INDIA REVISITED: VII. INDIA OF THE GREAT PALMS

By F. YEATS-BROWN

I This is the seventh of a series of articles which Mr. Feats-Brown has been specially commissioned by "The Spectator" to write on contemporary India. The eighth, which will appear next week under the title "The Enchanted Land," deals with a visit to the State cf Travancore.] ALL Puri seemed to be washing its teeth on the morning that I drove out to the Temple of the Black Pagoda at Konarak, fifty miles away. Pun is ilow the capital of the new Province of Orissa, and a favourite sea-side resort of Calcutta, as well as being the greatest place of pilgrimage in the world. The pilgrims do a great deal of washing, both in the sea and in various tanks : I suppose the Hindus are the cleanliest people in the world.

My car cuts' across the wide processional way, where. in July, Jaganath will pass in state, from the city to t he Garden Temple. At the moment, no doubt. Jaganath is also cleaning his teeth, or rather having them cleaned by some of his twenty thousand servitors, white elephants salaam at his levee, and nautch-girls sing iii his honour. He is alive : the real presence of the Godhead was brought. down to this stump of wood by an initiate, with a Word of Power, long centuries ago. His wealth in jewels is fabulous. The Koh-i-noor was given to him (though it never reached him, being taken by the British on the way) and his is the richest of the rich shrines of India. The food offered to him becomes so holy that a Brahmin may eat of it in the company of a sweeper: there is no caste in Puri, before the all-pervasive sanctity of the Lord of the World.

We are driving- through a luxuriant countryside. Great palms arc mirrored black upon the calm sheets of water of paddy fields, and clouds, and the morning star. Meeting us, come sheeted pilgrims strolling towards the city, and slender girls in lemon-coloured saris, their nose-rings aglint. Ahead there is a mountain : or is it a cloud ? I can see the image of a raiiiping white hOrse in the half-light : it is the guardian of some wayside temple. Paddy-birds sit watching for the droppings of cows. Monkeys chatter in the banyan trees.

A mile from Konarak the etit stops in the deep sand. The sun has risen, revealing an impressive scene. The Temple of the Sun God must he approached afoot, and the visitor, if he he at all sensitive to atmosphere, will feel that it towers over him with an air of menace and arrogance, claiming supreMacy for the dark forces of Nature. " Unhappily," as Murray's Handbook says. " much of the decoration is of a licentious character." Lust is generally something furtive : _here it has been deified. Here are long lines of carved figures that have remained for seven centuries in their three or four aspects of petrified passion. There is something oppres- sive in these subtly-smiling goddesses, these gods in ecstasy . . . perhaps the builder was a Freud of long ago, reducing the libido to terms of stone.

Yet the work is that of a great artist, cruel and cynical perhaps, but with ear attuned to the flute i Krishna, the Asian Pan, crouching and piping in his thickets by the sea. Nor need we be deterred from visiting Konarak because of these sculptures : sonic of them are small, and none of them obtrude upon the grandeur of the general design.

A comparison between the masterpieces of the Ili»da and Moghul architects is inevitable to a traveller like myself, who pays to the Taj Mahal an increasing venera- tion each time he has seen it during the last twenty-five years, and who can only stare in mystified wonder at the temples of South India. Technically, the Taj and KOnarak are no more comparable than the Empire State Building and Canterbury Cathedral, but they hoth represent that crucial moment in the life of a people when Fate brings down in ruin the highest expression Of a too-artistic age. After Shahjehan the Moghul Empire began to disintegrate. Konarak was never wholly completed : the skill of the masons did not avail against some unknown psychic collapse amongst its planners. Both buildings are masterpieces at the edge of decadence, but the Taj could only have been conceived in the mind a man who had known a great romantic passion : its message is that of Divine Love understood through hum. l forms ; whereas the architect of Konarak must lime explored all the avenues of the senses and turned to Divine Love only when he discovered that other kinds were sterile. The Taj is like an old friend, more beautiful and more steadfast every time I see her : I like to merge my mind in that of the master-artist who saw the world thus, and made this white splendour to the glory of God. and the grace of woman. But Konarak I shall probably never -see again. It is stupendous, unforgettable, but alien. It is entirely Asian; whereas the Taj is a bridge between East and West.

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Titivating south from Puri it is impossible to reach Madras without changing trains and spending an Uncom- fortable night at Khtirda Road. Just how uncomfortable such a night can be only the visitor who leaveS the main routes can understand.- It is curious, in a country where silence is so Ivell understood, where Mr. Gandhi remains mute every Monday, and where 'mania swamis -who have not spoken for years are greatly respected, that the Indian villager (who is a quiet sort of person as a rule) should be seized by a kind of 'frenzy when he tries to catch 'a train, and should yell himself hoarse. Hindu and Moslem water bearers, sweetmeat-sellers with cages of comfits lit by rush tapers; hot tea wallahs. newsboys, men selling rice and dhal, and cigarette merchants, cry their wares by every train, and add to the pandemonium of the passengers, the howls of strayed children, the yells of porters, the clang of gongs, and a delirious, incessant whistling of engines.

Moreover, there are worse discomforts than noise. All over India, except in two or three great cities, sanitary arrangements are what they were in our grandfathers' time, or in the time of Asoka, for that matter. Night- soil is carried away by hand. Even in Delhi and Simla, under the eyes of the mightiest in the land, the patient depressed classes may be seen driving blue buffaloes in carts which stink to heaven.

Weary and cross, I journeyed on as far as Waltair, where my luck changed, for here Sir S. Radhakrislman, the fainous prOfessor and philoSopher, boarded the train.

I asked him abOut the depressed classes, who were much on my mind just then. He spoke eloquently about the abolition of caste. Neither Mann nor the Upanishads had decreed the present arbitrary distinctions between man and man : it was ridiculous to divide up Hinduism into sections that could not touch each other for fear of pollution ; and he supported his arguments by quotations which were all Sanskrit to me.

In speaking with Sir S. Radhakristman, as also with Sir C. V. Raman, Pandit Malaviya, Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru. or Mr. Jayyakar (they are all Brahmins) one cannot fail to be impressed by their astonishing memories and mental range. These men have practised, and some of them I daresay still practise, exercises in medita- tion and concentration. In short, they are yogis. Generalisation front a handful of eminent men would be dangerous, but I have met hundreds. probably thousands of Brahmins, and they all display similar characteristics, although not, of course, similar capacities.

Sir S. Radhakrishnan is a philosopher with a practical bent ; arid as Principal of Andhra University at Waltair he was known as a good disciplinarian as well as a good orgartiSer.. In his new post at Oxford he will have a position which is in its way as -important as that of the Viceroy of India. *It is not enough for the West to explain itself to' the East : the reverse process has been much neglected since the days of Max Muller, Vivekananda, and E. B. Havel: it is high time that theie should be an Indian in England who can speak with real authority about his national culture ; indeed there should be riot one "s'uch interpreter,' but a dozen.

Madras -erilligy unlike -the rest of India. The -climate. though hot, is more genial than that of the north ; and the people are far better educated. Rural reconstruction is making rapid strides. In hospitals the Presidency has always led the rest of India. and until recently Madras was the only (and it is still the Aid') source of supply for trained midwives.

On the Beach, where the citizens enjoy the sea-breezes of an evening, you will hear orators with a remarkable facility for English. not " halm English. but the genuine article except for occasional slight slips. such as : " We shall perpetrate a building worthy of oiir cause." and, misquoting Hamlet, "It is easy to see that there k something wrong with the Government of Denmark.- The Hindu. owned and edited entirely by Indians, is the best newspaper in India with the exception of The Statesman of ('alcutta.. Other dailies stiffer from small staff and slack sub-editing : but The Pioneer of Lucknow has good leaders and CartiRMS and so has The Hindustan Times of Delhi. A feature of the Indian Press %%lick arouses may interest is the matrimonial advertising. The following announcements are taken front mu. day's issue of The Hindustan Times: "WANTED EARLY.---A healthy, educated. well-eonnecta1 bachelor, aged 20-25. with n decent income or property. for lit I accomplished Aggarwat girl of Garg Gotra.-53a. Press Quarter, New Delhi.- '' WANTED, A GOOD C1121.. of any caste for :11 Se. youth. 24 years of age, belonging to a respectable Agrawal family in lr.P. Apply with photo to Box No. 16."

`• WANTED, ACCOMPLASHEI) GIRL, for well-establislted, handsome, healthy Saxena Dunn' widower, aged 28, drawing Rs. 44) in Collectoratc.—Box No. 38."

" SVITABLE MATCH REQUIRED for an aceomplished and highly connected Sarawat Brahman girl, aged about 18 years. Applications. stating age, qualifications and occupation, should I. addressed to Box No. 36: I ant informed that an eligible bachelor in the Indian Civil Service is worth between £1,500 and £2,500 in the marriage market, which scents cheap. considering the fact that the I.C.S. is the plum of official posts. Doctors, police, engineers and forest officers must have a much lower value.

Feeling frivolous. I visited an astrologer in Madras. instead of going to the Museum and a Baby Clinic. The astrologer was out (he sent after me my horoscope) but I found two young disciples of his who were studying telepathy. At present, they explained. they could only show me some elementary phciannena : thereupon, with a mere wave of the hand. the elder put the younger into a light hypnotic trance. We went into an adjoining room. leaving the younger boy sitting in an armchair with his back to us. His lips were parted. his eyes were turned back into his head, his breath was drawn slow and deep. From where we sat I do not think that there was any possibility of messages being transmitted to him by mirrors or by other means. I showed the elder boy smile figures which I wrote on a sheet of notepaper, and instantly (but instantly, without the possibility of collusion) the younger gave us the figures : 4: 2 : 7 : 3. Then I showed the elder my camera. This was more of a puzzle. At first the younger boy kept silence ; when urged to speak, he said I was holding a watch in my hand, then a box. (Obviously the elder boy's visualisation of the object was not. very clear. hence the failure in transmission.) I then took up my watch, and this was immediately perceived by the boy in hypnotic trance : in quirk succession he also " saw my collar-stud (he called it a button), a rupee. a jtencil, a handkerchief, more figures written down. That was all. The elder boy apologised for the amateurishness of the experiment. "With it little more experience,- he said, " we shall be able to conununieate with each other mentally over any distance. Our guru" (the astrologer) " sends messages to ntinda attuned to his all over India, and. he frequently leaves his body here while his spirit goes away to cure some sick person in Calcutta, or even Tibet.-