Concerning Animals and Other Matters by Edward Hamilton Aitken (surface ebook reader TXT) 📕

it had come. So I came down and got to my boat. The panther was engaged a mile away dining on another cow! On further inquiry I learned that there was some good forest a day's journey distant, and it was quite the fashion among the panthers of that place to spend a weekend occasionally at a spot so full of all delights as this dark, jungle-smothered fort.


XIV


THE PURBHOO

I do not believe that the Member of Parliament who moved the adjournment of the House to consider the culpable carelessness of the Government of India in allowing the Rajah of Muttighur to fall into the moat of his own castle when he was drunk, could have told you what a Purbhoo is, not though you had spelled it Prabhu, so that he could find it in his _Gazetteer_. Of course he saw hundreds of them during that Christmas which he spent in the East before he wrote his book; but then he took them all for Brahmins. He never noticed that the curve of their turbans was not the same, and the idol mark on their foreheads was quite different, nor even that their shoes were not forked at the toes, but ended in a sharp point curled upwards. And if he did not see these things which were on the surface, what could he know of matters that lie deeper?

Now the first and most important thing to be known respecting the Purbhoo, the fundamental fact of him, is that he is not a Brahmin. If he were a Brahmin, one essential piece of our administrative apparatus in India would be wanting, and without it the whole machinery would assuredly go out of order. Nor is it easy to see how we could replace him. Not one of the other castes would serve even as a makeshift. They are all too far removed from the Brahmin. But the Purbhoo is near him, irritatingly near him, and he has proved in practice to be just the sort of homoeopathic remedy we require, the counter-irritant, the outward blister by wise application of which we can keep down the internal inflammation.

In speaking of the Brahmin as an inflammation in the body politic I disown all offensive and invidious implications. I am only using a convenient simile. You may reverse it if you like and make the disease stand for the Purbhoo, in which case the Brahmin will be the blister. Which way fits the facts best will depend upon which caste chances at the time to be nearest to the vitals of Government.

The case stands thus. Before the days of British rule the Brahmin was the priest and man of letters, the "clerke" in short. The rajahs and chiefs were much of the same mind as old Douglas:

Thanks to Saint Bothan son of mine,
Save Gawain, ne'er could pen a line,

Gawain being a bishop. As a Mohammedan gentleman related to one of the ruling Indian princes put the matter when speaking to me a few years ago, "In those days none of us could write. Our pen was the sword. If any writing had to be done the Brahmin was called in." And no doubt he did excellent service, being diligent, astute, and withal pliant and diplomatic. If to these qualities he added ambition, he might, and often did, become a Cardinal Wolsey in the state. In Poona, for example, the Brahmin Prime Minister gradually overshadowed the Mahratta king, and the descendant of Shivajee was put on a back shelf as Rajah of Sattara, while the Peishwa ruled at the capital.

Of course this carnal advancement was not gained without some sacrifice of his spiritual character, and the "secular" Brahmin had to bow, _quoad sacra_, to the penniless Bhut, or "regular" Brahmin, who, refusing to contaminate his sanctity by doing any kind of work, ate of the temple, or lived by royal bounty or private charity, and by the free breakfasts without which a marriage, "thread ceremony" or funeral in a gentleman's house could not be respectably celebrated. Idleness and sanctity are a powerful combination, and it is written in the _shastras_ that every day in which a holy man does no work for his bread, but lives by begging, is equal in the eyes of the gods to a day spent in fasting; so, though the prospect of power and wealth might tempt a few restless and wayward spirits, the great mass of the Brahmin caste clung to the sacred calling.

All this time the Purbhoo was in the land, but insignificant. He had no sacred calling. Tradition assigned him a hybrid origin. He could not presume to be a warrior, because his mother was a _shoodra_, nor could he condescend to be a farmer, for his father was a _kshutriya_. So the gods had given him the pen, and he was a writer--not a secretary, but a humble quill-driver. But when the Portuguese and then the British came upon the scene, not ruling by word of mouth, like the native rajahs, but inditing their orders and keeping records, the Purbhoo saw an open door and went in.

Then the Brahmin woke up, for he saw that he was in evil case. The spirit of the British _raj_ was falling like a blight and a pestilence upon the means by which he had lived, drying up the fountains of religious revenue and slowly but surely blighting the luxuriance of that pious liberality which always took the form of feeding holy men. He found that he must work for his bread whether he liked it or not, and the only implement of secular work that would not soil his priestly hand was the pen. And this was already taken up by the Purbhoo, who carried himself haughtily under the new _regime_ and showed no mind to make way for the holier man. Hence sprang those bitter enmities and jealousies which have done so much to lighten the difficulties of our position.

The British Government has often been accused of acting on the maxim, _Divide et impera_. It is a libel. We do not divide, for there is no need. Division is already there. We have only to rejoice and rule. How well and justly we rule all the world knows, but only the initiated know how much we owe to the fact that the talents and energies which would otherwise be employed in thwarting our just intentions and phlebotomising the ryot are largely preoccupied with the more useful work of thwarting and undermining each other.

What could a collector do single-handed against a host of clerks and subordinate magistrates and petty officials of every grade, all armed with the awfulness of a heaven-born sanctity, all hedged round with the prestige of an ancient supremacy, endowed with a mole-like genius for underground work which the Englishman never fathoms, and all leagued together to suck to the uttermost the life blood of those inferior castes which were created expressly for their advantage?

_He_ is working in a foreign language, among customs and ways of thought which it takes a lifetime to understand: _they_ are using their mother tongue and handling matters that they have known from childhood. _He_ cannot tell a lie and is ashamed to deceive: _they_ are trained in a thrifty policy which saves the truth for a last resort in case everything else should fail. He would be helpless in their hands as a sucking child. But he knows they will do for him what he cannot do for himself. The Purbhoo will lie in wait for the Brahmin, and the Brahmin will keep his lynx eye on the Purbhoo. And woe to the one who trips first. So the collector arranges his men with judicious skill to the fostering of each other's virtue, and the result is most gratifying. The country blesses his administration, and his subordinates are equally surprised and delighted at their own integrity.

I speak of a wise and able administrator. There are men in the Indian Civil Service who are neither wise nor able, and some who are not administrators at all, having most unhappily mistaken their vocation. When such a one becomes collector of a district his _chitnis_, or chief secretary, sees that that tide in the affairs of men has come which, "taken at the flood, leads on to fortune," and his caste-fellows all through the service are filled with unholy joy. But he does nothing rash or hasty. Wilily and patiently he goes to work to make his own foundation sure first of all. He studies his chief under all conditions, discovers his little foibles and vanities and feeds them sedulously. He masters codes, rules and regulations, standing orders, precedents and past correspondence, till it is dangerous to contradict him and always safe to trust him. In every difficulty he is at hand, clearing away perplexity and refreshing the "swithering" mind with his precision and assurance. He becomes indispensable. The collector reposes absolute confidence in him and is proud to say so in his reports.

Then the _chitnis_, if he is a Brahmin, addresses himself to the task of eliminating the Purbhoo from the service, or at least depriving him of place and power. It is a delicate task, but the Brahmin's touch is light. He never disparages a Purbhoo from that day; "damning with faint praise" is safer and as effectual. He practises the charity which covereth a multitude of faults, but he leaves a tag end of one peeping out to attract curiosity, and if the collector asks questions, he is candid and tells the truth, though with manifest reluctance. Then he grapples with the gradation lists, which have fallen into confusion, and puts them into such excellent order that the collector can see at a glance every man's past services and present claims to promotion. And from these lists it appears that clearly, whenever any vacancy has to be filled, a Brahmin has the first claim. And so, as the shades of night yield to the dawn of day, the Purbhoo by degrees fades away and disappears, and the star of the Brahmin rises and shines everywhere with still increasing splendour.

But the Purbhoo possesses his soul in patience, and keeps a note of every slip that the Brahmin makes. For the next _chitnis_ may be a Purbhoo, and then the day of reckoning will come and old scores will be paid off. The Brahmin knows that too, and the thought of it makes him walk warily even in the day of his prosperity. Thus our administration is saved from utter corruption.


XV


THE COCONUT TREE

Among the classic fairy-tales which passed like shooting stars across those dark hours of our boyhood in which we wrestled with the grim rudiments of Latin and Greek, and which abide in the memory after nearly all that they helped to brighten has passed away, there was one which related to a contest between Neptune and Minerva as to which should confer the greatest benefit on the human race. Neptune first struck his trident on the ground (or was it on the waves? "Eheu fugaces"--no, that also is gone), and there sprang forth a noble steed, pawing the ground, terrible in war and no less useful in peace. Then the watery god leaned back and smiled as if he would say, "Now, beat that." But the Goddess of Wisdom brought out of the earth a modest, dark tree bearing olives and, in classic phrase, "took the cake," Oriental mythology is more luxuriant and fantastic than that of the West, but I do not know if it has any legend parallel to this. If it has, then I am sure the palm is awarded to the deity who gave to the