Life in India/Varey-punthal
Varey-punthal.
Dull must be the heart, and cold the sensibilities of the traveller, who can pass through the villages and over the plains of India, without a kindling of joy at the scenes through which he journeys, and of sympathy for the poor villagers who till these fields. Though he sees many a barren waste, with scarce a blade of grass to conceal its nakedness, or a shrub to screen the huge ant-hills, with, it may be a solitary palm, adding to the sense of desolation, and though ignorance and vice, idolatry and poverty, are perennial dwellers in every town, the picture is not all dark.
There are fair spots in torrid India, and among its people there are joyous faces and kindly feelings. He who has seen India only in its crowded and corrupt cities, in its seaports and its courts, knows little of the masses scattered through the country. The visitor of the villages, though he finds much, very much, to make his heart sad and his soul faint for the sins of the people, yet finds a light as well as a shade to the picture.
The cawing of the crows waked us at an early hour on the morning after our arrival at the mundapam of Varey-punthal, (the arbour of bananas;) but already were many of the creatures of God rejoicing in the morning light. Bright green parroquets were flitting with screams of joy from bough to bough in the grove on our right, and there, too, was the gentle cooyil, with its soft, murmuring note, expressing its more quiet happiness. Pools of clear water stood in the sandy bed of the river, in front of our rest-house, which was a simple room of solid granite blocks, enclosed upon three sides, with the fourth open, excepting the pillars by which the roof was supported. On the ceiling, also formed of slabs of granite, was carved a clear illustration of the Hindu theory of eclipses, in the shape of a huge serpent swallowing the moon. On our left stood a heathen temple.
On arising, my choice would have been to have first gone through with some slight ablutions, but my congregation was assembled; and though they were uninvited, it did not seem right to postpone making known to them the truth, for washings. A middle-aged man, of portly stature—his stout person showing some relish for the good things of this life—after listening with the others, said, “This is all very fine about not sinning, not lying, and so forth; but if we do not lie, how are we to get our living? Tell me that! To live! that is the thing! And to live, you must lie!” And then he turned contemptuously away, well content to hear no more about forsaking sin.
The sun grew hot, and the air oppressive, and I lay down a while to rest, while my friend continued his instructions, and gave to applicants books in Tamil and Telugu. But it was not an easy matter to have any retirement, as the people crowded around us, and stared most assiduously. I accordingly retreated to the grove, and sat down at the foot of a spreading tree. Fatigued with speaking for hours, Mr. S. followed me, and sat down to rest a while in the grateful shade. But the crowd was not to be deprived of its entertainment. The people followed him, and presently they were seated in a group upon the ground, arranged in a semicircle, of which we were the centre. We should have been glad to have been relieved of our eminence, and, ceasing to be lions, have relapsed into commonplace personages; but that could not be. Resigning ourselves, therefore, to our distinction, we entered into conversation with these simple villagers, who now became quite sociable.
After telling them something of our own country, of its fruits and seasons, we asked them as to their circumstances. This led to the unburdening of a sore complaint, though in a good-humoured way, of the oppressive taxation by which they are ground to the earth. They said that between the half taken as tax by government, and the half snatched from them by Brahmins, in the shape of tahsildars, sherishtadars, writers, &c., they had hard work to live; that often they could not even get conjee, (rice-porridge,) and were fain to fill their stomachs from the tank. As for clothing, that was quite out of the question. If they wished to appeal to the collector, they had to approach him through these very persons of whom they wished to complain, who were always around him; and so they would bring on themselves greater oppression. “Well," we said, “if you are so poor, why do you leave your work to sit and stare at us?” "Oh," answered one, “ when the kalkakta-doorey (collector) comes to take the assessment, he lives in his tent, and the Brahmins are about him, so that we poor people cannot get near him; so we have all come to have a good look at you."
Poor fellows! they are kept in bondage, both spiritually and physically, by their oppressors, the Brahmins. It is a common saying that, “government gets the grain and we get the straw.” The outrageous system of bribery and peculation practised by almost every Hindu official, from the highest to the lowest, keeps them in the lowest stage of poverty consistent with living at all.
Hearing the gospel once can usually be of but little avail with persons so degraded and mentally so blind as the mass of the Hindus. It should be followed up by a succession of impressions, that the effect be not lost. When missionaries thus go through the land, and see that nothing hinders the studding it with preachers of the truth but the want of men, they cannot but send home earnest entreaties that labourers may be sent into these perishing fields. Were men to come and dwell among them, so that they might be protected from the Brahmins if they forsook idolatry, there would be much reason for hoping that many of them would leave heathenism for Christianity. It is in this way that Christianity has spread in Tinnevelly and Madura, so that more than 50,000 persons in those districts are under the influence of missionaries and of gospel truth.
Before leaving Varey-punthal, we walked through the town. The houses were out of repair, and many of them seemed going to ruin; thus bearing witness to the inability of the people to support the burden of their taxes, and yet have enough to procure for themselves the comforts of life.
It was refreshing to turn from the works of man to those of God. Attracted by a majestic banian-tree, we sat down by its root. From the outstretching branches of the parent trunk of this peculiar and noble tree, long cord-like fibres grow until they reach the ground. Striking into the earth, these fibrous cords take root, and, becoming in their turn trunks, support the branch from which they grow, and thus extend the shade of the parent tree. Thus one tree becomes an assemblage of trunks, sustaining a spreading mass of foliage. Among the branches of the tree, a multitude of parrots were sporting, full of life and joy; but at its root the work of man appeared again. In humiliating contrast with the arched and living pavilion above us, stood a temple not larger than a dog-kennel, and before it a stone with two images rudely carved upon its face: this was an object of worship! a god! It bore the marks of having been that day worshipped, for it had been anointed with oil and ornamented with flowers. How is human nature sunken!