sively the other and larger two, the dexterity required is assisted by the "priest," a confederate, also by the frequent lifting of the horse blanket for the performers before the public is allowed to see the growth. The trick is rendered easy by the length of time required, during which the spectators are apt to move about and look at other curious things, returning only when the final miracle is announced. It is not the mango that is so wonderful, but the growth of the narrative about it between Bombay and London.

There was, however, no deception about the great Ceylon turtle. It is about six feet long by four or five wide. It is quite blind, never drawing in its head at the approach of a stick. When thirsty it bellows like a bull. In the back of the thick shell a hole of three inches diameter has been bored so that the turtle may be spurred with a stick into motion. According to the tradition it was over a hundred years old, but that is a moderate estimate. I visited an old man of ninety who told me that the turtle was nearly of the same size in his boyhood. It occupies a field of several acres alone, and nothing is charged for seeing it; but a keeper goes over to carry it water when it

roars.

I shall always think of Ceylon as an Eden, and of the Sinhalese as happy children who have not yet eaten of that tree which Pessimism calls Consciousness. In the Padma Purana beautiful Parvati asks the god Siva to show her the finest garden in the earth; he conveys her to Naudana. In the garden's centre there is a wondrous tree, the Kalpa-tree, which "bestows all that gods desire." Its seeds are gems. Parvati longs for the "beautiful gem of a maiden," so Asokasundari was born. But this tree? Kalpa means Time, or an immeasurable era:

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does the Puranic fable mean that Time brings about all that the gods desire? It does not always bring about what man desires, and I do not suppose the famous founders and priesthoods of any temples would be satisfied with the shape Time has given their gods in Ceylon, which received them all with the large tolerance with which Roger Williams welcomed in Rhode Island the heretics exiled from other regions. Modliar quotes a Sinhalese as saying to a European sceptic: "I don't know whether these things be true or false. When we fall sick we try every means within our reach of getting better. We worship Buddha, the gods, and the demons, all at once, to take our chance of recovering from the sickness through the help of some of them. All my countrymen do so, and I am only doing like them." It does not seem to have occurred to the lowly man that any one of these potent beings might be a "jealous god" and object to being mixed up with other deities. The philosophy derived from Buddha is pure pessimism, and Ceylon is its academic centre; but the Kalpa-tree, Time, in that garden has produced a people practically optimist. The seeds of that tree are gems, and each has the priceless gem-contentmentwhich keeps the heart young to its last beat.

The Kalpa-tree in oriental folk-lore probably originated "La Peau de Chagrin." Balzac's centenarian says, “The Brahman to whom I owe this talisman explained that it would effect a mysterious accord between the desires and the destinies of its possessor." But it required European sophistication to connect with the Wish-talisman the moral that every fulfilled desire is another step in suicide. Whatever may be the natural penalties of violent western passions, there are none for the simple affections of these Sinhalese vegetarians, with their chaste nudity,

the womanliness even of the men, whose long hair is coiled with combs. I counted twenty-nine various vegetables in one market-stall, and wondered whether these various contributions of Armaiti, genius of the Earth, had any connection with the varieties of expression, voice, fancies of the Sinhalese, and their freedom from friction. They spoke and moved women, children, men spontaneously, as if never used to being sat upon.

Buddha said of Truth that it was as the rain which each plant, flower, grass-blade sucked up in accordance with its nature and its need. What matters any dogma, theology, philosophy, uttered thousands of years ago, compared with the life that is quickening hearts to-day? Each great Bo-tree (Ficus religiosa) beside its temple is a Kalpa, giving each several heart its sustenance; and I am leaving Ceylon with a serene confidence that if Allah or Jesus are ever welcomed there it will be because they will be seen sitting beside Buddha under his fig-tree, as Vishnu and Agni have long been sitting, and like these conveying to native hearts sweet secrets of private interpretation. The Buddhist Kalpa will, I believe, continue its gifts after the Trees rooted in deities and dogmas have withered. For in the course of ages the accumulated sentiments projected into and nursed by every religion bring human hearts in fatal conflict with any falsities in their foundation. George Sand, in her " Pauline," says:

She [Pauline] was not really pious. . . . She found in Catholicism the nuance adapted to her character, for all the shades (nuances) possible are found in the old religions; so many centuries have modified them, so many men have had a hand in the building, so many intelligences, passions, and virtues have borne to it their treasures, their errors, or their lights, that a thousand doctrines are ultimately stored in one, and a thousand

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different natures are able to draw thence the palliation or the stimulant suited to them. It is by that these religions are built up, and also by that they crumble.

(George Sand wrote these words in 1840, and while I quote them (1906) the world is witnessing the fulfilment in France of her last clause "c'est aussi par là qu'elles s'écroulent.")

CHAPTER IX

Madras - Temple dancers- Talk with students

St.

- Juggenauth Thomé A Portuguese Thomas - Legend of Savatri - New discoveries concerning Thomas - Pain and piety - A Jain parable Good will to man— - A Buddhist carol.

IT

T is the custom on P. and O. boats for the steward to awaken one at dawn with an offer of coffee. I began by storming against this dream-murder, and ended with ordering my coffee still earlier. Every oriental dawn is a pictorial rapture out of the Vedas. Especially resplendent was the sunrise under which we approached India. A great sun arose out of the sea, stretched himself, then sprang aloft and hurled darts on Ahi, serpent of darkness, revealing Madras in the distance. The colours of dawn descend to earth, breaking over an ocean that knows no twilight, transmuting every wave to opal, tinting each towering temple.

Carried ashore in a boat of bamboo tied with strings of palm bark, no nail in it, I entered on the grand estate of two days in Madras. Not a wavelet of daylight or moonshine to be lost! Straight I went rambling in the streets, and to my joy found that a lunar festival was just beginning. In front of an ancient temple a procession was forming, and a goddess brought out to her palanquin. It was Sira, a sister goddess (of Prosperity) with Lakshmi. She sat in a round red-and-gold frame, surrounded with tongues of flame representing rays of the sun. The great disc rested on a chariot driven by some Hindu Phaethon, and drawn by five metal horses painted green and red.

I was the only white person present; and as the man