by William Butler

“ Truly heathenism—and above all Hindoo heathenism—is an expensive system of social and national life for any people. Error and vice don't pay. They are dearer far than truth and virtue under any circumstances.
Welcoming to their ranks, as they did, every vagabond of ability who had an aversion to labor, before the introduction of the British rule, these Fakirs, under pretenses of pilgrimages, used to wander, like the Gypsies of the West, over the country in bands of several thousands, but holding their character so sacred that the civil power dare not take cognizance of their conduct ”

“ Few sovereigns have ever been so utterly forgetful of the duties of a governor of men, or more thoroughly steeped in selfishness and sensuality, than was Wajid Ali Shah. His territories at length, from his misrule and neglect, became an unequaled scene of outrage and bloodshed, and a refuge for the dacoits (robbers) of Northern India, who would cross the Ganges at night and plunder in the British Territories all around, making good their retreat into Oude before daylight. ”

“ He returned to India by Constantinople, and visited the Crimea, where the war was then raging between England and Russia. He bore to his master the tidings of his unsuccessful efforts on his behalf, but consoled him with the assurance that the youthful vigor of the Russian power would soon overthrow the decaying strength of England, and then a decisive blow would be sufficient to destroy their yoke in the East. Subtle and bloodthirsty, Azeemoolah betrayed no animosity until the outburst of the Rebellion, and then he became the presiding genius of the assault and final massacre. ”

“ The man who keepeth the outward accidents from entering his mind, and his eyes fixed in contemplation between his brows—who maketh the breath to pass through both his nostrils alike in expiration and inspiration—who is of subdued faculties, mind, and understanding, and hath set his heart upon salvation, and who is free from lust, fear, and anger—is forever blessed in this life; and being convinced that I am the cherisher of religious zeal, the lord of all worlds, and the friend of all nature, he shall obtain me and be blessed.
“The Yogee constantly exerciseth the spirit in private. ”

“ Just in proportion to this impotent rage, of which the Government was well aware, most of the Hindoo princes around were exultant to think that the Great Mogul had found a master at last—that there was a strong hand on the bridle in his jaws, to hold him back from trampling on the rights of other people. The Shroffs (native Bankers) and moneyed men in the bazaars were in high glee, knowing that the rupees in their coffers were all safe under the protection of England's power, and that none could make them afraid. ”

“ It was not safe for an unarmed man, black or white, to move among them. And, indeed, when I wanted to see the city thoroughly, it was considered essential to my safety that I should not go alone or unattended, so they kindly mounted me on the back of an elephant in a Government howdah, and gave me a Sepoy escort; and thus elevated, so that I could see every thing on the flat-roofed houses, and in the courts and streets below, I made my first acquaintance with the city of Lucknow, and saw heathenism and Mohammedanism in their unutterable vileness. ”

“ A spark of this Christ-like grace in the soul of a humble woman, once a heathen, can produce the same blessed spirit of self-sacrifice as that which animates the breasts of the most cultured ladies of Christendom ”

“ He could lead the advance that so gallantly captured that city; but to stand up for Jesus alone and unprotected, exposed to the rage of the Mohammedan and the Hindoo in their bazaars, seemed to the military hero something that ought not to be attempted in such a country as Oude. He shrugged his shoulders when I reminded him that, as to our safety, Christ our Master, whose commission we obeyed, would look to that; while our success was in the hands of the Holy Spirit, and duty alone was ours. But he could not see it, and
we parted never to meet again. ”

“ Of all the curses under which India and her daughters groan, it may safely be said that this profession of the Fakirs is one of the heaviest and most debasing. The world has not often beheld a truer illustration of putting “darkness for light” than is afforded in the character and influence of these ignorant, beastly-looking men—fellows that in any civilized land would be indicted as “common vagrants,” or hooted out of society as an intolerable outrage upon decency. ”

“ Here were crowded together twelve hundred kings and queens—for all the descendants of the Emperors assumed the title of “Sulateens”—with ten times as many persons to wait upon them, so that the population of the palaces were actually estimated at twelve thousand persons. Glorying in their “royal blood,” they held themselves superior to all efforts to earn their living by honest labor, and fastened, like so many parasites, upon the old Emperor's yearly allowance. ”

“ I have often stood and looked at them in the wild jungle, miles away from a human habitation, filthy, naked, daubed with ashes and paint, and thought how like they seemed to those wretched creatures whom a merciful Saviour released from the power of evil spirits, and so compassionately restored to decency, to friends, and to their right minds. ”

“ There is a further aspect of this subject, and one so singular and serious that the reader will be as much surprised at the alleged divine law which requires it, as the sole and only path to moral purity and ultimate perfection, as he will be that men have ever been found who would undertake to conform themselves to the amazing and unique discipline by which it is to be attained. We may talk of self-denial and cross-bearing, but did the history of human endurance ever present any thing equal to the requirements of the following teachings? ”

“ When this mystic union is effected, the Yogee is liberated in his living body from the clog of material encumbrance, and acquires an entire command over all worldly substance. He can make himself lighter than the lightest substances, heavier than the heaviest; can become as vast or as minute as he pleases; can traverse all space; can animate any dead body by transferring his spirit into it from his own frame; can render himself invisible ”

“ Christianity they are irreconcilably antagonistic. They detest the doctrine of a divine Christ, and his followers have to share his odium at their hands. Alas, it is simple truth to say, that if the Lord Jesus were to come down from heaven to-day, and put himself in their power, they would as assuredly crucify him afresh in the streets of Delhi for saying he was “the Son of God,” as did the Jews in Jerusalem eighteen hundred years ago. You have only to read their “Sacred Kulma” to be assured of this spirit, and understand their rage against him ”

“ Great was the admiration of his endurance which awaited him every-where. At length (no doubt when his condition had become such that he was for the time disposed to listen to some friendly advice) a rich native gentleman, somewhat skeptical as to the value and need of this discipline, met him and tried very earnestly to persuade him to quit his uncomfortable seat, and have mercy upon himself. But here let Mr. Cambridge give the reasoning of the kind-hearted native, and point the moral of the story. He says to the Fakir:
“ ‘Can such wretches as you give to madness a vogue? ”

“ In the East, where there are no constitutions or popular governments, personal influence in a sovereign is every thing; the despotic powers have only their individual adaptation and prestige to depend upon to commend their rule. It is a maxim with them, that “a king who has no eyes in his head is useless.” In reference to the poor, old, mutilated Emperor of Delhi, (grandfather of the one whose portrait is herein given,) it had much more than a metaphorical meaning. ”

“ These men became the life and soul of the great conspiracy for the overthrow of the English power and the expulsion of Christianity from India, and for the elevation once more of Mohammedan supremacy over the Hindoo nations. Yielding to their influence, and that of the Sepoys, as will be narrated in our next chapter, the old Emperor committed himself fully, without counting the cost, to the fearful struggle.
The reader can well understand what an “elephant” the English Government had here on its hands, and in what perplexity they were as to what they should do with it. ”

“ To these elements of disturbance and eager watchfulness for a change, has to be added the great fact of the growing fear of the extension of the Christian religion, and the founding of new Missions in the land, with the consequent and widespread fear that their own faiths were in imminent danger of overthrow. Confounding every white man with the Government, and regarding him as most certainly in the service and pay of the English, they looked upon each Missionary as an emissary, backed up by the entire power and resources of the Administration, and to be correspondingly feared. ”

“ Thousands of these mercenaries who could not be employed, and who, with arms in their hands, were sent adrift to seek their fortunes, became the ready instruments of the Talookdars' tyranny and power, when His Excellency announced to them his intention of introducing the British system of land revenue into their country, for they well knew that these public improvements could be established only at the cost of their personal prerogatives and opportunities. The result is before the world. ”

“ Some will lie for years on beds of iron spikes, like the one here represented, reading their Shaster and counting their beads; while their ranks furnish many of the voluntary victims who have immolated themselves beneath the wheels of Juggernaut. But there are tens of thousands of them who take to the profession simply because it gives them a living off the public, and who are mere wandering vagabonds. ”

“ Living in royalty on twenty-five dollars per month, or less, each of these worthies, on choosing a wife, or adding another to those he had before, would feel it necessary, for his rank's sake, to settle upon her a dowry of five lakhs of rupees, (two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,) while actually the royal scamp did not own fifty dollars in the world. His only accomplishment or occupation was playing on the “Sitar,” and singing the King's verses, for this king was ambitious of a poet's title, and they flattered the old gentleman's whim. Did the world ever witness such a farce! ”

“ Some few of these Fakirs are undoubtedly sincere in their profession of giving up the world, and its social and domestic relations, to embrace lives of solitude, mortification, or self-torture, or to devote themselves to a course of religious contemplation and asceticism; others of them do it from a motive of vain-glory, to be honored and worshiped by their deluded followers ”

“ Lucknow then well deserved the character, so far as its external aspect was concerned, which Bayard Taylor gives it in his “India, China, and Japan,” when, standing on the iron bridge which spans the Goomtee, he exclaims, “All was lovely as the outer court of Paradise!” But, in what moral corruption were its five hundred thousand inhabitants seething! I had never before seen any thing approaching its aspect of depravity and armed violence. Every man carried a weapon—even the trader's sword lay beside his goods, ready to defend them against the lawless. ”

“ I have myself seen one of them in the streets of Benares, in the middle of the day, when they were crowded with men and women—a man evidently over forty years of age—as naked as he was born, walking through the throng with the most complete shamelessness and unconcern! ”

“ Lucknow was the splendid capital of the kingdom of Oude, whose sovereign, Wajid Ali Shah, had just been removed to Calcutta, and his dominions annexed by the British Government, on account of the long-continued misrule and oppression that had made Oude a neighborhood of misery and rapine to all the country around it. ”

“ Court of Delhi, it is very probable that it might have escaped the guilt and misery which hastened its destruction. Men in high or low station cannot violate the laws of God, even when their creed sanctions that violation, without incurring the penalty which is sure to come, sooner or later. Of this truth there never was a more marked example than was exhibited within these high and bastioned walls. The three generations during which this wrath was “treasuring up” its force but made it more overwhelming when its overthrow of desolation came. ”

“ The word “Fakir” (pronounced Fa-keer, with the a broad) is an Arabic term signifying “poor,” or a “poor man,” because they profess to have taken the vow of poverty, and, in theory, hold themselves above the necessity of home, property, or money, realizing their living as a religious right from the people wherever they come.
Some wander from place to place, some go on pilgrimages, and others locate themselves under a great banyan tree, or in the depths of a forest in some ruinous shrine or tomb, or on the bank of a river, and there receive the homage and offerings of their votaries. ”

“ The peaceful soul released from fear, who would keep in the path of one who followed god, should restrain the mind, and, fixing it on me, depend on me alone. The Yogee of an humble mind, who thus constantly exerciseth his soul, obtaineth happiness incorporeal and supreme in me.”—Bhagvat Geeta, pp. ”