The Ways of the East

New Zealand Mail, Issue 957, 4 July 1890, Page 8

The Ways of the East

(Temple Bar.) There can, I think, be no doubt that the tendency of modern civilisation in the West is to to away with simplicity, whether of individual character or mode of life, or of methods of working. It tends to make men more and more rely on artificial aids, and on their fellow-men, less and less able to shift for themselves, if reduced suddenly to primi. tive conditions of existence. Yet why should this be ? In the East, the home of the most ancient civilisation t.he world has seen, it is n.»t so, and nothing strikes us Westerns more, on be. oming. acquainted with the East, than the curious eimplicity of the people, of their way of living, their requirements, and their implements. A Hindoo of almost any rank is capable of starting on a long journey, whether on foot or by rail, with little beyond the apostolic equipment of staff and scrip ; nor would he suffer much practical inconvenience by doing so. Where an Englisiiman would starve or at least suffer, the Hindoo_would.be satisfied and fare well. His soul uaukerosii not uf tor the

fleshpota of Egypt, nor does it thirst after the bitter beers of Allsopp and of Bass. The well whereof his fathers drank aufficeth also for him, and a brass pot and a cord whereby bo lower iliiiskc him independent even of any chance Rebekab. A handful of parched corn supplies him with nourishment, as of old it did Ruth, or with a little flour he will when night falls bake himself some cakes, lighting his Sre beside those of other travellers, beueath some wide-spreading tree whose hospitable canopy shall also be their tent by night. The personal wants, indeed, of the Hindoos, even of the richest among them, are at all times so fewthat it wonld oostthem little to be reduced suddenly to even antediluvian conditions of life. Contact with their Western rulers has, it is true, taught them to imitate in some degree Western customs, and they will have rooms in their palaces furnished in European fashion, with costly tables, chairs, aud couches, piotutes, and nick-nacks ; but they keep these rooms entirely for state ocoasions and for the reception of European visitors, and in their own private apartments have neither tables nor chairs, nor any such useless superfluities. They have a carpet or rug, costly in propor. tion to the’r rank, and a few Boft cushions and low stools : that constitutes the whole of the furniture from which they personally derive comfort. The rest is a concession to foreign ideas of what is necessary, and is valued only as are other sigus of wealth and dignity. A clock is not placed in the room from any personal desire to know at any time what the hour is, but because it is a foreign curiosity of value; and instead, therefore, of contenting himself, as au Englishman would, with one good clock in the room, a wealthy native will have crowds of clocks, much as a child will colleot quantities of shells of the same kind. For the same reason he will have crowds of useless retainers about him, and elephants and horses—though he may never ride or drive—and rhinoceros and other wild beasts, though he may never go to see them or pretend to take any interest in them. The clocks and the elephants, the furniture and the rhinoceros, are all there solely because suoh things are the acoepted signs of wealth and rank, and jonfer dignity on their possessor. A rhinoceros is perhaps equiva» lent to our orchid house. Whioh of the two is the more interesting or useful must remain a matter of taste, but, dissimilar as they are, they have one point in common they both mean Wealth, writ large. The main difference between them lies, I think, in the fact that if an Englishman has an orchid house it is probably because he is fond of flowers, and really derives personal pleasure from tho beauty of bis orchids. If he were deprived of them he would be sensible of the loss of some real pleasure. His luxuries have in fact grown out of his individual tastes, and have come to be felt almost as necessities, without which life would be distinctly barer. The Hindustani on the contrary, though he has learnt to surround himself with luxuries, does so in a purely imitative way, without feeling that they add in any degree to his own comfort, so simple as yet are his natural habits and tastes.

Not long after reaching India I was in Oudh at the time when a very rich Hindoo —brother to the famous Prime Minister of Nepaul, Sir Jung Bahadur—arrived in a dying state at the sacred city of Ajudhia. Though stricken with mortal sickness, he had made the long and painful journey from Nepaul in order to die in the holy eity that gave Rama birth, and whioh is to the Hindoo what Mecca is to the Moslem», and far more than Jerusalem is to Christians. On hearing of his arrival, the English- magistrate at Fyzabad went to nee him, the day before his death, as it proved. lie found the Elijah lying on a low wooden bedstead such as is used by the poorest natives, in a bare, mudplastered little room, having neither window Dor a single article of furniture in it, and with his silver dishes and drinking vessels spread about on the mud floor. To English eyes it seemed truly a strange and comfortless death-bed ; but such a view of it would not have struck any of the Hindoos present : the dying man, they would have said, had all he needed, and God was gracious to have let him live till his journey was accomplished. I know ot no Western parallel to this scene. Princes and nobles in the Middle Ages have doubtless suffered voluntary privation, and courted physioal pain by way of an expiatory or at least meritorious act, but we know that they were keenly alive to the full merit of suoh penances, and did not fail to put them down to the oredit side of their account with Heaven. But this Indian noble had no such feeling, and would have been genuinely surprised at its being thought that he had done anything worthy of admiration. His wretohed ani poverty-stricken surroundings were to him a perfectly indifferent accident of this quickly-passing life, and counted as nothing, He had attained his heart’s desire and was now happy, waiting for death. Nothing js more typical of the difference between Eastern and Western character than a bazaar la one the great cities where rich merchants dwell. There you seo men worth many thousands of pounds content with a little wooden frontless stall, some eight feet square, and with only the most meagre samples of their goods displayed —spread, that is to say, on the earthen floor, to attract passers-by. Their stock is kept entirely in wooden chests, from whose sandal—wood scented depths cunningly wrought embroideries, or carved ivori s, or jewels of gold and pearls of prie° as it rosy be are leisurely disintombed for the i. spection of any would-be purchaser. Cosily jewels are taken from their humble wrap, pings of cotton rags, and laid on a carefullyspread square rf Turkey red—the only attempt, and that an unconscious one, made to set off their beauty to advantage. It may with truth be said of the Hindustanis, as i was of the Athenians, that they were lovers of the beautiful, yet withal simple in their tastes. As twilight falls, each shopkeeper lights a lamp—a little earthen saucer full of oil, with a little bit of twisted cotton in it for a wick—which casts magnificent Rembrandtesqua shadows, save where it throws a ruddy glare on tho merchants as they sit cross-legged iu the midst of their VvnrcS| Suickiug th&ir liookwhs i j solemnity, and apparently little interested "in your ui.vuiiious oi cuying or not. Round

the shoe shops will always be found groups haggling over a pair of upturned shoes glittering with golden embroidery, or galiy attractive with bright yellow soles, »nd scraps of red and green leather sewn on in quaint devices, while ever in the narrow street the silent-footed crowd ebbs and flows as in a magic lantern. A shopkeeper cannot bring himself to ask for anything approaching, at first, the sum he will ultimately accept: the time lost in chaffering is to him of no account. ‘ What is the price of this cap ?’ I overheard asked by a purchaser, as he held up au embroidered skull cap. 1 Five rupees, preserver of the poor!’ ‘Five rupees !’ said the buyer, with fine scorn in his tone. ‘The world is truly a house of deoeit 1 One rupee aud two annas is its price.’ ‘Your highness, I am a poor man, aud must feed my children ; but I will take what your highness’ bounty will give me.' The indifference to time, characteristic of orientals, was illustrated iu many amusing ways when first a railway was opened in a new part of the country. Nothing but bitter experience could convince the natives that a train, unlike the bullock waggons they had been accustomed to, would not wait an indefinite time to pick up passengers. The Deputy Commissioner had on one ocoauWa, shortly after the opening of a new line, sent a servant with his official letter-bag to meet the train, and was much annoyed at seeing the man presently returning with it, having missed the train. * You had not half a mile to go, and you knew that the train left the station at three o’clock!’ ‘Yes, truly, your majesty,’ replied the man in an aggrieved tone ; * but when it strikes three here, the train goes from there 1’ That was sharp practice, of whioh he had co previous experience, and it was evident he did not think it very creditable to the company. Their usual measure of time is the namber of bamboo-lengths the sun has travelled above the horizon. It sounds to ua somewhat vague, as we should not nnnaturally be afraid the speaker and the hearer might not have in their minds bamboos of the same length; but, as a matter of fact, it is among these children of nature sufficiently accurate for all practical purposes. When a man ■ wears in court that an event occurred when the sun was four bambooß hig'u, it conveys to his Hindustani hearers a positively better idea of the time than if he said how many bells had struck. Public clooks, I need hardly say, are not to be met with in India. Time, according to our European division of it, is measured at country police stations by the primitive method of placing in a tub of water a oopper pot in which a small hole is bored, through which the water leaks in, filling and sinking the pot in the space of an hour—more or less When the pot is seen to have disappeared, the hour is struck by a policeman on a bell-like gong ; but it will readily bo soon that the length or brevity of an hour depends not a little on the clockkeeper’s promptness of observation, no less than on his wakefulness and freedom from that state of metaphysical abstraction engendered by the soothing hookah. The simplicity of the native clock is equalled by that of all the tools and implements in use among the Hindustanis, To one accustomed to the elaborate lathe, and the arsenal of chisels and gouges and other tools required by a very ordinary English tamer, it is curious to see tbe stock of instruments with which a Benares turner will execute work exceeding in delicacy anything attempted in Europe. He sits on his earthen floor, into which he has driven a couple of tent-pegs, whioh, if rickety, he tightens by driving in supplementary peglets. Between these pegs he fixes by means of two spikes, sharpened at each 6nd, the wood he intends to operate on. Tho rotary motion is then imparted to it by means of a piece of string twisted twice round it and pulled with rhythmic practised jerks by a lad sitting opposite to him. For tools I only saw two or three, all much alike tp my eyes. With these appliances as simple, surely, as oould have been the lathes of bamos described by Pliny, the Benares artist will turn out boxes of wafer-like thinness, fitting one within another, until the last and least would make an appropriate pill-box for a Liliputian. He will then take one of of tha many-coloured sticks of lac lying at his side, and, applying it to each rapidly revolving box in turn, a magio cuole of brilliant colour is born of its touch. The enchanter then changes his wand,, and a circle of another oolour springs into existence by the side of the first, until, obedient to his lightest touch, the plain wooden box is in a few seconds ringed with a ooat of many oolouis, hard, smooth, polished, and not to be hurt by water, or the moist warm lips of babes.

As with the artisans so with the other classes. The English magistrate, sitting in the seat of judgment and writing his decision with a steel pen, whioh, even in the memory of our generation, has supplanted the quill of the homely goose, may be taken as representing tbe civilisat'on nf the nineteenth century, while his native olerk sitting cross legged on the ground, carries one back to the civilisation of Herodotus’ time, using, as he does, the classic split reed of that ancient historian, and drying the too-inky manuscript with common river sand, in calm disdain of the more artificial blotting-paper. With the servant class it is not otherwise. A groom, a cook, or a gardener is expected to tarn out a very similar tale of bricks to that produced by his English prototype at home ; but whereas tbe straw is uncomplainingly supplied to tbe English servant, it is grudged, often to withholding it, from the Indian one. An Indian servant would stand amazed could he sea the long array of necessaries demanded by bii English brother ; and jet the net result of their labours is certainly not commensurate with that of their requirements. Whatever may be the nature oi the work done by a Hindustani—and how elaborately beautiful much of it is we all know—it is dune without hurry. Whether you watch them weaving or carpetmaking, or embroidering or wood carving, they are always working in a graceful, lighthearted way, as though it was some pleasant interesting occupation, and not a weary toil. They take life caimiy, and look with as much wonder at our restless energy and hurry, as we lock on the still greater hurry and restlessness of the typical American, who, even when he feeds himself, does so in mnch the same fashion as he would stoke a furnace,

and who rushes through some scene of beauty—whioh he has traversed half the globe to see—as if it were a oity smitten by the plague.