We remembered that it was reported this proud friend of ours also
belonged to the Sadhu sect.
"Who can tell," whispered the colonel
in my ear, "whether these reports are mere gossip, or the truth?"
Sadhu-Nanaka must not be confounded with Guru-Nanaka, a leader of
the Sikhs. The former are Adwaitas, the latter monotheists. The
Adwaitas believe only in an impersonal deity named Parabrahm.
In the chief hall of the vihara was a life-sized statue of Bhavani,
the feminine aspect of Shiva. From the bosom of this devaki streams
forth the pure cold water of a mountain spring, which falls into a
reservoir at her feet. Around it lay heaps of sacrificial flowers,
rice, betel leaves and incense. This hall was, in consequence, so
damp that we preferred to spend the night on the verandah in the
open air, hanging, as it were, between sky and earth, and lit from
below by numerous fires kept burning all the night by Gulab-Sing's
servants, to scare away wild beasts, and, from above, by the light
of the full moon. A supper was arranged after the Eastern fashion,
on carpets spread upon the floor, and with thick banana leaves for
plates and dishes. The noiselessly gliding steps of the servants,
more silent than ghosts, their white muslins and red turbans, the
limitless depths of space, lost in waves of moonlight, before us,
and behind, the dark vaults of ancient caves, dug out by unknown
races, in unknown times, in honor of an unknown, prehistoric religion -
all these, our surroundings, transported us into a strange world,
and into distant epochs far different from our own.
We had before us representatives of five different peoples, five
different types of costume, each quite unlike the others. All
five are known to us in ethnography under the generic name of Hindus.
Similarly eagles, condors, hawks, vultures, and owls are known to
ornithology as "birds of prey," but the analogous differences are
as great. Each of these five companions, a Rajput, a Bengali, a
Madrasi, a Sinhalese and a Mahratti, is a descendant of a race,
the origin of which European scientists have discussed for over
half a century without coming to any agreement.
- - - - - -
Rajputs are called Hindus and are said to belong to the Aryan race;
but they call themselves Suryavansa, that is to say, descendants
of Surya or the sun.
The Brahmans derive their origin from Indu, the moon, and are called
Induvansa; Indu, Soma, or Chandra, meaning moon in Sanskrit. If
the first Aryans, appearing in the prologue of universal history,
are Brahmans, that is to say, the people who, according to Max Muller,
having crossed the Himalayas conquered the country of the five rivers,
then the Rajputs are no Aryans; and if they are Aryans they are not
Brahmans, as all their genealogies and sacred books (Puranas) show
that they are much older than the Brahmans; and, in this case,
moreover, the Aryan tribes had an actual existence in other countries
of our globe than the much renowned district of the Oxus, the cradle
of the Germanic race, the ancestors of Aryans and Hindus, in the
fancy of the scientist we have named and his German school.
The "moon" line begins with Pururavas (see the genealogical tree
prepared by Colonel Tod from the MS. Puranas in the Oodeypore
archives), that is to say, two thousand two hundred years before
Christ, and much later than Ikshvaku, the patriarch of the Suryavansa.
The fourth son of Pururavas, Rech, stands at the head of the line
of the moon-race, and only in the fifteenth generation after him
appears Harita, who founded the Kanshikagotra, the Brahman tribe.
The Rajputs hate the latter. They say the children of the sun
and Rama have nothing in common with the children of the moon and
Krishna. As for the Bengalis, according to their traditions and
history, they are aborigines. The Madrasis and the Sinhalese are
Dravidians. They have, in turn, been said to belong to the Semites,
the Hamites, the Aryans, and, lastly, they have been given up to
the will of God, with the conclusion drawn that the Sinhalese, at
all events, must be Mongolians of Turanian origin. The Mahrattis
are aborigines of the West of India, as the Bengalis are of, the East;
but to what group of tribes belong these two nationalities no
ethnographer can define, save perhaps a German. The traditions of
the people themselves are generally denied, because they are not in
harmony with foregone conclusions. The meaning of ancient manuscripts
is disfigured, and, in fact, sacrificed to fiction, if only the
latter proceeds from the mouth of some favorite oracle.
The ignorant masses are often blamed and found to be guilty of
superstition for creating idols in the spiritual world. Is not,
then, the educated man, the man who craves after knowledge, who is
enlightened, still more inconsistent than these masses, when he
deals with his favorite authorities? Are not half a dozen laurel-
crowned heads allowed by him to do whatever they like with facts,
to draw their own conclusions, according to their own liking, and
does he not stone every one who would dare to rise against the
decisions of these quasi-infallible specialists, and brand him
as an ignorant fool?
Let us remember the case in point of Louis Jacolliot, who spent
twenty years in India, who actually knew the language and the country
to perfection, and who, nevertheless, was rolled in the mud by Max
Muller, whose foot never touched Indian soil.
The oldest peoples of Europe are mere babes com-pared with the
tribes of Asia, and especially of India. And oh! how poor and
insignificant are the genealogies of the oldest European families
compared with those of some Rajputs. In the opinion of Colonel Tod,
who for over twenty years studied these genealogies on the spot,
they are the completest and most trustworthy of the records of
the peoples of antiquity.
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