Chapter IV: Preface (4)

The first step they took was to explore some of the great religions of the world, and to select from their sacred books the most important and most convincing passages. This was very carefully done by Keshub Chunder Sen himself, but this international Bible failed to appeal to the hearts of the people of India. In religion anything that is not homegrown, or has become familiar to us from our childhood, cannot easily be divested of a strange and almost grotesque sound. When Bishop Colenso published an English translation of a beautiful prayer addressed to Vish_n_u, it produced nothing but merriment among his English readers, and why? Because Vish_n_u was addressed in it by his well-known popular name of Hari, and the invocation “O Harry” was too much for the risible muscles of John Bull.

The same effect was produced on the Hindus when they were told of a God that had made the world in six days, and rested the seventh day, or when they heard Christ invoked as _Agnus Dei_, or Vatsa Devasya. Language is a very important element in religion, and the slightest incongruity is sometimes fatal. It is well known that Dr. Arnold had to part with an excellent French master at Rugby simply because he had spoken of the Holy Ghost as a pigeon, instead of a dove. The boys could never forget or forgive it.

Then there was also the national sentiment, which asserts itself, even when it seems to be most out of place. The people of India wanted to have a national religion, and they did not see why they should have to borrow their prayers from Jews, Christians, Parsis, or other infidels. I strongly advised Keshub Chunder Sen, when he was staying with me at Oxford, to have a good translation made of the New Testament in Sanskrit, and in the more important vernaculars of India, only leaving out the historical passages, which conveyed no meaning to the large masses of the people in India, and any other chapters or verses which he considered inappropriate for influencing the Indian mind. Keshub himself was quite ready to adopt such a course, for he was really in his heart a true follower of Christ. Once when I had asked him why he did not declare himself publicly a Christian, he said, in a very grave and thoughtful tone, “Suppose that thirty years hence people find out that I was a disciple of Christ, what would be the harm? Only were I to profess myself a Christian now, all my influence would be gone at once.” Whether any steps were taken by Keshub to carry out the idea of a New Testament for India I cannot tell. Something of the same kind had been done in English by Rammohun Roy himself. The book has become very scarce, and I doubt whether it ever influenced even his own followers.

Debendranâth Tagore, the paternal friend of Keshub Chunder Sen, adopted a different course. He would never declare against the whole Veda, but, discarding the hymns and the Brâhma_n_as, he made a careful selection of important passages from the Upanishads, and published them, with an explanation in Sanskrit, under the title of “Brâhma-dharma,” the Law of the Brâhmas. This became for a time the new guide of the Brâhmas, even before Keshub Chunder Sen published his selections from the Bibles of the world, and will probably in time become their Bible, or at all events their Book of Meditations. The primitive religious doctrines of the Upanishads were reduced to an elaborate system of philosophy by Bâdarâya_n_a, probably long before the Christian era, though after the rise of Buddhism (fifth century), under the title of Vedânta-Sûtras, and a most wonderful system it is, though difficult to describe in a few pages. It is generally supposed that the Vedânta philosophy denies the reality of the whole world. But this is not so; it only declares, and even more consistently than we do, that the world is phenomenal. It is not what it seems to be, but it would not even seem to be, unless it reposed on the Divine, which alone is really real. That Divine, in order to be what it is, or what it ought to be conceived to be, must, according to the Vedânta, be free from all limitation, it must therefore be one, with nothing beside it, it must be subjective, not objective or perceptible by the senses, devoid therefore of all qualities. But, instead of calling the world a mere nothing, the old Vedântists held, on the contrary, that there could be nothing objective or phenomenal, unless there was something real beneath it, in comparison with which anything else might be called unreal, that is, phenomenal. Thus, even our unreal world could not exist unless there was at the back of it a something real; and, if we claim any reality for ourselves, we can only do so after surrendering all that is phenomenal in ourselves, all that is changing, perishing, and mortal. Only then can we find and recover our true being, where alone it can be found, namely in the divine, invisible, but ever-present, absolute Power, the uncreate, the eternal and never-changing Being whom we call God. This was that ultimate Reality which they called Brahman, and this was, in fact, but another name for what European philosophers have called the Ultimate, the Unknowable, the Great Reality, the Hidden, the Abyss, the Silence, the Fullness, the Eternal Life—names all meaning the same, or meant for the same, though powerless to reach what is beyond the reach of words.

Then came the very natural question, whence comes the change from the Real to the Phenomenal, or what we call the creation? Whence the phenomenal in place of the noumenal world? The Vedânta answer is, From Nescience. This has been called the weak, the human, the vulnerable point in the Vedânta; but we should remember that, in some shape or other, that vulnerable point can never be absent from any system of philosophy. I doubt whether there are many founders of philosophies who have disguised it better than Bâdarâya_n_a and his predecessors in the Upanishads. Nescience, they say, is neither real nor unreal. It is, but it cannot be called real, because it can be destroyed, and is to be destroyed by Vidyâ, science, i.e. the Vedânta philosophy; yet it cannot be called unreal, for we see its effects in all the phenomenal world. This nescience must not be taken for the ignorance of the individual man, or for his unacquaintance with the Vedânta philosophy. It is something inherent in human nature. Brahman itself is affected by it indirectly, but not directly. Brahman, as conceived by us, may be said to be for a time under its sway. A power such as this nescience was sure to yield to the mythopoeic influence of language, and to become _she_, as it did under the name of Mâyâ (illusion, magic), or even of _S_akti, _potentia_.

But whether that impulse which produced the phenomenal world is called Avidyâ (nescience), or Mâyâ (illusion), or _S_akti (_potentia_), it was and is the aim of Vidyâ or the Vedânta philosophy to dispel it, and thus to destroy the illusion that there is any real difference between man and Brahman. It then becomes clear that this phenomenal world in its endless variety is but an ignorance, a dream that will pass away, if once our eyes are opened. Whatever is known by us, becomes, _ipso facto_, objective and phenomenal, and to know this is the first step towards the truth. It may seem difficult to understand how such a philosophy could be treated as orthodox, and go hand in hand with the popular religion. But we must remember that Brahman, the first and the only real Being, as soon as perceived or conceived as an object, becomes at once a phenomenal being. Thus Brahman (neut.) became to human intelligence Brahmâ (masc.), and was recognised and worshipped as phenomenalised under such popular names as _S_iva, Vish_n_u, K_ri_sh_n_a, and many more. In this way the old mythological gods had not to be discarded altogether; on the contrary, devotion to them (Bhakti) was not only tolerated, but actually enjoined, till true knowledge or G_ñ_âna had arisen. _S_iva and Vish_n_u and other gods were accepted as persons or as faces (Pratîka) of Brahman. Nay, they were recognised as the phenomena of Brahman, and whosoever worshipped them was led to believe that he worshipped Brahman, though ignorantly. Here lies a wonderful amount of wisdom, from which even we may have something to learn; and it is not surprising that some of these modern Hindu philosophers and religious teachers should have felt that they had not only to learn from us, but had something also to teach us. This may sound very strange to our ears, and yet what is more natural? Nay, strange as it sounds to our ears, it is nevertheless a fact, that may have been exaggerated in the American papers, but that is not without some real foundation, namely, that some Vedântist missionaries, such as Vivekânanda, Abhedânanda, _S_âradânada, and others, who were sent to America, are lecturing there before large audiences, and have actually made some converts who accept the Vedântic view of the world, and call themselves Theosophists or Vedântists. These missionaries are mostly the disciples and followers of a well-known Indian ascetic, who had spent his life in preaching Vedântic sentiments, and who died as late as 1886[8]. Men of that class are well known in India, and are spoken of as Mahâtmans. They live as much as possible retired from the world, it may be in a cave or a small hut in the forest. They wear hardly anything but rags, bear heat, cold, and hunger without complaining, and strive hard to become Vairâgins, men without any passions and without any desires. It need hardly be said that some of them are mere impostors and disreputable characters, well known to the police. Others, however, are real religious enthusiasts. Though they may know a little Sanskrit, they are not the recognised depositaries of ancient learning; but, once filled and fired with the spirit of the Vedânta, they become very eloquent preachers, and gather crowds around them, willing to drink in the truths which never fail to exercise their intoxicating power on the Indian mind. Many of these Mahâtmans know by long practice how to put themselves into a real trance, and thus to make people believe that they have been outside their body or beside themselves, and have received inspirations from a divine source. If this is a deception, it is certainly a very old deception. It is practised by sons, as they had seen it practised by their fathers, and, as far as I can see, without any sinister intentions. Râmak_ri_sh_n_a and men of his class are addicted to Bhakti, devotion or love, rather than to G_ñ_âna., knowledge, or pure philosophy. They speak of K_ri_sh_n_a rather than of Brahman, nay, Brahman itself becomes with them Brahmâ, a masculine and active god. If some of these men declare their perfect willingness to adopt the religion of Christ, they can do so with perfect honesty. The God of Christianity, the Creator of the world, the Father of all the children of man, would be to them but another name, another face or person of the Godhead. Christ would be to them not simply a manifestation, like Râma or Nârada, but, from a far higher point of view, born of God, one with God, having realised God, as we all are to realise Him in time, in order to attain real brotherhood with Christ and among ourselves, and divine sonship, the long forgotten or forfeited birthright of every son of man. Would not that be enough to make them Christians, truer Christians than even some of the missionaries, who approach them as if they were a degraded race, and who are often satisfied if they can baptize them, even without having really converted them? If we want them to understand us, let us first try to understand them. If that mutual recognition is once achieved, there may be a future for Christianity in store in India such as we hardly venture to dream of as yet. There are Hindus of the highest caste who would be able, like the eunuch, to say with perfect honesty that they believed that Jesus Christ was the son of God, in the highest sense of the word. What then hindereth them from being baptized? No wonder that European visitors who come to see these devotees in India should often be repelled by what they see. They are generally naked, or in rags, with dishevelled hair, emaciated, and not always very clean. Their expression is wild and often half crazy. Even their photographs are enough to frighten us. But for all that, their utterances, partly their own, partly echoes of what they have heard, are sometimes very powerful and even beautiful, and people of all classes, educated and uneducated, are willing to listen to them for hours. One thing is certainly to their credit. Though they accept alms, they never ask for them; and even the missionaries who have travelled all the way to America to lecture and preach, never ask for money. They do not want it, and what is given to them is sent to India forthwith towards a fund for building and endowing what we should call monasteries, where the style of life is as simple as it was in the best days of monastic life in Europe. The sayings of Râmak_ri_sh_n_a have been published by his disciples, and I cannot resist the temptation of giving here at least a few of them:—

“Thou seest many stars at night in the sky, but findest them not when the sun rises. Canst thou say that there are no stars then in the heaven of day? O man, because thou beholdest not the Almighty in the days of thy ignorance, say not that there is no God.”

“Different creeds are but different paths to reach the Almighty.”

“As from the same gold various ornaments are made, having different forms and names, so our God is worshipped in different countries and ages, and has different forms and names. Though He may be worshipped variously, some loving to call Him Father, others Mother &c., yet it is one God that is being worshipped in all these various relations and modes.”

“Man is like a cushion-cover. The colour of one may be red, another blue, another black, but all contain the same cotton inside. So it is with man; one is beautiful, one is black, another holy, a fourth wicked; but the Divine dwells in all of them.”

“God is in all men, but all men are not in God, that is the reason why they suffer.”

“As the lamp does not burn without oil, man cannot live without God.”

“There are two egos in man, one ripe and the other unripe. The ripe ego thinks, ‘Nothing is mine, whatever I see, or feel, or hear, nay, even this body is not mine; I am always free and eternal.’ The unripe ego, on the contrary, thinks, ‘This is my house, my room, my child, my wife, my body,’ &c.”

“When the knowledge of Self is obtained, all fetters fall off by themselves. Then there is no distinction of a Brâhma_n_a or a _S_ûdra, of high caste or low caste. In that case the sacred thread, the sign of caste, falls away of itself. But so long as man has the consciousness of distinction and difference of caste, he should not forcibly throw it away.”

“A man after fourteen years of hard asceticism in a lonely forest, obtained at last the power of walking on the waters. Overjoyed at this acquisition, he went to his teacher and told him of his great feat. At this the master replied: ‘My poor boy, what thou hast accomplished after fourteen years of arduous labour, ordinary men do the same by paying a penny to the boatman.’”

“Where is God? How can we get at Him? There are pearls in the sea. One must dive again and again till one gets at them. So there is God in the world, but you should persevere in diving.”

“The vanities of all others may gradually die out, but the vanity of a saint is hard, indeed, to wear away.”

There are hundreds of such sayings, all breathing the same spirituality, the same familiarity with the unseen world. Some of them sound to us trivial and common, but in publishing them I did not like to leave out any, for fear of being suspected of falsifying the record and representing the bright side of the movement only. To our taste there may be too much of that familiarity. Silence in the presence of God seems to us more reverential than words, but to a man of the character of Râmak_ri_sh_n_a, and I might say, to Hindus in general, the distance between the human and the Divine, between God and man, has always been very small, till at last it seems to vanish altogether. To their eyes the unseen world and the unseen God are not unseen. The veil formed by what we call the flesh is to them so transparent that it often vanishes altogether. The idea of a distance from God or of a gradual approach to Him after death exists indeed in their exoteric philosophy, but to the true Vedântist such an approach is really unthinkable. To the Vedântist the highest goal has always been to have his humanity taken back into the Godhead, not to put on a new nature, but to recover his old and true nature, in fact to become what, in spite of the dreams and fancies of life, he has always been. Those who cannot soar so high, may indeed be allowed to worship a distant God, nay, to approach His throne reverentially in another life, and they are taught that even in that state of mind, they are moving forward on the right road, the road that may at last bring them to themselves and make them enjoy the Divine and the Eternal within them. Hence with all their strong sense of the imperfections of this life, with the acknowledgment of their guilt and their consequent separation from God, they never use the disparaging language of other religions which seems to make man the most contemptible worm on earth. No doubt, they also have imagined a number of beings intermediate between God and man, but when these creatures of their own fancy have been dissolved again, they seem to feel that in reality there is no class of real beings that can claim to fill the self-made gap between God and man. Râmak_ri_sh_n_a himself was still in the bonds of the popular faith of India. He worshipped the gods created by man, such as Vish_n_u, _S_iva, and others, he did not shrink even from offering sacrifices to idols, but he felt and saw that behind them there is the inexpressible Essence which is more than any or all of them. The purely human devotion and love which he expresses for his Divine Mother, for instance, is sometimes most startling, but one feels all the time that, if he could only express it, he is groping for that Godhead which he must find in himself or in his Self before he can find it in the Self of the whole world, in the Self even of the old idols. A distant God like the Jewish Jehovah would be no God at all to the Vedântist, he cannot be too near to his God; nay, to be without Him but for one moment would be death and annihilation to him.

Such ideas are no doubt strange to most of us, but if we cannot as yet make them our own, we should at all events give Râmak_ri_sh_n_a and his followers credit for holding them honestly.

MY INDIAN FRIENDS.

III.

Behramji Malabâri.

Intimately connected with the reform of religion in India were social reforms, such as the education of women, the recognition of widow marriages, the fixing of the marriageable age of boys and girls, &c. The burning of widows or of Suttees, had been boldly put down by the English Government years ago; though, as we saw, it was still defended as resting on Vedic authority by so learned and enlightened a man as Râdhâkânta Deva. But, though widows were no longer burnt, their life as widows was in many cases worse than death. Owing to the system of very early, and what has been truly called, child-marriages, the number of child-widows is, and has been for many years, very large in India; and the only means of reducing their number was to prohibit early marriages altogether. The chief actors in this good work were my friend Behramji Malabâri, and another dear friend, Râmabâi, both still alive and hard at work in the good cause. The former was chiefly bent on preventing these premature marriages, the latter on taking care of the victims of that pernicious system. We need not enter here on purely physiological questions, for here the answer is always ready that marriage at the early age of seven or eight can mean no more than betrothal. That in the East, men and women are more precocious in their physical development is an assertion rather than an established fact. But it is not the body only, it is the mind that has to be considered, and what can be the mental condition of a child-wife of seven, nay, even of fourteen? How such a system ever sprang up, it is difficult to say. It was not the old Indian system. It may have originated at the time of the Mohammedan conquest, married women being supposed to be more respected by the conquerors than unmarried girls. At present its fatal effects are but too clear, in the premature decay of the women, in the weakness of their offspring, and, more particularly, in the large number of child-widows. No wonder therefore that a man of Malabâri’s patriotism and sense of duty should have devoted himself body and soul, and purse too, to the abolition of that evil. Though there were many to sympathise with him and to help him, still there was also strong opposition, and from quarters where one would least have expected it. Malabâri was a Parsi, and the Hindus did not like to be lectured by an outsider. If their dirty linen had to be washed at all, they wished to have it washed at home by their own washerwomen. Others, though admitting abuses, gave a most idyllic picture of the first love of young children, which extended its blessing over the whole of their lives, while the European system led to endless misery, to broken hearts, to divided affections, and sometimes even to a sundering of ties which in the eyes of the Hindus can never be sundered.

There have been many strong protests from numbers of well-conducted families in India who deny altogether that child-widows, or any widows, are subject to cruel treatment, and who maintain that early marriages have by no means all the evil effects which are charged against them. There are exceptions, no doubt, to everything, but I doubt whether these exceptions can make up for the mischief caused by the system of early marriages as still prevalent in India. And what is there that can be urged in favour of a system which even its strongest supporters can only defend as less monstrous than it appears to be. We are told[9] that in Bengal a young husband is able to educate his young wife. That sounds very well. But in a Hindu family a married child is not supposed even to see her husband during the daytime, so that the education, whatever that may mean, could only take place in the stillness of the night, not the most propitious time after a day of constant work. We are likewise told that a child-wife divides her year in two halves. One of them she spends with her parents, this being a sort of vacation time, and the other she spends at the house of her husband’s parents, this being confessedly the time of daily drudgery. In well-ordered families the young wife is never allowed to live with her husband permanently till she has reached her fourteenth year.

This defence, however, does not amount to much, and though we may quite believe that in good families the evils of the system of child-marriage are very much mitigated, the system itself is unnatural, full of dangers, and certainly lowering, both physically and morally, to the mothers of India.

The most unexpected defender of child-marriages appeared in Ânandibâi Joshee, a young Hindu lady who had gone to America to study medicine, and, after taking her medical degree at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1886, was appointed Physician-in-charge of the Female Ward of the Albert-Edward Hospital at Kolhapur, and died in 1887 at the early age of twenty-two. She was evidently a most enlightened lady, and a great friend of Râmabâi. But when she had been asked, in 1884, to lecture on child-marriages, she surprised her large American audience by defending the national custom of early marriage. I am sorry I have never been able to see her lecture, but it shows at all events that the abolition of that custom was not so universally desired as it ought to have been, and by no means so easy in India as it might appear to us. We are told that the early betrothal of boys and girls made their mutual affection more natural and firm, and added the feelings of brother and sister to those of husband and wife. It was fondly hoped that under such circumstances the idea of anybody else ever taking the place of the first beloved one would be altogether impossible. Many other arguments were adduced in support of what seemed a national, time-hallowed, and almost sacred custom, but they soon crumbled away at the touch of so well-informed and determined a man as my friend Malabâri. I do not know how many voyages he has made to England to insure sympathy and help. He has spent years in travelling all over India and gaining support for his crusade. He has told us that he is a poor man, but whatever he possessed or gained, he seems to have given up for the main object of his life. I am quite willing to believe that in the better families the evil consequences of premature matrimony are guarded against, just as I cannot altogether withhold my belief from those who declare that in good families child-widows, and in fact all widows, are treated with sympathy and respect. But without denying such exceptions, it was the rule or the custom, such as he knew it to exist, that roused the indignation of Malabâri. He may be congratulated on having lived to see some at least of the fruits of his devoted labours. Assisted by his friends, both native and English, he carried at last a Bill which fixed the respective ages of freedom to marry at eighteen and twelve. This was a decided victory; still the battle is by no means over, and probably never will be till the marriageable age of girls is raised at least to sixteen, and that of boys to twenty. It was twenty-four in Vedic times. That every kind of abuse was heaped on Malabâri need not surprise us; still his own conscience must tell him that he has done a real service to millions of human beings, and removed from his country a slur that had lowered it in the eyes of all civilised nations. It is highly creditable to him that he declined all rewards and honours offered to him at the end of his successful campaign, and we should not be surprised if we met him again on the old battlefield, anxious to win new victories as the defender of a good cause.

The number of widows in India is simply appalling. According to the census of the year 1881 their number of all ages amounted, at that time, to twenty million nine hundred and thirty thousand six hundred and twenty-six. Of these six hundred and sixty-nine thousand one hundred were under nineteen years of age.

From 15 to 19 years of age 382,736
From 10 to 14 years of age 207,388
Under 9 years of age 78,976
———————
669,100

Even native states have taken up the cause of the unhappy children. Some of the Rajput states some years ago declared against premature marriage, and Mysore has now followed their good example, passing a law not only to prevent child-marriages, but to make it penal for an old man to marry a young girl. I doubt whether such a law would pass even our own Parliament. Clause 3 says:—

“Any person who causes the marriage of a girl who has not completed fourteen years of age, with a man who has completed fifty years of age, and any person who knowingly aids and abets, within the meaning of the Indian Penal Code, such marriage, shall be punished with simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to six months, or with fine, or with both.”

The Madras Presidency will now have to follow the example of Mysore, instead of taking the lead, as it ought to have done. In a Memorandum accompanying the Bill for the Madras Presidency, it is stated that in 1882 there were 157,466 girls married under the age of nine, and that there were 5,621 widows under the same age. Think of widows under nine years of age!

In the census of 1891 it was shown that there were 23,938 girls married in their fourth year and under, and 142,606 between five and nine years of age, giving a total of 166,544 girls married under nine years of age. There were 988 widows of four years and under, and 4,147 between five and nine years, making a total of 5,135. In future, however, the law is never to recognise any widows under nine years of age, and there is every hope that the number of these baby-widows will be considerably reduced as soon as no girl can be betrothed till she has reached, at least, the age of eight; the bridegroom being, as a rule, five or six years older. This is, of course, much too low an age, but it was considered the least likely to rouse opposition among the native population, as some of the law-books of the Hindus are in favour of that age, while they actually threaten parents who do not marry their daughter before ten with the hell called Raurava. The greatest living legal authorities in India have declared in favour of a limit of age, fixing it at eight for girls. As their support gives immense strength to the aspirations of the reform party, its leaders have accepted it for the present. Men like Malabâri are of course not satisfied, yet they may be proud to have achieved what they have achieved. They have at all events reduced the number of possible child-widows, by limiting the marriageable age of girls to eight. Much more, however, remains to be done, and Malabâri is not the man to let sleeping dogs lie. He wields a powerful pen in English, and he is the best living writer of Guzerathi. He began life as a Guzerathi poet, but he gave up poetry and everything else to concentrate all his energy on his crusade. He has written several very successful English books, the last being “The Indian Eye on English Life.” He is the editor of an influential paper at Bombay, _The Indian Spectator_. He has also undertaken to spread my Hibbert Lectures “On the Origin and Growth of Religion” all over India, by having them translated into Sanskrit and every one of the modern languages of the country. This undertaking also he has carried through successfully, without flinching from considerable trouble and pecuniary risk. All these undertakings require money, and in the present state of things a willingness to spend money is a very good, if not the best, test of a man’s sincerity. Malabâri has stood that test for many years, and much as he longs for rest, I learn that he is not likely to stand by with folded arms, and to leave the fight to others[10].

Râmabâi.

If we admire the boldness and perseverance of Malabâri, we cannot withhold the same admiration from a young Indian lady who, though she could not hope to prevent child-marriages, has done her very best to ameliorate the lot of the victims of those unnatural unions.

To be a widow at all is hard enough, but nothing can be more miserable than the lot of a young widow in India, whose life may be said to be over before it has begun. Widows are looked upon in their own homes as beings of evil omen, as having deserved their misfortune by some unknown misdeeds in this or, what is worse, in a former life, and, particularly if childless, they are treated no better than servants, whether in the house of their parents-in-law, or even in the house of their real parents, if they are allowed to return there. They are shunned, excluded from all amusements, obliged to wear coarse garments, deprived of their ornaments, and often condemned to have their heads shaved, a great indignity in the eyes of every woman. What a life to look forward to for a girl, often, it may be, not yet sixteen years old! No wonder that they should often commit suicide, or fall still lower by being driven to lead an immoral life. It is to ameliorate the lot of these unhappy creatures that Râmabâi has been working for years, chiefly at Poonah. She is certainly a most courageous woman, not to be turned away from her purpose by any misfortunes or any threats.

I saw much of her when she stayed with us at Oxford, but the most eventful part of her career belonged to an earlier period. With what she told me then, and what has been published since by Mrs. R. L. Bodley in the Introduction to Râmabâi’s account of the “Life of a High-Caste Hindu Woman” (Philadelphia, 1887), we begin to understand the high aims of this truly heroic Hindu lady, in appearance small, delicate, and timid, but in reality strong and bold as a lioness. Her life, so far as we know it from herself and from others, draws away the veil behind which so much that is really of the deepest interest to us, is hidden in the East. Here we see first of all from her own case how carelessly marriages are often arranged in India. Râmabâi’s grandfather, who belonged to an old and very illustrious Brâhmanic family, the Kauthumas, was on a religious pilgrimage with his family, that is, his wife and two daughters, one nine, the other seven years of age. One morning, when bathing in the Godâvarî, he saw a fine-looking man in the river, and after inquiring for his caste, his clan, and his home, and finding out that he was a widower, he offered him his eldest daughter, that is, a child of nine, in marriage. All things being satisfactorily settled in a few hours, the marriage took place the next day, and the stranger started with his child-wife for his home, nearly nine hundred miles away from the child’s own home, while the father continued his pilgrimage, unconcerned any longer about the fate of his daughter. However, the marriage, though we might call it hasty and imprudent, turned out well, and her husband, who was a great Sanskrit scholar, a pupil of Râmachandra _S_âstri, not only was kind to his little wife, but was most anxious to teach her the sacred language. This was a very unusual measure, in fact, it was against the Brâhmanic law. It seems that he had made the same experiment with his first wife, but that it had failed owing to the opposition of her family. When therefore he was met by a similar opposition in the case of his second wife, he suddenly left his home and his friends, and journeyed with his young wife to the forest of Gungamul, on a remote plateau of the Western Ghauts, and there founded his new home, where the world could no longer hinder or trouble him. Such things are possible in India only, and even there they are of rare occurrence. Râmabâi was told by her mother how she and her husband spent the first night after their flight from home in the open air without shelter of any kind, she rolled up in her pasodi or cotton quilt, he watching by her side. Wild animals were heard howling all around them, and the young wife lay convulsed with terror; and no wonder she did, though her husband kept watch till daybreak, frightening the wild animals away as best he could from his bride and his new home. However, there, in the forest, husband and wife, like another Yâ_gñ_avalkya and Maitreyî, remained, and there the husband began to teach his wife Sanskrit. A rude hut was soon constructed, such as suffices in a forest and in the climate of India. The wife grew in stature and in knowledge, and soon became the mother of three children born in this wilderness, one son and two daughters. As they grew up the father at once began the instruction of his son and his elder daughter. Soon the fame of his scholarship began to attract other students from the neighbourhood, and the hermitage, situated as it was near the source of one of the rivers, became a place of pilgrimage, and attracted many visitors.

When the younger daughter, our Râmabâi, grew up, the father was getting too old and too weary to teach her also, so that her education fell chiefly to the share of her mother, Lakshmâbâi.

Soon the household grew, partly by the arrival of the aged father and mother-in-law, who had to be taken care of, partly by the arrival of many pilgrims, who in India have a right to hospitable entertainment. At last the expenses grew too high, the little hermitage had to be broken up, and father and children had to begin a new life, that of a pilgrim family without any home, wandering about from place to place, tramping, in fact, as we should say, and earning a small livelihood by recitations, whether in palaces or monasteries. When Râmabâi began her career as a prodigy of learning, she had learned ever so many Sanskrit texts by heart, either from her mother or from listening unknown, as she told me, to the lessons given by her father to her brother. Erudition in India means learning by heart. A pupil learns a number of verses every day and repeats them the next day, constantly adding new lines, till at last he can repeat thousands of lines without a hitch. Râmabâi listened at the door while her brother and other students repeated their daily lessons, and in this way she learnt in the end to repeat more lines than most young Brâhmans. For this she received rewards while travelling on foot from place to place with her father, mother, and brother. The elder sister had been married, though not very happily, it would seem, while Râmabâi gladly remained unmarried long after the statutable age. This was really considered as a breach of the law, but as long as her parents were alive she had a recognised support in them. When, however, the father died, and very soon after the mother also, her position became almost desperate. She still had her brother, who then became her natural guardian and protector; but the whole of the small family property had been spent. There was not even enough left to pay a few Brâhmans for carrying the remains of her mother to the burning-ghat, about three miles distant. At last two Brâhmans were found who took pity on the bereaved children, and with their assistance son and daughter carried the sacred burden to the place of cremation. Poor Râmabâi’s low stature compelled her to carry her share of the dear burden on her head. We can hardly imagine such a state of things, and such suffering; yet what seems to us incredible comes from Râmabâi’s own mouth, and, from what I know of her, she may be implicitly trusted. When I once asked her how she knew that she belonged to the famous Brâhmanic clan of the Kauthumas, she replied very simply, “But who would ever doubt it?” And the same remark applies to all that she has told us of the sufferings of her life.

These sufferings were not over yet. She had now no one to look to but her brother, and without some male support the life of a single woman is simply impossible in India. For some years brother and sister travelled together on foot all over India, earning what they wanted for their support by their recitations of Sanskrit texts, and afterwards by lecturing on the degraded position of women in India. Arrived in Calcutta Râmabâi’s lectures excited great interest. But now followed a new blow. Her brother died, and from sheer necessity she had to take a husband. The marriage turned out perfectly happy, but after nineteen months of quiet married life there followed a new blow. Her husband died, and she was left a widow with one daughter, whom she called Manoramâ, or Heart’s Joy.

Her case seemed desperate indeed, but she was upheld by her strong desire to fit herself for useful work among her own countrywomen. Helpless as she was, she resolved to go to England in order to study medicine. This was a bold decision, and required more moral courage than Napoleon’s march to Russia.

Member of a high-caste Brâhman family though she was, the mere prejudice against crossing the black water would hardly have affected her, but she was very poor. All she possessed was a small sum of money which she had earned by her lectures and by translations done for Government, and how was she to pay for her passage and to support herself, her child, and a friend who was to accompany her to England? But undeterred by any fears she started with her little daughter and a female friend, and when she arrived in England, almost destitute, she fortunately found shelter for a time with the Sisterhood at Wantage, some members of which she had known at Poonah. But even then her tragedy was not yet ended. She had declared to the Sisters that, grateful as she felt for their kindness, she would never become a Christian, because, as she often said, a good Brâhmanî is quite as good as a good Christian. Her friend, however, was frightened by the idea that she and Râmabâi would be made Christians by force; and to save Râmabâi and herself from such a fate, she tried one night to strangle her. Failing in that, she killed herself. It was after this terrible catastrophe at Wantage that Râmabâi came to stay with us at Oxford, and such was her nervous prostration that we had to give her a maidservant to sleep every night in the same room with her. Nor was this all. After all arrangements had been made to enable her to attend medical lectures at Oxford, her hearing became suddenly so much affected that she had to give up all idea of a medical career. She then determined to study nursing, and thus fit herself for useful work in India. Then came an invitation from America to be present at the conferring of a medical degree on her countrywoman, Ânandibâi Joshee, of whom I spoke before, and being once there, she soon succeeded in gaining many friends, who helped her to start a refuge or Âsrama for child-widows in India. This is the work to which at last she has devoted herself, and with great success, her only difficulty being that in the meantime she had, after all, become a Christian and joined her Christian friends; not that she considered her former religion false or mischievous, but because, as she told me, she could no longer stand quite alone, she wanted to belong to somebody, and particularly to be able to worship together with those whom she loved and who had been so kind to her. Her having become a Christian has, no doubt, proved a serious obstacle to her success in her chosen sphere of usefulness in India. Though we may trust her that she never made an attempt at proselytising among the little widows committed to her care, yet how could it be otherwise than that those to whom the world had been so unkind, and Râmabâi so kind, should wish to be what their friend was, Christian! Her goodness was the real proselytising power that could not be hidden; but she lost, of course, the support of her native friends, and has even now to fight her battles alone, in order to secure the pecuniary assistance necessary for the support of her little army of child-widows. She is, indeed, a noble and unselfish woman, and deserves every help which those who sympathise with her objects, can afford to give her.

Ânandibâi Joshee, M.D.

There is another Hindu lady to whom I alluded before as a friend of Râmabâi’s, who in fact invited Râmabâi to come to the United States to be present at her taking her degree of M.D. in the Medical College of Pennsylvania, and who thus determined, to a great extent, the future course of Râmabâi’s life. She too must have been a young heroine, and it is well that her name should not be forgotten on the roll of martyrs, who have lived, worked, and died in the cause of elevating and regenerating their country. I draw my information chiefly from a sympathetic article, signed Isabel M. Sullivan, in the _Indian Social Reformer_, July 10, 1898. Ânandibâi was different from Râmabâi in one respect. Though free from many prejudices, she remained a true Brâhmani through life. She fearlessly stood by Râmabâi after her husband’s death, and even offered her the shelter of her home. She remained her faithful friend to the end, which took place in 1887, when she was only twenty-two years of age. Though she could not bring herself to go quite so far as Râmabâi in giving up the religion of her childhood, her enthusiasm took another, yet very perilous form. She had seen the untold physical sufferings of girls and women in India, who are almost entirely left to the medical care of uneducated _femmes sages_ and inefficient nurses. But for a young girl of eighteen, brought up in the narrowly guarded sphere of an Indian home, to dream of leaving her country, to travel to America, and enter as a medical student at an American University required such an amount of moral courage as we should never have expected from a young and timid Hindu lady who could know little of the world outside her Zenânah, and had probably never spoken to a man except her husband and members of her own family. She was married already, when she conceived her plan of going to America, and such was her strength of character that she succeeded in persuading her husband to accompany her in her voyage of discovery, and to support her in her endeavour to preserve her caste while living abroad. “I will go to America as a Hindu,” she said, “and come back and live among my people as a Hindu.” And she carried out her resolve in spite of endless difficulties. Yes, she had been married in 1874, at the age of nine. We can hardly believe in such marriages, yet they exist, and in her case this early, nay premature marriage proved certainly most successful. No wonder therefore that, when she was asked to speak about child-marriages before an American audience, she should have stood up for them, even in the presence of her friend Râmabâi, treating them, of course, as what they really are, betrothals, but betrothals binding for life. Accompanied by her husband, Gopalrao Vinayak Joshee, she arrived in the United States, being really the first Brâhman lady who had ever set foot in New York. From thence she went to Philadelphia, where her arrival is described to us by her friend, Dr. Rachel Bodley. “One day in September, 1883,” she writes, “there came to my door a little lady in a blue cotton saree, accompanied by her faithful friend, Mrs. B. F. Carpenter of New Jersey, and since that hour, when, speechless for very wonder, I bestowed a kiss of welcome upon the strangers cheek instead of words, I have loved the women of India. The little lady was Mrs. Ânandibâi Joshee, who had come to study medicine in the Medical College of Pennsylvania.” Dr. Bodley proved a true friend in need to the lonely stranger. She tells us that “though from the first Ânandibâi had received a cordial welcome in America, it must have been with some heart-sinking that she settled down alone in her college rooms, confronted by the anthracite coal stove, which was the only means of cooking her food, and which she did not know how to manage. She tried faithfully to prosecute her studies, and at the same time keep caste-rules and cook her own food, but the anthracite coal stove in her room was a constant vexation and likewise a source of danger, and the solitude of the individual house-keeping was overwhelming. After a trial of two weeks her health declined to such an alarming extent that I invited her to pay a short visit to my home, and she never left it again to dwell elsewhere in Philadelphia during her student-residence. In the performance of College duties, going in and out, up and down, always in her measured, quiet, dignified, patient way, she has filled every room with memories which now hallow the home and must continue to do so throughout the years to come.” Ânandibâi’s faculties developed rapidly under Western opportunities, her scientific acquirements placed her high in rank among her peers in College, and on March 11, 1886, she took her medical degree, being the first Hindu woman to receive the Degree of Doctor of Medicine in any country. On June 1, 1886, she was appointed to the position of Physician-in-Charge of the Female Ward of the Albert Edward Hospital at Kolhapur, and on October 9 she sailed from New York to assume the duties of her new official position. But, alas, the strain of the last three years in a foreign land had undermined her constitution, perchance the cold of the American winters had attacked lungs inured to naught but tropical heat, and when she landed in Bombay it was found that she was in an advanced stage of consumption. She had come home to die, and, after spending three years in the study of medicine, she must have known very well the fate that awaited her. After these three years of voluntary exile, she found herself once more in the familiar places of her childhood, at Poonah, surrounded by her mother and sisters, and it was her mother’s sad privilege to support her daughter in her arms when at midnight the end came quickly. This occurred on February 26, 1887, in the home in which she was born.

All this is unspeakably sad. So much silent heroism, so many sacrifices patiently borne for years, and then at the end resignation, and farewell! Mrs. Bodley, who has been such a motherly friend both to Ânandibâi and Râmabâi, and to whom we owe most of what we have been allowed to know of Ânandibâi’s last years, when receiving the photograph of her protégée taken on her deathbed, writes: “The pathos of that lifeless form is indescribable. The last of several pictures taken during the brief public career of the little reformer, it is the most eloquent of them all. The mute lips, and the face wan and wasted and prematurely aged in the fierce battle with sorrow and pain alike convey to her American friends this message, not to be forgotten: ‘I have done what I could.’”