by William Butler

“ He possesses the Veda, and is alone permitted to teach the laws. By his sacrifices and imprecations he could destroy a Rajah in a moment, together with all his troops, elephants, horses, and chariots. In his wrath he could frame new worlds, with new gods and new mortals. A man who barely assaulted a Brahmin, with the intention of hurting him, would be whirled about for a century in the hell termed Tamasa. He who smote a Brahmin with only a blade of grass, would be born an inferior quadruped during twenty-one transmigrations. ”

“ A part of the pageant was the procession of elephants. These animals, one hundred and seventy in number, and the finest in size and appearance in India, were each decorated in the richest housings, and ridden by the Nawabs and Rajahs who owned them, each trying hard to outvie the other. Perhaps the Maharajah of Putteallah carried off the palm. The housings of his immense elephant were of such extraordinary richness that they were covered with gold and jewels. The Maharajah, who rode on him, wore a robe of black satin embroidered with pearls and emeralds. ”

“ Four or five of these women, tricked out in all their finery and jewelry, and tinkling ornaments on arms, necks, and feet, will, for four or five dollars, dance and jest, and sing India's licentious songs for hours; but even they don't dance except with their own sex. They are prostitutes, and yet they are undoubtedly the only intelligent and cultivated class of Hindoo women. So that the profane and debased have a monopoly of education, while the virtuous and retiring ladies of the land are condemned to a life of ignorance. Such is woman in India as to her mind. ”

“ We knew them well—Brothers Freeman, Campbell, Johnson, and M’Mullen, and their devoted ladies and little ones, honored and beloved missionaries of the American Presbyterian Church. We alone of the number are left alive to tell the story of the circumstances under which they suffered, and of our own wonderful escape from a similar death! How well we can appreciate the victory of Christian civilization over heathen cruelty and purposes, as well as the amazing strides made by the Gospel and by education since that fearful day! ”

“ It is a mansion infested by age and by sorrow, the seat of diseases, harassed by pains, haunted with the quality of darkness, and incapable of standing long. Such a mansion of the vital soul should always be quitted with cheerfulness by its occupier.”—Institutes of Hindoo Law, VI, 76, 77. ”

“ Such men can and will do, for such reasons, what other men have not nerve enough to adventure merely in obedience to the theoretic rules of their order.
The Brahmins would fain be regarded as the learned class of India. Of course there was a time when, in the earlier ages of the world, they were so, as compared to men in other nations. No scholar can doubt this for a moment. But the world and education are no longer what they once were; both have advanced amazingly, while the Brahmin has not only stood still, but he has retrograded. ”

“ By every law and rule of power, opportunity, and purpose, it must have perished had it been merely human, and true philosophy as well as Christian faith teaches us that it was only saved by the special interposition of Almighty God, its defender and keeper. During the long and weary months of our siege on the summit of Nynee Tal, the handful of villagers there declared that we were the last of the Christian life left in India—that from where we stood, to the sea on either side, our religion and race had been all swept away. ”

“ True, but India's sons can never learn the sentiment and experience which Dryden's line thus expresses till the daughters of India receive the Christianity which alone can cultivate their minds and hearts, and take under its divine guardianship their sacred mission in India, as in America, to
“Give to social man true relish of himself.”
The men of India have never known woman's high power as “a helpmeet” in mind, heart, social life, or usefulness, and until they do they cannot enjoy the blessed home which only honored and elevated women can create. ”

“ From the blows which he dealt out to those foes of Gospel civilization they reeled back, stunned into the keen conviction that for them and their hateful creed there was no home in Europe. They recrossed the Straits of Gibraltar, and, instead of the Gallic and Germanic races, sought an easier prey in the enervated communities of Oriental heathenism. Thus, instead of France and Britain and Germany, the Crescent of the False Prophet subdued, and for nearly a thousand years waved over, Egypt, Persia, Toorkistan, and India. ”

“ And so it goes on from generation to generation, until now, when this wonderful innovator, Christianity, has walked right into the midst of this venerable ignorance, and, to the horror of these editorial oracles, has lifted many even of the Pariah youth of their bazaars to a plane of education and knowledge up to which millions look with amazement as they wonder what is going to happen now, when boys “whose fathers they would have disdained to set with the dogs in their flocks” are actually becoming possessed of an education which even their Pundits do not enjoy! ”

“ Innovations crept in and conflicts ensued, and, despite the desperate efforts of the Brahmins, confusion has marred Menu's strange designs, while the introduction of Western civilization, the teachings of Christianity, and the light of true knowledge, have delivered such severe and repeated shocks that the venerable and hideous monstrosity is tottering to its final fall. ”

“ To a Brahmin the Judge should say, ‘Declare;’ to a Kshatriya he should say, ‘Declare the truth;’ to the Vaisya he should compare perjury to the crime of stealing kine, grain, or gold; to the Sudra he should compare perjury to every crime in the following language: ‘Whatever places of torture have been prepared for the murderer of a Brahmin, for the murderer of a woman, or child, have also been ordained for that witness who gives false evidence. ”

“ I have seen a person of this class, on approaching a low-caste man, wave his right hand superciliously thirty yards before they could meet, and so send him off to the other side of the road. The poor despised man meekly bowed and obeyed the haughty intimation. No sacerdotal tyranny has ever been so relentlessly and scornfully enforced as that of the Brahminical rule, and none has been such an unmitigated curse to the nation where it was exercised. ”

“ In fact, until lately, when a gleam of light has begun to shine for women in the Land of the Veda, it might be said, without qualification, that no part of an American definition of education would apply to the culture under which a daughter of India is fitted for future life. It does not, for her, include reading, or writing, or history, or science, or aught else which we include in its meaning. Education, in its proper sense, is denied to the females of India ”

“ No doubt this want of appreciation of surrounding circumstances in their life is caused by their inability while heathens justly or truly to estimate that idea of home which Christianity has created for man, especially in the “honorable estate” of the married life which she ordains and blesses, and to which she leads the grateful, loving husband to bring his means and ingenuity to adorn it, to make it a convenient, cheerful, happy dwelling for the blessed wife whom he loves and the dear children whom God has given them. ”

“ If there be any one thing, short of salvation, in which America and India contrast each other most vividly, it is woman's high position in her home, and man's consequent happiness resulting therefrom—as wife, living for the husband whom she loves ”

“ They love to be decorated with dress and jewelry, enjoy frequent siestas, and divide the remainder of their leisure time in the society of women whom they choose to entertain in their zenanas; but of public spirit and efforts, disinterested devotion to the welfare of others, intellectual enjoyments, the culture and training of their children's minds or morals, or the exalting influence of communion with a refined and intelligent wife or mother, they know but little or nothing, because they are utter strangers to the inspiration of the holy religion whose fruits these joys and virtues are. ”

“ He should bear a reproachful speech with patience, and speak reproachfully to no man; and he should never utter a word relating to vain, illusory things. He should delight in meditating upon the Supreme Spirit, and sit fixed in such meditation, without needing any thing earthly, without one sensual desire, and without any companion but his own soul. ”

“ The food and manner of eating is quite Oriental, with the peculiarity on the part of the stricter Brahminical caste that they never touch flesh of any kind; but the rich variety of fruits and vegetables, and other products of the field and garden, with milk, butter, etc., enables them to enjoy a full variety. The favorite dish of India is the “curry,” and natives and foreigners alike seem to agree that it is the king of all dishes. ”

“ The body is a mansion, with bones for its rafters and beams, with nerves and tendons for cords, with muscles and blood for mortar, with skin for its outward covering, and filled with no sweet perfumes, but loaded with refuse. ”

“ But, then, they are only heathens, and don't appreciate the high accomplishments of Christian civilization! Still, Heaven grant that the future Church of India may ever retain at least this item of the prejudices of their forefathers! Dancing forms, then, no part of a daughter's education in India, and it probably never will, that is, unless they become corrupted by “Christian” example.
All of that sort of thing that they ever desire, on occasions of festivals and ceremonies, they hire from the temples and bazaars. ”

“ If you deviate from the truth you shall go naked, shorn, and blind, and be tormented with hunger and thirst, and beg food with a potsherd at the door of your enemy; or shall tumble headlong into hell in utter darkness. ”

“ The Sepoy Rebellion of 1857 distressed him exceedingly, and probably alienated him from his native land. His entire severance from the religion of his countrymen, and, most of all, probably, reasons of State in view of the English rule in his country, which he would not wish by his presence there to disturb in any way, led him to prefer England as a residence. A magnificent home has been provided for him near London, and there, on the allowance of his rank paid yearly by the British Government, he is spending the present portion of his life, honored and respected by all around him. ”

“ But there are no authors in India, no libraries in its homes; not one in a thousand of its aristocracy ever saw the outside of his native land. Learned societies, museums, or fruits of genius are not to be found there. Education, when acquired, is restricted mostly to the mere ability of reading and writing and talking in courtly style, while there are multitudes of wealthy men that cannot do that much ”

“ The native gentleman is evidently amazed, though he conceals it as well as he can, at her intelligence and her self-possession in the presence of another man than her husband, so unlike the prejudices that fill his mind about the female members of his own household. ”

“ The education of the gentlemen of India is sadly deficient. Conducted in the Zenana, among ladies ignorant of the most elementary knowledge, their mental training and acquisitions are usually of the most superficial sort, and destitute of healthful stimulus. But the gentleman here represented is one of the exceptions to this rule; and as he has had the moral courage to separate himself from heathenism and receive the Christian faith, the reader may be pleased with some further notice of him. ”

“ Of express trains, telegraphs, associated press, pictorial papers, and all our Christian appliances for collecting and distributing the news of the wide world, he is utterly ignorant. But the poor editor is on a par with the education of his patrons, and he can rest assured they are not likely to outstrip him in the race for knowledge. ”

“ He should only ask for food once a day, and that should be in the evening, when the smoke of the kitchen fires has ceased, when the pestle lies motionless, and the burning charcoal is extinguished; when people have eaten, and when dishes are removed. If he fail to obtain food he should not be sorrowful; if he succeed in obtaining it he should not be glad. ”