1. THE NINE GEMS OF UJJAIN
‘THERE IS THE old building,’ said he, and pointed to a new building.
‘But I want the ruins of which the stationmaster spoke; the palace that King Vikramaditya built, and adorned with Kalidas, and the other eight. Where is it? Where are they?’
‘Old building,’ he repeated more doubtfully, and checked the horse. Far out to the left, behind a grove of trees, a white and fantastic mass cut into the dusty horizon. Otherwise India prevailed. Presently I said, ‘I think you are driving me wrong,’ and, since now nothing happened at all, added, ‘Very well, drive me in that direction.’ The horse then left the road and proceeded with a hesitating step across the fields.
Ujjain is famous in legend and fact, and as sacred as Benares, and surely there should have been steps, and temples, and the holy river Sipra. Where were they? Since leaving the station we had seen nothing but crops and people, and birds, and horses as feeble as our own. The track we were following wavered and blurred, and offered alternatives; it had no earnestness of purpose like the tracks of England. And the crops were haphazard too — flung this way and that on the enormous earth, with patches of brown between them. There was no place for anything, and nothing was in its place. There was no time either. All the small change of the north rang false, and nothing remained certain but the dome of the sky and the disk of the sun.
Where the track frayed out into chaos the horse stopped, but the driver repeated ‘Old, very old,’ and pointed to the new building. We left the horse to dream. I ordered him to rejoin it. He said that he would, but looking back I found that he, too, was dreaming, sitting upon his heels, in the shadow of the castor-oil plants. I ordered him again, and this time he moved, but not in the direction of the horse. ‘Take care; we shall all lose one another,’ I shouted. But disintegration had begun, and my expedition” was fraying out, like the track, like the fields.
Uncharioted, unattended, I reached the trees, and found under them, as everywhere, a few men. The plain lacks the romance of solitude. Desolate at the first glance, it conceals numberless groups of a few men. The grasses and the high crops sway, the distant path undulates, and is barred with brown bodies or heightened with saffron and crimson. In the evening the villages stand out and call to one another across emptiness with drums and fires. This clump of trees was apparently a village, for near the few men was a sort of enclosure surrounding a kind of street, and gods multiplied. The ground was littered with huts and rubbish for a few yards, and then the plain resumed; to continue in its gentle confusion as far as the eye could see.
But all unobserved, the plain was producing a hill, from the summit of which were visible ruins — the ruins. The scene amazed. They lay on the other side of a swift river, which had cut a deep channel in the soil, and flowed with a violence incredible in that drowsy land. There were waterfalls, chattering shallows, pools, and to the right a deep crack, where the whole stream gathered together and forced itself between jaws of stone. The river gave nothing to the land; no meadows or water weeds edged it. It flowed, like the Ganges of legend, precipitate out of heaven across earth on its way to plunge under the sea and purify hell.
On the opposite bank rose the big modern building, which now quaintly resembled some castle on the Loire. The ruins lay close to the stream — a keep of grey stone with a water-gate and steps. Some of the stones had fallen, some were carved, and, crossing the shallows, I climbed them. Beyond them appeared more ruins and another river.
This second river had been civilized. It came from the first and returned to it through murmurous curtains and weirs, and in its brief course had been built a water palace. It flowed through tanks of carved stone, and mirrored pavilions and broken causeways, whence a few men were bathing, and lovingly caressed their bodies and whispered that holiness may be gracious and life not all an illusion, and no plain interminable. It sang of certainties nearer than the sky, and having sung was reabsorbed into the first. As I gazed at it I realized that it was no river, but part of the ruined palace, and that men had carved it, as they had carved the stones.
Going back, I missed the shallows and had to wade. The pools, too shallow for alligators, suggested leeches, but all was well, and in the plain beyond a tonga wandered aimlessly. It was mine, and my driver was not surprised that we had all met again. Safe on the high road, I realized that I had not given one thought to the past. Was that really Vikramaditya’s palace? Had Kalidas and the other eight ever prayed in those radiant waters? Kalidas describes Ujjain. In his poem of The Cloud Messenger — a poem as ill-planned and charming as my own expedition — he praises the beloved city. He feigns that a demi-god, exiled from his lady, employs a cloud to take her a message from him. An English cloud would go, but this is Hindu. The poem is occupied by an account of the places it might pass if it went far enough out of its course, and of those places the most out-of-the-way is Ujjain. Were the cloud to stray thither, it would enter the city with Sipra, the sacred stream, and would hear the old country people singing songs of mirth in the streets. While maidens clapped their hands, and peacocks their wings, it might enter perfumed balconies as a shower, or as a sunset radiance might cling round the arm of Shiva. In the evening, when women steal to their lovers ‘through darkness that a needle might divide,’ the cloud might show them the way by noiseless lightning-flash, and weary of their happiness and its own might repose itself among sleeping doves till dawn. Such was Kalidas’ account of his home, and the other eight — was not one of them a lexicographer? — may have sported there with him. The groves near must have suggested to him the magic grove in Sakuntala, where the wood nymphs pushed wedding” garments through the leaves. ‘Whence came these ornaments?’ one of the characters inquires, ‘Has the holy hermit created them by an effort of his mind?’ The conclusion, though natural, is wrong. ‘Not quite,’ answers another. ‘The sweet trees bore them unaided. While we gathered blossoms, fairy hands were stretched out.’ Cries a third, ‘We are only poor girls. How shall we know how such ornaments are put on? Still, we have seen pictures. We can imitate them.’ They adorn the bride...
But it is only in books that the past can glow, and Kalidas faded as soon as I felt the waters of the Sipra round my ankle. I thought not of Sakuntala’s ornaments, but of my own, now spread on the splashboard, and I wondered whether they would dry before we reached the railway station. One confusion enveloped Ujjain and all things. Why differentiate? I asked the driver what kind of trees those were, and he answered ‘Trees’; what was the name of that bird, and he said ‘Bird’; and the plain, interminable, murmured, ‘Old buildings are buildings, ruins are ruins.’
[1914]
2. ADVANCE, INDIA!
THE house of the rationalistic family (Mohammedans) lay close below that of my friends (English). We could see its red walls and corrugated iron roof through the deodars, and its mass cut into the middle distances though without disturbing the line of the snows. It was a large house, but they were not, I believe, prominent in their community, and only flashed into notoriety on the occasion of this marriage, which was the first of its kind that the province had seen. We did not know them, but had received an invitation, together with the rest of the station, and as the sun was declining we clambered down and joined the crowd in tneir garden.
A public wedding! It would actually take place here. In the centre of the lawn was a dais on which stood a sofa, an armchair, and a table, edged with torn fringe, and round this dais a couple of hundred guests were grouped. The richer sat on chairs, the poorer on a long carpet against the wall. They were of various religions and races — Mohammedans, Hindus, Sikhs, Eurasians, English — and of various social standings, though mainly subordinate Government clerks; and they had come from various motives, friendship, curiosity, hostility — the ceremony nearly ended in a tumult, but we did not know this until the next day. The snows were seventy miles off in front, the house behind; the less rationalistic part of the family remained in purdah there and watched the marriage through the blinds. Such was the setting.
After long delay the personages mounted. The Moulvi took the armchair — a handsome, elderly man robed in black velvet and gold. He was joined by the bridegroom, who looked self-possessed, and by the unveiled bride. They sat side by side on the sofa, while guests murmured: ‘This is totally contrary to the Islamic law,’ and a child placed vasefuls of congested flowers. Then the bridegroom’s brother arrived, and had a long conversation with the Moulvi. They grew more and more excited — gesticulated, struck their breasts, whispered and sighed at one another vehemently. There was some difficulty, but what it was no one could say. At last an agreement was reached, for the brother turned to the audience and announced in English that the marriage ceremony would begin with verses from the Koran. These were read, and ‘the next item,’ said the brother, ’is a poem upon Conscience. An eminent poet will recite on Conscience in Urdu, but his words will be translated.’ The poet and his interpreter then joined the group on the dais, and spoke alternately, but not very clearly, for the poet himself knew English, and would correct the interpreter, and snatch at the manuscript. Arid verities rose into the evening air, the more depressing for the rags of Orientalism that clothed them. Conscience was this and that, and whatsoever the simile, there was no escaping her. ‘The sun illumines the world with light. Blessed be the sun and moon and stars, without which our eyes, that seem like stars, could not see. But there is another light, that of conscience—’ and then conscience became a garden where the bulbul of eloquence ever sang and the dews of oratory dropped, and those who ignored her would ‘roll among thorns.’ When she had had her fling the pair were made man and wife. Guests murmured ‘Moulvi is omitting such-and-such an exhortation: most improper.’ Turning to the company, and more particularly to those upon the carpet, he said that it was not important how one was married, but how one behaved after marriage. This was his main point, and while he was making it we were handed refreshments, and the ceremony was more or less over.
It was depressing, almost heartrending, and opened the problem of India’s future. How could this jumble end? Before the Moulvi finished a gramophone began, and before that was silent a memorable act took place. The sun was setting, and the orthodox withdrew from us to perform their evening prayer. They gathered on the terrace behind, to the number of twenty, and prostrated themselves towards Mecca. Here was dignity and unity; here was a great tradition untainted by private judgment; they had not retained so much and rejected so much; they had accepted Islam unquestioningly, and the reward of such an acceptance is beauty. There was once a wedding in England where a talented lady, advanced, but not too advanced, rewrote her daughter’s marriage service. Bad there, the effect was worse in India, where the opportunities for disaster are larger. Crash into the devotions of the orthodox birred the gramophone —
I’d sooner be busy with my little Lizzie,
and by a diabolic chance reached the end of its song as they ended the prayer. They rejoined us without self-consciousness, but the sun and the snows were theirs, not ours; they had obeyed; we had entered the unlovely chaos that lies between obedience and freedom — and that seems, alas! the immediate future of India. Guests discussed in nagging tones whether the rationalistic family had gone too far or might not have gone further. The bride might, at all events, have been veiled; she might, at all events, have worn English clothes. Eurasian children flew twittering through the twilight like bats, cups clinked, the gramophone was restarted, this time with an Indian record, and during the opening notes of a nautch we fled.
Next morning a friend (Sikh) came to breakfast, and told us that some of the guests had meant to protest against the innovations, and that the Moulvi had insisted in justifying himself to them; that was why he had argued on the dais and spoken afterwards. There was now great trouble among the Mohammedans in the station, and many said there had been no marriage at all. Our friend was followed by the bridegroom’s brother, who thanked us for coming, said there had been no trouble in the community, and showed us the marriage lines. He said—’ Some old-fashioned gentlemen did not understand at first — the idea was new. Then we explained, and they understood at once. The lady is advanced, very advanced....’ It appeared that she had advanced further than her husband, and the brother seemed thankful all was over without a scandal. ‘It was difficult,’ he cried. ‘We Moslems are not as advanced as the Hindus, and up here it is not like Bombay side, where such marriages are commoner. But we have done what we ought, and are consequently content.’ High sentiments fell from his lips, conscience shone and flowered and sang and banged, yet somehow he became a more dignified person. It hadn’t at all events been an easy thing for two bourgeois families to jerk out of their rut, and it is actions like theirs, rather than the thoughts of a philosopher or the examples of kings, that advance à society. India had started — one had that feeling while this rather servile little clerk was speaking. For good or evil she had left the changeless snows and was descending into a valley whose farther side is still invisible.
‘Please write about this’ were his parting words. ‘Please publish some account of it in English newspaper. It is a great step forward against superstition, and we want all to know.’
[1914]
3. JODHPUR
THERE must be some mistake! It was surely impossible that a dragon, flapping a tail of stone, should crouch in the middle of houses; that, having reached an incredible height, his flanks should turn to masonry; that he should be ridged with a parapet and bristle with guns; and that upward again a palace should rise, crowning the dragon, and, like him, coloured pearl. This was in the dawn, when a belt of mist cut off the mountain from the lower earth. Later in the day there were contrasts between sun and shade. After the sun set the vision was one colour again — olive-black, merging into night — and the dragon’s crown rested among stars.
It was a vision of which the English community, stationed three miles off on the plain, had never lost sight. They had none of the indifference to their surroundings that is considered good form elsewhere. They loved the city and the people living in it, and an outsider’s enthusiasm, instead of boring them, appeared to give pleasure. Men and women, they shared the same club as the Indians, and under its gracious roof the ‘racial question’ had been solved — not by reformers, who only accent the evils they define, but by the genius of the city, which gave everyone something to work for and think about. I had heard of this loyalty at the other end of the peninsula — it was avowedly rare. But no one had described the majesty that inspired it — the air blowing in from the desert, the sand and the purple stones, the hills with quarries and tanks beneath, and the palace-fortress on the highest hill, an amazement for ever, a dragon’s crown. ‘I love these Rajpoots,’ an English official cried. ‘They have their faults, and one takes steps accordingly, but I love and respect them, and always shall.’ It was as if each race had made concessions. Ours seemed more sensitive than usual, the Indian more solid. A common ground for friendship had been contrived, ‘but if we were all somewhere else,’ he said, ‘I don’t expect it would be the same.’
Next morning I went to the fort. My companion was a landscape gardener from Bombay, who had been commissioned by the Ruler to contrive a park out of some of the low ground. He shook his head, and remarked, ‘A place like this doesn’t want a park.’ We had to make a wide circuit, since only a path approached the mountain on the city side. The citadel joined on to a wild country, covered for miles with walls that followed the tops of the hills. Below it were many smaller forts, one wider than the pedestal that bore it, and half-way up lay a green tarn and the marble tomb of a prince. The fortress seemed part of the mountain — the distinction between Nature and Art, never strong in India, had here become negligible. The first gateway — there were five or six lines of defence — lay between cliffs of masonry, in whose sides had been hollowed caves for the guard. Each turn of the ascent was commanded by a window, and there were ambushes innumerable. At Daulatabad, in the Deccan, the defences must have been even stronger, for there the enemy had to climb a tunnel cut in the living rock and closed at the upper end by a bonfire. But Daulatabad is not crowned by romance, like this city. Presently the quality of the stone grew finer, and we walked beneath precipices whose upper ranges had been carved. ‘We must be getting up in between the palace somehow,’ said my companion. ‘I’ve been all these years, and didn’t know there was such a place in India, or indeed in the world. What next?’ Transepts like honeycomb answered him, and, cramped but splendid, the courtyard of the palace came into view.
We were met by the Keeper of the State Jewels, which were, as so often, stupid and ugly. No lady wears her predecessor’s ornaments, and the gems had been recut and reset according to Regent Street. One necklace of emeralds — loot from the Mohammedans — had escaped emasculation. After the Treasury, we saw some other rooms, and admired the painted ceiling of the Durbar hall and its mirrored sides. But the best was to come.
The passage continued by walls of increased elaboration — they concealed the zenana, and how they smelt! — and emerged on to a platform of several acres, wind-swept and baked by the sun. The sense of space returned. On one side, far below, were vultures, on the other, still farther, lay the world of men. We could peer into their secrets with princely arrogance — a wedding procession, a family asleep, policemen drilling in a closed churchyard, camels, two women quarrelling on a housetop. The plans of the temples became clear: we could see their size and symmetry and their relation to the tanks. Then, tired of detail, we could glance at the grey-green bush, or overleaping civilization, rest on the encircling desert, and the ruins of forts ours had destroyed. A Rajpoot army idled on the platform. It was young and insolent, and played among the guns. These were of great age, some Dutch, others Indian, and cast in the shapes of fish, alligators, and dragons. The more reliable were fired in official salutes, and bursting occasionally would throw back the soldiers dead into the fort. Plenty were left, both of guns and Rajpoots, so no change was contemplated, though some day reform may come along with an electric button and a Babu. Beyond the soldiers, on the downward slope, stood a shrine to a goddess. She had some usual name — Chamundi — but she lives here and not elsewhere, and is the daughter of the rock, if not the rock. Beyond Chamundi’s appeared the Western city, with the dragon’s tail flapping across it, and dividing it into wards, and hidden in the creases of the tail were deep pools of water, where Brahmans scattered flowers or fed the fish. This is the land of heroism, where deeds which would have been brutal elsewhere have been touched with glory. In Europe heroism has become joyless or slunk to museums: it exists as a living spell here. The civilization of Jodhpur, though limited, has never ceased to grow. It has not spread far or excelled in the arts, but it is as surely alive as the civilization of Agra is dead. Not as a poignant memory does it touch the heart of the son or the stranger. And when it does die, may it find a death complete and unbroken; may it never survive archæologically, or hear, like Delhi, the trumpets of an official resurrection. One would wish for the sand to close in on the city, and the purple stones to show more frequently than they do through the soil; for the desert to resume the life it gave, and unobserved by men take back the dragon’s crown. The wish may be granted. The kindred State of Jaisalmer struggles up to its throat against such a death, and ‘will only be saved by a railway.’ Railways can create. They cannot save, and for my own part I would leave heroes to heroic graves, and concentrate the blessings of progress upon the new Canal Colonies in the Punjab.
Midday. A loud and unscientific explosion. Everyone remains alive. The soldiers run laughing into the cool of the passage, and fall asleep there.
[1914]
4. THE SUPPLIANT
OUR friend — I will call him Obaidulla and give the account, which, greatly agitated, he poured forth to us on the roof of his house — our friend and his brother had been sitting in the verandah unpacking some books, when an old man approached. His appearance was ruffianly. ‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Will you please subscribe to my son’s railway journey, in order that he may reach Calcutta?’ and he produced a forged subscription list. But he was a suppliant, a Moslem, and old. ‘I am a poor man myself,’ said our friend. ‘However, if your son will accept two rupees’ — and he gave them.
‘I think you have come here to practise as a barrister,’ remarked the old man, as he sat down. Obaidulla replied that he was correct; he had but recently arrived from England.
‘I think you need a clerk.’
‘No, I do not need a clerk. I have as yet no connection in the city, and can do such work as I get unaided. We live very simply, as you see.’
‘You need a clerk. I will be your clerk.’
‘You are most kind, but at present I do not need a clerk.’
‘When’s dinner?’
The theory that a suppliant leaves after a meal proved correct, and the brothers spent the evening arranging books with the help of their hall-porter, a dictatorial child of ten. They had acted courteously and felt happy. But towards midnight a ghari rolled up piled with luggage. A dirty white turban stuck out of its window. ‘I am your clerk,’ said the old man. ‘Where is my room?’ and he left them to pay the driver.
‘But what could I do?’ Obaidulla protested in answer to our cries. ‘What else could I do? One cannot be inhospitable, and he is old. He kept my servants up all night cleaning his hookah, and to-day he complains of them.’ He sighed, then said, laughing, ‘Alas! poor India! What next?’
We walked up and down, now scolding him, now joining in the lament. The roof seemed an exquisite place. It rose above the dust of the city into a world of green. The mangoes and toddy-palms and bel-trees pushed out of a hundred little gardens and courtyards, and expanded at our level into a city for the birds. The sun had set, an amazing purple bloomed in the orange of the western sky. Yet not even on the roof were we free. If we walked on its left side, we overlooked our next-door neighbour, a fat Hindu tradesman, and he would call up in English, ‘Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Go further away, please! These are lady-women quarters.’ And if we walked on the right we came in sight of other lady-women, less supervised or super-visible, who ran about on the top of their roof and waved long scarves. ‘A two-storey house is dangerous for a beginner,’ said Obaidulla elliptically, so we walked midway, while out of his own courtyard rose the growls of the suppliant — he corpulent mercifully and the staircase narrow.
We left depressed — partly because our friend did not urge us to stop to tea. Tea there was always delicious — peas done in butter were served with it, as were tangerines, as were guavas, sliced and peppered, and sometimes his married friends had sent sweets. But he could not well press us — the suppliant’s table manners were too awful — nor could he come to tea with us, not liking to leave his brother alone, nor could they both come, fearing to leave the house. Our depression increased when we caught sight of the old man himself. A thousand insults (I was told) were implied in his salaam. And from inquiries in the bazaar we had news that he really was a bad lot. Nothing could be done, for Obaidulla, though humorous and gentle, allowed no interference with his hospitality. We could only wonder for how long he would sacrifice his friends, his liberty, and his career, and reflect on the disadvantages of keeping house in the mediæval style.
Next morning the suppliant called on us. We repelled him before he could speak, and soon afterwards Obaidulla tumbled up on his bicycle, radiant with joy. ‘A most fortunate thing has happened,’ he cried. ‘He has stolen one rupee four annas six pies from my servant’s clothes and gone.
We congratulated him, and asked for details.
‘Ah! ah! at last we are happy again. Now I can tell you. When the little boy caught him I did not know what to do. One cannot be impolite. I said: “There seems to have been some misunderstanding,” and I waited. Very luckily he grew warm. He said: “I never stop in a house where I am not trusted.” I answered: “I am sorry to hear you say such a thing, and I have never said I do not trust you.”—” No, but your servants. Enough! Enough! I am your clerk no longer. I go.” I told him I was sorry to hear his decision, but perhaps he was wise. So he came straight round to you, having got all he could out of us! Oh, the old villain! The monster! It is a disgrace to India that such men exist! However, it cannot be helped, I suppose.’
‘And the money?’
‘Oh, he took it, of course; of course. But I might have had to replace as much as fifty rupees. Well, that is all over, and to-day will you both come to tea?’
He was really too silly, and we gave him a good British talking.
He listened in silence, his eyes on the ground. When we had finished he raised them to mine and said:
‘It is natural you should laugh at me. You are English, and have other customs. I should not have behaved like this in England myself. No doubt it all seems jolly funny.’ Then turning to his other critic, who was Indian, he added in sterner tones: ‘But you — I am ashamed of you. You ought to have understood. As long as we have money and food and houses we must share them, when asked, with the poor and the old. Shocking! Your heart has cooled. You have forgotten our traditions of hospitality. You have forgotten the East. I am very much ashamed of you indeed.’
[1914]
5. PAN
IN the silence of the noontide heat, I came, as so often, to a secluded glade among low, scrub-covered hills. The hills were not unfamiliar, and the glade had received its due minimum and meed of cultivation, in the absence of which all manifestations of the cosmic remain imperceptible. The universe cannot roll its eye without a socket. Outraged nature must have something to kick against. And these hurdles would do well enough, woven out of wattles perhaps, and certainly ominous, and that village quivering by the horizon was the asylum to which shepherds and visitors might terrified repair. The hurdles were seven feet high. They were corded together and covered with mats, and they formed an impenetrable palisade, which enclosed an area of one or two acres in extent. From the higher ground I could see over their top, on to a confused web of string and lightly strewn awnings, which were supported on poles. A vulgar observer might have thought he was in Kent. We know better. Something far more mysterious than that was brewing in the enclosure. Hops need a certain amount of protection from the wind, but none from the sun, nor do they retreat to a glade among scrub-covered hills, and further defend themselves by an elaborate system of straw-padded entrances, heavy and hinged, which bang behind the visitor like the doors of a continental cathedral.
I have entered. Ah! A universe of warmth and manure, a stuffy but infinite tent whose pillars and symmetric cordage are flecked with gold and green. Vistas that blend into an exhalation. Round each pillar a convolvulus twines, aromatic and lush, with heart-shaped leaves that yearn towards the sun, and thrive in the twilight of their aspirations, trained across lateral strings into a subtle and complicated symphony. Oh, and are those men? Naked and manure-coloured, can they be men? They slide between the convolvuli without breaking one delicate tendril, they squat upon the soil, and water flows out of it mildly and soaks the roots. What acolytes, serving what nameless deity? I wonder. And a passage from Dr. John Fryer (1650- 1733) comes into my mind:
‘These Plants set in a Row, make a Grove that might delude the Fanatick Multitude into an Opinion of their being sacred; and were not the Mouth of that Grand Impostor Hermetically sealed up, where Christianity is spread, these would still continue, as it is my Fancy they were of old, and may still be the Laboratories of his Fallacious Oracles; For they masquing the face of Day, beget a solemn reverence, and melancholy habit in them that resort to them; by representing the more inticing Place of Zeal, a Cathedral, with all its Pillars and Pillasters, Walks and Choirs; and so contrived, that whatever way you turn, you have an even prospect.’
Exactly; I think I know now; but to make sure, I stretch out my hand, I pluck a leaf and eat. My tongue is stabbed by a hot and angry orange in alliance with pepper. Exactly; I am in the presence of Pan.
Pan; pan-supari; beetle, bittle, bettle, betl, betel: what an impression it made upon the early visitors to the East, and how carefully they described it to their friends at home! Dr. Fryer took the most trouble, for he had read Sir Thomas Browne before sailing, so much so that it is uncertain to what plants the above passage really refers — he may have been endeavouring to adumbrate palm trees. Marco Polo had my convolvulus in view. Less of a stylist, he says straight out that Pan is ‘salutary,’ and may have recommended it to Dante on his return. Pan soothed the belly and brain of Duarte Barbosa, and he was a contemporary of Luther’s. Jan Huygen van Linschoten took it also. Growing as it did in an admired soil, in the most famigerous region of the world, the ample and large India,’ entwined as it was among the customs of an ancient people — Brachmans, Parsies, Moormen, Gentues, Banianes, Xeques — it appeared to our forerunners as a subject for inquiry and indeed for sympathy. We take a purer view. Anglo-India will have no truck with Pan, and roundly condemns the ‘natives filthy chewing betel nut,’ although the natives would rather not be called natives, and what they chew is not the betel or filthy or even a nut. A few of our officials master the technique for ceremonial purposes — they droop stubby fingers over a tray on which little green packets are piled — but actually to consume the mixture would be un-British. What a pity! For it is a good mixture, and in its slight and harmless way it is a sacrament. The early visitors realized this too: ‘It is the only Indian entertainment, commonly called Pawn.’ In a land so tormented over its feeding arrangements, anything that can be swallowed without being food draws men into communion. Strictly speaking, Pan is a pill, which the host administers to the guest at the conclusion of the interview; it is an internal sweetener, and thus often offered with the external attar of roses. Actually, it is a nucleus for hospitality, and much furtive intercourse takes place under its little shield. One can ‘go to a Pan,’
‘give a Pan,’ and so on: less compromising than giving a party, and on to the Pan tea, coffee, ices, sandwiches, sweets, and whisky-sodas can be tacked, and be accidentally consumed by anyone who happens to notice them. I have been to a Pan, which, as far as I was concerned, was an enormous meal. But it was not food technically. And there are other conveniences. An ‘allowance for Pan’ is a delicate excuse for benevolence: ‘He gives her rupees five for Pan’ — for pin-money, as we might say — cracking another witty jest, this time on the similarity between the words ‘pan’ and ‘pin,’ a pun which causes laughter when carefully explained.
But that green leaf, the betel-leaf as it is best called. It loses its violence after it has been gathered, and in a short time it is merely fragrant, pleasant, and cooling. Ready for use, it is smeared with lime. Perhaps the lime was originally a preservative and has gradually established itself as a delicacy — there would be a parallel to this in the turpentine which now plays so overwhelming a part in the native wines of Greece. Authorities differ over the lime; doctors think it may cause cancer, and deprecate it, and there is a general inclination to regard it as the least honourable of the ingredients, although it is useful in sticking the others together. Pan’s original home was Southern India, as the etymology shows, and the first lime was procured from the oyster shells of the pearl fisheries. On to the lime is sprinkled a most important item — the shredded seed of the areca palm, popularly called a nut,’though it has no shell. An areca seed is about as large as a breakfast egg, but otherwise recalls the iron pyrites one used to pick up on beaches at school: it is fabulously hard, darkling without, and radiates spokes within. To have even a fragment of areca in the mouth is alarming; afterwards one gets used to it, and can chew it neat. These three — betel, lime, areca — make up Pan’s trinity; but more ingredients can be added, for example cardomum seeds. When all is ready, the pliant leaf is folded upon itself, until it looks like a green jam-puff or the cell of a leaf-cutter bee. There are many ways of folding the leaves; some are tucked in, billet-doux fashion; others are fastened at the angle by a clove. There are so many ways of doing everything, all over India, that descriptions quickly shade into falsehood. My own betel grew at Garhi, Bundelkhand, but it may be cultivated differently round the corner.
Now for the operation. To unfold a Pan or to bite it off its end would be improper. It must go entire into the mouth, and consequences be awaited there. The leaf is mild enough, the crisis coming when its fibres tear and the iron pyrites fall about and get under the tongue. Now the novice rises in disorder, rushes in panic to the courtyard, and spatters shrapnel over the bystanders; it is as if the whole mineral kingdom has invaded him under a vegetable veil, for simultaneously the lime starts stinging. If he can sit still through this a heavenly peace ensues; the ingredients salute each other, a single sensation is established, and Pan, without ceasing to be a problem, becomes a pleasure. The cardomums crack, the formidable areca yields, splinters, vainly takes refuge in the interstices of the gums, and is gone. Warm and cleanly, one’s mouth beats in tune with the infinite, while the harmony, moving within, slowly establishes its reign in the regions Barbosa indicated. Nothing intoxicating has been swallowed; the kindly angels of Eupepsia are at work, spreading their benison on all that has gone before them. It is incredible that Anglo-India should condemn the innocent practice — incredible until one looks into a looking-glass. Another shock has to be borne then: golly, I am bright red! Why this happens, when the betel was green, the areca brown, and the lime white, I do not know; the writers say that a ‘bloody saliva is promoted,’ but why should nothing else promote it? It is easily rinsed away, but there is always a danger that one may forget, go to play bridge at the Club with vermilion jaws, and be ruined for ever. Indians who take Pan night and day for years, and never clean afterwards, do indeed get red permanently, and their teeth blacken. They are hideous until one gets used to them, which no doubt one oughtn’t to do. Their looks are against them, but their breath is sweet. They are the exact antithesis of Italians, and crowd for crowd I would rather be among them.
The serving of Pan is in itself a little art — and the arts of littleness are tragically lacking in India; there is scarcely anything in that tormented land which fills up the gulf between the illimitable and the inane, and society suffers in consequence. What isn’t piety is apt to be indecency, what isn’t metaphysics is intrigue. A ritual which avoids all, which coquets with religion yet never lifts her glum veil, which eludes the meshes of taboo without falling into the pit of grossness, has done valuable work, and the sight of the pretty little apparatus arriving makes the heart hop up — that hop that is more human than a leap, because it welcomes a joy of the earth. Generally the Pan comes ready-made upon a covered tray, the invisible hostess emits it, and if the occasion is ceremonial, scent, thick and brown, is offered first, and smeared on the handkerchief or the hand. At informal communions the actual box containing the ingredients may appear, a box on the lines of the spice-boxes one sees in a western kitchen — or possibly the spice-boxes are on the lines of it. It is divided into compartments where the ingredients are stored. Sometimes it is circular — the compartments radiating, and the lid domical; sometimes rectangular; sometimes in two stories, the upper story lifting out like the dress-tray of a lady’s trunk, and the lower, which has no divisions, containing the areca in large lumps, for chewing. Modern boxes are usually weakly ornate. The older work is often beautiful. Bidar, a forgotten city in the Deccan, has produced beautiful pan-boxes of a lead alloy inlaid with silver. I went there, hoping to see one being made, but the industry had been ‘revived,’ and all hands were consequently at work upon a metal portrait of the Prince of Wales.
The Indian hostess, though almost invisible, is not entirely so, and no one who has once seen her preparing a Pan will speak of ‘chewing filthy betel nut’ again. It is a gracious and exquisite performance — not even the much advertised tea-making of the Far East can be daintier. Her first labour is to find a perfect leaf. One after another she rejects, fantastically disdainful, and seeking that which grew not upon any earthly stem. Pursing up her lips, she takes the best available, trims it with a pair of scissors, lays it upon the palm of her hand, which it more than covers, and seems to think, ‘This is a disgraceful leaf, a humiliating leaf; can I possibly proceed?’ Pulling herself together, she seizes a little quill or spoon, and plunges it into the compartment of the pan-box that contains the liquid lime. The areca — which she has already shredded with jewelled clippers — comes next, then the cardomum seeds, and what else she thinks seemly. As she proceeds, her movements grow quicker and her spirits improve, she forgets her disappointment and becomes all anticipation, she is every inch a hostess, and doing up the difficult fastening like lightning, she bends forward and presents the gift. Little gestures, and a little gift. To think of the Mystery of the East in connection with Pan is to falsify the whole proceeding. The East is mysterious enough, mysterious to boring point. But now and then a tiny fact detaches itself from the Everlasting All, and our common humanity is remembered.
Such is the main outline of a neglected subject. Other aspects exist. There is Comic Pan, which contains salt. It is given to buffoons. Oh, how they splutter, sometimes being positively sick! Not even a pun is such fun. And, to end all, there is Tragic Pan, which contains ground glass, and is given to enemies.
[1922]