Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore

“ At nine o'clock we stumbled through a dark, deserted village to the so-called hotel, which was a little better than a stable only in that it had not yet been used for horses. We spread our bedding in chill, whitewashed, stone-floored rooms opening upon a stone porch; and once more in darkness followed a lantern through the streets to the post-office. There we agreed to pay the government of India, or the postmaster-general, seventy-five rupees for a "tonga phaëton," i. e., a two-pony victoria, with sixteen relays of ponies, for the fifty-seven-mile drive up to Simla and return. ”

“ We remounted, and the mahout guided the monster down the road and then close beside the parapet, goaded it until it was as close to the coping as possible, and then bade us look down and see the rock-sculptures that adorn the perpendicular face of a ravine of the rock. With three hundred feet of space below our feet, the breathing of the elephant seeming enough to burst the girths that bound the car to it, and its lurches as it shifted its weight from one foot to the other enough to propel us into the air, we cared nothing for bas-reliefs and images. ”

“ MAHABODHI, THE PLACE OF GREAT INTELLIGENCE OT Jerusalem nor even Mecca is held in greater reverence by the millions of Christians and Mohammedans than is Buddha-Gaya by many more millions of Buddhists, who, inhabiting every part of Asia save India, look upon the temple at Mahabodhi as their greatest shrine, to the Sacred Bo-tree beside it as their most holy relic and living symbol, the most venerated, if not strictly the most venerable, tree on earth—Bodhi-druma, the Tree of Knowledge, beneath which Gautama became the Buddha, the Awakened, the Enlightened. ”

“ It was a rest to find one heathen temple deserted, to be spared the oily Brahman guide, and to trace in peace the details of this most beautiful of Dravidian temples, the purest example of that style. The great vimana, or pagoda, thirteen stories in height, mounts like the gopuras of Madura, course upon course, carved over with figures and ornaments, two hundred feet to the ball at the peak—a granite mass weighing more than twelve tons, and which could have been placed there only by rolling it up an inclined plane more than a mile in length. ”

“ They take England's money; shoot and rob England's men. They are all Russians, enemies of the country. Just now the sowar is England's soldier. Four-o'clock gun goes bang! and he is wild man again, England's enemy."
The smooth, hard carriage-road wound farther in among the yellow hills, and the camel-train was soon far behind and out of sight. We were as an advance-guard, the first passengers of the day, and the riflemen sitting on the rocks and perched on hill crests every hundred yards exchanged greeting glances with the sowar that sent more cold chills down the inert Hindu spine. ”

“ These tall, hairy, and noisy creatures, with peaked Afghan caps within their striped turban-cloths, were far removed from the soft and supple Hindus we had left in the South, unlike even the bearded Sikhs at Lahore. We had journeyed overnight to another country, had come again to a blue-eyed people, to the pale Aryans of the Northwest, to a race of weather-beaten and ruddy-cheeked mountaineers, to the Pathans of Kipling's tales—tales so true, pictures so clearly painted, that one recognizes these hairy giants as fascinating old acquaintances, characters in fiction come to life. ”

“ The greatest human spectacle in India, the chief incident and motive of Benares life, and the most extraordinary manifestation of religious zeal and superstition in all the world, begins at sunrise by the Ganges bank and lasts for several hours. We started in the first gray light of the dawn, drove two miles across the city, and, descending the ghats, or broad staircases, to the water's edge, were rowed slowly up and down the three-mile crescent of river-front, watching Brahmans and humbler believers bathe and pray to the rising sun, repeating the oldest Vedic hymns. ”

“ Outside, inside, over all the walls and ceilings spreads the revel of ornament, and the windows hold perforated stone and marble screens as fine as woven reed-work. This was the real India of the imagination, the setting for "The Naulahka," every part of the carved labyrinth a scene for melodrama. There was one great five-story pavilion, strangely like Akbar's tomb in design, each pillared and open hall of fairy lightness, with a row of fantastic bell-cupolas on top. ”

“ After watching the entrance of some others, we paused for a first steadfast look, and then, all excitement and exaltation, followed the marble path and mounted the half-way platform that affords the perfect view-point, the white wonder reflected in the long marble canal at their feet.
The Taj on its high platform, with the red sandstone mosque at the west, the complementary building or "Response" on the east, and the whole sky-space over and beyond the river as background, presents the most harmonious and perfectly balanced composition and is the most admirably placed building in India. ”

“ Sweetmeat shops and peddlers' stands overflowed with gujack and kindred candies, thickly peppered with the dust of the streets.
The caravans bring down the white Kabul grapes which, packed in cotton in small, round wooden boxes, are sold at remotest railway stations all over India each winter; and such mountainous stores of pistachios, almonds, walnuts, raisins, figs, and fruits from fertile Afghan and Persian vales, as made one imagine a great horn of plenty had been tipped through the Khyber Pass and its contents spread over Peshawar plain. ”

“ A few days later we attended a second Parsi wedding, where still more of the old ceremonial was observed. There was the same garden company of men in white ceremonial dress, and a drawing-room full of Parsi ladies covered with jewels and draped in silks of every delicate color. The bride seemed not to like the way in which her veil was pulled and rumpled by clumsy hands, and sweetmeats thrust in her mouth, and with some emphasis unwound her sari herself and wrapped around her the silver-bordered one given by the groom's mother. ”

“ Modern Gaya, the Sahibs' market, is an orderly new town with broad thoroughfares and busy bazaars, the whitewashed houses, the tidy streets and drains betraying the infallible signs of model British rule, prosperity, and eternal sanitation. It is distinct from the more ancient Brahm-Gaya, where huddled houses cut by narrow streets crowd around the great Brahman temple of the Vishnupad by the river bank, to which more than one hundred thousand Hindu pilgrims come to bathe and pray each year—a temple crowded with Buddhist sculptures and wreck from older temples. ”

“ The standard flies above the main entrance, red lancers of the body-guard pose statuesque before the portico, and at times a red carpet rolls down the steps and the Viceroy goes in state to return princely visits, or to stand on a pearl and bullion embroidered carpet before his silver arm-chair and lay a corner-stone, unveil a statue, or open some new public building. The great event of the racing week is the Viceroy's Cup, when all sporting India has its eye on the Maidan, remotest cantonments as heavily interested as the cheering crowds on the oval. ”

“ Incongruity is the regular order in India, splendor and shabbiness, dirt and riches, luxury and squalor always going together. We were free to roam the courts and garden spaces of the palace unhindered, from Shah Jahan's open audience-hall, or music-room, with its panels of Florentine mosaic on black marble ground, to that inner throne-room, the most splendid in the world. This peerless Diwan-i-Khas, one mass of rich decoration from the inlaid floor to the golden ceiling, was worthy setting for the Peacock Throne. ”

“ All the roads leading there were crowded one Sunday afternoon with strings of ekkas and bullock-carts overflowing with women and children, and the garden-paths and the marble platform around the marquetry tomb of the Persian treasurer were crowded with family parties. The women and children were all in their most brilliant holiday attire, their jewels and tinsel, fantastic fineries and fripperies of every kind making the green garden around the white pavilion a dazzle of color, a dream of India. ”

“ Such tattered and picturesque figures as never before diverted one,—Afghan and Bokhara beggars, shaggy and ragged beyond all the religious mendicants of India. Coats of a hundred patches hung in a hundred shreds from the frowzy, turbanless ones, and but half protected them from the keen mountain winds that blew through the bazaars at sunset. Many of these were Pathan "saints," who live in caves in the hills, lead revolts, and urge the murder of unbelievers. ”

“ BOMBAY FTER two months "up-country," Bombay seemed a European city, a Western metropolis; and that hotel which strikes such dismay and disgust to the heart of the tourist coming from Europe seemed to us a very palace of comfort; that hotel whose corridors are strewn with servants and their rolls of bedding, their pots, pipes, and traps,—servants who gabble and smoke, eat and sleep, dress and undress, each before his employer's door, as unconcernedly as in their own serais; that hotel of hard and hillocky beds, which all one's winter accumulation of razais cannot soften ”

“ Else, when we stepped out on the lonely platform at Chidambram that rainy midnight, we would have thought twice before picking our way through sleeping pilgrims in the open waiting-room, and stowing ourselves away with every joint bent in a tiny box of a native cart, or "lie-down-bandy," for the ride into unknown blackness beyond. Daniel compressed himself with David and the larger luggage bundles into another small box on wheels, and the ponies spattered down a muddy road in the black shadows of overarching trees. ”

“ One crazy foreigner more or less, with notions crazier than the last one, could not disturb a molla; but as it was past his prophesying what we might not pay six annas for, in the course of our crass philanthropy, he himself conducted us about and to the tomb of Khusrau, "the sweet-singing parrot of India, memsahib." Khusrau was a Turk, but his Persian verses were so beautiful that Sadi made a pilgrimage from Persia to pay homage, and to this day all the gild of Delhi musicians and dancers remember him with garlands and bouquets. ”

“ And the Scotchmen said: "Those Americans can just pay more, then. We won't give you an anna. Jao!" After the arctic drive back to Agra, we had time only for a cup of scalding tea before hurrying to the Taj to witness the most wonderful sunset of all, an amber afterglow illuminating every inner curve and recess and dispelling all shadows, the light seeming to radiate from the glowing marble, to emanate from the white surface itself. ”

“ The sun was burning with full strength then, and we sought the mud and thatch Tamil village under a cluster of palm-trees. The villagers swarmed out, and an inky, sooty flock of cherubs ran beside us to another boulder-temple, where we sat in the shade and regarded a huge stone hollowed like a churn or bowl, where "the gopis made butter for Krishna in the forest"—"But the cat ran away with the butter," said Daniel, regretfully. Krishna, the dancing god of Hindu mythology, very nearly corresponds to the Greek Apollo or Hercules, and the gopis parallel the naiads and muses. ”

“ The sight of Gothic architecture was a revelation after having reached the edge of satiety among Hindu, Jain, Mogul, Pathan, and Dravidian masterpieces. Street-cars, European shop-windows and houses were objects of interest; and to drive over sprinkled roads beside the soft-sounding sea, where bands played and fashion walked; to drink tea on club-house porches,—all this was too exciting.
We were invited to a Parsi wedding on our first day, and drove across the native city, around the curve of the Back Bay, and up the slopes of Malabar Hill to the villa of the bride's family. ”

“ This aged seer and sage, a Brahman of so high a caste and sphere that no touch or deed can defile him, to whom no sin is possible, sits in his garden, "air clad," summer and winter alike, indifferent to heat and cold, hunger and thirst, feeling neither joy nor sorrow, a soul uplifted beyond all further test or trial. He sits there imparting wisdom to his disciples and followers, as Gautama Buddha taught once in the Deer Park, presenting the same old unchanging picture of religious life in the East. ”

“ Low ridges before us rose to hills, and they to mountains, and three miles away at Kadam is the real entrance, the beginning of the pass that leads to Afghanistan and the mystic lands of Central Asia, through which a procession of conquerors have come. Out there have gone only the British, bent on punitive expeditions and to the questionable triumphs of what Sir Charles Dilke calls, "thrashing the Afghans into loving us."
No other mountain-pass in the world has had and retains such strategic importance and holds so many historic associations as this Khyber gateway to the Indian plain. ”

“ From the rock of Trichinopoli we had seen the great pagoda tower of Tanjore on the horizon, and as we rumbled the thirty miles across the Kaveri plain in the early, showery afternoon it rose in height as we advanced, and the train stopped fairly in its shadow. Leaving David to watch the luggage at the station, Samuel Daniel hurried us to the temple gate and under the two gopuras to the striped inner court, where the thirteen-story vimana, or tower, of Shiva tapers away until its great trisul seems to touch the very sky. ”

“ The last gateway had great teak doors, and the doctor of the temple and director of the Srirangam government hospital met us there; also the council of priests and five huge elephants, their foreheads striped with the same yellow and white tridents of Vishnu as their piously frescoed keepers. We saw the famous Hall of the Horse Columns, where single blocks of granite are as intricately carved as wood or ivory, and we saw the other curiosities of the stone-cutter's art, serried columns displaying the many incarnations of Vishnu. ”

“ The city is new, architecturally, and its two long, straight streets, crossing at right angles by the palace walls, cause all picturesqueness to converge there. The crowds were so brilliant and fantastic that one remembers Jeypore as some pageant in grand opera, the bazaars more spectacular than even those of Lahore. At noon, we saw the broad main street crowded from curb to curb with men in white clothes, with gay turbans and shawls,—a crowd that swayed and surged and moved until the long expanse of turbans was like a tulip-bed in the wind. ”