The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858

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It is easy to perceive, that, if our friend Asirvadam were not one
of the "Young Bengal" lights who do not fash themselves with trifles,
his orthodox sensibilities would be subjected to so many and gross
affronts from the indiscriminate contacts of a mixed community, that
he would shortly be compelled to take refuge in one of those
Arcadias of the triple cord, called _Agragramas_, where pure
Brahmins are met in all the exclusiveness of high caste, and where
the more a man rubs against his neighbor the more he is sanctified.
True, the Soodras have an irreverent saying, "An entire Brahmin at
the Agragrama, half a Brahmin when seen at a distance, and a Soodra
when out of sight"; but then the Soodras, as everybody knows, are
saucy, satirical rogues, and incorrigible jokers.

There was once a foolish Brahmin, to whom a rich and charitable
merchant presented two pieces of cloth, the finest that had ever
been seen in the Agragrama. He showed them to the other Brahmins,
who all congratulated him on so fortunate an acquisition; they told
him it was the reward of some deed that he had done in a previous
life. Before putting them on, he washed them, according to custom,
in order to purify them from the pollution of the weaver's touch,
and hung them up to dry, with the ends fastened to two branches of a
tree. Presently a dog, happening to pass that way, ran under them,
and the Brahmin could not decide whether the unclean beast was tall
enough to touch the cloth, or not. He questioned his children, who
were present; but they were not quite certain. How, then, was he to
settle the all-important point? Ingenious Brahmin! an idea struck him.
Getting down on all fours, so as to be of the same height as the dog,
he crawled under the precious cloths.

"Did I touch it?"

"No!" cried all the children; and his soul was filled with joy.

But the next moment the terrible conviction took possession of his
mind, that the dog had a turned-up tail; and that, if, in passing
under the cloths, he had elevated and wagged it, their defilement
must have been consummated. Ready-witted Brahmin! another idea. He
called the cleverest of his children, and bade it affix to his
breech-cloth a plantain-leaf, dog's-tail-wise, and waggishly. Then
resuming his all-fours-ness, he passed a second time under the cloth,
and conscientiously, and anxiously, wagged.

"A touch! a touch!" cried all the children, and the Brahmin groaned,
for he knew that his beautiful raiment was ruined. Thrice he wagged,
and thrice the children cried, "A touch! a touch!"

So the strict Brahmin leaped to his feet, in a frightful rage, and,
tearing the precious cloth from the tree, rent it in a hundred shreds,
while he cursed the abominable dog and the master that owned him.
And the children admired and were edified, and they whispered among
themselves,--

"Now, surely, it behooveth us to take heed to our ways, for our
father is particular."

Moral: And the Brahmin winked.

The Samaradana is an institution for which our friend Asirvadam
entertains peculiar veneration. This is simply an abundant feast of
Brahminical good things, to which the "fat and greasy citizens" of
the caste are bidden by some zealous or manoeuvring Soodra,--on
occasion of the dedication of a temple, perhaps, or in a season of
drought, or when a malign constellation is to be averted, or to
celebrate the birth or marriage of some exalted personage. From all
the country round about, the Brahmins flock to the feasting, singing
Sanscrit hymns and obscene songs, and shouting, _Hara! hara! Govinda!_
The low fellow who has the honor to entertain so select a company is
not suffered to seat himself in the midst of his guests, much less
to partake of the viands he has been permitted to provide; but in
consideration of his "deed of exalted merit," and his expensive
appreciation of the beauties and advantages of high-caste society,
as expressed in all the delicacies of the season, he may come, when
the last course has been discussed, and, prostrating himself in the
sashtangam posture, receive the unanimous asirvadam of the company.

If, in taking leave of his august guests, he should also signify his
sense of the honor they have done him, by presenting each with a
piece of cloth or a sum of money, he is assured that he is altogether
superior in mind and person to the gods, and that, if he is wise, he
will not neglect to remind his friends of his munificence by another
exhibition of it within a reasonable time.

In the creed of Asirvadam the Brahmin, the drinker of strong drink
is a Pariah, and the eater of cow's flesh is damned already. If, then,
he can tell a cocktail from a cobbler, and scientifically
discriminate between a julep and a gin-sling, it must be because the
Vedas are unclasped to him; for in the Vedas all things are taught.
It is of Asirvadam's father that the story is told, how, when a fire
broke out in his house once, and all the pious neighbors ran to
rescue his effects, the first articles saved were a tub of pickled
pork and a jar of arrack. But this, also, no doubt, is the malicious
invention of some satirical rogue of a Soodra. Asirvadam, as is well
known, recoils with horror from the abomination of eating aught that
has once lived and moved and had a being; but if, remembering that,
you should seek to fill his soul with consternation by inviting him
to inspect a fig under a microscope, he would quietly advise you to
break your nasty glass and "go it blind."

But there is one custom which Asirvadam the Brahmin observes in
common with the Pariah, and that is the solemn ceremonial of Death.
When his time comes, he dies, is burned, and presently forgotten;
and it is a consolation for his ever having been at all, that some
one is sure to be the richer and happier and freer for his ceasing
to be. True, he may assume new earthly conditions, may pass into
other vexatious shapes of life; but the change must ever be for the
better in respect of the interests of those who have suffered by the
powers and capabilities of the shape which he relinquishes. He may
become a snake; but then he is easily scotched, or fooled out of his
fangs with a cunning charmer's tom-tom;--he may pass into the foul
feathers of an indiscriminately gluttonous adjutant-bird; but some
day a bone will choke him;--his soul may creep under the mangy skin
of a Pariah dog, and be kicked out of compounds by scullions; he may
be condemned to the abominable offices of a crow at the burning
ghauts, a jackal by the wells of Thuggee, or a rat in sewers; but he
can never again be such a nuisance, such a sore offence to the minds
and hearts of men, as when he was Asirvadam the Brahmin.

Fortunate indeed will he be, if the low, deep curses of all whom he
has oppressed, betrayed, insulted, shall not have availed against
him in his last hour. "Mayest thou never have a friend to lay thee
on the ground when thou diest!"--no imprecation so fierce, so fell,
as that; even Asirvadam the Brahmin abates his cruel greed, when
some poor Soodra client, bled of his last anna, thinks of his sick
wife, and the darling cow that must be sold at last, and grows
desperate. "Mayest thou have no wife to sprinkle the spot with
cow-dung where thy corpse shall lie, and to spread the unspotted
cloth; nor any cow, her horns tipped with rings of brass, and her
neck garlanded with flowers, to lead thee, holding by her tail,
through pleasant paths to the land of Yama! May no Purohita come to
strew thy bier with the holy herb, nor any next of kin be near to
whisper the last mantra!"

Horrid Soodra! But though thy words make the soul of Asirvadam shiver,
they are but the voice of a dog, after all, and nothing can come of
them. Asirvadam the Brahmin has raised up lusty boys to himself, as
every good Brahmin should; and they shall bind together his thumbs
and his great toes, and lay him on the ground, when his hour is come,--
lest the bed or the mat cling to his ghost, whithersoever it go, and
torment it eternally. His wife shall spread beneath him a cloth that
the hands of Kooleen Brahmins have woven. Lilies of Nilufar shall
garland the neck of the happy cow that is to lead him safely beyond
the fiery river, and the rings shall be golden wherewith her horns
are tipped. A mighty concourse of clients shall follow him to the
place of burning,--to "Rudra, the place of tears,"--whither ten
Kooleen Brahmins will bear him; and as often as they set down the
bier to feed the dead with a morsel of moistened rice, other
Brahmins shall sing his wisdom and his virtues, and celebrate his
meritorious deeds. When his funeral pyre is lighted, his sons, and
his sons' sons, and his daughters' husbands, and his nephews, shall
beat their breasts and rend the air with lamentations; and when his
body has been consumed, his ashes shall be given to the Ganges,--all
save a certain portion, which shall be made into a paste with milk,
and moulded into an image; and the image shall be set up in his house,
that the Brahmins and all his people may offer sacrifices before it.

On the tenth day, his wife shall adorn her forehead with a scarlet
emblem, blacken the edges of her eyelids with soorma, deck her hair
with scarlet flowers, her neck and bosom with sandal, stain her face,
arms, and legs with turmeric, and array her in her choicest robes
and all her jewels, and follow her eldest son, in full procession,
to the tank hard by the "land of Rudra." And the heir shall take
three little stones, that were planted there in a row by the
Purohitas, and, going down into the water as deep as his neck, shall
turn his face to the sun and say, "Until this day these three stones
have stood for my father, that is dead. Henceforth let him cease to
be a carcass; let him enter into the joys of Swarga, the paradise of
Devendra, to be blessed with all conceivable blessings so long as
the waters of Ganges shall continue to flow;--so shall the dead
Brahmin not prowl through the universe, afflicting with evil tricks
stars, men, and trees; so shall he be laid."

But who shall lay the quick Asirvadam, than whom there walks not a
sprite more cunning, more malign?

Ever since the Solitaries, odious by their black arts to princes and
people, were slain or driven out,--fifteen centuries and more,--
Asirvadam the Brahmin has been selfish, wicked, and mischievously
busy,--corrupting the hearts, bewildering the minds, betraying the
hopes, exhausting the moral and physical strength of the Hindoos. He
has taught them the foolish tumult of the Hooly, the fanatical
ferocities of the Yajna, the unwhisperable obscenities of the Saktis,
the fierce and ruinous extravagances of the Doorga Pooja, the
mutilating monstrosities of the Churruck, the enslaving sorceries of
the Atharvana Veda, the raving mad revivals of Juggernath, the pious
debaucheries of Nanjanagud, the strange and sorrowful delusions of
Suttee, the impudent ravishments of Vengata Ramana,--all the
fancies and frenzies, all the delusions and passions and moral
epilepsies that go to make up a Meerut or a Cawnpore.

Of the outrageous insolence of the Seven Penitents he omits nothing
but their sincerity; of the enlightened simplicity of the anchoret
philosophers he retains nothing but their selfishness; of the
intellectual influence of the Gooroo pontiffs he covets nothing but
their dissimulation. He has taught his gaping disciples that a
skilfully compounded and plausibly administered lie is a goodly thing,--
except it be told against the cause of a Brahmin, in which case no
oxyhydrogeneralities of earthly combustion can afford an idea of the
particular hotness of the hell devised for such a liar. He has
solemnly impressed them with the mysterious sacredness of the Ganges,
and its manifold virtues of a supernatural order; to swear falsely
by its waters, he says, is a crime for which Indra the Dreadful has
provided an eternity of excruciations,--except the false oath be
taken in the interest of a Brahmin, in which case the perjurer may
confidently expect a posthumous good time. For the rich to extort
money from the poor, says Asirvadam, is an affront to the Gooroos
and the Gods, which must be punished by forfeiture to the Brahmins
of the whole sum extorted, the poor client to pay an additional
charge for the trouble his protectors have incurred; the same when
fines are recovered; and in cases of enforced payment of debts,
three-fourths of the sum collected are swallowed up in costs. Being
a Brahmin, to pay a bribe is a foolish act; to receive one--a
necessary circumstance, perhaps. Not being a Brahmin, to offer or
accept a bribe is a disgraceful transaction, requiring that both
parties shall be made an example of;--the bribe is forfeited to the
Brahmins, and the poorer party fined; if the fine exceed his means,
the richer party to pay the excess.

As the Brahminical interpretation of an oath is not always clear to
prisoners and witnesses of other castes, it is usual to illustrate
the definition to the obtuser or more scrupulous unfortunates by the
old-fashioned machinery of ordeals: such as compelling the
conscientious or obdurate inquirer to promenade without sandals over
burning coals; or to grasp, and hold for a time, a bar of red-hot
iron; or to plunge the hands into boiling oil, and keep them there
for several minutes. The party receiving these illustrations and
practical definitions of the Brahminical nature of an oath, without
discomfort or scar, is frankly adjudged innocent and reasonable.

Another pretty trick of ordeal, which borrows its more striking
features from the department of natural history, is that in which
the prisoner or witness is required to grope about for a trinket or
small coin in a basket or jar already occupied by a lively cobra.
Should the groper not be bitten, our courtly friend, Asirvadam, is
satisfied there has been some mistake here, and gallantly begs the
gentleman's pardon. To force the subject to swallow water, cup by cup,
until it burst from mouth and nose, is also a very neat ordeal, but
requiring practice.

Formerly, Asirvadam the Brahmin "farmed" the offences of his district;--
that is, he paid a certain sum to government for the right to try,
and to punish, all the high crimes and misdemeanors that should be
committed in his "section" for a year. Of course, fines were his
favorite penalties; and although most of the time, expenses for
meddlers and perjurers being heavy, the office did not pay more than
a fair living profit, there would now and then come a year when,
rice being scarce and opium cheap, with the aid of a little extra
exasperation, he cut it pretty fat. "Take it year in and year out,"
said Asirvadam the Brahmin, "a fellow couldn't complain."

Asirvadam the Brahmin is among the Sepoys. He sits by the well of
Barrackpore, a comrade on either side, and talks, as only he can
talk to whom no books are sealed. To one, a rigid statue of thrilled
attention, he speaks of the time when Arab horsemen first made
flashing forays down upon Mooltan; he tells of Mahmoud's mace, that
clove the idol of Somnath, and of the gold and gems that burst from
the treacherous wood, as water from the smitten rock in the
wilderness; he tells of Timour, and Baber the Founder, and the long
imperial procession of the Great Moguls,--of Humayoon, and Akbar,
and Shah Jehan, and Aurengzebe,--of Hyder Ali and Tippoo Sultan,--
of Moorish splendor and the Prophet's sway; and the swarthy Mussulman
stiffens in lip-parted listening.

To the other, a fiery enthusiast, fretting for the acted moral of a
tale he knows too well, he whispers of British blasphemy and
insolence,--of Brahmins insulted, and gods derided,--of Vedas
violated, and the sacred Sanscrit defiled by the tongues of
Kaffirs,--of Pariahs taught and honored,--of high and low castes
indiscriminately mingled, an obscene herd, in schools and regiments,--
of glorious institutions, old as Mount Meru, boldly overthrown,--of
suttee suppressed, and infanticide abated,--of widows re-married,
and the dowries of the brides of Brahmins limited,--of high-caste
students handling dead bodies, and Soodra beggars drinking from
Brahminical wells,--of the triple cord broken in twain, and
Brahminee bulls slain in the streets, and cartridges greased with the
fat of cows, and Christian converts indemnified, and property not
confiscated for loss of caste,--and a frightful falling off in the
benighting business generally; and the fierce Rajpoot grinds his
white teeth, while Asirvadam the Brahmin plots, and plots, and plots.

Incline your ears, my brothers, and I will sing you softly, and low,
a song to make Moor and Rajpoot bite, with their very hearts:

"Bring Soma to the adorable Indra, the lord of all, the lord of
wealth, the lord of heaven, the perpetual lord, the lord of men, the
lord of earth, the lord of horses, the lord of cattle, the lord of
water!"

"Offer adoration to Indra, the overcomer, the destroyer, the
munificent, the invincible, the all-endowing, the creator, the
all-adorable, the sustainer, the unassailable, the ever-victorious!"

"I proclaim the mighty exploits of that Indra who is ever victorious,
the benefactor of man, the overthrower of man, the caster-down, the
warrior, who is gratified by our libations, the grantor of desires,
the subduer of enemies, the refuge of the people!"

"Unequalled in liberality, the showerer, the slayer of the malevolent,
profound, mighty, of impenetrable sagacity, the dispenser of
prosperity, the enfeebler, firm, vast, the performer of pious acts,
Indra has given birth to the light of the morning!"

"Indra, bestow upon us most excellent treasures, the reputation of
ability, prosperity, increase of wealth, security of person,
sweetness of speech, and auspiciousness of days!"

"Offer worship quickly to Indra; recite hymns; let the outpoured
drops exhilarate him; pay adoration to his superior strength!"

"When, Indra, thou harnessest thy horses, there is no such
charioteer as thou; none is equal to thee in strength; none,
howsoever well horsed, has overtaken thee!"

"He, who alone bestows wealth upon the man who offers him oblations,
is the undisputed sovereign: Indra, ho!"

"When will he trample with his foot upon the man who offers no
oblations, as upon a coiled snake? When will Indra listen to our
praises? Indra, ho!"

"Indra grants formidable strength to him who worships him, having
libations prepared: Indra, ho!"

The song that was chanted low by the well of Barrackpore to the
maddened Rajpoot, to the dreaming Moor, was fiercely shouted by the
well of Cawnpore to a chorus of shrieking women, English wives and
mothers, and spluttering of blood-choked babes, and clash of red
knives, and drunken shouts of slayers, ruthless and obscene.

When Asirvadam the Brahmin conjured the wild demon of revolt to light
the horrid torch and bare the greedy blade, he tore a chapter from
the Book of Menu:--

"Let no man, engaged in combat, smite his foe with concealed weapons,
nor with arrows mischievously barbed, nor with poisoned arrows, nor
with darts blazing with fire."

"Nor let him strike his enemy alighted on the ground; nor an
effeminate man, nor one who sues for life with closed palms, nor one
whose hair is loose, nor one who sits down, nor one who says, 'I am
thy captive.'"

"Nor one who sleeps, nor one who has lost his coat-of-mail, nor one
who is naked, nor one who is dismayed, nor one who is a spectator,
but no combatant, nor one who is fighting with another man."

"Calling to mind the duty of honorable men, let him never slay one
who has broken his weapon, nor one who is afflicted, nor one who
has been grievously wounded, nor one who is terrified, nor one who
turns his back."

But Asirvadam the Brahmin, like the Thug of seven victims, has
tasted the sugar of blood, sweeter upon his tongue than to the lips
of an eager babe the pearl-tipped nipple of its mother. Henceforth
he must slay, slay, slay, mutilate and ravish, burn and slay, in the
name of the queen of horrors.--Karlee, ho!

Now what shall be done with our dangerous friend? Shall he be blown
from the mouths of guns? or transported to the heart-breaking
Andamans? or lashed to his own churruck-posts, and flayed with cats
by stout drummers? or handcuffed with Pariahs in chain-gangs, to
work on his knees in foul sewers? or choked to death with raw
beefsteaks and the warm blood of cows? or swinged by stout Irish
wenches with bridle-ends? or smitten on the mouth with kid gloves by
English ladies, his turban trampled under foot by every Feringhee
brat in Bengal?--Wanted, a poetical putter-down for Asirvadam the
Brahmin.

"Devotion is not in the ragged garment, nor in the staff, nor in
ashes, nor in the shaven head, nor in the sounding of horns.

"Numerous Mahomets there have been and multitudes of Brahmas, Vishnus,
and Sivas;

"Thousands of seers and prophets, and tens of thousands of saints
and holy men:

"But the chief of lords is the one Lord, the true name of God!"

* * * * *

WHAT ARE WE GOING TO MAKE?

It would be easy to collect a library of lamentations over the
mechanical tendency of our age. There are, in fact, a good many
people who profess a profound contempt for matter, though they do
nevertheless patronize the butcher and the baker to the manifest
detriment of the sexton. Matter and material interests, they would
have us believe, are beneath the dignity of the soul; and the degree
to which these "earthly things" now absorb the attention of mankind,
they think, argues degeneracy from the good old times of abstract
philosophy and spiritual dogmatism. But what do we better know of
the Infinite Spirit than that he is an infinite mechanic? Whence do
we get worthier or sublimer conceptions of him than from the
machinery with which he works? Are we ourselves less godlike
building mills than sitting in pews?--less in the image of our Maker,
endeavoring to subdue matter than endeavoring to ignore its existence?
Without questioning that the moral nature within us is superior to
the mechanical, we think it quite susceptible of proof that the
moral condition of the world depends on the mechanical, and that it
has advanced and will advance at equal pace with the progress of
machinery. To prove this, or anything else, however, is by no means
the purpose of this article, but only to take the general reader
around a little among mechanical people and ideas, to see what lies
ahead.

"Papa, what are you going to make?" was doubtless the question of
Tubal-Cain's little boy, when he saw his ingenious father hammering
a red-hot iron, with a stone for a hammer, and another for an anvil.
Little boys have often since asked the same question in blacksmiths'
shops, and we now have shops in which the largest boys may well ask
it. It might be answered in a general way, that the smiths or smiters,
black and white, were and are going to make what our Maker left
unmade in making the human race. The lower animals were all sent
into the world in appropriate, finished, and well-fitting costume,
provided with direct and effective means of subsistence and defence.
The eagle had his imperial plumage, beak, and talons; the elephant
his leathern roundabout and travelling trunk, with its convenient
air-pump; and the beaver, at once a carpenter and a mason, had his
month full of chisels and his tail a trowel. The _bipes implumis_, on
the contrary, was hatched nude, without even the embryo of a
pin-feather. There was nothing for him but the recondite capabilities
of his two talented, but talonless hands, and a large brain almost
without instinct. Nothing was ready-made, only the means of making.
He was brought into the infinite world a finite deity, an
infinitesimal creator,--the first being of that class, to our
knowledge. His most urgent business as a creator was to make tools
for himself, and especially for the purpose of supplying his own
pitiful destitution of feathers. From the aprons of fig-leaves,
stitched hardly so-so, to the last patent sewing-machine, he has
made commendable progress. Without borrowing anything from other
animals, he can now, if he chooses, rival in texture, tint, gloss,
lightness, and expansiveness, the plumage of peacocks and
birds-of-paradise; and it only remains that what can be done shall
be done more extensively,--we do not mean for the individual, but
for the masses. Man has created not only tools, but servants,--
animals all but alive. We may soon say that he has created great
bodies politic and bodies corporate, with heads, hands, feet, claws,
tails, lungs, digestive organs, and perhaps other viscera. What is
remarkable, having at first failed to furnish them with nerves, he
has lately supplied that deficiency,--a token that he will supply
some others.

Let not the reader shrink from our page as irreverent. It shall not
preach the possibility of inventing perpetual motion or a machine
with a soul in it, as was lately and vainly attempted in our good
city of Lynn,--where, however, it may be said, they do succeed in
making soles to what resemble machines. It is not for us to be
either so enthusiastic, impious, or uncharitable as to prophesy that
human ingenuity will ever endow its creations with anything more
than the rudest semblance of that self-directing vitality which
characterizes the most servile of God-created machinery. The human
mechanic must be content, if he can approach as near to the creation
of life as the painter and sculptor have done. The soul of the
man-made horse-power is primarily the horse, and secondarily the
small boy who stands by to "cut him up" occasionally. Maelzel
created excellent chess-players, with the exception of intelligence,
which he was obliged to borrow of the original Creator and conceal
in a closet under the table.

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