Sun leaped above the horizon, and
began shooting his fiery arrows at the boat, and at our unfortunate
heads. Persecuting us from one place to another, he banished us,
at last, even from under a huge rock hanging over the water. There
was literally no place where we could seek salvation. The snow-white
marble beauties became golden red, pouring fire-sparks into the river,
heating the sand and blinding our eyes.
No wonder that legend supposes in them something between the abode
and the incarnation of Kali, the fiercest of all the goddesses of
the Hindu pantheon.
For many Yugas this goddess has been engaged in a desperate contest
with her lawful husband Shiva, who, in his shape of Trikutishvara,
a three-headed lingam, has dishonestly claimed the rocks and the
river for his own - the very rocks and the very river over which
Kali presides in person. And this is why people hear dreadful
moaning, coming from under the ground, every time that the hand
of an irresponsible coolie, working by Government orders in
Government quarries, breaks a stone from the white bosom of the
goddess. The unhappy stone-breaker hears the cry and trembles,
and his heart is torn between the expectations of a dreadful
punishment from the bloodthirsty goddess and the fear of his
implacably exacting inspector in case he disobeys his orders.
Kali is the owner of the Marble Rocks, but she is the patroness
of the ex-Thugs as well. Many a lonely traveler has shuddered on
hearing this name; many a bloodless sacrifice has been offered
on the marble altar of Kali. The country is full of horrible tales
about the achievements of the Thugs, accomplished in the honor of
this goddess. These tales are too recent and too fresh in the
popular memory to become as yet mere highly-colored legends.
They are mostly true, and many of them are proved by official
documents of the law courts and inquest commissions.
If England ever leaves India, the perfect suppression of Thugism
will be one of the good memories that will linger in the country
long after her departure. Under this name was practised in India
during two long centuries the craftiest and the worst kind of
homicide. Only after 1840 was it discovered that its aim was
simply robbery and brigandage. The falsely interpreted symbolical
meaning of Kali was nothing but a pretext, otherwise there would
not have been so many Mussulmans amongst her devotees. When they
were caught at last, and had to answer before justice, most of
these knights of the rumal - the handkerchief with which the operation
of strangling was performed - proved to be Mussulmans. The most
illustrious of their leaders were not Hindus, but followers of
the Prophet, the celebrated Ahmed, for instance.
