Sivas

“ It is the most important military position in this part of Turkey. It commands the sole route which descends with the waters upon the plateau of Asia Minor. Sivas is the key to the Peninsula on the Asiatic side; the Turks ought to fortify this place, particularly when they are threatened in Asia Minor by the Russians. Should the latter succeed in forcing the first line of defence, consisting of Kars, Ardahan, and Bayazid, and afterwards take possession of Erzeroum, there will be no other fortified town between themselves and Scutari. ”

“ These princes fled for their life, and the Turks were for a moment arrested by the spectacle of the multitude of white domes, belonging to the churches, which they mistook for the tents of their enemy. But both the city and the plain of Sivas were given over to pillage and massacre; streets and countryside were deluged with blood.47 North, south, and west spread the relentless inundation ”

“ Up more steps where children ran out to stare at the girl and to run from the warriors. Sivas was a nest of refuge for the harassed Armenians, hidden in the higher gorges near the caravan tracks. Michael wondered how human beings could exist there in such squalor, not knowing that the clay and the earth of the huts and the grime and the grease of the children all served to insure them gainst the visits of Turkish collectors and janizaries. ”

“ The soldiers of the Kasab Tabouri were tired from their exertions in killing the 4,000 exiles from Erzindjan such a short time before, so they made sport out of the reception of those from Sivas, who numbered more than 11,000 men, women and children. ”

“ Its sources must be sought in the map beyond Sivas, far up the northern slope of the lower Armenian hills, [43] where at one point but a few miles divide it from several tributaries of the Euphrates. For nearly two hundred miles it holds on in a south-westerly direction through hilly country, fed by numerous short streams on either hand, which scour for themselves deep channels in their swift descent. Its waters are deeply stained red-brown in colour by the rich sediment which it carries. ”

“ Jewett of Sivas, an excellent man, is unavailable for us for three reasons: first, the delay and difficulty in communicating with him on account of our isolation, and the very circuitous post-routes, in case the local authorities were kind enough not to intercept our letters, as they have repeatedly, even the official correspondence of the United States Minister (Foreign Relations of the U. S. 1893) ; second, the distance and methods of travel are such that probably from one to two months would elapse after any outrage, before the Sivas Consul could be notified and arrive ”

“ The Turks who come from the south suffer from poorness of blood. They have never drunk wine before, their law prevents them; when they receive alcohol as a medicine the effect is marvellous."
I now walked to one of the barracks, to see the cavalry regiment which had left Sivas whilst I was in that town. It had just arrived in Erzeroum. An officer accompanied me through the stables. ”

“ South of Sivas a line of bare hills connects this chain with another range of high forest-clad mountains, which loses itself southwards in the main mass of Taurus, and is held to be the true Anti-Taurus by geographers. It throws off, in the latitude of Kaisarieh, a subsidiary range, the Binboa Dagh, which separates the waters of the Sihun from those of the Jihun. The principal passes are those followed by the old roads:— (1) from Sebasteia to Tephrike and the upper valley of the western Euphrates ”

“ High amongst the Himalayas tower the great snow-mountains, and here, on the still, cold heights, is Siva throned. Silent—nay, rapt in silence—does He sit there, absorbed and lost in one eternal meditation. When the new moon shines over the mountain-tops, standing above the brow of the Great God, it appears to worshipping souls as if the light shone through, instead of all about Him. ”

“ I feel the skin of my face cracked by the burning of the sun. The hours crawl so slowly over the lake; patience, patience. The clouds display wonderful tone-effects; white and grey, sharply defined, they lie in different stages before the mountains, and behind them dark blue and purple curtains seem to hang down. We might be gliding over the bright floor of a temple hall, its walls richly decorated with flags and standards, which hang down from golden hooks on the ceiling of the sky, and touch the dust of earth with their fringes. The genii of Siva’s paradise seem to hover round us. ”

“ The palm groves of Siwa are very beautiful. It seems a veritable Garden of Hesperides when one arrives there after a long trek on the waterless desert which surrounds the oasis. One appreciates the slumberous shade of the luxuriant gardens, long, lazy bathes in the deep cool springs, and feasts of fruit on the banks of little rushing streams. Perhaps it is not surprising that the Siwans are lazy and indolent, for their country is in many ways a land of Lotus Eaters. The natives have a happy-go-lucky Omar Khayyámish outlook on life which is accentuated by the place they inhabit. ”

“ There is a saying in Egypt that whoever tastes the water of the Nile must some time return there, and I am very sure that he who drinks from the Siwa springs will always wish to go there again. Walking by moonlight under those huge, towering battlements of the strange old town, through streets and squares deserted save for an occasional white-robed figure, one could almost credit the queer stories of ghosts, jinns and afreets that are believed by the Siwans to haunt every spot in this mysterious little oasis which lies hidden among the great barren tracts of the pitiless Libyan Desert. ”

“ The smoke ascends in thin spirals from the evening fires, and a low murmur rises from the streets and squares below; then suddenly the prayer of the muezzin sounds from the many mosques, and one can see the white-robed figures swaying to and fro on the narrow pinnacles of the round towers that in Siwa take the place of minarets. When the call to prayer is over and the last mournful chant has echoed across the oasis, and the glow in the sky is fading away, one hears far down beneath the soft thudding of a tom-tom and perhaps the faint whine of a reed pipe. ”

“ SIVA, in Hindu mythology, a god who forms the supreme trinity with Brahma and Vishnu. As Brahma is the creator and Vishnu the preserver, so Siva is the destroyer. His name does not occur in the Vedas, but in later Hinduism he is an important divinity. Though Siva's personal appearance is fully described in the Puranas, it is in the form of the linga (phallic emblem) that he is almost universally worshipped. Death being a transition to a new form of life, the destroyer is really a re-creator, and thus Siva is styled the Bright or Happy One. ”

“ Siva was however considered the greatest of the four gods, and his temples were the most stately and august of the public edifices. Kâli was held to be a form of Pârvati, the consort of Siva. Indra, the king of the celestials, Kâma, the god of love, and celestial bodies, such as Surya the sun and Soma the moon had temples dedicated to them. With a view to impress upon the minds of the people, the distinctions of caste, the Brahmins introduced also the worship of four Bhootas or gigantic idols, which represented the four castes. ”

“ Siwa is one of the least known and most interesting places in North Africa, but owing to its inaccessibility very few Europeans had visited it prior to the outbreak of the Great War. It has a population of between three and four thousand inhabitants, who are not Arabs but the remains of an older race, of Berber origin. They have a language of their own, which is only spoken, not written, and has survived among the dwellers of the oasis from many centuries before the Arab invasion, owing to the remoteness of the country and the slight communication between Siwa and the outer world. ”

“ No shadow fell in that region, for clearness inhered there so thoroughly that it seemed the real essence of Siva’s dominions.
The region was not empty. As far as the eye could reach were seen heights and valleys where beautiful trees stood in groups; on those trees rose climbing plants, while ivy and [Pg 12] grapevines were hanging from the cliff sides.
But the cliffs and the tree trunks and the slender plant stems were almost transparent, as if formed out of light grown material. The leaves of the ivy had in them a delicate roseate light as of dawn. ”

“ We have already stated that Siva is usually deemed the third person of the Hindu triad, that he represents the destructive energy, and that he appears in such a variety of forms, and on so many occasions, that scarcely a step can be taken in any department whatever of eastern science, art, or subject of literature, without encountering him in some of his varied characters. The whole race of Hindoos, it seems, is divided into two classes, denoting the worship of Siva, or of Vishnu; Brahma, the first or creative power, having no worshippers or temples. ”

“ Here Siva is seated in the sukhāsana or the comfortable posture on a raised pedestal, as in the case of Sōmāskanda figures, his left leg hanging down and resting on a foot-stool. The goddess Pārvatī too is seated to the left of Siva on the same pedestal, her right leg being bent at the knee and placed on the pedestal while the left is hanging down to rest on another foot-stool. Siva has four arms. In his two back hands he holds the axe and the deer and with the two front arms he is seen decorating with a flower garland the locks of his servant, the devoted Chandēsa. ”

“ Siva is the second of the Hindu deities, and represents the primitive animating and destroying forces of nature. His symbols relate to these powers, and are worshiped more especially by the Sivaites—a numerous sect of this religion. The worshipers of Vishnu, called the Preserver, the first-born of Brahma, constitute the most extensive sect of India, and their ideas relating to this form of the Divinity are represented by tradition and poetry, and are particularly developed in the great monuments of Sanskrit literature. ”

“ A large number of important Saivaite temples are known to have been built during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and inscriptions speak of many learned and holy men who were devoted to this worship. The movement was probably accentuated by the opposition of the Jains, who seem to have been very powerful in the Western Deccan, and in Mysore. An inscription which will be more fully noticed later on tells of the God Siva specially creating a man in order to "put a stop to the hostile observances of the Jains and Buddhists." ”

“ I will just give the outline of the Hindu religion. Like all mythology, it is infinitely complex, but two great divisions are distinguished, in the followers of Siva and the followers of Vishnu. Under various names, and in varied forms, these are the two gods most worshipped.
Siva is at once the Destroyer and the Reproducer, the emblem of life and death—the god of sound philosophical doctrine. In a more terrible aspect he is worshipped as the Roarer, the Dread One. He is represented with a human head with five faces, and a body with four arms, with a club and necklace of skulls. ”

“ The temple of Loro-Jonggrang is one in which, as at Kalasan, the object of worship was Siva, and not Buddha. This god, as already stated, was the third of the three persons of the Hindu Trinity; the first being Brahma, or the Creator, and the second Vishnu, the Preserver. Siva, the Destroyer, is also the Reproducer, and appears in Java to have been worshipped under three forms: (1) as Mahadeva, or the Great God; (2) as Mahayogi, or the Great Teacher; and (3) as Mahakala, or the Destroyer. Guru (or Goeroe) is an alternative name for Siva Mahayogi, and his statues in this temple are so called. ”

“ They have a number of purely local customs and practices which are entirely different to those which are prevalent in Egypt, or among the Arabs of the Western Desert. The Siwans are Mohammedans, and strictly religious in most of their observances, but in some of their habits one can trace a faint resemblance to rites that [208] have survived from former times, long before the people adopted their present religion. But most of the apparently meaningless practices are founded on the inherent fear of evil spirits, which are implicitly believed in by all the inhabitants. ”

“ In spite of a climate that was sometimes trying, in spite of a bad bout of fever, and in spite of an occasional feeling of loneliness, the memory of the time that I spent at Siwa will always be a very happy one. Siwa is so absolutely unspoilt, and so entirely Eastern. Even the ubiquitous Greek trader has not penetrated this desert fastness. It is a place that grows on one, and the few who have been there, and who appreciate its curious fascination, find it very hard to leave. ”

“ Children take to firing crackers. The non-Brahman population of Madras wear new cloths on this day. As Siva is supposed to have appeared in the form of a pillar of radiance on this day, in every place where there is a Siva temple a big rod some 25 or 30 feet high is planted opposite to the temple in an open space and left covered up with a thick coating of dried palm leaves from top to bottom. ”

“ Lifting up the weighty tins and drawing up the skins of water gives the girls an opportunity for coquettish displays of neat arms and ankles, but an infinitely more modest expanse is exhibited by these Arabs than by the average young woman in England to-day. But in Siwa if one rode past a spring where women were washing clothes they would run off into the gardens as fast as they could, and even when a Siwan man came to the pool they retired hurriedly with shawls pulled over their faces, and waited some distance away. ”

“ DŪRGĀ
condition of Northern India must have driven many Brahmans and craftsmen from Aryāvarta to take service under the powerful Hindu monarchs of the south. The few classic examples at Elephanta, Ellora, and elsewhere are several centuries earlier. In the south, also, the traditions of the Saiva temple images survive to the present day, whereas in Northern India the Saivas, probably under the compulsion of Muhammadan rulers, generally substituted the lingam for iconic symbols of Siva. ”