Charkha

“ That was not the case in India before this bureaucracy came here. Our system was not this. I speak of Bengal because I claim to know more about Bengal. The system obtained in India was, that so far as our necessaries were concerned we were self-contained. We never depended on any body in India. We made our own clothes and were independent of any race in the world. Now just consider what Charkha can do for you. From Manchester comes 60 crores of rupees worth of cloth every year. You will not have to pay these 60 crores of rupees which go out of India. ”

“ They had cows, goats, a peacock, even a chattering myna bird. They had had a monkey, but it was so difficult to feed that they had to let it go. In the barn there was a rice husker and a lemon tree in the yard. There were also a few jasmine plants but none of them had borne flowers this year. On every verandah of the houses there was a spinning wheel.
Few people were around when Jiban entered the yard with the child in his arms. He walked up to the verandah of one of the houses and rotated a spinning wheel to its whining way. The child had never heard the noise of a charkha before. ”

“ As I am writing this, a friend objects that even though I may be right in thinking that the charka is not competent to bring us Swaraj, or remove the whole of our poverty, why ignore such virtues as it admittedly possesses? Every farmer, every householder, has a great deal of leisure left over after his ordinary work is done; so that if everyone would utilise such spare time in productive work much could be done towards the alleviation of our poverty. Why not glorify the charka as one of the instruments of such a desirable consummation? ”

“ We cannot get rid of the conviction that we can safely cheat our inner self of its claims, if we can but bribe some outside agency. This reliance on outward help is a symptom of slavishness, for no habit can more easily destroy all reliance on self. Only to such a country can come the charka as the emblem of her deliverance and the people dazed into obedience by some specious temptation go on turning their charka in the seclusion of their corners, dreaming all the while that the car of Swaraj of itself rolls onward in triumphal progress at every turn of their wheel. ”

“ And so we find that there are numbers of Hindus who would not hesitate even to kill a Mohammedan if he came to draw water from their own well. If the small be put on an equal footing with the big, it is not content to rest there, but needs must push its way higher up. That is how the injunction: “Thou shalt not drink dubious water” gets the better of the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill”. There is no end to the perversions of value which have become habituated to their facile intrusion that no one is surprised to see the charka stalk the land, with uplifted club, in the garb of Swaraj itself. ”

“ But to call upon man to make the easiest of offerings to the smallest of gods is the greatest of insults to his manhood. To ask all the millions of our people to spin the charka is as bad as offering the tomato to Jagannath. I do hope and trust there are not thirty-three crores of Gopees in India. When man receives the call of the great to make some sacrifice, he is indeed exalted ”

“ The charka is doing harm because of the undue prominence, which it has thus usurped, whereby it only adds fuel to the smouldering weakness that is eating into our vitals. Suppose some mighty voice should next proclaim that the rice-water waster must not be suffered to enter our councils. Given requisite forcefulness, that may lead to the flow of rice water being followed by the flow of human blood, in the sacred name of political purity. ”

“ Charles at once wrote notes asking that Perez and Martinez might accompany the expedition, and dispatched them by mounted peons.
"And now, Lopez, what amount of charqui have we in store?"
"A good stock, signor; enough for fifty men for a fortnight."
Charqui is meat dried in the sun. In hot climates meat cannot be kept for many hours in its natural state. When a bullock is killed, therefore, all the meat which is not required for immediate use is cut up into thin strips, and hung up in the sun to dry. ”

“ BrahmachariniA woman practising strict continence. CharkhaA spinning wheel. ChuchoRat (used in the text as a term of contempt) . DevaA deity. DharmaSacred duty. DhotiA kind of clothing, often worn by males all over India. ”

“ Again Varka sees the muddy high road, the people with wallets, her mother Pelageya, her father Yefim. She understands everything, she recognises everyone, but through her half sleep she cannot understand the force which binds her, hand and foot, weighs upon her, and prevents her from living. She looks round, searches for that force that she may escape from it, but she cannot find it. At last, tired to death, she does her very utmost, strains her eyes, looks up at the flickering green patch, and listening to the screaming, finds the foe who will not let her live.
That foe is the baby. ”

“ Then Chakkra informed Skag that Kudrat Sharif, Neela Deo's mahout, was the third of his line to serve the Blue God, who was not yet nearly in the ictus of his power and beauty; while he, Chakkra, was the only mahout Gunpat Rao had known—since he came down from the Vindhian trap-stockades, where he was snared. He was about thirty years younger than Neela Deo, the King. Would the Sahib bear in mind that an elephant continues to increase in strength and wisdom for an hundred years? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Laughing and winking and shaking her fingers at the green patch, Varka steals up to the cradle and bends over the baby. When she has strangled him, she quickly lies down on the floor, laughs with delight that she can sleep, and in a minute is sleeping as sound as the dead. ”

“ Amongst Oriental religions, the Moslem faith is not at all compatible with Hindu faith. In India alone Buddhism and Jainism are sometimes quite separate from Brahmanism, in which there are again conflicting faiths as Arya Samaj and Sanatan Dharma. Charwak is still another independent thinker of the past ages. He challenged the authority of God in the old times. All these creeds differ from each other on the fundamental question: and everybody considers himself to be on the right. There lies the misfortune. ”

“ A jika, a jewelled, feather-like ornament, is often worn at the side of the head, while the front hair, cut to a level with the mouth, is brought up in love-locks on either cheek. [323] Beneath the chargāt is generally a small kerchief of dark material, worn to set off the complexion, and preserve the chargāt; only the edge of this is visible. The ends of the chargāt cover the shoulders, but the gauze perhān, quite transparent, leaves nothing to the imagination. The breasts and chest are very visible, and the abdomen is quite bare. ”

“ Now few men remained in the kraal Duguza, for nearly all had gone with the impi, and only women and aged people were left. Dingaan and Umhlangana, brothers of the king, were there, for Chaka would not suffer them to depart, fearing lest they should plot against him, and he looked on them always with an angry eye, so that they trembled for their lives, though they dared not show their fear lest fate should follow fear. ”

“ According to Sachau, the learned translator of Albérúní, "some of the books that had been translated under the first Abbaside Caliphs were extant in the library of Albérúní, when he wrote his India, the Brahmasiddhánta or Sindhind.........the Charaka in the edition of Ali Ibn Zain and the Pañchtantra or Kalila and Dimna." The fact that the Charaka occupied a place in the library of a cultured Arab affords an additional proof of the esteem in which the Hindu system of medicine was held by the Moslem world. ”

“ I answered, “has gone where the king’s arm cannot stretch, for he is dead; and for my wife Macropha and my daughter Nada, they are by now in the caves of the Swazis, and the king must seek them there with an army if he will find them. To Macropha he is welcome, for I hate her, and have divorced her; and as for the girl, well, there are many girls, and it is no great matter if she lives or dies, yet I pray him to spare her.”
Thus I spoke carelessly, for I knew well that my wife and child were beyond the reach of Chaka. ”

“ These white people have been like brothers to me,” announced Chaka, in a firm voice. “I know them. In their hearts is no treachery; they seek no conquest; they are good and true. Tell me, Gatcha, have they not destroyed many of the enemies of the Itzaex? Have they not given you back your hereditary atkayma, just as the gods have permitted my father Tcheltzada to meet his doom? If you fail to greet my preservers as friends, the gods, from whom I am descended, and for whom I speak, will surely punish you.” ”

“ There are not many of the ancient race of Tcha, and they live so secluded in their mountain fastness that nothing definite is known concerning them. When Chaka’s father was a young man he, with a band of followers, unconsciously invaded the territory of the Tcha and climbed the mountain near their sacred retreat. The atkayma and his men were promptly seized and carried into the hidden city, where all were destroyed except the Itzaex ruler. ”

“ That the redactor thoroughly recast and remodelled the Susruta is evident from the fact that there are numerous passages in it which agree almost verbatim with the Charaka, and which appears to have been amply laid under contribution.
The Susruta is par excellence a treatise on surgery [18] as the Charaka is on medicine proper. Ancient India must have acquired considerable skill in the handling of the lancet; for in the Charaka we find a distinction drawn between the "Káyachikitsakas," i. ”

“ The village now consists of twenty-one houses, [17] and a mud fort to contain the exiles, [18] who are compelled to cultivate the land for Government, whilst the other inhabitants reap their own crops. The water used in irrigating the soil is led from the Chargalyk-daria, which flows from the neighbouring Altyn-tagh mountains, an elevated range south of Lob-nor.
Three hundred versts [19] to the south-west of Chargalyk, and under one governor with it, stands the small town of Cherchen, [20] on a river of the same name. ”

“ Varka jumps up, and looking round grasps what is the matter: there is no high road, no Pelageya, no people meeting them, there is only her mistress, who has come to feed the baby, and is standing in the middle of the room. While the stout, broad-shouldered woman nurses the child and soothes it, Varka stands looking at her and waiting till she has done. And outside the windows the air is already turning blue, the shadows and the green patch on the ceiling are visibly growing pale, it will soon be morning. ”

“ The white man holds the land, he goes to and fro about his business of peace where impis ran forth to kill; his children laugh and gather flowers where men died in blood by hundreds; they bathe in the waters of the Imbozamo, where once the crocodiles were fed daily with human flesh; his young men woo the maidens where other maids have kissed the assegai. It is changed, nothing is the same, and of Chaka are left only a grave yonder and a name of fear. ”

“ I had no hatchet."
"No peasant can carry on his business without a hatchet. Your neighbour, Ivan Timofeitch, who mended the sledge with you, swears that the hatchet is yours. . . ."
"I know nothing . . . only this, that I swear before God" — Kharlamoff extended his hand and opened wide his fingers — "I swear before my true Creator . . . I cannot even remember when I last had a hatchet. I once had one like that, only a little smaller, but my son Proshka lost it. About two years before he was taken as a soldier he went to cut wood — he went playing with the children, and lost it. ”

“ The green spot, the shadows from the trousers and the baby-clothes, tremble, wink at her, and soon again possess her brain. Again she sees a road covered with liquid mud. Men with satchels on their backs, and shadows lie down and sleep soundly. When she looks at them Varka passionately desires to sleep; she would lie down with joy; but mother Pelageya comes along and hurries her. They are going into town to seek situations. ”

“ Gorkha is rather warmer than the valley of Nepal, and its chief inhabitants were Brahmans and Khasiyas, in about equal numbers, with rather fewer Magars, the Brahmans being the chief cultivators, and the Khas and Magars the fighting men. The capital Gorkha is situated on a very high hill, and was the only place of note in the territory. ”

“ Sit down!"
The persistent distrust and unwillingness of all to listen at last irritated and enraged Kharlamoff. He blinked his eyes furiously, and on his cheek-bones appeared two bright red spots.
"Before the eyes of God!" he exclaimed, stretching out his hand. "If you do not believe me, then ask my son Proshka!" He spoke in a rough voice, and turned suddenly to the little soldier who guarded him. "Proshka, where is the hatchet? Where is the hatchet?" ”