India Revisited.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 179, 20 November 1886, Page 6

India Revisited.

By .Edwin Arnold.

Bombay "Al Fresoo." A tide of Beething Asiatic humanity ebba and flows up and down the Bhendi bazaar, and through the chief mercantile thoroughfares. Nowhere could be seen a play of livelier hues, a busier and a brighter city life ! Boeidea the endless crowds of Hindu, ! Gujorati, and Mahratta people coming and going— some in gay dresses, but most with next to none at all - between the rows of evotetquely painted nouses and temples, there are to be studied here specimens of every race and nation of the Ea9t. Arabs from Muscat, Persians from the Gulf, Afghans from tho Northern frontier, black ?haggy Biluchig, negroes of Zanzibar, ialandors from the Maldives and Laccadivoa, Malagaahed, Malays, and Chinese throng and jostle with Parseeß in their sloping bats, with Jews, Laecars, fishermen, Rajpoots, Fakiis, Europeans, Sepoys, and Sahibs. Innumerable carts, drawn by patient, aleopy-eyed oxen, thread their creaking way amid tram-cars, buggies, victorias, palanquins, and handsome English carriages. Familiar to me, but absolutely bewildering to my two companions, under the fierce, scorching, blinding sunlight ot midday, in this play of hoen colours, and this tide ot ceaeelese, clamouri ous existence. But the background of Hindoo fashions anil manners romains un- | changed and unchangeable. Still, as ever, the motley population lives its accustomed life in the public gaze, doing a thousand things in the roadway, in the gutter, or in the little open shop, which the European performs inside his closed above. The unclad merchant posts up hia accou -li of pice and annas with a reed upon long rolls of paper under the eyes of all the world. The barber ehaves tm customer, and seta right his care, nostrils, and finders, on the sidewalk. The ehampooer cracks the joints and grinds the muscled of hia clients whereever they happen to meet together. The Gum drones out hia Sanskrit shlokes to the little class of biown-eyed Brahman boys ; the banaula player pipes ; the sitar singer twangs his wires ; worshipped stand with clae-ped palms before the images of Rama and Parvati, or deck the Lingam with votive flowers ; the beggars squat in the sun, rocking themselves to and fro to the monotonous cry of " Dhurrum ;" the bheesties go about with water-skins sprinkling the dust ; the bhangy coolies trot with balanced bamboos ; the slim, baie-limbed Indian girla glide along with baskets full of chupatties or "bratties" of cow dung on their heads, and with email naked babiea astride upon their hips. Everywhere, behind and amid the vast commercial bustle of modern Bombay, abides ancient, placid, conservative India, with her immutable customs and deeply-rooted popular habitsderived unbroken Irom immemorial daya. And overhead, in every open space, or vista of quaint roof-top 3, and avenues of red, blue, or saffron-hued houses, the feathered crowns of the date trees wave, the sacred tree swings its aerial roots and shelters the squirrel and the parrot, while the air is peopled with hordes of übiquitous, clatnotous, grey-necked crows, and full of the "Kites or Govinda," wheeling and screamingunderacloudlesacanopy of sunlight. The abundance of animal life even in the suburbs of this great capital appears once more wonderful, albeit ao well known and remembered of old. You cannot drop a morsel of bread or fruit but forty keen-beaked, sleek, desperately audacious crowa crowd to snatch at the epoil ; and in the tamarind tree which overhangs our verandah may at this moment be counted more than a hundred red-throated parrokeets, chattering and darting, like live fruit, among the dark green branches. India does not change !

Cow Worship in India. One cannot be a day in this land without observing how the ancient worship of the cow still holds the mind of the Hindoos. Those baskets of " bratties " are the established fuel of the country, which everywhere burns the bois de vache. The Banjaras are the only sect in British India which allow the cow to labour, and good Brahmans will feed a cow before they take their own breakfast, exclaiming " Daughter of Surahbi, formed of five elements auspicious, pure, and holy, sprung: from the sun, accept this food from me. Salutation and peace !" Everything which comes from the cow is sacred and purifying, the droppings are plastered with water over the floors and verandahs of all native houses, and upon the cooking places ; the ashes of the same commodity are used, with colouring powders, to mark the foreheads, necke, and arms of the pious, and no punctilious Hindu would pass by a cow in the act cf staling without catching the hallowed stream in his palm to bedew his forehead and breast. I have observed this morning my hamal reverently touch the compound cow as she passed him, when nobody was looking, and raise hia hand to his mouth. He doubtless muttered the mantra, "Hail, O cow! mother of the Rudra, daughter of the Vasu, sister of the Aditya, thou who art the source of ambrosia !" India does not change !

A "Musical Afternoon" in Bombay. A visit at the house of a well known Hindu gentleman revealed that certain social alterations are silently operating at this Indian metropolis. Sir Munguldass Nathabhai, K.C.S 1., is of course, a remarkably advanced and enlightened Ilindu, renowned for his freedom from prejudices ; but, twenty years ago even this courteous and kindly personage could not have received me to the intimate hospitality of his mansion as he did. Meeting ua at the door of his mansion, albeit in feeble health, he led the ladies of our party up his staircase to the drawing-room, where they were at once joined by the wife and daughters of the Hindu knight. These amiable native ladies could talk English perfectly, chatted on social topics, compared tastes in dress and tints, and in all respects observed our own usages of intercourse except in the graceful local addition that at the close of our visit they preeented to their English friends deliriously fragrant bouquets of roses and jasmine, and offered the aromatic pan supari and the rose water. Later on in the day we again met the daughters and sons of Sir Munguldass at a " musical afternoon " given in a large house on Malabar Hill by a Parsee gentleman, Mr Kabraji. Here there were assembled in a really magnificent pillared hall paved with white and blue marble, some eighty or a hundred of the leading members of Parses, Hindoo, and Mohammedan eoeiety, including at least forty native ladies. £>ir Frederick Roberts, Mr Ilbert, fir William Wedderburn, Mr Justice Birdwood, and a number tif English residents, mingled with the large native party on perfectly easy and equal grounds, but no London drawing room could have presented a scene so bright in colour and character. ' The Pai?aee and Hindoo ladies — many of them personally most charming in appearance^ and all gentle and graceful in demeanour— wore lovely dresses' of every conceivable hue, ', rbse colour, amber, purple, silver, gol(V azure, white, green, and crimson. A Guzerati girl in red and gold sang the *' Last Roe© of Summer," with notable skill to the piano played by

her sister, and then a ring of Parsee maidens, in flowing si'llt' robe's and dark' 'glossy treases,' chanted a " song circle," softly singing in chorus, and beating time with their hands, while they' moved, round and round in a rhythmical ring of singular grace. The music ended with «' God Save the Queen," quite accurately sung by a number of theae Indian maidene in native words ; and after refreshments had been handed round, chaplets of flowers and little balls of rosebuds and the fragrant champa buds were distributed, and the well-pleased company separated by the light of innumerable oil lamps set among the shrubs and trees of the compound. If it were possible to dopict the golden background of the Indian sky, and the sleeping surface of the Indian Ocean, which made the setting of this fair and friendly gathering — until the quick twilight suddenly closqd upon us— some better artißtic idea might be derived of the pleasant and novel afternoon thus spent. One point was particularly noticeable to those accustomed to mark signs of fresh ideas in the native mind, ft ia incumbent on Parsee ladies to wear a rather ugly white band drawn tightly over the crown and brows, and this remnant of early times lias resisted even the new taste tor silk stockings, satin shoes, and European ornaments. But the pretty Zoroaatrians, who possess the finest and glossiest black trefeea in the world, object nowadays to conceal entirely this great charm, and so the white head- band i8 pushed farther and farther back until it threatens to disappear altogether under the sari of violet or rose, seagreen, or aapphire, drawn so coquettishly over the head.