India, Old and New | Page 6

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 back of the shrine, as I came away, some privileged worshippers were waiting to drink a few drops of the foul water which trickles out of a small conduit through the wall from the holy of holies. It is the water in which the feet of the idol--and those of the serving Brahmans--have been washed!
It was in this same temple of Kali that only some fifteen years ago, during the violent agitation provoked by the Partition