NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS WITH THE SWAMI VIVEKANANDA MY _SISTER NIVEDITA OF
RAMKRISHNA-VIVEKANANDA.
Author "
"
of
The "
The
Civic
IVcb
and
Cradle- Tales "T/ie
of Indian
National of
Master as I saw
Hinduism Him"
"
Life
Ideals"
;
;
"
;
&*c.
AUTHORISED EDITION, 1913.
EDITED BY THE SWAMI SARADANANDA ITBLISHKI)
UDBODHAN
liV
THE BRAILMACI1ARI GONENDRA NATH OFFICE BAGHBA/AR, CALCUTTA :
All rights reserved
:
Printed by K.
C.
64-1,
Ghose at the Lakshmi Printing WorJ 64-2, Sukea Street, Calcutta.
PREFACE. book of the late Sister Nivedita to the public, the Editor has taken care to correct only a few minor inaccuracies as regards In
presenting this
little
facts that crept into it, series of articles in the
when
it
appeared as a
Brahmavadin of Madras,
The Chapter headings and a short Synopsis of the contents of each chapter are also his and the ;
has been joined to the book, to venient for the reader to find out letter
with
in
it,
whenever he
feels
so
make
it
things
disposed.
con dealt In
he hopes that the book, which offers bright glimpses of the yet undiscovered nooks of the private life of the great Swami Vivekananda, and the period of training through which the much conclusion
lamented Sister Nivedita had to pass in the hands bf her Master, ere she came out before the
gaze as the wonderful champion of truth and justice and righteousness and of the cause of India will meet with the warm reception at the public
hands of the public, that
it
fully deserves.
SARA DANANDA.
,
CONTENTS. FOREWORD. How the Ideal became at the year s end the at at Nainital and Almora, Real the Belur, during year 1898 Foreword written
:
Kashmir
.and lastly at different places in
The
:
privilege of seeing
through the eyes of a great personality
the world
listening to
all,
The unique personality of and refusing none the Swami Vivekananda as it appeared to his western desciples and others at the time and the back ground which set it in strong feeling with
relief
all
:
Effects of studying
:
him thus
at close quarters.
CHAPTER
Pages
1-5
I
THE HOME ON THE GANGES. A
running description of the
Visits of the
of education
minds of
and
its
surroundings
:
:
his western pupils
repellant at
Home
The Master (Vivekananda) and his methods and rousing a new religious consciousness in the monks
in the infinite
never trying to soften things
Indian
and conversation on any subject always ending On nation-building, and Siva and Uma : Adwaita
first
sight
:
A visit to Sarada Devi InftiaGlimpses of God-Intoxication Noble M. E. into the life of a Brahmachdrini The Miss tion of :
:
:
Master
s
going to Darjeeling and return after the
clarations at Calcutta
The
:
first
signs of the times.
CHAPTER
...
Plague de *Pages 6-17
II
AT NAINI TAL AND ALMORA. The two Himalayas Khetri
:
parties :
The
leaving
Nainital
:
incident
Our
Howrah and
the
introduction
to
of the
Dancing
girls
first
the :
sight of the
Maharaja of
A mahamedan
11
s
gentleman Raja the to
about the Swami
feeling
Ram Mohan Roy s How the Swami :
the Master
:
The
message
The dominant
:
to India
notes of
Their acceptance by
:
dancing girls came to pay their respects incident of the nautch girl at Khetri The :
The morning talks of the Swami The journey to Almora strange new element that crept in at this time in Miss Noble s :
:
and and defiance on the other
relation with the Master, of bitterness
and
irritation
on one
distrust
How
:
side,
began and
it
The form adopted in these mornfng-talks it ended comparative review of East and West and assaults on deep-rooted
how
:
...
pre-conceptions.
...
CHAPTER
Pages
...
18-28-
III
MORNING TALKS AT ALMORA. morning talk on The central ideals of civilisations in the East, Truth The four Chastity kinds of national functions performed by different nations Talks The Master s epigram des on Indian history ? On the Moghuls
The
in
first
the
West,
:
,
:
:
cribing the Taj Opinion about Shah Jehan and On Italy, Sivaji and Oriental untruthfulness
Akbar On China and the Aryans
on the
scholars
:
:
Author
s
remarks
of
fascination
:
:
Indian
for
The Master s treatment of old Indian questions of Ethnology History as a struggle between the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas On Buddha, and the On the Kyasthas of Bengal and Buddhism :
:
:
vision
of the
san
On
:
tiality
:
On
;
Siva and
Pundit
anity on the
Uma
On Amba
Pali, the courte
On
the high poten
Sister
:
:
Swami
s life
Nivedita
:
:
:
On God
Stories from the Puranas
Vidyisagar and David Hare
the American Engineer the
:
the Babists of Persia
of love that seeks no personal expression
Universe
On
Swami regarding him
Bhakti
:
as the
Suka Deva
:
Influence of Christi
Funny stories on spirit-seance and The Swami s longing for quiet Blessing :
End
:
of the sprained relationship
:
Death
.
111
of Mr.
ment
Goodwin
J. J.
On
:
:
The Swami
as pernicious
On
:
:
On
week
s
retire
On the folly of imagin On God as the Eter
:
ing a Personal Will guiding the universe nal Magistrate, having no rest
after a
return
s
Baba
the death of Pavahari
:
Bhakti without renunciation
proverty and Self-mastery for the soul that
would wed the Eternal Bride-groom Renunciation is not akin to the morbid idea of worshipping pain The Hindu Ideal of On the peculiar character transcending both pleasure and pain :
:
:
istic
of the
sistent idea
Hindu Culture in having devotion even if it has no objective actuality
to a spiritually :
On
con
Krishna, the
most perfect of Avatars The deep impression of the Krishnaon India Memorial to Mr. J, J. Goodwin myth Requiescat in The last after-noon at the Almora and pace story of the fatal :
:
:
illness
of Sri Ramakrishna.
...
CHAPTER ON THE WAY
...
Pages 29-63
IV
TO KATHGODAM.
Hill-side haunted by centaurs Sunday after-noon talk The, Rudra prayer of the Vedas, the Benidiction after mourning Suradas Song Always face the brute The Terai and change of :
:
:
...
vegetation.
...
...
...
Pages 64-69
CHAPTER V ON THE WAY
TO BARAMULLA.
The Punjab love of the Swami for and reminiscences of the The vision of the old Brahmin chanting the Vedas and its deep impression on the Swami Vivekananda, a breaker of Talk at Dulai A new chapter of Hinduism Vamabondage
province
:
:
:
chara
:
Love, the only cure for evil
The Swami
:
Fragments of
talks
on the
naughtiness in childhood and remedy for the His love for Siva On marriage as the type of the soul s relation to God Meeting a*party of Sannyasi pilgrims Q n the
way same
:
s
:
:
:
:
IV
good and
effects
evil
The legend
of religion
The Dak Bangalow
:
of the vale of Kashmir.
CHAPTER THE VALE
the evolution of different ideals
each must hold
:
VI
OF KASHMIR.
Meeting an old Mohamedan lady
On
at Uri
Pages 70-83
...
...
Meeting Bengali
:
different
by
itself true in its future existence.
CHAPTER
officials
:
nations to which
Pages 84-90
...
VII
LIFE AT SRINAGAR. The Swami, on what Buddhism attempted past
Federalisation of religions
:
to bring
out
Talk on Chenghiz Khan
in :
the
Com
position of the Ode to The Awakened India Visiting the temples of Kshir Bhawani and Takt-i-Suliman The beautiful view from 3
:
:
the latter place
:
Fragments
of talks
on Tulsidas Sayings and the
Upanishads On Why Ravana could not tempt Sita by taking the form of Rama On Thomas a Kempis Kalidas s Kumar-Sambhabam and the privilege given to women and Sudras to read the The celebration of the 4th of July, the American Day Scriptures :
:
:
:
of Independence in the house-boat
of July
The great
:
The Swami
:
s
difference between a house-holder
Ode
to the 4th
and a Sannya-
Visit to Dahl Lake, Shalimar Bag, etc. The Swami s attempt to visit Amarnath by the Sonamarg route and failure on account of the break of glaciers His realisations on return.
sin
:
:
:
Pages 91-109
CHAPTER THE TEMPLE Sailing
of
Ram
Krishna
down
OF PANDRENTHAN.
the Jhellum with the
Prasad, on the Divine Mother :
On
the
way
to
VIII
Islamabad
1
Swami :
Fragments of songs Bhakti Radhaon Talk :
the old old
Temple
of Pan-
a relic of
drenthan critical in
Buddhism
examination of
its
architectural importance
Its
:
interior
and
exterior
The
:
a
four periods
which the Swami divided the History of Kashmir, placing The magni Pandrentham on the second period
the building of
:
Notes from the evening talk at The Christian rituals derived from the Buddhistic
view from the Temple
ficent
Pandrentham
:
:
and the latter from the Vedic Christianity has no common prayer like Hinduism Mohamedanism, the only religion that broke :
:
down
the idea of Priesthood
:
The Swami
ence of Christ and his dream off Crete
s :
doubts about the exist
The probable
origin of
by the meeting of Indian and Egyptian ideas with S. Paul Jndaism and Hellenism at Alexandria in old times Buddha and Mahomed, the only historical capable of Jesuitry Christianity
:
:
figures
in
Christianity
records
old religious
Buddha
:
lived.
surely
...
A
:
...
...
WALKS AND TALKS
examination of
...
CHAPTER The view up
critical
was the greatest man who ever Pages 110-125
IX
BESIDE THE JHELLUM.
the Jhellum calling up memories of Kalidas
and
of the Himalayas, Siva
Uma
:
Across the
fields
s
picture
on the banks
with the Swami His talk on The Sense of Sin Egyptian, Semitic and Aryan The Vedic God of anger becoming Mara, the Lord of Lust in Buddhism The difference between th e Vedic :
,
:
:
Anger-God and Satan of Christianity Zoroaster, a reformer of some old Vedic religion Ormuzd and Ahriman are but manifes tations of the Supreme Righteousness and Sin becoming later the Vidyd and AvidyA of the Upanishads The talk on guiding the future of India and the Indian people On National life as a ques :
:
:
:
:
tion of organic forces it
to
do the
rest
:
On
;
re-inforce.the current of that life, then leave the Ideas of renunciation and mukti as the
sources of Indian National
fife
:
The temple
of Bij-Behara and the
vi Islamabad
:
The Swami
s
the
coolness in the face of danger and death Fragments of
story of his encountering a bull in England reminiscences of his life as a wandering friar: The
:
temple of Marttand
Nivedita about
\vith the Sister
Calcutta
:
A
architectural
Its
:
great responsibility of the invitation to Sister to the Shrine of
The
:
Educational
same
His advice
:
work
for the
:
talk
Work
at
to
depend His view of the
Achhabal and the Swami s accompany him on a pilgrimage
same
Nivedita to
significance
Women s
tentative plan for the
on her own inspiration mainly
Ruins of the
Amarnath.
:
...
...
Pages 126-142
CHAPTER X THE SHRINE The Swami
OF AMARNATH.
meeting the pilgrim Sddhus at Bawan
s
:
The
The opposition to admitting Sister Nivedita among the pilgrims removal of the Pilgrim Camp to Chandanawara 18,000 feet above :
sea-level
the
:
Swami
quarters
:
Arrival at the Pantajharni, the place of five streams and s fulfilling the The study of a glacier at close Laws :
Arrival at the cave of
tions in the cave
:
The
return
Islamabad and Srinagar.
:
Amarnath
:
at
Evening
The Swami Pahlgam ...
...
CHAPTER
:
s
realisa
Back
to
Pages 143-153
XI
AT SRINAGAR ON THE RETURN
JOURNEY.
common longing of his His talk Nivedita about with India, conception people Hinduism an faith, spirituality deep making agressive missionary among many orthodox Hmdus, the association of Spirituality with The Swhmi
s
for
freedom and the touch of the
:
orthodoxy being accidental and not essential, Sri Ramakrishna as the
embodiment of the highest inner
life in
the Soul with perfect
worship of Sri Rama krishna leaving others free to decide for themselves which personactivity
on the outer plane
:
The Swami
s
Vll
alities
they would worship
:
The Swami
s
repudiation of palmistry,
character-reading, preaching of religion by displaying miracles : Per His worshipping the little Mohammedan boat-child as
Uma
sonal wish for special quiet of one of the ladies of the party
encampment on the land by the river-side, which of Kashmir was anxious for a time to offer to making a centre of
his organisation.
CHAPTER
the
the
:
and the
Maharajah
Swami
for
Pages 154-159
...
XII
THE CAMP UNDER THE CHENNAARS. The Swami
s meeting an European guest at the temporary His talk about Meera Bai, under the Chennaars encampment the queen who would not be queen for love of God About a song :
:
Tana Sena About Rana Pratap Sing Krishna Kumari Leaving for Ganderbal.
of
:
:
of Cheetore ...
:
About
Pages 160-166
CONCLUDING WORDS OF THE EDITOR.
BLESSINGS TQ NIVEDITH,
/
t~~S2*
, !**
f f^S
,, ^-^
^1**
<.
&<*e~
^
a^/^*t
^ A~^-~
//*"
r
J
77^
.r^^xu->
,
,
^v^
/
5-z^.
.
FOREWORD Persons
The Swami
:
Vivekananda
;
Gurubhais
and
;
disciples.
A
party of European guests and disciples, amongst
whom
were Dhira Mata, the Steady Mother ; and Nivedita.
;
One
whose name was Jaya Place
Time
:
Different parts of India.
/The
year 1898.
have been the days of this In them the Ideal has become the
Beautiful year.
Real.
Belur
;
First in our river-side cottage at then in the Himalayas, at Naini-
Tal and Almora
;
afterwards wandering
through Kashmir have come hours never to everywhere be forgotten, words that will echo through here
and
there
our lives for
ever,
;
and once
at least,
a
glimpse of the Beatific Vision. It
has been
We
all
play.
have seen a love that would be one with the humblest and most igno-
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS
moment
the world for the
rant, seeing
through his eyes, as if criticism were not we have laughed over the colossal ;
we caprice of genius ourselves at heroic fires
have warmed
;
been present, as
it
;
and we have
were, at the
awaken
ing of the Holy child. But there has been nothing grim or serious about any of these things. Pain
has come close to
all
Solemn
of us.
anniversaries have been and gone. But sorrow was lifted into a golden light,
where
it
was made
radiant,
and did not
destroy.
Fain,
if
I
our journeys. the
irises in
would
could,
Even bloom
at
as
I
describe
I
write
I
Baramulla
;
see
the
young rice beneath the poplars at Is lamabad starlight scenes in Himalayan and the royal beauties of Delhi forests ;
;
and the Taj. One longs some memorial of these.
to It
attempt
would be
worse than useless. Not, then,
in
but in the light of memory,
they are
words,
FOREWORD enshrined for ever, together with the kindly and gentle folk who dwell among them, and
whom we
trust
always to have
the gladder for our coming.
left
We
have learnt something of the mood in which new faiths are born, and of the Persons who inspire such faiths. For we have been with one who drew all
men
with
listening to
to him,
all,
and refusing none.
known a humility littleness,
all,
feeling
We
have
that
wiped out all a renunciation that would die
scorn of oppression and pity of the oppressed, a love that would bless even for
the
oncoming
feet
of torture
and of
We
have joined hands with that woman who washed the feet of the Lord with her tears, and wiped them with the death.
hairs of her head.
We
have lacked, not uncon
the occasion, but her passionate sciousness of self.
Seated under a tree
in the
garden dead emperors there came to us a vision of all the rich and splendid things
of
%
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS of Earth, offering themselves as a shrine for the great of soul. The storied win
dows of
and the jewelled
cathedrals,
thrones of kings, the banners of great captains and the vestments of the priests, the pageants of of the proud,
and the retreats came, and all were
cities, all
rejected.
In the garments of the beggar, des pised by the alien, worshipped by the
and only people, we have seen him the bread of toil, the shelter of cottageroofs, and the common road across the ;
seem
real
to this
life
cornfields
ground his
Amongst
sence, for his return,
And
back
loved
the
boatmen watched the
puted
for the
him as ignorant as scholars and statesmen. The
own,
much
enough
river, in his
ab
and servants
dis
with Quests to do him service. through it all, the veil of playful
ness was never dropped. "They played with the Lord," and instinctively they c
knew
it.
,
4
FOREWORD To
who have known
those
such
and sweeter, and in the long nights even the wind in the palm-trees seems to cry hours,
life is
"Mahadeva
richer
!
Mahuldeva
5
!
Mahadeva
!"
CHAPTER
I
THE HOUSE ON THE GANGES. Place
A
:
Time:
cottage at Belur, besides the Ganges.
March
Of
to
the
May
nth.
home by
Master had said that
little
heaven, for to
to
the
one
Ganges,
"You
find
will
house of Dhira Ma,t& it is
all
love,
the
like
from beginning
end."
was
It
indeed.
so
Within,
an
unbroken harmony, and without, every the green stretch thing alike beautiful, of grass, the tall cocoanut palms, the little
brown
villages in the jungle,
and
the nilkantha that built her nest in a tree-
top beside us, on purpose to bring us In the morning the blessings of Siva. but the shadows lay behind the house :
in the
afternoons
we could
sit in
front,
worshipping the Ganges herself, great and in sight oi mother leonine !
Dakshineswar.
THE HOUSE ON THE GANGES There came one and another with and we learnt traditions of the past ;
Master
of the
s
s
wanderings of the name changed from village to eight year
;
of the Nirvikalpa Sam&dhi and of that sacred sorrow, too deep for village
;
;
words, or for who loved had
common
sight, that
And
alone seen.
one
there,
came the Master Himself, with his stories of Um& and Siva, of Radha and Krishna, and his fragments of song and too,
poetry. It
seemed material
first
if
he knew that the
of a
new consciousness
as
vivid, but iso
must be a succession of
experiences, poured out without proper sequence, so as to provoke the mind of the learner to work for its own lated
conception of order and
any this
that
rate,
whether he knew
it
or
At not,
was the canon of educational science For the he unconsciously fulfilled.
most that
relation.
part,
it
was the
he portrayed
Indian religions
for us, to-day dealing
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS with one, and to-morrow with another, choice guided, seemingly, by the
his
whim
moment.
of the
religion
only
But
it
that he poured
Sometimes it would be Again, it would be folk-lore.
was not out upon
us.
history.
On
still
another occasion, it would be the mani fold anomalies and inconsistencies of race, caste,
and custom.
In fact
herself became, as heard in last
ing
India
him, as the
and noblest of the Pfirdnas, through his lips. Another point in which
utter
itself
he had
caught a great psychological secret was that of never trying to soften for us that
which would repellent.
at first sight be difficult or
In matters Indian he
would
rather put forward, in its extreme form, at the beginning of our experience, all that it might seem impossible for
European minds would quote, for about Gouri and
to
instance,
Sankar
form 8
Thus he some verse
enjoy.
in a
single
THE HOUSE ON THE GANGES "On
one side grows the hair
in
long
black curls,
And on On one
the other, corded like rope. are seen the beautiful
side
garlands, the other,
On
snake-like
One
side
the
The
is
bone earrings and coils.
white with ashes, like
snow mountains,
other,
golden as the light of
dawn.
For He, the Lord, took a form, And that was a divided form, Half- woman and
half-man."
And siasm
things,
hend
carried by his burning enthu was possible to enter into these and dimly, even then, to appre
it
their
meaning.
Whatever might be the the
subject of
ended always on Indeed I do not know that our Master s realisation of the Adwaita Philosophy has been conversation,
it
the note of the Infinite.
in
anything more convincing than in
.
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS matter of his interpretation of the He might appear to take up
this
world.
any
subject,
but
scientific, it
an
as
Vision. secular.
age,
of the
illustration
Ultimate
There was, for him, nothing He had a loathing for bond
and a horror of those who
chains with to
ethnological, or he always made us feel
literary,
make
flowers,"
"cover
but he never failed
the true critic
s
distinction be
and the highest forms of art. One day we were receiving European guests, and he entered into a long talk tween
this
ab6ut Persian poetry. Then suddenly, himself finding quoting the poem that says,
"For
one mole on the face of
my
would give all the wealth of Beloved, Samarcand he turned and said ener I
!"
would not give a straw, you know, for the man who was incap able of appreciating a love song!" His getically
"I
too teemed with epigrams. It was that same afternoon, in the course of
ta[k,
a long political argument, that he said 10
THE HOUSE ON THE GANGES "In
order to become a nation,
that
we need a common hate
a
common
it
appears
as well as
love."
months
Several
later
he remarked
that before one who had a mission he
never talked of any of the gods save Uma and Siva. For Siva and the
Mother made the great workers. Yet have sometimes wondered if he knew at this time how the end of every theme I
was
Much
bhakti.
of spiritual
luxury
as he
dreaded the
emotion
for
those
who might be enervated by
it,
not
of what
help giving glimpses
he could it
the consumed with And so he would intoxication of God.
meant
chant "
to
be
for us
such peoms as
They have made Rjidha queen,
in
the beautiful groves of Brindaban.
At her gate stands Krishna,on guard. His
singing all the time,: about to distribute infinite
flute is
Radha
is
wealth of love. 1 1
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS Though I am guard, all may enter. Come all ye who thirst Glory unto Radha
world
the
!
Say only
!
Enter the region of love Or he would give us the great antiphonal Chorus of the Cowherds, written !"
by
his friend :*
Men.
Thou art the Soul of Thou yellow garbed, With thy blue eyes.
Women. Thou
dark
One
souls,
Thou
!
Shepherd of Brind^ban Kneeling at the feet of the
!
Sheperdesses.
Men.
My
soul sing the praise
of
the glory of the Lord,
Who Women. Thy
took the
beauty
human for
form.
us,
the
Gopis.
Men.
Thou Lord
of
Sacrifice.
Saviour of the weak. *
The
late
Bengali dramatist, Babu Girish Chandra Ghose.
12
THE HOUSE ON THE GANGES Women.
Who lovest R&dh, and thy body
on
floats
own
its
tears.
One forget.
we can never
such day (May.g)
We had been sitting talking under when suddenly a storm came moved to the terrace, overhang
the trees, on.
We
ing the river, and then to the verandah. Not a moment too soon. Within ten minutes,
the
opposite
bank of the
Ganges was hidden from our view, and in
the blackness before us
the rain
falling
in
we
could hear
and
torrents,
the
now and
thunder crashing, while every
then there was a lurid flash of lightning. And yet, amidst all the turmoil of the
elements,
we
sat
in
on,
our
little
verandah, absorbed in a drama far more intense. One form passed back and forth across our
tiny
stage
;
one voice
compassed all the players; and the play that was acted before us was the love of the soul for
God!
Till we,
too
caught the kindling, and loved for the
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS moment could
with a
not
put Shall
disturb.
Love,
And
the
or
that the rushing river out nor the hurricane
fire
many, waters quench
overwhelm
floods
before Prometheus
before him together
left us,
and he
we
it
?"
knelt
blest us
all.
One day, early the cottage-life, Swami took the Dhinl M4t^, and her whose name was Jay4, to be re in
17.
the
time by S^rada Devi, had come from her village home, to
ceived for the
who
Calcutta,
first
his
at
call.
brought back with them a guest to
whom
the
day makes one of
Thence for a
they few hours,
memory
of that
life s
great festivals. the fragrance of
Never can she
forget the Ganges, nor the long talk with the Master, nor the service Jaya had done that
morning
by
orthodox of Hindu
the
most
to eat
with
winning
woman
(
her foreign the
disciples
many happy
;
ties
nor any one of that
that
day
broyght into existence and consecrated. March, 26.
A
week
later
the
same guest was
THE HOUSE ON THE GANGES there again, coming late on
and going away on
At
this time, the
of
coming
Wednesday,
Saturday evening. the custom
Swami kept
early,
and
spending the morning-hours there,
and
the
to
cottage
again returning in the late afternoon. On the second morning of this visit,
however, of the
Friday,
the Christian
Annunciation,
he took
feast
us
all
three back to the Math, and there, in the
worship-room, was held a Brahmacharini. mornings.
were taken
service
where one was made a
of initiation,
of
little
That was the happiest After
upstairs.
service,
we
The Swami
*put
the
ashes and
bone-earrings and matted locks of a Siva-yogi, and sang
on
the
and played
to
us
Indian instruments,
And
Indian for
music
on
an hour.
evening, in our boat on the Ganges, he opened his heart to us, and told us much of his questions and in the
regarding the trust that ,he held from his own Master.
anxieties
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS Another week, and he was gone to Darjeeling, and till the day that the plague declaration brought him back we May,
3.
saw him again no more. Then two of us met him
in the
house
Holy Mother. The political sky was black. It seemed as if a storm were of our
The moon
about to burst.
of those
evenings had the brown haze about it that is said to betoken civil disturbance
and already plague, panic, were doing their fell work. Master turned "There
are
existence of
to
the
two
and
riot
And
the
and
said,
some who scoff at the Kali. Yet to-day She is out
there amongst the people. They are frantic with fear, and the soldiery have
Who
been called to deal out death. can
say
that
God
does not manifest
Himself as Evil as well as Good only the Hindu dares to worship in the evil."
He
?
But
Him
had come back, and the old life was resumed once more, as far as could (
THE HOUSE ON THE GANGES be,
seeing that an epidemic was in pros
pect,
and that measures were on hand
As long give the people confidence. as this possibility darkened the horizon, to
he would
not
leave
Calcutta.
But
it
passed away, and those happy days with it, and the time came that we should go.
CHAPTER
II
AT NAINI TAL AND ALMORA fersons:
The Swami Vivekananda
anc
Guru-bhais*,
;
disciples.
A
party of Europeans, amongst
MM,
was Jaya Place
Time
;
whom
were Dhira
One whose name
;
and Nivedita.
The Himalayas.
:
/May
We two
Steady Mother
the
II to
May
25, 1898.
were a large party,
parties, that left
Wednesday layas.
Howrah
in
sight
They seemed
of the
to
rise
on
station
and on
evening,
morning came
indeed,
or,
Friday
Hima
suddenly
out of the plains, a few hundred yards
away. Naini Tal
was made
three things,
the Master
beautiful
by
pleasure in introducing to us his disciple, the Raja the dancing girls who met us of Khetri s
;
and asked us where *
Spiritual
same Master
brethren
to
find him,
disciples
;
are so called.
18
of one
and
and
th<
NAINI TAL AND ALMORA were received by him, inspire of the remonstrances of others and by the ;
Mohammedan
said
any claim
after-times
in
if
"Swamiji,
who
gentleman
you as an avatar, an especial incarna tion of
the Deity
Mohammedan, am It
was
long talk
here,
on
remember the
first
I,
a
!"
we heard a
too, that
Ram Mohun
that
Roy,
which
in
he
pointed out three things as the dominant notes of this teacher s mes
sage, his acceptance of the Vedanta, his
preaching of patriotism, and that
the
love
embraced the Mussulman equally
with the Hindu.
In
all
these
things,
he claimed himself to have
taken up
the task that the breadth and
foresight
of
Ram Mohun Roy The
had mapped
incident of the
dancing
occurred in consequence of our the two temples at the head tarn,
out. girls
visit
to
of the
which from time immemorial have
been places of pilgrimage,
making the
beautiful
holy.
little
"Eye
Lake"
Here,
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS offering
worship,
women. came up
When to us,
entered
age,
them.
We
ladies
of
we found two
nautch-
they had finished, they
and we
in
broken langu
conversation
into
with
took them for respectable the town, and were much
at the storm which had evidently passed over the Swami s audience at his refusal to have them
astonished, later,
turned away. ing that
it
was
Am in
mistaken
I
in think
connection with these
dancing-women of Naini Tal told
first
us
the
story,
that
he
times
many
repeated, of the nautch-girl of Khetri ? He had been angry at the invitation to
see her,
but
being prevailed upon to
come, she sang "O
Lord, look not upon
my
evil qualities
!
Thy name, O Lord, isSame-Sightedness, Make us both the same Brahman !
One
piece of iron
is
the knife in the
hand of the butcher 20
NAINI TAL AND ALMORA
And
another piece of iron
the image in the temple. is
But when they touch the philosopher
s
stone,
Both alike turn
to gold
the sacred Jumna, foul in a ditch by the roadside.
Onedrop of water
And one
is
!
is in
But when they fall into -the Ganges, Both alike become holy !
So, Lord, look not upon
my evil qualities
!
Thy name, O Lord, is Same-Sightedness. Make us both the same Brahman !"
And
then, said the
scales
that
fell
all
from
Master of himself, the his
eyes,
are indeed one,
and seeing
he condemned
no more. [And she whose name is Java, heard from another of this same visit,
when
to the
assembled
women he spoke
words of power that moved full of love and tenderness,
all
hearts,
without se
paration and without reproach.] It was late in the afternoon when we 21
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS Naini Tal for Almora,
left
overtook us while
and night
still
travelling through on we went, follow ing the road into deep gullies, and out again, round the shoulders of projecting
the forest.
hill sides,
On and
always under the shadow of
great trees, and always preceded by tor ches and lanterns to keep off bears and
While day
tigers.
the
"rose-forests"
lasted
we had seen
and the maiden-hair
by the spring sides, and the scarlet blossoms on the wild pomegranate bushes but with nightfall, only the fra fern
;
grance of these and the honeysuckles was left to us, and we journeyed on, con
know
nothing, save silence and starlight, and the grandeur of the moun till we reached a quaintly tains placed tent to
dak-bungalow, on the mountain side, in There after some the midst of trees.
Swamiji arrived with his party, of fun, and keen in his appreciation
time, fiJl
of everything that concerned the comfort of his guests,
but
full
22
before
all,
of the
NAINI TAL AND ALMORA poetry of the weird out, the coolies by
"night
near,
and the
Man s
whispering
solemn blackness of the
From
and the
their fires,
neighing horses, the Poor
with
scenes"
Shelter
trees
and
forest.
day that we arrived at Almora the Swami renewed his habit of the
coming over to us at our early breakfast, and spending some hours in talk. Then and always, he was an exceedingly light sleeper, and I imagine that his visit to the hour might be, was often paid during the course of his return with his monks from a still earlier walk. us, early as
Sometimes, but in the
we saw him again meeting him when
rarely,
evening, either out for a walk, or going ourselves Capt. Sevier
s
where he and
to
his party
were staying, and seeing him there. And once he came at that time to call
on
us.
Into these
a strange tary to
morning
new element,
talks at
Almora,
painful but salu
remember, had
crept.
There
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS appeared
to be,
bitterness
and
irritation
of the
on one
side,
distrust, and,
and defiance.
Swami s
a curious
on the other,
The youngest
disciples at this time,
it
must be remembered, was an English woman, and of how much this fact meant
what a
intellectually,
implied,
and always
strong bias it does imply, in the
reading of India, what an idealism of the English race and all their deeds and history,
the
conception
Swami
himself had had no
the day after her initiation
till
at the monastery.
Then he had asked her
some exultant question, as to which nation she now belonged to, and had been startl ed
to find with
what a passion of loyalty
and worship she regarded the Englishgiving to it much of the feeling that an Indian woman would give to her Thakoor. His surprise and disappoint flag,
ment
at the
ceptible.
A
moment were startled look,
scarcely per
no more. Nor
did his discovery of the superficial way in which this disciple had joined herself
NA1NI TAL AND ALMORA with his people in any degree affect his confidence and courtesy during the re maining weeks spent in the plains. But with Almora, school,
seemed as
it
had commenced,
a going-toand just as
if
schooling is often disagreeable to the taught, so here, though it cost infinite pain, the blindness of a
half-view must
A
mind must be brought centre of gravity. It was
be done away. to
change its never more than
this;
creed
of opinion or
;
never the dictating never more than
Even at emancipation from partiality. the end of the terrible experience, when method, as regarded race and coun was renounced, never to be taken
this try,
up systematically again, not
call for
the
any confession of
declaration of
Swami faith,
did
any
He dropped
new
opinion. the whole question. His listener went free.
But he had revealed a
standpoint pletely
in
thoughtand
com make it
feeling, so
and so strongly as
impossible for her to
different
to
rest, until later,
by
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS her
own
view
in
labours, she
had arrived
which both these
at
a
partial present
ments stood rationalised and accounted for
patriotism like
"Really,
he exclaimed once,
sin!"
yours
is
many weeks
when
the process of obtaining an uncoloured judgment on some incident had been more than commonly exasper later,
ating.
"All
that
want you
I
to
see
is
that most people s actions are the expres sion of self-interest, and you constantly
oppose to are is
all
this the idea that a certain race
Wickedness
which
Ignorance so determined Another question on
angels.
this
!"
same
disciple
showed a most
was that of the current western estimate of woman. Both these bitter obstinacy
sympathy look petty
limitations of her
and vulgar enough
to her
now, as com
pared with the open and disinterested attitude of the R>ut
mind
at the time they
in the path,
that
welcomes
truth.
were a veritable
lion,
and remained so until she had
grasped the
folly
of allowing anything
26
NAINI TAL AND ALMORA whatever
to obscure to her the personal
was here revealing itself. Once having seen this, it was easy to be passive to those things that could not be ity that
accepted, or could not be understood, and to leave to time the formation of ultimate In every judgments regarding them. case it had been some ideal of the past that
had raised a barrier
to
the
move
ment of her sympathy, and surely it is It is the worships of one era always so. which forge the
fetters of the next.
These morning
talks at
Almora
then,
took the form of assaults upon deep-rboted
and social, preconceptions, literary, artistic, or of long comparisons of Indian and European history and sentiments, often containing extended observations of very great value. One characteristic of the Swami was the habit of attacking
the abuses of a country or society openly
and vigorously when he was in its midst, whereas after he had left it, it would often seem as if nothing but its virtues were 27
t
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS remembered by him. testing his disciples,
He
was always and the manner of
these particular discourses was probably adopted in order to put to the proof the
courage and sincerity of one both woman and European.
28
who was
CHAPTER
III
MORNING TALKS AT ALMORA
The
Place
Almora.
Time
May and June
first
1898.
morning, the talk was that of
the central ideals of civilization,
West,
truth, in the East,
justified
Hindu
in the
chastity.
marriage-customs,
He as
springing from the pursuit of this ideal, and from the woman s need of protection, in
And
combination.
relation of the
he traced out the
whole subject
to the
Phi
losophy of the Absolute.
Another morning he began by obser ving that as there were four main castes,
Sudra,
Brahman, Kshattriya, Bunea, so there were four great national
functions, the religious or
priestly,
ful
by the Hindus, the military, by the Roman Empire the mercantile by
filled
;
and the democratic, by England today America in the future. And here he ;
29
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS launched off into a glowing prophetic forecast of
how America would
the problems of the
yet solve the prob
Sudra, lems of freedom and co-operation, and turned to relate to a non-American list ener, the generosity of the
arrangements which that people had attempted to make for their aborigines.
Again
it
would be an eager rdsumJ
of the history of India or of the
whose
greatness never
Moguls
wearied
him.
Every now and then, throughout the summer, he would break out into des Once criptions of Delhi and Agra. he described the Taj as dimness, and again a dimness, and there a grave "a
!"
he spoke of Shah Jehan, and then, with a burst of enthusiasm,
Another
"Ah
,
!
time,
He
was the glory of his line A and discrimination of beauty !
feeling for, that are unparalled in history.
And
an
have seen a manuscript illuminated by him, which is one of the
artist himself
!
I
art-treasures of India.
What
a genius
!"
MORNING TALKS A T ALMORA Oftener
would
still,
tell,
it
almost with tears
and a passion side that
was Akbar of
easier
whom
he
in his voice,
to understand,
undomed tomb, open
to
be
sun and
wind, the grave of Secundra at Agra. But all the more universal forms of
human
were open to the Master. In one mood he talked of China as if feeling
she were the treasure-house of the world,
and
told us of the thrill
saw
inscriptions in old Bengali (Kutil
which he
with
?)
characters, over the doors of Chinese
Few
more eloquent of the vagueness of Western
temples.
things
could
be
ideas regarding Oriental peoples than the fact that one of his listeners alleged
untruthfulness as a notorious that race.
As a matter
Chinese are famous
in the
quality of
of
fact
the
United States,
where they are known as business-men, for their remarkable commercial inte developed to a point
far
beyond Western requirement of the written word. So the objection was an
grity,
that of the
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS of
instance
misrepresentation, which, though disgraceful, is nevertheless too common. But in any case the Swami
would have none of Social rigidity very,
!
it.
Untruthfulness
What were
!
these, except
very relative terms
And
?
as to
untruthfulness in particular, could com mercial life, or social life, or any other
form of co-operation go on
men
did not trust
men
?
for a day,
Untruthfulness
as a necessity
was
that
if
of etiquette ? different from the
And how Western
the Englishman always glad idea ? and always sorry at the proper place ? Is
But there
a difference of degree but only of degree
is still
Perhaps Or he might wander as Italy, that
greatest of the
far afield as
countries of
Europe, land of religion and of art of
?
!
;
alike
and of organization mother of ideas, of culture,
imperial
Mazzini
;
and of freedom r
One day
!"
it
was
Mahrattas and the year 32
Sivaji s
and the
wandering as a
AT ALMORA
MOKN/Ni; TALKS Saunydsi, that "And
garh.
S \vami,
won him home to
this
"authority
Sannytisi,
lest
in
tin*
Aryans
?
said
day,"
the
dreads the
India
he conceal
yellow garb another Often the enquiry,
Rai-
to
beneath his
Siv&ji."
Who and
what are
absorbed his attention
;
and, holding- that their origin was com plex, he would tell us how in Switzerland
he had
felt
himself to be
in
China, so
He believed too were the types. that the same was true of some parts of like
Then
were scraps of information about countries and physiog
Norway.
there
nomies, an impassioned tale of the Hun garian scholar, who traced the Huns to Tibet, and lies buried in Darjeeling so on.
and
was very interesting throughout summer, to watch, not only in the
It
this
Swami s case, but in that who might be regarded as of the old Indian
culture,
of
all
persons
representative
how
strong-
was the fascination exerted by enquiries 33
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS of
this nature.
It
seemed
as
if
in
the
intellectual life of the East, questions of
race and custom and ethnological origins and potentialities took the place that
the observation of international politics might hold in the West. The idea
suggested itself that Oriental scholars and statesmen could never ignore this element in their peculiar problems, and
would be
likely
the
at
same time
to
bring a very valuable power of discri mination to bear upon it.
Sometimes the Swami would deal with the rift between Brahmins and Kshattriyas, painting the whole history of India as a struggle between the two, and showing that the latter had always
embodied the
rising,
fetter-destroying
He could give impulses of the nation. excellent reason too for the faith that was
in
him
that the Kayasthas of
Bengal represented Kshattriyas.
He
modern
the
pre-Mauryar would portray th(
two opposing types of 34
culture,
the
on<
WORKING TALKS AT ALMORA and saturated with an ever-deepening sense of tradition and the other, defiant, impulsive, custom classical, intensive,
;
liberal in its out-look. It was part of a deep-lying law of the historic deve Rama, Krishna, and lopment that
and
Buddha had
all
arisen in the kingly,
And
not in the priestly caste.
in
and this
paradoxical moment, Buddhism was re duced to a caste-smashing formula
"a
religion invented by the Kshattriyas" as a crushing rejoinder to Brahminism !
That was a great hour indeed, when he spoke of Buddha
catching a word that seemed to identify him with its anti-Brahminical spirit, an uncompre
hending did not
listener
for,
"Why Swami, I were a Buddhist you he said rounding on her, his
know
"Madam,"
;
said,
that
!"
whole face aglow with the inspiration of am the servant of the that name, "I
servants
Who Lord
of the
servants
was there ever
like
of
Buddha.
Him
who never performed one 35
?
ihe
action
,
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS Himself
for
embra
with a heart that
ced the whole world
So
!
of pity
full
that
He
His
life
prince and monk to save a little goat
that
He
sacrificed himself to the
would give
So loving
!
hunger
to of a tigress hospitality of a And He came pariah and blessed him
the
!
\
my room when I was a boy and I For I knew it was the fell at His feet Lord Himself Many times he spoke of Buddha in into
!
!"
fashion,
this
sometimes
sometimes afterwards. told
us
the
courtesan
beautiful in
story
of
who
Belur and
at
And
once he
Amb,pftli,
the
Him,
feasted
words that re-called the revolt of
Rossetti s
Magdalene "Oh
great
half-sonnet
of
Mary
:
loose
me
!
Seest thou not
my
s face,
That draws me
to
Bridegroom him ? For his
my
My
hair,
my
tears,
He
to-day
36
:
feet kiss,
craves
And oh
!
MORNING TALKS AT ALMORA
What words
He
me
see
Shall
can
needs me,
tell
what other day and place
blood clasp those stained feet of His ? calls
me, loves me,
let
me go all
!"
But national feeling did not have it its own way. For one morning when
chasm seemed to be widest, there was a long talk on bhakti that per
the
with the
fect identity
Beloved that the
Ramananda the Rilya Bengali nobleman before Chaitanya so
devotion
of
beautifully illustrates "Four
eyes met. There were changes in
And now
1
two
cannot remember
whether he
And
I
a
I
know
is,
talked
a
there were two,
came, and there
It
is
a
man
woman, or he a woman and I
All
souls.
man
!
Love
one was that same morning that he of the
Babists
37
of
is
Persia,
!"
in
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS martyrdom of the woman who inspired and the man who wor And doubtless shipped and worked. their era of
then he expatiated
on that theory of somewhat quaint and surprising to
his
unaccustomed minds, not so much the matter of the statement, as
for
for the
of the expression, goodness of the young,
of the
explicitness
greatness and who can love without seeking personal
expression for their love, and their high potentiality.
Another day coming at sunrise when the snows could be seen, dawn-lighted, from the garden, it was Siva and Uma on whom he dwelt, and that was Siva, up there, the white snow-peaks, and the
upon Him was the Mother of the World For a thought on which at this time he was dwelling much was light that
fell
!
that <;
it,
God
is
the
or outside
God
it,
Universe,
not within
and not the universe
or the image of and the All.
God
but
He
it,
MORNING TALKS AT ALMORA Sometimes he would
sit
through the summer hours telling us stories,
all
for
not at
function
is
fictions,
but
Hinduism, whose
of
those cradle-tales
all
that of our nursery
much more,
the
like
man-
making myths of the old Hellenic world. Best of all these I thought was the Suka, and
story of
we looked on the
Siva-mountains and the bleak scenery of Almora the evening we heard it for the
first
time.
the
Suka,
Paramahamsa,
typical
be born
refused to
for
fifteen
years,
because he knew that his birth
wpuld
mean
mother
his
father
appealed
The
death.*
to
Um^,
reader
may
the
his
Divine
question this version of the story of
But the Sister Nivedita, as
Suka.
Then
She was perpetually tearing
mother. *
s
far
as
we can judge has make it appear* that Suka had in
put the facts here thus, intentionally, either to
more natural his heart
kindred, born,
mother
;
for
or to suggest
he (Suka)
home and
the great
love
knew he would
all for
leave father, mother,
the love of God, as soon as he
was
causing death-like pangs to them, especially *to his s
heart.
whi e reading the
The
reader
last part
should remember this also,
of the story.
39
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS
down
the veil of Ma,y& before the hidden
and Vy&sa pleaded that She should cease this, or his sou would never come to birth. UniTi consented, for one Saint,
moment
only and that
He came
was born.
man
sixteen years
and went neither
moment
nor
father
young
unclothed,
forward,
straight
his
a
forth
of age,
the child
knowing
his
mother,
straight on, followed by Vyasa. Then, coming round a mountain-pass his
body melted away from him, because it was no different from the universe, and his father following and crying, "Oh
my
son
!
ed only by the
among
Oh my son echo,
the rocks.
"Om
!"
!
was answer
Om Om !
!"-
Then Suka resum
ed his body, and came to his father to But Vyasa get knowledge from him. found that he had none for him, and sent him to Janaka, king of MithiU, the father of Sitsi, if perchance he might
have some
Three days he
to give.
sat
outside the royal gates, unheeded, with-
40
MORNING TALKS AT ALMORA out a change of expression or of look.
The
day he was suddenly admit
fourth
the king s presence with tclat. Still there was no change. Then as a test, the powerful sage ted
to
who was
the
king s prime a himself into
translated
minister,
beautiful
every one to turn away from the sight But of her, and none dared speak. Suka went up to her and drew her to
woman, so present had
sit
that
beautiful
beside him
on
his
while
mat,
he
talked to her of God.
Then
the minister turned
to
Jandka oh if saying, you seek King, the greatest man on earth, this is he There is little more told of the life "Know,
!"
of Suka.
He
is
the
ideal
Parama-
To him
alone amongst men was it given to drink a handful of the waters of that one undivided Ocean of Sat-Chit-
hamsa.
Ananda
existence,
bliss absolute
!
Most
knowledge saints die,
heard only the thunder of
Its
and
having
waves
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS upon the shore. A few gain the vision and still fewer, taste of It. But he drank of the Sea of Bliss !"
was indeed the Swami s He was the type, to him, of saint. that highest realisation to which life and
Suka
the world are merely play. Long after, we learned how Sri Ramakrishna had
spoken of him Suka."
And
his
in
boyhood
never can
I
as,
"My
forget the into depths
one gazing far of joy, with which he once stood and quoted the words of Siva, in praise o: look, as of
the
deep
spiritual
significance
of the
Bhagavad-Gita, and of the greatness o: Suka know, the real meaning o "I
teachings of the
the
Bhagavad-Gita and Suka knows, and perhaps Vyasc knows a little !
Another day talked
of the
had arisen inrolling wash
that
in
Alrnora the
great
Swam
humanising
live,
Bengal, at the lon| of the first wave o
in
modern conciousness
on the
ancien
MORNING TALKS AT ALMORA
Of Ram Hindu culture. Mohun Roy we had already heard from And now of the him at Nani Tal. of
shores
Pundit Vidy^sjigar he exclaimed "There of my age in Northern is not a man India, fallen
on l"
whom It
shadow has not to him to these men and Sri his
was a great joy
remember that R4makrishna had
all
been born within
a few miles of each other.
to
The Svvami us now as
"
introduced Vidy&siigar the hero of widow re
marriage, and of the aboliton of poly But his favourite story ab out gamy."
him was of that day when he went home from the Legislative Council, pondering over the question of whether or not to adopt English dress on such occasions. Suddenly some one came up to a fat
Mogul who was proceeding homewards in leisurely and pompous fashion, in front of him, with the news Sir, your house is on fire The Mogul went "
!"
neither faster nor slower for this infor-
43
NOTES OF mation,
SO.\fE
WANDERINGS
and presently the
messengei
contrived to express a discreet astonish ment. Whereupon his master turned
on him angrily, "Wretch!" he said, "am I to abandon the gait of my ancestors, because
burning behind,
a few
sticks
happen
chudder, dhoti and
sandals,
not even
adopting coat and slippers.
The
be
to
And
Vidy^s^gar, walking determined to stick to the
?"
picture of
retreat for a
,
Vidysgar going into
month
for the
study of the
Sh^stras, (Scriptures), when his mother had suggested to him the re-marriage of
child-widows, was
"He very forcible. came out of his retirement of opinion that
they were not against such re-marriage, and he obtained the signatures of the pundits that they agreed in this opinion. Then the action of certain native princes led the pundits to abandon their own sig natures, so that, had the Government not
determined to
assist
the movement,
could not have been carried
44
and
it
now,"
.MORNING TALKS
AT ALMORA
the added the Swami, an economic rather than a "
We And
alone, it
social
was
has
basis."
man who
a
could believe that
\vas able to discredit
force
difficulty
polygamy by moral
"intensely
spiritual."
was wonderful indeed
to
realise
the Indian indifference to a formal creed,
when we heard how
this giant
was driven
when 140000
by the famine of 1864,
to people died of hunger and disease, have nothing more to do with God, and
become entirely agnostic in thought. With this man, as one of the educators of Bengal, the
Swami coupled
the name of David Hare, the old Scots man and atheist to whom the clergy of
Calcutta refused Christian
had died
burial.
of nursing
an
old
So
his
own
cholera.
He pupil
boys dead body and buried it in a swamp, and made the grave a place of has That place now pilgrimage. through
carried his
become College Square, the educational centre and his school
45
is
now
within
the
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS
And to this day, Calcutta University. students make pilgrimage to the tomb.
On
this
day we took advantage of
the natural turn of the conversation
Swami
the cross-question influence possible
that
as
to
to
the
Christianity
might have exerted over himself. Hi was much amused to hear that such ;i statement had been hazarded, and told us with much pride of his only contac: with missionary influences, in the persoi. of his old Scotch master, Mr. Hastie
This
hot-headed
old
man
lived
01
nothing, and regarded his room as boy s home as much as his own.
hi
was he who had Sri
I
Swami Ramakrishna, and towards the em first
sent the
t<
of his stay in India he used to say
my
boy, you were
right!
It is
am proud don
of
true
him
right,
that !"
all is
"Ye
you wer-
God
cried the
"
!"
Swami
think you could say that hhad Christianised me much!" It appeal "but
ed,
I
t
indeed,
that
he had only been
46
hi
>
MORNING TALKS AT ALMORA some
six
months, having attended college so irregularly that the Presidency College refused to send him for
pupil
up
though he undertook
for his degree,
to pass
We
!
heard charming
less serious
subjects.
instance,
own
There
was the
an American
in
lodging-house
on
stories, too,
where he had had
to
city for
cook his
and where he would meet,
food,
in
of operations, "an actress roast turkey everyday, and a
course
the
who
ate
husband and wife who lived by making And when the Swami remons ghosts". with
trated
persuade
husband, and tried to
the
him
to
give
up
deceiving not to do
ought people, saying this the wife would come up behind, and say eagerly "Yes Sir that s just "You
!"
!
makes
all
the
ghosts, and Mrs. Williams takes
all
the
what
tell
I
him
;
for he
money!"
He
told us also of a
an educated man, who, 47-
young engineer, at
a spiritualistic
,
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS gathering,
"when
the fat Mrs. Williams
appeared from behind the screen as his thin mother, exclaimed Mother dear,
how you have world li
the
spirit-
!"
At
broke,
hope
in
grown
this,"
for
said the
I
for the
peasant
s
thought there could be no But never at a loss, he
Russian painter,
to paint
dead
tion given
heart
"my
man."
told the story of a
was ordered
Swami,
father,
being,
the
of a
picture
the only descrip
"Man
you he had a wart on
who
!
don
his nose
at last, therefore, the painter
I
t
tell
When
?"
had made
a p6rtrait of some stray peasant, and affixed a large wart to the nose, the
was declared to be ready, and the son was told to come and see it. picture
He
stood in front
come, and said
of
it,
"Father
changed you are since
I
!
over
greatly
Father
saw you
!
how last
!"
this, young engineer would never speak to the Swami again, which showed at least that he could see the
After
the
4s
MORNING TALKS A T ALMORA of a
point
But
story.
at
Hindu monk was genuinely
this,
the
astonished.
In spite of such general interests, however, the inner strife grew high,
and the thought pressed on the mind of one of the older members of our party that the
Master himself needed service
and peace. Many times he spoke with wonder of the torture of life, and who can say bitter
how many
need
A
?
signs there were, of word or two was
enough and he, after many hours, came back and told us that he longed for quiet, and would
spoken
little,
alone
>o
to
but
the
and
forests
find
soothing.
And
then,
he .saw the
looking up,
young moon shining above
Mohammedans
said
"The
the
new moon.
Let us
new moon, begin a new
us,
think also,
life
!"
and he
much of with the
And he
blessed his daughter with a great bless ing, so that she, thinking that her old relationship
was broken, nor dreaming 49
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS new and deeper life was being given to it, knew only that the hour was that a
strange and passing sweet. And so that strife was ended, and for all views and opinions of the Swami,
room made thenceforth, that they might be held and examined, and determined on at leisure, however im there was
possible or unpleasing they might at the first.
He
went.
was
It
seem
Wednesday
H( on Saturday he came back. had been in the silence of the forest? ten hours each day, but on returning to
And
evenings, he had beer surrounded with so much eager atten dance as to break the mood, and he his tent in the
had
Yes, he was radiant.
fled.
discovered sannyasi,
himself
in
able
endure heat,
to
go
cold,
unspoilt by the West. else
he had
present,
and
got, \ve
the
He
old-time
barefoot,
and
anc
scanty
fare
This, and
wha
was enough for left him, under 50
hac
th<
th<
MORNING TALKS AT ALMORA eucalyptus trees, and amongst the tearoses, in Mr. Sevier s garden, full of gratitude and peace.
The
following Monday he went with his host an-d hostess, on a
away,
to read,
and we were left in Almora and draw, and botanise. One
evening
in
week s
that
in
One The
we
week,
Our
curiously with the In one of us read aloud "Yet
these ears,
till
set slow bell will
sat
talking
were
thoughts
Memoriam
,
and
hearing dies,
seem
to toll
passing of the sweetest soul
That ever looked with human eyes. I hear it now, and o er and o er, Eternal greetings to the dead
And Ave, Ave, Ave, Adieu, Adieu, for
;
said,
evermore."
was the very hour at which, in the distant south, one soul of our own circle was passing out of this little church It
visible of ours, into
and
30>
visit,
dinner.
after
Ma v
more
some
triumphant
finer radiance
manifestation,
June 2nd,
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS perhaps, in the closer presence possible But we did not know it yet. beyond.
another day the dark shadow knew not what hung over us. Still
then,
as
we
working on
sat
of,
we
And
Friday
morning, the telegram came, a day late that said "Goodwin died last night a: Ootacamund."
Our poor
friend
appeared, been one of the of what was to prove an last
And
i
epidemic o*
it
the Swami, and longed for his presence
by June
5th.
his side.
Sunday evening, the Swam came home. Through our gate anc over the terrace his way brought him and there we sat and talked with him moment. He did not know our news
On
<
but a great darkness hung over hin already, silence
had
and presently he broke to remind us of that saint wh(
th<
called the cobra s
from the
Beloved,"
:
victim:;
seemed tha breath he had spoken o
fever.
typhoid with his
first
had,
bite
one
"messenge
whom
he hac
*
MORNING TALKS AT ALMORA second only to Sri Ramakrishna have just," he said, "received himself.
loved,
"I
a letter that says
his
all
completed
sacrifice of his
"How
someone can in
speaking
I
fire."
"Swami
that very wrong?" tell said the Swami,
t
?"
"He
great agitation.
little
!
from amongst his
too great a man for me to judge. knew himself what he was doing."
Very
the
own body. He has burnt
"wasn
listeners,
with
sacrifices
himself in his sacrificial
exclaimed
Baba has
Paohari
:
was said
after
this,
was
He and
monks passed on. Not yet had the other news been broken. Next morning he came early, in a the party of
great mood. afterwards,
out to
He
had been
since four.
meet him, and
Goodwin
s
Some days the place
death. later,
up,
And one went told him, of
The blow
fell
Mr.
quietly.
he refused to stay
where he had received
it,
in
and
complained of the weakness that brought the image of his most faithful disciple 53
j une 6th.
he said
.
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS into
constantly
mind.
his
more manly, he ridden by one
be thus
protested, to s
was nc
It
memory,
than
to
fish
or
retain the characteristics of the
the
Man
must
conquer this and know that the dead are
dog.
illusion,
here beside us and
with
much
as
us,
absence and separa myth. And then he
as ever.
It is their
tion that
are
a
would break out again with some
bitter
utterance against the folly of imagining Personal Will to guide the universe. "As
one
he exclaimed,
if,"
s
right
God
and
Goodwin
this
!
slay
Him,
for
done
such a killing
if
he had
so
much
!"
India one was free to recognise as the most religious, because the
while
may perhaps
the
fight
in
And that
to
have
most unflinchingly I
would not be
And Goodwin,
could
lived,
And
and duty
"it
I
I
truthful,
speak of
fierce
all
!
it
another,
spoken out ol wonder at the dreams
heard a year
same
of
this utterance,
beside
put
mood
later,
54
MORNING TALKS A T ALMORA we
which
with "Why
!"
he
The
ourselves.
petty
"Every
allowed his
is
and
rest.
Only Magistrate, must and never go ever,
Eternal for
judging
free
officer
of retirement
period
sit
then,
said,
magistrate and
God,
comfort
!"
But
in
these
was calm about his loss, and chatted quietly with full
that
Swami and sat down
hours, the
first
us.
He was
morning of bhakti passing
asceticism,
divine
the
carries the soul
on
its
of reach of persons, yet
tides, far
leaves
it
out
again,
snares
those sweet
struggling to avoid
that
passion
high
into
of personality. What he said that
morning of renun ciation proved a hard gospel to one of those who listened, and when he came a^ain she put tion
that
to
it
to
love
him
as her
convic-
without attachment
involved no pain, and was in itself ideal. He turned on her with a sudden solemnity.
"What is
55
this idea of
bhakti
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS without
most
renunciation?"
he
said.
"It
is
and standing there for an hour or more, he talked of the awful self-discipline that one must impose
on
pernicious!"
would
one
if
oneself,
of the
unattached,
indeed
be
requisite nakedness
and of the danger that at any moment the most flowerlike soul might have its petals soiled of selfish motives,
with the grosser stains of life. the story of an Indian nun
asked when a
man
could be
He
told
who was
certain
of
and who sent back, for answer, a little plate of ashes. For the fight against passion was long and fierce, and at any moment the conqueror might become the conquered.
safety on this road,
And
seemed that this banner of renunciation was the flag of a great victory, that poverty and selfas
he talked,
it
mastery were the only
fit
raiment for
the soul that
would wed the Eternal
Bridegroom,
and that
life
was a long
opportunity for giving, and the thing not
MORNING TALKS AT ALMGRA taken away from us was to be mourned as lost.
Weeks
afterwards, in Kashmir,
when he was again
talking
in
some
kindred fashion, one of us ventured to ask him if the feeling he thus roused
were not that worship of pain Europe abhors as morbid. "Is
noble "But
"we
We
?"
that
the worship of pleasure, then, so
was
his
immediate
answer.
he added, after a pause,
indeed,"
worship neither pain nor pleasure. seek through either to come at that
which transcends them
both."
This Thursday morning there was a June talk on Krishna. It was characteristic
Swami s mind, and characteristic of the Hindu culture from which he
of the also
had sprung,
that he could lend himself
enjoyment and portrayal of an idea one day, that the next would see to the
pitiless analysis and left the field. He was a sharer to upon the full in the belief of his people that,
submitted to a slain
provided an
idea
was 57
spiritually true
9th.
NOTES OF and
consistent,
about
mode to
its
And
been suggested
"What
"do
who
a
of
authenticity
Ramakrishna, those
certain said
!"
itself?"
existence of Krishna, then, like
Mahommed teachers,
us
amongst
alone,
the
in
Buddha and
way he doubted.
general
religious
had been fortunate enough
have enemies as
well as friends
their
careers
historical
As
for
ruler,
A poet,
so that
a cowherd,
a warrior, and a sage had
perhaps been merged figure, holding the Gita
all
in
one beautiful
in his
But to-day, Krishna was perfect of the
,
to
were beyond Krishna, he was the
most shadowy of all. a great
such
conceive
could
that of Christ, he often told
dispute.
Sri
you not then think
ideas must have been the thing
The
this
boyhood, by his own had mentioned some doubt
religious history.
that
first
little
his
in
the
to
very
objective actuality.
He
Master. as
mattered
it
of thought had
him,
WANDERINGS
SO. WE
avatars."
58
And
hand.
"the
most
a wonderful
MORNIXG TALKS AT ALMORA picture
who
of the charioteer
followed,
reined in his horses, while he
surveyed
the field of battle and in one brief glance noted the disposition of the forces, at the to
same moment utter
to
his
that he
royal
commenced
pupil
the
deep
spiritual truths of the Gita.
And
indeed as
countrysides
we went through northern
of
India
the this
summer, we had many chances of noting how deep this Krishna-myth had set its the people. The songs that dancers chanted as they danced, in the
mark upon
roadside hamlets, were
Krishna. ,i
And
the
all
of
Radha
-and
Swami was fond of
statement, as to which we,
of course,
could have no opinion, that the Krishnaworshippers of India had exhausted the possibilities of the
romantic
motive
in
lyric poetry.
curious old story of the Gopis, then, really a fragment of some pastoral Is that
worship, absorbed by a
more modern
system, and persistently living on, in
59
all
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS its
dramatic tenderness and mirth, into
the glare of the nineteenth century But throughout these days,
?
the
Swami was fretting to be away and alone. The place where he had heard of Mr. Goodwin s loss was intolerable to him,
and
be written and
to
letters
received constantly renewed the wound.
He
said one
day that
while seeming to be all
within,
jndna
Sri Ramakrishna,
bhakti was really,
all ;
but
he
himself,
jndna, was full of bhakti, and that thereby he was apt to be as apparently
weak
all
as any
woman.
One day he
carried off a few
some one s
faulty
and brought little poem, which was sent to the widowed mother, as his memorial of
lines of
writing,
back a
her son. Requiescat
Speed Speed,
forth,
O
Pace
in
soul
blissful one,
upon thy star-strewn path, !
where thought is
60
!
ever
free,
MORNING TALKS AT ALMORA
Where
time and sense no longer mist the view,
Eternal peace and blessings be on thee!
Thy
service true, complete thy sacrifice,
Thy home
the heart of love
transcendent
Remembrance
sweet, that tells
Like altar-roses,
Thy bonds
fill
space and time, thy place behind.
are broke, thy quest
found.
in bliss is
And
one with that which comes
Death and
as
Thou
helpful
Ahead,
still
one
!
Life,
unselfish e er
on earth, aid with love this world of
And left
she
find, all
strife.
because there was nothing of the original, and he feared that then,
who was
corrected (because her lines 61
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS had been
"in
three
might be
metres")
he expatiated, long and earnestly
hurt,
upon the theme that
it
was so much
greater to feel poetically than merely to string syllables together
metre
!
He
sympathy
rhyme and
in
might be very severe on a
or an opinion that seemed
in
But an eyes sentimental or false. effort that failed found always in the his
Master
its
warmest advocate and tender-
est defence.
And how happy was
that
acknowledg to him
ment of the bereaved mother
when, in the midst of her sorrow sh( wrote and thanked him for the characte of
died so far June
It
loth.
that 1
away
was our
afternoon at
the
story
Sirkar had been called
pronounced the disease the
with
throat,
to
Almor;
of the fata
illnessofSriRamakrishna. Dr. Lall
ha(
!
last
we heard
who
over the son
his influence
Mohendr
in,
and
ha*
be cancer
c
f
leaving the young disciple
;
many warnings
as to
62
its
infectiou
>
MORNING TALKS AT ALMORA iture.
Half an hour
as he then was,
came
later,
in
"Noren",
and found them
huddled together, discussing the dangers
He
what they had been told, and then, looking down, saw at his feet the cup of gruel that had been partly taken by Sri Ramakrishna and which must have contained in it, of the
case.
listened to
germs of the mucous and pus, as the
discharges of came out in his
fatal it
attempts to swallow the thing, on account of the stricture of the foodbaffled
passage
and
in the throat.
drank
Never
was
from the
it,
He
picked
before
infection
it
them of
up, all.
cancer
mentioned amongst the disciples again.
CHAPTER ON THE WAY
IV.
TO KATHGODAM.
On
It
Saturday morning we left Almora. took us two days and a half to reach
Kathgodam. How beautiful the journey was Dim, almost tropical, forests, troops of monkeys, and the ever-wondrous !
Indian night.
Somewhere en water-mill
old
Swami told spoke of
and deserted
D/itr&
this
route near a
Mdtd
hillside
curious
forge, the
of a legend that as haunted by a
race of centaur-like phantoms, and of an
experience
had
first
known
by which one seen forms there, and only to him,
afterwards heard the folk-tale.
The
roses were
but a flower was in at a
touch,
because of
gone by this time, bloom that crumbled
and he pointed its
this
out,
wealth of associations
Indian poetry.
64
ii
ON THE WAY TO KATHGODAM
On Sunday afternoon we
rested, near
j u ne i2th.
what we took to be an out-of-the-way hotel, above a lake and and there he translated for us the fall,
the
in
Plains,
Rudra-prayer. "From
the Unreal lead us to the Real.
From darkness lead From death lead us
us unto light. to immortality.
Reach us through and through our
And evermore
protect us
Thou
From
ignorance, by
Thy
Terrible
fourth
hesitated
Face."
a long time over the
thinking of rendering it, us in the heart of our heart".
line,
"Embrace
But at
!
sweet
compassionate
He
self.
Oh
last
he put his perplexity to "The
real
us,
say-
is "Reach
ing shyly, meaning us through and through ourself." He had evidently feared that this sentence,
with
its
extraordinary intensity,
65
might
.
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS make good sense
not
But
in English.
our unhesitating choice of that afternoon has received a deep confirmation in my
own
eyes, since
a more
I
have understood that
rendering would be, Thou who art manifest only unto Thy I self, manifest Thyself also unto us literal
"O
!"
now
regard his translation as a rapid and direct transcript of the experience of
Samadki
itself.
out of the
lations,
it
and he gave us fragments
the great
which
Sanskrit,
again in an English form. was indeed an afternoon of trans
renders It
the living heart as it were, and
It tears
benediction
Hindu sacraments "The
May
mourning,
one of the most beautiful of
is
The
after
blissful
ol
the
;
winds are sweet
to us.
seas are showering bliss on us. the corn in our fields bring bliss to us
May
the plants and herbs bring bliss to us
May
the cattle give us
66
bliss.
ON THE WAY TO KATHGODAM
O
Father
Heaven be Thou
in
ful
The very
dust of the earth of
(And
the
then,
voice
bliss
unto us
!
is full
bliss.
dying down
into meditation), It is all bliss
all bliss
all
bliss."
And again we had Soor Das Song which the Swami heard from the Nautchgirl at
O
Khetri
:
Lord, look not upon
my
evil
qualities
Thy name,
O
Lord,
is
!
Samesightedness.
Make of us both the same Brahman One drop of water is in the sacred
!
Jumna,
And
another
is
foul in the ditch
by
the roadside, But,
when they
fall
into the
Ganges,
both alike become holy. So Lord, look not upon my evil qualities,
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS
Thy name, O
Lord,
is
Samesightedness,
Make of us both the same Brahman One piece of iron is the image in And
another
is
!
the temple the knife in the
hand of the butcher But when they touch the philosopher
*
stone, both alike turn to gold
So Lord, look not upon my
evil
qualities
Thy name,
O
Make
same Brahman same day, or some other
Lord,
is
Samesightedness
of us both the
Was it that that
he told us of the old Sannyasin
Benares,
who saw him annoyed by
of monkeys, and, afraid turn and run, shouted,
brute
!"
noon
to
face th
,
>
:
;
?
were always sorry this
troop
he migh
"Always
Those journeys were
At
that
ii
time,
cross
it
delightful.
W
to reach a destinatioi
took us a whole the Terai by
68
rail,
aftei th;
;
.
-
t
ON THE
WAY
TO
KATHGODAM
on which, as he reminded us, Buddha had been born. As we had come down the strip of malarial
country,
mountain-roads,
we had met
parties of
country-folk, fleeing to the upper hills, with their families and all their goods,
which would be upon them with the rains. And now, in the train, there was the gradual change of to escape the fever
vegetation pleasure,
to
watch, and the Master
greater
than
that
of
s
any
proprietor, showing us the wild pea cocks, or here and there an elephant, or in
a
train of camels.
Quickly enough, we came back to the palm-zone. Already we had reached yuccas and cactus the day before, and deodar-cedars we should not see
the
again,
till
distant Acchabal.
69
CHAPTER V ON THE WAY Persons
:
TO BARAMULLA
The Swami Vivekananda
;
Gurubhais,
am
disciples.
A
amongst whom Mata, the Steady Mother whose name was Jaya and Nivediti. party of Europeans,
Dhiri
;
wer<
On.
;
Place
Time
June
rFrom :
Bareilly to Baramulla, Kashmir.
June I4th
to 2oth, 1898.
We entered
14th.
the Punjaub next day, the Swami s excitement
and great was at the fact.
It
almost seemed as
if
he
had been born there, so close and special was his love for this province. He talked of the girls at their spinning wheels, I am listening to the "Sohum Sohum !
He
!
I
am He
!"
tion he turned to
!
Then, by a swift transi the far past, and unroll-
dd for us the great historic panorama ol the advance of the Greeks on the Indus, the
rise
of
Chandragupta, 70
and
the
ON THE WA Y
BARAMULLA
TO
development of the Buddhistic empire. He was determined this summer to find his
way
to Attock,
the
eyes spot turned back.
Gandhara
and see with
He
described
sculptures,
have seen
in the
his
own
which Alexander was
at
to
us
the
which he must
Lahore Museum the
year before, and lost himself in indignant repudiation of the absurd European claim that India had ever sat at the feet of Greece in things artistic.
Then
there were flying glimpses of
long expected
cities,
Ludhiana, where
certain trusty English disciples
where
his Indian
had ended; and so on.
We came,
as children lectures
had lived
;
Lahore,
upon the dry gravel beds of many rivers and learnt that the space between one pair was called the Doab and the
too,
area containing them
was
all,
the
Punjaub.
twilight, crossing one of these stony tracts, that he told us of that great vision which came to him years ago, It
at
while he was
still
new 71
to the
ways of the
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS of a
life
as
monk, giving back
to
him,
he always afterwards believed, the
ancient "It
mode was
of Sanskrit chanting.
evening,"
he
said,
that
"in
age when the Aryans had only reached I saw an old man seated on the Indus. the bank
of the
great
river.
Wave
upon wave of darkness was rolling in upon him, and he was chanting from the Rik Veda. Then I awoke, and went
on chanting.
They were
the tones that
we used long Many months later, one of those who listened, heard the story ot this and vision once more from the Swami ago."
;
it
seemed
to her then, with her
insight into his
method
gathered
of thought,
that
had been an experience of immense subjective importance. Perhaps it was a token to him of a transcendent continuity it
in
the
spiritual
experience, forbidding-
be baffled even by the lapse of millenniums and the breaking of many it
to
life-threads.
If so,
one could not expect
72
ON THE WAY TO BARAMULLA him
to be explicit
who were
on the
Those
point.
constantly preoccupied
with
own
past,
imagination regarding their always aroused his contempt.
But on
second occasion of telling the story, he gave a glimpse of it, from a very this
different point of view.
he was saying, "had caught the rhythm of the Vedas, the national cadence. Indeed I al "Sankaracharya,"
ways
imagine",
he went on suddenly,
with dreamy voice and
far
away
look,
always imagine that he had some mine when he was vision such as "I
and recovered the ancient young, music that way. Anyway, his whole life s
work
is
nothing but
that,
the
throbbing of the beauty of the Vedas
and
Upanishads."
Speeches
like
this
were of course
purely speculative, and he himself could never bear to be reminded of the theories to which he thus in
moments
emotion and impulse, gave chance 73
of
birth.
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS
To
others
seem not
however they would
valueless.
"Vivekananda is
one of
often
nothing"
exclaimed
his admirers in the distant
West, and a
not a breaker of bondage trifling incident of this day s journey recalls the words. At a station entering "if
!"
him a Mahomand bought from
the Punjaub, he called to
medan vendor and
his hand,
of food,
ate.
From Rawalpindi
to
we some
Murree,
went by tonga, and there we spent days before setting out for Kashmir.
Here the Swami came that
any
effort
which he might make to
induce the orthodox
pean as a tion of
to the conclusion
to accept a
Euro
fellow-disciple, or in the direc
woman s
education,
had better
Bengal. The distrust of the foreigner was too strong in Punjaub, to
be made
in
admit of work succeeding there. wass
much occupied by
this
He
question,
from time to time, and would sometimes
remark on the paradox presented by the 74
ON THE WAY TO BARAMULLA of political anta gonism to the English, and readiness to love and trust.
Bengali combination
We
Wed
had reached Murree on
It nesday afternoon, June the i5th. was again Saturday, June the i8th, when we set out for Kashmir. One of our party was ill, and that
day we went but a short distance, and stopped at Dulai, the first dak bun first
It was a curi galow across the border. ous moment, leaving British India be
hind, with the crossing
baked bridge.
We
were soon
a vivid realisation of just just
how
We
little this
were now
Jhelum.
Our
Kohala
to
river.
have
how much and
demarcation meant. in
the valley journey,
Baramulla,
was
twisting,
rapidly-rising
Here,
to
whole
through a narrow, pass, the
of a dusty, sun
of the
from to
run
mountain-
ravine of this
at Dulai, the
speed of the
was terrific, and huge watersmoothed pebbles formed a great shingle. current
75
June
18th,
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS Most of the
afternoon,
we were com
by a storm to spend indoors, and a new chapter was opened at Dulai, in our knowledge of Hinduism, for the Swami told us, gravely and frankly, of its modern pelled
abuses, and spoke of his own uncompro mising hostility to those evil practices
which pass under the name of Vdmdckdra.
When we
asked how Sri
who never
krishna,
Rama-
could bear to con
demn
the hope of any man, had looked at these things, he told us that the old
man had
said
well
but
every house may have a scavengers entrance!" And he pointed out that all sects of in
diabolism, to
this class.
"Well,
any It
!
country,
was a
belonged
terrible
but
necessary revelation, that never required to be repeated, and it has been related here, in
its
true
none may be able those
who
in
order that
to say that
he deceived
place,
trusted him, as to
the
worst
things that might be urged against of his people or their creeds.
76
any
ON 7 HE WAY TO BARAMULLA
We Swami
took
it
in turns to drive
in his tonga,
seemed
He
full
and
June
with the
next day
this
of reminiscence.
talked
of
Brakmavufyd, the vision of the One, the Alone- Real, and told how love was the only cure for He had had a school-fellow, who evil. grew up and became rich, but lost his health. It was an obscure disease, sap ping his energy and vitality daily, altogether
the
baffling
skill
of
yet the
At last, because he knew that the Swami had always been religious, doctors.
and men turn
to religion
when
all
else
fails, he sent to beg him to come to When the Master reached him,
"him.
curious thing to his
mind a
happened. text
"Him
a
There came the Brahmin
conquers, who thinks that he is separate Him the Kshatriya from the Brahmin. conquers, who from the Kshatriya.
thinks that he
And
is
separate
him the
Universe conquers who thinks that he is separate from the Universe." And the 77
,
19th
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS sick
man grasped
"And
so,-"
this,
said the
and recovered.
Swami,
"though
I
things and angry things, yet remember that in my heart
often
say strange
never seriously mean to preach any thing but love All these things will I
!
come
right,
only
when we
realise that
we
love each other.
Was
then, or the
day before, that, talking of the Great God, he told us how when he was a child, his mother it
and say many prayers and austerities, and
would sigh over "so
instead
me you
of a !"
till
his naughtiness,
good soul, Siva has sent he was hypnotised into
a belief that he was really one of Siva s demons, He thought that for a punish ment, he had been banished for awhile
from Siva
s
effort in life
His
first
act
heaven, and
must be
that
his
one
go back there. of sacrilege, he told us once, to
had been committed at the age Jof five, when he embarked on a stormy argu
ment with
his mother, to the effect
that
ON THE when
his it
eating,
IVA Y
TO BARAMULLA.
hand was
right
would be cleaner
tumbler of water with the
with
soiled to
left.
lift
his
For
this
or similar perversities, her most drastic remedy was to put him under the water-
and while cold water was pouring-
tap,
over his head, to say "Siva Siva This, he said, never failed of its effect. !
The exile,
prayer would
remind him of
and he would say
no, not this time
to quiet
He
!"
again
to himself !"
his
"No,
and so return
and obedience. had a surpassing love
for
Maha-
dev, and once he said of the Indian i
women
of the future that
if,
amidst their
new tasks they would only remember now and then to say "Siva Siva it !
!"
would be worship enough. The very air of the Himalayas was charged, for him, with the image of that "eternal meditation" that no thought of pleasure could break. said,
the
for
the
And he first
meaning of
understood,
he
time this summer, the nature-story that
79
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS made
Ganges fall on the head of the Great God, and wander in and out the
amongst His matted locks, before she found an outlet on the plains below. He had searched long, he said, for the words that the rivers and waterfalls uttered, amongst the mountains, before he had realised thatit was the eternal cry "Bom !
Bom
Hara
!
Hara
!
Siva one day,
"He
!"
is
"Yes
he said of
the Great God,
calm, beautiful, and silent
great
!"
!
and
I
am His
worshipper."
his subject was marriage, as of the soul s relation to God. the type
Again
he exclaimed, "though the love of a mother is in some ways "This
is
why,"
love of
the whole world takes the
yet
greater,
man and woman
No other power.
has
transforms
Then
is
the
type.
tremendous idealising beloved actually becomes
siich
The
what he
as
imagined to
be.
This love
its object."
the
strayed to national types, and he spoke of the joy with which talk
So
ON THE
IVA Y
TO BARAMULLA
the returning traveller greets once more the sight of the men and women of his
own
country.
The whole
of
life
has been
a sub-conscious education to enable one to
understand
these
in
every faintest
ripple of expression in face and form.
And
again
we passed
a group of
sannyasins going on foot, and he broke out into fierce invective against asceti
cism as
"savagery."
of India that only
It is
the
perfectly conscious In other lands, a
a peculiarity life
religious
is
and
fully
developed.
man
will
undergo as win success
hardships, in order to in business, or enterprise, or
many
even
in
men were probably endur But the ing. sight of wayfarers doing slow miles on foot in the name of their
sport, as these
ideals,
seemed
train
of painful
to rouse
in
his
associations,
mind a and he
grew impatient on behalf of humanity, at
the
"the
torture of
mood
arisen,
religion."
Then again
passed, as suddenly as
and gave place 81
to the
it
had
equally
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS strong statement of the conviction thai were it not for this "savagery," luxury
would have robbed man
of all his
man
liness.
We stopped that evening at
Uri dak
bungalow, and in the twilight, we al walked in the meadows and the bazar
How mud
beautiful fortress
feudal pattern
A
little place was exactly of the Europeai
the
!
overhung the
footwa>
as it swept into a great open theatre o field and hill. Along the road, abov<
the river, lay the bazar, and we returnee to -the bungalow by a path across the past cottages in whose garden: As we came the roses were in bloom. fields,
would happen that here and there some child, more venturesome thai too,
it
others,
would play with
The
us.
next day,
driving through most beautiful part of the Pass, and see ing cathedral rocks and an old ruine<
th<
we reached Bara
temple of the Sun, mulla.
The legend
is
82
that the Vale
o
ON THE WAY TO BARA MULL A Kashmir was once a
lake,
and that
at
Divine Boar pierced the mountains with his tusks, and let the this point the
Jhelum go geography it
free.
in the
Another piece form of myth.
also prehistoric history
?
Or
of is
CHAPTER THE VALE Persons
:
The
Swami
OF KASHMIR.
Vivekananda
Europeans, amongst the
whom
Time. Place.
The River Jhelum is
and
a
o
party
were Dhira Mata
One whose name wa
*Steady Mother,
Jaya, and Nivedita. June 2Oth to June 22nd.
"It
VI.
Baramulla to Srinagar.
said that the
Lord Himself
is
the weight on the side of the fortunate cried the Swami in high glee, returning !
pur room at the dakbungalow, and sitting down, with his umbrella on his As he had brought no com knees. to
panion, he had himself to perform all the ordinary little masculine offices, and
he had gone out to hire dungas, and dc what was necessary. But he had im mediately fallen in with a man, who, on hearing his name, had undertaken the
whole business, and sent him back, of responsibility.
free
THE VALE OF KASHMIR. So we enjoyed
We
the day.
drank
Kashmiri tea out of a Sdmdvdr and ate the
jam of the country, and
four o clock
of a
on
flotilla
we entered
about
into
possession of dungas, three in number,
which presently
Srinagar.
at
The
we
set
forth
for
evening, however by the garden of the
first
we were moored
and there we played with the children, and gathered forget-
Swami
s
friend,
me-nots, and watched a circle
of pea
some harvest-game in cornfields. The Swami,
sants, singing, at
the freshly-cut
returning to his boat about eleven, could as he passed us in the dark, hear
still
the end of our
warm
discussion about
the effect of the introduction of
on rural peoples. We found ourselves, next day,
money in the
midst of a beautiful valley, ringed round with snow-mountains. This is known as the Vale of Kashmir, but
it
might b e
more accurately described, perhaps, as the Vale of Srinagar.
35
The
city of Isla-
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS mabad had
own
its
valley,
the river, and to reach
higher up to wind
we had
it
and out amongst the mountains. The sky above was of the bluest of the blue
in
and the water-road
along which we
Some
travelled,
was also,
times our
way lay through great greer of lotus-leaves, with a rosy
tangles
perforce, blue.
dower or two, and on each side stretch ed the fields, in some of which, as w
The whol
came, they were reaping.
and green an white, so exquisitely pure and vivid th
was a symphony
in blue
a while the response of the soul beauty was almost pain
for* its
to
!
That
first
taking a
morning,
walk across the
fields,
immense chennaar
we
tree,
long came upon an
standing
in
the
It really look midst of a wide pasture. ed as if the passage through it might
shelter
the
proverbial
The Swami fell of how it might
twenty cows
to architectural
be
fitted
ing-place for a hermit.
86
!
visions
up as a dwell
A small cottage
THE VALE OF KASHMIR might in hollow of
fact
have been
this
living
a
in
the
in
And
tree.
he talked of meditation, consecrate every
built
then
way
to
chennaar we should
ever see.
We
turned, with him, into the neigh
bouring farm-yard. There we found, seated under a tree, a singularly hand
some
elderly
woman.
She
crimson coronet and white
Kashmiri
and
wore the
veil
of the
sat
spinning wool, while round her, helping her, were her wife,
two daughters-in-law and The Swami had called at
this
farm once
the previous autumn, and spoken, since, of the faith and
before,
often
their children.
in
He had very woman. begged for water, which she had at once Then, before going, he had given him. pride
of this
asked her quietly,
"And
what,
Mother,
thank God, Sir your religion had rung out the old voice, in pride and
is
?"
"I
!"
triumph, "by the mercy of the Lord, I am a Mussalm^n!" The whole family
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS received him now, as an old friend, and
were ready to show every courtesy to the friends he had brought. The jour to took two to three days, ney Srinagar
and one evening, as we walked in the fields before supper, one who had seen the K&lighat, complained to the Master of the abandonment of feeling there,
which had jarred on her.
"Why
do
they kiss the ground before the Image she exclaimed. The Swami had been
?"
which he pointing to the crop of til, thought to have been the original of the English
dill,
and
calling
it
oldest
"the "
oil-bearing seed of the Aryans at this question, he dropped the
But little
blue flower from his hands, and a great hush came over his voice, as he stood still
and
thing to
said.
kiss
"Is
the
it
not
the
same
ground before that
Image, as to kiss the
ground before
the,se mountains?"
Our Master had promised that before the end of the summer he would
THE VALE OF KASHMIR take
us
into
and teach us
retreat,
We
meditate.
had now
to
go
to
to
Sri-
a long-accumulating mail, and nagar the question rose as to the arrangement for
was decided that we see the country, and after
of the holiday.
should
first
It
wards make the
The
first
retreat.
evening
dined out, with some
and
in the
in
Srinagar
Bengali
officials,
course of conversation,
of the western
guests
we one
maintained that
the history of every nation illustrated and evolved certain ideals, to which the
people of that nation should hold them selves true. It was very curious to see
how
Hindus present objected to this. To them it was clearly a bondage, to which the mind of man could not per the
manently submit
itself.
Indeed, in their
revolt against the fetters of the doctrine,
they appeared to be unable to do justice to the idea itself. At last the Swami intervened.
he
said,
"that
think you must admit," the ultimate unit is psycho"I
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS much more permanent
logical.
This
than the
geographical."
is
And
then he
spoke of cases known to us all, of one of whom he always thought as the most he had ever seen, yet she was a Bengali woman, and of another, born in the West, who was a better Hindu than himself. And was typical
not
"Christian"
this,
after
all,
the
ideal
state
things, that each should be born in
other
of the
country to spread the given ideal as far as it could be carried ? s
CHAPTER
VII.
LIFE AT SRINAGAR. Place
Time
Srinagar.
:
:
June 22nd to July
1
5th, 1898.
the mornings, we still had long sometimes it would be talks, as before the different religious periods through In
which Kashmir had passed, or the mora of lity of Buddhism, or the history, Siva-worship, or perhaps the of Srinagar under Kanishka.
Once he was
talking
position
with one of us
about Buddhism, and he suddenly said
Buddhism tried to do, in the time of Asoka, what the world He re never was ready for till now "the
fact
is,
!"
ferred to the federalisation of religictas. It was a wonderful picture, this, of the religious imperialism of
Asoka,
broken
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS down, time and again, by successive waves of Christianity and Mohammedan ism, each claiming exclusive rights over
the conscience of mankind, and finally to seem to have a possibility, within
measurable distance of time, to-day
Another
time, the talk
!
was of Genghis
or Chenghiz Khan, the conqueror from "You hear Central Asia. people talk of
him as a vulgar passionately,
"but
aggressor,"
that
is
he cried
not true!
They
are never greedy or vulgar, these great souls He was inspired with the thought !
of unity, and he
wanted
to
Yes, Napoleon was
world.
same mould.
Only those
And
unify
his
cast in
the
another, Alexander.
three, or
perhaps one soul, three different con
manifesting itself in And then quests
he passed on to speak of that one soul whom he believed to have come again and again in reli !"
gion, charged with the divine impulse to
bring about the unity of man in God. At this time, the transfer of the
92
LIFE
AT SRINAGAR
Prabuddha Bharata, from Madras
to the
newly established Ashrama at Mayavati was much in all our thoughts. The
Swami had always had
a special love for
this paper, as the beautiful
given eager,
He
indicated.
it
too,
for
the
name he had
had always been
establishment of
organs of his own. The value of the journal, in the education of Modern India,
he
felt
was perfectly evident to him, and that his Master s message and
mode
of thought required to be spread by this means, as well as by preaching and by work. Day after day, therefore
he would dream about the future of his papers, as about the centres. Day after
work
And
various
day he would talk number, under
of the forthcoming first the new editorship of
pananda.
in its
one
Swami Swaruafternoon
he
brought to us, as we sat together, a paper on which, he said, he had "tried to write a letter, but
way
!"
93
it
would come
this
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS
To The Awakened Once more awake For sleep
!
not
was,
it
India.
anew, and
death,
bring thee
life
eyes, for
visions daring yet.
world,
in
no death
need, awaits, for thee
to
rest to lotus-
Oh
The Truth,
Resume thy march, With gentle feet
!
that
would not
break the peaceful pose, even of the road-side dust that
lies
so low,
yet
and steady, blissful, bold, and free. Awakener, ever forward Speak thy rousing words strong,
!
!
Thy home Where
is
gone,
loving hearts had
brought watched thy growth. strong, and this the law,
thee up, and
But
fate
is
All things
go back
to the
source
they sprang, their strength to renew. Thien start afresh
From
the land of thy birth, where great cloud-belted snows do bless
94
LIFE AT SRINAGAR and put
strength in thee, for
their
working wonders new. The heavenly river
eternal
tune thy voice
song
to
her
own
deodar shades oive
;
thee ne er-dying peace,
And
all
above,
Himalaya s daughter Uma, gentle, pure, the Mother who resides in all who works all as power and life, and of makes One the world works, whose mercy opens the gate to Truth, and shows the One in all, give thee ;
unending strength which Love.
is
Infinite
They bless thee, all The seers great, whom age nor can claim the race,
their
who
clime
own, the fathers of
felt
the heart of truth
the same, and bravely taught to man, Their servant, ill-voiced or well.
thou hast caught their secret, but One.
95
tis
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS Then
speak,
Oh Love
!
Before thy gentle voice so sweet, behold how visions melt, and fold
dreams departs
on
fold of
till
Truth, bare Truth, in
to void, all its
glory
shines.
And
Awake
the world
tell
dream no more This
is
!
Arise
!
and
!
the land
of dreams,
where
karma weaves unthreaded garlands, with our thoughts, of flowers sweet and none has root or or noxious, stem, being born in nothing, which the softest breath of Truth drives
back
and
to primal nothingness.
face, the
Truth.
Let visions cease,
Be bold
Be one with
it
!
you cannot dream but truer dreams, which are or, if
Eternal Love and Service Free.
The Master was us^all,
quiet,
longing to leave
and go away into some place of alone. But we not knowing this,
insisted
on accompanying him 96
to
the
AT SRINAGAR
LIFE Coloured Bhavani",
was
said
Christian
landed
"Kshir called Springs, it or Milk of the Mother,
to
be the
time
that
or
Mohammedan had
ever
there,
and
first
we can never be the glimpse we had
thankful enough for of it, since afterwards
it
the most sacred of
names
all
was
to
become
to us.
An
amusing incident was that our Mussalman boat-men would not allow us to land with shoes on; so thoroughly Hinduistic is the Mohammedanism of Kashmir,
and pilgrimages
with
its
made
fasting, to their shrines.
forty
rishis,
Another day we went ofTquietfy by ourselves, and visited the Takt-i-Suleiman, a little temple very massively built, on the summit of a small mountain two thousand feet high. It was and and the famous beautiful, peaceful Gardens could be seen below Floating
or
three
us,
for
miles
around.
The
Tak^-i-
Suleiman was one of the great illustra tions of the Swami s argument, when he 97
June 29th
-
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS would take up the subject of the Hindu
shown temples and monuments. As he had love of nature as
in the choice
of sites for
architectural
London,
hill-tops, in
pointed
in
declared,
on the
lived
out,
after another,
example people
saints
order to enjoy the scenery,
now he
so
the
that
that our Indian
consecrated
always
one
citing
of
places
peculiar beauty and importance, by ing there their altars of worship.
mak And
there was no denying that the little Takt, crowning the hill that dominated the
whole
valley,
was a case
in point.
lovely fragments of those days into mind, as
Many come
Tulsi, take thou care to
"Therefore,
live in
with
for
all,
who can
tell
where, or
what garb, the Lord Himself may
next come to "One
thee?"
God
is
hidden
in all these, the
Torturer of all, the Awakener of Reservoir of bereft of all
all
being, the
qualities."
98
One
all,
the
Who
is
LIFE AT SRINAGAR the sun does not shine, nor
"There
the moon, nor the
stars."
There was the story of how Ravana was advised to take the form of Rama, in
He
order to cheat Sita.
answered,
order to
thought of it? But in take a man s form you must
meditate
on him
"Have
I
not
and
;
Rama
is
the
Lord Himself; so, when I meditate on him, even the position of Brahma be comes a mere straw. How then, could I
"And
criminal
?"
commented the Swami, commonest or most the
so",
in
"even
It
woman
think of a
life,
was ever
there are these
He
thus.
glimpses."
was constantly
interpreting human life as the expression of God, never insisting on the heinous-
ness
wickedness
or
of an act
or
a
character. "In
that
which
dark night to the
is
rest of the world, there the
control
is
awake.
to the rest of the
man
of
That which
world
99
is
sleep to
self-
is life him."
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS Speaking of Thomas a Kempis one day, and of how he himself used to
wander as a sannyasin, with the Gita and the Imitation as his whole library, one word, he said, came back to him, inseparably associated of the western monk.
with the
name
ye teachers of the world, and silence Speak thou ye prophets
"Silence
!
!
!
alone,
O
Lord, unto
my
sou!
!"
Again "The
soft
shirisha flower can bear
weight of
the
humming
bees,
but not of birds
So Uma, don tapasy&f
t
you go and make come, Uma, come!
delight and idol of
Be
seated,
my
my
Mother on the
soul
!
lotus
of
heart,
r
And
let
me
take a long long look at
you.
100
AT SRINAGAR
LIFE
From my
birth
I
up,
am
gazing,
Mother, at your face-
Know
you suffering what trouble, and pain ?
Be
seated, therefore,
Blessed
on the lotus of
my
heart,
dwell there for
evermore."
And
One
Every now and then there would be long talks about the Gita, "that wonder poem, without one note in it, of weakness or unmanliness." He said one
ful
day that
it
was absurd
to
complain that
knowledge was not given to women or sudras. For the whole gist of the Upanishads was contained in the Gita
to
Without be
it,
they could hardly
indeed,
understood
;
and
castes could read the
women and
all
Mahabharata.
With great fun and secrecy Swami and his one non- American
the dis
prepared to celebrate The Fourth of July. A regret had been expressed ciple
101
,
Ju| v 4th
-
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS in his hearing, that
we had no American
Flag, with which to welcome the other member of the party to breakfast, on and late on their National Festival ;
the afternoon of the third, he brought a
pundit durzey
in great
plaining that this imitate it, if he
and
stars
excitement,
man would be were
told
ex
glad to
how.
The
were very crudely re fear, on the piece of cotton
stripes
presented, I that was nailed, with branches
of ever
greens, to the head of the dining-roomboat, when the Americans stepped on
board
for
on
Independence had the Swami But postponed a Day journey, in order to be present at the early tea,
!
and he himself contributed the addresses that were now
little festival,
a
poem
to
read aloud, by
way
of greeting.
To THE FOURTH
OF JULY.
Behold, the dark clouds melt away,
That gathered thick
at
night,
and
hung 102
LIFE
So
AT SR1NAGAR
a gloomy
like
pall,
above the earth
!
Before thy magic touch, the world Awakes. The birds in chorus sing.
The
flowers
raise
star-like
their
crowns,
Dew-set and wave thee welcome fair.
The
lakes are opening wide in love,
Their hundred-thousand lotus-eyes,
To welcome
thee,
with
their
all
depth. All hail to thee,
Thou Lord
A welcome
new
Oh Sun
To-day
!
of Light
\
to thee, to-day,
thou
sheddest Liberty
!
Bethink thee how the world did wait,
And
search for thee,
through time* and clime *
Some gave up home and
love
of
friends, Clime
Climate.
103
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS
And went
quest of thee,
in
self-
banished,
Through
dreary
oceans,
through
primeval
Each
a
step
struggle
for
forest,
or
life
death
Then came
the day
!
when work bore fruit,
And
worship, love and sacrifice,
Fulfilled, accepted,
And
and complete.
then thou, propitious,
rose
to
shed
The light of Freedom on mankind Move on, Oh Lord, in thy resistless !
path Till thy high
!
noon o erspreads the world
Till
every land
Till
men and women,
reflects thy light
;
;
with uplifted head,
Behold
Know
their shackles broken, in
springing joy,
and
their
life
renewed 104
!
LIFE AT SRINAGAR That evening someone pained him
July 5th.
by counting the cherry-stones left on her plate, to see when she would be
He, somehow, took the play the following earnest, and came,
married. in
morning, surcharged with passion
for
the ideal renunciation. "These
home and even my mind now and
shadows
of
marriage cross he cried, with that tender desire then !"
to
make himself one
that he so often
across
with
showed.
oceans of scorn
the
But
sinner it
for those
was
who
would glorify the householder, that *he sought, on this occasion, to preach the religious
life.
"Is
so
it
easy,"
he ex
be Janaka ? To sit on a throne absolutely unattached ? Caring claimed,
"to
nothing for wealth or fame, for wife or child ? One after another in the west has told
But
me
that he
could only say are not born in India
had reached
this.
such great
men
I
And
!
then he turned to the other side.
105
July 6th.
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS "Never
he said to one of
forget,"
his hearers,
"to
and to
say to yourself,
teach to your children, the difference between a firefly and the blazing sun, "as
between the
infinite
ocean and a
little
pond, between a mustard-seed and the mountain of Meru, such is the difference
between
householder
the
Sannyasin
and
the
!"
"Everything is
fraught
Renunciation alone
is
fear
:
fearless."
even the fraudulent
be
"Blessed
with
who have failed to vows, in as much as they
sddhus, and those carry out their
have witnessed
also
so are in
ideal
the
ideal,
some degree the cause of
success of others "Let
to
us
and the
!
never,
never,
forget
our
!"
At such moments, he would tiimself
entirely with the
identify
thought he
sought to demonstrate, and in the same sense in which a law of nature might be
deemed
cruel or arrogant, his expositior 1
06
LIFE AT SRINAGAR might have those listening, to face
we
felt ourselves brought face
with the invisible and absolute.
All this
nagar,
and
Sitting
qualities.
was on our return
from the real
to
Sri-
Fourth of
July-
Celebration, which had been
a
visit
to
There we had seen the Shalimar Bagh of Nur Mahal, and the Nishat Bagh, or Garden of Glad the
Dahl Lake.
and had spent the hour of sunset quietly, amongst the green of the irises, at the foot of giant chennaar trees. That same day, Dhirft, Mdtd and she ness,
whose name wasjayd, left for Gulmarg, on some personal business, and the
Swami went with them,
part of the way.
At nine o clock on the evening
of
the following Sunday, July the loth, the first two came back unexpectedly,
and presently, sources,
from
we gathered
Master had gone
Sonamarg
route,
another way.
He
many the news
to
different
that
Amarnath by
and
tfye
the
would return
had started out penni107
NOl^ES OF
SOME WANDERINGS
but that could give no concern his friends, in a Hindu Native state.
to
less,
A disagreeable day or two
later,
incident occurred,
when a young man,
eager to become a disciple,
and It
a
turned
up,
on being sent on to him. that this was an unwarrant
insisted
was
felt
able intrusion on that
privacy which he but as the request
had gone to seek, was persistent, it was granted, and life flowed in accustomed channels for a day or two.
What were we
setting
out for
?
We
were just moving to go down the river, on Friday and it was close on five in the afternoon,
when
the servants recognised friends in the distance,
some of their and word was brought that the Swami s boat was coming towards us. An hour later, he was with us, saying how pleasant it was to be back. l*ne summer had been unusually hot and certain glaciers had given way, rendering
the
Sonamarg 1
08
Route
to
LIFE
Amarnath
AT SRINAGAR This
fact
had
moment dated
the
impracticable.
caused his return.
But from
this
of three great increments of joy and realisation that we saw in him, during
first
our months
in
Kashmir.
It
was almost
we
could verify for ourselves the truth of that saying of his Guru
as
if
"There is
indeed a certain ignorance.
has been placed there by Mother that her work may
It
But It
it is
my Holy be done.
only like a film of tissue paper.
might be rent
at
any
109
moment."
CHAPTER THE TEMPLE Persons
VIII.
OF PANDRENTHAN.
The Swami Vivekananda and
:
amongst the Steady Mother
ropeans,
whom ;
a
were
of
party
Eu
Dhira Mata
One whose name was
Jay;
and Nivedita. Time.
July i6th to igth.
Place.
Kashmir.
It
fell
the
to
of one
lot
of the
Swami s disciples,
next day, to go the river with him in a small boat.
down As it
went, he chanted one song after another of "Ram Prasad, and now and again, he
would translate a verse. call upon thee Mother. "I
For though
The child
cries
^
am
I
still
mother
"Mother!
*
"Though I
his
I
Oh
him,
Mother. *
*
cannot see Thee,
not a lost child cry
strike
!
Mother! Mother
no
!"
-
THE TEMPLE OF PANDRENTf/AN and then with the haughty dignity of an offended child, something that ended
am not the woman Mother "I
son to
any other
call
|"
must have been next day, that he came into Dhtrd Mdtd s dunga, and It
talked
of
was
that
of Siva
and
First
Hindu thought
curious
Uma
Bhakti.
it
JuiyiTth.
It is easy to give the but without the voice, how com words,
in one.
And then paratively dead they seem there were the wonderful surroundings !
picturesque Srinagar, tall poplars, and distant snows. that river-valley,
how
"The
There,
in
some space from the
foot of the great mountains, to us
Lombardy
he chanted
Lord took a form and
was a divided form, half woman, and half man. On one side, beautiful
that
garlands
and
coils
on the other, bone ear-rings, On one side the of snakes.
:
j
hair black, beautiful,
and
the other, twisted like
rope."
in
in
curls
on
And
then
,
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS passing immediately into the other for of the same thought, he quoted
became Krishna and Radhsl
"God
Love
flows in thousands of coils.
Whoso Love
The And
wants, takes
it.
flows in thousands of coils
tide of love fills
and loving
past,
the soul with bliss and joy
So absorbed was he
that his
!"
break
long after it was at last he went reluc
stood unheeded
fast
ready, and
when
saying When one has all this bhakti what does one want with food ? tantly,
was only to come back again quick and resume the subject. But, either now or at some other
it
ly,
time,
he said that he did not talk of
Radha and Krishna, where he looked It was Siva who made stern for deeds. and earnest workers, and to Labourer must be dedicated.
The
Him
the
next day, he gave us a quaini
saying of Sri Ramakrishna, 1
12
comparing
THE TEMPLE OF PANDRENTIfAN the
critics
of others to bees or
flies,
ac
cording as they chose honey or wounds. And then we were off to Islamabad,
and
really, as
The
first
proved, to Amarnath. afternoon, in a wood by
it
the side of the the long-sought
Jhelum, we discovered
Temple
of Pandrenthan
(Pandresthan, place of the Pandavas ? ) It was sunk in a pond, and this was thickly covered with scum, out of which it
rose, a tiny cathedral of the
long ago,
of heavy grey limestone. The consisted of a small cell, with temple
built
four
doorways, opening to the cardinal
Externally, it was a tapering with its top truncated, to pyramid, give foothold to a bush supported on a
points.
four-pierced
pedestal.
In
its
architec
and triangular arches were combined, in an unusual fashion, with each other, and with the straight-lined
ture, trefoil
lintel.
It
was
built
with
marvellous
and the necessary lines were somewhat obscured by heavy ornament. solidity,
8
July toth
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS
We
were
much
all
on
distressed,
arriving at the edge of the pond in the wood, to be unable to go inside the little temple, and examine the interior deco rations, which a number of guide-books
declared to be
"quite classical,"
that
is
to
Greek or Roman, in form and finish Our grief was turned into joy, how
say,
ever,
when
our
or
hajjis,
brought up a countryman, took to provide a boat for brought
out,
from under
!
boatmen, who under
us.
This he
the scum,
and
he proceeded to placing a chain on it, drag us each in turn about the lake, himself wading almost waist-deep in the
So we were
water.
desired, to
For
all
go
able, as
we had
inside.
but the
Swami
himself, this
peep at Indian Archaeo So when he had been through it,
\sas our first
logy.
he taught us how In large
to observe the interior.
centre of the ceiling was a sun-medallion, set in a square
the
whose points were the points of the 114
THE TEMPLE OF PAXDRENTHAN This
compass.
left
four equal triangles,
at the corners of the ceiling, filled
which were
with sculpture in low relief, male figures intertwined with ser
and female
beautifully
pents,
done.
On
the
wall
were empty spaces, where seemed to have been a band of topes. Outside, carvings were similarly dis In one of the trefoil arches
tributed.
over,
think, the eastern
I
door,
was a
image of the Teaching Buddha, standing, with His hand uplifted. Run
fine
ning round the buttresses was a muchdefaced frieze of a seated woman, with a tree,
Maya Devi, The three other
evidently
of Buddha.
the
Mother
door-niches
were empty, but a slab by the pond-side seemed to have fallen from one, and this contained a bad figure of a king, said by the country-people to represent the sun.
The masonry superb,
and
temple was accounted for probably of this
little
A
single block long preservation. of stone would be so cut as to correspond, its
.VOTES OF
SOME WANDERINGS
not to one brick in a wall, but to a sec tion of the
architect s
It
plan.
would
turn a corner and form
part of two dis tinct walls, or sometimes even of three.
This
made one
take the building as very, very old, possibly even earlier than The theory of the workmen Marttand. fact
seemed so much more
that of carpenter
ing than of building
The water
it,
!
was probably an overflow,
aboul
into
the
temple-court, from the sacred spring thai the chapel itself may have been placed as the Swami thought, to enshrine.
To
him, the place was delightfully It was a direct memoria suggestive. of
Buddhism,
four
representing one of the
religious periods
had already divided
Kashmir and i. Tree
into
the
which he History
o
:
\\hich dated
ending 2.
in
all
Ng,
Buddhism
Snake-worship,
the
names of the
as Vernag, 3.
;
116
spring;
and so on
Hinduism, form of Sun-worship and 4. ;
frorr
in
th<
Moham
THE TEMPLE OF FANDRENTHAN Sculpture, he told us, was the characteristic art of Buddhism, and
medanism.
the
sun-medallion, or lotus,
commonest with
one of
The
ornaments.
its
figures
serpents referred to pre- Bud
the
But sculpture had greatly dete riorated under Sun-worship, hence the dhism.
crudity of the Surya figure. And then we left the little temple in
What had
the woods.
it
men
held, that
might worship, nearly eighteen centuries ago,* when the world was big, with
We
the births of mighty things ? not tell. could only guess.
could
We
Mean bow the one thing we could One the Teaching Buddha. we could conjure up the great
while, to
knee, picture
wood-built
city,
with
this at its heart,
long years afterwards destroyed by
and now moved some
And
so,
five
with a dream
miles
and a
fire,
away.
sigh,
_^__________ *
>
We
assumed Pandrenthan, when we saw it, Kaniksha s time, 150 A. D. I am not sure that it so
old.
we
N.
117
to be of is
really
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS wended our way back through
the trees,
to the river-side
was the time of
It
sunset
were
The
!
such a
sunest,
mountains
in
the
west
a shimmering purple. Further north, they were blue with snow and all
The sky was green and
cloud.
and touched
with
and
colours,
daffodil
red,
yellow flame bright against a blue
and opal background. We stood and looked, and then the Master, catching that sight of the throne of Solomon ex little Takt which we already loved claimed
"what
genius the Hindu shows
He always placing his temples chooses a grand scenic effect! See! The
in
!
Takt commands the whole of Kashmir.
The
rock of Hari
Parbat
rises
red
out of blue water, like a lion couchant,
crowned.
And
the
Temple of Marttand
has the valley at its feet Our boats were moored !"
near the
edge of the wood, and we could
see
that the presence of the silent chapel, ol
118
THE TEMPLE OF PANDRENTHAN we had just explored, Swami deeply. That even
the Buddha, which
moved ing we
the
foregathered mDhird Mdtd s houseboat, and a little of the conver all
down.
sation has been noted
Our Master had been Christian
of
from
derived
as
ritual
talking
Buddhist, but one of the party would
have none of the theory. did Buddhist "Where
come from
?"
"From
Swami
ritual
itself
She asked. answered Vedic,"
the
briefly.
as
"Or
it
was present
not better to
Europe,
is
common
origin for
it
and the Vedic "No
!
No
also in southern
it,
rituals !"
suppose a
and the Christian, ?"
he replied.
"You
for
Buddhism was entirely within Hinduism Even caste was not attacked it was not yet crystallised, of and Buddha merely tried to course restore the ideal. He who attains to get that
!
!
God
in
this
life,
says
119
Mann,
is
the
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS Brahmin. Buddha would have had so, if he could." "But
how
nent.
Vedic and Christian
are "
connected
ritual
it
persisted his oppo could they be the same ?
"How
?
You have
nothing even corresponding to the central rite of our worship "
!
"
Why
"
the
said
yes ritual has !
Swami,
Mass, the offering of food to God, your Blessed Sacrament, is our pras&dam. it offered Only "Vedic
its
not kneeling, as is common in hot countries. They kneel in Thibet. sitting,
Then,
too,
Vedic
incen-se,
"But,"
argument,
"has
contained
a
generalisation. He flashed
That
in
bold
new
this
lights,
prayer?"
way always
paradox which and unthought-of
down on
and neither is
its
any common
it
urged
some
elicited
!
has
was the somewhat ungracious
Objections
"N*o
ritual
music."
had
the
question.
Christianity
!
pure protestantism and protes120
THE TEMPLE OF PANDRENTHAN tantism took
it
from the Mohammedans,
perhaps through Moorish influence "Mohammedanism that
has completely
!
the only religion broken down the is
idea of the priest. The leader of prayer stands with his back to the people, and
only the reading of the Koran may take Protestantism place from the pulpit. is
an approach
Even in
the
to this.
the tonsure existed in India,
shaven head.
have
I
seen a
receiving the Law which the monks
picture of Justinian
from two monks, in heads are entirely shaven. The monk and nun both existed, in pre-Buddhistic
Hinduism. from the "
Europe
At
"Yes
that
almost
believe.
since
I
Aryan
you accept
!
all
am
I
then,
rate,
never existed. ever
her orders
Thebaid."
Catholic ritual as
I
gets
Christianity is Aryan, inclined to think Christ,
have doubted
I
had 121
my
dream,
that,
that
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS dream off Crete! # Indian and Egyptian ideas met at Alexandria, and went forth the
to
world,
with Judaism
tinctured
and Hellenism, as Christianity. "The Acts and Epistles, you know, are older than the Gospels, and S. John
The
is
spurious. sure of is S.
we can be
only figure
Paul,
and he was not an
own
eye-witness, and according to his showing was capable of Jesuitry
means save
all
isn
souls"
"by
t it ?
*In travelling from Naples to Port Said, on his way back Januaay 1897, the Swami had a dream of an old
to India, in
and bearded man, who appeared before him, saying is th island of Crete," and showing him a place island, that
he might afterwards
identify.
and
in the
connection with this gave him two
one of which was Therapeufae
European words, declared, were
in
the
went
vision
had originated
to say that the religion of Christianity
island of Crete
The
"This
in
which
it
Therapeutae meant sons (from the Sanskrit putrci) of the Theras, or Buddhist monks. From this the Swami was to understand that derived from Sanskrit.
Christianity had originated in a Buddhist mission.
man added
*
The
proofs are all
and you will see As he awoke, feeling that
an
Swami officer,
old
!"
"Dig
the
here,"
The
pointing to the ground.
rose,
this
was no common dream, Here he met
and tumbled out on deck.
turning in from his watch.
122
"What
o clock
is it
!
THE TEMPLE OF PANDRENTHAN
No
11
Buddha
!
Mahommed,
and
alone amongst religious teachers, stand out with historic distinctness, having been fortunate enough to have, while
enemies as well as
they were living,
Krishna
friends.
doubt
I
a yogi,
;
and a shepherd, and a great king, have all been amalgamated in one beautiful of Jesus
"Kenan s life
It
does
touch
not
Two
antiquarian. said the
are
we
in his
holding the Gitft
figure,
Swami.
answer came back
"fifty
Our Master used
;
miles
the
was the answer.
!"
to
when, off
froth.
real
stand out as
things
"Where
his astonishment,
Crete
at himself
to laugh
it off.
The
fact
that
the
"
!
for the
strength of
dream had made en him.
the impression that this
could never shake
Strauss,
"Mid-night
he then said
?"
hand.
mere
is
the
second
But he of
the
two etymologies has been lost, is deeply to be regretted. The Swami had to say that before he had had this dream, it
had never occurred
of Christ
was
strictly
ever, that according to
ness of an idea that
is
to
him
to
historic.
doubt that the personality must remember, how-
We
Hindu philosopy, it is the complete important, and not the question of its
The Swami once asked Sri RiVnawhen he was a boy, about this very matter. "Don t answered his Guru, "that those who could invent you think historical authenticity.
krishna,
!"
such things were themselves that
I2 3
?"
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS personal living touches in the life of the woman taken in adultery, Christ, the most beautiful story in and the woman at the true
strangely life
!
A
this
is
literature,
last, to
woman, coming
to
How
well.
Indian
draw water,
finds, seated at the well-side, a
clad
He
monk.
Then He
asks
her
yellowfor water.
teaches her, and does a
little
mind-reading and so on. Only in an Indian story, when she went to call the villagers, to look
would have taken to the forest "On
Hillel
and his
the
monk
chance, and
fled
!
the whole,
is
listen,
I
think for
old
Rabbi
the
teachings of Jesus, and an obscure Jewish sect of Nazarenes a sect of great antiquity responsible
S. Paul, galvanised by furnished the mythic personality, as a centre of worship.
suddenly
1
v
"The
Resurrection,
of course,
is
Only the rich Greeks and Romans had had cremation
simply spring-cremation.
124
THE TEMPLE OF PANDRENTHAN any way, and the new sun-myth would only stop "
the
He
lived.
worship. man, but door.
He a
Enter,
"He
went
the sinner.
!
!
drew a breath
never
Above
himself.
few.
Buddha Surely ever greatest man who
Buddha
But
he was
amongst the
it
he never claimed
all,
said, "Buddha
state.
I
is
not a
have found the
of you
all
for
!"
to the feast of Ambapjlli,
He
though he knew
dined with the pariah,
it
would
kill
him,
and
sent a message to his host on his death bed, thanking him for the great deljverance. Full of love and pity for a little goat,
his
even before he had attained the
You remember how he offered own head, that of prince and monk,
truth
!
only the king would spare the kid that he was about to sacrifice and how the if
king was struck by his compassion, that he saved its life ? Such a mixture
r>f
rationalism and feeling was never seen Surely, surely, there was none like him
125
!
!"
CHAPTER WALKS AND TALKS Persons
BESIDE THE JHELLUM.
The Swami Vivekananda, and
:
Europeans, amongst the
Place
Time
:
:
IX.
whom
party
of
One whose name
Steady Mother and Nivedita. ;
was Jaya Kashmir.
a
were Dhira Mata,
;
July 2Oth to July 29th, 1898.
Next
day,
we came
to
the ruins
of
two great temples of Avantipur. Each hour, as we went deeper and deeper into the interior, the river and the moun
the
tains
grew more
lovely.
immediate attractions of
And
amidst the
fields
and
trees,
and people with whom we felt thoroughly at home, how difficult it was to remem ber that we were exploring a stream in Central
Asia
!
To
those
who have
seen Kashmir in any season, a wealth of memory is called up, by Kalidas picture of the
spring-forest,
126
in
all
its
WALKS fr TALKS BESIDE THEJHELLUM beauty of wild cherry-blossom, and almond and apple, that forest, in which Siva
sits
Uma,
princess of the
beneath a dheodhar,
when
Himalaya, enters
with her offering of a lotus-seed garland, while close at hand stands the beautiful
young god with flowers. All that
spring,
or
his quiver is
lovely
divine in an English in woods of the
at Eastertide,
Normandy, and multiplied,
in
and bow of
the
is
gathered up charms of the
vale of Kashmir.
That morning, the and shallow and
river
clear,
was broad
and two of us
walked with the Swami, across the fields and along the banks, about three miles.
He
began by talking of the sense of sin, how it was Egyptian, Semitic and Aryan. It
appears
in
the
Vedas,
but quickly
The Devil is recognised passes out. there, as the Lord of Anger. Then, with the Buddhists, he became M&ra, the Lord of Lust, and one of the most
loved of the Lord
Buddha s
127
titles
was
NOTES OP SOME WANDERINGS of
"conqueror
Mara",
vide the Sanskrit
lexicon (Amarkosha) that Swami learnt to patter, as a child of four But while !
Satan
the
is
Hindu
Hamlet
the
scriptures,
never
divides
of the Bible, in the
Lord of Anger
creation.
He
always
represents defilement, never duality.
Zoroaster was a reformer
some
of
Even Ormuzd and
old religion.
Ahri-
man, with him, were not supreme they were only manifestations of the Supreme. :
That older religion must have been Vedantic. So the Egyptians and Semites theory of sin, while the Aryans, as Indians and Greeks, quickly
cling to
the
lose
In India, righteousness
it.
become
vidyd,
transcended.
and avidyd,
Amongst
and
sin
both to be
the Aryans, Per
and Europeans become Semitised, * by religious ideas, hence the sense of sin. sians
*
One
of those
who
listened to this talk,
had a wonderful
opportunity, later, of appreciating the accuracy, the breadth of the Parsis glad to
of their
own
sit
Swami
s
at his feet,
religious ideas
as well
as
knowledge, when she saw two and learn from him the history
N.
128
WALKS fr TALKS BESIDE THE JHELLUM
And
then the talk drifted, as
it
was
always so apt to do, to questions of the
What idea country and the future. must be urged on a people, to give them strength ? The line of their own development runs in one way, A. Must -
the
new
accession of force
be a compensating one, B ? This would producea deve
lopment midway between the two, C, a geometrical But it was not so. alteration, merely. >c
of that
was a question of organic We must reinforce the current life itself, and leave it to do the
rest.
Buddha preached
National forces.
life
renunciation,
and India heard. Yet within a thousand years, she
had reached her highest point
of national prosperity. in
The
national
India has renunciation as
Its highest ideals are service
The Hindu mother
eats last.
its
life
source.
and mukti. Marriage
not for individual happiness, but for the welfare of the nation and the caste.
is
129
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS Certain individuals
of
the
modern
reform, having embarked on an experi ment which could not solve the problem, 4
are the sacrifices, over which the
has to
race
walk."
And
then the trend of conversation
changed again, and became all fun and merriment, jokes and stories. And as we laughed and listened, the boats came up, and talk was over for the day.
The whole of that afternoon and night, the Swami lay in his boat, ill. But next day, when we landed at the terpple of Bijbehara
already thronged with Amarnath pilgrims he was able to join us for a little while. "Quickly up -and quickly down," as he said of himself
was always his characteristic. After that, he was with us most of the day, and ir the afternoon,
we reached
Islamabad.
The dungas were moored beside ar apple-orchard. Grass grew down to th( water s edge, and dotted over the lawi stood the apple and pear and even plun 130
WALKS
<Sn
TALKS BESIDE THE JHELL UM
trees, that a it
necessary
Hindu to
used to think
state
each
outside
plant,
In spring-time, it seemed to us, spot must be that very IslandValley of Avilion. village.
this
"Where falls
not
or rain, or
hail,
any snow.
Nor ever wind blows
loudly
but
;
it
lies,
Deep-meadowed, happy,
fair
with
orchard-lawns,
And bowery
hollows,
crowned with
summer
The
houseboat,
in
lived, could not be taken
came
sea."
which two of us so
far,
so
it
deep and rapid portion of the stream, between high how beautiful was the hedges, and to rest in a very
walk, from the one
point to the other, under the avenue of poplars, with the
wonderful green of young
hand
rice
on either
!
In the dusk that evening, one came into the little group amongst the apple
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS trees,
and found the Master engaged
in
the rarest of rare happenings, a personal talk with DhirQ, Mdtd, and her whose
He had taken two Jaya. pebbles into his hand, and was saying name was
how, when he was
well, his
direct itself to this
and
might seem
less firm,
mind might
that,
but
or his
will
the
least
let
touch of pain or illness come, let him look death in the face for a while, and
am
hard as that (knocking the stones together), for I have touched the "I
feet of
as
God."
And
one
remembered,
apropos of this coolness, the story of a walk across the fields, in England, where he and an Englishman and
woman had been pursued by an angry bull. The Englishman frankly ran, and reached the other side of the
The woman ran
safety.
could,
and then sank
as
to
far
the
hill
as
ir
she
ground
incapable of further effort. Seeing this and unable to aid her, the Swami,
thinking
"So
this
is
the end, after
132
all
-
WALKS fr TALKS RESIDE THEJHELLUM took up his stand in front of her, with He told afterwards how folded arms.
mind
his
was
occupied
mathematical calculation, as to the bull would be able
animal
the
paces
off,
to
with
a
how
far
suddenly stopped,
and
then,
But
throw.
raising
a
his
few
head,
retreated sullenly.
A was
like far
courage though he himself these from of thinking
had shown itself, in his early youth, when he quietly stepped up to a runaway horse, and caught it, in the incidents
streets of Calcutta, thus
of the
woman,
saving the
who
occupied
life
the
carriage behind.
The grass for
talk drifted on, as
beneath the
trees,
we
sat
on the
and became,
an hour or two, half grave, half gay. heard much of the tricks the
We
monkeys could play, in Brindaban. And we elicited stories of two separate occasions in his wandering life, when he had had clear previsions of help, 33
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS which had been I
remember.
occurred at the the
vow
One
fulfilled.
of these
may possibly have time when he was under
It
to ask for nothing,
and he had
been several days (perhaps five) without food. Suddenly, as he lay, almost dying a railway-station,
of exhaustion,
in
flashed into his
mind
that he must
it
rise
up, and go out along a certain road, and that there he would meet a man, He obeyed, and bringing him help.
met one, carrying a tray of you he to whom I was sent mari, at
him
coming up
to
him,
?"
"Are
said
this
and looking
closely.
Then its
food.
a child was brought to hand badly cut, and the
us,
with
Swami
He bathed applied an old wives cure. the wound with water, and then laid on it,
to stop the bleeding,
piece
of calico.
duly 23rd
The
of a
villagers
were
The
soothed and consoled,
was over
the ashes
and our gossip
for the evening,
next morning, a motley gather-
134
WALKSfr TALKS BESIDE THEJHELLUM assembled beneath the and waited some hours, to apple-trees ing of coolies
take us to
the
ruins
of Marttand.
It
had been a wonderful old building
more abbey than temple, in a wonderful position, and its great interest evidently
lay in the obvious agglomeration of styles
and periods
which
in
it
had grown up.
Never can I forget the deep black shadows under the series of arches that confronted
us,
as
we
entered
in
mid-
afternoon, with the sun directly behind There were three the west. us, in arches, one straight
behind the ojher,
and just within the farthest of them, two-thirds of lined
window
trefoil,
but
showed
evidently
of
height, a
top.
only
this,
moment
its
The the
heavy
straight-
arches were
first
at
all
and second
we saw them at the The place had entering. as
originated
as
three
small
rectangular temples, built, with heaVy blocks of stone, round sacred springs.
The
style of these three
135
chambers was
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS all straight-lined,
severe.
Taking the
middle and furthest East of the three, some later king had built round it an enclosing wall, placing a trefoil arch outside each low lintel-formed doorway,
without interfering with the original in any way, and then had added to it in a larger nave, with a tall trefoil arch as entrance. Each building had been so perfect, and the motive of the front,
two epochs of construction was so clear that the plan of the temple was pure delight, and until one had drawn it, one coulfi
not
The dharmsdld
stop.
or
cloister, round the central building, was extraordinarily Gothic in shape, and to
one who has seen this, and the royal tombs of Mohammedanism in the north of India, cloister
once suggested that the the whole of a ideally,
it is is,
monastery, climates,
presence the East
it
is
at
and
though, in our cold can not be so retained, its
a perpetual
was
the
136
reminder that
original
home
of
WALKS fr TALKS BESIDE THEJHELLUM monasticism.
work,
an
in
The Swami was hard
instant,
at
on observations and
theories, pointing out
cornice that
the
ran along the nave from the entrance to the sanctuary, to the
surmounted
west,
by the high trefoils of the two arches and also by a frieze or showing us the and before panels containing cherubs ;
;
we had coins.
done, had picked up a of couple The ride back, through the sun
was charming.
set light,
From
all
these
hours, the day before and the day after, fragments of talk come back to me. "No
nation,
not
Greek
or
another,
has ever carried patriotism so far as the
They don
Japanese.
t
talk,
up all for country. noblemen now living in
give
they act There are
Japan
as
peasants, having given up their prince doms without a word to create the unity of the *
This
privileges,
empire.* is,
not
I
think a their
And
not
mistake.
It
that
the
estates,
renounced.
137
one was
traitor
their political
Japanese samurais
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS could be found in
Think of
that
Again,
some
to
the
Japanese war.
!"
of the
talking
express
feeling,
inability "Shy
of
and
reserved people, I have noticed, are always the most brutal when roused."
Again, ascetic
evidently
life,
and
the
giving the rules of "The
brahmackarya.
of
talking
desire
of gold, to suicide," and so on.
thinks
The darkness
of
who
sannyasin it,
night
commits and the
a great pinefire under the trees, two or three tents standing out white forest, 1
in the blackness, the
of
many
distance, disciples,
forms and voices
servants at their
and the such
is
fires
in
the
Master with three
the next
picture.
Of
Vernag, under the appleorchards and along the common-sides, of the pouring rain, and the luncheon in the road
to
the hard-won
sunshine, of that grand
old palace of Jehangir, with its octagonal tank at the foot of the pine-wooded hills,
138
WALKS fr TALKS BESIDE THE JHELLUM much might be said. But the crown of the day came in the hours after dinner, when we were, at long last, alone, and the constant
file
of visitors
and wor
shippers, with their gifts, had Suddenly the Master turned
member
ceased. to
one
party and said "You never mention your school now, do you of the
sometimes forget it ? You see," he have much to think of. One went on, "I
day
turn to Madras, and think
I
work
there.
attention
to
Another day America or
Ceylon or Calcutta. ing about yours." that
moment
away
to dine,
At called
I
give
all
I
am
think
Master
and not
till
was
he came
back could the confidence he had vited,
my
England or
Now the
of the
in
be given.
He
listened to
it
all,
the deliberate
wish for a tentative plan, for smallness of beginnings, and the final inclination to turn away from the idea of inclusive-
ness and breadth, and to base the whole
139
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS of an educational effort on the religious
and
life,
on
the
of
worship
Sri
Ramakrishna.
you must be sectarian get that enthusiasm, must you not he said. "You will make a sect
to
"Because
order to
rise
above
all
?"
in
Yes
sects.
I
understand."
There would be obvious difficulties. The thing sounded, on this scale, al most impossible, for many reasons. But
moment
only care need be to will rightly, and if the plan was sound, ways and means would be found to for the
the
hand, that was sure.
He heard
waited
it
ask
me
do.
For
as
much
I
little
when he had
and then he
all,
to
a
criticise,
said,
but that
I
"You
cannot
regard you as inspired, quite You know inspired as I am.
that s the difference
between other
reli-
i
gions and us. Other people believe their founder was inspired, and so do we.
But so
am
I,
also,
just as
140
much
so
as
WALKSfr TALKS BESIDE THE JHELLVM he,
and you as
and
I,
and
after you, be.
their disciples will
your
So
I
girls
shall
help you to do what you think best." Then he turned to Dhira Mata and
and spoke of the greatness of the that he would leave in the hands
to Java,
trust
of that disciple who should represent the interests of women, when he should west,
go
of
how
the responsibility of
it
would
work
for
exceed
men.
And
he added, turning to the worker of the party, "Yes, you have faith, but you have not that burning enthusiasm that you need.
Siva
You want
to be
Siva
and
!
blessing of
and
left us,
!"
consumed energy. so,
invoking
the
Mahadeva, he said goodnight and we, presently, went to bed.
The
next morning, we breakfasted early, in one of the tents, and went on to Achhabal. One of us had had a
dream of old jewels all bright and new.
lost
and restored,
But the Swami,
smiling, stopped the tale, saying talk of a dream as good as that
"Never
!"
141
Ju| v 25th
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS At Achhabal,
we
gardens of Jehangir. Vernag,
that
Was
had been
more
found it
here, or at
his
favourite
?
resting-place
We
roamed about the gardens, and a still pool opposite the Pathan Khan s Zenana, and then we lunched in the first garden, and rode down in
bathed
in
the afternoon to Islamabad.
As we
sat
at
lunch,
the
Swami
go to the Cave of Amarnath with him, and be dedicated to Siva. Dhira Mata smiled permission, and the next half-hour was given to invited his daughter to
pleasure
and
congratulations.
It
had
already been arranged that we were all to go to Pahlgam and wait there for
Swami s return from the pilgrimage. So we reached the boats that evening,
the
packed, and wrote
letters,
and next day Bawan.
in the afternoon, started for
142
CHAPTER X THE SHRINE
OF AMARNATH.
Time.
July 2Qth to August 8th 1898.
Place.
Kashmir.
From of
this
time
Swami.
the
we saw very
He
was
Ju| v 29th
little
full
of
enthusiasm about the pilgrimage and lived mostly on one meal a day, seeking
no company much, save that of sddhus. Sometimes he would come to a campingground, beads in hand. To-night two of the party went roaming about Bawan,
which was
like
a village
fair, all
modified
by a religious tendency, centering sacred springs.
Mata
in the
Afterwards, with Dhira
was possible
go and listen, at the tent door, to the crowd of Hindispeaking sddhus who were plying tjie it
Swami
On
to
with questions.
Thursday, we reached Pahlgam.
* ,
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS and camped down
We
valley.
at the lower
found that the
to encounter high
end of the
Swami had
opposition over
the
question of our admission at all. He was supported by the Naked Swamis,
whom
one of
have
said,
"It
is
true
you
strength, Swamiji, but you not to manifest it He yielded at ought the word. That afternoon however, he this
!"
took his daughter round the camp to be blessed,
alms,
which
really
meant
and whether
looked upon as
to distribute
because
rich, or
he was
because he was
recognised as strong the next day our tents were moved up to a lovely knoll, at
the
head of the camp, where we
had the rushing Lidar in front of us, and pine-covered mountains opposite,
,
with a glacier distinctly visible, beyond a cleft high up. stayed a whole day,
We
shepherds, to k^ep ek&dasi, and early next morning the pilgrims left. at
July 30th.
this
village,
At
six in the
of the
morning we had break144
THE SHRINE OF AMARNA TH and were
tasted
camp had moved,
off.
What
time
the
seemed impossible
it
even at our early meal-time very few pilgrims or tents were left. The ashes of dead fires were all that
to guess, for
marked the place where yesterday had been a thousand people and their canvas homes.
How next
beautiful
was the route
Chandanawara
halt,
!
to the
There we
camped on the edge of a ravine. It rained all afternoon, and I was visited by the
Swami
But
only for a five-minute s chat. received endless touching little
I
kindnesses from the servants and other In the
pilgrims.
showers
I
interval
between two
went out botanising, and found
seven or eight species of Mycsotis, two of which were new to me. Then I went
back to the shadow of
my
dripping
hr-tree.
The second than
any of
endless.
stage was much harder the It seemed others.
Close
to
Chandanawara, the 45
10
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS Swami
insisted
on
my
doing my first glacier on foot, and took care to point out every detail of intrest. A tremen dous climb of some thousands of feet,
was the next experience. Then a long walk along a narrow path that twisted round mountain after mountain, and
At the top mountain, the ground was
finally
another steep climb.
of the
first
Then simply carpeted with edelwiess. the road passed five hundred feet above with
Shisharnag, at last
we camped
its
sulky in a cold
water,
damp
and
place
8000 feet high. The firs were far below, and all after noon and evening the coolies had to
amongst the snow-peaks,
1
forage for juniper in all directions. The Tahsildar s, Swami s and my own tents
were
all
close together,
and
in the
even
ing a large fire was lighted in front. But it did not burn well, and many feet
below lay the
Swami
after
glacier.
I
did not see
the
we camped.
Pantajharni
the
146
place of the
five
THE SHRINE OF AMARNA TH was
streams
not
march. Moreover,
such a long than
nearly it
was lower
and the cold was dry and exhilarating. In front of the camp was a dry river-bed, all gravel, and through Shisharnag,
ran
this
five
streams, in
all
was the duty of the pilgrim walking from one garments.
which to
bathe,
wet
the other in
to
it
Contriving to elude observa
tion
completely, Swamiji nevertheless fulfilled the law to the last letter in this
respect.
How
The lovely were the flowers or was it this ? night before, night large blue and white anemones grew in my tent,
!
beneath
wandering
off,
a glacier
at
my
bed
in the
closer
gentian, sedums,
!
here,
afternoon, to quarters,
saxifrages,
with
And I
set
found
and a new
hairy silver thick velvet like Even of leaves, pile. jxmiper at this place there was very
forget-me-not
little
little.
At
these
heights
we
often
found
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS ourselves in great circles of snow-peaks, those mute giants that have suggested to
Hindu mind the
the
idea of the
Ash-
encovered God. August 2nd.
On
Tuesday. August the 2nd, the great day of Amarnath, the first batch of pilgrims must have left the camp at
two
!
We
by the light of the full sun rose as we went down
left
moon. The
the narrow valley. It was not too safe, But when at this part of the journey.
we
left
our ddndies and began to climb,
A
sort of goatthe real danger began. path o in almost vertical hill-sides, becom
ing in the descent on the other side, a Every here tiny staircase in the turf.
and
there,
aelmas
one
to
delicate
daisies,
risk
and wild
life
Mich
columbines,
and
roses,
limb
tempted in
their
Then, having at last reached the bottom of the farther slope, acquistion.
we had
along the glacier, mile About a mile after mile, to the Cave. to toil
before our destination, the
148
ice
ceased,
THE SHRINE OF AMARNATH and
flowing water had to bathe. Even when in the
the
pilgrims
we seemed
have arrived, there was still quite a ascent over the rocks to be made.
to
stiff
The Swami, time,
fallen
bering that
below the
exhausted, had by this behind, but I, not remem
he
might be ill, waited, banks of gravel for his
He came at last, and, appearence. with a word, sent me on, he was going to bathe. Half an hour later he entered the
With
cave.
a smile he knelt,
first
one end of the semi-circle, then at the other. The place was vast, large at
to
enough great
hold
a in
ice-Siva,
shadow, seemed as base.
A
cathedral,
a niche if
and the
of deepest
throned on
its
own
few minutes passed, and then
he turned to leave the cave.
To
He
him, the heavens
had touched the
had had
to hold
afterwards, lest
had opened.
feet of
Siva.
himself tight,
He
he said
he should swoon away/
But so great was
his physical exhaustion,
149
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS that a doctor
afterwards
said
that
his
ought to have stopped beating, and had undergone a permanent enlarge
heart
ment
How
strangely near had been those words of his
instead.
fulfilment
Master,
"when
what he
he
he
realises
who and "
give up this body he have enjoyed it so much is
will
!
"
"
I
!
hour afterwards, as he sat on a rock above the stream-side, eating said half an
lunch with the kind
thought the ice-lingam was And there were no Himself.
myself.
Siva
Naked Swami and
"I
thievish
Brahmins,
wrong.
It
was
all
no
trade,
worship.
nothing I never
enjoyed any religious place so much Afterwards he would often tell of the "
!
overwhelming vision that had seemed He to draw him almost into its vertex. 1
would
talk of
ice-pillar,
and
the it
poetry of the white
was he who suggested
discovery of the place hact been by a party of shepherds, who had wandered far in search of their flocks that the
first
THE SHRINE OF AMARNATH one summer day, and had entered the cave to find themselves, before the unmelting ice, in the presence of the Lord He always said too that the Himself. grace of
him
Amarnath had been granted
there,
not to die
till
he
to
himself
And to me he said should give consent. "You do not now understand. But you have made the pilgrimage, and it will Causes must bring go on working. You will understand better their effects. afterwards.
The
effects will
come."
was the road by which How we returned next morning to Pahlgam beautiful
;
\Ve struck tents that night immediately on our return to them, and camped later for
the
night in a
stage further on.
snowy pass a whole
We paid a coolie a few
annas here, to push on with a letter, but when we actually arrived next after-noon
we found *
that this
had been quite un-
necessary, for all morning long, relays of pilgrims had been passing the tents, and dropping in, in the most friendly
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS manner, to give the others news of us, and our impending arrival. In the morning, we were up and on the way
As the sun rose moon went down
long before dawn. before us, while the behind,
we passed above
Death, into
which about
the
forty
Lake
of
pilgrims
had been hurried one year, by an ava lanche which their hymns had started. After this we came to the tiny goat-path
down the we were
face of a steep
able
to
cliff,
shorten
This was
journey so much.
by which the
return
little
better
than a scramble, and everyone had per At the bottom, force to do it on foot. the villagers had something like break fast ready. Fires were burning, chapatties baking, and tea ready to oe served out. From this time on, parties of pilgrims would leave the main body at each
ways, and the feeling of solidarity that had grown up amongst us parting of the
all
throughout the journey became gra
dually less and
less.
152
THE SHRINE Or AMARNAT1I That evening on the
knoll
above
Pahlgam, when a great fire of pinc-i was lighted, and dhurries spread we sat
and
talked.
Our
friend, the
all
Naked
Swami, joined us and we had plenty of fun and nonsense, but presently, when all
had gone save our own
sat on, with the great
little
moon
party,
we
overhead,
and the towering snows, and rushing And river, and the mountain-pines. the
Swami
talked of Siva, and the
Cave
and the great verge of vision. We started for Islamabad next day, and on Monday morning as we sat- at breakfast,
we were towed
safely
August 8th
into
Srinagar.
I I
153
CHAPTER
XI
AT SRINAGAR OH THE RETURN Persons
:
Swami Vivekananda, and a
The
whom
Europeans, amongst the
Place
:
Time
:
At
August 9th.
Steady
Jaya
Kashmir
Srinagar.
this
of leaving
the
know
us.
"The
One whose name wa
monk
exactly
is
is
pure
that
what
passionate outcry much better when
I I
And when
River
"
4
*
c
time the Master was always
find the entry
I
Mother."
and Nivedita.
p^rty
were Dhira Mata
August Qth to August I3th.
talking
flows,
JOURNEY.
it
am have
pure that goes,"
means always to
I
the sc
undergo
hardships and beg my bread," the longing for freedom and the touch of the
common
the picture of himsel faaking a long circuit of the country or foot, and meeting us again at Baramulh for the
people,
journey home. 154
A T SR/NA GA R ON THE RE TURN JO URNE Y
whom
His family of boat-people,
he
had staunchly befriended through two Afterwards he seasons, left us to-day.
would refer to the whole incident of their connection with
him
as proof that
even charity and patience could go too far.
was evening, and we all went out On the return he to pay some visit. called his disciple Nivedita to walk His talk with him across the fields. was all about the work and his inten It
tions in
He
it.
ness of his
and as
its
spoke of the inclusive-
conception
religions
;
being solely
Hinduism ary
faith
of his in
of the country
own
distinction
his desire to
make
active, aggressive, a mission ;
of
*
dont-touch-ism
as the
Then he only thing he repudiated. talked with depth of feeling of the gigantic \vTio
spirituality
of
were most orthodox. her hold
of those
India
wan
must never
let
on the old meditative
life
ted practicality, but she ef>
many
155
August ioth
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS "To be as deep as the ocean and as broad as the Sky Sri Ramakrishna has said, was the ideal. But
for that.
profound inner life in the soul encased within orthodoxy, is the result of an accidental not an essential associa this
we set
ourselves right here, the world will be right, for are we not all
tion.
one
"And
"Rctmakrishna
?"
Paramahamsa was
depths of his being, yet the outer plane he was perfectly the
alive to
on
if
active
and
And of the "My
capable."
then
of that
worship of
own
life
is
critical
his
own
question
Master,
guided by the enthu
great personality, but others will decide for themselves how far siasm,
this
not
is
of
that
true
filtered
for
out
them. to
Inspiration
is
the world through
one man. August nth
There was occasion
Swami
to
this
day
rebuke a member
for the
of
th is
It was party for practising palmistry. a thing he said that everyone desired,
156
A T SRINAGAR
ON THE RETURN JOURNE Y
India despised and hated. Yes, he said, in reply to a little special plead ing, even of character-reading- he dis yet
all
"To tell you the truth I approved. should have thought even your Incar
nation ciples
more honest if He and His dis had not performed miracles.
Buddha unfrocked a monk Later,
for
talking on the subject
doing to
it."
which
he had now transferred his attention, he
spoke with horror of the display of the least of it as sure to bring a terrible reflex.
The Swami had now taken
a Brah-
min cook.
Very touching had been the arguments of the Amarnath sAd/ins against his willingness to let even a Mussalm&n cook for him. "Not in the
land
of
Sikhs,
they had said, sented.
But
shipping his child as
was mir,
Swamiji and he had at last con
for the present little
Uma.
Her whole
:"
he was wor
Mohammedan idea of
boatlovfc
and the day he left Kash tiny one, was fain to carry a
service,
she,
at least
157
August i2tK and 13th.
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS him
tray of apples for
tonga
He
herself.
all
the
time.
Kashmir
In
to the
never forgot her,
though he seemed quite the
way
indifferent at itself
he was
fond of recalling the time when she saw a blue flower on the towing path and sitting this
down
way and
before that,
flower for twenty
and striking
it,
"was
it
alone with tha
minutes."
There was a piece of land by the river-side on which grew three chennaars, towards which
our
thoughts
turned
with peculiar love at this time. For the Maharajah was anxious to give it to Swamiji,
and we
centre
work
of
which should 4<
all
in
pictured it as a the future-work
the great idea of by the people, for the people, as a joy
to
worker and
realise
to
served."
view of Indian feeling about a homestead blessed by women, it had In
been suggested that we should go annex the site, by camping there while.
One
of
aivd for a
our party moreover had 158
A T SRINAGAR ON THE RETURN JOURNE Y a personal wish for special quiet at this So it was decided that we should
time.
establish
before the
And
the
land,
women
a
s
math
Maharajah to
confer
it
,
as
should
it
were,
require
on the Swami.
was possible because the spot was one of the minor camping grounds this
used by Europeans.
159
CHAPTER
XII
THE CAMP UNDER THE CHENNAARS. Persons:
The Swami Vivekananda, and
a party of
Eu
amongst whom were Dhirfi Mata the Steady Mother One whose name wa ropeans,
;
Jay a t
Place
:
Kashmir
Time /August
August 14th Sept. 3rd.
and Niveditu.
;
Srinagar. to
1 4th
September 2Oth.
was Sunday morning and next afternoon the Swami was prevailed on It
come up to tea with us, in order meet a European guest, who seemed
to
be interested
in the
He
little
had been
himself with his real
the
motive
to
to
subject of Vedanta. inclined to concern
matter,
and
I
think
accepting, was pro
in
bably to afford his
too-eager disciples
an
opportunity of convincing them selves of the utter futility of all such
attempts as infinite
as
pains
certainly
this.
with
Certainly he tobk the enquirer and trouble
his
1
60
was wasted.
THE CAMP UNDER THE CHENNAARS I
remember
be broken. break a
What you
amongst other
saying,
"How
things,
to
his
a law
wish
I
could
we were really should be law we
able
If
free.
breaking the law, is real ly only another way of keeping Then he tried to explain a little of the call
it."
fell
words
his
on ears that could not hear.
On Tuesday our
the end,
enough
to the it
began
"History
meal.
mid-day
to rain heavi
to prevent his return,
Tod s
took up
he came once more to
camp
little
Towards ly
But
life.
super-conscious
of
and he
Rajasthan"
which was lying near, and drifted into talk of
Meenl
national
ideas
Bai.
now
"Two-thirds
in
Bengal,"
of the
he
said,
have been gathered from this book." But the episode of Meenl B3,i, the queen
who would
be queen, but would world with the lovers of
not
wander the Krishna, was always his favourite, even in Tod. He talked of how she preached .
>
submission, prayerfulness, and service to 161 1 1
September
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS all in
contrast to
ched love
mercy one of
to
to
Chaitanya,
the
Name
his great patronesses.
put into her story
now
is
such
nections,
prea
and
Meer& B&i was always
all.
which one
who
of God,
He
threads with
many
familiar in other
the
as
would con
conversion
of
two great robbers, and the end by an image of Krishna opening and swal heard him on one I lowing her up. recite
occasion of I
remember
could
Cling to
it,
fell
whole,
cling
to
it,
and ended with
and Bunka the
the
I
one wish but
it
rendering, with the words,
in his
Brother,"
translate
songs to a woman.
her
tegan,
and
cling "If
to
it,
Aunka
the robber brothers, Sujana
butcher,
playfully taught name of the
and the courtesan, who
her parrot to repeat the
Lord
Krishna
were
Again ^1 hope for tale marvellous that tell him heard have of Meera B&i, in which on reaching Brind^van, she sent for a certain famous saved, there
is
all."
162
THE CAMP UNDER THE CHENNAARS
He refused to
s&dhu.* that
woman might
When
go,
not see
on the ground
men
Brin-
in
had happened three times, Meer3, Bai went to him herself say ing that she had not known that there ddvan.
this
were such beings as men there, she had supposed that Krishna alone existed.
And when she
she saw the astonished sddku
unveiled
the words
Man
do you call yourself a as he fell prostrate before
"Fool,
And
?"
with
herself completely,
her with a cry of awe, she blessed as a mother blesses her child.
Today
the
Swami passed on
him
to the
Akbar, and sang us a song of
talk of
Tana Sena, Emperor
the
of the
poet-laureate
on the throne, a god amongst men,
"Seated
Thou
the
Emperor
of Delhi
:
Blessed was the hour the minute, the second, *Sanatana, the famous Sannyasin disciple of Sri Chaitanya of Bengal, of
Beng^
who to
gave up his office of minister become a religious devotee. 1
6.?
to
the
Nawab
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS
When
thou ascendest the throne,
O
God amongst men, Thou the Lord of Delhi. Long- live thy crown, thy sceptre, thy throne,
O
God amongst men, Thou Emperor of Delhi
:
Live long, and remain awakened
O
always, son of Humayoon,
Joy of the sun, God amongst men, Thou, the Emperor of Delhi !"
Then hero"
the talk passed to
Prot^p Singh,
"our
national
who never
be brought to submission.
could
Once indeed
he was tempted to give in, at that moment when, having fled from Cheetore, and the queen herself having cooked evening meal, a hungry cat swooped down on that cake of bread which was the children s portion, and the scanty
th*3
King
of
Mewar
heard his babies
Then, indeed, the strong cry for food. The prosheart of the man failed him. 164
THE CAMP UNDER THE CHENNAARS pect of ease and relief tempted him. And for a moment he thought of ceasing from the unequal conflict, and sending
Akbar, only for an instant. Eternal Will protects its own. Even
his alliance to
The
as the
picture passed
before his mind,
there appeared a messenger, with those despatches from a famous Rajput chief, that said
There
is
but one
left
amongst
us who has kept his blood free from admixture with the alien. Let it never
be said that his head has touched the "
dust. in
the
renewed the
And
the soul
breath
loner faith,
country
of Protap of courage
drew and
and he arose and swept its foes, and made his
of
own way back to Oodeypore. Then there was the wonderful
tale
of the virgin princess Krishna Kumari, whose hand was sought by various royal suitors at once.
were
And when
three armies
at the gate, her father could
think
of nothing better than to give her poison. The task was entrusted to her uncle,and
165
NOTES OF SOME WANDERINGS he entered her room as she lay asleep to do it. *But at the sight of her beauty
and youth, remembering her too as a baby, the soldier s heart failed him, and he could not perform his task. But she
was awakened by some sound, and being told what was proposed, stretched out her hand for the cup, and drank the And so on, and so poison with a smile.
For the
on.
in
kind are endless.
this Sept, 20th.
Rajput heroes
stories of
On
Swami and he whose
Saturday, the
name was Soong, went
Dahl Lake, to be the guests of the American consul and his wife for a couple of days. They to the
returned on Monday, and on Tuesday, the Swami came up to the new Math, as
we
called
it,
and had
us
his boat
moved
by ours, so that he could be with for a few days, before leaving for
close
Ganderbal.
1
66
CONCLUDING WORDS OF THE EDITOR. From Ganderbal
the
Swami
week of October and announced for
the
plains
in
returned
by the
his intention of leaving
a few days for urgent reasons.
European party had already made plans cities
Agra
as soon
ties
decided
From
here
Calcutta
to
the
The
to visit the
of Northern India e.g. Lahore, Delhi,
principal etc.,
first
as the winter
return
together
Swami and
leaving the
set in.
rest
to
sight-seeing in Northern India.
So both par
and came
his
party
to Lahore.
returned to
carry out their plans for
r\