Chapati

“ He said ' In the time of the Moghul Empire, Chapperbands settled in the Bijapur district. At that time, a fakir named Pir Bhai Pir Makhan lived in the same district. One of the Chapperbands went to this fakir, and asked him to intercede with God, in order that Chapperbands might be directed to take up some profession or other. The fakir gave the man a rupee, and asked him to take it to his house quickly, and not to look backwards as he proceeded on his way. As the man ran home, some one called him, and he turned round to see who it was. ”

“ CHAPTER L. I decide to Devote Myself to Personal Interests—Summoned as a Witness in Indian Difficulties—My own Troubles—I meet the Demands of my Brethren though it Takes my Home.
Major Chaffee had been watching the efforts of the whites to rob the natives of their rights. He had reported to the proper department the condition of affairs. He did all he could to protect the rights of the Indians. I kept him continually posted and I am satisfied that without his oversight of affairs the Indians would have been driven away and the work among them on Salt river broken up. ”

“ Pratap came closer to Shaibalini, and took her hand in his, after a long, long time. It then became very difficult for them to swim. They again caught hold of the support.
Shaibalini then said, "Now I am ready to swear anything you like. Pratap, after what a long time I clasp your hand in mine!"
Pratap. Swear by me, or I will drown myself here. What is this life for? Who will willingly bear the burden of a sinful life? What can be more desirable than to lay down that burden on the sacred bosom of the flowing Bhagirathi, under the silvery radiance of the glorious moon? ”

“ Then indeed it would have been difficult to withstand the extortions of its touts, despite the inner conviction of the travelers, that though the shore opposite may be one, its landing places are many and diversely situate.
Our shastras tell us that the divine shakti is many-sided so that a host of different factors operate in the work of creation. In death these merge into sameness; for chaos alone is uniform. God has given to man the same many-sided shakti for which reason the civilisation of his creation have their divine wealth of diversity. ”

“ Gurgan Khan then bundled up the letters, and concealed them in a safe place. He then said within himself, "Now, what course should I follow? India is now an ocean, so to speak—one would pick up as many gems as often he would dive into it. What gain will there be if I simply count the waves from the shore? Well, I used to sell cloth measuring it out with the yard, but now India is afraid of me; I am the absolute master of Bengal. Am I really so? Who is the real master? The English merchants. Mir Kasim is their slave; I am Mir Kasim's slave—I am, therefore, a slave of the real master's slave! ”

“ In some localities they are considered impure, and high-caste Hindus who do not eat meat will wash themselves if forced to touch a Khatīk. Elsewhere they rank just above the impure castes, but do not enter Hindu temples. These Khatīks slaughter sheep and goats and sell the flesh, but they do not cure the skins, which are generally exported to Madras. The Hindu Khatīks often refuse to slaughter animals themselves and employ a Muhammadan to do so by the rite of halāl. The blood is sometimes sold to Gonds, who cook and eat it mixed with grain. ”

“ Pratap was much gratified at this. He thought within himself, "Will not the Nawab be able to drive the devils out of Bengal? Would not Foster be seized? It is the duty of every man to help the Nawab in this matter, to the extent of his capacity. Even the squirrels [1] could bridge up the sea, can I not render any assistance? What can I do? I have no trained soldiers—I have only Lathials and gangs of plunderers at my beck and call; can they be of any service? The work of pillage, if not anything else, can be carried on with them. ”

“ The religious practices of the Shaktas being such as are believed to lead to the possession of supernatural powers, many persons of this sect, taking advantage of the religious blunders of the great mass of the people, practice the most barefaced impositions. The credulity of the Hindus becomes to many an inexhaustible source of wealth, especially to those who are at the head of any religious establishment, where any form of the Shakti is the presiding divinity. ”

“ Making more for the west, and almost west through this Damute, are other lordships which they call the Cafates, people who are not very dark, and large of stature. They say that they had been of the race of the Jews, but they have no books or synagogues, they are more subtle people than any that are in this country; they are pagans and great warriors, and always carry on war with the Prester. ”

“ The other crops are inconsiderable. The other part of the country, south and east from the capital, is called Khasant. One half of its inhabitants are Brahmans, mostly of the bastard (Jausis) race, who plough and carry burthens; one-fourth consists of Khasiyas, who call themselves Khatris; and one-fourth consists of other Hindus of a lower birth, but called also Khasiyas. Very few of even these spurious Hindus have settled among the Gurungs, and very few of the latter have remained in the Khasant. ”

“ There is much obscurity about the origin and proper application of the term. [The word is by some derived from Skt. chūḍa, the top-knot which every Hindu must wear, and which is cut off on conversion to Islam. In the same way in the Punjab, choṭīkaṭ, 'he that has had his top-knot cut off,' is a common form of abuse used by Hindus to Musulman converts; see Ibbetson, Panjab Ethnog. p. 240.] According to Sonnerat (i. 109) , the Chulias are of Arab descent and of Shīa profession. [The Madras Gloss. takes the word to be from the kingdom of Chola and to mean a person of S. India.] ”

“ It united India, and the great nationalist movement was born in Bengal in that same year. Chatterji's novel became the inspiration of this revolutionary movement. Not only in Bengal but all over India men dedicated themselves to the task of making Chatterji's dream come true. ”

“ For what could be a greater joy than to join hands in the field of work with one for whom one has such love and reverence? Nothing is more wonderful to me than Mahatmaji’s great moral personality, In him divine providence has given us a burning thunderbolt of shakti. May this shakti give power to India — not overwhelm her — that is my prayer! ”

“ The religion of the Hindus can boast an antiquity little less, perhaps, than that of ancient Egypt, and it can lay claim to a conservatism unequalled in any other part of the world. The unchanging custom of centuries has crystallized into social forms, which may be destroyed, but can scarcely be modified, and so closely bound up are the religious and social systems, that an attempt to alter the one must inevitably involve an attack upon the other. ”

“ Much of the splendour of the Hindu idolatry consists in the celebration of the Shakta rites. The great festivals, which are annually celebrated in Bengal, such as the Durga Puja, the Jagaddhari and Kali Pujas, the Charak, the Basanti, Rutanti and Falahari Pujas, are all Shaktya observances, and for the most part performed by the worshippers of the Shakti. These festivals themselves, and the exhibitions that accompany them, exert a pernicious influence over the morals of the people. ”

“ Ever since the days when the first great tide of Aryan invasion swept down from the highlands of Central Asia, and drove the aboriginal inhabitants to the hill fastnesses or the forest depths, the plains of India have from time to time been the battle-ground of opposing civilizations, though in almost every case the ultimate victory has rested with the Brahmans. If, on the one hand, the influence of Greek thought may be faintly traced in Buddhism, there can, on the other, be no doubt that the Greek philosophers owed not a little to India ”

“ Khipil abased himself before Shahpesh, and answered, ''Tis even here, O King of the age, where thou delightest the earth with thy foot and the ear of thy slave with sweetness. Surely a site of vantage, one that dominateth earth, air, and water, which is the builder's first and chief requisition for a noble palace, a palace to fill foreign kings and sultans with the distraction of envy ”

“ Let us remember that India is an empire with various tribes and tongues of mutual peculiarities and even uncongenialities, and not a single homogeneous and consolidated nation. It has several distinct and marked centres of diffusive illumination and civilization. Among these Calcutta, the capital of the North-West Provinces, Lahore, Bombay, and Madras are the chief. ”

“ A qasba is a Musalman settle- ment in a defensible military position generally on the site of an ancient Hindu headquarters, town, or fort, wbere for mutual protection a Musal- man who had overrun and seized the proprietary of the surrounding villages resided, where the faujdár and his troops, tbe pargana qánúngo and chaudhri, the mufti, qázi, and other dignitaries lived, and as must be the case where the wealth and power of the Moslem sect was collected in one spot a large settlement of Sayyad's mosques, dargáhs, &c., sprang up. ”

“ His adversary was an evolutionary socialist, who had every appearance of being a superior bank clerk. Another group comprised only five members; there was a brown Indian, a one-eyed man wearing a cap, a stout Armenian Jew and two taciturn men with pipes; the one-eyed man declared with a fearful pessimism that “something is sometimes nothing,” while the Indian advocated the more cheerful view that “something is sometimes something,” which he repeated twenty times in very tumbledown English. ”

“ The Nawab had taken care of the thorn instead of the rose—Kulsam had truly said—"The ruler of Bengal is a fool."
The Nawab then said to the noblemen of his court, "Listen to me, it is beyond my power to retain this kingdom any more. The slave girl has truly said, that the ruler of Bengal is a fool. If you can save this kingdom from ruin, good and well—I shall take leave of you all and quit this place; I shall either take shelter within the female quarters in the castle at Ruhidas, or lead the life of a mendicant." ”

“ Let our lord now hear a word from the mouth of thy servant, and I will declare unto thee the truth concerning the people which dwelleth near thee in this hill country, and there shall no lie come out of the mouth of thy servant. For this people is descended from the Chaldeans, and they dwelt heretofore in Mesopotamia, because they would not follow the gods of their fathers, which were glorious in the land of the Chaldeans, but went out of the way of their ancestors, and adored the God of heaven, whom they knew ”

“ They are above the middle size of Asiatics, and exceed, both in stature and muscular power, either the Javan or the Maláyu. Though professing a religion which in western India moulds the character of the Hindu into the most tame and implicit subserviency to rule and authority, and though living under the rod of despotism which they have put into the hands of their chiefs, they still possess much of the original boldness and self-willed hardihood of the savage state. ”

“ He answered the call to arms to fight against the common enemy—the Kauravas—mentioned in that great Indian classic, the "Mahabharata," and, having advanced as far as Panipat in the Punjab, that fateful spot where has been sealed the fate of so many Indian heroes, seems to have been killed, for he never returned to his kingdom. ”

“ From among the Kaffirs, Zulus, Matabeles, Basutos, Bechuanas, or any other of the fierce South African tribes, select an ordinary specimen of those splendidly-formed tribes so ruthlessly denominated as negroes, and plant him near a West African, or Congoese, or Gabonese type, and place a Hindu between them, and having been once started on the right trail of discovery, you will at once perceive that the features of the Kaffir are a subtle amalgamation of the Hindu and West African types; but if we take a Mhuma of mature age, the relation to the Hindu will still more readily appear. ”

“ Until the war ended, Islam in India relied not only on the Government of India’s undertaking to the effect that the Caliphate was a matter for Moslem opinion alone to decide, but on the fact that the Empire as a whole contained 100,000,000 Moslems to 80,000,000 Christians. With these assurances, Indian Moslem troops even participated in the capture of Jerusalem, but when the peace proposed to continue what the war had begun, the Caliphate agitation in India soon became the most formidable fact in the British Empire. ”

“ The Kaftan, temple locks, fur caps, and jargon, have certainly nothing in common with religion, yet in the East if a Jew attire himself in Western habit, and speak any language correctly, he is regarded with mistrust, as already almost an apostate from the faith, for he has destroyed those links which united him to his race, and they are aware that these alone secure adherence to their community, apart from which the individual Jew must perish morally and spiritually beyond hope of recovery. ”

“ The Kaffirs are, undoubtedly, one of the finest races of savages in existence, and of a physical type very different from, and superior to all other South African races. Their customs and institutions also are, in many cases, so peculiar and remarkable, exhibiting strong traces of similarity to the wandering tribes of Arabia, that they have naturally led to the supposition of a distinct origin, and there is certainly much to confirm the belief that they are descendants of Ishmaelite tribes, who have wandered down the east coast by the Red Sea. ”