India, Old and New | Page 6

cases to lifelong contempt
and drudgery. For they were debarred henceforth from fulfilling the

supreme function of Hindu womanhood, _i.e._ securing the continuity
of family rites from father to son by bearing children in legitimate
wedlock, itself terribly circumscribed by the narrow limits within
which inter-marriage is permissible even between different septs of the
same caste. Happily those I saw were probably still too young to realise
the full significance of the unkind fate that already differentiated them
so markedly from their more fortunate caste-sisters.
Nor has one to go so very far from the heart of Calcutta to be reminded
that the "premier city" of modern India derives its name from Kali, the
most sinister of Indian goddesses. She was the tutelary deity of
Kali-Kata, one of the three villages to which Job Charnock removed the
first British settlement in Bengal when he abandoned Hugli in 1690,
and her shrine has grown in wealth and fame with the growth of
Calcutta. Kali-Kata is to-day only a suburb of the modern city, but in
entering it one passes into another world--the world of popular
Hinduism. In its narrow streets every shop is stocked with the
paraphernalia that Hindus require for their devotions, for everything
centres in Kali-Kata round the popular shrine sacred to Kali, the black
goddess of destruction, with a protruding blood-red tongue, who wears
a necklace of human skulls and a belt of human hands and tongues, and,
holding in one of her many hands a severed human head, tramples
under foot the dead bodies of her victims. From the ghats, or long
flights of steps, that descend to the muddy waters of a narrow creek
which claims a more or less remote connection with the sacred Ganges,
crowds of pious Hindus go through their ablutions in accordance with a
long and complicated ritual, whilst high-caste ladies perform them in
mid-stream out of covered boats and behind curtains deftly drawn to
protect their purdah. Past an ancient banyan tree, from whose branches
streamers of coloured stuffs depend with other votive offerings from
grateful mothers who have not prayed for male offspring in vain, past
the minor shrines of many favourite deities, a road lined with closely
packed beggars and ascetics, thrusting forth their sores and their
shrivelled limbs in the hope of a few coppers, leads up to the place of
sacrifice in front of the temple. The pavement is still red with the blood
of goats immolated to the Great Goddess, and her devotees who may
have just missed the spectacle can at least embrace the posts to which

the victims were tied. On an open pillared platform facing the holy of
holies some of the high-caste worshippers await in prayer and
meditation the moment when its ponderous bronze doors are from time
to time thrown open. One old Brahman lady of singularly refined
appearance presses her fingers alternately on her right and her left
nostril, whilst she expels through the other, keeping her lips all the time
tightly closed, the unhallowed air which may have contaminated her
lungs on her way to the temple. Another worshipper lies full length
with his face pressed to the ground in motionless adoration. Between
them flit about laughing, bright-eyed little girls, the "daughters" of the
temple, still unconscious of the life of temple prostitution to which they
have been dedicated from their birth. The court-yard all around is
packed with a surging, howling mob of pilgrims, many of them from a
great distance, fighting for a vantage point from which they may get a
glimpse of the Great Goddess in her inner sanctuary, even if they
cannot hope to penetrate into it.
At last, after much clanging of bells and fierce altercations between the
Brahman priests and the faithful as to payment of necessary fees, the
bronze doors roll back, and in the dim religious twilight one catches a
glint of gold and precious stones, the head-dress of Kali, whose terrific
image barely emerges from the depth of the inner sanctuary in which it
stands, accessible only to its serving Brahmans. They alone, though
strangely enough temple Brahmans as a class enjoy little credit with
their fellow-castemen, can approach the idol and wash and dress and
feed it with offerings. Whilst the doors are open the frenzy and the
noise increases, as the mob of worshippers struggle for a front place
and bawl out their special supplications at the top of their voices. Then
when they are closed again there is a general unravelling of the tangled
knots of perspiring humanity, and those who have achieved the
supreme purpose of their pilgrimage gradually disperse to make room
for another crowd, one stream succeeding another the whole day long
on special festivals, but on ordinary days mostly between sunrise and
noon. At the