p. 811 | NOTES ABOUT INDIA by Eyre Chatterton

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 29, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 51.

NOTES ABOUT INDIA.

By Eyre Chatterton

TO REALLY know Indian life one must know what an Indian village is like, and how its inhabitants live. Over 90 per cent of the vast population of India are found in villages. They are more directly dependent upon the soil than is our home population. And if this is true of all India, as we hear on good authority, it is especially true of our large district.

In the district of Hazaribagh, with its 7,000 square miles, and a population of over 1,200,000, the only places approaching the size of a home town are: Hazaribagh, 16,000; Chattra, 12,000; Ichak, 6,000; and Giridih, with a considerable population, brought together by the coal mines. The rest of the population find their homes in villages of every size, from villages like Gola, Goomia, Ramgarh, Bishongarh, with populations of considerably more than 1,000, to very small Santal villages, and even to the drifting wattle-made abodes of the vagabond Birhoors, who seldom remain in a place more than a few weeks, wear scanty clothing, and are as aboriginal in their tastes as I should fancy any aborigines in the world.

The day of small things with a missionary is when he can only visit the villages and stammer out a few words, and not feel the least bit certain whether he has conveyed his meaning to his hearers or not. But the time is always coming, if he persists, when the stone laid on stone will begin to shape into the long-wished-for building. And then he will see that each day's work went towards the great result, though at the time many a day gave no return of joy, and only made one ask what was the good of doing it at all.

How some of my readers would have enjoyed the strange sensation of sitting, as I have done, within the precincts of a mosque and reading part of the fourth chapter of St. John's Gospel to a small body of Mussulmans!

I cannot forget, too, another scene I witnessed one morning within the temple of the sun god in Hazaribagh. I was passing along the road with Bhattacharya, and we had just reached a large tank where people bathe themselves and wash their clothes, when I heard the voice of a man singing in the adjoining temple. We approached the temple and entered the door, from whence we could see into the shrine where the idol was placed. There, lying on the ground before his idol, banging his head on the floor, was a man. He was singing most earnestly, and his voice was not unmusical. Presently he rose from the ground, and, standing on one leg before the idol, began to sprinkle it with water. After this he rapidly walked around the outside of the temple, singing all the time, and then again returned to his position before the idol. Shortly after this he raised from the ground a little brass lota, in which were curds, and left this temple to offer these curds in another temple to Mahadeva or Shiva. This was part of his morning's work before going to the Kacherri, where he is employed as a government clerk.

On another occasion, while the head of the Oxford Mission and two others of its members were staying with us, we were invited one evening to the neighboring village of Lakheh, which is for the most part inhabited by Mussulman tailors, and sat for nearly an hour in the mosque while a distinguished maulvie (an expounder of the Koran) from Delhi spoke to us and to a large gathering of Mussulmans on the subject of religion. At the end of his address he stated (it had only lasted for an hour) that he regretted he could not speak longer, but he was quite willing, if we could get a quiet place in the bazaar, to speak to us again for several hours on religion.

It is, perhaps, one of the sternest trials laid on a missionary in a new country that he is debarred by ignorance of the language from doing almost any active work when he first enters it. Like all trials, it leaves a man better or worse, according to the power he possesses of casting himself on God's grace. With some natures the strain is very severe. The Master whom we profess to follow met all his temptations and sorrow with a perfect victory, because his eye was ever fixed on the joy that was set before him of redeeming man. In this he offers us an example.—Rev. Eyre Chatterton.