India Under Ripon: A Private Diary. Blunt Wilfrid Scawen
Читать онлайн книгу.
in the principal mosque on Fridays.
The Mohammedans of Ceylon are known there as “Moors,” a name given them originally by the Portuguese, which is applied also to the Mohammedans of the south-west coast of India. They belong to a far older Mohammedan settlement than the Moguls of the north, being, in fact, the descendants of Arab traders who in the first centuries of Islam came not as conquerors, but as commercial settlers from Oman and Yemen. Unlike the Mohammedans of the north, they are a pushing and prosperous community, having most of the shop-keeping trade in their hands, especially that of jewel merchants. There is also a comparatively small Mohammedan community of Malays, the descendants of a force of Malay soldiers formerly maintained by the Dutch. With them I found living on terms of friendly intercourse the Brahminical Tamils, who consider themselves to be of Dravidian race, originally from Southern India, though they have probably mixed much with the Aryans in past times. They, too, are a pushing race, commercial and combative, and had driven the Cingalese out of half the island before the arrival of the Portuguese in Ceylon. The Dravidians number here and in Southern India some seventeen millions, and the Tamils are considered their leading branch. Their form of Brahminism is of a purer type than in the north, as they hold closer to the Vedas, so much so that the Brahma Suraj reformers make no way with them; their doctrines have been forestalled. They are also more particular about the consecration of their idols, and the performance of their religious ceremonies. The head of their community at Colombo, Ramanatha, told me that he had been shocked in Northern India at the rough and ready idols even the princes worshipped, unconsecrated, in their own houses. He says there is a good feeling between all the members of the Asiatic creeds at Colombo, but the Catholics, Methodists, and Wesleyans are on bad terms with these. The Catholic population is large along the coast. On the 9th the Tamils entertained me at a banquet, to which the Egyptian Pashas and several Europeans were also invited. These were Mohammedan Tamils, of whom there were about one hundred present. Though unfit for it, for I was very tired, I made a long speech, or rather sermon, to them on the subject of Mohammedan reform, and reform in their political life. It was rather a venturesome attempt, but was well received by them. I spoke, of course, in English, which all understood.
We also made acquaintance, while in Colombo, with the Governor, Sir Arthur Gordon, a very excellent man, who was on the best of terms with the various native communities. There was in Ceylon a good tradition of this kind, dating, I believe, from Sir William Gregory’s governorship some years back, and contrasting in a very marked manner with the relations I afterwards found in India between the rulers and the ruled. Ceylon’s position as a Crown colony, with institutions of a semi-representative kind, puts the natives of the island in a position of comparative equality with the Europeans, and is answerable, doubtless, for the better feeling displayed towards them by these, at least in public. There is none of that extreme and open arrogance we find in Northern India. Nor was there on the part of the natives I came in contact with any expression of that race bitterness which in India is universal. On Sunday, the 11th November, my journal, interrupted by my illness, begins again to be regularly kept.
“11th Nov.– We bade good-bye to our friends, and took steamer for Tuticorin, the southernmost point of the Indian peninsula. The night before I had a serious talk with Mahmud Sami. He is a man of a very superior education, and has behaved to us throughout as our host with the most consummate courtesy. Immediately after breakfast came some other chief friends among the Moors, with them Haj Ibrahim Didi, the Sultan of Maldive’s nephew, who is also Consul for him, though the Maldive Islands are so cut off from the mainland that he has had no communication with head-quarters for years. The Pashas came on board to see us off, and I embraced each one of them as they went over the ship’s side, and, last of all, Arabi, for whom I feel a true affection. In spite of faults and failings, there is something great about him which compels one’s respect. His faults are all the faults of his race, his virtues are his own.
“Looking back on the last three weeks spent in Ceylon, I recognize in them perhaps the happiest of my life. When I arrived I was so weak I could have died happily. But, though I did not die, I have had such satisfaction as seldom comes on earth, that of seeing the bread one has cast on the waters return to one a hundredfold, a feeling that at last the power to do good has been won, and more than one’s wishes granted. This is true pleasure and true happiness. I regret the quiet life at Mahmud Sami’s as I regret a home. We could see the banyan tree in the garden, and the boats on the shore, and the columns of the verandah as we steamed away. I doubt whether I shall ever be happier than I have been there.”
CHAPTER III
MADRAS
“After a good passage of about fifteen hours we sighted the Indian coast, first the western hills, and then the low shore off Tuticorin. We have been carrying four hundred and thirty-five Indian labourers coming home after working in Ceylon. The captain says they carry 15,000 every year each way. They are fat and merry, so I judge that they thrive during their absence from home – all I believe Hindu Tamils. On the pier we were met by twenty or thirty Moslems, representing the local Mohammedan population of two hundred families. They had been telegraphed to about us by Ibrahim Didi. A Moor from Galle, Kasim Biak, did the honours, entertaining us at breakfast with a friend, Bawa Sahib, also from Ceylon. The native Moslems seem very poor. I asked them about their condition, and they complained of having no school. Their Imam had work enough to do leading the prayers five times a day, and had no leisure to teach. They also complained of being subject to annoyance from the Hindus, who came with drums outside their mosque, and that the magistrate, being a Hindu, would not prevent it. They all wear a turban here, as do the Hindu Tamils. There seemed to be no English resident in Tuticorin at all. We only stayed two hours, and then went on by train, accompanied by our Mohammedan friends, now increased to about fifty.
“The country for a mile or two inland is pure sand, and very pretty with its desert vegetation, thorn acacias and groves of dom palms. The heavy rains had brought up beautiful bright green grass, on which flocks of long-legged goats were led to feed. By the side of the railroad I noticed several birds well known to me, the turtle dove of Egypt, the kite, the hen-harrier, the bee-bird, and the roller, also birds unknown to me, a little magpie, a long-tailed blackbird and others – butterflies, too, in some variety, and flowers, yellow and blue, one like the convolvulus minor. Later, the country opened into a vast cultivated plain, perfectly level, but with fine mountain ranges to the west, a very light soil, but improving as we got further from the coast, though nowhere good on this day’s journey. It is easy to understand a drought causing general famine. The cultivation is much as in the rest of Central Asia, lightly ploughed lands, without fences or boundaries, scattered trees, acacias or banyans, and at great distances villages; no sign anywhere of ‘gentlemen’s seats,’ or of any habitation better than the poorest, herds of lean sheep or goats, the only cattle a few buffaloes. The whole country has been recently under water, and this year at least there ought to be crops, but they are not yet out of the ground.
“At Kumara Puran we came to some low hills, which I think were of red granite, and here the country was greener, with millet and rice crops, and more trees. I noticed mulberry trees as well as banyans, and near the station, Australian gums. Much water about in the pools. After these hills the land improved, growing more beautiful; but night came on, and though there was a full moon we saw little more. About half-past seven the train came to a stop, and we were made to get out and walk some two or three hundred yards, as the rails had been washed away by a flood. All around the frogs were croaking in thousands. In another place was a fine old stone bridge broken down, with a great stoppage of bullock carts, and we arrived about nine o’clock at Madura. I was almost dead with fatigue. Two Mohammedans, Abd-el-Aziz Sahib and another, were awaiting us at the station, but I could do nothing but get to bed.
“13th Nov.– Madura is a pretty place, with palm trees and flocks of parrots. In the early morning we watched them flying overhead, talking as they went. At nine the Mohammedans came again, accompanied by an alem of Arab descent, a sayyid, who spoke good Arabic, but with a peculiar old-fashioned accent. We had a long talk, principally about the misfortunes of their community. The Moslems throughout Southern India have always been a very small minority – descendants of the former Mogul rulers of the country – for the mass of the population never conformed to Islam. In those days they occupied