Winter India/Chapter 26

by Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore

 

CHAPTER XXVI
MOUNT ABU AND AHMEDABAD

E were jolted from midnight until the next noon, to cover the two hundred and seventy-four miles of railway between Jeypore and Abu Roads, our bearer standing in his crowded car for all but three hours of that time. At Abu Roads we met again the long-tongued Anglo-Indian "jinny rickshaw." There were six coolies to each cart; two leaned against the cross-beam of the ridiculously long tongue as they slowly walked; two more leaned against the back of the vehicle; and the two reliefs rested as they lounged along the flat country road; all six dragging their clumsy shoes in the dust and enveloping us in a cloud for the six miles of level carriage-road. Running was not in their thoughts as, with frequent rests, they slowly crossed the plain and, at a snail's pace, crawled up the easy grades of the mountain road. Even ox-teams overtook us. We passed only the wretched hovels of the people, mere pig-sties of bamboo and mud beneath bamboo-trees, each with its banana-patch, and our shouting coolies made all who came to the doors to stare, kneel and salute us. We rested once by a tragic black pool shaded by two enormous banian-trees, where Scotch whisky and soda was insistently offered us by a black keeper of a refreshment booth. The temple domes on the mountain-top showed in sky-line; the golden plain shimmered far below US; and in six and a half hours we accomplished the sixteen miles. We dragged along beside a lake in the late sunset as bullock-carts filled with rosy English children came from a picnic. There were rice-fields on the mountain top, flooded by primitive Persian water-wheels, wonderfully green and thriving crops, and groups of palms in every vista. Violets bloomed by the dak bangla's doorsteps, where a fine old khansamah greeted us and gave us tea with Goanese guava jelly on crisp toast in a warm room.

Mount Abu is the headquarters of the resident who rules the seventeen Rajput principalities, and from him we secured a permit to visit the Jain temples. The Jains are the last of the Buddhists left in India and their creed is still closely akin to that Gautama devised for his people, although their observance of caste is contrary to the fundamental principle of Buddhism. A Rajput officer in European coat, draped dhotee, and a sword as his badge of race and rank, with a red-coated chuprassy from the Residency, escorted us the next morning the two miles to the Dilwarra shrines. The guard at the temple gate hurriedly wound himself into his kamarband, set his turban straight, and, shouldering his carbine, paced the flags energetically while we waited for the permits to be examined.

 

CEILING OF JAIN TEMPLE, MOUNT ABU

 

Another red coat and yellow turban came, and the three guided us around the two Jain temples, which are the most elaborately carved and decorated shrines in India. They were built in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and the marble was brought from quarries twelve miles away and carved to frost- and lace-like fineness.

Marble cloisters whose alcove chapels contain seated images of the tirthankars, or Jain saints, surround an inner court holding the elaborately constructed and decorated central shrine and altar. One marvels as much at the perfect preservation as at the minute, lavish ornamentation; and for the preservation the Rajputs have to thank the English. In the central domical halls of both temples the columns, arches, struts, trusses, beams, central panels, and altar-fronts are covered with myriads of tiny figures and bands of conventional ornament in full and low relief, a marble filigree-work surpassing anything to be seen elsewhere. Scenes from the lives of the saints frame the niches holding their images; wonderful rosettes and pendentives enrich the ceilings; and saints by the meter band the columns and walls until one feels hypnotized by the myriad repetitions. Leaf forms suggest the Greek acanthus, while the Buddhist swastika, elephant, lotus, and Hansa goose appear, and a whole grammar of Indian ornament can be traced in those halls, where the white saints sit absorbed in eternal meditation. At the first temple fifty-five saints sit in as many cells around the court, and a coolie was dusting the images as indifferently as if they were but common furniture, flicking at them with a doubtful rag, and whacking them again in a way to make one wonder what a European could do to shock religious sentiment and make the Jains hedge a visitor's entrance with permits and guards. It is expressly enjoined that Europeans shall remove their hats and not step on the platforms of the shrines or within the image-cells.

The second temple is the older one and simpler in some respects; but the pillared hall of the main shrine is loftier, its serpentine brackets and struts even more lavishly ornamented, its dome and pendentives more exquisite. We went back and wondered again at all the extravagance of carving in the first temple. Certainly these two Jain shrines are the climax of Indian decoration and ornamental construction, miracles and masterpieces of patient art.

The night on the frosty mountain top aggravated colds dating back to the wet felt slippers at Amritsar temple, and it was a delight to get down to Abu Roads and the dry, hot plain again. The station-master let us go at once to the waiting car that was attached to the train in the middle of the night. The down mail jolted us into Ahmedabad before daylight, where another kind station-master let us remain in the shunted car until breakfast-time. At the end of the station platform an ornamental minaret rose above the trees, first harbinger of the day of architectural feasts. Had Ahmedabad not been one of the exceptionally unique and interesting cities of India, I could not have maintained enthusiasm to explore its mosques while burning with the fever of influenza. The air was soft and warm as late spring in the earliest morning, and the sun had a desert scorch at noon at that end of February. By dreary lanes and ruined gates in broken walls, we reached the beautiful mosques whose carved sandstone columns and walls recall those of Fatehpur Sikri. Rani Sipri's mosque, the Queen's mosque, the tombs of Mohammed Chisti and Muhafiz Khan each seemed the perfection of beauty in line and carved ornament, the minarets, arches, and walls covered with such a wealth of arabesques and traceries as vied with the white wonders on Mount Abu. At the Queen's mosque a band of Moslems bore in a sheeted figure bound to a charpoy covered with a rich cloth and garlands of marigolds. All the mourners bathed at the tank, united in standing prayer, lifted the charpoy, and bore it off to the graveyard.

We drove into a dreary, rubbish-strewn common, and, through a breach in an old wall, reached the court behind Sidi Said's desecrated mosque of the palace to look from the outside upon the two famous tracery windows, best known and most beautiful work of that kind in India. Nothing in marble traceries elsewhere approaches them. We drove to Hathi Singh's Jain temple, whose saints in niches and elaborately carved ornament in white marble are in the style of the Mount Abu shrines, and then we went to see the great tanks and green wells surrounded by marble galleries, where luxury-loving rulers sought coolness during the great heat.

The streets of Alunedabad are dazzling and kaleidoscopic to one beginning his India at Bombay; but Ahmedabad, once "the handsomest town in Hindustan, perhaps in all the world," is a dull second after Jeypore. There were new models in turbans to be seen, and the picturesque pigeon-cotes erected by humane Jains are other novelties peculiar to this one city; for the Jains observe the strictest Buddhist tenets against destroying life, provide refuges and hospitals for animals, strain all the water they use, and step aside to spare the lowliest insect.

The vegetable, brass, and pottery bazaars, strung down the middle of a wide street, were centers of life and uproar; but the local guide bore us off to the workshop of a carpet-weaver,—poor show after Amritsar, Lahore, and Agra's factories,—and to the gate of the chief wood-carver who executes American orders for interior decorations. There was holiday or bankruptcy on for that day, but much searching and pounding on mute doors at last produced a lank Moslem with a key, who opened a great room containing a table, a book of designs, and four carved chairs, tagged with price-marks five times those of the Lahore Art School. We searched the brass bazaars and all the brass-shops for the pierced screens that a winter-touring M. P. lauds as a local specialty. In clouds of warm dust we drove here and there, hunting the famous kincob-shops, walking through archways to alleys and ill-smelling courts and cul-de-sacs, where small dealers had bundles of creased samples of tawdry, wall-papery brocades. Others

 

TRACERY WINDOW, AHMEDABAD

 

shook squares of tinselly stuffs from upper windows, and shouted, "Fifteen rupees!" for each damaged remnant. The smells of those byways were invitation to and promise of any pestilence, and in one damp, fetid corner that we retreated from abruptly even the glib guide seemed to smell a thing or two. "Phew! the drains! the drains! What a very bad municipal!" and we never wondered that the native states show such a great decrease of population during the last five years of the century, while the bubonic plague raged.

At the busy clothes bazaar, tinsel caps and orange jackets for little boys were the bargains of the day that crowds were competing for, and more and more peddlers were opening rainbow packs and preparing for an evening bazaar. We had done our duty by the sights and shows of Ahmedabad; we had had our fill of local color and smells; and we drove back to rest at the comfortable station. Our guide and the bearer were bewildered, and the latter tearful at our wasting two hours on foot in the bazaar, and losing that much time in the use of the horses taken at so much for all day. "But, memsahib," he whimpered, "if you pay six rupees a day for a carriage, you must use all day. You must see all. There are many nice tombs yet. You must see more. You must not stop now. These horses just stand around, while you walk two hours, and now you stop for tea, and no more use. It is too expenseful."

When the Bombay mail rumbled in, we found our reserved compartment, spread our razais, and lay down, and all at once had a strange, dizzy, floating sensation, as if hypnotized or drugged. The train was moving, but without jar, jolt, or thumps. The carriage rolled smoothly, as if on springs, and we sat up and stared out and at each other to fathom the mystery. At last, on our seventeenth night, and after many days spent on Indian railway trains, we had met the mythical "bogie-car"! The car-spring was a reality.