Lectures on the Tinnevelly Missions/Chapter II
Tinnevelly is one of those "Collectorates," "Zillahs," or provinces, each comprising about a tenth of the area of England, into which British India is divided, and is the most southerly province on the eastern side of India, or, as it is termed, the Coromandel Coast. Cape Comorin, the southern extremity of the Indian peninsula, is included in the native state of Travancore, on the Malabar or Western Coast; but Tinnevelly may be regarded as commencing at Cape Comorin, for it commences only about three miles to the east of the Cape. It contains an area of 5,482 square miles, and a population of 1,269,216 souls; consequently, the population amounts to 233 in the square mile, which is exactly equal to the average population of the midland counties in England. Tinnevelly is separated from Travancore by the great mountain chain of the Ghauts, which form its western boundary, and on the east it is bounded by the Gulf of Manaar, by which it is separated from Ceylon. Its greatest length to the north-east is about 120 miles, and its greatest breadth from east to west about 75 miles.
The southern extremity of the province being only 8 5' north of the equator, the heat is necessarily very great. During the whole period of my residence in Tinnevelly, I never noticed the thermometer lower than 70, and rarely so low as that. When it sinks to 75 we call it cold weather, and put on additional clothing. Though our so-called cold weather is warmer than the average of summer heat in England, it is a comfort that during the hot season the thermometer is not proportionately high. I have not known it higher in my own house at any period of the year than 91, and it is rarely more than a few degrees higher even in the hottest localities. This would be reckoned a very moderate degree of summer heat in Northern India, where, though it sometimes sinks in the cold weather to the freezing-point, it rises in the hot season to 110 or even 120 in the shade. In Tinnevelly such violent extremes of temperature are unknown, the annual range being rarely more than 20; but owing to the entire absence of cold weather, properly so called, the aggregate of heat throughout the year is much greater than in Northern India. We have not the alternatives of being roasted one part of the year and frozen the other, but gently simmer over a slow fire the whole year round. On the other hand, the heat of Tinnevelly is not a moist, enervating heat, like that of the Malabar Coast and Ceylon, but a dry, healthy heat; and there are few provinces in India which agree so well, on the whole, with the European constitution. As there is no province in India where Missionaries are more numerous, so there is none where they enjoy better health or are able to remain longer in their spheres of duty. Though the dryness of the air may be conducive to the health of the inhabitants, it is far from being conducive to the fertility of the soil. The drought is so excessive, that much of the land lies uncultivated. On the southern coast, where my own residence was, the average annual fall of rain was only 22 inches, which is less than the average fall in England j and three -fourths of the entire quantity fell during a single month, November. Only 35 inches of rain were registered during the three years that elapsed before I left! This excessive drought is owing to the influence of the Ghauts, the great mountain range, or rather mountain-plateau, by which Southern India is divided into two portions, the Coromandel and Malabar coasts. The steep sides of this plateau form a continuous chain of mountains from near Cape Comorin for about 200 miles northwards, and the breadth of the plateau gradually increases from a single rock at the Cape to about 80 miles at "the Coimbatoor gap." The average height of the ridge is about 3,000 feet, but there are peaks which rise to double that height. This elevated range acts as an effectual barrier to the rains of the South- West monsoon, which is the great monsoon, or periodical rainy season, of India, and to which the greater part of India owes its fertility. On the Malabar Coast, the western side of the Ghauts, there is a great abundance of rain : consequently, we have there perpetual verdure, and per petual fertility and beauty ; for in the tropics, wherever we have rain, we have all the elements of vegetable wealth. But on the eastern side of the Ghauts, on the Coromandel Coast, including the whole of the Carnatic, the supply of rain from the South-West monsoon is almost entirely intercepted by the Ghauts : the North- Eastern monsoon, which is the special monsoon of the Coromandel Coast, compensates but partially for the absence of the South- Western ; and the evil reaches its maximum in Tinnevelly, which is not only shut out from the South- West monsoon, but is robbed, by the vicinity of Ceylon, of half its due share of the North-Eastern. Ceylon does not lie wholly to the south of India, as is sometimes supposed ; its northern extremity is nearly two degrees to the north of Cape Comorin, and hence the whole length of Tinnevelly is overlapped by it. Though so little rain falls in Tinnevelly, and though the greater part of the province suffers severely in consequence, there are regions which are as fertile and beautiful as the eye could desire. Besides smaller rivers, there is one of considerable magnitude, and of great celebrity and sacredness, the Tamravarni, or " copper-coloured " river, which irrigates and fertilizes the ex tensive tract of country through which it flows ; and as this river rises in the Ghauts, it is filled by the rains of both monsoons, so that two crops of rice every year are produced all along its banks. .Similar advantages are enjoyed by the rich and beautiful districts in the vicinity of the mountains ; and hence, though Tinnevelly does not participate directly in the rains of the South- Western monsoon, yet in the neighbourhood of the rivers and mountains it participates indirectly, yet largely, in the fertilizing influences of those rains. In consequence of this, in the amount of revenue derived from " wet cultivation," that is, rice, &c., Tinnevelly ranks next to Tanjore amongst South-Indian provinces.
Notwithstanding the advantages enjoyed by particular portions of the province, nine-tenths of the entire area are parched and arid through excessive drought, and there are districts as sandy, burnt up, and dreary as any in the deserts of Africa. I have stood on a mountain peak about twenty miles from Cape Comorin, from which both Travancore and Tinnevelly are visible at once, and have been exceedingly struck with the difference ; Travan core beautifully green, and diversified with hill and dale, wood, lake, and river ; Tinnevelly an immense fiery-red plain, with signs of cultivation few and far between. On closer acquaintance, -the reality is found to be better than the appearance ; for the " regur," or blistered "black cotton soil" of the northern dis tricts is well adapted to the growth of cotton, about 60,000 bales of which are annually shipped at Tutocorin for England and China, besides what is retained for use in Tinnevelly itself, and .the adjacent provinces : the red sands also of the South-Eastern districts are admirably suited to the growth of the palmyra palm.
In those districts in which the majority of our Mission Churches are planted, the chief dependence of the people is upon the palmyra, which is to them what rice is in Bengal, or wheat in England the staff of life. During the brief and scanty rains of the North-Eastern monsoon, a crop of pulse and of inferior sorts of grain is raised from the better kinds of soil ; and where water is available for irrigation, the plantain, or banana, is largely and successfully cultivated. Along the lower slopes of the " t6ries," or red sand hills, which form so peculiar a feature of the South- Eastern palmyra districts, the water lies near the surface, and is available for plantain gardens ; and hence each of those slopes is beautified by a belt of the richest, brightest green, which presents a grateful contrast to the uncultivated, naked, fiery-red ridges of the "t6ries." The staple produce, however, of the sandy districts is the palmyra. If one were to judge from abstract probabilities, he might expect to find those districts uninhabited ; but Divine Providence is there as well as here, and it has pleased Providence to ordain that the palmyra palm should flourish more luxuriantly in those sands than in any other part of the East, and should feed an abundant population with its saccharine sap. The sandy districts in the South-East teem with human life, and it is remark able that it is amongst the inhabitants of those districts that Christianity has made greatest progress. Hitherto, from a variety of causes, Christianity and the palmyra have appeared to flourish together. Where the palmyra abounds, there Christian congrega tions and schools abound also ; and where the palmyra disappears, there the signs of Christian progress are rarely seen.
As the majority of the people who have been converted from heathenism in Tinnevelly, and who form the bulk of our Christian congregations, are cultivators of the palmyra, and as most of my own sphere of labour was included in the palmyra forest, I shall here give my readers a description of that remarkable tree.
The palmyra is one of the least elegant of the family of palms, but is, perhaps, the most useful member of the family. It grows to the height of from GO to 90 feet, almost as straight, though not as smooth, as the mast of a ship. Like other palms, it is totally destitute of branches, but is surmounted by an erect plume of fan-shaped leaves, each of which is so large that it may almost be regarded as a branch. Each leaf is shaped like a fan, not pinnated like that of the coco-nut palm, whence it has received its botanical name of Borassus flaldliformis, or " fan-shaped Borassus."* The leaves are stiffer and much less graceful than the long, drooping leaves of the coco-nut, but of all leaves they are the most ser viceable to man. They are not only used for thatching the houses of the middle and lower classes, but are also used for making mats, baskets, and vessels of almost every description ; and a single leaf folded in a particular manner serves as a bucket for drawing water with. But the leaf of the palmyra is put to a still more remark able use : slips of the young leaf form the ordinary stationery of the Hindus in every part of Southern India. Thus in India the " leaf " on which people write is literally a leaf. Each ray, or vein, of the fan-shaped leaf comprises two long slips, and each of those slips will suffice as writing material for an ordinary letter : a collection of leaves strung together constitutes a book. The leaf requires no smoothing or pressing, or any other process of preparation. Just as it comes from the tree it may be used for writing upon ; and as nearly a hundred such slips are supplied by a single leaf, and as a cart-load of leaves may be had for a few shillings, the Hindus are provided with the cheapest species of stationery in the world. It is written upon with an iron pen, or graver, an instrument with a sharp steel point, with which the penman rapidly graves or scratches the characters ; and though the " olei," or palmyra leaf, is not as durable as parchment, or even as paper, yet I have seen documents written on it which were at least 200 years old.
The palmyra is the only palm-tree of which the wood is of any value, and the rafters and laths made of the palmyra are regarded as the best of their kind ; but the high estimate in which the palmyra is held is chiefly owing to the value of its products as articles of food. The young root is edible, and so is the ripe fruit : neither, however, is of much value ; the unripe fruit is greatly preferable, inasmuch as it contains the purest, most wholesome, and most refreshing vegetable jelly in existence.
" Borassus," the generic name of the palmyra, is one of the names which the Greeks gave to the membrane that envelopes the fruit of the Date palm. In after times it came to be used as the botanical name of that family of palms to which the palmyra belongs. ,
These articles sink into insignificance when compared with the saccharine sap or juice of the tree, which is by far its most valuable product. The "patha-mr," or unfermented sap, without any cooking or preparation, is very nourishing : during the period when it flows most abundantly, the poorer classes get visibly sleeker and more comfortable, and you might almost see your face in the skin of the children. Just as it comes from the tree, the sap forms the breakfast of the Shanars and lower castes, who drink it in a cup formed for the occasion of a palmyra leaf. The supply of sap is greatly in excess of what is required for daily use, and most of it is boiled into a hard, black mass, called by the English "jaggery " a kind of coarse sugar-cake, which forms the mid-day meal of the same classes. Their evening meal, the principal meal of all Hindus, which is generally of rice, with some curried addita- ments, is procured by the sale of the superfluous "jaggery." The greater part of what is made is sold, and it always commands a ready sale. Some of it is sent to be refined into white sugar for the European market ; and by varying the process a little, the people themselves make a very good sugar-candy. It is the unfermented juice of the palmyra which is used as food : when allowed to ferment, which it will do before mid-day if left to itself, it is changed into a sweet, intoxicating drink, called " kal," or " toddy." This is the liquid which is generally used in India as yeast for leavening bread, but it is also used by the Pariars and other low- caste Hindus, especially in the vicinity of large towns, for the purpose of intoxication. The Shunars, the cultivators of the tree in the southern provinces, are rarely known to make use of it for this purpose : as a caste, they are strictly temperate, in which respect they differ from all other low-caste tribes, and claim to be ranked with the higher castes. One may travel for miles through the thickest part of the palmyra forest, without meeting with a single tree that is licensed to be used for "toddy." Between Edeyenkoody and Sawyerpuram, a distance of thirty-two miles, which I have very frequently traversed,, and which is thickly planted with palmyras throughout, I have only noticed the existence of one " licensed" tree.
The amount of nourishment which is supplied by the palmyra, without even the trouble of cooking, might be supposed to operate as a premium upon indolence ; but, in reality, we find no premium upon indolence in Tinnevelly, or anywhere else in God's world a hard-working world, in which it has been made necessary for every class of people to eat their bread by the sweat of their brow. The Shanars are as industrious a people as any in India ; and if this were not their character, the provision made for their wants would be unavailable, for though their breakfast is ready cooked for them, it is at the top of the palmyra, and the palmyra is a tall, slim tree, without a single branch ; hence it is necessary for every man to climb for his breakfast before he gets it, and the labour of climbing the palmyra in so hot a climate is one of the hardest and most exhausting species of labour anywhere to be seen.
The sap of the tree cannot be obtained, as from the maple, by tapping the trunk ; it flows only from the spadix, or flower-stalk, at the top of the tree. From amongst the fan-shaped leaves, which form the plumed head of the palmyra, there shoot forth in the season several bunches of flower-stalks ; each flower-stalk branches out into several, and each of those flowering branches, when bruised or sliced, yields drop by drop about a pint a day of sweet juice. A little earthen vessel is attached to each " spadix," or flower-branch, to receive the sap as it drops ; and it is the business of such of the Shanars as are palmyra-climbers to cjimb the tree morning and evening, for the purpose of trimming the "palei," or spadix, and emptying into a sort of pail made of pal myra leaf, which they carry up with them, all the sap that they find collected since their last ascent. The pail is then conveyed to a little boiling-house in the neighbourhood, where the women boil the juice into "jaggery." In the northern part of the Carnatic, the palmyra-climbers make use of a sort of movable girdle, to help them in climbing the tree ; but in Tinnevelly and Travancore, in which palmyra-climbing is much more common, the Shanars make no use of any such artificial assistance. They clasp the tree with joined hands, and support their weight not with the knees (which project from the trcv, and of which they make no use,) but with the soles of the feet, which they bend inwards like the hands, and keep together by the help of a little band, so as to enable them to clasp the tree almost as the hands do, and then they ascend, not by the alternate action of each hand, but by a series of springs, in which both hands move together and both feet follow together, not unlike the action used in swimming. A Shanar will climb a palmyra in this manner almost as rapidly as a man will walk the same length, and most of them are accustomed thus to climb fifty trees twice a-day, or even three times a-day, for eight months in the year. Taking sixty feet as the average height of a palmyra, and the climbing of fifty palmyras twice a-day, as the average work of an able-bodied Shanar, we shall form a clear idea of the amount of his work, if we suppose him, every day for the greater part of every year, to climb a perpendicular pole 3,000 feet in height, and then to descend the same pole the same day, ascending and descending without any apparatus, and supporting the entire weight of his body by his strength of limb alone ! Surely no harder work than this has ever been done in a tropical climate. Though the palmyra may be said to resemble a mast, or pole, it must not be supposed to be as smooth. The bark is rough from the scars of former leaves, and this renders the climbing of the tree less difficult, and also less dangerous, than it would otherwise have been. Accidents rarely occur, except in high winds, or when the tree is slippery through recent rain, and not often even then. I knew of a man who was sitting upon a leaf-stalk at the top of a palmyra in a high wind, when the stalk gave way, and he came down eighty feet to the ground, safely and quietly, sitting on the leaf, which served the purpose of a natural parachute.
No kind of cultivation involves so little trouble or expense as that of the palmyra. The nut has merely to be cast into the sand and loosely covered over, and no further thought or care is necessary till it becomes a tree and begins to bear. The farmer is often relieved even of the trouble of planting by the crows, which leave the nut on the ground after devouring the fruit. Sometimes, for two or three years, no trace of the young palmyra appears above ground: it might be supposed to have perished, but it is busily occupied in working its way downwards in search of water. After about twenty years of neglect, this wonderful tree which the Hindus praise as the model of the highest sort of generosity begins to requite its owner for benefits which it never received.
It is remarkable that the palmyra yields its sweet juice not during, or at the close of, the rainy season, when it might be expected to be full of sap, but during the hottest period of the year. The sap begins to rise when the sun returns from the south, and flows most copiously when the sun is righb overhead. The sun is vertical in Tinnevelly in April, and again in August; and the intervening period including also March and Sep tember is what is called the palmyra season. When the heat is BO great and so continuous that every blade of grass disappears from the parched soil when the air is filled with clouds of red sand, hurled along by the land-wind, or South- West monsoon, which mocks with showers of sand the earth's desire for rain then it is that the palmyra yields the abundance of its cool, sweet, refreshing sap, for the supply of the wants of the people. I have dug down through the sandy soil to see where this copious supply of sap came from, and have found the long, stringy roots of the palmyra penetrating right down to a depth of forty feet beneath the surface. There I found them drinking in perpetual draughts of water in the secret springs and channels that lie far beneath the surface of the ground, where the greatest droughts never reach. Even at that depth, I found that they penetrated still lower into interstices amongst the rocks, where I could follow them no longer. Here, then, I found the reason why the palmyra flourishes so well in the sands of Tinnevelly why it flourishes best where the soil is loosest and sandiest, and why in the hottest season of the year it pours forth from its head such a constant supply of cool, sweet moisture. What a remarkable illustration is this of the wisdom with which Divine Providence makes the peculiarities of every part of the world minister, in some way or another, to the support and advantage of mankind !
Most of the Christian converts in Tinnevelly being Shanar?, and either owners or climbers of the palmyra, at the commence ment of the climbing season I was accustomed to assemble our people in church for a special service, including prayers that the tree might yield its fruit, and that the climber's " foot might not slide;" and on such occasions I have sometimes reminded the people of an appropriate expression in our Tamil version of the psalms Nitima'n panei-pol serippan, " the righteous shall flourish like the palmyra," (the Tamil rendering of Ps. xcii. 11, "the righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree," the palmyra being adopted as the representative of palms in general) : and I have then reminded my Shanar hearers, that " the righteous," for this reason amongst others, may be said to " flourish like the palmyra," because he, too, strikes his roots deep beneath the surface the root of faith shoots deep down into the love of God, and "the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ;" and hence the righteous " flourishes like the palmyra " in a dry and thirsty land flourishes most not in the richest soil, but in the poorest, in afflictions and persecutions, and is continually bringing forth fruit for the refreshment of mankind. Thus, in Tinnevelly, as everywhere else in the world, there are " sermons " in trees and stones, "and good in everything." Our attention must now be turned from the country to the people.
In consequence of Tinnevelly lying at the southern extremity of the Indian peninsula, there are few provinces in India in which ancient Hindu usages have been so faithfully preserved. Five hundred years had elapsed from the time of the arrival of the Mahometans in India, before the wave of Mahometan conquest reached and overspread Tinnevelly j and hence the Mahometans are fewer and less influential here than elsewhere. The language of the province is Tamil, and the Tamil spoken by the educated classes in Tinnevelly is singularly pure and classical. Even amongst the lower classes, notwithstanding their rude pro nunciation, the language of the ancient poets still lingers. The Tamravarni, or Palamcottah river, is represented by native writers as the southern boundary of the Sen-Tamir nadu, or " Classical-Tamil country," and the -whole of the province, together with the southern districts of Travancore, was included in the ancient Pandiyan empire an empire of which Madura was the capital city, and which sent two embassies to the Emperor Augustus.
The inhabitants of Tinnevelly, as of most other provinces in India, may be divided into the three classes of Brahmans, Sudras, and lower classes; and, as elsewhere, it is chiefly amongst the lower classes that Christianity has made progress.
The Brahmans spring from a different origin from the rest of the Hindus, and claim kindred with ourselves. They are the lineal representatives of that Sanscrit-speaking race, allied to the Greeks and Germans, which conquered the Punjab at least 1500 years before the Christian era, and which rendered ancient India so illustrious for philosophy, literature, and the cultivation of the arts. Tinnevelly, like every other part of India, owes its higher civilization to the Brahmans, who appear to have formed colonies along the fertile banks of the Tamravarni six or seven centuries before the Christian era, and gradually made themselves revered by the aboriginal tribes as their guides, philosophers, and friends. They founded amongst the Dravidians, or South-Indians, a succession of civil communities modelled after the empires of Northern India, and taught the rude chieftains of the South to imitate the cultivated tastes of the " Solar " and "Lunar" dynasties. Notwithstanding the value of these services to society, it is questionable whether they are not outweighed by the evils which the Brahmans introduced idol worship, a routine of inane ceremonies, morbid scrupulosity respecting meats and drinks, an unpractical philosophy, and the division and subdivision of the people into castes. The Brahmans have become much more numerous than in the olden time, but much less influ ential. They still, it is true, rank at the head of native society as a sacred, priestly aristocracy, which has not degraded itself by a single intermarriage with the classes beneath it for 2,500 years; but individually the Brdhmans have now little religious or social influence beyond what they possess as respectable landed pro prietors. The greater number even of the priestly functions, except in the more important temples, are now performed in Southern India by Sudras, who form, undoubtedly, the most influ ential portion of the community; and though they are rarely more willing than the Brahmans to embrace Christianity, they seldom evince that, scorn of it, as a foreign or low-caste religion, which the Brahmans generally evince. So far as I am aware, only one Tinnevelly Brahman has, as yet, become a Christian.
The un-Brahmanical, or aboriginal Hindus, who are ordinarily styled " the Tamil people," " the Telugu people," &c., and who constitute nine-tenths of the population everywhere in Southern India, belong not to the Aryan or Indo- Germanic, but to the Turanian or Scythian race that race to which the Mongols, the Turks, and the Finns belong ; and the vernacular languages of Southern India, though occupying a distinct position of their own amongst the various families of human speech, have a greater resem- Hance to the Finnish tongues than to any other class. The South Indian aborigines, having received from the Brahmans the elements of their higher civilization, were divided by their Brahman in structors into castes, and have become as zealous for caste as the Brahmans themselves. All the castes into which they were divided maybe classified into two easily recognized divisions ; viz. the higher or Sudra group, including the " cultivators," merchants, artificers, shepherds, &c. ; and the lower castes, beginning with the Shanars, including the Pariars, and other agricultural slaves, and ending with the wandering gipsy tribes. I regard the lower castes not as the descendants of a race of aborigines still older than the Tamilians, but as the descendants of those Tamilians who happened to occupy a low position in the social scale, as servants or slaves, at the period when the Brahmanical caste system was introduced, and who have been prevented by that fossilizing system from ever emerging from the position they then occupied. The Siidra castes of Southern India occupy a position in society much superior to that of the Sudras in the North. The castes called by that name in the North belong to the lower classes : the Sudras of the South answer closely to our "middle classes;" they form the staple of population in the towns and in the richer country districts; manufactures, commerce, the administration of justice and education, are mainly in their hands, and it is to them that the people of the lower castes generally look as their natural heads and guides.
A considerable proportion of the Tinnevelly Sudras in some districts a large majority of them have sprung from a Telugu origin, and speak Telugu in their own homes, though they com municate with their neighbours freely enough in Tamil. They belong to the Telugu castes of Reddies, Naiks, &c., and are descendants of those men at arms and adventurers who followed the fortunes of the Vijaya-nagar generals, by whom the Chola and Pandiya dynasties were subverted in the fifteenth century, and who were rewarded for their services by donations of uncul tivated lands in various districts, especially in the northern part of Tinnevelly. These Telugu castes rank lower than the corre sponding Tamil castes in point of social respectability, but in domestic morals they rank lower still. The married life of the middle classes of the Tamil people is singularly free from blame ; but all sorts of irregularities and abominations prevail amongst the Telugu settlers, and instead of exposing the guilty parties to disgrace, are sanctioned by the law of the caste. Hence, in addition to the ordinary difficulties in the way of the reception of Christianity by persons of caste, the Reddies are deterred from it (and sometimes, after they hate nominally received it, are induced to abandon it) by its pure morality. It was from this cause, amongst others, that the promising movement amongst the Reddies in the north of Tinnevelly, of which so much was heard seven or eight years ago, came to nothing. Though the pure Tamil castes present a favourable contrast to the Telugu settlers in point of domestic morals, they are con sidered to be, and probably are, more untruthful and slippery. They are commonly regarded as the least scrupulous and as the most adventurous of Hindu races. One can hardly fail to read n their very look the habit of gaining their purpose by a circuitous path, and of overcoming opposition not by open resistance, but by a feigned, temporary compliance.
No Indian people, not even, I think, the Brahmans, have reached a higher point of civilization than the Tamilian Siidras ; but their civilization, like that of every Asiatic people, is partial and unequal. One meets with as many degrees of civilization as of complexion. Stupendous hewn-stone temples and mean mud- built habitations, a scrupulous regard for ceremonial purity, and a shameful disregard of decency and drains, institutions of con summate policy and follies of which sensible children would be ashamed, exist everywhere side by side. Indian civilization is full of inconsistencies and incongruities : it is lacking in expan- siveness and in progress ; but its most grievous defect consists in the absence of that scorn of lies and that keen sense of honour which are inherent in Christian civilization, and which charac terize the Christian gentleman.
Notwithstanding the high civilization which the high-caste Hindus, and especially the Tamilians, have reached, and their fondness for religious speculation and ceremonial, they are deeply sunk in spiritual ignorance and mental torpor. In no country in the world does religion enter so largely into the affairs of life and the usages of society as in India : it pervades the entire frame work of society, and mixes itself up in every concern, whether public or private, in which the people are interested ; and yet in no country has religion exerted so little influence for good. There are ancient sects and modern sects, austere sects and licentious sects, high-soaring metaphysical sects and grovelling materialist sects, sects that worship the gods and sects that worship the demons, sects that worship the sun and sects that worship the snake, sects that worship everything and sects that worship nothing ; but the results of each and all seem exactly iden tical they leave men where they found them, or make them worse. They are reckoned by the Brahmans themselves as equally useful, which means, I presume, that they are equally useless.
It used to be said by the Duke of Wellington, that " education without religion made people clever devils : " recent events in India prove that this may be said with still greater truth of the effects of civilization without religion, or, what is still worse, if possible, civilization with a bad religion. The tiger's step becomes softer and its coat sleeker, but it remains as much of a tiger as ever. Human nature when left to itself is bad enough, but it becomes still worse when the devil, in the shape of a bad religion, gets the management of it, and when God's gifts are placed at the devil's disposal.
I may here remark, that it is the peculiar policy of the Brahmans to render all the religious systems of India subservient to their purpose by making friends of them all. Brahmanism repudiates exclusiveness ; it incorporates all creeds, assimilates all, consecrates all. People are permitted to entertain any opinions they please, and to practise any ceremonies they please, provided only that the supremacy of the Vedas and of the Brahmans is acknowledged. When that acknowledgment has been duly made, the new heterodoxy becomes another new authoritative orthodoxy, especially revealed by the Supreme Being himself for the enlightenment and salvation of the parti cular class of people amongst whom it has become popular. Thus Brahmanism yields and conquers ; and hence, though the demon- worship of Tinnevelly is as far as possible repugnant to the genius of orthodox Hinduism, and was not only independent of it in origin, but, as I believe, long anterior to it, yet even it has received a place in the cunningly-devised mosaic of the Brahmans, and the devils have got themselves regarded as abnormal developments of the gods.
It is one of the peculiar difficulties that Christianity has to encounter in dealing with Hindus of the higher and middle castes, that the religion of the country is so closely intertwined with the usages of Hindu society. The more punctilious a high-caste Hindu is in the performance of his religious ceremonies, and in the maintenance of his caste purity and exclusiveness, the higher are supposed to be his claims to social respectability. It is not necessary for him to be a believer in the doctrines of his religien; but it is absolutely necessary, if he is a man of " good caste" and in affluent circumstances, that he should carefully practise all its rites. He cannot keep his place in society, he cannot claim to be regarded as a gentleman, without affecting to be superstitious. A poor low-caste man may be as careless as he likes about his religious duties ; but one who occupies a respectable position in society cannot choose but show himself ceremonious, just as an English gentleman cannot choose but live in a style appropriate to his rank. Hence, to propose to a Hindu of respectability to abandon all the usages of his sect and caste, and embrace a foreign religion, sounds in his ear like asking him to abandon the pro prieties of life and become a Pariar. No class of people are so enslaved to custom and precedent as those who are wealthy and luxurious without being enlightened.
Another difficulty in the way of the spread of the Gospel amongst that class is owing to the tyranny of caste. A caste man may, indeed, become a Christian after a fashion without giving up his caste, though he cannot become a Christian without ceasing to be respectable ; but if he should be so thoroughly con vinced of the truth of Christianity, and so completely disen thralled by it, as to determine to give up not only his false creed, but his caste exclusiveness, he must be content to suffer not only the loss of social status, but the loss of everything which life holds dear. The government, indeed, will protect his person and his life; it has recently guaranteed to him also his right to his paternal inheritance, and so far his condition is better than that of converts to Christianity under the Roman Emperors ; but the Government cannot protect him from being abandoned by his relations, excluded for ever from the society of his equals, and condemned to life-long reproach and disgrace.
"W hat to require of a caste man on his becoming a Christian, is a perplexed question involved in many difficulties. If he is required, as he now generally is, to give up caste at once and submit to social excommunication, other persons similarly situated are deterred from following his example, notwithstanding their conviction of the truth of Christianity, and thus the narrow entrance to the way of life is made narrower : if, on the other hand, he is received into the Church without giving up caste, in the expectation that this part of his duty as a Christian will be fulfilled at some future period, when he has obtained more light and strength, it is found that the caste usages and unsocial dis tinctions that have been retained the Canaanites that have been spared in the land wax stronger, instead of weaker, every year, and at length begin to pave the way for the re-introduction of heathenism.
Amongst the Sudra or middle-class portion of the population of Tinnevelly, Christianity has made, as yet, but little progress. Of the 43,000 converts who are registered in our church-lists, not more than a thousand are members of that class, "and the majority of that thousand belong to the lowest division of it. The Sudra inhabitants of Tinnevelly have not embraced Christianity more generally, or shown themselves better disposed towards it, than persons belonging to similar castes in other provinces. On the contrary, much greater progress was made amongst persons of this class in Tanjore by Swartz and his immediate successors. It is amongst the Sh&na'rs, or palmyra cultivators, a caste which is almost restricted to Tinnevelly and South Travancore, that Christianity has made most progress ; and though the movement has extended to some other castes, higher and lower in the social scale, almost all the missionary results for which Tinnevelly is famous have been accomplished amongst the Shanars. Shana"r Christianity still forms the staple of the Christianity of Tinnevelly.
In some respects the position of the Shanars in the scale of castes is peculiar. Their abstinence from spirituous liquors and from beef, and the circumstance that their widows are not allowed to marry again, connect them with the Sudra group of castes. On the other hand, they are]not allowed, as allSudras are, to enter the temples ; and where old native usages still prevail, they are not allowed even to enter the courts of justice, but are obliged to offer their prayers to the gods and their complaints to the magistrates outside, and their women, like those of the castes still lower, are obliged to go uncovered from the waist upwards. These circum stances connect them with the group of castes inferior to the Sudras ; but if they musfc be classed with that group, they are undoubtedly to be regarded as forming the highest division of it. A considerable proportion of the Shanars are owners of the land they cultivate, many are engaged in trade, and some of both those classes are wealthy, as wealth is estimated amongst peasantry ; whilst one family, being Zemindars, is entitled to be classed with the gentry of the province. All of them are, in some shape or another, engaged in the cultivation of the palmyra, and perhaps the majority are employed in climbing that tree. Though the Sh&n&rs rank as a caste with the lower classes, and though the greater number of them earn their daily bread by their daily labour, pauperism is almost unknown amongst them. Of the great majority it may be said, that they are equally removed from the temptations of poverty and riches, equally removed from the superficial polish and subtle rationalism of the higher castes, and from the filthy habits and almost hopeless degradation of the agricultural slaves. Few of them before their conversion to Christianity are found to be able to read ; and as they form almost the entire population in those districts in which they reside, with little or no opportunity of intercourse with the better-educated classes, their reception of the Gospel is, in most instances, the commencement not only of their spiritual life, but of their intellectual cultivation. Christianity generally finds their minds undeveloped and their manners almost as rude as their ideas, but it does not leave them in the condition in which it finds them. It is the glory of the Gospel that it elevates the social, mental, and moral condition of every people by whom it is embraced, and as the Shanars are by no means deficient in prac tical shrewdness, and are peculiarly willing to be taught, guided, and modelled by those in whom they confide, when once they are induced to embrace Christianity with a sincere faith, the progress they make is peculiarly steady and satisfactory.
In many respects their character is as peculiar as their social position. They are peculiarly docile and tractable, peculiarly fitted to appreciate the advantages of sympathy, guidance, and protection, and peculiarly accessible to Christian influences. Though inferior to many of their neighbours in intellectual attainments, they are by no means inferior to them in sincerity. Their chief faults dissimulation, litigiousness, and avarice are the faults of all Hindus ; but with respect, at least, to dissimula tion, the first and worst of those faults, experience testifies that of all Hindus they are the least guilty. The strong points of the Hindu character are patience, good humour, and natural courtesy, and in these particulars the Shanars are quite on a level with the rest of the Hindus. Less polished than their neighbours, they are not less courteous ; less lively, they are not less good- humoured ; and as for patience, they have been so oppressed and Harassed ever since they were a people, that it is too frequently taken for granted that their patience has no limits. Hence if. their position in the scale of intellect and attainment must be admitted to be low, perhaps no caste of Hindus occupies, as a caste, a more respectable position as regards the moral elements of character. They are a timid people, much exposed to the rapacity of their high-caste neighbours and landlords, and greatly wanting in self-reliance. Accustomed to be led, they are re luctant to be left to themselves, and reluctant to take any step alone. Very sensitive and touchy with respect to the honour due to their caste, that is, to their combined personality, they are apt to resort to combinations for the purpose of gaining caste- privileges, or revenging caste-injuries ; and though individually they are easily influenced, there are no combinations more diffi cult to break or more impracticable than theirs. However convinced of the truth of Christianity they may be, they can rarely be persuaded to act upon their own convictions indepen dently of the course of conduct adopted by their neighbours. They prefer to wait till a party has been formed, and if the party becomes tolerably strong, it then not only dares to act for itself, but often brings with it the entire village community. When a movement of this sort is in progress, nobody likes to anticipate his neighbours, and nobody likes to be left behind.
Most of the peculiarities of the social condition and character of the Shanars, which have now been mentioned, have worked together for their good, and have contributed either to the recep tion of Christianity by members of this caste, or to their growth, in Christian propriety and order after their reception of it. Obstacles which exist elsewhere have no place amongst them, and facilities abound amongst them which are rarely met with else where. We learn from the parable of the Sower, that the different results which attended the preaching of the Gospel in different places were owing, not to the seed, for the seed was in every instance the same, the good seed of the Word, nor to the sower, for the sower was the Lord Jesus Himself, but to differ ences in the soil. Now, amongst the Shanars of Tinnevelly we have the advantage of having a good soil to labour in. In this instance, as amongst the Karens of Burmah, the seed sown amongst a peculiar class of people has brought forth [fruit in peculiar abundance. God's providence may here be observed making straight in the desert a highway for His Gospel, making ready a people " prepared for the Lord," prepared to appreciate Christian teaching and guidance, and prepared to profit by Christian discipline.
The chief peculiarity in the social condition of the Shanars prior to their reception of Christianity was the prevalence amongst them of demonolatry, or the worship of evil spirits. The popular superstitions of the Hindus may be divided into two classes ; viz., the higher or more classical Hinduism, consisting in the worship of the gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines of the Brah- manical Pantheon, and the lower or pre-Brahmanical superstition, deriving its origin from the early inhabitants of India, and con sisting in the worship of devils. A similar demonolatry prevailed amongst the Mongols before their conversion to Buddhism, and amongst the Turks before their conversion to Mahometanism, and survives up to the present day amongst the Ostiaka and other heathen tribes in Siberia. In India, demonolatry is the religion of most of the rude inhabitants of the mountains and pestilential jungles ; and in the provinces in the extreme south, which are farthest removed from the original centres of Brahmanical influence, it prevails even amongst the civilized and partially Brahmanized peasantry. Nowhere does it prevail to a greater extent than in Tinnevelly, where it constitutes the religion of the Shanars and of the whole of the lower classes, and enters very largely into the religion of the middle classes. It was from Tinnevelly or the neighbour hood that demonolatry passed over into Ceylon, where it is mixed up with the Buddhism of the Singhalese. Amongst the middle classes in Tinnevelly demonolatry has received a Brahmanical shape, and pretends to be the worship not of the enemies of the gods, but of sanguinary emanations and energies of the supreme divinities ; but amongst the lower classes it wears no such screen and puts forth no plausible explanations it presents itself as devil-worship " pure and simple." It is true that even the lower classes offer a little passing reverence to the ordinary deities of the country, especially to Subrahmanya, a son of Siva, who has from a very ancient period been the favourite deity of Tinnevelly; but the only worship which they form into a system, the only system which can be styled their religion, the only religion, which has any real hold of their minds, is demonolatry.
The essential features of the demonolatry of Siberia, commonly called Shamanism, and of the demonolatry of Tinnevelly, are identical. Neither system knows anything of a regular priest hood. Ordinarily the head of the family, or the head man of the community, performs the priestly office ; but any worshipper, male or female, who feels disposed, may volunteer to officiate, and the office may at any time be laid aside. Neither amongst the Shamanites, nor amongst the demonolaters of India, is there any belief in the transmigration of souls. Both systems acknowledge in vague terms the existence of a Supreme God ; but they agree in the notion that, if He does exist, He is too good to do people harm, and it is therefore unnecessary to offer Him any kind of worship. The objects of worship in both systems are neither gods nor heroes, but demons, which are supposed to have got the actual administration of the affairs of the world into their hands ; and those demons are so numerous and cunning, so capricious and malicious and powerful, that it is necessary to worship them very sedulously to keep them from doing people mischief.
In Tinnevelly, as in Siberia, bloody sacrifices are offered to appease the anger of the demons ; but the most important and essential feature in the worship of all demonolaters is " the devil- dance." The officiating priest, or " devil- dancer," who wishes to represent the demon, sings and dances himself into a state of wild frenzy, and leads the people to suppose that the demon they are worshipping has taken possession of him ; after which he communicates, to those who consult him, the information he has received. The fanatical excitement which the devil-dance awakens constitutes the chief strength and charm of the system, and is peculiarly attractive to the dull perceptions of illiterate, half- civilized tribes. The votaries of this system are the most sincerely superstitious people in India. There is much ceremony, but little sincerity, in the more plausible religion of the higher classes ; but the demonolaters literally " believe and tremble." In times of sickness, especially during the prevalence of cholera, it is astonishing with what eagerness, earnestness, and anxiety the lower classes worship their demons.
It might naturally be supposed that a pure and spiritual religion, like Christianity, would make little progress amongst a people who are so besotted as to worship devils ; yet in Tinne velly and the neighbouring provinces it has made greater pro gress amongst demonolaters than amongst the followers of the higher Hinduism. The exceeding greatness of the contrast between the fear and gloom of devil-worship and the light and love of the Gospel is found to attract their attention, and it is generally found to be easy to convince them of the debasing character of their own superstition, and of the great superiority of Christianity. We have gone amongst those poor demonolaters as preachers of a religion of mercy, as preachers of " peace on earth and good will to men," and have endeavoured to illustrate its beneficent tendencies by doing them all the good in our power, and especially such good as they could appreciate. We have assured them that God has not abandoned the world He made, but rules it Himself, and is as merciful as He is powerful ; we have given them this convincing proof of His mercy, that " He so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life :" we have told them also that it is unnecessary, as well as wrong, to worship devils, through any fear of their malice ; for the Son of God was "manifested" for this very pur pose, " that He might destroy the works of the devil" " by dying He destroyed him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and delivered those who through fear of death were all their life- time subject to bondage;" so that if they only put their trust in Him, and feared and served Him, he would defend them from all that devils can do. And when they have been induced to listen to these statements and to ponder them in their minds, it has generally been found that of all heathens in India, they are the most ready to throw off the shackles of their slavish fear, and to enter into the enjoyment of the liberty of the children of God. Thus the progress of the Gospel in Tinnevelly has supplied us with another illustration of the truth, that " where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." In a province where devils were literally the objects of worship " where Satan's seat was" the Church of God has received larger accessions of converts than in any other province in India. In Tinuevelly the Church " flourishes like the palmyra" flourishes where perpetual barrenness might have been expected to reign. Hay I not also say that the position which the Shnrs have acquired in the fore-front of Hindu Christianity, notwithstanding their poverty, their want of mental culture, and their lowly rank as a caste, fulfils the prediction, that " there are last which shall be first?"