak cannot develop into a beech tree,
and that a lion cannot be the parent of a tiger, is
so invariable that, like the law of universal causa-
tion and the succession of night and day, it excites
neither the wonder nor even the notice of unre-
flective minds, who see nothing remarkable in the
normal course of nature and irrationally reserve

their wonder for the exceptional and uncommon.
When we pass from specific to individual heredity,
the operation of the law becomes less clearly re-
cognisable, because more liable to be defeated by

counteracting causes. Though we are certain that
115
116 HEREDITY AND THE
the offspring of human parents must be a human

being, we mayexpect, but cannot be sure, that a
child will inherit most of the peculiar characteris-
tics of mind and body, by which its parents were
distinguished from other human beings. This is,
however, just what might have been expected
from the operation of the law of heredity. We
have to remember that, though by the law of
heredity, men's physical and mental characteristics
are mainly determined by their parents, they may
be influenced in a degree by grandparents and
less
more remote ancestors. Being the descendants of

countless generations of human beings, we have no
ancestors from whom to inherit the nature of
tigers and But, though our parents

horses. may
have one set of individual characteristics, we may
inherit a large admixture of opposite characteris-
tics from a grandfather. Thus Edward III. re-
sembled not his father Edward II., but his able

and warlike grandfather. Yet, on the whole,
children are~more likely to resemble their parents
than their grandparents. According to Galton,
we inherit about 1-1 6th of our original nature from
our grandparents and a whole quarter from our
parents. For the sake of simplicity, confining our
attention to inheritance from parents, we can say
with regard to individual characteristics that chil-
REGENERATION OF INDIA. 117
dren tend to resemble their parents, that the child

of virtuous parents is more likely to be virtuous
than the child of vicious parents, and the children
of parents strong in mind and body are likely
under ordinary circumstances to grow up into men
and women strong in mind and body. The truth
of this, as a general rule, is so obvious, that it has
been recognised from the earliest times of which
we have any record. Moral heredity is recognised
u
in the laws of Manu, where we read, A woman
always brings into the world a son gifted with the
same qualities as he who begat him," and " We
may know by his act the man that belongs to a
low class, or who is born of a disreputable mother,"
and again, " A man of low birth has the evil dis-
positions of his father or his mother, or of both
he never can hide his descent." The anciently
established caste system of India and of Egypt is
a recognition on an immense scale of heredity, for
its chief justification is that physical and mental
aptitudes for work are handed down from genera-

tion to generation, that the descendant of many
generations of with an in-
carpenters starts life
herited capacity for working in wood, so that it
would be in most cases a waste of talent to educate
him to any other trade. Another practical illus-
tration of the belief in the principle of heredity

is to be found in Japan, where, it is said, the

parents of criminals are punished for the crimes
of their The proverbs of all nations
children.
recognise the resemblance between parents and

children. In England, a son resembling his father
"
is proverbially declared to be a chip of the old
block." An Indian proverb tells us that "a son
takes after his father as the fruit of the banyan
tree is like the tree on which it grows." Quota-
tions in support of heredity might be collected
from most of the great writers of ancient and
modern times. Aristotle illustrated it by the story
of a father, who, being dragged out of the house
by his son, besought that son to drag him no

farther than the threshold, for, he said, " I in my
day dragged my father no farther than the thres-
hold." The grim humour of this story is repro-
duced in Browning's poem of Ralbert and Hob. But
it isuseless to accumulate the various expressions
of belief in heredity to be found in the writings
and sayings of all ages. Enough has been said to
illustrate how widely the principle has been ac-
cepted as true by the wisdom of the ancients.
may, however, be objected that many gener-

It
alizations, once widely accepted, have had to

be rejected by modern science, as based upon no
better foundation than a certain number of affirma-

tive instances, that by their strange coincidence
attracted attention, while the contrary instances,
having nothing remarkable in them, were easily

forgotten. As Bacon clearly pointed out, all the
old superstitious beliefs in astrology, witchcraft,
charms, omens, and all kinds of magic were due

to this tendency of the human mind to attend to
positive instancesand neglect the duty of search-
ing for negative instances. Can the same be said
of the principle of heredity ? Can we believe
that it based only on a few chance cases in
is
which children happened to resemble their parents,

and could we find, if we looked for them, just
as large a proportion of instances of resemblance
between men born, say, in the same year, or in
the same house, as between parents and children ?
If this werethen this generalization, like the
so,
superstitions of the ignorant, must be condemned

as a popular delusion for which there is no rational
foundation. This, however, is very far from being
the case. Modern science, instead of attacking
the belief in heredity, confirms it on rational
grounds. Specific heredity, the lav/ that animals

can only reproduce their own species, is of such
universal necessity that it admits of no exception.
Indeed, the universality of specific heredity is a

very strong argument in favour of individual
heredity. Seeing that through the whole animal

and vegetable world, parents of one species
can never produce offspring of another species,
it is natural to expect that parents who transmit
all their specific qualities should also transmit
some of their individual peculiarities also. You
have probably got in your own experience
all
instances of the resemblance between parents and

children in private that are far too striking
life,
and numerous to be attributable to chance.

Writers upon the subject of heredity in collect-
ing statistics have to confine themselves to the

relationships of eminent men, whose characters
are known from history, so that readers may test
the accuracy of their instances. Even from this
limited range of selection Galton and Ribot can
bring forward a convincing array of instances

It would be useless for me here to bring all this
great mass of evidence before you. Let me, how-

ever, as good typical modern instances of intellec-
tual heredity, direct your attention to the amount

of literary talent and learning that has been dis-
played by two English families the Arnolds

and the Wordsworths in both which cases I
happen to be able to supplement the information

attainable in biographical dictionaries by my own
individual experience. The

literary reputation
of the Arnold family appears to begin with
Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby, whose
history of Rome deserves to be regarded as one
of the very greatest masterpieces of English prose.
His eldest son was Matthew Arnold, the poet ;
a
younger son was W. D. Arnold, Director of Public

Instruction in the Punjab, author of OaJcjield,
whose death is consecrated in one of his brother's
most beautiful and pathetic poems. The second
son of Thomas Arnold was another Thomas Arnold,
who has written several works on English litera-
ture. His daughter is Mrs. Ward, the authoress
of Robert Elsmere. One of his sons, who was
my contemporary at school, won scholarships
there and at Oxford by his marked superiority
in English over other candidates. The only
original work, as far as I know, that he has yet
produced, is his treatise on the Roman System
of Provincial Administration, by which he won
the Arnold Essay at Oxford but he may be
;
expected in the future fully to sustain the family

The literary talent and genius
literary reputation.
manifested in the Wordsworth family is equally
remarkable. The great poet's sister Dorothy is
known to have rivalled him in poetic insight
and keen susceptibility to the beauties of nature
His brother was the Rev. Christopher Wordsworth,

Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and author
of Ecclesiastical Biographies. Two sons of the
Rev. Christopher Wordsworth became Bishops,
one the Bishop of St. Andrews, the other the
Bishop of Lincoln. The Bishop of St. Andrews
wrote a work on the Bible in Shakespeare. His
younger brother, the Bishop of Lincoln, is the
author of Greece Pictorial and Descriptive,
and many other learned works. One of the
Bishop of Lincoln's sons, whose lectures I had

the privilege of attending at Brasenose College,
Oxford, has since become Bishop of Salisbury,
making the third Bishop in the W'ordsworth
family. He is an eminent Latin scholar and
is the author of
Fragments of Early Latin.
His brother, Canon Wordsworth, wrote Social
Life in the English Universities. His sister
is joint authoress of a biography of her father

the Bishop of Lincoln. If we now turn to the
direct line of descent from the poet we find it
well represented by the late Principal of Elphin-

stone College, whose literary talents and poetic
genius are well known in Bombay and deserve

to be better known by the world.
Two such instances of family genius I only
give as examples. They would prove little in
themselves if they were not supported by the

large array of similar instances, far too numerous
to be included in this short paper, of hereditary
genius collected by Galton from his investiga-

tions into the family history of eminent judges,
statesmen, commanders, men of science, poets,

musicians, painters, and orators. Our own per-
sonal experience makes it plain to us that, as
might be expected, bodily strength, moral char-
acter, and ordinary intellectual ability are as
distinctly hereditary as genius. We may, there-

fore, safely conclude that the intellectual and moral
character and the physical strength with which
a child begins life are entirely, or almost entirely,
derived from its parents. It may perhaps be
objected that in many cases healthy parents
have unhealthy children and wise parents have
foolish children. This, of course, cannot be denied.
But such exceptions are quite compatible with
the fact that the children of healthy parents are
more likely to be healthy than the children of
unhealthy parents, and that the children of wise
parents are more likely to be wise than the chil-
dren of unwise parents. In the case of large
numbers for instance, if we consider whole
nations instead of individual instances the ex-
ceptions due to chance or counteracting cases

would disappear. Just as a thousand picked

marksmen would be make a better score
sure to
at the target than a thousand men unskilled in the
use of the rifle, although one or two of the best
shots made by the unskilled riflemen might happen
to be better than one or two of the worst shots of
the picked marksmen, so, other circumstances re-
maining the same, the next generation of a nation

of parents strong in mind and body is sure to be
stronger in mind and body than the offspring of a

nation of mentally and physically weak parents.
Having thus established that the bodily and
mental powers of children are to a very large
extent determined by the bodily and mental health
of their parents, it is natural next to inquire
whether a child derives more of its original char-
acter from its father or its mother, and whether

any distinction can be made between the inheri-
tance derived from the two parents. Schopenhauer
was strongly of opinion that a distinction could
be made between the mental gifts derived from
father and mother. He was firmly convinced that
a child derives its intellect from its mother and
its will from its father. The same distinction is
drawn in the Vedanga-niruhla, a Sanskrit medical
work, in which we are told that the child derives

from the mother his brains and other passive
elements, but from his father his strength and

active powers. If this were so, it would be ex-
pedient in the interests of the coming generation

to cultivate especially the intellects of girls and
the will power of boys. But in this as in other
cases Schopenhauer seems to have generalized for
the most part from his own instance. As he hap-
pened himself to inherit his intellect from a clever

mother, and Goethe and many other eminent men
are known to have resembled him in this, he
elevated this order of mental succession into a
general rule, ignoring the equally numerous cases

of men who, like William Pitt, Hartley Coleridge,
and J. S. Mill, inherited their intellect from their
fathers. However numerous the instances we
examine, it seems impossible to accept any such
distinction as
Schopenhauer believes to exist
between the kind of influence, that male and
female parents have upon the mind of their
offspring. As far as can be seen, it appears that

father and mother both have a share in affecting
all the elements of their offspring's character by
hereditary transmission, the will, the intellect, the

emotions, and the sensations. In some cases a
child may inherit more of its father's will and
its mother's intellect, another child may inherit
more of its father's intellect and its mother's will,
a third may inherit an intellect and will about

half-way between the intellects and wills of its
two parents. Nor can any distinction be made be-
tween the quantity of hereditary influence exerted
by fathers and mothers over their sons, on the one
hand, and their daughters on the other. Although
the code of Manu and the author of the Vedanga-
nirukla, as we have seen, fully acknowledge the fact
that sons inherit their character from their mother
as well as from their father, it is, I believe, the pre-
valent opinion in India that sons resemble their
fathers and daughters their mothers. But many
eminent European physiologists have held the op-
posite theory of cross heredity, that daughters take
after their fathers, and sons after their mothers.
Michelet the historian calls this a " law of which
history has but few exceptions." It has been called

in to explain the fact that so great men have
many
ordinary sons. Ribot, the French psychologist, is
inclined to believe that cross heredity has fewer ex-
ceptions than heredity in the same sex. But an im-

partial examination of statistics seems to give no de-
cided preponderance to either of these two opposing
theories, so that we are naturally driven to the con-

clusion that mothers and fathers exert an equal in-
fluence upon the original groundwork of character,
with which the boys and girls of the next generation

commence life.
It is at this point that we are in a position

to apply the doctrine of heredity to the question
of the regeneration of India. Why is it that
India, which in the golden ages of Sanskrit

literature was in the forefront of the world's
civilization, has been for the last thousand years
in a backward condition, while other nations
have been progressing rapidly and far outstripping
her in the race ?
Why is it that the nation,
that in the past produced poetry and philosophy
fit to rival the masterpieces of Greece, has for
so many centuries produced no literary work

of high rank, no great poet, or dramatist, or his-
torian, or philosopher, no great name in litera-
ture since the days of Sanskrit literature, no
man of first-rate eminence in practical life since
Akbar, and even he, though an Indian by birth,

belonged to a family but newly settled in India ?
No single cause can account for this strange
retrogression, but I am convinced that the con-

sideration of heredity plainly shows that the
principal cause has been the introduction of the
practice of female seclusion, which appears to have
gradually become more prevalent and stringent

from the date of the earliest Aryan invasion of
India, and came to a climax at the time of the
Mahomedan conquest. If you accept the law
128 HEltEDITY AND THE
of heredity and think you cannot refuse to
I
accept it the practice of female seclusion must
constantly tend to national deterioration, to

diminution of physical, intellectual, and pro-
bably also moral strength in each successive
generation. Intellectual and physical strength

are equally dependent on active outdoor exercise
for their development and establishment. Strict
female seclusion prevents the mothers, that is,
half the parents of each succeeding generation,
from exercising their minds and bodies, except
in the feeblest manner. What physical exercise,
worthy of the name, can be enjoyed by secluded
women, who are never allowed to breathe the
free air of heaven on foot or on horseback, and
even when they can afford the luxury of what
is called by a misnomer carriage exercise, have
the air excluded by blinds and curtains ? Equally

little mental exercise is afforded to women con-
fined entirely to domestic duties indoors, and hav-

ing no opportunity of taking any part whatever
in the active life of their husbands and brothers.
The consequence of this mode of life is that a
girl grows up to womanhood
with her mind and
body imperfectly developed, and transmits, as far
as in her lies, her own weakness of mind and body
to her children.
Let us try to put the matter more clearly by ex-

pressing in a numerical form the way in which female
seclusion tends to make each generation weaker in
mind and body than its predecessor. Let us
imagine a nation in which female seclusion is the in-
variable rule, and suppose that the average man
at the time of marriage has had his mind and
body well developed by a good education, in-

cluding the experience obtained by active out-
door life. Let us express his mental and bodily
strength by the number ten, and say that he
has 10 of mental and bodily strength. Assuming
that the average woman is somewhat inferior
in bodily and mental strength to the average
man, we may suppose that the average woman
in this nation was capable of being developed
by a good education to 8 of mental and bodily

strength, but that, owing to seclusion, her mind
and body were so imperfectly exercised that
at the time of marriage her mental and bodily
strength was only 6. Thus we have an average

father of 10 and an average mother of 6 of
mental and bodily strength, so that by the
principle ofheredity the average child of the
next generation may be expected to be born
with a capability of being developed by good
education to the amount of capacity midway
between that of the father 10, and that of the

mother 6 that is, to 8, the arithmetical mean
between 10 and 6. Making the same distinc-
tion as before between male and female capacity,
we may say that the average man of the next
generation will be developed by a good education
to 9 of capacity, and the average woman, though
capable of being developed to 7, will, owing to

female seclusion, be only developed to 5. When
the men and women of this generation marry,
the average child will only be of 7 of capacit}-,
whereas but for female seclusion the average child
of each successive generation would have had
9 of capacity. If any one takes the trouble
to follow up this calculation, he will see that
in this way female seclusion, by stunting the
mental and bodily development of the mothers of
each generation, tends to produce steady deteriora-
tion as time goes on. Though this tendency, like
many other tendencies, may be counteracted
by other opposing just as

circumstances, it is
likely to be aggravated by other causes acting

in the same direction, so that it is natural to
expect that any nation that adopts female seclusion

will deteriorate steadily in intellectual and bodily
strength.
On the whole, I think, we shall find that this
conclusion deduced from the law of heredity is
confirmed by the experience of history, so far as

with their complex intermixture of
historical facts
causes and effects can give support to any law of
cause and effect. At any rate, historical facts har-

monise with the conclusion. The rapid rise and
fall of great Oriental empires may be mainly
attributed to the effect of female seclusion. The
usual history of Oriental empires is that they
originate in some poor tribe or nation overpowering
a wealthy monarchy and taking its place for a time,
only to be displaced after an interval of wealth and

prosperity by some other race of poor conquerors,
who go through the same cycle of conquest, pro-
sperity and decay. The history of Europe shows
that wealth and prosperity does not necessarily lead
to national weakness. The decay of power of the great
monarchies of the East may more naturally be at-
tributed to the practice of female seclusion rendered
possible by wealth, and making the nation that

adopts it an easy prey to poor enemies, whose
poverty and nomad life have prevented them from
adopting the custom. I imagine that it was thus
that the hardy Marathas, who seem to have allowed
their women more share in active outdoor life than
is usual in India, were able to wreck the
Mogul
power. The same explanation may be given of the

early Aryan conquest of India. The decreasing
stringency of female seclusion, that we find as we
go back by the help of Sanskrit literature towards
the earliest times of Aryan India, indicates that
the ancestors of the modern Hindus allowed their
women in Central Asia the same freedom that is
stillenjoyed there among the nomad Koords in

spite of their Mahometan ism. Thus the early
Aryan conquerors of India and the men of genius,
who endowed the world with Sanskrit literature,
were the descendants of many generations, the
women of which had been adapted by a free life
to be the mothers of children strong in mind and
body, and so paved the way for a period of success
in war and literature, rivalling the age of Elizabeth

in England and the outburst of Athenian genius
that followed and accompanied the Persian war.
Perhaps only one Oriental parallel can be found

to these great epochs of national history, and that
in the conquests of the Arabians at the beginning
of the Mahometan era, and the triumphs of litera-
ture and science that followed these conquests.

The Arabians then played
brilliant part that the
in the history of the world is another fact harmon-
ising with the view that female emancipation is

conducive to national greatness, for, as Palgrave
remarks in the account of his Arabian travels,

"The absolute seclusion, which, it is well known,
imprisons physically and morally the fair sex in
orthodox Mahometan lands, is seldom, if ever,
observed in Arabia, where women bear a great part
in active life and domestic cares, keep shops, buy,
sell, and sometimes even go to war." If so much
freedom is now enjoyed by Arabian women, we
may infer, and the ancient poetry of idolatrous
Arabia supports the inference, that they were
still freer before Arabia was converted by
Mahomet. So that there we have an instance of
a nation, unenervated by the intense heat of the
climate which they lived, issuing forth to
in
conquer a great part of the civilized world, and

taking the leading position not only in arms, but
also in science and literature ;
and the Oriental
nation that effected this was one conspicuous for
the breach of the custom of female seclusion. In
course of time, when the later Arabians became
rich enough to build harems for their wives and
daughters, their valour and genius began to suffer
decay. I must, however, before leaving the subject
of these historical instances, again remind you that,
owing to the vast complexity of the causes to which

national success is due, they can only be expected
to illustrate and verify, and not to prove, my
position,which almost entirely rests on the in-

disputable fact that the mental and bodily power
of children is to a large extent determined by the
mental and bodily power of their mothers, and that
the mothers of the next generation cannot be ex-
pected to be strong in body and vigorous in mind,

if they are confined to a
sedentary indoor life.
It may be objected that, even though the prac-

tice of seclusion may be prejudicial to the intel-
lectual and physical strength of individuals and
nations, it is nevertheless extremely valuable
as a safeguard of moral virtue. It is, of course,
perfectly true that seclusion defends women

against temptations that they would encounter
in an unsecluded life. But it must be remem-
bered that the absence of
temptation, though
it may diminish the amount of actual wrong-
doing, does not constitute virtue. A man with

murderous or thievish inclinations is not neces-
sarily made more virtuous

by being imprisoned
for life, though he
may be thereby deprived of
all opportunities of committing theft and murder.
The highest virtue consists in facing and resisting
and conquering temptations, not in fleeing from
them. Although in some cases it may be a
good thing that a man, who has some reason to
distrust his own resolution, should retire from

public life and its temptations, such cloistered
virtue, as Bacon calls it, is far inferior to that
of the brave man, who follows the rules of virtue
in the midst of all the temptations of ordinary
daily life. It is this struggle that, if successful,
really strengthens the moral character, and it

must be remembered that the power of resisting
temptation is, like all other mental qualities,
transmissible by heredity. So that every one
who gains a moral victory makes the gaining
of such victories easier in the future to his chil-
dren and his children's children, and so paves
the way for their moral progress to greater
But such training in militant virtue
victories.
is women by the practice of seclusion
denied to ;
and when they become mothers, they hand down

to their children moral wills unstrengthened
by exercise. In their own case, the want of
power of resisting temptation would not perhaps

so much matter, as it might be urged with some
plausibility that it is useless to
against arm them
temptations to which they will never be exposed.
Nor would the want be so material, if the law
of heredity went by sex, and sons took after
their fathers and daughters after their mothers.
But there is no reason to believe this is the case,
and some believers in heredity, as we have seen,

actually on the contrary believe that sons rather
take after their mothers and daughters after their
fathers. Without accepting this extreme view,
we have every reason to believe that sons derive
at least as much of their original character
from their mothers as from their fathers, so
that the untrained moral will inherited from
a mother bred up in seclusion may descend to
her son, who is not, in like manner, protected
against temptations to error, and thus falls an

easy prey to the temptations of vice when he
becomes his own master and goes out into the
world.
Thus, even if there may be a certain amount of

doubt as to the moral effects of seclusion on the
women who are secluded, it is hardly possible to
deny the bad moral effects it is likely to have on
their sons by transmitting to them a character ill
fitted to cope with temptation. If to this bad

moral effect be added the gradual deterioration of
intellectual and physical strength that seclusion
tends to produce in each successive generation, it is
clear that any nation that adopts the practice of
female seclusion is, to use a sporting phrase,
severely handicapped in every kind of contest
with nations that do not adopt this custom. A

nation with this custom, when it competes with
other nations for political, literary, scientific or
any other kind of pre-eminence, may be compared

to a gladiator fighting with one hand tied be-
hind his back, who may by good
luck gain
temporary success, but can scarcely hope to be

permanently victorious. Therefore, any true
patriot, who
sincerely wishes for the regenera-
tion of India, and has any care for the future
of his country, should try to further female
emancipation by all means in his power, or else
he will be guilty of the logical inconsistency
of desiring the end and refusing to use the means.
How the emancipation of women in the East
is to be accomplished, is a question on which I
can say nothing. no doubt, immense
There are,
obstacles in the way, the strength of which it
is impossible for an outsider like me to
appreciate ;
and all that can be said with certainty on the

subject is that it must be very gradual. Attempts
to introduce female emancipation suddenly are
almost sure to defeat their own object.But
until progress in this direction is somehow or
other effected, general progress will be woefully
retarded.
Some twenty-three centuries ago, the Athenian
public assembly was discussing the fate of Mitylene,

a revolted city that had been re-conquered.
The Athenian demagogue Cleon proposed that
all the men fit to bear arms should be slain, and
that all the women and children should be sold
into slavery. Another orator, called Diodotus,
argued against this monstrous proposition. It
is an extraordinary fact that in his whole
speech,
as reported by Thucydides, Diodotus makes no
appeal to the compassionate feelings of his audience,
and deliberately bases all his arguments on national
interests and none on pity. I have followed the
same course in urging the necessity of female
emancipation. Had
been an orator, I might
I
have attempted to draw a vivid picture of cap-
tives pining for liberty and freedom to live in
the sunlight and breathe the free air of heaven.
No doubt it would have been urged on the other
side that custom reconciles women to a secluded
life, as prevents the canary bird from feeling

it
its captivity. This counter argument is, how-

ever, not quite convincing. Those who bring
it forward forget that girls must inherit from
their fathers aspirations for a free life, and are
allowed a short taste of freedom in their childhood.
But I prefer to follow the example of Diodotus and
base my argument entirely on national interests.

Those of you who know me best, my own pupils
who have wandered with me year after year
through the mazes of Logic and Moral Philosophy,
know that, as a rule, I am not a person of very
decided opinions that I am almost too prone
;
to both sides of every question. But as to

see
the prejudicial effects of female seclusion upon
the mental and bodily power of any nation or
community, that adopts the custom, my conviction

is so strong, that in urging the necessity of female
emancipation as necessary to national progress,

I feel justified in concluding my address, as Milton's
Satan concluded his speech to his followers lying
at his feet in the oblivious pool of Lethe, with
the words :
" Awake ! arise ! or be ever fallen."

Some 3nMan proverbs*
Archbishop Trench in his interesting book on

proverbs tries to show how national character is
reflected in the sayings of various nations. His

attempt is not entirely unsuccessful ;
but it must
be always borne in mind that individual proverbs
cannot by any means be assumed with certainty
to express the opinions of the average members
of the nation that produces them. Each proverb
must certainly express the opinion of an immense
number of men, but it may be the opinion of a
strong minority protesting against some wrong
opinion or practice dear to the nation as a whole.
Thus it is that proverbs contradict each other.
"
The Indian proverb, To work without pay is
better than sitting idle," is diametrically opposed

to a Scotch proverb that says, "Better sit still
than work for nought." May we conclude on this
evidence that the native of India is much more in-
dustrious than the Scot ?
Certainly not. Both pro-
verbs may express the opinions of minorities, and
141
142 SOME INDIAN PROVERBS.
very likely further search would find Scotch pro-

verbs condemning idleness as an evil in itself and
Indian proverbs in praise of idleness. In order to
find evidence of national character we require a
large number of proverbs all pointing the same way,

and we must have reason to believe that there are
few or no contradictory instances.
If we thus guard ourselves against rash conclu-
sions, we shall find that a general survey of the
proverbs of all nations, although in some cases it
indicates national peculiarities, much more conspic-

uously demonstrates similarity in character and
experience between nations widely separated by
large intervals of space and time. In spite of the
immense difference in social manners and customs
and in religion between England and India, most
Indian proverbs have more or exact equivalents
less
in English and other languages. Mr. Roebuck in

his collection of Oriental proverbs comments on the
"
saying, The miser who refuses at once is prefer-
able to the liberal man who gives slowly," and
expresses his belief "that the natives would in
general be better satisfied with injustice adminis-

tered at once than await the tedious decision of a
cause." This may be true, but it does not reveal
any peculiarity of Indian character. Just as this
proverb in its general application is equivalent to

SOME INDIAN PKO VERBS. 143
"
the often quoted Latin proverb, Bis dat qui cito
"
dat (He gives twice who gives quickly), so its
special application to the law may be easily paral-
"
leled inShakespeare's complaint of the law's
delay," which has found an echo in so many

hearts that the phrase has become proverbial. In
fact, on examination it will be found that the
immense difference in religion and social life be-
tween India and England does not much affect the
thought contained in the proverbs of the two
nations, although it causes them to be illustrated
by different kinds of examples. The difference is
in most cases rather a difference of form than a

difference in matter. To take a typical instance,
exactly the same meaning is expressed by the
"
English proverbial phrase, Carry coals to New-
"
castle," and the Indian, Sell a needle in the street
where the blacksmiths work," although the latter

uses as an illustration not the black diamond
which is one of the chief sources of England's
wealth, but the peculiarly Indian or Oriental
custom by which all workmen of the same kind
congregate together in the same streets or quarters
of cities. Many equally close parallels will present

themselves as we go on, and it will be difficult to
find Indian proverbs which can be said directly to

reveal peculiar traits in the character of the Indian
peopleamong an immense number of proverbs that

throw much light on their manners and customs.
Most of them only reveal national character in-
inasmuch as the existence of the manners
directly,
and customs referred to in the proverbs gives evi-
dence of the tastes and sentiments of the people.
There are, however, a few exceptions to this state-
ment. The immense number of Indian proverbs
regarding sugar as among the chief joys of this

life illustrates clearly the almost universal love of
sweetmeats that prevails among young and old

throughout India. There is also a strikingly large
number of proverbs that seem to indicate what
Bacon morigeration that is, submission or
calls
even servility to those in power, more than is

approved by any expression of English proverbial
philosophy. Take, for instance, the proverb that
says that
"
A man in need calls even an ass his
father," or ina slightly different form, " Even a
"
wise man in need holds the feet of an ass that is,
bows down before an ass and holds his feet in
supplication. It would be hard to parallel this
among English Individual Englishmen

proverbs.
may have given such precepts or approved such
conduct. Bacon does not condemn Aristippus, the
Greek exponent of the philosophy of morigeration,
"
when, having a petition to Dionysius and no ear
SOME INDIAN PROVERBS. 145
given to him, he fell down at his feet ; whereupon

Dionysius stayed and gave him the hearing and
granted it and afterwards some person, tender on
;
the behalf of philosophy, reproved Aristippus that

he would offer the profession of philosophy such
an indignity as for a private suit to fall at a
tyrant's feet but he answered it was not his fault,
:
but it was the fault of Dionysius that had his ears

"
in his feet" These and the like applications and
stoopings to points of necessity and convenience,''
Bacon goes on to remark, " cannot be disallowed :
forthough they may have some outward baseness,

yet in a judgment truly made they are to be
accounted submissions to the occasion and not to
the person." However the precepts in favour of
morigeration given by Bacon were not sufficiently
in accordance with theaverage
spirit of the
Englishman have become

to proverbial. Other
Indian proverbs in accordance with Bacon's theory
and practice are, "Never fight with one superior
in wealth or strength," "If circumstances demand,
"
we must call an ass our uncle." He that is ser-
"
vile is the favourite of God," and He that is
servile will fill his belly." On the other hand it
is but fair to mention the contradictory Indian

proverbs opposed to morigeration. One of them
"
holds up to scorn the man who is a toady and
nevertheless touches the tip of his nose with his
tongue." This gesture is indicative of pride and ;
the proverb regards the toady as the last person in

the world who has any right to feel self-satisfaction,
"
If you wish to retain your own honour, do not
ask any one even for a draught of water," prescribes
even excessive independence, as also does the say-
ing that "A tiger never eats grass." The misery of
a dependent life is well expressed by the common
"
saying that Dependence on another is perpetual
disappointment." These maxims of independence
show, that even if the past circumstances of India
often led the people unduly to favour morigeration }
there were always at least strong minorities who

were opposed to such conduct and cherished in
their hearts the love of individual liberty.
In considering the revelation of character by
proverbs, we must not forget to record those which
are either expressly intended to hit off the char-
acteristics of various geographical or social sections
of the people, or assume that these characteristics

are known beyond the reach of
well dispute.
"
Many such may be found in England. A Scottish
man and a Newcastle grindstone travel all the
world over," points to the travelling propensities of
a people who, according to Dr. Johnson's epigram-
matic remark, found in all their country no pro-
spect so fair as that of the road leading to England.

Other local proverbs given in Mr. Ray's collection
ascribe faithlessness to the men of Dursley in
Gloucestershire, and rudeness to the inhabitants of
Hogs-Norton. The wise men of Gotham in Eng-

land, and in Greece the inhabitants of Abdera, and
the Boeotians, particularly those of Thebes, have
been chosen as types of stupidity. Their Indian
"
proverbial equivalents are the Children of
"
Budlaoon in Rohilkund, whose reputation for
stupidity is
perhaps no better deserved than that
earned by the Greek citieswhich produced Demo-
critus, Protagoras, Epaminondas, Plutarch, and
Pindar. According to another proverb Bhagulpoor
isfamous for hypocrites, Kuhulgaum for foot-pads,
and Patna for bankrupts, while a third proverb
reflecting on the inhabitants of individual towns
tellsus that "The people of Sialkote are thoroughly
wicked." Turning now to proverbs that deal with
larger collections of people, we find one declaring

"
that The Brahmin is short-sighted, the Banya
long-sighted, and the Shudra rash." Another pro-
verb that attempts to distinguish the leading
characteristics of large divisions of the native com-
munity, says that
u
A Parsee is wise after the
event, a Banya is prudent, a Borah is meek, a
Mahometan blood-thirsty." Of two other proverbs
mentioning the Parsee, one declares that his blow

is like a cannon ball. This, at first sight, seems
rather a strange thing to be said of a community
that is generally supposed to be peace-loving and
has for many generations had no chance of
displaying martial valour. It is, however, sup-
ported by the enthusiasm with which the Parsees

of to-day have taken up cricket and other active
English games. This indicates that they have

really kept up since the time of their immigration
to India the physical strength and energy of their
warlike ancestors. Another proverb tells us that
"
A Parsee turns round in no time," which is a less
pleasing Hindu estimate of Parsee character. There

are also, as might be expected, several Hindu pro-
verbs reflecting injuriously upon the Mahometans.
They are purposely expressed in Hindustani, the
language of the Indian Mahometans, so that they

profess to condemn the Mahometans out of their
"
own mouth. Thus, Is there anyone to fight ?
Yes, I and my brother," is put in Hindustani as a

dialogue typical of Mahometan quarrelsomeness*
" "
Yours is mine, and mine is ends with an
expressive aposiopesis, which is intended to express

that the Mahometan's ideal of mutual goodwill is
not strictly impartial. The proverbial estimate of
the Path an character seems to be that it has great
"
possibilities for good or evil. The son of a
"
Pathan," it is said, is sometimes a saint and some-
"
times a devil ! The Englishman has hardly been
long enough in the country to find a place in Indian
proverbs. There is, however, one proverb which

has for its subject-matter the characteristics of Eng-
lish rule, and, therefore, gives indirectly apopular
Indian estimate of English character. "Under the
"
British raj," it is said, the gods have gone away
to the mountains, the pious Mahometans to Mecca,
and a dher (man of low caste) jostles you."
Among the most interesting of Indian proverbs
are those which throw light on domestic manners
and customs. Several proverbs indicate the oppres-
sion endured by the young bride at the hands of
"
her mother-in-law. In the month of Posh the
mother-in-law is very angry while the wife is con-
tented." The explanation of this is that Posh falls
in winter when the working day is short, so that
the poor hard-worked little wife gets grateful rest
from her labours, while the mother-in-law cannot
enjoy the pleasure of working her hard except for
a limited number of hours. But, unfortunately,
the number of the days in the month of Posh are
limited, and the young bride has so few happy
days in her year that an Indian equivalent for the
" "
English, Every dog has his day," is, If there are
a hundred days for the mother-in-law, there must be,

at least, one for the daughter-in-law." A similar
contrast between the position of the two is made
"
by the proverbial saying, Get a daughter-in-law
and take rest. Let mespin and you grind the
grain." One merciful proverb puts into the mouth
of daughter-in-law entering her husband's
the
house the pathetic appeal, " Mother-in-law, do not
use me ill. There is one before you to be exposed
to similar treatment." This is a kind of applica-
tion of the golden rule, and means that the mother-
in-law ought to treat the daughter of another
woman as she would like her own daughter to be
treated by the mother-in-law in the house which she
will enter as a bride. Such an appeal is the more
forcible as the mother-in-law, in spite of her great
authority in her own house over her son's bride,

has little power of interfering in the interests of
her daughter in the house belonging to her
daughter's husband and his family. A Cujarathi

proverb expresses this difference by declaring that
"
The mother-in-law in the house of her son is
like a whale ;
in her daughter's house a cat." The
daughter of the house seems to have an easier time
"
than her married sister-in-law. If the daughter
walks it is like a mountain moving, if the daughter-
in-law, it is waste of time," for, it is implied, the
latter ought to be working. If the young bride

commits any fault she cannot expect much indulg-
"
ence, for If the wife breaks anything it is an im-
portant thing, if the mother-in-law breaks anything

it is a trifle." Under these circumstances it is no
wonder that the mother-in-law is in Indian pro-
verbs much what the cruel stepmother is in
European and other fairy tales, sothat the feelings

of hatred towards her is expressed by saying that
"
The best of mothers-in-law is like a large boil," or
and directly by another proverb, which
less coarsely
says that "However good a mother-in-law may

be, she is, nevertheless, a mother-in-law." The
daughter-in-law escapes from this oppressive rule,
and, no doubt, herself becomes in turn an oppressor,
when the mother-in-law either dies or is reduced to
the condition of widowhood. For by this calamity
even the all-powerful mother-in-law is reduced to
impotence, and gives up the rule to her son and
her son's wife. Her fall from her high estate of
authority on the death of her husband is expressed
"
in the strong language of the proverb, When my
husband was under a benevolent ruler
lived, I ;
when the son succeeds to the throne I am under

the rule of a boot." Sic transit gloria mundi.
Many other features of Indian domestic life are
illustrated by proverbs. The native of India
seems to have no doubt about the preferability o

the married to the unmarried life. " Men with
"
children," says a Cujarathi proverb, are alone
really men : unmarried men are like cattle," and

again,
"
A house without children is like a burying-
ground." The strength of maternal affection is

indicated by two proverbs which say that "A
mother's love is best of all," and " Anybody else
but the mother will pierce a child's ear." The say-
ing that A mother that grinds the corn is better
"
than a father of the rank of eight thousand," places

the value of a mother's love far above the affection
of a father, a judgment which is supported by the
experience of all nations, and will not therefore
lead us to imagine that the Indian father is inany
way destitute of natural affection. It must, how-
and especi-
ever, be noticed that parental affection,
would appear to be
ally paternal affection, in India
unequally distributed between sons and daughters.
It is well known that the Hindus, like the Jews
and the ancient Greeks, attach especial importance

to their male offspring as necessary for the con-
tinuance of those sacrifices which secure the
father's salvation after death. The comparative
unimportance of female children is shown by the
evidence of Indian sayings, and the former preval-
ence of female infanticide, to have in many cases
quenched the natural feelings of parental affection.
According to the proverbs, A son is the lamp of a

"
dark house," while " He that has a daughter is

fined by God." Therefore when
a daughter is un-
fortunately born, it is advisable to marry her and so
get rid of her as soon as possible, for

"
daughter A
"
grows up as fast as a dunghill," and Goods for
sale and a daughter in the house are best disposed
of," the coarseness and brutality of which proverbs
is, it may be remarked by the way, exceeded by
"
the Scotch saying that Daughters and deid fish
are nae keepin' ware." The business of match-
making is so zealously pursued by the parents

"
that it is Nobody would run unless he had
said
a daughter to dispose of." " A daughter and a
cow should go where they are led," is a warning
to the girl-child not to interfere with her parents'
matrimonial plans. When married, the daughter
is satisfactorily got rid of, for, whereas in England
" he get him a wife

My son's my son, till ;
But my daughter's my daughter all the days of her life,"
in India " Thereis no more complete stranger in a
house than the married daughter."

A large number of Indian proverbs refer to the
ceremonies observed at marriage. Most of these
festive ceremonies are dispensed with when the

bride is a widow, as we might infer from the say-
"
ing, No drum at a widow's marriage, and no sugar
in the kidgeree." At the same time there are cer-
tain substantial advantages in marrying a widow
owing to the fact that even in the castes where

re-marriage is allowed they are less in demand, so
that the intending bridegroom has a larger supply
to select from. This is expressed in the proverb,
"
When you want marry a virgin, don't look
to
about to choose but when you have to marry a
;
widow, pick and choose." Another proverb pretty

distinctly recommends widows as wives, coupling
them with such excellent specimens of their re-
spective classes as Patels of Padra and horses of
Sadra. you want to marry riches, you are
If
recommended to get "A daughter of Gujarat and
a safe full of gold." The maternal uncle is an
important person, as it is his duty in Cujarat to
conduct the bridegroom to the place appointed for
the marriage ceremony. Hence the Cujarathi equi-
valent for " Half a loaf is better than no bread," is,
"
He
that hath no other uncle must put up with a
squinting uncle." The bridegroom is not allowed

to see his bride till the wedding day. She is
chosen for him by a deputation of his relatives,
upon whom a pretty deceit is sometimes practised

by the family of the bride. "Ilai is shown and

made to sit upon the chair," that is, the best
Jilai is
looking sister is exhibited to the party of inspec-

tion, and, when the wedding day comes, they find
some inferior specimen of the family substituted
in her place. Everybody is used to such a pro-
cedure in shopping. Ladies often complain that,
when they have asked for a fine article exhibited
at a low price in the window, the shopkeeper tries
to palm off on them an inferior article from the
stock in the shop. But it must be rather a trial
to one's power of resignation to grin and bear the

effects of a similar imposition in such an im-
portant matter as a marriage. When a wedding is

arranged on principles of the strictest economy, it
"
is said that Neither were various vegetables, nor
the wadi (imitation flowers) prepared, and the
bride was got without money," and the same
proverb is used in a wide sense as equivalent to
our " Something for nothing." Generally speak-
"
ing, The nuptial procession is proportioned to the
rank of the bridegroom." As to the happiness of
Hindu married life we have already had evidence
to show that the new bride is often unhappy owing
to the oppression of her mother-in-law. Another
severe thorn in the flesh is the presence of a
co- wife, when the husband practises polygamy.
But most wives are free from this annoyance, as,
except in exceptional cases, Hindus have to content

themselves with single wives. When, however, for
any reason the Hindu husband does take an extra
wife, the result does not seem to be happy. Several
proverbs in Mr. Roebuck's collection give strong

negative evidence in favour of monogamy, and re-
cognise the unhappiness produced by a plurality of
"
wives. They inform us that One wife is enough
for a whole family," that " A fellow-wife, though a
"
Houri, worse than a she-devil," and that
is The
fellow-wife is intolerable even in effigy."
In India, as in medieval Europe, professional
doctors found formidable rivals in old women
looked up to for their experience and their know-
ledge of old established recipes. Aubrey tells us

"
that Hobbes was wont to say that he had rather
have the advice or take physic from an experienced
old woman that had been at many sick people's
bedsides, than from the most learned but unexperi-

enced physician." Bacon remarks in his Advance-
ment of Learning that " empirics and old women
are more happy many times in their cures than
learned physicians," and attributes their success to
the fact that they are more inclined to adhere to
old medicines, the efficacy of which has been firmly
established by experience, while physicians like to
try new remedies. It is probably the same idea

added to economical considerations that makes
Indian proverbs speak of medicine as a profession
that any stupid person who can do nothing else
may without hesitation take up, while the saying

that " An old woman in the house is a great assist-
ance" may be regarded as a recognition of the
value of experience unsupported by medical science
At the same time in India as in England the exist-
ence of a certain number of proverbs and stories at
the expense of doctors must not be regarded as in-
dicating a general disbelief in the utility of medical

science. Probably the originators of these stories
are quite ready to call in the assistance of the
doctor when they happen to fall ill. The ingrati-
tude of people in health towards the doctors who
cure them when they are sick, is noticeable all
over the world, and is expressed clearly in two
Indian proverbs, " A physician is an enemy when
he has done his duty," and " Let the physician die
when my disease is cured."
Besides the evidence on the subject of fondness
for sugar mentioned above, other proverbs indicate
native preferences for various articles of food. The
height of luxury is "To eat plantains and ghee,"

which are fried together. Ghee is for cooking
purposes much to be preferred to oil, as might be
inferred from the proverb that " the family chap-

lain's pudding is cooked in oil, a stranger's in
ghee." The most unpardonable mistake in Indian

house-keeping is to put asafoetida into rice, for, as
Mr. Roebuck informs the uninitiated, asafoetida
should be put into and by no means
split pease,
into rice. Therefore when anyone makes a ridicu-
"
lous mistake, it is said that The woman has for-
gotten and put asafoetida into the rice." At

Roman dinner parties it was a common practice to
bring as uninvited guests friends who were called
umbrae (shadows). The prevalence of the same
practice in India is attested by such proverbs as
"
Three were invited and thirteen came such is ;
the custom here, the strangers eat up all, and the

"
family may whistle for supper," and One, I my-
self, the second my brother, the third the barber
and shaver."
The Indian proverbs containing references to
religion and the distinctions of caste are, as might

be expected, very numerous. The sacredness of
the great rivers of India is a well-known feature
in the Hindu religion. Thus it is said that " All
the stones of the Nerbudda are gods," and, if any
blessing comes upon a person without effort on his

part, the Ganges is said to flow into his house.
The Indian equivalent of "What is everybody's
business is nobody's business," will be found in

"
The mother of many children receives not the
benefit of the Ganges." It is the son's duty to take
his mother to the Ganges, but, as the fulfilment of
this duty is often very expensive, it often happens
that, when there are more sons than one, each is
inclined to shift the burden upon the other, and so

there is some danger of the duty remaining unper-
formed. The sacredness of the city of Benares is
attestedby a proverb which illustrates the greatest
perverseness of fortune by the instance of a person
who lived in Benares for twelve years and eventu-
ally died in Magadha, it being supposed, as Mr.

Roebuck points death in the latter city
out, that
leads to transmigration into the form of an ass,
while those who die in Benares obtain release from
future birth. But it is not only rivers and cities
that are sacred in India. The extreme

sanctity of
the cow is expressed by the proverb that "The cow
feeds on grass, but even her tail is worshipped."
The snake, too, comes in for a share of religious
honour. The neglect of favourable opportunities
when they come, and the consequent necessity of
taking much trouble to find them at some subse-
quent period, is
proverbially compared to the con-
"
duct of those who do not worship the snake that
comes to their house, but go to worship at his
hole." Some trees also are sacred, for it is said

that "If you rinse your mouth with the root of
the jhil tree, your sin is washed away." Jhil is the
Sindi name of the Indigofera Pauciflora, a tree
out of which Hindu tooth-brushes are made.
Naturally the Brahmins occupy a prominent posi-
tion in Indian proverbs. As the Brahmins are in
the habit of receiving gifts from everybody, it is
the excess of impropriety to " ask a gift from a
Brahmin." The absurdity of such a request could
hardly be equalled, unless you were to "ask a
Brahmin to kill a snake." As the Brahmins use
leaves for platters and perform frequent ablutions,
"
it ishumorously said that Water, stone, and leaves
tremble at the sight of a Brahmin," and that " A
Nagar is never black, and near a Brahmin's house

there are no broad leaves." The Nagars are an ex-
clusive caste of Brahmins in Cujarat, who no doubt
pride themselves on their fair skins. However, the
possibility of even a Brahmin flagrantly violating
the rules of his caste and religion is
contemplated
by one proverb, which compares a person who,
after taking solemn pledges, breaks them on the
first opportunity, to a forgetful Brahmin who ate
beef and swore never to eat it again. The strict-
ness with which caste rules prevent men from

leaving their own sphere is seen in the proverb
SOME INDIAN PKO VERBS. 161
that " A tailor's son must remain a tailor all his
life." In other countries anyone may take a drink

of water from anybody else. In India it is not so.
The Hindu must, therefore, ascertain the caste of
the person who offers him the draught before he
ventures to drink. Therefore it is said that to
drink water first and then ask the caste of the
giver, is your daughter away and then
like giving
inquiring about the family. We must not leave

the religious proverbs without giving a curious one
referring to the worship of the goddess of small-

pox and comparing a person who is ill-proportioned
"
to an offering to Sitla," the goddess of smallpox.
Mr. Roebuck, in explaining this proverbial com-
"
parison, remarks that it is customary with those
who are seized with smallpox to make, after their
recovery, votive offerings to the female deity who

is supposed to preside over this disease, these con-
sisting of figures in gold or silver, representing

different parts of the body, as an eye, a nose, an
ear, etc., which have been exempted from the effects
of the disease." A
similar practice prevails in a
Roman Catholic church at Bandora near Bombay,
where Goanese servants, who attribute the cure of
any limb of their body to the intervention of the
Virgin Mary, offer at her shrine a wax-work effigy

of the part cured.
With the many proverbs referring to the cere-

monial outward observances of religion must be
contrasted others which express a revolt against
exclusive attention to forms, and show a preference
for virtuous conduct. In these we find some faint
echoes of the scriptural denunciations against those
Israelites who scrupulously performed sacrifices
and observed fasts, but neglected the weightier
matters of the law. One such proverb condemns
the son " who disregards his living father and
offers him the sraddha when he is dead," and an-
other in a lofty spirit declares that "If the heart is
pure, the Ganges will flow into one's katwat."

The katwat a vessel used by cobblers to hold
is
water, and the proverb containing the word is said

to have been first uttered by a poor cobbler whose
poverty prevented him from travelling to the holy

Ganges. The same idea is expressed more clearly,
and at greater length, in a passage quoted by Pro-
fessor Monier Williams, in his Indian Wisdom,
from the Mahabharata :
" word and deed,

Triple restraint of thought and
Strict vow of silence, coil of matted hair,
Close shaven head, garments of skin and bark,
Keeping of fasts, ablutions, maintenance
Of sacrificial fires, a hermit's life, ,
Emaciation these are all in vain,

Unless the inward soul be free from stain."
There are also several proverbs condemning

those whose conduct is inferior to their profes-
"
sions. Such are, Men crushing fishes under their
feet cry out Ram," and that which declares that
"
Religious principles properly belong to them who
hold them in practice, and he bears a sword who
uses it on the battle-field." Of distinctly immoral
proverbs I have only noticed one. It is, according
to my informant, derived from a Sanskrit origin,
"
and is to the effect that One should not care for
the death of one's father, if a man has the choice
and thereby freed himself." Such immoral pro-
is
verbs seem to be found in all lanûaês, though
they always form a very small minority when

compared with the large number that inculcate
religion and morality.
Some Hindu proverbs indicate a belief in there
being a close connection between a man's character

and his external appearance. Blackness of colour
is looked upon with suspicion, though we are
warned against regarding blackness as an infallible
mark of villainy by an Indian equivalent of " All
that glitters is not gold," which informs us that
"
All having very black skins are not the brothers-
in-law of thieves." This contempt for black skins
probably originated as early as the Aryan invasion

of India, when the fairer skinned invaders from the
north despised the blackness of the original natives

as evidence of mental and moral inferiority. It is
interesting to notice the same connection of ideas

in the English language in such words as black-
guard, blackleg, and in the combination of literal
and metaphorical meaning in the English proverb,
,(
The devil is not so black as he is painted."
Another Indian proverb on the connection between
"
looks and character lays down that A short neck
and low forehead are the marks of a bad disposi-
tion." The former part of this proverb agrees with
the popular conception of a brutal prize-fighter as
a person with a short and thick neck. But the
idea of a low forehead indicating wickedness is not
quite in accordance with English ideas, unless we

assert invariable connection between intellectual
and moral excellence. For in England a large
brow is supposed to be the sign of intellectual
power. When Keats calls Homer deep-browed he
is him not moral goodness but poetic
attributing to
genius and mental power, and Tennyson
is thinking
of the narrow range of the savage intellect when,

in Locksley Hall, he makes his hero scorn the idea
of herding witli narrow foreheads. Indian pro-
verbial wisdom does not approve of beards. The
proverb, "This beard is a screen for imposture,"
was probably a favourite jibe of the Hindus at
what would appear to them to be the most char-

acteristic feature in the
personal appearance of
their Mahometan conquerors. This idea of the use-
fulness of the beard for purposes of dissimulation is
not a common one, but it is
recognised by the great
modern philosopher of Germany, who professes
himself to be most in agreement with Indian philo-
sophical and religious ideas, and would no doubt

have been glad to have supported his opinion on
the subject by the quotation of an Indian proverb.
Schopenhauer supposes that the beard was given

"
man to enable him to conceal his feelings. The
"
final cause of it," he remarks, lies in the fact that
the rapid alterations of the countenance betraying
every movement of the mind are principally visible

in the mouth and its vicinity : therefore in order
from the prying eye of the adversary
to conceal these
as something dangerous in bargaining, or in sudden
emergencies, nature gave man the beard. The

woman, on the other hand, could dispense with this;
for, with her, dissimulation and command of coun-
tenance are inborn." We must, of course, treat with

respect the opinion of the profound Schopenhauer,
but, at the same time, if we must search for the final
cause of the beard, it seems more natural to think that
the beard is more useful as a protection for a deli-
cate throat than as an instrument of dissimulation.
166 SOME INDIAN PROVEEBS.
As was noticed above, Indian proverbs taken as

a whole give much the same generalizations from
experience and rules for conduct as European
proverbs. But they are expressed in different
language, with a good deal of local colouring from
the climate, the fauna, and the zoology, as well as
from the manners and customs of this great penin-
sula. In this respect a large number of proverbs
are characteristic of India, and could not have well
originated in any other country. We often see a

native of the country being shaved in the open air
and gazing intently at the little mirror in his
hands to see that the operation is performed to his
satisfaction. The mirror is not his own but the
and therefore anything that goes about
barber's,
from one person to another is " Like the barber's
looking-glass in every one's hands." The rainy
season on which the agricultural prosperity of the
whole year depends will explain how failure is
expressed by the question and answer, "If out of
twelve months three are gone, what remains ?
Nothing," and also how the Indian equivalent for

"
Make ha}T while the sun shines " is " Wash your
hands while the river flowing." In Europe rivers
is
are not usually looked upon as likely to dry up

and cease flowing. The rustic of the Latin pro-
verb, who sat down by the river bank to wait until
the water flowed away and he could cross dry shod,
might perhaps be regarded as a sensible person in

the hot season of the year in India when great
rivers dwindle away into tiny streams or entirely
dry up. In England the principle of heredity is

recognised by calling a man "a chip of the old
"
block." The Indian says that A son takes after
his father as the fruit of a banyan is like the
tree on which it
grows." The preparations made
to receive a great man on his travels in the
villages through which he has to pass are al-

luded to in the proverbial address to an impudent
"
boaster, You don't know that you will be allowed
to enter the town, yet you order the patel to
have a warm bath ready." Sometimes Indian
proverbs use fables as illustrations, like our Euro-
pean ideas of the basilisk killing with a look or

of the ostrich hiding itself in the sand to conceal
from the eyes of the hunter. In India there
itself
isa fiction that, when a musk-rat has been seized

by a snake, the snake dies if he eats the musk-rat
and becomes blind if he lets it go. Hence anyone
who reduces another to a choice of evils is said
"
to be a musk-rat to a snake." The advisability
of the cobbler sticking to his lastexpressed in is
India by reference to an ambitious cobbler who

went to Benares and got sawn in pieces. The
"
fish that fell out of the frying-pan into the
fire" finds its Indian counterpart inthe person
"
who, being troubled at home, went to the forest,
and the forest took fire." "To dig a well when
"
the house is on a good equivalent for our
fire is
"
Locking the door when the cow is out or when
the steed is stolen." In India good things given to
anyone who unable to appreciate their excellence

is
are compared not to " pearls before swine," but to
sugar offered to an ass, which is one of the many

proverbial expressions attesting the Hindu's love
for sweet things. The Indian condemnation for a
fool who rushes in where angels fear to tread is,
"
He knows not the charm even for a scorpion, and
yet puts his hand into a snake's hole." The fact
that the weakest goes to the wall is expressed by
"
saying that Whether the melon falls upon the
knife, or the knife on the melon, the melon is the
sufferer." Sometimes there is a close similarity
not only in thought but also in words between
Indian and English proverbs. Thus the Indian
proverb that the mountains appear smooth, or, as
it issometimes given, beautiful in the distance, is
almost the same, word for word, as the English
proverb which Campbell expanded into :
" Tis distance lends enchantment to the

view,
And clothes the mountains in their azure hue. "
Proverbs have been denned as the wisdom of

many and the wit of one. The proverbs of India,
though equal in wisdom or prudence to those of

Europe, seem, taken as a whole, to be rather defici-
ent in wit. Yet sometimes we find in them very
ingenious expressions of the truths to be conveyed.
The almost magical advantage of union is pithily
"
expressed by the proverb, One and one makes
eleven," because if you put 1 and 1 together the
result is 11. It would be difficult to find an in-
stance of more skilful use of metaphor than in this

"
warning against quarrelling with friends O :
Summun, do not rudely break the cord of friend-

ship if, after breaking, it should even be joined, a
;
"
knot will remain." Without being hammered a
stone cannot become a god," is a powerful expres-
"
sion of the uses of adversity," and the same truth
seems to be enforced by an equally striking illus-
"
tration in the proverb, The bend when they
trees
bear fruit." But taking a general view of the sub-
ject, anyone who expects to find in Indian proverbs
much subtlety, or masterly employment of language,
will be disappointed. What they contain," except
in a few exceptional cases, is a great amount of
practical shrewdness expressed in homely words
and illustrated by simple examples.
Sn&ian anb Ibomenc Epics.
The Indian Epics are distinguished from all other

Epics by their vastness and irregularity. The Iliad
is one of the largest poems that Europe has ever
produced, but the Ramayana is three times and the

Mahabharata twelve times as long. The action of
the Iliad completed in fifty-one days, that of the
is
Odyssey in forty days, while the two Indian Epics

detail the events of many years. The vast Epic
poems of India, in spite of their many beauties, must,
when compared with the Iliad and Odyssey, suffer
by the comparison, in like manner as the confused

and often grotesque imagery depicted on the walls
of Hindu temples, and the uu human figures in their
shrines, would appear barbarous and ugly if placed
side by side with the frieze of the Parthenon
or the statue of Athene. The Greeks living in a
small country broken up by its mountains into
many sub-divisions, where all was perfectly beauti-
ful and limited in extent, early conceived an ad-
miration for moderation as the true standard of
171
172 INDIAN AND HOMERIC EPICS.
excellence. Their philosophers regarded the limited

as good and the unlimited as bad. In this spirit
Aristotle determines that Babylon on account of its
immense size could hardly be deemed worthy of the
name of city, and that a poem should not be too long
to be contemplated as a whole. Before this love of
moderation obtained definite expression, as the
guiding principle of philosophy and art, it was

abundantly exemplified in Greek literature, and
nowhere more conspicuously than in the Homeric
Epics. In the Iliad and the Odyssey the heroes
are superior indeed to ordinary men, but the great-
est care is taken not to exaggerate their superiority
beyond the range of possibilitj'. Agamemnon is a

mighty king, but the great army he leads to Troy is
not larger than that which Pausanias commanded at
Plataea. The shield of Achilles is described as
being a wonderful work of art, and it would, no

doubt, have been beyond the power of contemporary
artists to represent all the pictures it contained,
but that such a work is not beyond the power of

art has been practically demonstrated in modern
times by Flaxman. Diomede and Hector are
stronger than average men, but their superiority is

expressed in language of carefully guarded modera-
tion. They are represented as lifting stones such
as two ordinary men could not support. Virgil is
INDIAN AND HOMERIC EPICS. 173
less careful toobserve the limits of possibility, and
vainly tries to improve upon Homer and produce a

greater effect upon his readers by making Turnus
wield a stone which twelve men could scarcely
carry. It would have been as easy to have given

these heroes the strength of a hundred, a thousand,
or even a million men, and an Indian poet would not
have hesitated to prefer the larger to the smaller
number as likely to be more impressive, forgetting
many cases the part is more than the whole.
that in
Such transgressions of the rule of the golden
mean are continually committed by the Indian Epic
poets. In the Ramayana and Mahabharata the

reader is perfectly bewildered by the enormous
numbers and hyperbolical descriptions intended to
declare the prowess of the heroes. In the Iliad even

the great goddess Athene contents herself with lift-
ing up a landmark to hurl at Ares. Hanumat, in the

Ramayana, tears up a great mountain by the roots
and carries it through the air with the tigers,
in large numbers
elephants, and gazelles that lived
on its slopes. He needs both hands to support
the burden, but this does not prevent him
from overcoming with his feet and his knees
six powerful demons who attempt to oppose his
progress. But even this is nothing to what he did
before he picked up the mountain. Thirty million
Gandharvas had set upon him with clubs and
swords, and he destroyed all those thirty million

strong warriors in the twinkling of an eye. In
one of the battles round Lanka the demon Indrajit
in the eighth part of a day kills or wounds six hun-
dred and forty millions of Rama's monkey allies.
Such exploits cast far into the shade even the sway
of the Archangel Michael's two-handed sword fell-
ing whole squadrons at once. In fact almost every
exaggeration that occurs in other Epics may be

found far outdone in the pages of the Ramayana
and Mahabharata. In the Iliad the spear of Achilles
passes right through the rim of Aeneas' shield, and,
passing above his back, is fixed in the ground and
;
on another occasion Athene with her breath diverts

Hector's spear, so that instead of striking Achilles
it turns back and falls at its owner's feet. These
two wonders are combined together and outdone
by the arrow shot from Rama's bow, which, after
passing through the heart of Ravana, came back of

itself to the quiver when its work was accomplished.
"
Witherington at Chevychase, fighting on his
"
stumps when both his legs were cut off, is sur-
passed by the demon Kumbhakarna, who, after los-
ing his arms and his feet, rushes open-mouthed upon
Rama. None of the suitors in the Odyssey can bend
the bow of Ulysses, even wdien they have tried to
render it more supple by warming it before the fire

and rubbing it with melted fat, but they can all
lift it without any difficulty. Such a limited mark

of a hero's prowess is far too little for the Rama-
yana. The bow which Rama has to pull is so big
and heavy that it has to be brought in on an eight-

wheeled hurdle drawn by five thousand men, and,
not content with merely bending it, he breaks it
asunder with such violence that all around hear a
crash like that of a fallen mountain.
Whether there is any connection between the
Indian and Greek Epics is a question not very easy
to decide. Dion Chrysostom, a Greek writer be-
longing to the reign of Trajan, in a passage which
evidently refers to the Ramayana and Mahabharata,

speaks of these poems as Indian adaptations of the
Iliad and Odyssey. His words are interesting as
being the earliest record extant of the Indian Epic
poems being introduced to Europeans, for it seems
that Dion Chrysostom derived his information from
the writings of Megasthenes, the friend of Seleucus
Nicator, who at the end of the fourth century be-
fore Christ reigned over a kingdom which extended
from the Euphrates to the Indus. This Megasthenes
was sent as an ambassador to the capital of San-
dracottus Chandra-gupta, king of the Prasii, which
seems to have been somewhere near the modern city
of Patna, and used well his

opportunity of studying
Indian manners and customs. It is from his
writings, according to Professor Lassen, that Dion

derived "
Chrysostom his information that the
poetry of Homer was said to be sung among the
Indians transformed into their language and voice."
Is there any probability of this view being true, or
is it
merely one of the
many instances showing the
common Greek tendency to attribute a Greek origin
to everything worthy of note to be found in
foreign countries
? It is certainly not historically
impossible that the story of the Iliad and the

Odyssey may have become known to the inhabi-
tants of North- Western India before the fifth cen-
tury. Greece and India had at that early date
opportunities of influencing each other. Although

there was little or no direct communication between
the two countries, the Great Empire of Persia,
which numbered among its subjects both Greeks
and Indians, must occasionally have been the means
of bringing them together, and afforded them the
opportunity of exchanging ideas. Herodotus actu-
ally gives us an account of such a meeting, which
is wellworth quoting. "Darius," we are told,
"
after he had got the kingdom, called into his
presence certain Greeks, who were at hand, and

asked what he should pay tiiem to eat their fathers
when they To which they answered, that

died.
there was no sum that would tempt them to do
such a thing. He then sent for certain Indians of
the race called Callatians, men who eat their
fathers, and asked them, while the Greeks stood by

and knew by the help of an interpreter all that was
said, what he should give them to burn the bodies of
their fathers at their decease. The Indians exclaimed
aloud and bade him forbear such language." If
this interview ever took place, it must have been
towards the end of the sixth or the beginning of the
fifth century. When Xerxes succeeded his father
we find that he led Indian sepoys to fight against
Europeans, and thus anticipated the policy of the

Malta expedition nearly twenty-four hundred years
ago. These Indian auxiliaries entered Greece with
Xerxes in the spring of 480, and did not return
with him after the defeat of Salamis. Mardonius
retainedthem all among the 300,000 picked troops
with which he hoped to subdue Greece, so that they
remained more than a year in the country, and took
part in the battle of Plataea in the autumn of 479.
Thus it came about that the Indians and Persians
perished together on that fatal field, and the
mingled dust of the ancestors of the modern
Parsees and Hindus, who now live peaceably
together in Bombay as subjects of Queen

M
Victoria, fertilised the rich plains of Boeotia.

Just as Xerxes used Indian auxiliaries against
Greece, Darius his father is almost certain to have
employed Greek mercenaries when he conquered the

Punjab. Some them may have settled in the
of
conquered country, and from them the natives of

the country may have learnt the story of the Iliad
and Odyssey. There is thus a probability of the
Greeks having bad intercourse with the Indians at
about the time that the Ramayana is supposed to
have been composed, and fragments of the Greek
story may have penetrated from Darius' Indian
province to the city of Bundelkhand, in which
Valmiki, the author of the Ramayana, is said to
have lived.
To this connectionbe due the parallels that

may
have been noticed between the Indian and Greek
Epics. The great invasion of Ceylon described in
the Ramayana is undertaken to recover Rama's
wife, who has been carried away by Ravana. In
like manner the object of the Trojan war is to re-
store to Menelaus his wife Helen, who had been
carried away by Paris from Sparta. The siege of
Lanka in theRamayana is like a nightmare of the
siege ofTroy in the Iliad. A certain similarity in
the incidents and sentiments forces itself upon any
one who makes the comparison, however much it
may be overlaid by the vast exaggerations of the

Indian Epic. Both sieges are undertaken to re-
cover a wife who has been stolen away from her
husband. Sita suffers from the bitter abuse of the
women in Lanka, just as Helen was attacked by
her female relations in Troy. Sita also, like Helen,
is inclined to be self-reproachful, only with this
difference, that, being the type of a perfect woman

in the life she was then living, and holding the
Hindu doctrine of metempsychosis, she attributes
her misfortunes to errors committed in a previous
state of existence. When Hanumat, after the fall of
Ravana, beseeches Sita to be allowed to punish the

women who had reviled her, as Ulysses punished
the faithless servants of Penelope, she mercifully
''
replies, Let not the noble monkey be angry with

servants forced to obey, who move according to the
will of another. All that has come upon me by
their doing I have endured as a punishment for the
bad deeds I had done before, and by the fault of my
adverse fortune. It is my destiny alone that had
tied me to this wretched lot." The parallelism be-
tween Helen and Sita is further borne out by the
resemblance between the thoughts aroused by those
two heroines in the minds of those who were en-
gaged in war on their account. In the celebrated
scene of the Iliad painted by Zeuxis, Helen, when she
appears on the Trojan walls, excites the admiration

of the Trojan elders.
" Helen
they saw, as to the tow'r she came ;
And 'tis no marvel,' one to other said,

'
'
The valiant Trojans and the well-greav'd Greeks
For beauty such as this should long endure
The toils of _war for goddess-like she seems. "
;
'
Very similar are the thoughts of the monkeys when

Sita, for whose release they have been fighting so
long, is at last brought into their midst in a closed
litter. They crowded round by thousands, desiring
"
to see her, and said : What sort of beauty does
Sita possess ? What a pearl among women must
she be, for whose sake this world of monkeys
underwent such great danger, for whose sake King
Havana, the monarch of demons, was killed, and a

bridge one thousand miles long was built in the
"
waters of the ocean ? In both passages great
beauty is regarded as a sufficient justification for all
the toil and danger that had been undergone.

When Helen came to the tower she looked down on
the plain below, and gave Priam a fine description
of the various leaders of the Greek army. There
seems to be a reminiscence of this striking descrip-
tion in another passage of the Eamayana. In the
6th book of that poem two spies who have re-
turned from the camp of the besieging army go
with Ravana to the top of his palace and point

out to him the hostile leaders encamped in the plain
"
beneath. Ravana, the demon king of Lanka, with
ten faces, copper-coloured eyes, a huge chest, and
bright teeth like the new moon, tall as a mountain

peak, stopping with his arms the sun and moon in
their course, and preventing their rising," is at first
sight utterly incomparable with the intensely

human Hector, the defender of Troy. But in spite
of the contrast the poet who tells the fall of Ravana
might seem to have had in his mind the story of
the Iliad, that may have come to his knowledge in
a more or less distorted form. Ravana, like Hector
isrepresented as being utterly merciless in the field
of battle, but when he appears in private life we
are surprised to find him chivalrously polite to his
loving wife, whose fears for his safety remind us of

Andromache's similar anxiety in the 6th Iliad. She
advises him to send Sita to Rama's camp accom-
panied with precious gifts, and he replies courte-

ousl} with an expression of the same sentiment as
T
,
Hector utters in answer to Andromache's similar

appeal, that, if he refused to do battle with his
adversaries, he would be disgraced in the eyes of
all, and that life would not be worth living, if he so
forfeited his high reputation. In his last great

battle he eventually discovers, like Hector, that the
fates are against him and he must die, but though

conscious of this he does not abate his resolution to
fight out the battle to the bitter end. When his

horse wept large tears and thunder from a cloudless
sky portended his destruction, he bravely bore up

"
against his evil destiny. I must conquer," said
"
Rama ;
I must die," said Ravana. This conscious-
ness of coming death present with Hector also at
is
his last hour, when, deserted by God and man, he

rushes desperately at Achilles, exclaiming :
" Oh Heav'ns ! the Gods above have doom'd my death !
Now is my death at hand, nor far away :
Escape is none since so hath Jove decreed,

;
And Jove's far-darting son, who heretofore

Have been my guards ; my fate hath found me now.
Yet not without a struggle let me die
Nor all inglorious but let some great act,
;
Which future days may hear of, mark my fall."
Finally the catastrophe of the poems is brought

about by the death of Ravana, who, after being
lamented by his wives with lamentations like those
of Hecuba, Andromache, and Helen, is, by the per-
mission of his enem}', burned on the funeral pyre
with obsequies closely resembling the honours paid
to dead Hector in the end of the Iliad.
The Ramayana reminds us most of the Iliad
from the general resemblance of the main events
INDIAN AND HOMEKIC EPICS. 183
in the two poems. Occasionally, however, we seem

to find also recollections of Homer in the sentiment
expressed. Sarpedon's celebrated speech in the

12th Iliad begins by insisting on the fact expressed
"
by the French proverb noblesse oblige" and goes
on to declare that the certainty of death should
make men prefer glory to length of days. The
Lycian king first shows that kings having higher
privileges and greater honour than ordinary men
are bound to show a corresponding superiority in
labour and courage. Then he goes on to say that
as death must come soon or late, it may be met
honourably rather than dishonourably avoided :
11
O friend ! if we, survivors of this war,
Could live, from age and death for ever free,
Thou shouldst not see me foremost in the fight,
Nor would I urge thee to the glorious field :
But since on man ten thousand forms of death

Attend, which none may 'scape, then on, that we
May glory on others gain, or they on us."
Both the leading thoughts of this fine speech may

be found clearly expressed in the reproaches uttered
by Angada against the monkeys fleeing before
"
Kumbhakarna. Where go ye now," he says,
"
frightened like ignoble monkeys forgetful of
yourselves, your valour, and your race ? Come,

turn back. Wherefore do you wish to save your
lives ?
By fleeing whither, do you think you can
evade death, valiant Vanari ? Since death is
ordained of necessity, it is better for people like
you to die in battle. To obtain life or death is not

in Therefore preferring to everything
your power.
the duty of warriors, fight, illustrious Vanari."
"
Again in another passage Hanumat says, Flight
is unbecoming in heroes of noble race," repeating
one of the ideas that occur in Sarpedon's speech

quoted above.
Besides the resemblances already referred to, we
may notice that Ravana deludes the besieging

army with a magical image of Sita, just as Apollo
deceives the Greeks by bringing into battle a
figure representing Aeneas. In the Ramayana, as

in the Iliad, slaughter is foreboded by the falling of
bloody rain. Havana's horses weep before the

death of Ravana, just as the horses of Achilles do
after Patroclus Vibhishina proposes
has fallen.
that noble ladies should prepare the bath for Rama
and anoint him with perfumes, just as the attend-
ant ladies of Helen bathe and anoint Pisistratus
and Telemachus when they visit Menelaus. The
brilliancy of the palace of Menelaus in Lacedaemon
is compared to the brightness of the sun, and the
brilliancy of Ravana's palace in Lanka is illustrated
by the same comparison. Those who support the

unity of authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey quote,

among other parallel passages, in support of their
view, the fact that the speed of the Phaeacian ships
is compared to the speed of thought, and that the
same comparison is found in a more elaborate form

in the Iliad. In the Ramayana we more than once
find this simile used to illustrate the speed of
horses. In the Odyssey the Phaeacian ships
are said to move without rudders in accord-
ance with the will of the sailors, and in like
manner in the Ramayana the chariot of Indra is
represented as moving voluntarilv- in obedience to

the will of the charioteer. Doubtless many other
parallel passages would be discovered if any one

perfectly acquainted with both sides of the com-
parison subjected the Ramayana to a searching ex-

amination side by side wii/h the Homeric poems.
But enough has been said to show that it is not at
all impossible that Megasthenes may have been
right in supposing that the Ramayana owed some-
thing to the Homeric poems.
If we now turn from the Ramajâna to the more
immense Mahabharata, we find less similarity to

the Homeric poems in the framework of the poem
and more in the details. The winning of Draupadi
in the Mahabharata very closely resembles the
bow-scene in the Odyssey. In the latter poem
Penelope promises to marry whichever of the

suitors can bend Ulysses' bow. All the suitors fail,
and then, in spite of their

indignant murmurs,
Ulysses in his beggar's rags bends the bow and
shoots the arrow through a row of axeheads. In
the Mahabharata, Draupada promises his daughter
Draupadi to whoever will bend an enormous bow

and shoot five arrows simultaneously through a re-
volving ring to hit a target beyond. Arjuna is

present in the coarse dress of a mendicant Brahmin,
and in spite of the indignation of the suitors, per-
forms the feat. In the battles of the Mahabharata
we are chiefly concerned with human warriors, and
are no longer bewildered by the millions of monkeys
and demons that slaughter each other round the
walls of Lanka. But probability is violated, and the
human interest of the struggle is decreased, in the
Mahabharata also by immense exaggerations, which
appear still more monstrous as the actors are re-
presented being ordinary men.

as It would be
tedious to enumerate in detail the wonderful ex-
ploits performed by the heroes on either side. Pro-

fessor Monier Williams says with truth that " when
Arjuna described as killing five hundred warriors
is
simultaneously, or as covering the whole plain with

dead and filling rivers with blood ; Yudhishthira,
as slaughtering a hundred men in a mere twinkle ;
Bhima, as annihilating a monstrous elephant, includ-

ing all mounted upon it, and fourteen foot soldiers
besides, with one blow of his club ;
Nakula and
Sahadeva, fighting from their chariots, as cutting
off heads by the thousand and sowing them like
seed upon the ground, we at once perceive that the

utter unreality of such scenes mars the beauty of
the description." The story of Bhishma's fall is a
good instance to show what extreme forms such
hyperbolical descriptions may take. He is repre-
sented as being transfixed by so many arrows that
when he falls from his chariot his body cannot
touch the ground. For such instances as these no
parallels could be found among the battles of the

god-like men and man-like gods who fought in
the plains of Troy. Achilles at his best can only
kill one man at a time, and n/o hero on the Trojan
plains is represented as bristling with the javelins

that have pierced his side. I doubt whether any
such instance of exaggeration could be found in

any Greek or Roman Epics, until the time of the
silver age, when a close parallel to this description
is found in Lucan's Pharsalia. There Scaeva, the

defender of Caesar's camp, is represented as pierced
"
by so many wounds that nothing now defends
T
his naked vitals except the spears sticking on the

surface of his bones."
Still, although such extravagant incidents do not

disfigure the pages of the Iliad, in some respects
these unearthly battles do remind us of the Trojan
war. There is, at any rate, one striking peculiarity
common to the Greek and Indian Epics. The use
of cavalry in war, familiar as it is in the historical
periods of Greece and India, is as conspicuous by

its absence in the Mahabharata and the Ramayana
as in the Iliad and the Odyssey. The chief heroes
in the Pandava and Kuru armies fight never on
horseback but on chariots generally drawn by two
horses, and each hero is supported by a charioteer,
who often a person of great importance, being
is
generally the next in power to the prince who

fights on the chariot. Even the gods sometimes
perform this office for their favourites. Thus
Krishna drives Arjuna's chariot, just as the god-
dess Athene drives that of Diomede. We may also
it is a very common device
notice that in the Iliad
on the part of the poet to give a kind of partial
triumph to a hero by allowing him to kill, not the
adversary he actually aims at, but the charioteer
driving his adversary's chariot. This particular

casualty is twice mentioned as taking place in
the first day's battle of the Mahabharata. In
fact the whole account of this first battle is very
spirited, and reads occasionally like an extract from
the Iliad, being free from the exaggeration which

mars, at any rate in European eyes, the interest of
some of the other battle pieces in the Indian Epics.
In it, as in the 11th Iliad, a shower of blood falls
upon the field as a presage of the coming horrors.
Kama, leading the van of the Kuru host, advanced
"
Gorgeous, shining as the rising sun ;
His warriors deemed the gods themselves were weak

With Indra at their head to stem his prowess,"
which, though more exaggerated, is very like the

language in which the poet of the Iliad extols the
prowess of Hector, when he burst the gate of the
Greek camp, and " no one," in the words of the
"
Iliad, without the gods could have stemmed his
onset."
Arj una's last charge in the same battle, when
"On he dashed with whirring wheel

Through the deep streams of blood with carcases
And shattered weapons choked, and thundering drove
Against the Kuru ranks,"
reads very like the description in the nth

book of how Hector's horses bore
"The flying car, o'er corpses of the slain

And broken bucklers trampling all beneath
;
Was plash'd with blood the axle, and the rails

Around the car, as from the horses' feet

And from the felloes of the wheels were thrown
The bloody gouts yet on he sped to join
;
The strife of men and break the opposing ranks."
In the passage of arms at Hastinapura, Kripa

asks Kama his parentage, to see if he is of high
enough birth combat with Arjuna.

to engage in
The description of Kama's demeanour, when being
asked the question and unable to answer he
"
silent stood
And hung his head, as when surcharged with dew
The drooping Lotus bows its fragrant blossom,"
irresistibly reminds us of a passage in the Iliad,

which Virgil afterwards imitated :
" Down sank his head, as in a garden sinks

A ripened poppy charged with vernal rains.
1
So sank his head beneath the helmet's weight.''
These striking parallels, all except the last of

which are taken from Wilson's translation of
the account of the first day's battle, may be taken as
Inque humeros cervix collapsa recumbit.

1
cf.
Purpureus veluti quum flos succisus aratro

Languescit moriens, lassove papavera collo
Demisere caput pluvia quum forte gravantur.
Aen. ix. 432.
specimens of the considerable likeness which exists

between the Iliad and the Mahabharata. Their
number could be largely increased by taking a sur-
vey of the whole fighting portion of the great

Indian Epic. Although, together with the resem-
blances noticed in the Ramayana, they might possibly
be attributed, if no other alternative were possible,
partly to similarity of subject, partly to the com-
mon origin of the Greeks and Indians, and the
consequent similarity of manners and customs that
remained until the advance of civilisation and
difference of climate and other circumstances had
begun to obliterate their original resemblance, it
seems more natural to account for them by the in-

direct connexion between Indians and Greeks that
must, as we have seen, have existed in the begin-

ning of the fifth century before Christ.
flDorality of tbe fIDababbarata,
It has often been remarked that, whereas science

has made immense strides since the early days of
Greek philosophy, metaphysics and moral philo-
sophy have remained stationary, so that modern
philosophers, though in different terms, now discuss
the very same problems as occupied the minds of
Plato and Aristotle, and are no nearer their solu-
tion. An examination of Sanskrit literature shows
that the unprogressive of metaphysics
character
and ethics may be still further illustrated. Berke-
ley's ideal theory was held by the later Vedanta
school many centuries before Bishop Berkeley was
born. Sanskrit philosophers, such as Kanada and
Charvaka, at a very early age discovered for them-
selves atomism, materialism, and many other
logical and metaphysical doctrines that have been
vigorously defended and opposed again and again
by successive generations of European philosophers.
Schopenhauer, whose philosophy is believed by

193 N
194 MORALITY OF THE MAHABHARATA.
many to be the philosophy of the future, in spite of

the lapse of time that intervened between himself
and them, thought that the ancient philosophers of
India, together with Plato and Kant, saw more
deeply into the nature of things than any other of

his predecessors. Exhaustively to detail all the
parallelism existing between Indian and European
philosophy would be almost the labour of a life-
time. however, to get a few definite
It is possible,
ideas on the subject by confining our attention to a
limited portion of Sanskrit literature and a limited
portion of the whole range of philosophy.

An examination of the moral philosophy con-
tained in the Mahabharata would show that the
author or authors of that great epic had clearly
thought out some of the most important questions
that are now discussed by modern moralists. Pro-
fessor Monier Williams has collected, in his Indian
Wisdom, a number of moral precepts out of the
Mahabharata, which certainly testify to the very
high morality of the writers. It is not, however,
fair to regard them as average specimens of the
morality of this immense poem. The Mahabharata,
a poem or collection of poems twelve times as large

as the Iliad, and the work of different authors, is
composed of nobler and baser materials. A careful
selection of the most exalted sentiments it contains,

MORALITY OF THE MAHABHARATA. 195
unless taken side by side with such other passages
as are in conflict with our ideas of right and wrong,

would give a misleading idea of the general moral
atmosphere of the poem. We must remember that
several very base deeds are ascribed to the heroes,
and even to those gods who take a prominent part
in the action. The human heroes of the poem
five
are the sons of Pandu, who are collectively repre-

sented as being far superior in virtue to their
enemies the Kauravas. The eldest of the five is
held up to our admiration as a pattern of perfect
virtue, while the other four, though not represented
as free from failings, are evidently intended to be
heroic in character. Yet we find that they are all
married to one wife like the ancient Britons, or
the Todas on the Neilgherry Hills, among whom
polyandry is still
practise^. Such a union is op-
posed to the moral sentiments of all civilised
nations in the East as well as the West. In the
rest of the conduct of the five Pandavas we find a
good deal that isopposed to our ideas of what
ought to be. Perhaps the worst act told of them
in the Mahabharata is the story of the burning
house. The five Pandavas, with their mother, were
invited by their enemies to a house, which was
built of inflammable materials, in order that it
might be burnt over their heads. Hearing of the

plot, they got an underground passage made, so

that they might be able to escape when the house
was set on fire. One night an outcast woman
with her five children came to receive charity from
the Pandavas. They drank till they were un-
conscious, and lay down in the house oppressed with
sleep and wine. Then Bhima himself set fire to
the house, and escaped with his four brothers and
mother by the underground passage, leaving the
outcast woman and her five children to their fate.
They were burnt alive, and their charred corpses

were mistaken for the bodies of the Pandavas,
which was so convenient that it looks as
they if
had been lefthehind on purpose to conceal their

flight. At any rate, Bhima and his brothers seem
not to have had the least concern for the six in-
nocent persons that they left to perish by a horrible
death.
When we examine the characters of the five
brothers separately, we find that several of their
actions are so bad that their being attributed
to the heroes of the poem must have a bad
moral effect on those who try to find in it
heroic examples for their guidance in life. Even

the otherwise perfect Yudhishtbira's character
is marred by reckless gambling and a tendency
to cowardice. As a gambler, he pledged his
MOLALITY OF THE MAHABHARATA. 197
kingdom, his brothers, himself, and even his

wife. His cowardice is shown on one occasion
when he flies before Drona on a fleet horse,
and on another when he sends his nephew, a boy
of sixteen years, to almost certain death, instead of
going himself on the dangerous enterprise. Bhima,

the second brother, disgraces himself by many acts
of ferocity, such as could scarcely be paralleled in
the actions of the heroes of any European fictions.
In the Iliad, Achilles exclaims in his fury that he
would like to eat the flesh of his enemy, Hector,
but never really thinks of doing so. In the
Mahabharata, Bhima, after cutting off the head of
his enemy, Duhsasana, catches the blood in his two
hands and actually drinks it up, exclaiming, " Ho !
ho ! Never did I taste anything in the world so

sweet as this blood," Again, in his fight with
Duryodhana, he strikes his enemy with his mace
on the thigh, which in a combat with the mace is
considered to be foul play. The base blow breaks
Duryodhana's thigh and brings him to the ground,
whereupon Bhima brutally kicks his fallen enemy
on the head. Such acts as these cannot be justi-
fiedeven by consideration of the deadly insults
they were intended to avenge. Arjuna, who, ac-
"
cording to Professor Monier Williams, may be
regarded as the real hero of the Mahabharata, of un-
daunted bravery, generous, with refined and de-
forgiving, and
licate sensibilities, tender-hearted,
affectionate as a woman, yet of superhuman
strength, and matchless in arms and athletic ex-

ercises," nevertheless takes an unfair advantage of
Kama, when that hero is trying to disengage his

chariot wheel. He also gives the hint to Bhima,
suggesting that he should use foul play and strike
Duryodhana on the thigh.
Both these base actions of the two younger
Pandavas are, strange to say, suggested by the god
Krishna, who also suggested the following extra-
ordinary prevarication to effect the death of the

formidable Drona. Krishna advised Yudhishthira
lie to Drona, and falsely inform him that
to tell a
his sonAswatthama was dead, in order that grief
might make him throw down his arms. This the
virtuous Yudhishthira refused to do. Krishna
then found a way out of the difficulty by getting
an elephant called Aswatthama killed. Bhima,
killed the elephant and told Drona that Aswat-
thama was dead. Drona would not believe Bhima

and asked Yudhishthira, whose reputation for
virtue was a sufficient guarantee that he would
speak the truth, whether his son was really dead.

"
Yudhishthira, in answer to the question, said, As-
watthama is dead not indeed the man, but the
;
elephant." But Krishna and Arjuna made such a

"
noise directly Yudhishthira had said Aswat-
thama is dead," that Drona could not hear the
following words. This incident shows Bhima,
Krishna, and even Arjuna, who is represented in
the poem as a man who never told a lie, all joining
in a mean prevarication. Even Yudhishthira's
conduct is a little suspicious in the matter. It
must in fairness be acknowledged, that some of the

deviations from ordinary morality, which mar
the characters of the heroes of the Mahabharata,
do not pass uncondemned in the poem itself. Thus
Yudhishthira has to do penance in hell for the
deceit practised on Drona, and himself strikes his
brother Bhima in the face as a punishment for
the base blow he dealt in his combat with
Duryodhana. But very i/iany bad acts are nar-
rated without either praise or blame, as if they did
not at all detract from the heroism of the actors.
But if we find in some of the actions ascribed
to the heroes a very low ideal of morality, through-
out the poem, in the sentiments expressed, we have
wonderful anticipations of the highest precepts
of European religion and philosophy. Some of the
most remarkable of these moral sentiments, culled
from various portions of the Mamayana and
Mahabharata, may be found translated into blank
verse by Professor Monier Williams in his Indian

Wisdom.
" Do to others which done to thee
naught if
Would cause thee pain ;

this is the sum of duty,"
(Mahabharata v. 1537, )
is an anticipation not only of the golden rule of

Christianity, but also of the categorical imperative
of Kant, that bids us only act on a rule that we
could will to be law universal.
" Bear
railing words with patience, never meet
An angry man with anger, nor return
Reviling for reviling, smite not him
Who smites thee let thy speech and acts be gentle,"
:
(Mahabharata v. 1270 J
is a passage that reminds us of Socrates' assertion

that it is better to suffer than inflict injustice, and
still more of the words of Christ, Luke vi. 27-29.
" Just heaven is not pleased with costly gifts,
Offered in hope of future recompense,

As with the merest trifles set apart
From honest gains, and sanctified by faith,"
(Mahabharata xiv. 2788, )
is the same truth as Christ inculcated when He

called the attention of His disciples to the contrast
between the rich men offering costly gifts out of
their abundance, and the poor widow who, out of
her want, cast in her two mites, all that she had,
even all her living. There are about fifty similar

extracts from the Mahabharata quoted by Professor
Monier Williams, most of which are in the same
high strain, inculcating a far more advanced moral-
ity than isto be found anywhere in the literature
of Greece and Rome, except in the works of one or
two professed moral philosophers.
Although the Mahabharata is popularly ascribed
to one author called Vyasa, it is believed by Sans-
krit scholars to have really been the work of
several centuries from 500 B.C. to the second or
third century of our era. This theory would of
course give an easy explanation of the divergence
of moral sentiment to be found in different parts of
the poem. Only a very wide interval of time be-
tween the most ancient and most modern portions
of the Mahabharata could /account for its contain-
ing, togetherwith a style of fighting more brutal

than any to be found in the Iliad and Odyssey,
moral sentiments rivalling the most spiritual utter-
ances of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius in
their resemblance to the doctrines of Christianity.
It is, therefore, almost certain that the original
foundation of the whole structure was the narra-
tive describing the gambling, the exile, and the
great war, and that writers of subsequent centuries,
when civilisation had improved morality and intro-
duced intellectual speculation, added numerous

philosophical disquisitions to the original epic. It
is even thought by some scholars that the striking
parallels between the Mahabharata and Christian-
ity may be due to late interpolations made after
the influence of Christianity and some knowledge
of Christian doctrines had permeated to India.
But the difficulty of determining even approxi-
mately the date of the various portions of the

poem is so great, that it seems better to look upon
itas one whole representing the state of civilisation
that prevailed in India during the ages of Greek
and Roman history. By surveying it in this light
we can at least determine how much brutality pre-
vailed in the most barbarous, which was probably
the earliest, epoch of this period, and also what an
advance in moral and metaphysical philosophy had
been made before the Mahabharata took its pre-
sent form.
Such metaphysical speculations as occur in the
Bhagavadgita and elsewhere we have not space to
examine. It is easier to confine ourselves to the
ethical element in the poem. That Sanskrit mora-

listshad worked out independently the moral con-
clusions that are often supposed to be the peculiar
property of European thinkers, may be clearly

seen from an ethical argument given in the third
book of the Mahabharata. Pratap Chandra Roy,

the Secretary of the Datavya Bharata Karyalaya,
who is devoting himself to the laborious task of
translating the whole Mahabharata literally into
English prose, has proceeded so far in his great

work, that a considerable portion of the Mahabhar-
ata is now accessible to all the English speaking
world. As the part already translated includes
the third book, we
can quote from Pratap Chandra
Roy's work the very words used in the discus-
sion we have to examine. The persons who take
part in the dialogue are Yudhishthira, his brother
Bhima, and their common wife Draupadi. Yud-
hishthira had lost in a gambling match with his
cousin Duryodhana his kingdom, his own liberty,
the liberty of his four brothers, and finally his wife
Draupadi. Duryodhana anc^ one of his brothers in

the exultation of their triumph submitted Drau-
padi, whom they claimed as a slave in accordance

with the result of their gambling, to terrible insults
and indignities. But the father of Duryodhana
would not allow Yudhishthira to surrender the
kingdom he had lost, and sent him with his
brothers and their wife Draupadi back to their
capital city. Duryodhana pointed out to his father

the impolicy of this concession, and besought that
he might at least be allowed to play another
gambling match with Yudhishthira, on the under-

standing that the loser with his brothers should go
into exile for thirteen years.This was permitted,
and Yudhishthira, who lost again, went with his
four brothers and Draupadi to spend their years of
exile in the forest. Bhima and Draupadi try to
persuade Yudhishthira that he ought not to wait
the stipulated thirteen years, but take immediate
vengeance on their enemies for the indignities they

have suffered. But their arguments are answered
from a higher level of morality by Yudhishthira,
who isintended to be the embodiment of perfect
virtue. For Yudhishthira was the son of the God
of Justice, and, as soon as he was born, an in-
"
corporeal voice said, This child shall be the best
of men the foremost of those that are virtuous.
Endowed with great prowess and truthful in speech,
he shall certainly be the ruler of the Earth. Pos-
sessed of prowess and honesty of disposition, he
shall be a famous king known throughout the
three worlds."Accordingly, just as the speeches of
Christ in Paradise Regained, of Mneas in the
dEneid, and of King Arthur in the Idylls of the
King may be assumed to represent the opinions of
Milton, Virgil, and Tennyson, so the sentiments

uttered by Yudhishthira are intended to give ex-
of the
pression to the highest moral sentiments
authors of the Mahabharata, while any opinions

that he contests are thereby condemned as wrong.
Apart from religious considerations, there are,

as Mr. Sidgwick shows in his Methods of Ethics y
three ultimate reasons which are supposed to
justify conduct and show its reasonableness. If a

man is asked why he refuses to make himself
wealthy by appropriating trust money, he may
reply that such an action would make him liable to
punishment, or that it would cause unhappiness
both to the person deprived of his property and
also to the world generally, owing to the feeling of
insecurity and mistrust engendered by such acts,

or finally that he sees clearly without regard to
consequences that it is his duty not to do such an

action. The
first answer is egoistic, the second
utilitarian, and the third may be called intuitional.

If a man were always to giiide his conduct by con-
siderations of self-interest, he would be a consistent
egoist he always aimed at general happiness, he
;
if
would be a consistent utilitarian if he always

;
acted in accordance with his intuitions of right

and wrong without regarding consequences, he
would be a consistent intuitionist. As a matter of
fact, most men waver between these three ultimate
reasons, sometimes appealing to one, and sometimes
to another, and not recognising the possibility of a
conflict, and therefore not seeing any necessity to

determine which of the three is superior to the
others. We shall see that all three principles are
clearly appealed to in the dialogue under considera-

tion, and that Yudhishthira declares in favour of
the strictest form of intuitionism as affording the
true standard of action.
Draupadi, at the commencement of the dialogue

which we wish to examine, calls upon Yudhishthira
not to forgive the Kauravas, but to take vengeance
upon them. She quotes an old sage, who showed

on egoistic principles the evils of continual forgive-
ness, and also the evils of continually punishing
every There is a time for forgiveness and

offence.
a time for punishment. "He that becometh for-
giving at the proper time, and harsh and mighty

also at the proper time, obtaineth happiness both
in this world and the
other." She finishes her ap-
peal by urging that the case of the insolent treat-
ment they have received from the Kauravas is not
a proper occasion for forgiveness, but requires
immediate vengeance.
In his reply to Draupadi, Yudhishthira con-
first
fines himself for the most part to egoistic and
utilitarian considerations. Although these prin-

ciples are not the sole justification of his conduct,
he can quite reasonably employ them as arguments
against a person who had argued against forgive-

ness on egoistic grounds. Thus opposing egoistic
arguments by other egoistic arguments he rinds a

common ground with his antagonist. The reply
may be partly regarded as an argumentum ad
hominem, but it also has a certain amount of ab-
solute force, as egoistic considerations are generally
acknowledged to be reasonable in themselves, how-

ever inferior in importance to the higher interests
with which they may conflict. Yudhishthira first
shows how anger leads to all kind of sin. " The
angry man committeth sin the angry man killeth
j
even his preceptors. The angry man insulteth even

his superiors in harsh words. The man that is
angry faileth to distinguish between what should
be said and what should not. There is no act that
an angry man may not do, no word that an angry
man may not utter. From anger a man may slay
one that deserveth not to be slain, and may worship
one that deserveth to be slain. The angry man
may even send his own soul to the regions of
Yama.'' So far the argument appears to be in-
tuitional, since it condemns anger as productive of
injustice and other vices. But when Yudhishthira

goes on to say that the wise, beholding all this,
control their anger, desirous of obtaining high

prosperity both in this and the other world, the
ultimate reason furnishing the basis of the argu-

ment is seen to be the egoistic
principle that it is
reasonable for each man to secure his own pro-
sperity, and his remark that truth is more beneficial
than untruth, and gentle than cruel behaviour,
appears from the context to be rather egoistic than
utilitarian. At the same time it is
apparently
recognised by the speaker that either anger or
some substitute for anger necessary to protect
is
the individual against wrong and as a check upon

evil doing. The usefulness of resentment has been
abundantly shown by Bishop Butler and other
moralists. It will be generally allowed that if
anger disappeared from the world and nothing took

its place, an appalling increase of wickedness would
be the result, as evil doers would fear no punish-

ment. Is there then any means by which anger
and its evil effects could be banished from the
world without its good effects being lost at the
same time ? Yudhishthira suggests an escape

from this difficulty, which he seems to have
"
vaguely discerned. He
says that they that are
regarded by the learned of foresight, as possessed
of (true) force of character, are certainly those who
are wrathful in outward show only." This seems
to suggest that, when we suffer wrong, we should
not allow ourselves to be driven to rash acts of
punishment by gusts of passion, but should appear

to beangry and act as if we were angry, in order
that the injustice not be repeated. This is
may
an ingenious suggestion, but it is to be feared
that ordinary men, without the stimulus of real in-
dignation, would not, in cold blood, take the trouble

to punish evildoers. The reply to Draupadi then
goes on to take rather a utilitarian character. It
is argued that if wrathful requital became law

universal, the continuance of life would be impos-
"
sible. If the injured return their injuries, if one
chastised by superiors were to chastise his
his
superiors in return, the consequence would be the

destruction of every creature. ... If the king
giveth way to wrath, his subjects soon meet with

destruction. Wrath, therefore, hath for its con-
sequence the destruction and the distress of the

people." Thus wrath is condemned as incompatible
with the happiness and the continued existence of
living creatures. The end of this section of the
Vana Parva reverts to egoistic considerations of the
state of bliss to be obtained by the forgiving in
another world.
Draupadi answers Yudhishthira's egoistic argu-
ments by pointing to the fact that the wicked
sometimes flourish while the virtuous are un-
fortunate. As an instance she gives Yudhishthira
o
himself, who regarded virtue as dearer than life,
and was nevertheless robbed of his kingdom and

driven into exile, while his wicked cousins enjoyed
prosperity.
Yudhishthira might have answered her on
egoistic grounds by declaring that happiness
by is
no means entirely to be identified with outward

prosperity, and that he in exile under the foliage
of the Dwaitavana forest was really happier than
Duryodhana in Whether the poet
his palace.
thought of such a reply or not, he makes Yud-

hishthira take a different and a higher ground.
Kant, the strictest of modern moralists, teaches
that no act is really virtuous, unless it is formally
virtuous, that is, done simply from love
unless it is
of duty. If any other motive of natural inclina-
tion leads to the action, however much it may out-
wardly resemble a virtuous action, it is not really

virtuous. This very strict criterion of moral
action is anticipated in the Mahabharata by Yud-
hishthira, who says to Draupadi, "I never act,
solicitous of the fruits of my actions ! I give away,
because it is my duty to give ;
I sacrifice, because
it is my
duty to sacrifice !
My heart is naturally
attracted towards virtue. The man who wisheth
to reap the fruits of virtue is a trader in virtue.
His nature is mean, and he should never be counted
among the virtuous." He then goes on further to

show that the man who does an act outwardly
virtuous from desire of reward not only fails to be
virtuous, but also loses the reward he expected for

his seeming virtue, thus by his folly sacrificing
happiness both in this world and the next.

Draupadi's reply is rather incoherent. Indeed
she declares herself to be raving. In her previous
speech she had advocated fatalism in this she in- :
sistsupon the freedom of the will. She uses one

favourite modern argument in support of freedom.
" "
It is," she says, because a person is himself the
cause of his work that he is applauded when he
achieveth success. So the doer is censured if he
faileth. If man were not himself the cause of his
acts, how could all this be justified." This argu-
ment is strongly stated. Jt can only be answered
by denying entirely the justice of reward and
punishment, and saying that reward and punish-
ment, though unjust, may be reasonably inflicted on
grounds of expediency. Thus the freedom of the
will is based on the possibility of justice. Drau-
padi appeals to the freedom of the will as proving
that prosperity may be secured by action, and
therefore urges her husband to make an energetic
attempt to recover his kingdom. Such an argu-

ment is of course a very inconclusive reply to
Yudhishthira's perfectly disinterested profession of

virtue.
The next speaker in the dialogue is Bhima, the

most impetuous of the "
five brothers. Why," he
"
exclaims, in obedience to the trite merit of stick-
ing to a promise, dost thou suffer such distress,

abandoning that wealth which is the source of
both virtue and enjoyments? . . . That virtue,
which tortureth one's own self and friends, is really
no virtue. Itrather a vice producing calamities.
is
. . . He that practiseth virtue for virtue's sake
always sufferetb. He can scarcely be called a wise

man, for he knoweth not the purposes of virtue,
like a blind man incapable of perceiving the solar
light." Bhima
throughout his speech regards
virtue as a means to the attainment of happiness,
and as being on a par with wealth and pleasure.
"
One should not devote oneself to virtue alone,"
"
he says, nor regard wealth as the highest object
of his wishes, nor pleasure, but should ever pursue
all three." In conclusion he urges his brother to
cultivate the virtues of the warlike caste to which
he belongs, and recover his kingdom by force of
arms. Even sins committed in gaining a kingdom,
he adds, can easily be expiated by sacrifices and
bountiful gifts to Brahmins. Yudhishthira, in
reply, maintains that the promise given before the
MORALTTY OF THE MAHABHARATA. 213
gambling match, that if he lost he would retire

with his brother for thirteen years, was a binding
engagement which he could not break for the sake
"
of an earthly kingdom. He
ends by saying, I
regard virtue as superior to life itself and a blessed

state of celestial existence. Kingdom, sons, fame,
wealth all these do not come up to even a six-
teenth part of truth."

Bhima once more immediate vengeance,
calls for
"
that if a man slaying his
passionately exclaiming,
injurer goeth the very day into hell, that hell be-
cometh heaven to him." Then Yudhishthira
changes his line of argument, perhaps despairing
of exciting in the breasts of his hearers his own
disinterested love of virtue, and points out to
Bhima the immense difficulties that will have to be
overcome if they rashly, without much deliberation,
rush to battle with their enemies.
All through the argument dramatic discrimina-
tion of character has been well maintained. Drau-
pacli, like a woman, shifts her ground and is
prevented by her strong emotions from rigidly

maintaining her line of argument. The hot-
headed Bhima gives forcible expression to his
comparatively low moral sentiments. Yudhish-
thira, inaccordance with his repution for virtue,
acknowledges humbly the justice of the re-

p roaches, to which he has subjected himself by his

unhappy gambling, but never swerves in his deter-
mination to abide by his plighted word, whatever
may be the consequences, although at the same
time he shows that honesty is really the best
policy. Thus it may be concluded that the writer
of the Mahabharata, or of this part of it, while
recognising the importance of egoistic and utili-

tarian considerations to guide others in the way of
virtue, had himself adopted a system of intuitionism

closely resembling Kant's.
THE END.
Printed by Cowan & Co. , Limited, Perth.

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THE

GLOBE TROTTER IN INDIA

Unb tber JnMan Studies

MICHAEL MACMILLAN B.A. (Oxon.)

With the exception of the paper on Hered-

ity and the Regeneration of India, originally

delivered as a lecture to the Elphinstone

appeared before in the pages of the Bombay

of which have kindly consented to their re-

publication. The quotations from Gemelli

Churchill 's Voyages.

(i) gemelli careri on his way to india i

(2) gemelli careri in the persian gulf

(3) gemelli careri in portuguese india 25

(4) a visit to the great mogul .

(5) gemelli careri and his times .

II. An Anglo-Indian Man of Letters .

III. Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases .

IV. Heredity and the Regeneration of

VII. Morality of the Mahabharata . .

GEMELLI CARERI ON HIS WAY TO INDIA.

Gemelli Careri, one of the early European

on Dec. 3rd, 1699. Although it was family

gives his readers some hints as to the various

introduction to a seventeenth century Murray's

and thence proceed to Ispahan by a choice of five

commended to others, was to go to Constantinople

As to the manner of travelling, he recommended

ill-treating him they would offend in his person

at Malta these petrified serpents' tongues and eyes

having made plain that the serpents of these

tongues inside a ring in such a way that the stone

Cheap watches are in demand there." The

before starting with a certain amount of medical

travel straight for India we need not dwell.

Suffice it to say that he spent some ten months in

preliminary travels through Egypt, the Holy Land,

way Erzeroum, Kars, Erivan, Ispahan, Shiraz, and

civility, obstruction, and extortion, that

border as a release and respite from his troubles.

to kiss the Persian soil that he had so long

travellers' horses for their own use, and the road

counted in Gemelli's diary of this journey, it is

in other respects full of interest. traveller A

to meet strange characters among the religious

Christianity in a controversy with an Armenian.

cropped out in the seventeenth century for Father ;

Dalmasius, as he toiled up the Armenian hills on

ing his pardon for two duels he fought, killing two

curious spots of several colours, not inferior to the

good fortune to be in Ispahan at the time of the

(Shah Sulaiman) began to have a continual suc-

tributed 3,700 tomans among the poor and ordered

provisions to be given on the road to a thousand

coronation of so great a king solemnised." Five

red, white, and yellow, covered with pullets and

vinegar. The king had the same diet on a table

Akbar, son of the Great Mogul, and many am-