Old Deccan Days Part 26

CHANDRA'S VENGEANCE.

Page 292.--The picture of the childless wife setting forth to seek Mahdeo, and resolving not to return till she has seen him, is one which would find a parallel in some of the persons composing almost every group of pilgrims who resort to the great shrines of Hindostan.

Any one who has an opportunity of quietly questioning the members of such an a.s.semblage will find that, besides the miscellaneous crowd of idlers, there are usually specimens of two cla.s.ses of very earnest devotees. The one cla.s.s is intent on the performance of some act of ascetic devotion, the object of which is to win the favor of the divinity, or to fulfill a vow for a favor already granted. The other cla.s.s is seeking "to see the divinity," and expecting the revelation under one or other of the terrible forms of the Hindoo Pantheon. There are few things more pathetic than to hear one of this cla.s.s recount the wanderings and sufferings of his past search, or the journeys he has before him, which are too often prolonged till death puts an end to the wanderer and his pilgrimage.

Page 294.--The "fire which does not burn" is everywhere in India one of the attributes of Mahdeo.

In many parts of the Deccan are to be found shrines consecrated to one of the local G.o.ds, who has been Brahminically recognized as a local manifestation of Mahdeo, where the annual festival of the divinity was, within the last few years, kept by lighting huge fires, through which devotees ran or jumped, attributing their escape from burning to the interposition of Mahdeo. Except in a few remote villages, this custom, which sometimes led to serious accidents, has in British territory been stopped by the police.

Page 298.--This story of the wonderful child who was found floating in a box on a river is to be heard, with more or less picturesque local variations, on the banks of every large river in India. Almost every old village in Sind has a local tradition of this kind.

Page 305.--Most households in Calcutta can furnish recollections of depredations by birds, at their nest-building season, similar to that of the Ranee's bangles by the Eagles in this story. But the object of the theft is generally more prosaic. I have known gold rings so taken, but the plunder is more frequently a lady's cuff or collar, or a piece of lace; and the plunderers are crows, and sometimes, but very rarely, a kite.

Page 313.--Purwaris, or outcasts, who are not suffered to live within the quarter inhabited by the higher castes, are very numerous in Southern India, and a legend similar to this one is a frequent popular explanation of their being in excess as compared with other cla.s.ses of the population.

HOW THE THREE CLEVER MEN OUTWITTED THE DEMONS.

Page 314.--Old residents at Surat may remember an ancient local celebrity named Tom the Barber, among whose recollections of former days was a chronicle of a renowned duelist, who used to amuse himself by shooting with his pistol, somewhat after the fas.h.i.+on of the Pearl-shooter. The little tin can of hot water which Tom carried, slung from his forefinger as he went his morning rounds, was a favorite mark. So were the water-jars on the heads of the women as they pa.s.sed the duelist's house coming from the well; and great was Tom's relief when an old woman, who could not be pacified by the usual douceur for the loss of her jar and the shock of finding the water stream down her back, appealed to the authorities and had the duelist bound over to abstain in future from his dangerous amus.e.m.e.nt.

So vivid were Tom's recollections of his own terrors that, after the lapse of half a century, he could ill conceal his sense of the poetical justice finally inflicted on his tormentor, who was killed in a duel to which he provoked a young officer who had never before fired a pistol.

[Decoration]