Anna Harriette Leonowens

“ This fortress was finally captured by the English during the Mahratta and English war. The ascent is made by palanquins. Splendid trees and many a wild flower crown the hillsides, creeping over gate and tower and moat, spreading beauty and gladness where once was heard the perpetual war-cry of deadly combatants.
We visited the Peishwa's palace. Our syce, or groom, looked like a bedizened prince as he led the way with his gay turban and brilliant sash. We kept close to his horse's heels, and the pundit, whose long white robe gave him the appearance of a lady on horseback, brought up the rear. ”

“ The ceremonies attending the death of a Parsee are very singular. When a person is about to die he is conveyed to the ground-floor, washed in consecrated water, and his face anointed with holy oil. A lamp or lamps lighted from the sacred fire in the temple are placed by the dying man's bed, and priests stand before him with folded arms crossed on their breasts, and pray for him in a most earnest and beautiful chant. When life becomes quite extinct the body is clothed in a new white cotton shirt of nine seams and a sort of apron, which is thrown over the face. ”

“ The European portion of the city of Poonah stands on a fine open plain. There are here wide fields, handsome barracks for the European soldiers, bungalows for their commanding officers, a hospital, a lunatic asylum, a pretty little church with reading-room and library adjoining. In fact, there is everything here to render the European comfortable and happy, except the temper of the people, who still cling to the recollections of old times, when Poonah was the capital of their own great kings and warriors, filled with all the pomp and parade of Oriental splendor. ”

“ With their forests of foliage and rich jungles the Thull Ghauts are a perpetual wonder and mystery to the natives, and the spot on which the handsome city of Nashik stands is a paradise to the Brahmans. Through it the Godaveri, sometimes called the Gunga, flows, spreading gladness and plenty everywhere. Here it was that Rama, with his beautiful wife Sita, spent the first days of their exile near a dark and dreadful forest, out of which issued the beautiful deer in pursuit of which he was obliged to leave Sita, who became an easy prey to his enemy Rawana. ”

“ Such is the real doctrine of Zoroaster, while the hymns of the Zend-Avesta glow and burn with the assurance of the mystic and essential life of the soul with the spiritual essence of all pure thought. The pure heavens are like light; thought is likened to a drop of pure light, and the departing spirit has a sunbeam for its guide to conduct it to immortal light. ”

“ This vital fire of the universe, with every upward dart of flame issuing out of the cold, hard rock, starting out of dried wood, streaming in jets spontaneously out of the heart of the earth itself, and flaming luridly from mountain-tops, was an object so full of mystery, so potent, ever present, even when invisible, ever within call, lurking in the rock and air, water and tree, waiting to be called into life, vanishing at a breath, naturally became the highest symbol of the unseen to those primitive worshippers of nature. ”

“ On the great continent of Asia all nations meet and hail each other as friends, only to part, perhaps never to meet again, as vessels do at sea. But we were all sincere enough at the moment, which is all that can be expected from travellers scattering over the vast unknown land of India. I remember I was very greatly troubled because I was about to part from a gentle, blue-eyed young friend, a frank, bright, innocent young Scotch girl, who had become very dear to me during the most tedious and sultry part of our voyage from Aden to Bombay. ”

“ Leaning toward the earth, which he desires to propitiate in behalf of his fellow-men, he slowly draws out the knife, pours his life-blood out upon her parched and thirsty soil, and expires at the foot of the dreaded altar raised to her name. Honored as no other creature in the land, reared for death, the "Meriah," or doomed one, exults in the performance of this self-sacrifice with a consciousness of being a savior of the country, and has never been known to evade or escape the doom in store for him. ”

“ A great part of its beauty, however, is derived from the singularly shaped hills that are found in its vicinity. Old as the world, they appear to have gone through the hands of some gigantic architect—some so exquisitely rounded, some regularly terraced, and others, again, sharply pointed, not unlike spires. Lifting themselves proudly above the broad glittering sea that bathes their palm-fringed base, they help to make the scenery distinct from that of any other bay in the world. Then, beyond question, there is nothing to equal in grace and beauty the palm forest. ”

“ A large reservoir is excavated in front of the temple to receive the waters of the Krishna and Koina, and in front is a huge stone cow, through whose mouth the waters flow into it. All around this reservoir is a fine stone walk, and farther on are several cells where saints who have long abandoned the world still reside unseen, but not unheard, for night after night their voices, like the feeble wail of infants, are borne on the night air, imploring the gods in behalf of the lost, erring human race. Fiends, angels, heroes, demons, and gods are all worshipped here. ”

“ I have never seen any place where the charm of Oriental grace working through the pure Hindoo imagination has more forcibly stamped itself. The soil, the climate, the temples, the river, the wide-spreading trees, the sportive figures of the gods and goddesses, are all calculated to bring out in strong relief the characteristics of the adjoining mountains, which here assume a multitude of beautiful shapes, rising heavenward like innumerable battlemented towers, pinnacles, or spires, each loftier than the last and endowed with a certain air of individuality peculiar to these hills. ”

“ The moment the victim, a remarkably handsome woman about thirty, and most superbly dressed, appeared, accompanied by the Brahman priests, her relatives, and the dead body of her husband, the people greeted her with loud exclamations of praise and delight, poured forth benedictions on her head for her constancy and virtue, and showered flowers on her path as she was borne along; women pressed to touch the hem of her garments, hoping thereby to be absolved from all sin and preserved from all evil influences. ”

“ The dirtiness of a low-caste, poverty-stricken Oriental street is inconceivable. Filth reigned supreme in some of the lanes and alleys through which we passed. A rank vegetation clothed everything; trees hung with many-colored festoons of leaves and flowers formed thick tapestries of foliage on the right and on the left.
There is no country in the world (save the beautiful island of Ceylon) that is kinder to the sluggard. The poorest soil will grow certain qualities of fruit and cocoanut palms. ”

“ Painful as the lesson has been, it was a wholesome one, not only for all classes of merchants in British India, but for Old England herself. The merchants of Bombay are once more in their counting-rooms and warehouses, the banks are as firmly established as ever, with a richer experience and a more profound insight into the laws which govern the moral as well as the business world; they yet bid fair to render the beautiful island of Bambâ Dèvi the heart and centre of all the commerce of the East, even as she is now, owing to her remarkable sanitary conditions, the healthiest city in India. ”

“ A burst of wild Oriental melody flooded the pavilion, and all at once the Nautchnees started to their feet. Poised on tiptoe, with arms raised aloft over their heads, they began to whirl and float and glide about in a maze of rhythmic movement, fluttering and quivering and waving before us like aspen-leaves moved by a strong breeze. It must have cost them years of labor to have arrived at such ease and precision of movement. The dance was a miracle of art, and all the more fascinating because of the rare beauty of the performers. ”

“ Now one sees a Mohammedan funeral, or the procession of gorgeous Taboots of Moslems, or gods of the Hindoos; anon the body of a Hindoo or a Parsee borne on an open bier by white-robed priests, the one to be burned, the other to be abandoned to birds of prey in their strange silent "towers of the dead." Sometimes a gay procession of dancing-girls, followed by troops of men and elephants richly caparisoned, waltzing all the way to the temple and keeping time to the pipes, cymbals, and the beating of most discordant drums ”

“ In 1780 the English attacked, stormed, and captured the city of Bassein once more from the fierce Mahrattas, and have held it ever since, a melancholy monument of the departed greatness of the Portuguese conquerors. Such is the fate of conquering nations. It can hardly be doubted that if the English were now expelled from India the few relics left of their religion, their power, and their civil and military magnificence would be swept rapidly away, and would in the course of a century or two leave not a trace behind them. ”

“ We passed along reefs of gold, now over wide swamps, our boat riding above and crushing down the tall waving grass, and anon we would suddenly shoot almost within touch of dark hollow caverns, and looking up see the high beetling cliffs piled one above the other, surmounted by the ruins of some of old Portuguese or Mahratta forts or castles, covered with wild flowers and huge creeping plants. The scenes along the banks of this river are wild and romantic enough to satisfy the most enthusiastic lover of nature. ”

“ Everywhere there is more filth and dirt than is possible to conceive at first sight; odors of ghee, or clarified butter, and fish in every stage of decomposition, assail you amid all manner of deafening sounds.
On one occasion, when visiting this part of Bombay, I saw the landing of some pilgrims from Mecca—a dirty, ill-looking set of men, but the moment they touched land the crowd was hushed; they walked in file counting their beads through the parted crowds, who almost to a man salââmed in abject reverence to the holy strangers. ”

“ The early Aryan priest, who was to his race what our poets and thinkers are to us to-day, on awakening at dawn turned his face to the east, and, waiting for the light, cried, "Arise! arise! the breath of our life has come, the darkness has fled." The fire had to be kindled by men. ”

“ Almost at the mouth of the Taptee stands a lovely little island; opposite to this is a little town called Domus, a quaint, homelike-looking place, where Europeans spend the hot months. The river flows for miles through a richly-cultivated suburb of gardens, plantations, and beautiful houses, till it reaches the city, which is walled with bastions at certain points, but the walls and towers are fast crumbling away. At one extremity stands the famous old castle of Surat, about three hundred years old, looking older and more stained with time and age than even the fortress of Damaun. ”

“ From the remotest times there has been a ceaseless march of tribes and races into the vast peninsula called Hindostan, from which there is no easy outlet, east or west, north or south; all points are equally difficult and impassable—mountain-barriers on the north, with ranges of mountains and circling seas on every other side. Nevertheless, pouring across the Indus and straggling down the narrow defiles and passes of the Himalayas, came wave after wave of immigration, pushing the earlier populations farther and farther into the hills and forest-boundaries of the occupied land. ”

“ Light, as seen in the sun, moon, and stars, dawn and sunrise, fire in all its mysterious forms—the spark struck from the flint, the fire that burned their oblations, the holy flames that were lighted on the domestic hearth—became their earliest objects of worship. ”

“ Within full sight and hearing of the beauty of Christianity, with all the wonders and marvels of scientific discoveries taught hard by in the public native school and in the Sanskrit college, here were these men, neither of whom lacked intellectual training, bowing down to idols of wood and stone. Surely, the more earnest and spiritual of these lowly worshippers see something of the truth, beauty, and goodness of God, denied to less ardent natures, and only discernible with closed eyes and in moments of deep, silent emotion. ”

“ For six hours these masses of humanity struggle, work, barter, buy and sell, load and unload, and carry on the strangely-exciting warfare, not of flesh and blood, but of pounds, shillings, and pence, straining every nerve each to outdo his neighbor, to enrich himself, at great sacrifice of life, health, and at times even of honor, in the hope of returning to his native land to enjoy the spoils—a hope which, alas! ”