Winter India/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
FOR THE HONOR AND GLORY OF SHIVA
HE temple jewels are kept in iron-bound chests in a room fastened by many locks. The magistrate, the high priest, and a half-dozen other Brahmans of different castes each holds a key, and all must be present to unlock the room. Count and record are kept of each article; many of the jewels are historic and famous, and all are so well known to the community that the loss of even one stone would be as quickly noted on display days as the disappearance of an idol itself. When the jewels are thus shown, it is customary for visitors to leave from ten to twenty rupees for cleansing them pure from outcast touch. The rupee is a great leveler, and has purifying effect unaided; for nothing could be dingier, greasier, more in need of alcohol, jeweler's sawdust, and a touch of chamois than these jewels of Chidambram, unless it were the jewels at Srirangam or the famously dirty sapphires at Madura.
There was earnest effort and long parley over a first iron-bound chest that would not open. All the head Brahmans shouted and struggled with the obdurate padlock until the key broke. An agile brother whipped out a knife and tried to pick the lock, with an assurance that bespoke familiarity with such processes, but the rusty clamp would not yield. A longer and a louder clamor, and then a lusty Brahman seized one of the big keys on the table, a bar of iron as solid as the key of the Bastille, and began hammering the clasp, laying on blacksmith's blows with a will. The padlock flew off, the heavy lid creaked back, and with deafening yells the riches of Chidambram came in view.
They drew out all the jeweled ornaments, the crowns, caps, hand-and arm-coverings, necklaces, ear-rings, nose-rings, bracelets, anklets, and staffs given to the temple's precious idols for centuries back, laid them on the table, and passed them to us to handle and defile at will. The Brahmans shouted, talked, oh'd and ah'd, stretched hands over our shoulders to call attention to some special beauty or marvel, and even snatched them from our hands. Their eyes shone and their faces glowed with pride and joy in these treasures, their delight at seeing them childlike in its expression. They all told at once how the ruby bracelets were given the goddess by the rani, wife of the Raja of Tanjore, in fulfilment of a vow; and how, when the pious rani learned that the goddess had no ear-bosses, she despoiled her own jewel-boxes of her most magnificent ones. Then they told of Patcheapper Mudalier, the rich man of Madras, who had given the goddess pairs of gold serpents scaled over with great jewels; and, at the sale of the effects of the late Raja of Tanjore in 1891, had bought and presented the temple with a huge Phrygian cap, or war-bonnet, covered with hundreds of cabochon rubies and table-cut diamonds, along with a great breastplate over six inches square, set solidly with large flat rubies—rubies of the most perfect tint, and set double, ruby on top of ruby, as was the old Hindu custom, until the depth and richness of color surpass anything to be otherwise obtained. Patcheapper had not only given modern jewels, but he had had the old gems reset, adding lost stones to historic settings, and putting the accumulation of loose stones into telling form.
Two enormous water-bottles of solid gold were lifted out—"for bringing the sacred water to wash the goddess," said Daniel. "Six thousand rupees! Six thousand rupees!" yelled the Brahmans, anxious to impress us with the exceeding value of these toilet articles. A two-foot-long pendant of linked medallions set with rubies and diamonds, worn hanging from the back of the goddess's crown, was vouched for as valued at twenty-five thousand rupees, and a huge crested headpiece glowing with gems was quoted at thirty thousand rupees; and then, through Daniel, the Brahmans were besought kindly to omit price-marks and quarreling over and outbidding one another in values, since we had not come to buy nor to appraise the temple jewels, and had no interest in their money value.
That shabby table was spread over with more precious things than one can remember—gold crowns, crests, tiaras, plumes, bosses for the ears, ornaments for the hair and the forehead, nose-rings, necklaces, armlets, bracelets, zones, girdles, anklets, and every possible article of Hindu jewelry worn for these two thousand years—forms and designs but little changed in two thousand years; the same ancient, archaic Swami or Dravidian style of ornaments having been worn centuries before Chidambram's building, according to the sculptured records of the Buddhist monuments. Every piece was crusted over, inlaid with rubies and diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, and pearls; with emeralds as big as bullets—great drops of green dew; with sapphires the size of filberts and walnuts, sunk in pure, dull yellow gold as soft as wax. There were rubies, rubies, rubies—rubies everywhere—thick as pebbles on a beach,—and all of them smoothly rounded drops, blobs, or uneven lumps of warm and splendid color that went to the heart. A Western lapidary or jeweler would scoff at and perhaps scorn these masses of roughly cut cabochon gems, whose flaws and feathers and cloudings make them of little commercial but of such great artistic value. Crystalline perfection was not the first test which the old Hindu jewelers applied to their gems. With an eye first to color effects and rich combinations of color, all the flawed stones, the splinters and scales and pin-points of color, had their value to them, and with them they achieved results of such richness, such gorgeousness and splendor, that our mechanically perfect, geometrically exact, many-faceted, flashing gems of Western jewelry seem cold, characterless, expressionless beside these living gems of the East. We were fairly dizzy with the glow and glitter and gorgeousness of the display, the feast of gems and flow of jewels, the barbaric splendors literally heaped upon Oriental magnificence within touch before us. One hardly knows the ruby, its glorious tones, its true uses and possibilities, until he has had some such feast of rubies in an Indian temple, and the taste there acquired is little satisfied afterward with the glassy, regular polyhedrons of the West. That deep, clear, warm red ruby, the concentration of all heat and gorgeous light, the glowing, burning stone of the tropics, is India's own, its most typical, tropical gem. It became hard to believe, though, that rubies were rare and precious when, after all seen elsewhere, Chidambram's Brahmans laid plates and sheets of rubies—dozens, hundreds, thousands of them—before us. One could almost think they came like buttons on a haberdasher's card, and that one bought them by the gross or great gross as required, or by dry measure perhaps—by heaped-up pints and overflowing quarts.
For nearly two hours we handled the collars and crowns and ornaments passed out to us, until we were well surfeited with splendors, until pear-shaped pearls in rains and fringes could excite no more surprise, until big tallow-drop emeralds were the common thing, and star sapphires had to be of thumb's-end size to command any praise. Ropes of necklaces made of overlapping gold pieces clanged in dead weight on the table; the famous parrot cut from a single emerald was produced with cheers, and broad manacle-bracelets, set with ancient stones recut in European facetings, closed the list. The lid of the last chest was slammed down, the Brahmans voiced their pent-up joy, and we sank back in our chairs, well exhausted with the strain of long-continued attention to such dazzling surprises. More flower garlands were dropped on our shoulders and enormous bouquets were presented us. Trays of fruit and cake and sugar things were offered, which we formally praised, accepted, and touched according to custom; and, by the same sign and custom, we never saw the defiled stuff again.
The musicians struck up a deafening pæan, the crowd in the courtyard made way, and we were borne triumphantly on for the great Nautch dance in the choltry, or Hall of a Thousand Columns. That noblest Brahman of them all, who had maintained a particular protectorate over us in the jewel-room and so summarily checked the other Brahmans when they extolled the jewels too full-lunged, all but gave his arm as he escorted us across the court, waving the others aside or pushing them with force when necessary. This arch-heathen, Pattu Thacheadar, the Superb, highest-caste Dikshatar Brahman of the white cord and the carved bead, was altogether the finest specimen Chidambram afforded, and sculptor or painter would equally delight in him as model. This big Brahman beau-ed us gallantly across the courts, up into the lofty pillared hall, and seated us in the waiting arm-chairs with a grace and address that would have become a leader of cotillions—barefooted, with only a red-bordered sheet for his full-dress uniform of social ceremony!
The magistrate, in his scholarly, gold-bowed spectacles, and the disdainful little goddess, 
PATTU THACHEADAR
Six barefooted, neat-looking colored girls in starched muslin dress skirts and velvet jackets of antiquated cut and no fit whatever, stepped forward and, in methodical march and countermarch to a nasal chorus, braided the May-pole's ribbons down to their hands; in reverse order unbraided them, and stepped demurely back in line. We were breathless with surprise.
Was that the famous sacred temple dance? Could six octoroons, matter-of-fact young "yaller gals," shuffling slowly around a May-pole, ever give rise to such visions of beauty and grace as only the name of the Nautch dance conjures up? Oh, no! It was surely coming next. There would be something graceful and bewitching, something in gorgeous native costume, after this purposely tame and tedious cake-walk by colored church members in velveteen basques trimmed with cotton lace.
The same wooden young persons marched out again in line. We cheered ourselves, noting then that they were almost Oriental from the collar upward—what with necklaces and ear-studs and earrings looped back to the decorated waterfall, the "bath bun" of hair at the back of their heads, and nose-rings whose lowest pearl trembled on their lips, the literal pearls of speech. We questioned Daniel closely to know if these really were the picked dancers, the flower of Chidambram's beauties; if he had never seen them dance in voluminous, diaphanous, graceful native dress?
"No, your ladyship. These are their richest clothings. You see the magnificent velvets of their costumes. They never wear the common sari now that they have these. It is always this splendid dress they wear for the dancing when I bring European visitors."
The dance went on, a tame and tedious cake-walk, purely callisthenic school-girl exercise to the end, save in one or two less shuffling measures where they made undeniable eyes at us, posed one finger against the cheek, and looked unutterable archness. "Notice the postures, see the sentiments of the countenance," said Daniel, who was a connoisseur in such dances, and gifted with the second sight needed to make anything at all fascinating out of the languid measures. "It is praise of the goddess," said the old gentleman, rapturously, delighted with the spectacle. But such a dreary ballet! Such a monotonous walk-around to minor airs thumped and blown by the earnest temple musicians, and plaintive choruses wailed by the dancers themselves, would never fill a theater nor a side-show in the West, and the Midway Plaisance would have closed for lack of patronage had its Oriental dances been like this.
The sun struggled through the clouds and sent shafts and ladders of gold down from the high windows, that, touching the white draperies of the seated Brahmans, illuminated them as if with lime-light. Pattu Thacheadar was radiant and smiling, nodding his approval and delight, and enjoying the great day and his prominent part in it with all of a boy's vain glee. He hung upon and watched closely the evolutions of the dancers, and all the Brahmans buzzed approval when the six advanced and retreated, rapping little sticks together in the measure of some very old dance to Shiva. That was the liveliest measure trod—very literally trod, with the flat of the bare foot—by these star-eyed serpents and enchanters of the Coromandel coast.
"It is the most difficult to do this dance, you see. They are trained to it from little girls. Their limbs are very movable," said Daniel, aglow with delight.
When the placid program came to an end, Daniel put on his spectacles, took his place by the May-pole, and, more like a head schoolmaster giving diplomas than like the grand almoner of royalty, presented a rupee to each girl. Each one advanced and received it with a bow, and each one then stepped on to us, stood rigid, and made the regulation military salute with one hand—a figure only a little more formal and automatic than the whole gay revel of the sacred dance had been, something very plainly learned from a British drill-sergeant's code. The musicians received their gratuities in the same formal manner, and the Brahmans, dancers, and orchestra trooped with us down the hall to the court surrounding the temple tank, where the afternoon sun lighted a scene of splendor and picturesqueness. Despite the late and yellow light, I snapped the camera to right and left, on gilded gopuras, the mirror tank, and the staircase of the great hall where the dancers and Brahmans were grouped unconscious. Little Thungama and her adoring peon stood for me; and then Pattu Thacheadar, special protector and personal conductor, impresario, and grand manager of the Brahman troupe, was asked to take the steps, to pose magnificent, all flower-garlanded as he was. He assented with excited delight, the other Brahmans shouted their satisfaction, and with much chaff and back-talk to his Brahman brethren, this splendid creature spread out his flower necklaces and stood, facing the sun, breathing slowly and not winking for seconds after the button was pressed.
The bullock-bandy carried us and our load of floral gifts home to the bangla, and after a quick dinner and long nap carried us on to the station, where Pattu, the Superb, was parading the platform in waiting. He had walked the eight miles to take leave of us, to present more flower garlands and a rare lemon brought from a grove some miles away on the Coromandel coast. He wore classic sandals, or shoes bound by rawhide thongs, and the end of his long white drapery was thrown up over his head and shoulders like an Arab burnoose. He swung a quaint, archaic lantern, and in the flashes of light from the station-rooms he was more paintable and operatic than at the temple. And this son of the Sun, descendant of ten thousand Brahmans, masher of most magnificent order, was posing for effect as unmistakably as others of his kind pose in Western drawing-rooms—the handsome man and his little arts—the same transparency the world over.
The station-master interpreted for him while we waited a whole midnight hour for the train. Pattu wanted to know when we would come to Chidambram again; how far away was America; how many days would it take us to get back there; how much would it cost; had we railways there; or any temples as splendid as Chidambram.
"Then," said the station-master, "he has been telling me of the great festival at the temple to-day. He says there was a crowd there to see the dance, more than two hundred Brahmans, and he was the best-looking man there, and you took his picture to carry to America to show."
Oh! Pattu! Pattu Thacheadar!