On the Indian Hills

THE coolie is not entirely without religion, though it is one chiefly made up of superstitions and deeply contaminated with the strange and fantastic fetish worship of the aboriginal tribes -- peoples who have roamed these jungles since the remotest ages, and have been overcome by succeeding waves of northern invaders. But these wild superstitions are grafted on the stock of Hinduism, which is the prevailing religion of the south of India. Thus, our coolies wore the red spots and parti-colored trident of Vishnu on their forehead, and would yet eat the flesh of monkeys, when they could get it, or drink strong spirits without a misgiving. Perhaps on our hills they were on their worst behavior, and the famine had made them careless of strict rules -- it is very hard to be virtuous on an empty stomach.

All over the estate there were samee trees at conspicuous spots, and generally at cross-roads. Under these, strange little shrines were built just big enough for a man to kneel in, and made of green boughs plastered over with mud. The figures inside varied considerably. In one close to my hut there was a slab of wood with a roughly carved image of a cross-legged deity on it, and a three-pronged fork with the two outer prongs painted white, and the inner one red, stuck in the ground by the side. This lay right in our track as we went to work every day, and each coolie, as he or she passed, salaamed to the little idol -- a proceeding which hindered the march, but they would not work well until it had been gone through. In another little temple, not so well endowed as the former, there were two small mud cones on the floor, on the top of one of which white paint was poured, and on the other red. At this shrine a bit of ground had been cleared of weeds and leaves, and there every Tuesday afternoon (apparently the coolie Sunday) they congregated and killed a chicken or a sheep, if they had one, and made a burra puja, or offering, afterwards salaaming and rubbing their foreheads on the ground in front of the mud pyramids, which, however, it should be clearly remembered, they no more worshipped than a Christian worships the altar when he kneels down in front of it. It was simply that the shrine was the abode of a divinity, and they represented the Invisible according to their means.

For myself, I always reverenced these little places, and would no more have thought of disarranging one than I would blow out the tiny votive lamp of an Italian wayside chapel. The men killed sheep and ate them there, but the women also made small offerings; and on a pointed stick by the entrance of the temple were a number of glass bangles freshly taken from the wrists of the votaries; these remained there untouched by any hand for many months. Whether or not coolies had much faith in charms was difficult to say; they did not wear them about their persons; but there was a handsome brown-and-yellow flower, the Indian marigold, which seemed to find especial favor, and one of the prettiest habits of the native women was the way in which they twined bunches of these gay buds amongst their shining black tresses. The effect was very pleasing. These flowers did not grow wild in the forests, but there were plenty of them about the older bungalows, whence they were fetched on grand occasions, to deck the women-folk and strew the floor of the temples.

As for birth, marriage, or death ceremonies, I can say very little from observation. The population of the "lines" had been increased by various small brown babies, but without any visible rejoicings. As for marriages, they were probably put off until better times; and though there had been very many subjects for burying, these were interred with few funeral honors. In fact, even the nearest kindred of a departed coolie seemed to think the sooner he was forgotten the better, for they raised no memorials over his narrow cell. There seemed to be some sort of ill-defined desire to put the dead on a peninsula with running water on as many sides as might be -- a trace, perhaps, of that wide-spread and strange idea that a stream is a safeguard against evil spirits, whereof there are fragments in the legends and superstitions of every land, from the "bush" of Australia to the forests of North America.