MAN'S ABDICATION 247 What of Kali's right hand, raised upward in benediction? As I sat at midnight on my hotel portico, I saw again as in a dream that Madonna-like woman who stood nearest to the goddess at Kalighat; and amid the outward silence a still small voice said to my inward ear, "I am Kali. When, in an age far past, prophets arose to tell mankind that their agonies were inflicted by cruel and heartless deities, I went forth, a princess turned prophetess, to point the sufferers upward to a paradise where all their sorrows would be compensated, and all tears wiped away. 'After death?' the people cried; 'why not now?' Then I went into retreat, and reflection, to reappear with the faith that all human agonies and evils are disguises of a universal maternal love which by such terrible discipline trains the sufferers for eternal felicity. Alas, that heavenward hand drew on the three hands of destruction assigned me after death. My casket was covered equally with flowers and with the symbols of ferocity and disease in nature. I had by my optimism consecrated the horrors of this predatory world. You see me pedestalled on the genius of Destruction, whom my love should have trodden down. Ah, thou traveller unknown, the fatal teaching in this world is that all is under divine Providence, and all evil good at heart. That is man's abdication!" CHAPTER XII Exploring Bengal-A conference of religions-Moslem Christianity — Dr. Rajendralála Mitra on Christian polytheism Hon. Syed Ameer Ali - Dr Ananda Cumara Swamy-The marvellous dolls - Maharajah Sir Jotendra Mohun Tajore — The demonized Buddha - Buddha-Gaya - Root of Buddha's Bo-tree-Letter from Dr. Mitra - Buddhist-Hinduphilosophy-Benares - Monkey Temple - Deer Park and legend of the Mango Girl "The Toy-Cart"-Our Western Buddha. - STR IR WILLIAM HUNTER came in his carriage one day and said, "I intend to show you Bengal." I had only a day or two more in Calcutta, but my simple faith in the Gazetteer-general of India prevented my having any doubt about his ability to show me a great province in that time. We drove nearly ten miles into the country, and visited the homes of several humble Hindu families of which he knew something. Sir William told them in their own language that he wished me to see the interior of the houses, and these were cheerfully shown. Even the women (most of them comely) were not shy of us; they smilingly made a half movement aside but not out of sight; and it was especially notable that those who in the hot weather had scanty clothing did not show any consciousness of that at all. In one house a woman scampered out of sight in earnest, but it was because her father-in-law had come in at the gate. In no case must a wife meet her husband's father! The houses were poor to look at, but comfortable enough inside. One man took us to see a curious thing in the woods near his house, an enormous stone, about ten feet square and more than two thick, held seven feet in the air A CONFERENCE OF RELIGIONS 249 by four trees. The trees clamped it at the corners, having grown around them and then gone on into stately forest trees. The stone which the trees had raised by their growth was known as "the dog's grave," the legend being similar to that of the Beth Gelert stones in Wales celebrated in the ballad "Llewellyn's Dog." In most European versionse. g. in Rome, Munich, and Ireland - the faithful animal, slain on suspicion of having killed the infant it had saved, is an ape. When we had visited eight or ten of these houses and several shrines, Sir William said, "I have now shown you Bengal. You may travel from one end of it to the other and see only just such houses and shrines and such people as those we have visited." This generous friend arranged an assembly of learned Brahmans, Brahmos, Moslems, and Parsîs to meet me for conference on religious and philosophical subjects. The meeting was held in the government Council Chamber and the grand native personages came in their fine robes. The Pandits were apparently rationalists; the principal one, a grand looking man who spoke excellent English, asked me my opinion about the miraculous conception of Christ. I regarded it as like the legend of the virgin-born deity of the Hooghly River, whose annual fête was going on; a story of mythological and poetic interest, but not to be regarded as historical. The Pandit said that such was exactly his opinion of both the Christian and the Hooghly legends, and it was the general opinion of educated Brahmans. Other Pandits confirmed his view, and also several English scholars present. The Moslems, of whom there were a dozen of high rank in the room, had said nothing, and I remarked that I would like to hear their opinion. Thereupon the Moslems bent their richly turbaned heads together in private consultation. At length one of them arose and said that they all felt "bound to accept the narrative just as it stands in in the New Testament." As the Moslems were the only orthodox Christians present, but would not argue about their faith, our conference amounted only to a high appreciation on the part of the Pandits of English science and literature, responded to by our exaltation of the sacred books and poems of India. The most notable thing was that in a large company in Calcutta, of which a third were influential and official Englishmen, the only believers in Christian supernaturalism were the Moslems! I was also impressed by the familiarity of the Brahmans with all those vital problems with which we were so occupied in Europe and America, divine existence, fate, freedom, animism, immortality, these issues being raised in their own philosophical systems. Discussions, in the western world have no doubt revived the interest of Hindu thinkers in such questions, but have given them no idea not found in their own ancient books. James Sime, biographer of Lessing, told me that on Schopenhauer's last day he said, "I am Buddha!" Those around him supposed that his mind was wandering, but the pessimist's words had meaning. Dr. Rhys Davids says: "Gotama Buddha was the Auguste Comte born two thousand years too soon," but I should rather describe him, as the Schopenhauer of that time. The venerable author, Dr. Rájendralála Mitra, was unable to attend the conference, but requested me to visit him. I found him in his large fine library, and but for his complexion I might have fancied myself conversing with some eminent orientalist in Europe. He was simply the philo sophic scholar and interpreter of religious phenomena, without, I believe, any connection with the temples. His countenance was handsome and full of sensibility, his individuality and humour reminding me at times of our American Ingersoll. The Christian propaganda in India having fallen mostly into the hands of missionaries without culture and the Salvation Army, these have brought about this strange situation: the West boasting of its Science sends to India a religion resting on a claim to authority, and is there confronted by a religion appealing only to its reasonableness. The signs and wonders and the dogmas being thus emphasized, the Hindu scholars are provided with a sort of Museum of Antiquities. "Like every other religion, Christianity is a polytheistic system," said Dr. Mitra; "Satan and the 'sons of God,' and the archangels are just as much deities as the so-called gods of India, who are subordinate to the Triad just as Satan and the angels are to the Trinity. Educated Christians put these things into the background, just as educated Indians do their minor deities, the priests turning them into allegories." He had something like enthusiasm for Buddha, but could not make a genuine human character out of Christ. I mentioned some of the suppressed and recently discovered Sayings of Jesus, and he was impressed by them, especially the declaration that he had "come to dissolve the sacrifices." He took from a shelf his English translation of "The Yoga Aphorisms of Pantanjali" and presented it to me, after pointing out in it a quotation from the ancient (Sanscrit) Lalista-Vistara recording an utterance of Buddha closely resembling that of Jesus about sacrifices. After mentioning the fallacious ways in which people seek purification ("fancying the image of a divinity in one's mind, saluting supposed divinities," etc.), Buddha |