IV
DEVI—GODDESS!
A young unmarried girl is by some in Bengal called Kumari—Princess, and when married, Devi—Goddess.
I was musing on this, and all it told of the feeling of a Nation, and of the true beauty of that feeling at its best, when an old Prime-Minister friend of mine in a Native State came to invite me to a Ceremony.
It is known how I love all things primitive and individual, and my orthodox Hindu friends are very good to me in remembering this. “But of course I will come,” I promised. “What is it this time?”
“The worship of young girls,” said he. There was the idea again, the central idea in all Hindu thought in relation to women. … The worship of the Life-Bringer.
It was very simple, as all such Ceremonies are, and free from all manner of false shame or conventionality. There was remembrance of the Creator; for the creature—the gentle little girls, such babies all of them—there were garlands of gay flowers, feastings and anointings with perfume of rose-leaves.
There was also towards them in the manner of these kindly elders who had long looked on the face of Nature, a pretty dignity and reverence which could not fail to beautify the fact of Creation whenever it should draw nigh.
Not long after, the youngest Bride in the household—she is but ten years of age—had a joy-making on her own account. She worshipped the Aged. They came in happy groups, the same who had so lately blessed her—toothless grandmother, great-aunt, cousins’ Mother, wife of Mother-in-Law’s Spiritual Guide—each had a name of her own in the dictionary of relationships. She received them charmingly, standing at the head of the Zenana stairs—the baby-hostess! falling at the feet (parnam) of those to whom she owed this courtesy, saluting others with joined hands raised to forehead (numuscar), and each made answer “Blessings,” hand on the child’s head. Then they sat in rows on little mats along the floor, and ate sweets and vegetables off green plantain leaves, their hostess waiting on them.
This little exchange of religious obligation is all the etiquette, and makes all the social amenities known among orthodox women in India.
It is hard to convey the idea, state the fact as one may, but the Hindu woman acknowledges no claims save those of religion. No social, no communal claims. Her worship of the Gods, of her husband, her children, they are all the same, part of her religion, and they make her life.
Even the ordinary business of the day, bathing, dressing, eating, is a religious act. … To cook her husband’s food an orthodox Hindu wears a special silk garment: the only gardening she ever attempts is to water and tend the sacred basil (Tulsi). If she travels, it is on a pilgrimage to this shrine or that, to bathe in this or that sacred river. Of course she gives dinner parties as did my ten-year-old Bride, on special occasions, or on feasts of Gods and Goddesses through the year, also in memory of the dead; but there is no machinery of calls, no social entertaining for entertainment sake, no interchange of civilities to acquaint young people and make marriages. Marriages are made by the Priests and your map of stars, not by the social broker. For births and deaths you may have a house full of women, your relations or “spiritual” relations, come unbidden on a visit of congratulation or sympathy. To these you may never suggest departure, and only innate good manners in the visitor has saved from bankruptcy many a house in which the doors of Life and Death were often open.
This involuntary hospitality may become quite tiresome in practice. I remember one great Feasting. It was a ceremony for the dead. A Maharani had died, and we made her “praying-for-the-soul” budget, buying her sinlessness for 1,000 lives at a cost of Rs. 20,000. Part of the penalty was feeding Brahmins. Our budget provided for 3,000 guests: but it was not etiquette to shut the gates, and when 5,000 had been fed, my business soul did really take alarm.
“If the gates were shut by my order no ill-luck would betide the house, would it?” I asked of her of many years, who kept our abstract of right action. “Luck or ill-luck concern only the Believer” was her verdict … so my way was clear. In the courtyard great caldrons of food were steaming. Here was one stirring the rice and ever boiling more and yet more. On the veranda sat Brahmin cooks, cutting up red pumpkins or brown-green brinjals, slicing potatoes, grinding curry stuffs, dancing red-yellow grains of pulse in the winnowing fan. Other Brahmins ran to and fro, serving the food as it was made ready: all was orderly confusion, at which the women peeped from the third floor balcony.
They were the disciples of Priests at the expense of whose appetites we were buying merit, and they sat in rows, hungry and clamorous. Scarce could they be served fast enough.
“But how long will they sit there?” I asked of my old Dewan.
“Till they are fulfilled,” was his delightful answer; and it gave me courage for the shutting of the gates.
It was but the day before that we had prayed for the soul of the Lady, at thirteen altars of holy Ganges mud. Four of these altars were arranged round a great central place of prayer, under an awning, to which were four “Gate-ways.” At each gateway hung a looking-glass to hold the shadow of the spirit. … Beside the awning stood a wooden image of the dead, and to this was tethered a cow. So we bought for her blessings. This was also the purpose of the final ritual—gifts to Priests—silver vessels, beds with silken hangings, jewels of gold, and precious stones; … for the apostles of the order, whole travelling-kits—neat rolls of matting, drinking-gourds, umbrellas, begging-bowls. …
But, after all, it was in the Zenana that regret and longing were prettiest rendered. … In the hour of Union (as we call the Twilight in Bengal), when the glories of the West had died into silence, and earth and sky were gray and still as life at the passing of a friend—she who was now Maharani—my ten-year-old Bride, crept out on to the landing of “the Inside” to sprinkle with holy water the place where soul and body parted, and to light the death-light of welcome.
“She will come back, and know that we have not forgotten.”
It is interesting, the definite place in the scheme of life, allotted to women in a country where woman is of no account, except as hand-maid to her lord man. I am always finding illustration of this truth. No spite, no resentment can rob individuals of the right to perform certain religious acts. The death-light, for instance, was the province of Boho-Rani, the daughter-in-law, the youngest in a household including three generations, and many collaterals. … But the most passionate love for the dead never suggested any variation of etiquette. The old Mother bent with grief, sisters, daughters sat huddled in the living-room, looking with hungry eyes at Boho, who alone could relieve the tension of that quiet-coloured hour by service.
Now it is the turn of one, now of another, the women know; there is no wrangling. … But a few days past there had been the Spring games, and the Festival of the Spring. The children-wives swung to and fro under the big tree in the women’s courtyard. It was a pretty sight—the graceful little ladies in their bright draperies, clinging with their toes to the board (for they swing standing), holding to the ropes with tiny hands. … The sun peeped at them through the screen of leaves, and set on fire the rough-cut jewels at throat, at wrist, at anklet. To and fro, to and fro … so rhythmic was the motion, I found myself thinking of a field of grass, rippling in the wind. Some brides, too small for the exercise, were gravely swinging their dolls, and here was a “religious” fondling the baby Krishna in his cradle … but none of them played really: it was only—Oberammergau—how the god Krishna grown to manhood sported with the maidens; that was the reason given by all for the evening’s gaiety.
Another day, with laughter and shy importance, the youngest Bride and Bridegroom were led to a place of prominence. It was their first Springtime since the marriage ceremony, and they sat side by side, bound together with silken cords; while the mother and grandmother threw at them little soft cushions of red powder, the same that is used in religious sacrifices for dusting the idol; with it is made the mark on the head of the Bride: perhaps the colour is symbolical, the women do not know, “it has always been so,” they tell you. And, as to the games—why it is Springtime, children should be merry, and the shy pelting with red pellets is Zenana merriment in italics. Next year, maybe, the Bride will be a mother, and such boisterousness will not become her. Let the children play while they may, and let the old Grand-dame pillow-fight with red powder cushions. Is she not nearer to the children in spirit than that grave-eyed Madan Mohun, of three Springtides, for instance, who is having his baby feed, in greedy solemnity. For is she not the wise woman of many years? and only the years can bring true youth and wisdom. Ignorance dies after decades of convention, of pain, of mistakes, and from the dead bulb springs this wonderful flower of youth and wisdom. The ignorance, the pain, the mistakes,—they had to be. Do they not make the fragrance of our Spring plant? The pity is when the original shrub knows no decay, when in the smug satiety of its evergreenness it journeys to no winter, and finds no aftermath of Spring.
On yet another day the youngest sister was chief lady. I found her sitting before a brass tray of glass bangles and silver ornaments. It was a first visit to her childhood’s home since marriage, and her husband would break her old bangles and refit her. The Wise Woman says it is symbolical of the fact that even in her Parents’ house she remains the possession of her husband. So he is admitted to the parental “Inside,” and the women other than his wife, peep at the bangle-play from behind doors and curtains.
“What do Indian women do with their time?” how often I have been asked the question. Custom and religion make the day’s programme—a woman’s husband, and a womans’ God, are occupation in themselves, and then there may be the children. The good Hindu will have her house of Gods, her private Chapel. Sometimes there is an image in it. I have known God-houses without any image. The name of the particular God it is right for her to worship will be whispered in her ear by the family Priest, and not even to her husband may she reveal the secret. But in her Chapel you will find most often in Bengal, an image either of the Baby God a-crawling, or of Kali, the Mother. In Krishna Chapels there will be a little crib, fashioned in these Western-Eastern days like an English bedstead, with mosquito nets: and just as in the morning the devotee bathes and anoints the baby, leaving food beside it on the little altar, so at eventide she lights the nursery lamp and puts it to bed. … Is this Hinduism? I do not know. In practice it seems to me but the Mother-worship of the Child.
But in truth there is no one form or stage of Hinduism to be found in India, or, for the matter of that, in Bengal. … The great truths are eternal and prevail in every religion: yet all men are not capable of receiving the truth, and Hinduism recognizes this. In the actual worship of the idol are the illiterate and ignorant encouraged. “It would be sin to disclose to these the mysteries of a God not made with hands,” so says the wisest of my wise women … “for he who has heard and hearkens not, and understands not, hath the greater sin.” Yet that even a child may be capable of instruction she proves to you. I have seen many hundreds of babies under her roof, babies ranging from three to twelve years of age doing their morning pooja. It is “the worship of the possible” that she teaches them, “the worship of the Might-be.”
At 9 o’clock they come hastening to the hour of prayer, like the birds and lizards of the Moslem legend: each little devotee, lips pursed in serious earnestness, is carrying her “basket of worship,” and sits cross-legged to unpack it—an incense-burner, the bowl for Ganges water, flowers, bits of half-eaten fruit and vegetables, the sacrificial powder, often a remnant of some favourite saree, the Ganges mud with which to make her “idol”—all this she unpacks gravely, daintily, moulding her lump of clay into a cone. … Now she will make comparison with her neighbour, a little wistfully, perhaps, perhaps exultingly: often she shares her gifts. … Anything may be given to the God; the teaching here is to give what costs something, and when the pooja is over, the Pujari carries round a food-collecting plate for the animals within the gates, and the crows on the housetops. Now she is threading garlands of the sacred white jasmine, and the Priests have come for the chaunting.
The children sit in rows facing each other, along the walls of the veranda. My Wisest of the Wise explains to me that the God who dwells within us is to be invited to inhabit that lump of mud (the clay on the potters’ wheel), for His better worshipping by the children of men. So, the opening ceremony is a movement of the hands—the invocation! Each little worshipper sits wrapt before the God in the clay. … Now the Priest takes up the Sanskrit word, and the Babies chaunt it after him.
“Oh! Great God, bless us, forgive us, remain with us.”
“Oh, Great God, I offer thee this incense, these flowers, this holy water,” etc.
And the fingers are busy with the offering while every now and again “Dhyan karo” (meditate) will be the order: and five hundred pairs of Baby eyes are puckered into concentration and five hundred pairs of arms are tightly folded.
The earnest tension of the attitude moves one to tears. … Of what are they thinking? Oh! but of what?
“The worship of the Possible?”
That is the Wise Woman’s thought, not theirs. I put it to her.
“Of what should they think,” said she, “but of the whole duty of womanhood—to be a good wife: to omit no act of ceremonial Hinduism.”
The sequence showed her wisdom. And being a good Hindu wife means fulfilling the duty of a Life-Bringer, thinking no evil of the lord who bears to you God’s message of creation, counting his most temporal want as superior to your own most spiritual craving, making a religion of his smallest wish; and when the Gods, for your sins, take him from you, holding to his memory with prayer and fasting and self-suppression. … So we end, whence we set out Devi—Goddess!