Life in India/Conjeveram
Conjeveram.
Our homeward route now brought us to Conjeveram, not merely, like Trivatoor, a place of resort and of celebrity, but one of the seven holy cities of India. Few places are more famous for temples and festivals than Conjeveram, “the golden-beaded city.” Nor is it without note in modern oriental history; during the last half of the eighteenth century, its neighbourhood was the scene of many a bloody struggle between the armies of England and France, while contending, ten thousand miles from home, for the supremacy of India. Here, too, Hyder Ali and his son Tippoo in 1780 met, and by superior numbers overpowered an English force, slaying or capturing them to a man.
But Hyder and Tippoo have passed away, and British power is here supreme. The inhabitants of the holy city, no more harrassed by marauding bands of robbers or terrified by the approach of hostile armies, have little to think of but their pagodas, their processions, and their gains reaped from the superstitions of Southern India.
The town is long and straggling, covering a space near six miles in length. The streets are broad, level, and finely planted with shade-trees. The inhabitants are mainly Brahmin, who live by the temples. Their houses are often large, and, when compared with those of other Hindu towns, handsome. Though the country around is not rich, the money brought into Conjeveram by its sanctity, and its celebrity as a resort of pilgrims, gives it the appearance of prosperity and ease. The streets cross each other regularly; the temples are of uncommon size and extent, the tanks large, and the choultries (native rest-houses) numerous.
The great attraction of the place is the temple of Maha-deva, the “mighty god” Siva. The entrance to this temple, styled by the Tamil people a gobram, by the English, pagoda, is very lofty, being, if I remember aright, twelve stories in height, and may be seen for miles around, towering above the cocoanut-trees with which the streets of the “golden city” are planted. This structure is upon the same model as that upon which all the gobrams of Southern India are built. They stand in the centre of one of the four walls which surround the temple, which is properly only the dwelling-place of the idol-god, and frequently very small. They are pyramidal in shape, and rise in successive stories, gradually diminishing as they ascend. In the first story of the gobram is the gateway to the courts and shrines within. Each succeeding story is reached by flights of steps, and has an arched door-like opening, through which you can see the sky beyond. They are built usually of brick, stuccoed with chunam, (Madras plaster,) and are completely covered with grotesque images of gods, demons, and creatures of all imaginable shapes, and of some shapes quite unimaginable, save by a Hindu.
The temple proper, as in the temple at Jerusalem, stands in a court within this gateway, and upon a slightly raised platform. Around this court runs a deep portico supported by stone columns, said to be a thousand in number. Of these, some are plain, and others carved into the shape of animals, vases, gods, &c. On the walls, also, are many sculptured scenes. Many of these scenes, though in the spot devoted to the worship of their gods, are so vile, that human nature, unless itself as vile, would blush to confess that it could conceive them. Yet, here the gods are worshipped—this is a holy place, and to visit it an act of piety! Such is Hinduism, and such the moral sense of the Hindus! Such, rather, is human nature left to reveal its own depravity.
The great temple of Siva has not a monopoly of the sacred city. The worshippers of the rival god Vishnu have also a famous temple here. It is not Christianity alone, as many suppose, that is divided into sects. Hinduism has its sects, who have engaged in bloody wars to decide whether Siva or Vishnu was the supreme ruler; and Mohammedans of different sects hate each other as bitterly as do the Vishnuvites the Sivites. A line of separation has been drawn by the government between the two divisions of Conjeveram, of which one is known as Siva-Conjee, the other as Vishnu-Conjee. As the rival sects may not settle their disputes by blows, they take delight in insulting and ridiculing the claims of the opposing god and his worshippers. On the night preceding the great car-drawing, the Vishnuvites mount their idol on a great gilt elephant, and drawing it to the line of separation, turn its tail toward the temple of Siva, and with shouts and gestures of insult, run it backward to the line. The affair ends bloodlessly, however, with abuse and insult, and, it may be, some pulling of hair and brandishing of fists.
At a certain season, the incarnations of Vishnu, ten in number, are celebrated for ten successive days. Each day his image is exhibited to the public, or is borne in procession through the streets. The idol, adorned with jewels and rich clothes, is seated on a platform surrounded by his priests, and the platform borne in triumphal procession through the wide streets. It is preceded and followed by devotees on foot, drummers astride of bullocks, elephants, dancing-girls, torch-bearers, fireworks, and men in various disguises. Others, to excite compassion by their penances, and so collect alms, move among the crowd with iron rods run through their cheeks or sides; or lie with their heads buried under the earth, while their bodies are exposed to public gaze. Others, with scarce a rag to cover their nakedness, and smeared all over with ashes of cow-dung, exhibit limbs stiffened by disuse, or emaciated by long-continued austerities. The drawing of the idol-car is thus described by a missionary visiting Conjeveram at the great festival for the purpose of preaching to the assembled multitudes:
“Early in the day, I went out to witness the imposing spectacle. The bright sun that Jehovah made flooded sky and earth with effulgence. Were it not an inanimate luminary, surely it would have veiled its face with midnight sorrow, as it gazed upon the scene that passed before my eyes. How shall I describe it? A vast multitude, whose heads were like the ears of waving wheat upon an illimitable grain-field, filled up the long avenue along which the car was drawn. It was, indeed, a mighty structure, towering above the tops of the palm-trees. It was gaudily decked with crimson trappings, and a glittering umbrella adorned its pinnacle. Its massive wheels moved slowly and majestically through the sand. Monstrous, misshapen forms, like dragons of giant size, grinned and leered hideously on its four sides; and images of horses in leaping attitudes were projected from its front. On the fore-part of the car, and about half-way up the edifice, Brahmins stood waving long and graceful deer-hair brushes to the crowd below; while men, packed in the sides of the car, busied themselves in letting down ropes with bags attached, and drawing up the spoils which the people deposited in them. Four cables of enormous size, such as no ship on the ocean carries, stretched far away in front of the car, lying like anacondas on the necks and heads of the half-maddened throng, who, grasping them and bearing upon them with their full strength, moved the towering vehicle slowly along. Between the ropes were Brahmins, old and young, waving cloths and sticks hung with small white banners, cheering the multitude forward in their task. Now the throng would stop, weary with their labour; and now again the shout would rise up with a great rush of voices along the cables, and once more they would give their shoulders to the toilsome work. I never saw such a sight. The ocean-like crowd parted and met around the car like waters around an island. The old, the middle-aged, and the young were there. Aged Brahmins with white hairs were there; and there, too, were infants lying on the necks of delicate women.
"Among the deluded worshippers, I saw some who bore votive cocoanuts in their hands. These they cracked, and then held the dissevered portions with uplifted arms before their idol-god. I saw others, who stood at some distance in advance of the car, throwing themselves flat upon their faces in the hot sand to do homage to the senseless image. My soul was filled with horror at this sight. Having been occupied for several days, together with my father, in preaching against idol-worship, and proclaiming the true God, I felt a little apprehension, before going out, lest I might meet with some insult or violence; but, when I witnessed this scene, indignation took the place of apprehension. I felt that if there was aught for which I could lay down my life, it would be possible for one to do it in testimony against this abominable idolatry.”